Kant said that logic had not had to take a single step forward since Aristotle, but German Idealists in the following generation made concerted efforts to re-think the logical foundations of philosophy. In this book, Jacob McNulty offers a new interpretation of Hegel's Logic, the key work of his philosophical system. McNulty shows that Hegel is responding to a perennial problem in the history and philosophy of logic: the logocentric predicament. In Hegel, we find an answer to a (...) question so basic that it cannot be posed without risking incoherence: what is the justification for logic? How can one justify logic without already relying upon it? The answer takes the form of re-thinking the role of metaphysics in philosophy, so that logic assumes a new position as derivative rather than primary. This important book will appeal to a wide range of readers in Hegel studies and beyond. (shrink)

In the opening sections of his Foundations of Natural Right, Fichte argues that mutual recognition is a condition for the possibility of self-consciousness. However, the argument turns on the apparently unconvincing claim that, in the context of transcendental philosophy, conceptions of the subject as an isolated individual give rise to a vicious circle the resolution of which requires the introduction of a second rational being to ‘summon’ the first. In this essay, my aim is to present a revised account of (...) the opening arguments on which they are more convincing. In particular, I argue that the problem of a circle is genuine and may be seen to result from a relation of mutual dependence between agency and cognition which ensures that for an exercise of either capacity to take place, an exercise of the other would have already had to have taken place with the result that neither can occur. Moreover, the solution is successful. The summons prevents us from being driven around the circle once more because it is a ‘synthesis’ that reconciles the constraint to which I am subject as a cognizer of independently given objects and my freedom as a self-determining subject. (shrink)

In his Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Kant asserts that laws of nature “carry with them an expression of necessity”. There is, however, widespread interpretive disagreement regarding the nature and source of the necessity of empirical laws of natural sciences in Kant's system. It is especially unclear how chemistry—a science without a clear, straightforward connection to the a priori principles of the understanding—could contain such genuine, empirical laws. Existing accounts of the necessity of causal laws unfortunately fail to illuminate the possibility (...) of non-physical laws. In this paper, I develop an alternative, ‘ideational’ account of natural laws, according to which ideas of reason necessitate the laws of some non-physical sciences. Chemical laws, for instance, are grounded on ideas of the elements, and the chemist aims to reduce her phenomena to these elements via experimentation. Although such ideas are beyond the possibility of experience, their postulation is necessary for the achievement of reason's theoretical ends: the unification and explanation of the cognitions of science. (shrink)

For over twenty years, Mark McNulty has been documenting the Liverpool music scene, both in the city and as it has proliferated worldwide. Accompanied by over 100 photographs, Pop Cultured celebrates the city, its music, and its culture through the lens of this highly acclaimed and influential photographer. McNulty has covered a wide array of iconic British bands such as the Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, Echo and the Bunnymen, and the Arctic Monkeys, as well as visiting international acts (...) like the White Stripes. Witty, enthralling, and visually stunning, Pop Cultured combines McNulty’s images with his own laconic and humorous commentary and that of his iconic musical subjects, providing a rollercoaster account of the last twenty years of British culture. (shrink)

Since his Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft was first published in 1786, controversy has surrounded Immanuel Kant’s conception of matter. In particular, the justification for both his dynamical theory of matter and the related dismissal of mechanical philosophy are obscure. In this paper, I address these longstanding issues and establish that Kant’s dynamism rests upon Leibnizian, metaphysical commitments held by Kant from his early pre-Critical texts on natural philosophy to his major critical works. I demonstrate that, throughout his corpus and inspired (...) by Leibniz, Kant endorses the a priori law of continuity of alteration as a truth of metaphysics, according to which all alterations in experience must occur gradually through all intervening degrees. The principle thus legislates against mechanical philosophy’s absolutely impenetrable atoms, as they would would involve instantaneous changes of velocity in impact. This reveals the metaphysical incoherencies in mechanical philosophy and leaves Kant’s own dynamical theory of matter, grounded on material forces, as the only viable approach to physical explanation. Subsequently, I demonstrate that Kant nevertheless made conceptual space in his system for the theoretical consideration of mechanical explanations, which makes manifest one of the positive roles that the faculty of reason can play with respect to natural science. (shrink)

