The notorious but: unimpeachably corroborated case of Pavlov's mice raises, in capsule form, a variety of fascinating issues with far-reaching ramifications in several directions, but with particularly serious implications, several of which are well worth restating and pondering further (cf. Sebeóle 1977b: 192-201), both for the foundations and research methodology of contemporary semiotics.

"... fascinating throughout.... the book is recreative in the highest sense." —Arthur C. Danto, The New Republic "A gem for Holmes fans and armchair detectives with a penchant for logical reflection, and Peirce scholars." —Library Journal.

Photocopy of typescript pages 203-250 of Theory and Methodology in Semiotics, v.26: 3-4, 1979 stapled in covers, 2 copies of the prefinal draft of Aug. 21 [1979] (1 in covers).

Joseph Alois Schumpeter (1883-1950) stands among the intellectual giants of the twentieth century, especially in the field of economics; in his long and varied impact on the profession, he is second only to Maynard Keynes. He was a pragmatist in his economic philosophy, an “objective scientific investigator with no particular axe to grind” (Newman, et al., 746). His encyclopedic History of Economic Analysis, edited after his death by his wife and published in 1954, is a monument to his gigantic and (...) versatile achievements; and it remains the locus classicus of almost all works in this area. (shrink)

Film can be a significant way of doing public philosophy. This chapter sketches some essential public features of philosophy by using popular films. Learning to watch popular films as philosophical expressions, on par with books and articles, brings film and philosophy to inform one another and illuminate important areas of overlap. Memento is an especially uncanny film because it begins with the story's ending. Daniel J. Clark's 2018 documentary film Behind the Curve charts the resurgence of flat‐Earth theory in the (...) United States. Its core thesis is that false, avowed belief in flat‐Earth is sustained partly by an irrational weighing of evidence reinforced by various social, psychological, and economic benefits that come from holding the belief. We gain insight into a classic mechanism of motivated reasoning from Tony Kaye's film American History X, a fictional exploration of the rise of white supremacist ideology in US white working‐class neighborhoods. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Scale Theory: A Nondisciplinary Inquiry by Joshua DiCaglioS. Scott GrahamScale Theory: A Nondisciplinary Inquiry. By Joshua DiCaglio. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2021. 349 pp. Paperback: $30.00. ISBN: 978-1-5179-1207-9.Scale Theory embodies its title in every possible way. It offers both a deep dive into and a 10,000-foot view of scale, scalar thinking, and the role of scale in scientific inquiry. The subtitle, A Nondisciplinary Inquiry, is no less (...) apt. Author Joshua DiCaglio blends insights from rhetoric, philosophy, literary studies, and mysticism to create a novel account of scalar thinking. In so doing, he weaves together detailed thought experiments, the work of Gregory Bateson, and Philip K. Dick's account of an extraterrestrial communication he received while under the influence of anesthesia. Provocatively, Scale Theory treats these diverse intellectual resources as coequal contributors to an emerging theory of scale and scalar thinking. Within this nondisciplinary framework, the book is devoted to advancing two primary theses: (1) Notions of scale are undertheorized in science studies and related strands of new materialisms; and (2) Proper attention to questions of scale within these theoretical traditions should prompt a more thoughtful reconsideration of the merits of mystic holism. Ultimately, Scale Theory makes a compelling case for the first thesis and advances inquiry usefully in this area. With respect to the second thesis, DiCaglio refers to a certain academic "allergy" to holism (99), and I must confess I share this allergy. That said, I assume readers already predisposed favorably toward mystic holism are likely to find Scale Theory's attention to the second thesis thoughtful and engaging.Scale Theory is organized into three distinct parts. Part 1, "Algorithms for a Theory of Scale," presents three interrelated thought experiments that call upon readers to imagine themselves at various distances and vantage points with respect to several objects of interest. Part 1 is stylistically [End Page 388] Wittgensteinian. Like the Tractatus-Logico Philosophicus (Wittgenstein 2013) or Latour's "Irreductions," (1993), the thought experiments unfold as a series of numbered and nested propositions, each postulating or interrogating an emerging concept in DiCaglio's theory of scale. Part 2, "Configurations for a Theory of Scale," returns the reader to more familiar styles of prose, providing a sort of review of the relevant literature and its relationship to the insights of the thought experiments. Finally, part 3, "Rhetorical Technologies for a Theory of Scale," reflects on the twin marginalizations of rhetoric and mysticism in mainstream Western academia and argues for a new embrace of disembodied inquiry.The aforementioned thought experiments of part 1 outline DiCaglio's theories of scale, scalar thinking, and scalar analysis. The discussion makes extensive use of visual and cinematic metaphors to aid the reader's consideration of scalar questions. Ultimately, DiCaglio posits that scale is a function of the relationship between the "'being' of phenomena" and "the one who is measuring" (8). He argues, therefore, that "scale functions at a level above ontology and epistemology: scale is a means of orienting yourself both to experience and the being of things" (8). In making this argument, Scale Theory reflects on a range of scientific practices that require gradients of scale. Microscopy, telescopy, and simulations all provide scientists with tools to escape the mundane scales of embodied human experience. DiCaglio argues that "science must always find itself grouping things together, speaking of species, types, systems, and so on which exist on a different logical type than the individual encounters that make up these groups" (41). The taxonomic activities of scientific practice require shifts in scale to account for kingdoms, phyla, orders, genera, species, and all manner of nonbiological analogs.Within this framework, scale functions as a sort of meta-ontology that allows objects to be provisionally identified and delineated. Echoing Bateson, DiCaglio argues thatIn order for any thing to be said to exist whatsoever, a differential must exist out of which a difference can be discerned. Every differential occurs on some scale at which a fluctuation or movement is able to make a difference. If one goes to a smaller scale, any given differential is no longer able to be used to register a difference.(51... (shrink)

