This book, the third in the series of Samuel Hollander's essays, covers twelve key studies on the economic theory and method of John Stuart Mill. This volume provides an accessible sourcebook on Mill's relationship with David Ricardo, and the 'Classical School', as well as confirming his relevance for modern economics and for the place of economics within the social sciences.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Three Poems RICARDO PAU-LLOSA panta rhei¿Quién es tu hermano? Tu vecino más cercano. (Who is your brother? Your nearest neighbor.) —Spanish saying In emergencies, the closest will do. Love, even a few blocks away, fails when the stranger next door rises in charity unknown to him till then. The day is saved by those whose names you’ll forget: the driver in the next car, the gardener who rushed (...) into a house he’s never seen to pull, guard, rescue. All the verbs which were alien and will resume their callous grip, now storm the sudden heart that just then fled the wolf condition. But it hears the lunar groan returningly. Homo homini lupus est, teach Romans who knew so much about impenetrability. Ovid and Hobbes differ, Erasmus equivocates, Freud surrenders. A pack of thinkers have torn at the flesh of our layered psyche, wishing to find an identifying center. We are the poker hand, tossing and assembling bluff and triumph. We fold, we hold on. There is nothing Chaos, our secret god, cannot bestow. arion 28.2 fall 2020 70 three poems Proteus In the dream, the man is bathing a large dog whose breed changes as the chore unfolds, starting with a rottweiler, then bulldog, great dane.... Starts on the lawn, then shifts to the groomer’s, the man’s bathtub, a creek from his childhood.... First it was a dog he owns, then a former pet, then a friend’s, a dog from a commercial.... It is as if the dream announced this thing, then that, then changed its mind, and it is then that the man understands he cannot truly embrace the idea that the dream has a mind to make up or change, for then life would have a toolbox, a menu, program tabs, training schedule.... hence throwing into the acid of questions whether he has such powers—to alter, navigate, reflect, cure, develop.... this tumble of paradigms, themselves becoming a chain, sequence, sentence, syntax, metonymy.... because the thing —the announcement— cannot simply be a fate but a motion, a variance, an effect that churns the weather of effects, topples the still life on the table just when the painter had caught the just-so light, right before the supper, the sole ingestion point of the thing, the call to itself, begins and leaves everything else twirling. Ricardo Pau-Llosa 71 puddle 2 Samuel 14:14 My student sees filth everywhere, even in this dank, rotten-leafed, cigarette-butt poisoned tongue of late morning bronze. It laces the oak branches above it and folds the mid-day sky in green convections. Allow me to introduce you to squallor’s gorgeous mirror who taught the golden youth to catch himself in love. This silent bed whose many sheets are one mellifluous of shade, has hosted boot and quandary, astronomy and betrayal. I cannot hold it accountable for accuracy or permanence. Surely it knew from the start how short the mission and how stark the light. But linger, pupil, where an eye might brave the trough whose vapid depth dared frame the trees, their sky.... (shrink)

While Marx’s critique of David Ricardo is frequently debated, Marx’s critique of Samuel Bailey has, for far too long, remained in the shade. I try to show that Ricardo and Bailey represent two fundamental “moments” of Marx’s Darstellung. The word “moment” is here used in a non-generic sense: Ricardo’s and Bailey’s theories of value represent two opposite and contradictory sides of value’s category as presented in Marx’s critique of political economy. Building on the work of Hans (...) Georg Backhaus, who claims that the first chapter of Volume one of the Capital can be understood only as a metacritique of Bailey’s critique of Ricardo, this topic is developed in order to further clarify the connection of critique and presentation in Marx’s theory. (shrink)

In this chapter, Ricardo Silvestre and Alan Herbert offer a reconstruction of the Gītā’s concept of God with a focus on the relationship between God and the world. They try to explain the claim that the Gītā is panentheistic. This is done with the help of some key notions of contemporary metaphysics (such as ontological dependence and fundamentality) along with the Indic notion of prakṛti, considered as a metaphysical primitive denoting the intimate relationship that exists between matter and conscious (...) living beings on the one hand, and God on the other. (shrink)

