Inhaltsverzeichnis/Table of Contents: Rudolf HALLER: Zwei Vorworte in einem. Evelyn DÖLLING: Alexius Meinong: "Der blinde Seher Theiresias". Jaakko HINTIKKA: Meinong in a Long Perspective. Richard SYLVAN: Re-Exploring Item-Theory. Francesca MODENATO: Meinong's Theory of Objects: An Attempt at Overcoming Psychologism. Jan WOLE??N??SKI: Ways of Dealing with Non-existence. Karel LAMBERT: Substitution and the Expansion of the World. Terence PARSONS: Meinongian Semantics Generalized. Reinhardt GROSSMANN: Thoughts, Objectives and States of Affairs. Peter SIMONS: Meinong's Theory of Sense and Reference. Barry SMITH: More Things (...) in Heaven and Earth. Michele LENOCI: Meinongs unvollständige Gegenstände und das Universalienproblem. Maria E. REICHER: Gibt es unvollständige Gegenstände? Dale JACQUETTE: Meinong's Concept of Implexive Being and Nonbeing. Herbert HOCHBERG:s, Functions, Existence and Relations in the Russell-Meinong Dispute, the Bradley Paradox and the Realism-Nominalism Controversy. Jacek PA_NICZEK: Are Contradictions Still Lurking in Meinongian Theories of Objects? Marie-Luise SCHUBERT KALSI: Apriorische Elemente im Denken. Liliana ALBERTAZZI: Forms of Completion. Johann Ch. MAREK: Zwei Gegenstände und ein Inhalt. Zur Intentionalität bei Meinong. Wolfgang KÜNNE: Some Varieties of Thinking. Reflections on Meinong and Fodor. Alberto VOLTOLINI: Is Meaning Without Actually Existing Reference Naturalizable? Markus S. STEPANIANS: Russells Kritik an Meinongs Begriff des Annahmeschlusses. Nenad MIŠ_EVI_: Imagination and Necessity. R.D. ROLLINGER: Meinong on Perception: Two Questions Concerning Propositional Seeing. Wolfgang G. STOCK: Die Genese der Theorie der Vorstellungsproduktion der Grazer Schule. Rudolf HALLER: Über Meinongs Wissenschaftstheorie. Alfred SCHRAMM: Meinongs Wahrscheinlichkeit. Karl SCHUHMANN: Der Wertbegriff beim frühen Meinong. Wilhelm BAUMGARTNER: Wertpräsentation. Ursula ZEGLÉN: Meinong's Analysis of Lying. Seppo SAJAMA: Hitting Reality: France Veber's Concept of Zadevanje. Matja_ POTR_: Sensation According to Meinong and Veber. Róbert SOMOS: Zwei Schüler Brentanos: Ákos von Pauler und Meinong. J.C. NYÍRI: Palágyis Kritik an der Gegenstandstheorie. David M. ARMSTRONG: Reaction to Meinong. (shrink)

