Two solutions are offered to the problem of distinguishing "historical" from "functional" associations in cross-cultural surveys. The underlying logic of the mathematical model is discussed and three kinds of association distinguished: hyperdiffusional or purely "historical" association, undiffusional or purely "functional" association, and semidiffusional or mixed "historical-functional" association. Two overland diffusion arcs constitute the test sample; the relationship of social stratification to political complexity constitutes the test problem. A sifting test establishes a bimodal distribution of interval lengths between like types and (...) sifts out repetitions with a lesser interval length than the second mode. A cluster test shows that for the test problem, the "hits" cluster more than the "misses". (shrink)

Traite de la conception philosophique de Jacques Maritain qui a développé tout au long de sa carrière un système de pensée proche de celui de Saint Thomas d'Aquin. Cette étude s'inscrit dans la tentative de mettre en lumière les aspects fondamentaux de la quête de l'homme et de son rapport à la beauté d'après le philosophe Maritain.

Published posthumously in 1908, Ecce Homo was written in 1888 and completed just a few weeks before Nietzsche’s complete mental collapse. Its outrageously egotistical review of the philosopher’s life and works—featuring chapters called Why I Am So Wise and Why I Write Such Good Books—are redeemed from mere arrogance by masterful language and ever-relevant ideas. In addition to settling scores with his many personal and philosophical enemies, Nietzsche emphasizes the importance of questioning traditional morality, establishing autonomy, and making a commitment (...) to creativity. Essential reading for students of philosophy, this unique memoir is crucial to an understanding of Nietzsche’s other works. (shrink)

In a 2008 paper, Walmsley argued that the explanations employed in the dynamical approach to cognitive science, as exemplified by the Haken, Kelso and Bunz model of rhythmic finger movement, and the model of infant preservative reaching developed by Esther Thelen and her colleagues, conform to Carl Hempel and Paul Oppenheim’s deductive-nomological model of explanation (also known as the covering law model). Although we think Walmsley’s approach is methodologically sound in that it starts with an analysis of scientific practice rather (...) than a general philosophical framework, we nevertheless feel that there are two problems with his paper. First, he focuses only on the deductivenomological model and so neglects the important fact that explanations are causal. Second, the explanations offered by the dynamical approach do not take the deductive-nomological format, because they do not deduce the explananda from exceptionless laws. Because of these two points, Walmsley makes the dynamical explanations in cognitive science appear problematic, while in fact they are not. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that in recent literature on mechanistic explanations, authors tend to conflate two distinct features that mechanistic models can have or fail to have: plausibility and richness. By plausibility, we mean the probability that a model is correct in the assertions it makes regarding the parts and operations of the mechanism, i.e., that the model is correct as a description of the actual mechanism. By richness, we mean the amount of detail the model gives about the (...) actual mechanism. First, we argue that there is at least a conceptual reason to keep these two features distinct, since they can vary independently from each other: models can be highly plausible while providing almost no details, while they can also be highly detailed but plainly wrong. Next, focusing on Craver's continuum of ?how-possibly,? to ?how-plausibly,? to ?how-actually? models, we argue that the conflation of plausibility and richness is harmful to the discussion because it leads to the view that both are necessary for a model to have explanatory power, while in fact, richness is only so with respect to a mechanism's activities, not its entities. This point is illustrated with two examples of functional models. (shrink)

This paper provides a relational analysis of James Fowler's Faith Development Theory and Heinz Streib's Religious Styles Perspective in light of a recent study of apostasy from religious fundamentalisms. Empirical support is provided for both theories. RSP is endorsed as a more encompassing theory of religious development which accounts for more contingencies than FDT. However, FDT is subsumed rather than superseded by RSP as a powerful lens through which to observe cognitive dimensions of religious development. The paper introduces an integrative (...) paradigm, phenomenological empiricism, to conceptualise a complementary relationship between FDT and RSP as key theories in the future study of religious development. (shrink)

A distinguished cross-cultural researcher presents a brave, heartfelt and exciting challenge to the social sciences: the creation of an international, moral order. He advocates the use of cross-cultural research to uncover a common core of values and morality. This research would then be used to ameliorate problems and guide policy in the light of those values. He shows his procedures at work in the study of ten major social and personal ills, such as mental illness, divorce, sex roles, and child (...) abuse. His research leads him inexorably to the concept of the moralnet -- the social group that provides values and support. When these are disrupted, problems are aggravated or even created. 'The work of Naroll fits in well with. (shrink)

