"How do we go about weighing evidence, testing hypotheses and making inferences? According to the model of 'inference to the Best explanation', we work out what to inter from the evidence by thinking about what would actually explain that evidence, and we take the ability of a hypothesis to explain the evidence as a sign that the hypothesis is correct. In inference to the Best Explanation, Peter Lipton gives this important and influential idea the development and assessment it deserves." (...) "The second edition has been substantially enlarged and reworked, with a new chapter on the relationship between explanation and Bayesianism, and an extension and defence of the account of contractive explanation. It also includes an expanded defence of the claims that our inferences really are guided by diverse explanatory considerations, and that this pattern of inference can take us towards the truth. This edition of Inference to the Best Explanation has also been updated throughout and incudes a new bibliography."--BOOK JACKET. (shrink)

This 2001 book offers an examination of functional explanation as it is used in biology and the social sciences, and focuses on the kinds of philosophical presuppositions that such explanations carry with them. It tackles such questions as: why are some things explained functionally while others are not? What do the functional explanations tell us about how these objects are conceptualized? What do we commit ourselves to when we give and take functional explanations in the life sciences and the social (...) sciences? McLaughlin gives a critical review of the debate on functional explanation in the philosophy of science. He discusses the history of the philosophical question of teleology, and provides a comprehensive review of the post-war literature on functional explanation. What Functions Explain provides a sophisticated and detailed Aristotelian analysis of our concept of natural functions, and offers a positive contribution to the ongoing debate on the topic. (shrink)

Political decisions have the potential to greatly impact our lives. Think of decisions in relation to abortion or climate change, for example. This makes political legitimacy an important normative concern. But what makes political decisions legitimate? Are they legitimate in virtue of having support from the citizens? Democratic conceptions of political legitimacy answer in the affirmative. Such conceptions righly highlight that legitimate political decision-making must be sensitive to disagreements among the citizens. But what if democratic decisions fail to track what (...) there is most reason to do? What if a democratically elected government fails to take measures necessary to protect its population from threats related to climate change? Peter argues that the legitimacy of political decisions doesn't just depend on respect for the citizens' will; and defends a novel hybrid conception of political legitimacy, called the Epistemic Accountability conception. According to this conception, political legitimacy also depends on how political decision-making responds to evidence for what there is most reason to do. Grounds for Political Legitmacy starts with an overview of the main ways in which philosophers have thought about political legitimacy, and identifies the epistemic accountability conception as an overlooked alternative. It then develops the epistemic accountability conception of political legitimacy and discusses its implications for legitimate political decision-making. Considering the norms that should govern political debate, it examines the role of experts in politics, and probes the responsibilities of democratically elected political leaders and as well as of citizens. (shrink)

This article presents seven principles that have guided our thinking about emotional intelligence, some of them new. We have reformulated our original ability model here guided by these principles, clarified earlier statements of the model that were unclear, and revised portions of it in response to current research. In this revision, we also positioned emotional intelligence amidst other hot intelligences including personal and social intelligences, and examined the implications of the changes to the model. We discuss the present and future (...) of the concept of emotional intelligence as a mental ability. (shrink)

In our everyday lives we struggle with the notions of why we do what we do and the need to assign values to our actions. Somehow, it seems possible through experience and life to gain knowledge and understanding of such matters. Yet once we start delving deeper into the concepts that underwrite these domains of thought and actions, we face a philosophical disappointment. In contrast to the world of facts, values and morality seem insecure, uncomfortably situated, easily influenced by illusion (...) or ideology. How can we apply this same objectivity and accuracy to the spheres of value and morality? In the essays included in this collection, Peter Railton shows how a fairly sober, naturalistically informed view of the world might nonetheless incorporate objective values and moral knowledge. This book will be of interest to professionals and students working in philosophy and ethics. (shrink)

This far-reaching study redraws the intellectual map of the Enlightenment and boldly reassesses the legacy of that highly influential period for us today. Peter Hanns Reill argues that in the middle of the eighteenth century, a major shift occurred in the way Enlightenment thinkers conceived of nature that caused many of them to reject the prevailing doctrine of mechanism and turn to a vitalistic model to account for phenomena in natural history, the life sciences, and chemistry. As he traces (...) the ramifications of this new way of thinking through time and across disciplines, Reill provocatively complicates our understanding of the way key Enlightenment thinkers viewed nature. His sophisticated analysis ultimately questions postmodern narratives that have assumed a monolithic Enlightenment—characterized by the dominance of instrumental reason—that has led to many of the disasters of modern life. (shrink)

Kant's Critique of Teleological Judgment is read as a reflection on philosophical methodological problems that arose through the constitution of an independent science of life - biology. This work presents an example of the interconnections between philosophy and the history of science.

