(2013). Heidegger, Wittgenstein and St Paul on the Last Judgement: On the Roots and Significance of ‘The Theoretical Attitude’. British Journal for the History of Philosophy: Vol. 21, No. 1, pp. 143-164. doi: 10.1080/09608788.2012.686980.

Paul Boghossian has pointed out a ’circularity problem’ for dispositionalist theories of meaning: as a result of the holistic character of belief fixation, one cannot identify someone’s meaning such and such with facts of the form S is disposed to utter P under conditions C, without C involving the semantic and intentional notions that such a theory was to explain. Alex Miller has recently suggested an ’ultra‐sophisticated dispositionalism’ (modelled on David Lewis’s well known version of functionlism) and has argued (...) that this version of dispositionalism escapes Boghossian’s ’circularity problem’. Miller argues, nonetheless, that another of Boghossian’s criticisms of dispositionalism, ’the infinity problem’ still applies to this ’ultra‐sophisticated dispositionalism’: C will still draw upon a potential infinity of mediating background clusters of belief. The present paper argues that the feature that ’the infinity problem’ presents as problematic is a feature of a host of familiar explanations. Our fundamental difficulty in this area is not our inability to understand how a more general model can be applied to a particular domain (the intentional understood as dispositional) but our failure to understand that general model itself (dispositional explanation). (shrink)

The emergence of cave art in Europe about 30,000 years ago is widely believed to be evidence that by this time human beings had developed sophisticated capacities for symbolization and communication. However, comparison of the cave art with the drawings made by a young autistic girl, Nadia, reveals surprising similarities in content and style. Nadia, despite her graphic skills, was mentally defective and had virtually no language. I argue in the light of this comparison that the existence of the cave (...) art cannot be the proof which it is usually assumed to be that the humans of the Upper Palaeolithic had essentially ‘modern’ minds. The article includes peer commentary by Paul Bahn, Paul Bloom, Uta Frith, Ezra Zubrow, Steven Mithen, Ian Tattersall, Chris Knight, Chris McManus and Daniel Dennett , with response by Nicholas Humphrey. [Owing to the number of illustrations, the full text for this file is in excess of 1 Mb. .]. (shrink)

This article provides insight into the entwinement of the allegedly neutral category of handedness with questions of sex/gender, reproduction, dis/ability, and scientific authority. In the 1860s, Paul Broca suggested that the speech centre sat in the left brain hemisphere in most humans, and that right-handedness stemmed from this asymmetry. One century later, British psychologists Marian Annett and Chris McManus proposed biologically unconfirmed theories of how handedness and brain asymmetry were passed on in families. Their idea to integrate chance (...) into genetic models of handedness was novel, and so was their use of computerized statistics to parse out the incidence of handedness genotypes and phenotypes. Notwithstanding significant conceptual and methodological overlaps, McManus and Annett did not collaborate and proposed competing theories. I analyse the sexed/gendered dimensions of their controversy by drawing on published literature, unpublished documents, and oral history interviews. I first attend to the epistemological importance of sex/gender. Both psychologists published several iterations of their models, which increasingly relied on questions of sex/gender and reproduction. Annett additionally linked handedness with stereotypically gendered cognitive abilities. Second, I argue that using masculine-coded computer technologies contributed to Annett’s professional marginalization whereas similar methods endowed McManus with surplus authority. Finally, I show that Annett’s complicity in stabilizing sociocultural hierarchies within her theory mirrored her personal experience of marginalization based on sex/gender, age, education, and lack of institutional affiliation. This analysis exemplifies the entanglement of cognitive and social factors in scientific controversies and adds to the literature on 20th-century British women psychologists. (shrink)