The ontology of fictional objects in fictional literary texts is one of the most debated issues of a general theory of fiction. This contribution starts out from considerations by Rudolf Haller, connecting them with the model of the Possible Worlds Theory (PWT). A particular strength of this theory is that it does not only analyse the borders of fiction, which lie between the real and the text world, but that it offers in particular a more accurate differentiation within the (...) text world itself by drawing attention to the issue of what is possible, impossible and necessary within a Textual actual world (TAW). In this way, for example, the ‘Wunschwelt’ of individual characters and their confrontation with what will be possible or actual within a particular text world, can be described in detail and, as in the case of Ovid’s exile poems Tristia, the literary play with different levels of fictitiousness can be analysed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 65.2 (2004) 251-276 [Access article in PDF] British Geography's Republic of Letters: Mapping an Imagined Community, 1600-1800 Robert Mayhew University of Bristol Introduction: Geographies of the Republic of Letters One of the main ways in which scholars molded their self image in early modern Europe was as citizens of the "republic of letters." At the level of professed ideals the concept of (...) the republic of letters was simple: scholars would create an egalitarian world amongst themselves, where views could be expressed without the rancor of national, religious, historical, or other barriers to their exchanges. Recent studies have highlighted the impressive degree to which eighteenth-century scientists ignored war and xenophobia to exchange ideas, thereby enacting the cosmopolitan ideal of a republic of letters.1 Yet the details of this ideal have been the subject of intense scrutiny and debate, in part because there were many versions of scholarly cosmopolitanism,2 but more importantly because the reality of the republic of letters was in most instances at some distance from the ideal.3 There have been debates about the chronology of the rise and fall of the republic of letters, Miller seeing it as having risen to prominence in the later sixteenth century but in terminal decline by 1720. By contrast Goldgar shifts the era of the republic of letters to 1660-1750, and most recently Brockliss has argued for the essentially healthy state of the republic of [End Page 251] letters into the era of the French Revolution.4 Such chronological debates have themselves been prompted by a major disagreement over the relationship between the republic of letters and the Enlightenment of the philosophes: was the former a mere token of the ancien régime which was destroyed by an incipiently radical Enlightenment,5 or was the ideal of egalitarian cosmopolitanism which the republic of letters championed the seedbed for such radicalism, thereby making Enlightenment philosophes a subset of the republic of letters rather than their successors?6Clearly, debates about the meaning of the republic of letters have been sparked by its status as a quasi-political republican body and the extent to which this was mere terminology or was a real spur to new forms of political association. Yet the notion of a republic also presupposes a geography: a polis, fictive or real, needs a territorial scope over which it holds sway. Concerning the geography of the republic of letters, recent scholarship has been both more consensual and less critically acute. A number of scholars have documented the extent to which the republic's cosmopolitan ideals were undermined by national antagonisms and religious schisms.7 Furthermore, feminist scholars have pointed to the complexities of female participation in this arena, their salons enabling while their gender undermined their ability to negotiate a relationship with the public sphere of the republic.8 Clearly, there was a tension between nationalism (together with other forms of parochialism such as gender discrimination) and cosmopolitanism in the political geography of the republic of letters.At a more concrete level, several studies have analyzed the geography of the republic of letters by trying to map its spatial extent in diagrams or prose. Ultee has looked at the spatial extent of Leibniz's correspondents, and Brockliss has likewise mapped Esprit de Calvet's web of communications.9 Parallel studies of scientific correspondence networks have been conducted for Albrecht [End Page 252] von Haller and the natural historians clustered around Buffon.10 In this respect perhaps the most theoretically sophisticated work has been produced by historians of science galvanized by the work of Latour.11 Thus Lux and Cook have looked to the chains of contact and epistolary exchange by which Oldenberg came to credit knowledge claims for inclusion in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, while parallel methods have been used to analyze the geography of Jesuit scholarly exchange.12Other elements of the circulation of knowledge in early modern Europe beyond correspondence have also been examined to give readings of the geography of... (shrink)