This paper claims that the standard characterization of the motivational role of belief should be supplemented. Beliefs do not only, jointly with desires, cause and rationalize actions that will satisfy the desires, if the beliefs are true; beliefs are also the practical ground of other cognitive attitudes, like imagining, which means beliefs determine whether and when one acts with those other attitudes as the cognitive inputs into choices and practical reasoning. In addition to arguing for this thesis, I take (...) issue with Velleman's argument that belief and imagining cannot be distinguished on the basis of motivational role. (shrink)

Many philosophers hold that if an agent acts intentionally, she must know what she is doing. Although the scholarly consensus for many years was to reject the thesis in light of presumed counterexamples by Donald Davidson, several scholars have recently argued that attention to aspectual distinctions and the practical nature of this knowledge shows that these counterexamples fail. In this paper I defend a new objection against the thesis, one modelled after Timothy Williamson’s anti-luminosity argument. Since this argument (...) relies on general principles about the nature of knowledge rather than on intuitions about fringe cases, the recent responses that have been given to defuse the force of Davidson’s objection are silent against it. Moreover, the argument suggests that even weaker theses connecting practical entities with knowledge are also false. Recent defenders of the thesis that there is a necessary connection between knowledge and intentional action are motivated by the insight that this connection is non-accidental. I close with a positive proposal to account for the non-accidentality of this link without appeal to necessary connections by drawing an extended analogy between practical and perceptual knowledge. (shrink)

Islamic education; Islamic ethics; thesis.

Merleau-Ponty's «Phenomenology of Perception» suggests perception to be the primary level of the giveness of the world. Perception appears as always an incomplete synthesis of the plural, bringing together bodily and material aspects. Such the simplest interpretation of perception as rendering a contact within the dyad «body-world» is a preliminary axiom for explaining the rest of the process of noematic sense formation. At the same time, Merleau-Ponty’s theoretical intuitions clearly presuppose more, and perception is also thought of as the final (...) point where sense is already given by some way. Thus, in Phenomenology, the second interpretation of perception presumes it to be sense-giving accompanied by the tacit cogito. Merleau-Ponty suggests that these interpretations are compatible with each other, but the transition between them seems really problematic. In the research author shos that the limit of the initial synthesis of perception - some sense of the perceived (exemplyfing meanings as «this horse», «the green density that rushed towards me») - is unattainable from within perception itself and by its means. Perception is itself mediated by other faculties, such as memory, reflection, and imagination. Argumentation for this thesis is carried out in several ways; the relations in the perception/imagination pair show us the most characteristic case, where Merleau-Ponty, judging by later works, himself comes close to recognizing the limitations of the hypothesis of «the world of perception», to the need for a phenomenological development of the topic of faculties. Based on the application of the phenomenological method and the analysis of the conceptual constructions of Merleau-Ponty, we can conclude the following: «the world of perception» does not exist, but the phenomenology of faculties is demanded. (shrink)

