Scientific rationalism has long been considered one of the pillars of true science. It has been one of the criteria academics have used in their efforts to categorise disciplines as scientific. Perhaps scientific rationalism acquired this privileged status because it worked relatively well within the context of the natural sciences, where it seemed to be easy to apply this kind of rationalism to the solution of natural scientific problems. However, with the split in the scientific world between the natural sciences (...) and the social sciences, the role of scientific rationalism, especially in the social sciences, becomes less clear-cut, with the ambiguous status of positivism in the social sciences making scientific rationalism more of a shaky foundation than a pillar of social science. The weaknesses inherent in scientific rationalism are most exposed within the context of anthropology, and particularly in the anthropological study of the supernatural, or supernatural beliefs. This paper will attempt to point out some of the weaknesses of scientific rationalism specifically within the context of the anthropology of the supernatural and religion. By doing so, it is hoped to show, with reference to some phenomenological ideas, that, while scientific rationalism does have its merits within anthropology, a rigid application of rationalism could become a limitation for anthropological studies of those aspects of human life that challenge Western scientific rationalism. The debate around the position of anthropology as a science or non-science is related to the issue of the role of scientific rationalism. This debate is indeed part of the history of anthropology and is as yet unresolved As such, the ideas of several earlier scholars will be referred to in an attempt to contextualise the arguments presented in this paper. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 6, Edition 1 May 2006. (shrink)

Since the passage of Medicare, the self-regulation characteristic of professionalism in health care has come under steady assault. While Canadian physicians chose to relinquish financial autonomy, they have enjoyed far greater professional autonomy over their medical judgments than their U.S. counterparts who increasingly have their practices micromanaged. The Affordable Care Act illustrates the ways that managerial strategies and a market model of health care have shaped the financing and delivery of health care in the U.S., often with little or no (...) evidence of their effectiveness. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 34.1 (2001) 21-37 [Access article in PDF] Conscience and the Concealments of Metaphor in Hobbes's Leviathan Karen S. Feldman Introduction Conscience is not a topic of terribly heated debate in Hobbes research. 1 Nevertheless, my claim in this article is that conscience in the Leviathan, which Hobbes poses as an example of the dangers of metaphor, is not merely an example of the dangers of (...) metaphor, but rather is the most dangerous metaphor, the metaphor that corrupts knowledge and thereby makes error and deception possible. Hobbes's brief account of conscience, which appears in the chapter of Leviathan on the ends of discourse, tells the story of the insinuation of metaphor into proper nomenclature; however, his example of the metaphorical use of the word conscience turns the story into one in which public knowledge itself is made private and thereby corrupted. Moreover, according to the story, private conscience is itself invented by means of a metaphor; it is in effect metaphorized into being. 2 With the emergence of private conscience, the potential of privatization expands from the privatization of the meaning of words to an entire private sphere of opinion. The metaphorical corruption of conscience invents a new understanding of knowledge as isolated from other witnesses, and the resultant privatization of truth lends itself to the corruption of that truth. Thus, whereas Hobbes characterizes the wrong use of names (of which metaphor is an instance) as a threat to accurate judgment and reason (L 22-23, 34, 161-62), as I will argue in the sections following, Hobbes's demand for the preservation of proper meaning in Leviathan corresponds to an anxiety regarding privacy and its peculiar potential for corrupting truth and knowledge. Hobbes's worries as to the dangers that metaphor poses to the stability of the commonwealth thereby converge with his worries about the dangers of conscience to the principle of public authority (cf. Strong 1993). [End Page 21] Hobbes's condemnations of conscience In Leviathan, conscience is condemned as a source of principles of human decision and action in a commonwealth. The problem with conscience as a principle of action is that it renders each individual inventor of his own rules and judge of his own actions. In brief, individual conscience is incommensurable with the public authority that defines a commonwealth: Another doctrine repugnant to civil society, is, that whatsoever a man does against his conscience, is sin; and it dependeth on the presumption of making himself judge of good and evil. For a man's conscience, and his judgment is the same thing, and as the judgment, so also the conscience may be erroneous. Therefore, though he that is subject to no civil law, sinneth in all he does against his conscience, because he has no other rule to follow but his own reason; yet it is not so with him that lives in a commonwealth; because the law is the public conscience, by which he hath already undertaken to be guided. Otherwise in such diversity, as there is of private consciences, which are but private opinions, the commonwealth must needs