In the literature on dynamical models in cognitive science, two issues have recently caused controversy. First, what is the relation between dynamical and mechanistic models? I will argue that dynamical models can be upgraded to be mechanistic as well, and that there are mechanistic and non-mechanistic dynamical models. Second, there is the issue of explanatory power. Since it is uncontested the mechanistic models can explain, I will focus on the non-mechanistic variety of dynamical models. It is often claimed by proponents (...) of mechanistic explanations that such models do not really explain cognitive phenomena . I will argue against this view. Although I agree that the three arguments usually offered to vindicate the explanatory power of non-mechanistic dynamical models are not enough, I consider a fourth argument, namely that such models provide understanding. The Voss strong anticipation model is used to illustrate this. (shrink)

Part One: The lottery of birth: 1. Luck 2. Punishment 3. Reward -- Part Two: The illusion of consent: 4. Control 5. Elections 6. Markets 7. Media -- Part Three: The fight for our freedom: 8. Creativity 9. Knowledge 10. Power 11. Survival 12. Empathy.

Peter Maurin, a French, itinerant immigrant, known, if at all, as co-founder with Dorothy Day of the Catholic Worker movement plies his pedagogy from the margins of society, identifying with the poor of the Depression. He believes his vocation is to awaken the poor and professionals alike to reconstruct a personalist democracy and restore its spiritual foundation, Remarkably resonate with John Dewey’s experiential learning, Jane Addams’ Hull House initiative, and the Brazilian educator and theologian Paulo Freire’s theory of humankind’s vocation (...) to humanize the world, Maurin critiques education as “knowing more and more about less and less” and not relating knowledge to the real world. Today Dewey and Freire influence progressive experiential pedagogy, but most progressive educators are unacquainted with Maurin’s radical vision. Yet, Maurin speaks as trenchantly to our own time of socio-economic, ideological, and moral crisis as he did to the crises of the 1930s. This paper seeks to recover Maurin’s pedagogy for critical theory’s work of educating today’s students—and the world, in general—to a deep consciousness of the workings of society, for restructuring the social order, and for solidarity with those who suffer from structural injustice. For Maurin, solidarity with the impoverished and marginalized is the site of both deep knowing and transformative power. This solidarity is the bedrock of Maurin’s teaching—propagated among the cast-offs at Columbus Circle to academics on Boston Commons, to the storefront and tenement schools he established, to his outdoor university, to forums, symposia, and nightly round-table discussions. With poetic phrasing, he casts his thought as “points” in what becomes known as “easy essays.” While those from the academic mainstream publish in respected journals, Maurin, from the margins, tacks up his essays in public places and even mails them to reluctant listeners. Working out the practical implications of his vision, he offers a particular angle on the world, and a prophetic pedagogy for the gravitas of our time. (shrink)

In the debate about values in science, it is a time-honored tradition to distinguish between the normative question of whether non-cognitive values should play a role in science and the descriptive question of whether they in fact do so or not.1 Among philosophers of science, it is now an accepted view that the descriptive question has been settled. That is, it is no longer disputed that non-cognitive values play a role in science. Hence, all that is left to do on (...) the descriptive front is to describe these values and their roles in more detail. In the words of Longino: “We should stop asking whether social values play a role in science and ask which values and whose values play a role and how” (2004, p. .. (shrink)

In this paper, I explicate and discuss performance-similarity reasoning as a strategy for mechanism schema evaluation, understood in Lindley Darden’s sense. This strategy involves inferring hypotheses about the mechanism responsible for cognitive capacities from premises describing the performance of those capacities; performance-similarity reasoning is a type of Inference to the Best Explanation, or IBE. Two types of such inferences are distinguished: one in which the performance of two systems is compared, and another when the performance of two systems under intervention (...) is compared. Both types of inferences are illustrated with examples taken from cognitive science. I conclude that performance-similarity reasoning is an important strategy for evaluating mechanistic hypotheses. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that explaining cognitive behavior can be achieved through what I call hybrid explanatory inferences: inferences that posit mechanisms, but also draw on observed regularities. Moreover, these inferences can be used to achieve unification, in the sense developed by Allen Newel in his work on cognitive architectures. Thus, it seems that explanatory pluralism and unification do not rule out each other in cognitive science, but rather that the former represents a way to achieve the latter.