The unobservability thesis states that the mental states of other people are unobservable. Both defenders and critics of UT seem to assume that UT has important implications for the mindreading debate. Roughly, the former argue that because UT is true, mindreaders need to infer the mental states of others, while the latter maintain that the falsity of UT makes mindreading inferences redundant. I argue, however, that it is unclear what ‘unobservability’ means in this context. I outline two possible lines (...) of interpretation of UT, and argue that on one of these, UT has no obvious implications for the mindreading debate. On the other line of interpretation, UT may matter to the mindreading debate, in particular if we think of it as a thesis about the possible contents of perceptual experience. The upshot is that those who believe UT has implications for the mindreading debate need to be more specific about how they understand the thesis. (shrink)

This chapter serves as an introduction to the book, offering a description of problems in Lockean scholarship, the book's overall argument and approach, and more. Locke scholarship tends to be compartmentalized, which is problematic since Locke was a systematic polymath. Scholarship also tends to over-simplify the intense debates in which Locke found himself. Furthermore, scholars typically fail to make a distinction between Locke's programmatic and personal views. As a result of these tendencies, some label Locke as heterodox, others as orthodox, (...) and still others try to identify him as defending a particular sect, all depending on the narrative or issue the scholar is exploring. Most Lockean scholars approach him as being religiously surreptitious, sectarian, or sincere. This book adds to the voices that think Locke was forthright in his writings. This chapter also articulates the thesis for the entire book and the theses and coherence of the following chapters. (shrink)

The past is, indeed, so essential to the club that they might just as well be called the Sons of History. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel argues that history follows a rational course of development that begins with civilization's earliest and crudest forms of thinking but culminates in modern science and philosophy. Thinking develops and matures through a process Hegel calls “dialectic.” A dialectical process has often been described as one in which an initial “thesis” is set against an opposing (...) “antithesis,” with the opposition between the two provoking a process that “sublates” or “uplifts” them into a hybrid or unified “synthesis.” This dialectical hybrid preserves what is good and right in those originally one‐sided positions, forging them into something higher. (shrink)

The material in "TCU," as we've come to refer to this volume, began as a Master's Thesis that examined the manner in which knowledge of fairly complex, patterned material could be acquired without any conscious effort to learn it and with little to no awareness of what had been learned. It was dubbed implicit learning and, over a fifty-plus year span, became a vigorously researched area in the social sciences. TCU brings together several dozen scientists from a variety of (...) backgrounds and presents a broad (and deep) overview of how the exploration of the cognitive unconscious grew from that first study to a domain of research to which contributions have been made by sociologists, neuroscientists, evolutionary biologists, modelers, social and organizational psychologists, sport psychologists, primatologists, developmentalists, linguists, psychiatrists and psychotherapists, and measurement and assessment researchers. The core message seems fairly straightforward. Unconscious, implicit cognitive processes play a role in virtually everything interesting that human beings do. The implicit and explicit elements of cognition form a rich and complex interactive framework that make up who we are. The volume has contributions from over 30 distinguished authors from nine different countries and gives a balanced and thorough overview of where the field is today, a bit over a half-century since the first experiments were run. (shrink)

Revision of the author's thesis (Ph. D.--Kāśī Hindu Viśvavidyālaya, 1994) under title: Śaktiviśishṭādvaita Vedānta, eka samīkshātmka anuśīlana.