In his Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft (MAN), Kant claims that chemistry is an improper, though rational science. The chemistry to which Kant confers this status is the phlogistic chemistry of, for instance, Georg Stahl. In his Opus Postumum (OP), however, Kant espouses a broadly Lavoiserian conception of chemistry. In particular, Kant endorses Antoine Lavoisier's elements, oxygen theory of combustion, and role for the caloric. As Lavoisier's lasting contribution to chemistry, according to some histories of the science, was his emphasis on (...) quantitative methods, Kant's assimilation of the chemical revolution raises the question: did Kant continue to think of chemistry as an improper, though rational, science in OP? In this paper, I answer this question affirmatively. I explain that a proper science requires a priori laws for the mathematical construction of its objects: the mere use of quantitative measurements is insufficient for the satisfaction this requirement. Further, I argue, contra Burkhard Tuschling, that in OP Kant retains a central role for mathematical construction in the foundations of proper natural science. Finally, I contend that the prominent a priori components of chemistry discussed in OP—the aether and the enumeration of the elements—do not make chemistry into a proper science. (shrink)

Phillip R. Sloan - Performing the Categories: Eighteenth-Century Generation Theory and the Biological Roots of Kant's A Priori - Journal of the History of Philosophy 40:2 Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.2 229-253 Preforming the Categories: Eighteenth-Century Generation Theory and the Biological Roots of Kant's A Priori Phillip R. Sloan Situating Kant's philosophical project in relation to the natural sciences of his day has been of concern to several scholars from both the history of science and the history of (...) philosophy. Historians of philosophy have displayed an expanded awareness of, and interest in, the importance of the scientific context of the period in which Kant carried out his "Copernican" revolution. Most commonly among philosophers, this interest has been analyzed in relation to Kant's concerns with the foundations of mechanics, matter theory, and the epistemology of Newtonian science, with the central text of interest being the Metaphysische Anfangsgründe. On the other hand, historians of philosophy and historians of science, interested in the issues of the third Critique and in the several papers of Kant dealing with biological and anthropological issues, have emphasized the unified nature of Kant's inquiries into the natural sciences, and the importance of his continued interest in the life and human sciences alongside his interests in the foundations of the physical sciences. The effort to understand the unity of Kant's.. (shrink)

In his Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft, Kant claims that chemistry is a science, but not a proper science (like physics), because it does not adequately allow for the application of mathematics to its objects. This paper argues that the application of mathematics to a proper science is best thought of as depending upon a coordination between mathematically constructible concepts and those of the science. In physics, the proper science that exhausts the a priori knowledge of objects of the outer sense, (...) only motions and concepts reducible to motions can be legitimately coordinated with mathematical constructions. Since chemistry can neither achieve its own a priori principles of coordination nor be reduced to the coordinated doctrine of motion, it is a merely improper science. (shrink)

In 1935 geneticist Nikolai Timoféeff-Ressovsky, radiation physicist Karl G. Zimmer, and quantum physicist Max Delbrück published “On the Nature of Gene Mutation and Gene Structure,” known subsequently as the “Three-Man Paper.” This seminal paper advanced work on the physical exploration of the structure of the gene through radiation physics and suggested ways in which physics could reveal definite information about gene structure, mutation, and action. Representing a new level of collaboration between physics and biology, it played an important role in (...) the birth of the new field of molecular biology. The paper’s results were popularized for a wide audience in the What is Life? lectures of physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1944. Despite its historical impact on the biological sciences, the paper has remained largely inaccessible because it was only published in a short-lived German periodical. Creating a Physical Biology makes the Three Man Paper available in English for the first time. Brandon Fogel’s translation is accompanied by an introductory essay by Fogel and Phillip Sloan and a set of essays by leading historians and philosophers of biology that explore the context, contents, and subsequent influence of the paper, as well as its importance for the wider philosophical analysis of biological reductionism. (shrink)