The Irish writer and Nobel Prize winner, Samuel Beckett, assembled for himself a history of western philosophy during the 1930s, just at the point at which his first novel, Murphy, was coming together. The 'Philosophy Notes', together with related notes taken at that time about St. Augustine, thereafter provided Beckett with a store of knowledge, but also with phrases and images, which he took up in the major work that won him international and enduring fame, from the dramas Waiting (...) for Godot and Endgame, through to the late prose works Worstward Ho and Stirrings Still. This edition presents, for the first time, Beckett's full 'Philosophy Notes', which constitute his most extensive unpublished text. The Notes display Beckett's own interests and emphases within the history of western philosophy, from the pre-Socratic Greeks onwards, together with more familiar figures in the study of his work, such as Descartes, Leibnitz, and Geulincx. Here we see Beckett's original thoughts on all of these figures for the first time. The Notes also, tellingly and often comically, display Beckett's impatience with many aspects of philosophy, such as its anthropological or anthropomorphic bias, or the idealism of the Enlightenment and Kant. The Edition contains an extensive Introduction, outlining the origin of Beckett's Notes, his major sources and approach to them, the historical context for his view of philosophy, and the significance of Beckett's 'Philosophy Notes' within his mature writings. The many footnotes then suggest ways in which particular aspects of the philosophy narrated here by Beckett suggest fresh insights into those later writings-the images, but also the creative impulses, behind some of his most famous texts. This Edition, further, raises larger questions about, and perspectives upon, the relation between philosophy and literature in the twentieth century and beyond."--Back cover. (shrink)

In a recent book and an article, Carl Craver construes the relations between different levels of a mechanism, which he also refers to as constitutive relations, in terms of mutual manipulability (MM). Interpreted metaphysically, MM implies that inter-level relations are symmetrical. MM thus violates one of the main desiderata of scientific explanation, namely explanatory asymmetry. Parts of Craver’s writings suggest a metaphysical interpretation of MM, and Craver explicitly commits to constitutive relationships being symmetrical. The paper furthermore explores the option of (...) interpreting MM epistemologically, as a means for individuating mechanisms. It is argued that MM then is redundant. MM should therefore better be abandoned. (shrink)

I provide a theory of the metaphysical foundations of identity: an account what grounds facts of the form a=b. In particular, I defend the claim that indiscernibility grounds identity. This is typically rejected because it is viciously circular; plausible assumptions about the logic of ground entail that the fact that a=b partially grounds itself. The theory I defend is immune to this circularity.

The use of new paradigms of false belief tasks allowed to reduce the age of children who pass the test from the previous 4 years in the standard version to only 15 months or even a striking 6 months in the nonverbal modification. These results are often taken as evidence that infants already possess an—at least implicit—theory of mind. We criticize this inferential leap on the grounds that inferring a ToM from the predictive success on a false belief task requires (...) to assume as premise that a belief reasoning is a necessary condition for correct action prediction. It is argued that the FBT does not satisfactorily constrain the predictive means, leaving room for the use of belief-independent inferences. These heuristics, when applied to the FBT, can achieve the same predictive success of a belief-based inference because information provided by the test stimulus allows the recognition of particular situations that can be subsumed by their ‘laws’. Instead of solving this issue by designing a single experimentum crucis that would render unfeasible the use of non-representational inferences, we suggest the application of a set of tests in which, although individually they can support inferences dissociated from a ToM, only an inference that makes use of false beliefs is able to correctly predict all the outcomes. (shrink)

Frege's picture of attitude states and attitude reports requires a notion of content that is shareable between agents, yet more fine-grained than reference. Kripke challenged this picture by giving a case on which the expressions that resist substitution in an attitude report share a candidate notion of fine-grained content. A consensus view developed which accepted Kripke's general moral and replaced the Fregean picture with an account of attitude reporting on which states are distinguished in conversation by their (private) representational properties. (...) I begin in support of the consensus by showing how a sort of de facto coordination on mental symbols is possible, even for unsophisticated agents. But I go on to argue that whenever conditions are ripe for de facto coordination on symbols, there is an inter-subjective relation that supports a fine-grained notion of content resistant to Kripke's challenge. The consensus view corresponds to a Kripke-resistant strain of the Fregean picture. (shrink)

Many take Kantian ethics to founder when it comes to our duties to animals. In this paper, I advocate a novel approach to this problem. The paper is divided into three sections. In the first, I canvass various passages from Kant in order to set up the problem. In the second, I introduce a novel approach to this problem. In the third, I defend my approach from various objections. By way of preview: I advocate rejecting the premise that nonhuman animals (...) are nonrational. (shrink)

Because moral understanding involves a distinctly first-personal grasp of moral matters, there is a temptation to think of its value primarily in terms of achievements that reflect well on its possessor: the moral worth of one's action or the virtue of one's character. These explanations, I argue, do not do full justice to the importance of moral understanding in our moral lives. Of equal importance is the value of moral understanding in our relations with other moral agents. In particular, I (...) argue that an understanding of moral matters is of central importance within relations of solidarity. In addition to highlighting an overlooked aspect of moral understanding's value, this view also has important implications for what solidarity requires of those who stand in that relationship. (shrink)