Sensibility, in any of its myriad realms – moral, physical, aesthetic, medical and so on – seems to be a paramount case of a higher-level, intentional property, not a basic property. Diderot famously made the bold and attributive move of postulating that matter itself senses, or that sensibility (perhaps better translated ‘sensitivity’ here) is a general or universal property of matter, even if he at times took a step back from this claim and called it a “supposition.” Crucially, sensibility is (...) here playing the role of a ‘booster’: it enables materialism to provide a full and rich account of the phenomena of conscious, sentient life, contrary to what its opponents hold: for if matter can sense, and sensibility is not a merely mechanical process, then the loftiest cognitive plateaus are accessible to materialist analysis, or at least belong to one and the same world as the rest of matter. This was noted by the astute anti-materialist critic, the Abbé Lelarge de Lignac, who, in his 1751 Lettres à un Amériquain, criticized Buffon for “granting to the body [la machine, a common term for the body at the time] a quality which is essential to minds, namely sensibility.” This view, here attributed to Buffon and definitely held by Diderot, was comparatively rare. If we look for the sources of this concept, the most notable ones are physiological and medical treatises by prominent figures such as Robert Whytt, Albrecht von Haller and the Montpellier vitalist Théophile de Bordeu. We then have, or so I shall try to sketch out, an intellectual landscape in which new – or newly articulated – properties such as irritability and sensibility are presented either as an experimental property of muscle fibers, that can be understood mechanistically (Hallerian irritability, as studied recently by Hubert Steinke and Dominique Boury) or a property of matter itself (whether specifically living matter as in Bordeu and his fellow montpelliérains Ménuret and Fouquet, or matter in general, as in Diderot). I am by no means convinced that it is one and the same ‘sensibility’ that is at issue in debates between these figures (as when Bordeu attacks Haller’s distinction between irritability and sensibility and claims that ‘his own’ property of sensibility is both more correct and more fundamental in organic beings), but I am interested in mapping out a topography of the problem of sensibility as property of matter or as vital force in mid-eighteenth-century debates – not an exhaustive cartography of all possible positions or theories, but an attempt to understand the ‘triangulation’ of three views: a vitalist view in which sensibility is fundamental, matching up with a conception of the organism as the sum of parts conceived as little lives (Bordeu et al.); a mechanist, or ‘enhanced mechanist’ view in which one can work upwards, step by step from the basic property of irritability to the higher-level property of sensibility (Haller); and, more eclectic, a materialist view which seeks to combine the mechanistic, componential rigour and explanatory power of the Hallerian approach, with the monistic and metaphysically explosive potential of the vitalist approach (Diderot). It is my hope that examining Diderot in the context of this triangulated topography of sensibility as property sheds light on his famous proclamation regarding sensibility as a universal property of matter. (shrink)

In An Essay on the Vital and Involuntary Motions of Animals, Robert Whytt maintained that the muscular motions that perform the natural functions of the organism are caused by an immaterial power. Here we consider to what extent the philosophical criticism of power urged by Locke and Hume may jeopardize his thesis, how his response mobilizes the resources of the Scottish experimental theism and whether he makes an original use of such resources. First, we examine various pieces of experimental (...) evidence from which Whytt infers the need to evoke this power, before showing how they prompt him to stand by the immaterial power in the face of the empiricist criticisms. Following this, we explore the link Whytt makes between power and agency, in particular comparing his thought with Locke’s. Lastly, we examine his work in the light of Hume’s criticism regarding the question of whether a power may be felt. (shrink)

This book offers a new interpretation of the metaphysics of Charles Peirce, the founder of pragmatism and one of America's greatest philosophers. Robert Lane begins by examining Peirce's basic realism, his belief in a world that is independent of how anyone believes it to be. Lane argues that this realism is the basis for Peirce's account of truth, according to which a true belief is one that would be settled by investigation and that also represents the real world. He (...) then explores Peirce's application of his Pragmatic Maxim to clarify the idea of reality, his two forms of idealism, and his realism about generality and vagueness. This rich study will provide readers with a clear understanding of Peirce's thoughts on reality and truth and how they intersect, and of his views on the relation between the mind and the external world. (shrink)

In Overdoing Democracy, Robert B. Talisse turns the popular adage "the cure for democracy's ills is more democracy" on its head. Indeed, he argues, the widely recognized, crisis-level polarization within contemporary democracy stems from the tendency among citizens to overdo democracy. When we make everything--even where we shop, the teams we cheer for, and the coffee we drink--about our politics, we weaken our bonds to one another, and work against the fundamental goals of democracy. Talisse advocates civic friendship built (...) around shared endeavors that we must undertake with fellow citizens who do not necessarily share our political affinities as the best way we can obtain a healthier, more sustainable democracy. (shrink)

In this book, Dr. Robert J. Levine reviews federal regulations, ethical analysis, and case studies in an attempt to answer these questions.

In Water into Wine? Robert Larmer re-examines significant issues in this cross-disciplinary debate and attacks two basic assumptions governing it.

Robert R. Williams offers a bold new account of divergences and convergences in the work of Hegel and Nietzsche. He explores four themes - the philosophy of tragedy; recognition and community; critique of Kant; and the death of God - and explicates both thinkers' critiques of traditional theology and metaphysics.