The apparent contextual variability exhibited by ‘knows’ and its cognates—brought to attention in examples like Keith DeRose’s Bank Case—poses familiar problems for conservative forms of invariantism about ‘knows’. The paper examines and criticises a popular response to those problems, one that involves appeal to so-called ‘pragmatic’ features of language. It is first argued, contrary to what seems to have been generally assumed, that any pragmatic defence faces serious problems with regard to our judgments about retraction. Second, the familiar objection that (...) the pragmatic effects at issue do not seem to be cancellable is considered. Advocates of the pragmatic defence have suggested that cancellability concerns can be dealt with fairly readily. It is shown both that their recent attempts to respond to those concerns, and some other possible attempts, are unsuccessful. Finally, it is argued that the popular relevance-based accounts, found in the work of Jessica Brown, Alan Hazlett, and Patrick Rysiew, fail to provide a satisfactory explanation of our judgments. (shrink)

A biogenetic structural explanation is offered for the cross‐culturally common mystical experience called portalling, the experience of moving from one reality to another via a tunnel, door, aperture, hole, or the like. The experience may be evoked in shamanistic and meditative practice by concentration upon a portalling device (mirror, mandala, labyrinth, skrying bowl, pool of water, etc.). Realization of the portalling experience is shown to be fundamental to the phenomenology underlying multiple reality cosmologies in traditional cultures and is explained in (...) terms of radical re‐entrainment of the neurological systems mediating experience in the brain. Phenomenological experiments with mirror portalling devices from both the Tibetan and the Tsimshian religious traditions are reported. (shrink)

Michael Bergmann argues directly from our ignorance about actual and merely possible goods and evils and the broadly logical relations that hold betweenthem to the conclusion that “noseeum” arguments from evil against theism like William L. Rowe’s are unsuccessful. I critically discuss Bergmann’s argument in the first part of this paper. Bergmann also suggests that our ignorance about value and modality undermines the Humean argument from evil against theism that I defended in a 1989 paper. I explain in the second (...) part of this paper why this suggestion is false. (shrink)

Constructive empiricism is not just a view regarding the aim of science; it is also a view regarding the epistemological framework in which one should debate the aim of science. This is the focus of this book -- not with scientific truth, but with how one should argue about scientific truth.

There is a natural objection to the epistemic coherence of Bas van Fraassen’s use of a distinction between the observable and unobservable in his constructive empiricism, an objection that has been raised with particular clarity by Alan Musgrave. We outline Musgrave’s objection, and then consider how one might interpret and evaluate van Fraassen’s response. According to the constructive empiricist, observability for us is measured with respect to the epistemic limits of human beings qua measuring devices, limitations ‘which will be described (...) in detail in the final physics and biology’ (van Fraassen 1980: 17). In order for the constructive empiricist to determine what counts as observable, he will have to appeal to our best scientific theories of light, human physiology, and so forth. To put the same point in a slightly more abstract way, in order to draw a distinction between observable and unobservable entities, the constructive empiricist needs to use his best scientific theory of observability – call it T* – to tell him the identity of the observable entities. This raises an interesting difficulty. Constructive empiricism is the view that ‘science aims to give us theories that are empirically adequate; and acceptance of a theory involves as belief only that it is empirically adequate’ (van Fraassen 1980:12). When he accepts a theory, the constructive empiricist only believes the statements of his scientific theories that are about observable entities. Thus, in order to know which statements of a scientific theory to believe, the constructive empiricist needs to know which statements of that theory are about observable entities. In particular then, the constructive empiricist only believes the statements of his theory of observability T* that are about observable entities. Therefore, in order to know which statements of T* he can believe, the constructive empiricist needs to know which statements of T* are about observable entities. However, it is T* that tells the constructive empiricist what counts as an observable entity: the constructive empiricist therefore needs to use T* to tell him which statements of T* he can believe. The fact that the distinction drawn by T* must also apply to itself is not an immediate cause for alarm.. (shrink)

This intriguing new book examines and analyses the role of critical realism in economics and specifically how this line of thought can be applied to the real world. With contributions from such varying commentators as Sheila Dow, Wendy Olsen and Fred Lee, this new book is unique in its approach and will be of great interest to both economic methodologists and those involved in applied economic studies.