One striking feature of apocalyptic readings of Paul—and the Protestant dogmatics that follows after such a Paulinism—is the ‘widescreen’ portrayal of Sin as Power. This account stresses the ‘three-agent drama’ of salvation and the bondage of human persons to anti-God forces. It resists moralising interpretations of human sins in favour of a starker moral cosmology. In this way, it seems to leave ‘ethics’ and ‘freedom’ in suspension. Contrast the approach of the moral theologian Oliver O’Donovan. Here, sin is a case (...) study in the difference of perspectives between dogmatics and ethics. Dogmatics, ‘making sin exceedingly sinful, quickly resorts to apocalyptic largeness of scale’. Ethics is concerned instead with ‘possible’ sins. It describes sin in phenomenological rather than ultimate terms—something to be avoided in the next moment of free agency. This article distils the theological commitments each intends to secure, observes what each risks, and seeks to determine what is at stake. It draws them together in a synthetic moral ontology, but also looks further, to an integrative account that can inform moral discernment. To this end, the final section observes how subsequent work in Pauline studies converges with discussions about structural sin in Catholic social thought. (shrink)

Gils-Schmidt and Salloch recognise that human and climate health are inextricably linked, and that mitigating healthcare-associated climate harms is essential for protecting human health.1 They argue that physicians have a duty to consider how their own practices contribute to climate change, including during their interactions with patients. Acknowledging the potential for conflicts between this duty and the provision of individual patient care, they propose the application of Korsgaard’s neo-Kantian account of practical identities to help navigate such scenarios. In this commentary, (...) we argue that by focusing attention on this physician–patient level, the authors overlook the complexity of climate change, both within the healthcare sector and beyond. We recognise the importance of individual agency in tackling this issue, and we also recognise that the authors do briefly acknowledge the importance of considering these broader complexities; however, we emphasise the need for climate and health discussions/action to be situated in a wider framework of systemic change. Our concern is that overemphasis on patient-level interactions risks normalising the prioritisation of individual-level approaches to addressing climate change, detracting from such a broader approach. Physician training emphasises the need for trust, confidentiality and shared decision-making in the doctor–patient relationship. …. (shrink)

This Element, written for researchers and students in philosophy and the behavioral sciences, reviews and critically assesses extant work on number concepts in developmental psychology and cognitive science. It has four main aims. First, it characterizes the core commitments of mainstream number cognition research, including the commitment to representationalism, the hypothesis that there exist certain number-specific cognitive systems, and the key milestones in the development of number cognition. Second, it provides a taxonomy of influential views within mainstream number cognition research, (...) along with the central challenges these views face. Third, it identifies and critically assesses a series of core philosophical assumptions often adopted by number cognition researchers. Finally, the Element articulates and defends a novel version of pluralism about number concepts. (shrink)

This dissertation is an experiment: what happens if we treat proper names as anaphoric expressions on a par with pronouns? The first thing to notice is that a name's 'antecedent' can occur in a discourse prior to the one containing the name. An individual may be introduced and tagged with a name in one context, and then retrieved using the name in a later context. To allow for discourse crossing anaphora, in addition to the usual cross-sentential anaphora, a revision of (...) discourse semantics is in order. Essentially, we must countenance discourse referents that span contexts, and think of contexts, not as islands, but as nodes connected to each other by the discourse referents they share. Discourse semantics gives rise to a new notion of content determined by discourse reference rather than pure reference. In a space of contexts structured by shared discourse referents, discourse content becomes transmissable. For a piece of content may be sent from one context to another whenever the discourse referents bundled up in the content are held in common by the two contexts. The final step is to treat the cognitive state of an agent as just another kind of context, and so a potential recipient of discourse content. Discourse content is more fine-grained than traditional 'singular' content, and so is a better fit for our pretheoretic intuitions about communication and attitude reporting. This is illustrated by applying the theory to Frege's puzzle, a puzzle of Loar's about communication, Kripke's puzzle about belief, Geach's intentional identity and new breed of 'mixed' de re-de dicto sentence. (shrink)