Discussions of whistleblowing and employee loyalty usually assume either that the concept of loyalty is irrelevant to the issue or, more commonly, that whistleblowing involves a moral choice in which the loyalty that an employee owes an employer comes to be pitted against the employee''s responsibility to serve public interest. I argue that both these views are mistaken and propose a third view which sees whistleblowing as entirely compatible with employee loyalty.

Questions of Miracle will be a valuable reference book and teaching tool for scholars and students of theology, religious studies, and philosophy. Contents The Logic of Probabilities in Hume's Argument against Miracles - Fred Wilson David Hume and the Miraculous - Robert Larmer Miracles and the Laws of Nature - Robert Larmer Against Miracles - John Collier Against "Against Miracles" - Robert Larmer Miracles and Conservation Laws - Neil MacGill Miracles and Conservation Laws: A Reply to Professor (...) MacGill - Robert Larmer Miracles and Criteria - Robert Larmer Miracles and Natural Explanations - David Basinger Miracles and Natural Explanations: A Rejoinder - Robert Larmer Miracles as Evidence for Theism: A Surrejoinder - David Basinger Miracles, Evidence, and Theism: A Further Apologia - Robert Larmer Authenticating Biblical Reports of Miracles - Phillip Wiebe Miracles and Testimony: A Reply to Wiebe - Robert Larmer Miracles as Evidence against the Existence of God - Christine Overall Miracles and the Existence of God: A Reply - Robert Larmer. (shrink)

The first is that a miracle, understood as an event produced by a transcendent agent overriding the usual course of nature, involves a violation of the laws of nature. Larmer argues that events are explained by reference to both relevant laws and units of mass/energy in the sequences to be explained. He contends that a miracle need not be conceived as involving a violation of natural law, but rather as the creation or annihilation of mass/energy by a transcendent agent. In (...) reply to the objection that this account would violate the first law of thermo-dynamics, he distinguishes two forms of the principle -- one metaphysical, one scientific -- and aruges that a miracle would not violate the principle considered as a scientific law. The second assumption is that miracle testimony cannot serve as evidence for theism. Larmer demonstrates that the logical ties connecting the concept of miracle to theism need not imply that one must be a theist to evaluate miracle testimony properly. All that is required is that one is prepared to entertain theism as a hypothesis. Attacking these assumptions allows Larmer to show that Humean balance-of-probabilities arguments, based on a presumed conflict between evidence which establishes belief in the laws of nature and evidence in favour of miracles, miss the point if miracles need not be defined as violations of the laws of nature. He argues that, in the absence of a general argument demonstrating that the testimonial evidence in favour of miracles conflicts with the evidence for the laws of nature, it is up to the atheist to demonstrate, on a case-by-case basis, why the testimonial evidence is to be rejected. His conclusion is that, contrary to what is usually thought, the burden of proof lies not upon the shoulders of the theist, but upon the shoulders of the atheist. (shrink)

In "Miracles as Evidence Against the Existence of God," (’Southern Journal of Philosophy’, 1985) Christine Overall argued that the occurrence of miracles would constitute evidence against the existence of God, on the grounds that miracles are violations of natural law or permanently inexplicable events and, as such, would be inconsistent with the supposed purposes of God. In ’Water Into Wine?’ (MacGill-Queen’s, 1988), I argued that her argument fails once a more adequate definition of miracle is adopted. In "Miracles and God: (...) A Reply to Robert A.H. Larmer" (’Dialogue’ 1997), Overall attempted to reply to my specific criticisms and to attack central theses of ’Water Into Wine?’. I argue that she is successful in neither endeavor. (shrink)