This book offers a systematic treatment of the requirements of democratic legitimacy. It argues that democratic procedures are essential for political legitimacy because of the need to respect value pluralism and because of the learning process that democratic decision-making enables. It proposes a framework for distinguishing among the different ways in which the requirements of democratic legitimacy have been interpreted. Peter then uses this framework to identify and defend what appears as the most plausible conception of democratic legitimacy. According (...) to this conception, democratic legitimacy requires that the decision-making process satisfies certain conditions of political and epistemic fairness. (shrink)

For many years—and with some energy since Laudan’s “Confutation of Convergent Realism” —the scientific realist has sought to accommodate examples of false-yet-successful theories in the history of science. One of the most prominent strategies is to identify ‘success fueling’ components of false theories that themselves are at least approximately true. In this article I develop both sides of the debate, introducing new challenges from the history of science as well as suggesting adjustments to the divide et impera realist strategy. A (...) new ‘recipe’ for the prospective identification of working/idle posits is considered. (shrink)

This far-reaching study redraws the intellectual map of the Enlightenment and boldly reassesses the legacy of that highly influential period for us today. Peter Hanns Reill argues that in the middle of the eighteenth century, a major shift occurred in the way Enlightenment thinkers conceived of nature that caused many of them to reject the prevailing doctrine of mechanism and turn to a vitalistic model to account for phenomena in natural history, the life sciences, and chemistry. As he traces (...) the ramifications of this new way of thinking through time and across disciplines, Reill provocatively complicates our understanding of the way key Enlightenment thinkers viewed nature. His sophisticated analysis ultimately questions postmodern narratives that have assumed a monolithic Enlightenment—characterized by the dominance of instrumental reason—that has led to many of the disasters of modern life. (shrink)

Peter Pagin Is the principle of semantic compositionality compatible with the principle of semantic holism? The question is of interest, since both principles have a lot that speaks for them, and since they do seem to be in conflict. The view that natural languages have compositional structure is almost unavoidable, since linguistic communication by means of new combinations of words would be virtually incomprehensible otherwise. And holism too seems generally plausible, since the meaning of an expression is directly connected (...) with the way that expression interacts with other. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Kant-Studien Jahrgang: 105 Heft: 4 Seiten: 554-572.

Sidgwick's theses that "if I judge any action to be right for myself, I implicitly judge it to be right for any other person whose nature and circumstances do not differ from my own in certain important respects" fails to differentiate moral judgments of importantly different kinds and, In particular, Overlooks peculiarities of a kind of judgment, Made by a prospective agent, About what "he" ought to do. The court-Martial in melville's "billy budd" is closely examined as an example. Although (...) we can speak of such an agent "finding out" what he ought to do, He is not finding out what "anyone" ought to do in such a situation, But something "about himself": something, However, Which can only be expressed in moral categories. (shrink)

Paulo Freire : the educator, his oeuvre, and changing contexts -- Holistic interpretations of Freire's work : a critical review -- Critical literacy, praxis, and emancipatory politics -- "Remaining on the same side of the river" : neo-liberalism, party movements, and the struggle for greater coherence -- Reinventing Freire in a Southern context : the Mediterranean -- Engaging with practice : a Freirean reflection on different pedagogical sites.

Quine has called the question, ‘What is there?’ the “ontological question.” But if we call this question by that name, what name shall we use for the question, ‘What are we asking when we ask “What is there?”’? I shall call it ‘the meta-ontological question’. I shall call the attempt to answer the meta-ontological question ‘meta-ontology’ and any proposed answer to it ‘a meta-ontology’. In this essay, I shall briefly sketch a meta-ontology. The meta-ontology I shall present is broadly Quinean. (...) I am, in fact, willing to call it an exposition of Quine’s meta-ontology. (shrink)

Based on an analysis of the category of “infinite judgments” in Kant, we will introduce the logical hexagon of predicate negation. This hexagon allows us to visualize in a single diagram the general structure of both Kant’s solution of the antinomies of pure reason and his argument in favor of Transcendental Idealism.

Books on Paulo Freire continue to be published in abundance. It is often very difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. Following on a great book on the subject by Walter Kohan, this book has...

Starmaking brings together a cluster of work published over the past 35 years by Nelson Goodman and two Harvard colleagues, Hilary Putnam and Israel Scheffler, on the conceptual connections between monism and pluralism, absolutism and relativism, and idealism and different notions of realism -- issues that are central to metaphysics and epistemology. The title alludes to Goodman's famous defense of the claim that because all true representations of stars and other objects are human creations, it follows that in an important (...) sense the stars themselves are made by us. More generally, the argument moves from the fact that our right representations are constructed by us to the claim that the world itself is similarly constructed. Starmaking addresses the question of whether this seeming paradox can be turned into a serious philosophical view. Goodman and Putnam are sympathetic; Scheffler is the critic. Although many others continue to write about pluralism, relativism, and constructionalism, Starmaking brings together the protagonists in the debate since its beginnings and follows closely its still developing form and substance, focusing sharply on Goodman's claim that "we make versions, and right versions make worlds.". (shrink)

This book is the first full length account of the significance of MacIntyre's work for the social sciences. MacIntyre's moral philosophy is shown to provide the resources for a powerful critique of liberalism. His discussion of the managerist and emotivist roots of modern culture is seen as the inspiration for a critical social science of Modernity.