Introduction My claims are scandalously out of proportion with the general temper of the times and my literary background, which must be regarded by almost ...

This paper examines interaction involving a child with an Autistic Spectrum Disorder, a humanoid robot and a co-present adult. In this paper data from one child (collected as part of the ROBOSKIN project) is analysed in order to evaluate the potential contributions of a conversation analytic perspective to the examination of data relating to socio-emotional reciprocity. The paper argues for the value of treating all interaction as potentially relevant, looking without carefully pre-defined target behaviours and examining behaviour within its specific (...) sequence of interaction. Adopting this approach, the paper suggests, enables noticings and observations that might not be available from perspectives that rely on the coding of pre-specified behaviours in isolation. Treating all interaction as potentially relevant brought into view interactions that might otherwise be dismissed or ignored – because they occurred before, or after, the trial itself. Being informed by the value of unmotivated looking – rather than pre-specified coding schemes – enabled highly relevant behaviour that was not anticipated within the trials to be analysed. Finally, seeing sequence as important meant that behaviours were appreciated in their intricate detail, enabling a more precise understanding than might be available if they were considered separately from that sequential environment. Keywords: autism; assessment; autistic spectrum disorder; experiment; conversation analysis; interaction; humanoid robot; sequences; sequence of interaction; socio-emotional reciprocity. (shrink)

In this journal, Peter Lipton and I discussed Musgrave's objection that the constructive empiricist cannot consistently maintain his own distinction between the observable and the unobservable, and van Fraassen's initial reply. We considered several possible interpretations of van Fraassen, and expressed misgivings about each. Muller and van Fraassen have consequently clarified the official constructive empiricist response to Musgrave, although some issues still remain.According to Muller and van Fraassen, Musgrave's objection assumes that constructive empiricism is to be understood in line with (...) a syntactic account of our scientific theories – whereby a theory consists of a set of sentences formulated in some suitable language – whereas constructive empiricism has always been wedded to an explicitly semantic account of our scientific theories, which understands a scientific theory in terms of a class of models. Once this oversight is amended, the objection is seen to be toothless. As Muller and van Fraassen write: " Indeed, the only proper response, and the one that turns the table on Musgrave and his followers, is to argue that his incoherence argument does not work in the context of the semantic view as here elaborated, while the bad consequence he draws is an inevitable corollary to the older view within which he presents it. "The force of Musgrave's objection therefore turns on nothing more than implicitly saddling the constructive empiricist with an independently problematic account of what a scientific theory is.This move should cause some surprise however, for Musgrave's objection – albeit usually presented in conjunction with an explicitly syntactic construal of our scientific theories – is in fact quite neutral between these competing accounts. As Musgrave originally put it, in order for the constructive empiricist to draw his distinction between observable and unobservable …. (shrink)