Questions of Miracle will be a valuable reference book and teaching tool for scholars and students of theology, religious studies, and philosophy. Contents The Logic of Probabilities in Hume's Argument against Miracles - Fred Wilson David Hume and the Miraculous - Robert Larmer Miracles and the Laws of Nature - Robert Larmer Against Miracles - John Collier Against "Against Miracles" - Robert Larmer Miracles and Conservation Laws - Neil MacGill Miracles and Conservation Laws: A Reply to Professor (...) MacGill - Robert Larmer Miracles and Criteria - Robert Larmer Miracles and Natural Explanations - David Basinger Miracles and Natural Explanations: A Rejoinder - Robert Larmer Miracles as Evidence for Theism: A Surrejoinder - David Basinger Miracles, Evidence, and Theism: A Further Apologia - Robert Larmer Authenticating Biblical Reports of Miracles - Phillip Wiebe Miracles and Testimony: A Reply to Wiebe - Robert Larmer Miracles as Evidence against the Existence of God - Christine Overall Miracles and the Existence of God: A Reply - Robert Larmer. (shrink)

The Legitimacy of Miracle defends the view that miracles, in the strong sense of being events produced by a supernatural agent overriding the usual course of nature, can take place without violating any laws of nature. This means that the evidence for miracles cannot be judged to be in conflict with the evidence for the laws of nature; the result being that Humean objections to the rationality of belief in miracles fail.

In this book, Robert Talisse critically examines the moral and political implications of pluralism, the view that our best moral thinking is indeterminate and that moral conflict is an inescapable feature of the human condition. Through a careful engagement with the work of William James, Isaiah Berlin, John Rawls, and their contemporary followers, Talisse distinguishes two broad types of moral pluralism: metaphysical and epistemic. After arguing that metaphysical pluralism does not offer a compelling account of value and thus cannot (...) ground a viable conception of liberal politics, Talisse proposes and defends a distinctive variety of epistemic pluralism. According to this view, certain value conflicts are at present undecidable rather than intrinsic. Consequently, epistemic pluralism countenances the possibility that further argumentation, enhanced reflection, or the acquisition of more information could yield rational resolutions to the kinds of value conflicts that metaphysical pluralists deem irresolvable as such. Talisse’s epistemic pluralism hence prescribes a politics in which deep value conflicts are to be addressed by ongoing argumentation and free engagement among citizens; the epistemic pluralist thus sees liberal democracy is the proper political response to ongoing moral disagreement. (shrink)

For many years, Charles Peirce maintained that all senses of the modal terms "possible" and "necessary" can be defined in terms of "states of information." But in 1896, he was motivated by his work in set theory to criticize that account of modality, and in 1905 he characterized that criticism as a return "to the Aristotelian doctrine of a real possibility ... the great step that was needed to render pragmaticism an intelligible doctrine." But since Peirce was a realist about (...) modality before 1896, and since he continued defining "possibility" in terms of "states of information" after that date, it is not clear exactly what he changed his mind about. In this essay I explain what it was that Peirce changed his mind about and why, in retrospect, he viewed that change as a decisive step in the development of pragmaticism. (shrink)

The primary purpose of this study was to assess the ethics of purchasing management professionals. A multidimensional scale of ethics was used to measure their predispositions to act morally. The ethics measure from this scale was correlated to a series of ethical vignettes specific to the purchasing function to further assess the value of the scale. In addition, the consistency of values as rationale for decision making was also examined. The findings of the study indicate that purchasing professionals appear to (...) be more ethical than indicated in previous studies as measured by both the multidimensional scale of ethics and their responses to ethical situations similar to those faced in their day-to-day work experiences. The utility of a multidimensional scale of ethics is further validated, and some preliminary assessments of the nature of values impacting on ethical decision making are also evaluated. (shrink)

Over the last few years there has been a renewed interest in questions of citizenship and in particular its relation to young people. This has been allied to an educational discourse where the emphasis has been upon questions concerned with 'outcome' rather than with 'process' - with the curriculum and methods of teaching rather than questions of understanding and learning. This paper seeks to describe and illuminate the linkages within and between these related discourses. It advocates an inclusive and relational (...) view of citizenship-as-practice within a distinctive socio-economic and political, and cultural milieu. Drawing upon some empirical insights from our research we conclude that an appropriate educational programme would respect the claim to citizenship status of everyone in society, including children and young people. It would work together with young people rather than on young people, and recognise that the actual practices of citizenship, and the ways in which these practices transform over time are educationally significant. (shrink)