Discusses the philosophy of science and the process of scientific discovery, and looks at ethical issues such as genetic engineering, prolonging life through technology, and the role of the physician.

The traditional (Leibnizian) reading of Descartes on mind-body interaction is given a more rigorous reformulation, explaining how Descartes could assert that the mind while not affecting the quantity of motion in the world could change its direction. It is shown, contrary to the trend in recent literature, that this reading has a reliable textual base, and it is argued that it attributes to Descartes a philosophical position of more substance and interest. The kind of interpretation favored depends on the status (...) that the reader attributes to the assertion of the causal closer of the material world. (shrink)

Formal dialogue games have been studied in philosophy since at least the time of Aristotle. Recently they have been applied in various contexts in computer science and artificial intelligence, particularly as the basis for interaction between autonomous software agents. We review these applications and discuss the many open research questions and challenges at this exciting interface between philosophy and computer science.

Volume 52, Issue 12, November 2020, Page 1243-1248.

Surveys theories in contemporary neuroscience, exploring many of its methodological techniques and problems.

In this article, Peter and Rowland explore the role of implicit statistical learning in syntactic development. It is often accepted that the processes observed in classic implicit learning or statistical learning experiments play an important role in the acquisition of natural language syntax. As Peter and Rowland point out, however, the results from neither research strand can be used to fully explain how children's syntax becomes adult‐like. They propose to address this shortcoming by using the structural priming paradigm.

Although the residues of official segregation are widespread, affirmative action continues to meet resistance in both official and everyday life, even in such recent Supreme Court decisions as Grutter v Bollinger (539 U.S. 306). This is due in part to a governing ontology that draws the line between individual and collective. But there are other possibilities for conceiving the social, and I offer one here in a theory of affirmative action that is developed through close examination of sharing and promising (...) as elemental qualities of equitable communal life. The nature and value of these actions are demonstrated in narrative formulations of fairness as exemplified in triage and the situation at the end of slavery; of the difference between equality and equity and how justice depends on their conjunction; and finally of theorizing how these may come together in the permutable, opaque, yet resilient interdependence of person and community that represents most deeply the Greek idea of two in one, that is, of one two, not two ones. In these respects the paper is successful insofar as it discloses the kinds of reasoning that underlie both resistance and commitment to affirmative action. (shrink)

Introduction Ordinary experience seems both to take place in time and to concern things that happen in time. This seemingly simple fact is the starting ...

This paper, rather than providing a comprehensive discussion around Paulo Freire’s ideas, focuses on one aspect of his body of work: colonialism. The emphasis is on the ‘oppressor consciousness’ and cultural invasion (seen in its broadest context to include institutional colonialism with special reference to the traditional, modernizing and prophetic church. It also deals with the complex issue of language in postcolonial contexts, with special reference to education in Guinea Bissau and its implications for other colonial contexts.

This paper applies Emmanuel Levinas’ philosophy to the management practice of leadership. Specifically, it focuses on servant leadership, which is considered the most dyadic other-oriented style. While often viewed altruistically, servant leadership can still be egological if it totalizes followers to a leader’s interests and to organizational ends. This paper conceptualises an enriched version of servant leadership using key ideas taken from Levinas’ understanding of the infinite Other and then describes this style using relevant examples. This novel approach, Servant-Leadership-for-the-Other, offers (...) a theoretical lens by which to enrich existing leadership practices as well as providing a style of leadership better suited for the twenty-first century. (shrink)

Based in a holistic exposition and appraisal of Gramsci’s writings that are of relevance to education in neoliberal times, this book--rather than simply applying Gramsci's theories to issues in education--argues that education constitutes the leitmotif of his entire oeuvre and lies at the heart of his conceptualization of the ancient Greek term hegemony that was used by other political theorists before him. Starting from this understanding, the book goes on to compare Gramsci's theories with those of later thinkers in the (...) development of a critical pedagogy that can confront neoliberalism in all its forms. (shrink)

Certain familiar theoretic claims of both popular and academic postmodernism are examined for their implications as to the necessary and desirable limits of social life. Taken to the end, these claims promote errancy as a means of freeing conduct from the constraints of foundation. But this kind of freedom, one which treats all limitation as pernicious, generates social action that is mechanical, scattered, and without substance—it is a pyrrhic emancipation which trades content for self-sufficiency and thus constitutes an empty life (...) of unhappy social dispersion. And yet an opportunity does remain to address the way a limit can also be inspiring if we think through how interpretation, a limit which is itself limited, invites nevertheless what Derrida glossed as joyous affirmation. Interpretation, though imperfect, offers powers that are genuine and enjoyable because these powers supply life with content and thus with the vitalizing collective and individual possibility of conduct which is affirmative (and disaffirmative). Perhaps it could even be said that interpretation emancipates us from the emptiness of pure freedom. (shrink)