If humans are not capable of immortality, then eschatological doctrines of heaven and hell make little sense. On that Christians agree. But not all Christians agree on whether humans are essentially immortal. Some hold that the early church was right to borrow from the ancient Greek philosophers and to bring their sense of immortality to bear on the interpretation of biblical passages about the afterlife. Others, however, suggest that we are inherently mortal, and only conditionally immortal. This latter view is (...) usually associated with an annihilationist interpretation of the doctrine of hell and a rejection of eternal torment. In a philosophical analysis and argument, McLeod-Harrison proposes that humans are, indeed, immortal, but not essentially so. But neither are we immortal accidentally or conditionally. Instead, immortality is an enduring property--a property we cannot lose once created. McLeod-Harrison carefully delineates the sense of immortality he defends and provides a broadly Christian philosophical argument for it. The argument, if correct, leaves the recent suggestion that the unredeemed are annihilated on unsteady metaphysical feet. However, McLeod-Harrison does not defend eternal conscious punishment for the unredeemed, but suggests some ways to think about the possibility of a universal salvation. ""McLeod-Harrison provides an admirably careful metaphysical analysis of the concept of human immortality, ultimately arguing for the impossibility of personal annihilation. Whether or not one finally agrees with his thesis, this work is an immensely valuable resource, especially as regards discussions of philosophical anthropology and the doctrine of hell."" --James S. Spiegel, Professor of Philosophy and Religion, Taylor University ""In this fascinating, albeit complicated, argument against conditional immortality (annihilationism), the author makes no claim that the human soul is essentially immortal; he argues instead that, once a human offspring acquires a fully robust free will and thus becomes fully human, it is metaphysically impossible that it should cease to exist altogether. Whether or not one accepts every detail of this argument, it provides an original and intriguing twist to theological discussions of free will."" --Thomas Talbott, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Willamette University, Author of The Inescapable Love of God ""I often say the future of the hell debate is between conditional immortality and universal reconciliation, and it is no secret that I think the biblical case for the former is unassailable. However, while I am not persuaded by this volume's case for enduring and universal human immortality, it nevertheless promises to add precision to the language of immortality and to feature prominently in the philosophical side of that debate moving forward."" --Christopher M. Date, editor of Rethinking Hell: Readings in Evangelical Conditionalism Mark S. McLeod-Harrison is Professor of Philosophy at George Fox University. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to make a simple observation regarding the Johnson -Carnap continuum of inductive methods. From the outset, a common criticism of this continuum was its failure to permit the confirmation of universal generalizations: that is, if an event has unfailingly occurred in the past, the failure of the continuum to give some weight to the possibility that the event will continue to occur without fail in the future. The Johnson -Carnap continuum is the mathematical consequence (...) of an axiom termed Johnson 's sufficientness postulate, the thesis of this paper is that, properly viewed, the failure of the Johnson -Carnap continuum to confirm universal generalizations is not a deep fact, but rather an immediate consequence of the sufficientness postulate; and that if this postulate is modified in the minimal manner necessary to eliminate such an entailment, then the result is a new continuum that differs from the old one in precisely one respect: it enjoys the desideratum of confirming universal generalizations. (shrink)

The model theoretic `back and forth' construction of isomorphisms and automorphisms is based on the proof by Cantor that the theory of dense linear orderings without endpoints is ℵ 0 -categorical. However, Cantor's method is slightly different and for many other structures it yields an injection which is not surjective. The purpose here is to examine Cantor's method (here called `going forth') and to determine when it works and when it fails. Partial answers to this question are found, extending those (...) earlier given by Cameron. We also give fuller characterisations of when forth suffices for model theoretic classes such as structures containing Jordan sets for the automorphism group, and ℵ 0 -categorical ω-stable structures. The work is based on the author's Ph.D. thesis. (shrink)

Upshot: The target article suggested that Ashby’s device, the homeostat, embodies and illustrates a conception of life as a passive-contingent phenomenon. It advocated renewed experiments with updated and extended versions of his device that would allow us to understand better what passive-contingent life “would be like.” In assessing the proposal, we should be particularly careful when dealing with the concept of “passivity,” and we should not mistake the proposed theoretical exploration for a substantial metaphysical thesis about life in general.

_Purpose._ The paper seeks to prove the thesis of the significance and importance of the theories and methodological approaches of historical anthropology, which are aimed at understanding the meanings, essence and value systems of human existence in the past for philosophical anthropology. The study of this problem is relevant for understanding the evolution of human identity with philosophical and anthropological concepts, understanding the essence of one’s own existence and attitude to the world. _Theoretical basis._ The author conducts research in (...) the analysis of the reflexive field of philosophical anthropology and related disciplines, in particular historical anthropology, implemented in the philosophical literature of recent centuries, that is, in the space of non-classical and modern philosophical thought. _Originality._ I raise and substantiate the theoretical question of the scientific significance of the analysis of human existence in the past thanks to the involvement of theoretical approaches and concepts formed in the reflexive field of modern historical and anthropological research. This forms the prerequisites for understanding complex and interdisciplinary explorations of the essence and cultural and spiritual values of human existence. I analyse the problems of the work in the context of the concept of the incompleteness of the project of philosophical anthropology without its involvement in the theoretical achievements of historical-anthropological investigations. _Conclusions._ In my opinion, modern historical and anthropological studies of the essence and meanings of being a person of the past form an extensive theoretical system. It is realized through such theoretical aspects of comprehension of human existence by historical and anthropological studies as "history of mentalities", "microhistory", "history of women", "new cultural history", "history of identity", "history of memory", history of mental aspects of political processes. Methodological approaches and concepts of modern historical anthropology form the basis of mental reconstruction and understanding of the mental and cultural causes and factors of human existence, thanks to the analysis of the evolution of the worldview, behaviour, outlook, various forms of individual and social activity of the individual. (shrink)