Big Data’s calculative ontology relies on and reproduces a form of hyperindividualism in which the ontological unit of analysis is the discrete data point, the meaning and identity of which inheres in itself, preceding, separate, and independent from its context or relation to any other data point. The practice of Big Data governed by an ontology of hyperindividualism is also constitutive of that ontology, naturalizing and diffusing it through practices of governance and, from there, throughout myriad dimensions of everyday life. (...) In this paper, I explicate Big Data’s ontology of hyperindividualism by contrasting it to a coconstitutive ontology that prioritizes relationality, context, and interdependence. I then situate the ontology of hyperindividualism in its genealogical context, drawing from Patrick Joyce’s history of liberalism and John Dewey’s pragmatist account of individualism, liberalism, and social action. True to its genealogical provenance, Big Data’s ontological politics of hyperindividualism reduces governance to the management of atomistic behavior, undermines the contribution of urban complexity as a resource for governance, erodes the potential for urban democracy, and eviscerates the possibility of collective resistance. (shrink)

This is a discussion of a three-valued logic in Peirce's writings.

Methodological naturalism has been widely accepted as a necessary condition of scientific theorizing, the assumption being that it exacts no questionable epistemological or metaphysical costs. In this paper, I argue that this assumption is mistaken. I further argue that the presumed costs of not adopting methodological naturalism are illusory.

One of the major reasons underlying the widespread rejection of the theory that the mind is an immaterial substance distinct from the body, But which nevertheless acts on the body, Is that it is felt that such a theory commits one to denying the principle of the conservation of energy. My aim in this article is to assess the strength of this objection. My thesis is that the usual replies are inadequate, But--Strong as this objection appears--Some important logical distinctions have (...) been overlooked and when these are taken into account its force vanishes. (shrink)

In this essay I describe two of the accounts that Peirce provides of personhood: the semiotic account, on which a person is a sequence of thought-signs, and the naturalistic account, on which a person is an animal. I then argue that these disparate accounts can be reconciled into a plausible view on which persons are numerically distinct entities that are nevertheless continuous with each other in an important way. This view would be agreeable to Peirce in some respects, as it (...) is modeled on his theory of perception, incorporates his categories of Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness, and is in harmony with his objective idealism. But it diverges from Peirce in one important respect, viz. its rejection of the idea that some groups of human beings count as persons. (shrink)

This chapter compares the social behaviour of human hunter-gatherers with that of the better-studied chimpanzee species, Pan troglodytes, in an attempt to pinpoint the unique features of human social evolution. Although hunter-gatherers and chimpanzees living in central Africa have similar body weights, humans live at much lower population densities due to their greater dependence on predation. Human foraging parties have longer duration than those of chimpanzees, lasting hours rather than minutes, and a higher level of mutual dependence, through the division (...) of labour between men and women ; which is in turn related to pair-bonding, and meat sharing to reduce the risk of individual hunters' failure on any particular day. The band appears to be a uniquely human social unit that resolves the tension between greater dispersion and greater interdependence. (shrink)

... I was many years ago led to define "real" as meaning being such as it is, no matter how you, or, I, or any man or definite collection of men may think it to be; where I use the long and awkward phrase in order to avoid all appearance of meaning independently of human thought. For obviously, nothing that I or anybody ever can mean can be independent of human thought. That is real which men would eventually and finally (...) come to think to be absolutely necessary to be thought in order to understand the truth, supposing the existence and advance in knowledge of the human race to be continued without any limitation, though I cannot pretend that I have as distinct an idea of exactly what that means as I could wish.... (shrink)