The entry of time and history into biological systems of classification is perhaps the single most significant development in the history of biological systematics in the modern era. Darwin's claiming that descent is ‘… the hidden bond of connexion which naturalists have been seeking under the term of the natural system’, rather than seeing the answer in the multitude of previous attempts to resolve the problem in terms of morphological affinities, analogies, and complex relations of resemblance, marked the turning point (...) in a long search into the meaning of biological taxonomy, and allowed the development of Darwin's insights by Haeckel, Plate and others into modern phylogenetic systematics. (shrink)

This paper seeks to show Kant’s importance for the formal distinction between descriptive natural history and a developmental history of nature that entered natural history discussions in the late eighteenth century. It is argued that he developed this distinction initially upon Buffon’s distinctions of ‘abstract’ and ‘physical’ truths, and applied these initially in his distinction of ‘varieties’ from ‘races’ in anthropology. In the 1770s, Kant appears to have given theoretical preference to the ‘history’ of nature [Naturgeschichte] over ‘description’ of nature (...) [Naturbeschreibung]. Following Kant’s confrontations with Johann Herder and Georg Forster in the late 1780s, Kant weakened the epistemic status of the ‘history of nature’ and gave theoretical preference to ‘description of nature’. As a result, Kant’s successors, such as Goethe, could draw from Kant either a justification for a developmental history of nature, or, as this paper argues, a warrant from the critical philosophy for denying the validity of the developmental history of nature as anything more than a ‘regulative’ idea of reason. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop a new interpretation of the order of nature, its function, and its implications in Margaret Cavendish’s philosophy. According to the infinite balance account, the order of nature consists in a balance among the infinite varieties of nature. That is, for Cavendish, nature contains an infinity of different types of matter: infinite species, shapes, and motions. The potential tumult implicated by such a variety, however, is tempered by the counterbalancing of the different kinds and motions of (...) matter against one another, or what Cavendish calls the “poising” of nature’s actions by their opposites. The infinite balance account of order offers insight into a central notion of Cavendish’s system and bears important implications for other interpretive issues. To wit, the account resolves the standing issue of whether there is genuine disorder in Cavendish’s universe and elucidates the nature of her opposition to atomism. Nevertheless, the interpretation faces an epistemic challenge, insofar as Cavendish appears to deny knowledge of infinity. I argue that, for Cavendish, our knowledge of the order of nature is conceptual and non-empirical, revealing limits to her apparent empiricism. (shrink)

Wrestling with the Angel is a meditation on contemporary political, legal, and social theory from a psychoanalytic perspective. It argues for the enabling function of formal and symbolic constraints in sustaining desire as a source of creativity, innovation, and social change. The book begins by calling for a richer understanding of the psychoanalytic concept of the symbolic and the resources it might offer for an examination of the social link and the political sphere. The symbolic is a crucial dimension of (...) social coexistence but cannot be reduced to the social norms, rules, and practices with which it is so often collapsed. As a dimension of human life that is introduced by language--and thus inescapably "other" with respect to the laws of nature--the symbolic is an undeniable fact of human existence. Yet the same cannot be said of the forms and practices that represent and sustain it. In designating these laws, structures, and practices as "fictions," Jacques Lacan makes clear that the symbolic is a dimension of social life that has to be created and maintained and that can also be displaced, eradicated, or rendered dysfunctional. The symbolic fictions that structure and support the social tie are therefore historicizable, emerging at specific times and in particular contexts and losing their efficacy when circumstances change. They are also fragile and ephemeral, needing to be renewed and reinvented if they are not to become outmoded or ridiculous. Therefore the aim of this study is not to call for a return to traditional symbolic laws but to reflect on the relationship between the symbolic in its most elementary or structural form and the function of constraints and limits. McNulty analyzes examples of "experimental" (as opposed to "normative") articulations of the symbolic and their creative use of formal limits and constraints not as mere prohibitions or rules but as "enabling constraints" that favor the exercise of freedom. The first part examines practices that conceive of subjective freedom as enabled by the struggle with constraints or limits, from the transference that structures the "minimal social link" of psychoanalysis to constrained relationships between two or more people in the context of political and social movements. Examples discussed range from the spiritual practices and social legacies of Moses, Jesus, and Teresa of Avila to the political philosophy of Hannah Arendt and Jacques Rancière. The second part is devoted to legal and political debates surrounding the function of the written law. It isolates the law's function as a symbolic limit or constraint as distinct from its content and representational character. The analysis draws on Mosaic law traditions, the political theology of Paul, and twentieth-century treatments of written law in the work of Carl Schmitt, Walter Benjamin, Sigmund Freud, Pierre Legendre, and Alain Badiou. In conclusion, the study considers the relationship between will and constraint in Kant's aesthetic philosophy and in the experimental literary works of the collective Oulipo. (shrink)