The allocation of scarce health care resources such as flu treatment or organs for transplant presents stark problems of distributive justice. Persad, Wertheimer, and Emanuel have recently proposed a novel system for such allocation. Their “complete lives system” incorporates several principles, including ones that prescribe saving the most lives, preserving the most life-years, and giving priority to persons between 15 and 40 years old. This paper argues that the system lacks adequate moral foundations. Persad and colleagues' defense of giving priority (...) to those between 15 and 40 leaves them open to the charge that they discriminate unfairly against children. Second, the paper contends that the complete lives system fails to provide meaningful practical guidance in central cases, since it contains no method for balancing its principles when they conflict. Finally, the paper proposes a new method for balancing principles of saving the most lives and maximizing life-years. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine global public reason as a method of justifying a global state. Ultimately, I conclude that global public reason fails to justify a global state. This is the case, because global public reason faces an unwinnable dilemma. The global public reason theorist must endorse either a hypothetical theory of consent or an actual theory of consent; if she endorses a theory of hypothetical consent, then she fails to justify her principles; and if she endorses a theory (...) of actual consent, her theory will lead to a highly unstable political system. On either side of the dilemma, global public reason faces untenable implications. Although similar criticisms have been advanced against domestic public reason, my argument is not repeating points made before me. My argument is new, in that it raises these objections specifically against global public reason, and in that it shows how, due to increased diversity of belief in the global arena, these problems are more pressing for global public reason than they are for domestic public reason. (shrink)

I develop an account of disciplinary level in terms of truth-maker semantics. In particular, I exploit the mereological structure of states of affairs—which is central to the truth-maker approach—to provide conditions in which one discipline occupies a higher level than another.

Liberalism generally holds that legitimate political power is limited and is to be impartially exercised, only for the public good. Liberals accordingly assign political priority to maintaining certain basic liberties and equality of opportunities; they advocate an essential role for markets in economic activity, and they recognize government's crucial role in correcting market breakdowns and providing public goods. Classical liberalism and what I call “the high liberal tradition” are two main branches of liberalism. Classical liberalism evolved from the works of (...) Adam Smith and the classical utilitarian economists; its major 20th century representatives include Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. The high liberal tradition developed from John Stuart Mill's works, and its major philosophical representatives in the 20th century are John Dewey and, later, John Rawls. This paper discusses the main distinguishing features of the classical and the high liberal traditions and their respective positions regarding capitalism as an economic and social system. Classical liberals, unlike high liberals, regard economic liberties and rights of private property in productive resources to be nearly as important as basic liberties. They conceive of equality of opportunity in more formal terms, and regard capitalist markets and the price system as essential not only to the allocation of production resources, but also as the fundamental criterion for the just distribution of income, wealth, and economic powers. High liberals, by contrast, regard the economic liberties as subordinate to the exercise of personal and civic liberties. They are prepared to regulate and restrict economic liberties to achieve greater equality of opportunities, reduce inequalities of economic powers, and promote a broader conception of the public good. And while high liberals endorse markets and the price system as essential to allocation of productive resources, they do not regard markets as the fundamental criterion for assessing just distributions of income, wealth, and economic powers and positions of responsibility. The paper concludes with some reflections upon the essential role that dissimilar conceptions of persons and society play in grounding the different positions on economic justice that classical and high liberals advocate. (shrink)

We analyze two problems in mathematics – the first (stated in our title) is extracted from Wittgenstein’s “Philosophy for Mathematicians”; the second (“What set of numbers is non-denumerable?”) is taken from Cantor. We then consider, by way of comparison, a problem in musical aesthetics concerning a Brahms variation on a theme by Haydn. Our aim is to bring out and elucidate the essentially riddle-like character of these problems.

¿Ciencias sociales o ciencias de la sociedad? -- La adquisición e intercambio de conocimiento -- La formación y evolución del lenguaje -- La formación de valores, moral y costumbre -- Bases metodológicas para el estudio histórico de los fenómenos sociales -- Cooperación social y gobierno.

This chapter contains section titled: Introduction A Global Distribution Principle? Problems with Globalizing the Difference Principle Conclusion Notes.

Fragmentalism allows incompatible facts to constitute reality in an absolute manner, provided that they fail to obtain together. In recent years, the view has been extensively discussed, with a focus on its formalisation in model-theoretic terms. This paper focuses on three formalisations: Lipman’s approach, the subvaluationist interpretation, and a novel view that has been so far overlooked. The aim of the paper is to explore the application of these formalisations to the alethic modal case. This logical exploration will allow us (...) to study (i) cases of metaphysical incompatibility between modal facts and (ii) cases of modal dialetheias. In turn, this will enrich our understanding of the role of impossibility in the fragmentalist framework. (shrink)

Should the idea of economic man-the amoral and self-interested Homo economicus-determine how we expect people to respond to monetary rewards, punishments, and other incentives? Samuel Bowles answers with a resounding "no." Policies that follow from this paradigm, he shows, may "crowd out" ethical and generous motives and thus backfire. But incentives per se are not really the culprit. Bowles shows that crowding out occurs when the message conveyed by fines and rewards is that self-interest is expected, that the employer (...) thinks the workforce is lazy, or that the citizen cannot otherwise be trusted to contribute to the public good. Using historical and recent case studies as well as behavioral experiments, Bowles shows how well-designed incentives can crowd in the civic motives on which good governance depends. (shrink)

Any plausibly just market exchange must balance two conflicting moral considerations: non-worseness (Wertheimer, 1999) and euvoluntariness (true voluntariness; Munger, 2011). We propose an analytical theory of just market exchange that partly resolves this conflict.