be distracted, and no man dare to obey the sovereign power, further than it shall seem good in his own eyes. (L 311) In this account, conscience is not just inferior to civil law as a principle guiding action, but at odds with civil society and the good of the commonwealth. The fact that conscience is private renders it problematic for the commonwealth for several reasons: First, as privately invented, it may be erroneous. Likewise, because it is private, conscience does not possess any binding power outside the individual, private sphere. Each person may be bound by his own conscience, but insofar as consciences differ, standards of action differ, and this leads to the undermining and distraction of the commonwealth. Likewise, private consciences may be divergent from one another, and the conflicts in private judgment produce conflicting actions that disturb the peace of the commonwealth. This rule of privacy is, moreover, associated with primitive life and with the state of nature... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 34.1 (2001) 21-37 [Access article in PDF] Conscience and the Concealments of Metaphor in Hobbes's Leviathan Karen S. Feldman Introduction Conscience is not a topic of terribly heated debate in Hobbes research. 1 Nevertheless, my claim in this article is that conscience in the Leviathan, which Hobbes poses as an example of the dangers of metaphor, is not merely an example of the dangers of (...) metaphor, but rather is the most dangerous metaphor, the metaphor that corrupts knowledge and thereby makes error and deception possible. Hobbes's brief account of conscience, which appears in the chapter of Leviathan on the ends of discourse, tells the story of the insinuation of metaphor into proper nomenclature; however, his example of the metaphorical use of the word conscience turns the story into one in which public knowledge itself is made private and thereby corrupted. Moreover, according to the story, private conscience is itself invented by means of a metaphor; it is in effect metaphorized into being. 2 With the emergence of private conscience, the potential of privatization expands from the privatization of the meaning of words to an entire private sphere of opinion. The metaphorical corruption of conscience invents a new understanding of knowledge as isolated from other witnesses, and the resultant privatization of truth lends itself to the corruption of that truth. Thus, whereas Hobbes characterizes the wrong use of names (of which metaphor is an instance) as a threat to accurate judgment and reason (L 22-23, 34, 161-62), as I will argue in the sections following, Hobbes's demand for the preservation of proper meaning in Leviathan corresponds to an anxiety regarding privacy and its peculiar potential for corrupting truth and knowledge. Hobbes's worries as to the dangers that metaphor poses to the stability of the commonwealth thereby converge with his worries about the dangers of conscience to the principle of public authority (cf. Strong 1993). [End Page 21] Hobbes's condemnations of conscience In Leviathan, conscience is condemned as a source of principles of human decision and action in a commonwealth. The problem with conscience as a principle of action is that it renders each individual inventor of his own rules and judge of his own actions. In brief, individual conscience is incommensurable with the public authority that defines a commonwealth: Another doctrine repugnant to civil society, is, that whatsoever a man does against his conscience, is sin; and it dependeth on the presumption of making himself judge of good and evil. For a man's conscience, and his judgment is the same thing, and as the judgment, so also the conscience may be erroneous. Therefore, though he that is subject to no civil law, sinneth in all he does against his conscience, because he has no other rule to follow but his own reason; yet it is not so with him that lives in a commonwealth; because the law is the public conscience, by which he hath already undertaken to be guided. Otherwise in such diversity, as there is of private consciences, which are but private opinions, the commonwealth must needs be distracted, and no man dare to obey the sovereign power, further than it shall seem good in his own eyes. (L 311) In this account, conscience is not just inferior to civil law as a principle guiding action, but at odds with civil society and the good of the commonwealth. The fact that conscience is private renders it problematic for the commonwealth for several reasons: First, as privately invented, it may be erroneous. Likewise, because it is private, conscience does not possess any binding power outside the individual, private sphere. Each person may be bound by his own conscience, but insofar as consciences differ, standards of action differ, and this leads to the undermining and distraction of the commonwealth. Likewise, private consciences may be divergent from one another, and the conflicts in private judgment produce conflicting actions that disturb the peace of the commonwealth. This rule of privacy is, moreover, associated with primitive life and with the state of nature... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 34.1 (2001) 21-37 [Access article in PDF] Conscience and the Concealments of Metaphor in Hobbes's Leviathan Karen S. Feldman Introduction Conscience is not a topic of terribly heated debate in Hobbes research. 