In his Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, Kant presents the “pure part” of natural science – that is, the a priori principles holding of matter. This special metaphysics of matter is, Kant claims, grounded on the general metaphysics of nature described in the System of Principles of his first Critique. This chapter develops a comprehensive account of Kant’s framework for natural science that touches on interpretive issues that arise in the transition from general to special metaphysics and that outlines his (...) dynamics and its limitations. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

How responsible can you be? Take on the challenge to be the most awesome you, you can be. Approachable text filled with examples from the child's world paired with engaging photos makes important SEL learning fun. Plus, a bonus activity at the end lets young readers practice their new skills.

How trustworthy can you be? Take on the challenge to be the most awesome you, you can be. Approachable text filled with examples from the child's world paired with engaging photos makes important SEL learning fun. Plus, a bonus activity at the end lets young readers practice their new skills.

Gold Stripe on a Jackass is a conceptually rich description of one naval officer's career journey. Author Stephen B. Sloane began his career in Annapolis, where the commandment of obedience holds sway, and finished in Berkeley, a place where questioning authority is woven deeply into the cultural fabric.

We study a long-recognised but under-appreciated symmetry called dynamical similarity and illustrate its relevance to many important conceptual problems in fundamental physics. Dynamical similarities are general transformations of a system where the unit of Hamilton’s principal function is rescaled, and therefore represent a kind of dynamical scaling symmetry with formal properties that differ from many standard symmetries. To study this symmetry, we develop a general framework for symmetries that distinguishes the observable and surplus structures of a theory by using the (...) minimal freely specifiable initial data for the theory that is necessary to achieve empirical adequacy. This framework is then applied to well-studied examples including Galilean invariance and the symmetries of the Kepler problem. We find that our framework gives a precise dynamical criterion for identifying the observables of those systems, and that those observables agree with epistemic expectations. We then apply our framework to dynamical similarity. First we give a general definition of dynamical similarity. Then we show, with the help of some previous results, how the dynamics of our observables leads to singularity resolution and the emergence of an arrow of time in cosmology. (shrink)

We are told the academic ideal is that all voices have equal claim to attention. But this excludes the voices of the poor and marginalized, who lack theresources to be heard. They are the victims of historical forces over which they have no control, while a kind of “economic fundamentalism” infects first-worldattitudes toward markets and free trade, widely viewed as capable of automatically solving the problems of the Third World. But the earth does not possess theresources to allow everyone to (...) enjoy a first-world standard of living. We can help only those with whom we share moral community. The issue is the recognition ofthe other as a fellow human. Taking the victims’ side, modeling the world from the perspective of the reality that daily oppresses them, transforms both the victimsand ourselves. This change in perspective will not be easy. The movement from observer to participant in the struggle of the poor cannot help changing the waywe relate to our students and what we understand by “education.”. (shrink)

