What is the role of measurement in the sociology of culture and how can we sort out the complexities that distinguish qualitative from quantitative approaches to this domain? In this article, we compare the issues and concerns of contemporary scholars who work on matters of culture with the writings of a group of scholars who had prepared papers for a special symposium on scientific measurement held at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) back (...) in 1956. We focus on three issues—the recurring need to reinvent measurement (as illustrated by the career of the psychologist S.S. Stevens), the linkage between qualitative and quantitative methods of analysis (as articulated in the writings of the sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld), and the assertion (by philosophers Ernst Cassirer and Peter Caws) that theorizing necessarily precedes measuring. We review a number of important advances in the way that measurement is theorized and implemented in the sociology of culture and we also point to a number of enduring dilemmas and conundrums that continue to occupy researchers in the field today. (shrink)

Das System der Disponibilitätshierarchien versucht in der Rechtsphilosophie eine neue Perspektive zu eröffnen, indem speziell das Phänomen der Disponibilitätssetzung und seiner Auswirkungen auf die Umgangsmöglichkeiten und Urteilsmacht des Menschen in der Gesellschaft betrachtet wird. Die Disponibilitätshierarchie der Umgangsmöglichkeit und die Disponibilitätshierarchie der Urteilsmacht dienen dem Aufbau eines neuen Freiheitsbegriffes. Mit der Darstellung des Aufbaus der Statikexistenziale und der Dynamikexistenziale begründet das Werk einen neuen Freiheitsbegriff und überschreitet damit die Grenze der Rechtsphilosophie hin zur Allgemeinphilosophie. In der antiken und in der (...) klassischen Philosophie wurde Freiheit zumeist als Möglichkeit, in der absoluten Daseinsform aufzugehen, verstanden. Kant hat die Möglichkeit der absoluten Eigenursächlichkeit eines gedanklichen Ereignisses für den Folgegedankengang und Ereignisablauf als transzendentale Freiheit verstanden und als notwendige Bedingung der konkreten praktischen Freiheit, die er Selbstautonomie nannte, angesehen. Die moderne Philosophie sieht zumeist in der größtmöglichen materiellen und ideellen Ungebundenheit die Freiheit, die negative Freiheit als Freiheit von Zwängen ist. In diesem Buch wird herausgearbeitet, daß Freiheit ambivalent erstrebt wird durch den Aufbau von Statik- und Dynamikexistenzialen. Der Autor, geb. 1969, absolvierte ein Studium der Rechtswissenschaft an der Universität Freiburg im Breisgau und unternahm darüber hinaus Studien zur Allgemeinphilosophie. Er ist derzeit Rechtsreferendar am Landgericht Freiburg. (shrink)

Drawing upon research in philosophical logic, linguistics and cognitive science, this study explores how our ability to use and understand language depends upon our capacity to keep track of complex features of the contexts in which we converse.

Steven Crowell has been for many years a leading voice in debates on twentieth-century European philosophy. This volume presents thirteen recent essays that together provide a systematic account of the relation between meaningful experience and responsiveness to norms. They argue for a new understanding of the philosophical importance of phenomenology, taking the work of Husserl and Heidegger as exemplary, and introducing a conception of phenomenology broad enough to encompass the practices of both philosophers. Crowell discusses Husserl's analyses of first-person (...) authority, the semantics of conscious experience, the structure of perceptual content, and the embodied subject, and shows how Heidegger's interpretation of the self addresses problems in Husserl's approach to the normative structure of meaning. His volume will be valuable for upper-level students and scholars interested in phenomenological approaches to philosophical questions in both the European and the analytic traditions. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWe often use our own emotions to understand other people’s emotions. However, emotional egocentric biases, namely the tendency to use one’s own emotional state when relating to others...

Plato Plato (427-347 BC) is surely the most famous of all philosophers. Little is known of his early life, except that he was born into a noble Athenian ...