Is it possible to combine different logics into a coherent system with the goal of applying it to specific problems so that it sheds some light on foundational aspects of those logics? These are two of the most basic issues of combining logics. Paranormal modal logic is a combination of paraconsistent logic and modal logic. In this paper, I propose two further combinatory developments, focusing on each one of these two issues. On the foundational side, I combine paranormal modal logic (...) with normal modal logic, resulting into a paraconsistent and paracomplete multimodal logic dealing with the notions of plausibility and certainty. On the application side, I combine this logic with Reiter’s default logic, resulting into an inductive and consequently nonmonotonic paraconsistent and paracomplete logic able to represent some key inductive principles. (shrink)

Este trabajo describe la vida y escritos de L. Polo hasta 1996. A los 25 años descubrió su método de pensamiento: el abandono del limite mental. Vivió en Madrid, Roma, Granada y Pamplona. Amante de la verdad y de la libertad personal. Entre sus obras más profundas se encuentran las que componen su Curso de teoría del conocimiento y su Antropología trascendental.

We uncover fundamental dimensions of the process through which organizations embed the practice of fraternity through embarking on an organizational journey in the direction of the common good. Building on the latest encyclical of Pope Francis, _Fratelli Tutti_, about fraternal and social friendship, we offer insight into the understanding of what it means to become a fraternal organization and reflect on the key ethical and paradoxical challenges for organizations aiming at collectively contributing to the common good. We add to previous (...) work by characterizing this journey as a process involving unique ethical challenges that emerge from the paradoxes associated with this process and how this might change the nature of the relationships between organizations and others within the organizational landscape. (shrink)

Anchors and ghosts -- Making sense -- The anxiety of evidence -- The wheat and the chaff -- Sedation or seduction?.

In his discussion of the duty of benevolence in §27 of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant argues that agents have no obligation to promote their own happiness, for ‘this happens unavoidably’ (MS, AA 6:451). In this paper I argue that Kant should not have said this. I argue that Kant should have conceded that agents do have an obligation to promote their own happiness.

In Improvisation, Samuel Wells defines improvisation in the theater as "a practice through which actors seek to develop trust in themselves and one another in order that they may conduct unscripted dramas without fear." Sounds a lot like life, doesn't it? Building trust, overcoming fear, conducting relationships, and making choices--all without a script. Wells establishes theatrical improvisation as a model for Christian ethics, a matter of "faithfully improvising on the Christian tradition." He views the Bible not as a "script" (...) but as a "training school" that shapes the habits and practices of the Christian community. Drawing on scriptural narratives and church history, Wells explains six practices that characterize both improvisation and Christian ethics. His model of improvisation reinforces the goal of Christian ethics--to teach Christians to "embody their faith in the practices of discipleship all the time."--Publisher description. (shrink)

Mathematics is a critical part of much scientific research. Physics in particular weaves math extensively into its instruction beginning in high school. Despite much research on the learning of both physics and math, the problem of how to effectively include math in physics in a way that reaches most students remains unsolved. In this paper, we suggest that a fundamental issue has received insufficient exploration: the fact that in science, we don’t just use math, we make meaning with it in (...) a different way than mathematicians do. In this reflective essay, we explore math as a language and consider the language of math in physics through the lens of cognitive linguistics. We begin by offering a number of examples that show how the use of math in physics differs from the use of math as typically found in math classes. We then explore basic concepts in cognitive semantics to show how humans make meaning with language in general. The critical elements are the roles of embodied cognition and interpretation in context. Then, we show how a theoretical framework commonly used in physics education research, resources, is coherent with and extends the ideas of cognitive semantics by connecting embodiment to phenomenological primitives and contextual interpretation to the dynamics of meaning-making with conceptual resources, epistemological resources, and affect. We present these ideas with illustrative case studies of students working on physics problems with math and demonstrate the dynamical nature of student reasoning with math in physics. We conclude with some thoughts about the implications for instruction. (shrink)