Kant famously distinguishes between the methods of mathematics and of metaphysics, holding that metaphysicians err when they avail themselves of the mathematical method. Nonetheless, in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, he insists that mathematics and metaphysics must jointly ground ‘proper natural science’. This article examines the distinctive contributions and unity of mathematics and metaphysics to the foundations of the science of body. I argue that the two are distinct insofar as they involve distinctive sorts of grounding relations – mathematics (...) pertains to formal grounding, while metaphysics concerns material grounding – while they are unified insofar as they treat motion, the fundamental determination of the science of body. (shrink)

Kant conceives of chemical dissolutions as involving the infinite division and subsequent blending of solvent and solute. In the resulting continuous solution, every subvolume contains a uniform proportion of each reactant. Erich Adickes argues that this account stands in tension with other aspects of Kant’s Critical philosophy and his views on infinity. I argue that although careful analysis of Kant’s conception of dissolution addresses Adickes’ objections, the infinite division inherent to the process is beyond our human cognition, for Kant. Nevertheless, (...) such infinite division may be considered as an idea of reason to make comprehensible chemical reactions, revealing reason to play a pivotal role in the foundations of chemistry. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to explore an affinity between early critical theory and analytical philosophy. The affinity is in a fairly unexpected area: philosophy of science. I argue that early critical theory embraces a view of science which is a natural if somewhat unfamiliar extension of the pragmatist one defended by Quine. In particular, I argue that Horkheimer has a version of the Quine-Duhem thesis (“underdetermination of theory choice by the evidence”). How do the Frankfurt and analytical versions (...) of the underdetermination thesis differ? Quine and others have taken the thesis to motivate a form of pragmatism. What this means is that it is certain interests that ultimately determine the choice of theory: chief among them, an interest in simplicity of our theories. However, the Critical Theorists offer us a distinctly historical materialist version of the underdetermination thesis, in which it is the imperatives of the prevailing mode of production, for example, capitalism, which are decisive. The result is an unfamiliar Marxist version of an otherwise familiar thesis from the analytic tradition. (shrink)

In this article I explore the contribution of ethical analysis and theological reflection to understanding and responding to moral injury of healthcare workers in light of the COVID pandemic. I begin by critically appraising the relevance of moral injury for healthcare contexts, and suggest that the term ‘medical moral injury’ should be used to differentiate it from ‘military moral injury’. I briefly relate medical moral injury to other relevant phenomena, such as moral dilemmas, moral distress, and moral residue, arguing that (...) moral injury in healthcare contexts might take chronic as well as acute forms. I suggest that agent regret might play an important role in understanding medical moral injury. The associated distinction between harms and wrongs, and so regret and remorse, help us identify different kinds of moral injury, and the distinct role that apology plays in each instance. Theological reflection on penitence, forgiveness, and lament also contributes to understanding and responding to potentially morally injurious events. I conclude that while psychological intervention plays an important role in medical moral injury, moral and theological perspectives provide both crucial lenses through which to understand these potentially injurious moral landscapes, and resources to assist healthcare workers in navigating them more safely. (shrink)

Most experts would agree that the current medical malpractice system in the United States does not work effectively either to compensate victims fairly or prevent injuries caused by medical errors. Policy responses to a series of medical malpractice crises have not resulted in effective reform and have not altered the fundamental incentives of the stakeholders. In Medical Malpractice, economist Frank Sloan and lawyer Lindsey Chepke examine the U.S. medical malpractice process from legal, medical, economic, and insurance perspectives, analyze past efforts (...) at reform, and offer realistic, achievable policy recommendations. They review the considerable empirical evidence in a balanced fashion and assess objectively what works in the current system and what does not. Sloan and Chepke argue that the complexity of medical malpractice stems largely from the interaction of the four discrete markets that determine outcomes--legal, medical malpractice insurance, medical care, and government activity. After describing what the evidence shows about the functioning of medical malpractice, types of defensive medicine, and the effects of past reforms, they examine such topics as scheduling damages as an alternative to flat caps, jury behavior, health courts, incentives to prevent medical errors, insurance regulation, reinsurance, no-fault insurance, and suggestions for future reforms. Medical Malpractice is the most comprehensive treatment of malpractice available, integrating findings from several different areas of research and describing them accessibly in nontechnical language. It will be an essential reference for anyone interested in medical malpractice.Frank A. Sloan is J. Alexander McMahon Professor of Health Policy and Management and Professor of Economics at Duke University. He is the coauthor of The Price of Smoking and author or editor of many other books on health economics. Lindsey M. Chepke, an attorney, is a Research Associate at the Center for Health Policy at Duke University. (shrink)