Ce livre presente une investigation critique de la science generale de l'etre, instituee par Aristote au titre de la science de l'etant en tant qu'etant. L'auteur met en lumiere ce qu'est l'etre pour Aristote, ce que signifie precisement le type d'unite de ses significations multiples, et quelles sont les structures, principes et concepts epistemologiques par lesquels le reel peut etre explique dans son ensemble. L'originalite aristotelicienne qui se revele dans son apprehension horizontale du reel, est a la fois responsable de (...) son naufrage historique dans l'ocean dominant des pensees hierarchisantes, et de son renouveau axtremement stimulant pour la pensee actuelle. (shrink)

What are the inherent claims that lie at the core of religion? Which of them are defensible by reason, and which are not? Potential answers to these questions and more, from influential philosophers past and present, may be found in this short book edited by Steven M. Cahn. Featuring fifty-two classic and contemporary readings, Exploring Philosophy of Religion: Text and Readings is a topically-organized anthology that presents broad coverage of seven major areas in the philosophy of religion - the (...) concept of God, the existence of God, religious language, miracles and mysticism, belief in God, resurrection and immortality, and religious pluralism - in a clear and accessible format. With guiding introductory material from Professor Cahn, each of the readings has been carefully selected and edited for maximum clarity and comprehensiveness; only the most essential material is included. To further foster understanding, the text also features an appendix consisting of Professor Cahn's monograph, God, Reason, and Religion, which provides a synthesis and interpretation of the crucial issues raised throughout the readings. (shrink)

A study both of the aims of education and the appropriate means of achieving those aims. It is suitable for courses in philosophy of education, foundations of education and the history of ideas.

Explores the basic forms of responsibility that we willingly assume and the collaborative fulfillment that we find in each.

This is the first detailed study to explore the little-understood notions of "knowing who someone is," "knowing a person's identity," and related locutions. It locates these notions within the context of a general theory of believing and a semantical theory of belief- and knowledge-ascriptions.The books's main contention is that what one knows, when one knows who someone is, is not normally an identity in the numerical sense of "a = b," but rather a certain sort of predication to know who (...) someone is is just to know that that person is F, where "F" is a predicate that is "important," in a technical sense defined by the authors, for the purposes determined by context. Their book offers a rigorous formal semantics for ascriptions of knowing and of knowing-who in particular, solving such well-known problems and paradoxes as Kripke's Puzzle, and Quines difficulties with de re belief, along the way.The authors apply their analysis to each of several important issues in philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and ethical theory in which the previously unexamined notion of "knowing who" has loomed large-the mechanics of linguistic referring, the foundations of epistemic logic, problems of self-knowledge and self-regarding belief, universalizability and "Golden Rule" arguments in ethics, and moral "personalism" versus "impartialism."Stephen Boër is Professor of Philosophy at the Ohio State University. William Lycan is Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina and author of Logical Form in Natural Language. A Bradford Book. (shrink)

An introduction to and critique of the latest trends in critical theory.

Winner of 2002 Edward Goodwin Ballard Prize In a penetrating and lucid discussion of the enigmatic relationship between the work of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, Steven Galt Crowell proposes that the distinguishing feature of twentieth-century philosophy is not so much its emphasis on language as its concern with meaning. Arguing that transcendental phenomenology is indispensable to the philosophical explanation of the space of meaning, Crowell shows how a proper understanding of both Husserl and Heidegger reveals the distinctive contributions (...) of each to that ongoing phenomenological project. (shrink)

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) was one of the most important philosophers of all time; he was also arguably the most radical and controversial. This was the first complete biography of Spinoza in any language and is based on detailed archival research. More than simply recounting the story of Spinoza's life, the book takes the reader right into the heart of Jewish Amsterdam in the seventeenth century and, with Spinoza's exile from Judaism, right into the midst of the tumultuous political, social, intellectual (...) and religious world of the young Dutch Republic. Though the book will be an invaluable resource for philosophers, historians, and scholars of Jewish thought, it has been written for any member of the general reading public with a serious interest in philosophy, Jewish history, seventeenth-century European history, and the culture of the Dutch Golden Age. Spinoza: A Life has recently been awarded the Koret Jewish Book Award. (shrink)