Scarce healthcare resources can be allocated in many ways. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence in the UK focuses on the size of the benefit relative to costs, yet we know that there is support among clinicians and the general public for reducing inequalities in health. This paper shows how the UK general public trade-off these sometimes competing objectives, and the data we gather allow us to show the weight given to different population groups, for example, 1 extra (...) year of life in full health to someone who would otherwise die at the age of 60 years is worth more than twice as much as an additional year of life to someone who would otherwise die at the age of 70 years. Such data can help inform the rationing decisions faced by all healthcare systems around the world. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Murder in the Garden? The Envy of the Gods in Genesis 2 and 3 Paul DuffJoseph Hallman George Washington University University of St. Thomas According to Walter Brueggemann, "No text in Genesis (or likely in the entire Bible) has been more used, interpreted and misunderstood" than the story of Adam and Eve in the garden. "This applies to careless, popular theology as well as to the doctrine of (...) the church"(41). Augustine attempted to explain the first few chapters of Genesis on no fewer than five different occasions throughout his career. Based on his reading ofPaul, Augustine and Western Christianity after him believed that the entire human race inherited the disobedience ofAdam and Eve. The story in Genesis 2-3 represents the beginning ofthe J narrative, the so-called Yahwist account of the creation which originated in the early years ofthe Israelite monarchy.8 Commentators have long acknowledged a variety ofelements in the Yahwist creation account which complicate its interpretation and defy any satisfactory explanation. Among the more puzzling elements in the story are, first, the implication in Gen. 3:22 of a plurality of divine beings, a fact which seems to contradict the rest ofthe narrative and which also flies in the face of Israelite monotheism. Second, according to Gen. 2:17, God threatens Adam with the punishment of 8 The Yahwist document, originally independent, was later combined with three other strands of ancient material to form the Pentateuch. For a recent study ofthe "Documentary Hypothesis," see Richard Friedman. 1 84Paul DuffandJoseph Hallman immediate death for transgressing the deity's prohibition (cf. 3:3, 3:4). God does not carry out the threatened punishment, however, nor does the text offer the reader an explanation for the deity's commutation ofthe sentence (Westermann 224-5). Third, the origin and nature ofthe serpent in the story is unclear. Where did he come from? The identification ofthis figure with Satan in the later tradition has no support in the text (Westermann 237-9). Finally, the prohibition not to eat ofthe single tree in the garden appears to be arbitrary. Hence the crime of Adam and Eve is obviously contrived. Despite the fact that the original sentence of death for their disobedience was not carried out, the curses invoked on Adam and Eve seem hardly warranted by the offense. Consequently, some sections ofthe text depict the deity as a petty tyrant, certainly a very different picture than that given by other scriptures ofthe Jewish and Christian traditions. We believe these difficulties can be overcome by approaching Genesis 2-3 from a Girardian perspective.9 We propose that this story has evolved10 in order to hide its original meaning. As a result—following Girard's understanding of the function and evolution of mythology—we will endeavor to "deconstruct" Genesis 2-3 in order to trace the evolution ofthis myth from its origin in a primal crime. This will enable us to explain the inconsistencies in the text as it stands and to appreciate the final revisions made by the biblical author(s). We will begin with a brief discussion of Girard's understanding ofmyth. Then we will turn to the problems ofthe Genesis text. Girard on myth According to Girard, myth is, quite simply, a narrative about a primal murder, rewritten from the vantage point ofthe killers (1977a, 64-7, 91-5; 1986, 24-44). As such, mythology covers up the role of the victimage mechanism as the basis ofculture. Myths which disguise or cover up such a crime can take many forms. For instance, the foundational murder of an 9 In his recent book on Paul, Robert Hamerton-Kelly presents a Girardian interpretation of this passage which is completely different from ours (92-7). Since Hamerton-Kelly appears to read the myth at face value without a sense of development, he, like most interpreters, ends with somewhat tortuous conclusions. 10It is virtually certain that the account found in Gen. 2 and 3 did not come into being as a free composition of the Yahwist. But, as Claus Westermann has pointed out in his history ofthe exegesis ofthis passage (186-91), despite the fact that most see it as a product of a long... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:INDIFFERENCE AND ENVY: THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF MODERN ECONOMY Paul Dumouchel University ofQuébec-Montréal 1. Girard and economics René Girard himself has not written very much on economics, at least explicitly. Though his works are full ofinsights into and short remarks on the sacrificial origin of different economic phenomena or the way in which mimetic relations and commercial transactions are often intertwined and act upon each other.1 Unlike religion, (...) psychology, psychoanalysis, literature and anthropology, the analysis of modem and traditional economies from the point ofview ofmimetic theory has never been carried out by Girard himself, but for the most part by other people, for example, in the French speaking world, which I know best, essentially by Michel Aglietta and André Orléan in La violence de la monnaie (1982) and by Jean-Pierre Dupuy and myself in L'enfer des choses (1979) and as well as others, such as, by Mark Anspach, Andrew Feenberg, P. Lantz, A. Orléan, G-H. de Radkowsky and Lucien Scubla in various works on economy, economic anthropology, or the place and role of money in literary texts.2 In a way, this is somewhat surprising since the relationship between mimetic and economic phenomena, at least in a broad sense, was seen quite early on. For example, soon after the original publication Mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque (1961) the French Marxist Lucien Goldman wrote in his Pour une sociologie du Roman (1964) that Girard's work was the most important book to read in order to understand 1 For example, Mensonge romantique (18-23); Des choses cachées (82-88). 2 See Anspach, Feenberg, Lantz, Orléan [passim], de Radkowski. 