AI-driven decisions can draw data from virtually any area of your life to make a decision about virtually any other area of your life. That creates fairness issues. Effective regulation to ensure fairness requires that AI systems be transparent. That is, regulators must have sufficient access to the factors that explain and justify the decisions. One approach to transparency is to require that systems be explainable, as that concept is understood in computer science. A system is explainable if one can (...) provide a human-understandable explanation of why it makes any particular prediction. Explainability should not be equated with transparency. To address transparency and characterize its relation to explainability, we define transparency for a regulatory purpose. A system is transparent for a regulatory purpose (r-transparent) when and only when regulators have an explanation, adequate for that purpose, of why it yields the predictions it does. Explainability remains relevant to transparency but turns out to be neither necessary nor sufficient for it. The concepts of explainability and r-transparency combine to yield four possibilities: explainable and either r-transparent or not; and not explainable and either not r-transparent or r-transparent. Combining r-transparency with ideas from the Harvard computer scientist Cynthia Dwork, we propose four requirements on AI systems. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 36.4 (2003) 376-379 [Access article in PDF] Rhetoric and Poetics in Antiquity. Jeffrey Walker. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp. xii + 396. $65.00, cloth. According to Jeffrey Walker, poetry is among rhetoric's true progenitors. Rhetoric was derived, he argues, not from the usual and oft told forensic or political sources but from an ancient argumentative mode that came to be known as epideictic and (...) that, long before Aristotle, included poetry. For Walker, this ur-epideictic was a broadly considered practice of artfully composed persuasive discourse: epideiktikon, "the rhetoric of belief and desire," as opposed to pragmatikon, "the rhetoric of practical civic business" (10). The former is primary and existed ages before rhetoric itself had a name; the latter is secondary because it depends upon and appeals to the beliefs and desires cultivated by the former. Recent discussions, as this well documented work suggests, have prepared us for a reconsideration of rhetoric's origin, perhaps even such a drastic one as this book proposes. Walker's aims, however, are not confined to revising rhetoric's history.The import of his thesis goes several steps farther to reflect his dismay with modern poetic practice and its underlying educational tradition. In that dismay, Walker's work passes beyond the revisionary and turns toward the subversive and polemic. This turn is seen best not in his thesis but in his hypothesis, his "plot": "the dominant notions of 'poetry' and 'rhetoric' that modern culture has inherited—and its notions of 'poetry' in particular—are largely products of the grammatical tradition in late antiquity" (311), a tradition which has proved stifling.In sum, Walker seeks not simply to revise history but also to adjust our educational and critical ideas and, above all, to improve the practice of poetry. In attempting briefly to set forth his thesis and hypothesis, I have surely misrepresented his manner. His stance is not exactly confrontational, although in the ultimate reckoning the reader will find that Walker pulls no punches about his aims. Revisionary, to an extent subversive, and at least somewhat polemical if not exactly confrontational—all adjectives fit, as I shall show in a review that, as I say, may regretfully damage Walker's rhetorical skills by making his case seem simpler, plainer, and far less interesting [End Page 376] than in fact it is. Indeed Walker's own skill as a rhetorician is particularly gratifying and persuasive. It's always gratifying and persuasive to find a rhetorical specialist who is adept at communication, relaxed in controversy, crafty in his use of figures (e.g., Isocrates's "Henry-Jamesian periods," 177), and sharp in his knowledge of literature.Walker's argument proceeds seamlessly and smoothly, as if offering only a kind of alternate to the usual view of our intellectual history: the nature of neither rhetoric nor poetry need be confused with the politics and taste that have necessarily driven the fortunes of each. After a brief excursus into comparative rhetoric (13-14), Walker turns his attention toward another kind of diversity, or lack thereof: the confining theoretical and critical sameness that has prevailed in our Western attitudes toward rhetoric and poetry since their ancient appearance as "conceptualized discursive practices" (17). Again, Walker's alternate to the usual view emerges as a kind of rancor-free "on the other hand" stance, or more in line with his own terminology, as the sort of tactic that from the time of the sophists has been known as making the lesser case the stronger. Nonetheless, the shortcomings of the traditionally dominant case grow exponentially until finally, as Walker's argument turns to near-polemic, they become shackles on the nature of the two arts.Crucial to his thesis is his presentation of the enthymeme. Here, more than in his discussion of epideictic, is the linchpin of his argument. At first he adverts to rhetoric as a Ciceronian combination of wisdom and eloquence or as a Quintilianesque ideal of wisdom speaking copiously, two venerable, widely accepted, perhaps even common-ground definitions that (like his idea of the epideictic) allow strategically for considerable... (shrink)