The aim of this chapter is to explore and examine what hermeneutic methods can and should be summoned in order to interpret critically an intriguing yet endlessly puzzling sentence in the “Genjōkōan” (現成公案) fascicle of Sōtō sect founder Dōgen’s (道元, 1200–1253) Shōbōgenzō (正法眼蔵). The source material deals with the way perspectives shift dramatically “when riding a boat out to sea, where mountains can no longer be seen (yamanaki kaichū 山なき海中)”? The analogy of sailing past the horizon, so that any trace (...) of land is not visible, and one feels temporarily encircled by the ocean with no other frame of reference available, raises key phenomenological issues regarding the innate partiality or insufficiency of human perception in connection to the Zen goal of awakening to a holistic standpoint that is devoid of divisibility but incorporates an array of standpoints. This passage has been interpreted in diverse ways since the time of early medieval commentaries by Senne and Kyōgō and by Edo-period Sōtō scholiasts, as well as in modern times by various Japanese philosophers and researchers of Dōgen’s texts. (shrink)

How do minds emerge from developing brains? According to the representational features of cortex are built from the dynamic interaction between neural growth mechanisms and environmentally derived neural activity. Contrary to popular selectionist models that emphasize regressive mechanisms, the neurobiological evidence suggests that this growth is a progressive increase in the representational properties of cortex. The interaction between the environment and neural growth results in a flexible type of learning: minimizes the need for prespecification in accordance with recent neurobiological evidence (...) that the developing cerebral cortex is largely free of domain-specific structure. Instead, the representational properties of cortex are built by the nature of the problem domain confronting it. This uniquely powerful and general learning strategy undermines the central assumption of classical learnability theory, that the learning properties of a system can be deduced from a fixed computational architecture. Neural constructivism suggests that the evolutionary emergence of neocortex in mammals is a progression toward more flexible representational structures, in contrast to the popular view of cortical evolution as an increase in innate, specialized circuits. Human cortical postnatal development is also more extensive and protracted than generally supposed, suggesting that cortex has evolved so as to maximize the capacity of environmental structure to shape its structure and function through constructive learning. (shrink)

The Kant-Lexikon is a guide to the philosophical work of Immanuel Kant and incorporates the latest scholarship. This textbook edition presents the most important entries contained in the comprehensive, three-volume lexicon released in 2015.

In recent years an uneasy peace has descended in U.S. academe between those who feel research universities have done too little to advance the representation of minority groups and women and those who feel that the administrative policies developed to improve representation can and sometimes do come into conflict with core intellectual commitments of universities. Using quantitative and qualitative evidence from interviews with 47 natural sciences, engineering, and mathematics faculty members at a U.S. research university, the paper examines the background (...) characteristics of three sets of protagonists - academic progressives, academic traditionalists, and those whose views bridge the divide - and the way respondents discussed and justified their viewpoints. The paper draws on the theory of strategic action fields to illuminate the structure and dynamics of the conflict and suggests modifications to the theory that would improve its explanatory power for this case. (shrink)

From Plato's Ion to works by contemporary philosophers, this anthology showcases classic texts to illuminate the development of philosophical thought about art and the aesthetic. This volume is the most comprehensive collection of readings on aesthetics and the philosophy of art currently available.