150Paul Dumouchel the effects of economic alienation on literature since Georg Lukács's Theory of the Novel (1920). Moreover in a footnote in Les origines du capitalisme (1971) Jean Baechler suggested that those wishing to understand the nature of the infinite desire for acquisition which capitalists economies have institutionalized should read Girard's book.3 Whatever the reason for Girard's relative disinterest in economic phenomena others have not been prevented from tackling this problem and it bears witness in a special way to the dynamism and intellectual power ofthe mimetic theory that its application to the field ofeconomics has essentially, ifnot entirely, been due to the work of others rather than to the efforts of René Girard himself. 2. The substantivist-formalist debate In the late 1 940's and early 1 950's a debate began that divided (and still divides) the community ofeconomists and ofanthropologists interested in economic phenomena. It concerns the nature ofeconomy and is generally referred to as the substantivist-formalist debate. It was first formulated in the works of the Austrian economist, Karl Polanyi.4 In The Great Transformation (1945), a book on the history ofthe formation and organization ofthe market economy in Europe from the late 1 8th to early 20th centuries, Polanyi already argued that the modem market economy was a rare historical accident. Furthermore Polanyi said, unlike what liberal and economic ideologies pretend, thatthere is nothingnatural aboutthe market. It does not correspond to any spontaneous human tendency to barter and exchange, and it does not arise by itself as soon as certain conditions are satisfied. Onthe contrary, modem markets have been put into place through sustained and voluntary state policies which consciously destroyed traditional solidarities, authorized the unlimited sale of land and labor and literally created the labor market, for example, in England through the Reform Bill of 1834 that repealed the existing Poor Laws which had prevented the free circulation of labor. The system formed by market economies, the balance of power among European states and the gold 3 Interestingly, 24 years later, in the second vastly enlarged edition of that work, Le capitalisme, (1995) the reference to Girard has disappeared though the text ofthe original work, which now constitutes the second part of the book, is otherwise reprinted in its integrity. 4 Actually Polanyi in The Livelihood ofMan (1977) sees the origin of the debate in Carl Mengers, Principles ofEconomics [1871]. Let us say then that it found its first modern formulation in the work of Polanyi. Indifference andEnvy... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:FERMENT IN PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE REVISITED PAUL T. DURBIN University of Delaware Newark, Delaware I N 1986 I published a survey of some then-recent works in academic philosophy of science, primarily in the United States (The Thomist 50/4 (Oct. 1986): 689-700). My theme was continuity amid change, with a secondary focus on the diversity of philosophers' discussions of science-a diversity much greater than many academic philosophers of science (...) were then admitting. In my earlier survey, I conceded that one recent contribution, by Ronald Giere, represents something genuinely novel in philosophy of science. I was concentrating there on an early adumbration, in article form, of Giere's new approach, which-following W. V. Quine-he has dubbed "naturalized philosophy of science." Giere soon produced a book length version of this approach, Explaining Science: A Cognitive Approach (1988), and it is with that book that I want to begin my survey here. Giere says that from the beginning of his graduate studies in philosophy he had been " troubled... because philosophical discussions of induction seemed so remote from scientific practice as [he] had known it (Explaining Science, p. xv). But, twentyfive years later, his skepticism had increased markedly: From this skepticism, and some fortuitous encounters with work in cognitive science, Giere quickly went on to perceive the I began to lose my faith in the general program.... My skepticism progressed to the point that I now believe there are no special philosophical foundations to any science. There is only deep theory, which, however, is part of science itself (p. xvi). 655 656 PAUL T. DURBIN outlines of his new naturalized philosophy of science. This involves the view that, in general, " cognitive agents... develop representations of the world and make judgments about both the world and their representations of it." And, in particular in Giere's view, "scientists [are] cognitive agents and... scientific models [are] a special type of representation" (pp. xvi-xvii). Philosophy of science is not exactly expendable, but its task becomes one of understanding what scientists do, not of providing rational foundations for it. Later, Giere is even more explicit about the rejections this naturalized approach entails. It means, he says, giving up philosophical definitions of rationality, where he explicitly mentions Karl Popper and Larry Laudan-with their conflicting definitions of rationality-as examples (p. 8). And Giere equally forcefully repudiates other alleged philosophical foundations, whether empiricist, positivist, Kantian, etc. (p. 15). What Giere includes in his approach is an evolutionary naturalism (with debts to Donald Campbell and George Gale, among others), openness to social influences on cognitive resources, and close parallels with " traditional [internalist] historians of science " (p. 19). However, Giere goes on, "evolutionary models of scientific development recommend some changes in the way the history of science is conceived," moving it in the direction that "social historians" have moved for other reasons: "To see the processes of variation and selection at work, one must look at many members of a research community, including those who are unsuccessful" (p. 19).1 Despite Giere's repudiation of "over fifty years [of] philosophy of science " in which its practitioners " have labored to·elucidate the nature of scientific theories and the [rational] criteria for choosing one theory over others " (Explaining Science, 1 An approach very similar to Giere's (in my opinion) has been provided in David Hull's Science as a Process: An Evolutionary Account of the Social and Conceptual Development of Science (1988)-though Hull makes no use of cognitive science models, and his examples are from the history of biological research communities. PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE 657 p. 5), that enterprise continues unabated. And it is to these continuing efforts that I turn next. I. Conventional Philosophy of Science I begin with an excellent textbook that clearly and authoritatively summarizes all the traditional issues-and defends their continued relevance against the critics. The textbook is Merrilee Salmon et al., Introduction to the Philosophy of Science (1992), a collaborative work produced by members of the History and Philosophy of Science Department at the University of Pittsburgh. Focusing on this one textbook is not meant to disparage the others that are now appearing with increasing frequency in a field... (shrink)