Kant’s preoccupation with architectonics is a characteristic and noteworthy aspect of his thought. Various features of Kant’s argumentation and philosophical system are founded on the precise definitions of the various subdomains of human knowledge and the derivative borders among them. One science conspicuously absent from Kant’s routine discussions of the organization of knowledge is chemistry. Whereas sciences such as physics, psychology, and anthropology are all explicitly located in the architectonic, chemistry finds no such place. In this paper, I examine neglected (...) passages from Kant’s corpus as well as texts regarding chemistry that Kant himself read in order to unveil his views on the definition of chemistry and its relations with the other sciences. These considerations reveal chemistry to be the science that studies the changes of matter into new kinds. Yet Kant idiosyncratically believes that such a change requires an infinite division of matter, effected by chemical forces. Although this understanding of chemical change dovetails with Kant’s dynamical, continualist theory of matter, it implies that chemistry cannot be reduced to physics. Thus, although chemistry stands alongside empirical physics as an applied natural science in Kant’s architectonic, it remains a distinct, independent science. (shrink)

The evolution of the idea of hospitality can be traced alongside the development of Western civilization. Etymologically, the host is the “master,” but this identity is established through expropriation and loss—the best host is the one who gives the most, ultimately relinquishing what defines him as master. In The Hostess, Tracy McNulty asks, What are the implications for personhood of sharing a person—a wife or daughter—as an act of hospitality? In many traditions, the hostess is viewed not as a (...) subject but as the master’s property. A foreign presence that both sustains and undercuts him, the hostess embodies the interplay of self and other within the host’s own identity. Here McNulty combines critical readings of the Bible and Pierre Klossowski’s trilogy The Laws of Hospitality with analyses of exogamous marital exchange, theological works from the Talmud to Aquinas, the writings of Kant and Nietzsche, and the theory of femininity in the work of Freud and Lacan. Ultimately, she contends, hospitality involves the boundary between the proper and the improper, affecting the subject as well as interpersonal relations. Tracy McNulty is assistant professor of romance studies at Cornell University. (shrink)

I explore two logical possibilities for the discretization of time, termed ``instantaneous" and ``smeared". These are found by discretizing a continuous theory, and the resulting structure of configuration space and velocities are described. It is shown that results known in numerical methods for integration of dynamical systems preclude the existence of a system with fixed discrete time step which conserves fundamental charges universally, and a method of avoidance of this ``no-go" theorem is constructed. Finally the implications of discrete time upon (...) quantum cosmology are discussed. NB : At this point this paper is a draft, citations and formatting are not completed. (shrink)