The thesis of this paper is that games and sports that harm nonhuman animals are unethical because they exceed the permissible limits of optional harm and the more harm the game imposes on the nonhuman animal(s) it objectifies the worse the ethical transgression. Factors in the analysis include the nature of games and sports, the ontology of beings (i.e., human and nonhuman animals) in games, the mitigating power of informed consent among human game-players and its absence among nonhuman game (...) players, harm, and intent. (shrink)

My objective in this project is to explore the concept of moral luck as it relates to sports. I am especially interested in constitutive luck. As a foundation I draw from both Bernard Williams and Thomas Nagel’s classic handling of moral luck, generally. Within the philosophy of sport are similar explorations of this nexus by Robert Simon and David Carr that also factor into the present work. My intent is to put a new lens in front of a puzzle drawn (...) from Torbjörn Tännsjö’s well-known article ‘Is Our Admiration of Sports Heroes Facistoid?’ Specifically, the idea that we might admire an athlete who excels without having worked hard for it. If we may call this puzzle ‘the talent problem,’ the questions driving the present work are as follows: what is the relationship between moral luck and the talent problem, and can this relationship provide a prescription for morally assessing the talent problem? The thesis that this exploratory work suggests that more complex games (and... (shrink)

Introduction. The scientific literature notes that in countries with significant revenues from oil and gas production, there is less economic growth. This paradox has been called the «resource curse». The abundance of hydrocarbons negatively affects the domestic political situation: it worsens the quality of public administration, preserves autocratic rule and corruption. The presence of such natural resources significantly increases the threat of armed conflict, civil war. M. Ross stated that the country’s oil and gas wealth prevents women from participating in (...) the official workforce and reduces their political influence. His argument is based on three statements: in low- and middle-income countries, women usually get jobs in low-paid export-oriented factories; preserving these jobs can expand women’s opportunities for self-realization in social and political terms; the presence of significant reserves of oil (or other minerals) in the state makes such traditional branches of industrial industry unprofitable and, more broadly, does not encourage women to work outside the home. As a result, hydrocarbon wealth in low- and middle-income countries tends to close an important path to gender equality. -/- The purpose of the work is to test M. Ross’s hypothesis. The author seeks to get an answer to the following research question: what impact do hydrocarbons have on the level of representation of women in the labor force and the deputy corps of legislatures of the subjects of the Russian Federation? Is there a «gender resource curse»? -/- Methods. Regression analysis has become the method of data analysis. The source of information for panel data is Rosstat data. -/- Scientific novelty of the research. This study contributes to the academic debate on the factors of women’s representation in politics and the economic sphere. -/- Results. The conducted research showed that M. Ross’s thesis about the «oil patriarchy» and the «gender Dutch disease» on the statistical data of the subjects of the Russian Federation has not been empirically verified. -/- Conclusions. The author has outlined several explanations for this result. It is shown that this is due to the difference in the operationalization of the independent variable. Secondly, the analysis is carried out at the subnational level, when revenues from the activities of oil and gas companies go to the federal budget. Finally, there is an impact of socio-cultural factors. (shrink)

Presentation of the thesis that Kumāril Bhaṭṭa and Dharmakīrti, 7th cent., Sanskrit philosophers, were Assamese by birth, contrary to the traditional belief that they are from South India.