The beginning of the journey -- What this book is about : using ideas from mathematics, economics, and physics to tackle the big questions in philosophy : what is real? what can we know? what is the difference between right and wrong? and how should we live? -- Reality and unreality -- On what there is -- Why is there something instead of nothing? the best answer I have : mathematics exists because it must and everything else exists because it (...) is made of mathematics, with an excursion into artificial intelligence -- Unfinished business -- Unfinished business from chapter two : the nature and purpose of economic models -- How Richard Dawkins got it wrong -- Why Dawkins's argument against intelligent design can't be right and a mathematical analysis of the arguments for the existence of God -- Belief -- Daydream believers -- Most beliefs are ill-considered because most false beliefs are costless to hold -- The next several chapters will explore the consequences of this observation before we return to the question of where our beliefs and knowledge come from -- Unfinished business -- Unfinished business from the preceding chapter : how color vision works, sound, and water waves, the sheer craziness of economic protectionism -- Do believers believe? -- Our ill-considered beliefs about religion : why I believe that almost nobody is deeply religious -- On what there obviously is -- Our ill-considered beliefs about free will, ESP, and life after death -- Diogenes's nightmare -- How is legitimate disagreement possible if you're arguing with someone who is as intelligent and informed as you are, shouldn't you put just as much weight on your opponent's arguments as your own? -- The fact that we persist in disagreeing is strong evidence that we don't really care what's true -- Knowledge -- Knowing your math -- Where mathematical knowledge comes from and logic and why evidence and logic are not enough -- Unfinished business -- Unfinished business from the preceding chapter : the tale of hercules and the hydra, with an excursion into the lore of very large numbers -- Incomplete thinking -- Godel's incompleteness theorem and what it doesn't say about the limits of human knowledge -- The rules of logic and the tale of a Potbellied pig -- The power of logical thought, with excursions into the most counterintuitive theorem in all of mathematics and the tale of a potbellied pig -- The rules of evidence -- What we can and can't learn from evidence, with excursions into the value of preschool and how internet porn prevents rape -- The limits to knowledge -- What physics does and doesn't tell us about what we can and cannot know -- Understanding Heisenberg's uncertainty principle -- Unfinished business -- The oddness of the quantum world and why it matters to game theorists -- Right and wrong -- Telling right from wrong -- Some hard questions about right and wrong and about life and death -- The economist's golden rule -- A rule of thumb for good behavior -- How to be socially responsible -- Putting the rule of thumb into practice -- On not being a jerk -- Goofus and gallant on immigration policy -- The economist on the playground -- Our ill-considered beliefs about fairness in the market place and in the voting booth, contrasted with our carefully considered beliefs about fairness on the playground -- Unfinished business -- How ancient talmudic scholars anticipated modern economic theory -- The life of the mind -- How to think -- Some basic rules for clear thinking, mostly about economics, but also about arithmetic, neurobiology, sin, and eschewing blather -- What to study -- Advice to college students : stay away from the English department and approach the philosophy department with caution, with an excursion into the remarkable life of Frank Ramsey. (shrink)

How can we take history seriously as real and relevant? Despite the hazards of politically dangerous or misleading accounts of the past, we live our lives in a great network of cooperation with other actors; past, present, and future. We study and reflect on the past as a way of exercising a responsibility for shared action. In each of the chapters of Full History Smith poses a key question about history as a concern for conscious participants in the sharing of (...) action, starting with “What Is Historical Meaningfulness?” and ending with “How Can History Have an Aim?” Constructing new models of historical meaning while engaging critically with perspectives offered by Ranke, Dilthey, Rickert, Heidegger, Eliade, Sartre, Foucault, and Arendt, Smith develops a philosophical account of thinking about history that moves beyond postmodernist skepticism. Full History seeks to expand the cast of significant actors, establishing an inclusive version of the historical that recognizes large-scale cumulative actions but also encourages critical revision and expansion of any paradigm of shared action. (shrink)

Preface -- Why political philosophy? -- Antigone and the politics of conflict -- Socrates and the examined life -- Plato on justice and the human good -- Aristotle's science of regime politics -- The politics of the Bible -- Machiavelli and the art of political founding -- Hobbes's new science of politics -- Locke and the art of constitutional government -- Rousseau on civilization and its discontents -- Tocqueville and the dilemmas of democracy -- In defense of patriotism.