This article seeks to identify at what point in hominid evolution language would have become adaptive. It starts by recalling the distinction between kin-selected altruism and reciprocal altruism, noting that the former is characteristic of social insects while the latter is found among some species of social mammal. Reciprocal altruism depends on the exchange of information assuring partners of the other’s continued friendly intent, as in the iterated prisoner’s dilemma. The article focuses on species that practice “fission–fusion”: social behaviour, where (...) the alternation between larger and smaller parties creates greater uncertainty as to individuals’ continued commitment to reciprocity. The greatest uncertainty arises in “atomistic” fission–fusion, where individuals leave and join foraging groups independently. Chimpanzees, bonobos, and human hunter–gatherers practice this type of social behaviour. There is less uncertainty where the smaller social unit is an extended family, as among vampire bats, chacma baboons, and savanna elephants. A comparison of the repertoire of calls and gestures among these species indicates that chimpanzees and bonobos have the largest repertoires. I then point out that, thanks to the higher proportion of meat in the diet, hunter–gatherers must live in far more dispersed communities than chimpanzees or bonobos, yet they practice more complex patterns of cooperation and reciprocity. This, I argue, created a social environment in which language became particularly adaptive. Homo heidelbergensis is identified as the key species in which language could have originated, during the transition between the Lower and Middle Paleolithic. (shrink)

This volume presents, for the first time, an assemblage of contributions on the philosophical dimensions of the impersonal, the multiplicity of its linguistic, social, scientific, religious and artistic perspectives, as well as initial approaches to its unified definition. Linguistic and logical impersonality The “It" in K. Kraus “Impersonality” in the subject and in events The impersonal ontology of H. Rombach Levinas on the “Il y a” Organisation in non-egological consciousness The witness of consciousness in the Vedānta traditions Anonymous self-consciousness G. (...) Deleuzes figures of the impersonal The impersonal in G. Agamben's Philosophy Formal and collective thought in Spinoza Cusanus and the person as stake in the game of life Impersonal subjectivity and the comedy of solipsism Dimensions of the impersonal in T. Nagel, E. Husserl and H. Plessner On the figure of the impersonal in the Anthropocene Language and mask in F. Nietzsche Theodoros Terzopoulos on impersonality and theatre With contributions by Michael Astroh, Eric Ebner, Eric Eggert, Rolf Elberfeld, Katrin Felgenhauer, Ralf Gisinger, Annika Hand, Stefan Lang, Robert Lehmann, Enrico Müller, Daniel Neumann, Frank Raddatz, Christian Rößner, Thomas Schmaus, Fabian Strobel and Theodoros Terzopoulos. (shrink)

Christian Overall and I have been debating whether the occurrence of events traditionally viewed as miracles would constitute evidence for theism. In this article, I make some concluding comments regarding our exchanges. My goal in making these comments is twofold. First, I wish to sketch why I think miracles can function as evidence for God. Second, in the course of our discussion, Overall has ascribed to me claims that I do not make and criticized me on the basis of my (...) holding these views. I feel it is important to set the record straight on several issues. (shrink)

This is the first of two papers that examine Charles Peirce’s denial that human beings have a faculty of intuition. The semiotic and epistemo-logical aspects of that denial are well-known. My focus is on its neglected metaphysical aspect, which I argue amounts to the doctrine that there is no determinate boundary between the internal world of the cognizing subject and the external world that the subject cognizes. In the second paper, I will argue that the “objective idealism” of Peirce’s 1890s (...) cosmological series is a more general iteration of the metaphysical aspect of his earlier denial of intuition. (shrink)

Many contemporary thinkers seeking to integrate theistic belief and scientific thought reject what they regard as two extremes. They disavow deism in which God is understood simply to uphold the existence of the physical universe, and they exclude any view of divine influence that suggests the performance of physical work through an immaterial cause. Deism is viewed as theologically inadequate, and acceptance of direct immaterial causation of physical events is viewed as scientifically illegitimate. This desire to avoid both deism and (...) any positing of God as directly intervening in the physical order has led to models of divine agency that seek to defend the reality of divine causal power yet affirm the causal closure of the physical. I argue, negatively, that such models are unsuccessful in their attempts to affirm both the reality of divine causal power acting in the created world and the causal closure of the physical and, positively, that the assumption that underlies these models, namely that any genuine integration of theistic and scientific belief must posit the causal closure of the physical on pain of violating well-established conservation principles, is mistaken. (shrink)

A letter to The Times of London, May 9, 1992 protesting the Cambridge University proposal to award an honorary degree to M. Jacques Derrida.