Purpose. The research is aimed at substantiation of the process of formation of various human images in the postmodernism era in the context of biophilosophy, taking into account the need to find an adequate response to historical challenges and the production of new value orientations reflecting succession of civilization development. Theoretical basis. The author in his theoretical constructs proceeds from the need of taking into account the biophilosophical aspect of postmodern man, as the one who, remaining a representative of the (...) species Homo sapiens, began to dynamically change, losing its own natural and functional qualities, acquiring to a large extent the socio-technology-related qualities. The thesis that in the postmodern society the moral and legal foundations of existence of human being, as the subject of actions and responsibility for these actions, practically coincide with the biological foundations is taken as initial argument. New biological knowledge, as well as the related technologies, orient the public consciousness towards production of fundamentally new or modernization of the existing bio-philosophical ideas. The author's vision of the anthropological collision of the Post-Modernism era is caused by the fact that the issues of a postmodern man acquire a special urgency at the end of the ХХ – early XXI century. A progressive disproportion between a human being, whose abilities as a representative of the species Homo sapiens are biologically limited, and the human community, which sees no limits in its information and technological expansion, is of current interest. Originality. The author reveals the key features of the Post-Modernism era, in which a fundamentally different civilizational space originates, and where a new type of person emerges in its internal culture, which is called the postmodern man. The postmodern man was considered through the prism of bio-philosophy. Its interest in man is caused by his or her place in nature, the prospects of development at the individual, population and species levels. Conclusions. In the process of development of bio-philosophy, its research field will be naturally expanded with the use of philosophical means of perception of life as such and filling the bio-philosophy with philosophical and biological issues. In contemporary conditions, the study of the boundaries of biological reality and its previously unknown properties, definition of new horizons of theoretical knowledge in the science of life, the critical rethinking of the concepts of biocentrism and anthropocentrism in the space of modern scientific knowledge, the definition of perspective trends in the study of man, his or her place and role in the planetary being is of great importance. (shrink)

Most naturalists think that the belief/desire model from Hume is the best framework for making sense of motivation. As Smith has argued, given that the cognitive state (belief) and the conative state (desire) are separate on this model, if a moral judgment is cognitive, it could not also be motivating by itself. So, it looks as though Hume and Humeans cannot hold that moral judgments are states of belief (moral cognitivism) and internally motivating (moral internalism). My chief claim is that (...) the details of Hume’s naturalistic philosophy of mind actually allow for a conjunction of these allegedly incompatible views. This thesis is significant, since readers typically have thought that Hume’s view that motivation is not produced by representations, coupled with his view that moral judgments motivate on their own, imply that moral judgments could never take the form of beliefs about, or representations of, the moral (virtue and vice). (shrink)

Authority qua empowerment is the weak reading of authority in Hans Kelsen's writings. On the one hand, this reading appears to be unresponsive to the problem of authority as we know it from the tradition. On the other hand, it squares with legal positivism. Is Kelsen a legal positivist?Not without qualification. For he defends a normativity thesis along with the separation thesis, and it is at any rate arguable that the normativity thesis mandates a stronger reading of (...) authority than that modelled on empowerment. I offer, in the paper, a prima facie case on behalf of a stronger reading of authority in Kelsen. I go on to argue, however, that the textual evidence weighs heavily in favour of the weak reading. Both nomostatics and nomodynamics are pervasive points of view in the Pure Theory of Law, and both reflect species of empowerment as the endpoint of Kelsen's reconstructions. (shrink)

The paper highlights the alienation and separation produced by science—technology between man and nature, and between man and man. The principal thesis in this paper is that such separative mentality is the root cause of the deterioration in ethics even in unexpected quarters. Warnings about this were foreseen by a number of Indian livers and thinkers during the early twentieth century. Their prophecies seem to be unfortunately coming true. After sharing this sample of opinions, several recent cases of vicious (...) unethicalities all over the world have been presented. This is followed by a brief survey of Western thought over the past six decades which too was mature enough to caution us about the blind onslaught of technology. The paper concludes by arguing for a complete overhaul of the vocabulary of modern discourse from the objective to the subjective. (shrink)

The civilizational turn in sociological theory is best understood as an attempt to do full justice to the autonomy of culture (against all versions of structural-functional theory) without conceding the issue to cultural determinism. Civilizational formations are based on combinations of cultural visions of the world with regulative frameworks of social life, but the relationship between the two levels is open to conflicting interpretations and strategic uses of them. Axial age civilizations open up new structural and historical dimensions of interaction (...) between cultural and social patterns, and are therefore central to the agenda of civilizational analysis. Among the later breakthroughs which draw on Axial sources, the emergence of modernity stands out as particularly important; the cultural and political program of modernity may be seen as a new and distinctive civilization, but it remains open to more or less formative influences from older civilizational legacies. (shrink)