Winner of 2002 Edward Goodwin Ballard Prize In a penetrating and lucid discussion of the enigmatic relationship between the work of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, Steven Galt Crowell proposes that the distinguishing feature of twentieth-century philosophy is not so much its emphasis on language as its concern with meaning. Arguing that transcendental phenomenology is indispensable to the philosophical explanation of the space of meaning, Crowell shows how a proper understanding of both Husserl and Heidegger reveals the distinctive contributions (...) of each to that ongoing phenomenological project. (shrink)

Steven Shapin argues that science, for all its immense authority and power, is and always has been a human endeavor, subject to human capacities and limits.

Explores the interrelationship of mind, self, emotion and the development of moral consciousness in the Nepalese city of Bhaktapur. The author investigates how the citizens have developed moral awareness in the context of cultural life.

In ethical thinking we can 't treat the structural unemployment with the glance back in the »golden age« of full employment. Considering the dropping demand for manpower and - at the same time - the rising supply, the »human right of labour« is to create only with reserve: In the same measure as labour is the key to social participation, everyone has the same right to be employed. The necessary generalization of labour would be possible only by downgrading the labour (...) for everybody at the same time. The distribution of work to gender is to overcome: men and women are to participate on labour and housework with the same part. (shrink)

The paper begins with the prerequisite assumption that social deprivation is a fragile and porous category. Thus, our hypothesis is, that how people are affected by the restrictions against the spreading of the coronavirus is often discussed in far too general and simplistic terms. It is often taken as a given, that the virus and the restriction measures not only have caused severe difficulties for us all (due to social distancing, fear, affected health, etc.), but that the measures have exacerbated (...) already previously existing forms of social deprivation. Therefore, it is assumed that marginalized groups are particularly affected by these effects of the pandemic. Two major German studies show the alleged effects of the relevant measures on adolescents and emerging adults (COPSY and FIBS) against the backdrop of social and economic deprivation; their results confirmed that social deprivation entails a higher degree of being affected by the pandemic.However, this picture becomes thwarted by considering the results of 10 narrative interviews, that were conducted by us with emerging adults in a German vocational training institute between April and August 2021 and showed variegated forms of experiencing issues related to the pandemic. In our analysis, we used the method of objective hermeneutics. In this paper, we present our considerations by outlining two contrastive experiences with the Covid-19 pandemic, in order to highlight the divergent ways in which the pandemic has been experienced even among individuals who previously had been affected by social deprivation – at least at first glance – in similar ways. The conceptual lens through which we interpret these two examples is, firstly, the one of precariousness and precarity (Butler 2009). And secondly, the concept of recognition derived from Honneth’s pertinent theory and Butler’s account of recognizability will play a pivotal role. While Honneth’s approach allows us to emphasize the normative and existential role of the fulfilment of our basic desire for recognition and the detrimental implications of disregard, Butler provides us with the means to thoroughly analyse the socio-historical conditions of misrecognition and social invisibility. Moreover, Butler focuses specifically on the recognizability of precariousness (Honneth’s triad of love, being respected as a rights bearer and solidarity shows a different focus). Combining qualitative research on precarious live circumstances with a theoretical perspective on recognition can also be found in a stunning research on couples in atypical working relations (Wimbauer and Motakef 2019). Proceeding from these theories and ‘applying’ them to our empirical material, we seek to call into question a too generalizing and hegemonic picture of how people were affected by pertinent restrictions. Qualitative interviews are able to point us to significant differences in the experience of the restrictions.In terms of an outlook, we suggest that a sensitization for previously excluded kinds of experiences forms a crucial basis for a less normalizing, that is, more inclusive account of interpreting the affectedness and needs of variegated social groups; the pandemic has influenced and altered structures of the recognition of vulnerability and, by the same token, made them more explicit. It thus is an occasion for a critical engagement with the recognizability of needs, deprivation, discrimination, and related phenomena. (shrink)