Traditionally, special divine acts have been understood as involving intervention in the course of nature, so as to cause events that nature would not, or could not, otherwise produce. The concept of divine intervention has come under heavy fire in recent times, however. This has caused many philosophers and theologians either to abandon the possibility of special divine acts or to attempt to show how such acts need not be understood as interventions in natural processes. This paper argues that three (...) objections typically raised against special divine acts conceived as interventions in the natural order are pseudo-problems and pose no reason to abandon the traditional conception of such acts. Further, it argues that attempted noninterventionist accounts constitute a blind alley of investigation, inasmuch as they fail to provide a secure foundation for a robust account of the possibility of special divine acts. (shrink)

In a recent article, Neil MacGill criticizes my claim (See "Water Into Wine", MacGill-Queen’s University Press, 1988) that miracles, understood as a transcendent agent overriding the usual course of nature, can conceivably occur without violating or suspending any of the laws of nature. MacGill feels that my account of miracles implies the violation of at least one law of nature, the Principle of the Conservation of Energy. In my reply, I point out that he is mistaken and that my original (...) claim has not, therefore, been refuted. (shrink)

Temporal betweenness in space-time is defined solely in terms of light signals, using a signalling relation that does not distinguish between the sender and the receiver of a light signal. Special relativity and general relativity are considered separately, because the latter can be treated only locally. We conclude that the (local) coherence of time can be described if we know only which pairs of space-time points are light-connected. Other consequences in the case of special relativity: (1) a categorical axiom system (...) exists in terms of nondirected light connection alone, with neither particle nor time order as a primitive concept, though we do not actually present the axioms; (2) any concept definable by coordinates is also definable in terms of nondirected light signals if and only if it is invariant under Lorentz transformations, translations, dilations, space reflections, and time reflections; and (3) any transformation of space-time (not necessarily continuous) which preserves nondirected light connection is a product of transformations just listed above. The bulk of the paper is devoted to proving that the definitions we give correspond to their intended interpretations in the usual space-time continua. (shrink)

We propose a vision of the structure of knowledge and processes of learning based upon the particularity of experience. Highly specific cognitive structures are constructed through activities in limited domains of experience. For new domains, new cognitive structures develop from and can call upon the knowledge of prior structures. Applying this vision of disparate cognitive structures to a detailed case study, we present an interpretation of addition‐related matter from the corpus and trace the interplay of specific experiences with the interactions (...) of ascribed, disparate structures. The interpretive focus is on learning processes through which a broadly applicable skill emerges from the interaction and integration of knowledge based on specific, particular experiences. (shrink)

In this innovative introduction, Robert Layton reviews the ideas that have inspired anthropologists in their studies of societies around the world. An Introduction to Theory in Anthropology provides a clear and concise analysis of the theories, and traces the way in which they have been translated into anthropological debates. The opening chapter sets out the classical theoretical issues formulated by Hobbes, Rousseau, Marx and Durkheim. Successive chapters discuss Functionalism, Structuralism, Interactionist theories, and Marxist anthropology, while the final chapters address (...) the competing paradigms of Socioecology and Postmodernism. Using detailed case studies, Professor Layton illustrates the way in which various theoretical perspectives have shaped competing, or complementary, accounts of specific human societies. (shrink)

Robert Stern; VII*—The Relation between Moral Theory and Metaphysics, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 92, Issue 1, 1 June 1992, Pages 143–160, h.

Don Marquis has argued that abortion is immoral because it deprives the fetus of a "future like ours." But Marquis's argument fails by incorrectly assuming that a zygote and the late-term fetus with which it is physically continuous are numerically identical. In fact, the identity of a prebirth human (PBH) across gestation is indeterminate, such that it is determinately morally permissible to destroy an early-term PBH and determinately immoral to destroy a late-term PBH. Beginning at some indeterminate point during gestation (...) and ending at some indeterminate point later in gestation, destroying a PBH is neither determinately morally permissible nor determinately immoral. (shrink)