Recent scholarship resuscitates the history and philosophy of a ‘left wing’ in the Vienna Circle, offering a counterhistory to the conventional image of analytic philosophy as politically conformist. This paper disputes the historical claim that early logical empiricists developed a political philosophy of science. Though some individuals in the Vienna Circle, including Rudolf Carnap and Otto Neurath, believed strongly in the importance of science to social progress, they did not construct a political philosophy of science. Both Carnap and Neurath were (...) committed to forms of political neutralism that run strongly against a political reading of their logical empiricism. In addition, Carnap and Neurath sharply differ on precisely the subject of the place of politics in logical empiricism, throwing into question the construct of the ‘Left Vienna Circle’ as a coherent, sociohistorical, programmatic unit within the Vienna Circle.Keywords: Vienna Circle; Rudolf Carnap; Otto Neurath; Logical empiricism; History of philosophy of science; Political philosophy of science. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:How Old Are Modern Rights? On the Lockean Roots of Contemporary Human Rights DiscourseS. Adam SeagraveArguing for the proper placement of John Locke’s natural rights theory within intellectual history is a particularly high-stakes enterprise for historians of political thought and political theorists alike. This is due in large part to the fact that, as Brian Tierney notes in his recent study, it is “widely agreed that Locke’s work was (...) an important influence in the formation of modern liberal ideas, including ideas concerning rights.”1 Our understanding of Locke thus contributes to our reflective self-understanding as “modern liberals” (of one stripe or another) to an extent perhaps unequaled by any other thinker so far removed from our own time.As a result of the rare promise of studying Locke’s natural rights theory, there has been no shortage of scholarly attempts to determine its place in intellectual history on the basis of Locke’s own writings and their relation both to preceding and subsequent traditions and modes of thought. Although John Dunn had argued in his influential study that Locke’s political thought was too thoroughly steeped in theology to remain relevant in the contemporary context, this thesis has since been persuasively challenged (albeit in very different ways) by Simmons, Zuckert and Waldron, among others.2 Each of these scholars has contributed to an emerging agreement [End Page 305] that the thread of Locke’s natural rights theory may indeed be carried all the way up to current political and moral debates in some form or another. The precise length of this thread as it extends in the other historical direction has, however, remained a point of heated controversy. The scholarly literature on this issue may be broadly described in terms of a spectrum determined by two opposing emphases in understanding the relation of Locke’s natural rights theory to its medieval predecessors: a continuity emphasis and a discontinuity emphasis.On the discontinuity end of the spectrum stand those such as Michel Villey, Leo Strauss, C. B. Macpherson and, more recently, Michael Zuckert who argue for the existence of some sort of “Copernican moment” separating medieval natural rights theories from their modern counterparts.3 Whether this moment is identified with William of Ockham in the fourteenth century or Hobbes in the seventeenth century, these scholars tend to emphasize the distinctively “modern” character of Lockean natural rights theory and its significant departures from medieval modes of thought. According to many of the advocates of discontinuity, Lockean natural rights are not only “modern” in their political applications but also in their more profound meaning as foundations for morality, and particularly in their newly conceived relation to the concept of natural law.4The continuity end of the spectrum is, perhaps, more variegated, including scholars such as Tuck, Tierney, Tully, Oakley, Nederman, Coleman, and Swanson, among others.5 Despite their many important differences, [End Page 306] these scholars each focus upon the similarities between various elements or strains of medieval thought and modern natural rights theories rather than the differences between them. Insofar as the scholars on this end of the spectrum explicitly consider Locke’s natural rights theory, they tend to emphasize Locke’s intellectual debt to various preceding traditions and thinkers rather than his innovations upon them. Building explicitly upon the work of Tuck, Tierney and Tully, Janet Coleman finds “some extraordinarily Lockean moments” in the medieval thinkers John of Paris and Godefroid of Fontaines, and argues that Locke ought to be understood as contributing to this medieval tradition of thought rather than departing from it.6 Scott Swanson, in turn, builds upon Coleman’s scholarship in carefully connecting medieval understandings of the rights of subsistence and the principle of extreme necessity to Locke’s natural rights theory. Swanson initially goes even further than Coleman in asserting that “all of Locke’s celebrated doctrine is here [in John of Paris’s writings] offered in a nutshell” before concluding on the more moderate note, echoed by Cary Nederman, that Locke’s “application of natural rights of subsistence to politics” may indeed have been something “new under the sun.”7Brian Tierney, who has long been a prominent... (shrink)

I am broadly sympathetic to Dale Matthew’s analysis concerning phenotypic devaluation and disadvantage. However, in what follows, I restrict my remarks to a few areas where I think he either lacks empirical precision, or overstates his case.