As sources of knowledge, perception and testimony are both vulnerable to sceptical arguments. To both arguments a Moorean response is possible: both can be refuted by reference to particular things known by perception and testimony. However, lies and dreams are different possibilities and they are different in a way that undercuts the plausibility of a Moorean response to a scepticism of testimony. The condition placed on testimonial knowledge cannot be trivially satisfied in the way the Moorean would suggest. This has (...) substantial implications for any non-sceptical epistemological theory of testimony. (shrink)

Qualitative coalitional games (QCGs) were introduced as abstract formal models of goal-oriented cooperative systems. A QCG is a game in which each agent is assumed to have some goal to achieve, and in which agents must typically cooperate with others in order to satisfy their goals. In this paper, we show how it is possible to reason about QCGs using Coalition Logic (CL), a formalism intended to facilitate reasoning about coalitional powers in game-like multiagent systems. We introduce a correspondence relation (...) between QCGs and interpretations for CL, which defines the circumstances under which a CL interpretation correctly characterises a QCG. The complexity of deciding correspondence between QCGs and interpretations for CL is shown to vary from being tractable up to Πp 2-complete, depending on the representation chosen for the QCG and interpretation. We then show how various properties and solution concepts of QCGs can be characterised as CL formula schemes. The ideas are illustrated via a detailed worked example, in which we demonstrate how a model checker can be deployed to investigate whether a particular system has the properties in question. (shrink)

This paper summarizes J.L. Schellenberg’s trilogy on the philosophy of religion. In the first book, Prolegomena to a Philosophy of Religion, Schellenberg analyzes basic concepts in the philosophy of religion. In the second, The Wisdom to Doubt, he rejects theism but defends skepticism about both naturalism and a very general religious position that he calls “ultimism.” And in the third book, The Will to Imagine, Schellenberg argues that rationality requires ultimistic faith.