Par-dela les limites de la methode experimentale, tributaire des sens exterieurs, se deploie une experience toute spirituelle du monde suprasensible, royaume des choses morales et substances incorporelles, ainsi que du monde surnaturel, celui des arcanes de la grace et de la gloire. Meme dans le domaine des choses corporelles, ou l'experience sensible reste imparfaite, cette experience mystique qu'est l'illumination interieure est necessaire pour suppleer a l'insuffisance de l'experience des sens, simplement humaine et philosophique. Roger Bacon nous apparait a travers cet (...) ouvrage comme mystique, mais aussi comme humaniste et savant: cette harmonie dans sa personne n'est pas sans repondre a l'harmonie des choses ou le surnaturel s'ajoute a la nature pour la parfaire, puisque apres tout ces deux facons de connaitre le Createur et la creature peuvent bien eter la double manifestation d'un seul et meme gout imperieux pour l'experience. Roger Bacon peut bien s'eprnedre des donnees de la nature et des idees de la litterature profane sans pour autant se dejuger: s'il est vrai que c'est le meme Dieu qui a fait la Nature et l'Ecriture, c'est le meme Dieu qui nous illumine de l'illumination generale dans l'experience physique et de l'illumination interieure dans l'experience mystique. (shrink)

Dopo aver affermato che non è più possibile ridurre il pensiero sartriano a degli schemi ermeneutici semplificatori, il saggio individua il tema della singolarità quale filo rosso che percorre quegli scritti nei quali Sartre dichiara di voler definire l’ambito e il metodo di un’antropologia marxista. Sono gli scritti che hanno come fulcro la Critica della ragione dialettica, in particolare il testo che ne diventerà l’Introduzione, cioè le Questioni di metodo, dove Sartre chiarisce quale funzione può giocare l’esistenzialismo nel conferire al (...) marxismo un rigore metodologico che gli permetta di costituirsi come un rigoroso materialismo storico. Il cuore dell’ontologia di L’essere e il nulla è rappresentato dalla nozione di «realtà umana», la versione «antropologizzata» del Dasein heideggeriano. Ispirandosi a Heidegger, ma mutandone l’orientamento di pensiero, Sartre attribuisce alla «realtà umana» il tratto del bisogno come mancanza organica. Così, gli schemi marxisti di intelligibilità dei processi storici e materiali sono rivisitati alla luce della natura contingente e finita della «realtà umana». È ciò che spinge Sartre a una revisione della dialettica, con lo scopo di aprirla alla comprensione della singolarità di ciascun uomo e a un sapere storico che possa finalmente ambire alla concretezza. (shrink)

Whether in a new Austrian constitution a preamble, with or without reference to God I with or without reference to the religious, in particular Christian legacies, should precede the normative text, is a question that is discussed from a historical and constitutional point of view, and answered negatively: European constitutions since the Enlightenment transform the »subjects«, who would not have any other appeal than to God, into »citizens« who are protected by human rights as constitutional law; citizens are the origin (...) and the goal of all political activities. Their participation in shaping the state's policies is based on their own concience only, even if their concience is determined by religious beliefs. (shrink)

Among philosophers of science, there is now a widespread agreement that the DN model of explanation is poorly equipped to account for explanations in biology. Rather than identifying laws, so the consensus goes, researchers explain biological capacities by constructing a model of the underlying mechanism.We think that the dichotomy between DN explanations and mechanistic explanations is misleading. In this article, we argue that there are cases in which biological capacities are explained without constructing a model of the underlying mechanism. Although (...) these explanations do not conform to Hempel’s DN model, they do invoke more or less stable generalisations. Because they invoke generalisations and have the form of an argument, we call them inferential explanations. We support this claim by considering two examples of explanations of biological capacities: pigeon navigation and photoperiodism. Next, we will argue that these non-mechanistic explanations are crucial to biology in three ways: sometimes, they are the only thing we have, they are heuristically useful, and they provide genuine understanding and so are interesting in their own right.In the last sections we discuss the relation between types of explanations and types of experiments and situate our views within some relevant debates on explanatory power and explanatory virtues. (shrink)

In this book, Moati systematically replays the historical encounter between Austin, Derrida, and Searle and the disruption that caused the lasting break between Anglo-American language philosophy and continental traditions of phenomenology ...

The recognition and reconciliation of ‘opposites’ lies at the heart of our most personal and global problems. These problems are ‘wicked’ in the sense that they are difficult or impossible to solve and arise at the interface of interdependent polarities. By exploring the human tendency to divide the world into two parts, _Wicked Problems & the Reconciliation of Opposites_ argues that our relationship with such pairings and polarities is profoundly important to the way we recognise and resolve wicked problems. Using (...) an original theory of bi-relational development, Adam proposes that our everyday ways of knowing and being can be powerfully located and understood in terms of the creation, emergence, opposition, convergence, collapse and trans-positioning of dyadic constituents. Chapters use this concept to frame key debates in and across domains of knowledge, including education, psychology, law and theology, as well as to offer a new perspective on the most profound problems of the twenty-first century: globalisation, sustainability and secularisation. This book is a comprehensive study of dyadic structrures and relationships and provides a multidisciplinary and original approach to human development. It will be of great interest to students and academics of social psychology, psychosocial development, psychoanalysis and transpersonal psychology, but it is also relevant within the fields of education, human development and theology. (shrink)