Alvin Plantinga claims that certain beliefs entailing God's existence can be properly basic. He uses this claim to suggest two distinct replies to evidential arguments from evil against theism. In "Reason and Belief in God" he offers what he calls his "highroad" reply, and in a more recent article he suggests what I call his "modest" reply. First I show that Plantinga's highroad reply fails, because it relies on a faulty analysis of probability on total evidence. Then I reformulate his (...) modest reply so that is applies specifically to David Hume's evidential argument from evil. And finally, I show that a certain "existential" problem of evil undermines Plantinga's modest reply to Hume's argument. (shrink)

As the vulgar generally look no higher for the original of moral good and evil, just and unjust, than the codes and pandects, the tables and laws of their country and religion, so there have not wanted pretended philosophers in all ages who have asserted nothing to be good and evil, just and unjust, naturally and immutably; but that these things were positive, arbitrary and factitious only.1 In this short presentation I want to propose a sketch of what “naturalizing ethics (...) from a Girardian perspective” would look like. My goal is not to engage in a Girardian tentative at naturalizing ethics, but rather to contrast what such a project entails in comparison with some of the current attempts at .. (shrink)

Carnap's mature philosophy of science is an attempt to dissolve the scientific realism debate altogether as a philosophical pseudo-question. His argument depends upon a logico-semantic thesis regarding the structure of a scientific theory, and more importantly, a meta-ontological thesis regarding the explication of existence claims. The latter commits Carnap to a distinction between the analytic and the synthetic, which was allegedly refuted by Quine. The contemporary philosophy of science has therefore sought to distance itself from logico-semantic considerations, and has pursued (...) the scientific realism debate as an essentially epistemological thesis. I show however that one of the most prominent positions in this recent debate—van Fraassen's constructive empiricism—not only ends up in very close proximity to Carnap's attempted dissolution, but even provides the resources for extending and refining his programme. Rather than a historical footnote, Carnap's mature philosophy of science offers a live-option in the current debate. (shrink)

Derrida's work encompasses dynamic spatial dimensions to understanding as a pervasive theme, including the search for a ‘new psychoanalytic graphology’ in Writing and Difference. This preoccupation with a spatial text for repression also occurs later in Archive Fever. Building on Derrida, this paper seeks to develop key aspects of a new dynamic psychoanalytic graphology through diametric and concentric interactive spatial relation. These spatial movements emerge from a radical reconstruction of a neglected aspect of structural anthropologist Lévi-Strauss’ work on spatial relations (...) prior to myth. This psychoanalytic graphology is argued to silently pervade Freud's own direct accounts of repression. This graphological domain is developed through diametric and concentric spatial movements across common concerns of Derrida and Freud such as inversions, interruption and restoration, regarding traces in the unconscious. A spatial text is uncovered for diverse features of Freudian repression, including ambivalence in obsessional neurosis and psychosis, splitting of the ego and repetition compulsion. This psychoanalytic graphology challenges the construction of a restricted subjectivity based on repressive diametric spatial relations. It goes beyond Freud's logocentric repression, resonant with Derrida's more radical call for a wider spatio-temporal understanding of structures of differential relation, prior to causality and myth. (shrink)

As part of his wider critique of the credibility of miraculous testimony, Hume also offers a rather curious argument as to the mutual detriment of conflicting testimony for the miracles of contrary religious worldviews. Scholarship on this aspect of Hume’s reasoning has debated whether or not the considerations are to be understood as essentially probabilistic, and as to whether or not a probabilistic interpretation of the argument is logically valid. The consensus would appear to offer a positive answer to the (...) first question and a negative answer to the second. In this paper I expose a deeper fallacy in Hume’s reasoning that undermines both probabilistic and non-probabilistic readings. My critique is closely based upon analogous considerations in the philosophy of science, and the equally intriguing issue as to the epistemological relevance of conflicting scientific theories throughout the history of science. (shrink)