1 Nevertheless, my claim in this article is that conscience in the Leviathan, which Hobbes poses as an example of the dangers of metaphor, is not merely an example of the dangers of (...) metaphor, but rather is the most dangerous metaphor, the metaphor that corrupts knowledge and thereby makes error and deception possible. Hobbes's brief account of conscience, which appears in the chapter of Leviathan on the ends of discourse, tells the story of the insinuation of metaphor into proper nomenclature; however, his example of the metaphorical use of the word conscience turns the story into one in which public knowledge itself is made private and thereby corrupted. Moreover, according to the story, private conscience is itself invented by means of a metaphor; it is in effect metaphorized into being. 2 With the emergence of private conscience, the potential of privatization expands from the privatization of the meaning of words to an entire private sphere of opinion. The metaphorical corruption of conscience invents a new understanding of knowledge as isolated from other witnesses, and the resultant privatization of truth lends itself to the corruption of that truth. Thus, whereas Hobbes characterizes the wrong use of names (of which metaphor is an instance) as a threat to accurate judgment and reason (L 22-23, 34, 161-62), as I will argue in the sections following, Hobbes's demand for the preservation of proper meaning in Leviathan corresponds to an anxiety regarding privacy and its peculiar potential for corrupting truth and knowledge. Hobbes's worries as to the dangers that metaphor poses to the stability of the commonwealth thereby converge with his worries about the dangers of conscience to the principle of public authority (cf. Strong 1993). [End Page 21] Hobbes's condemnations of conscience In Leviathan, conscience is condemned as a source of principles of human decision and action in a commonwealth. The problem with conscience as a principle of action is that it renders each individual inventor of his own rules and judge of his own actions. In brief, individual conscience is incommensurable with the public authority that defines a commonwealth: Another doctrine repugnant to civil society, is, that whatsoever a man does against his conscience, is sin; and it dependeth on the presumption of making himself judge of good and evil. For a man's conscience, and his judgment is the same thing, and as the judgment, so also the conscience may be erroneous. Therefore, though he that is subject to no civil law, sinneth in all he does against his conscience, because he has no other rule to follow but his own reason; yet it is not so with him that lives in a commonwealth; because the law is the public conscience, by which he hath already undertaken to be guided. Otherwise in such diversity, as there is of private consciences, which are but private opinions, the commonwealth must needs be distracted, and no man dare to obey the sovereign power, further than it shall seem good in his own eyes. (L 311) In this account, conscience is not just inferior to civil law as a principle guiding action, but at odds with civil society and the good of the commonwealth. The fact that conscience is private renders it problematic for the commonwealth for several reasons: First, as privately invented, it may be erroneous. Likewise, because it is private, conscience does not possess any binding power outside the individual, private sphere. Each person may be bound by his own conscience, but insofar as consciences differ, standards of action differ, and this leads to the undermining and distraction of the commonwealth. Likewise, private consciences may be divergent from one another, and the conflicts in private judgment produce conflicting actions that disturb the peace of the commonwealth. This rule of privacy is, moreover, associated with primitive life and with the state of nature... (shrink)

In this article I claim that Leibniz's 1670 preface to a sixteenth-century text on rhetoric by Marius Nizolius offers a historical perspective on the relationship between figurative language and performativity in philosophical discourse. To begin with, although Leibniz argues in the Preface to Nizolius against the use of rhetoric, eloquence, and specifically tropes in philosophical discourse, nevertheless his prescriptions for philosophical clarity implicate a "channel of tropes" in what could be described as a retroactive, performative assignation of proper usage. Moreover, (...) the example that Leibniz supplies to illustrate the channel of tropes, namely a tropological account by which the Latin past participle fatum is said to have come to designate that which must necessarily come to pass, i.e., fate, directly connects Leibniz's claims about the channel of tropes to the performative fiat by which God decides for this world. Leibniz's fatum example indeed touches on the very question of how the articulation of fate takes on force, changes actuality, and thus is not simply of constantively "about" what it decrees. In the channel-of-tropes account of fatum, however, a metonymy of cause-for-effect fills in for the performative moment, in such a way that obscures a clear view of the performative causality of fate. I argue that this obscurity and the indirectness of metonymy are not accidental, but are in fact required, i.e., there is no better or more direct way to represent the bindingness of God's fiat on the necessity of future events. (shrink)

Written by some of the leading experts in the field, the essays in this volume will be a fascinating resource for students and scholars of ancient philosophy, ...

Translations, especially of important texts, tend to be controversial. In a collaborative translation, the controversy will start during the process itself, and may persist until the end. In our case this is reflected in two translators’ introductions. Translators and reviewers agree or disagree on the basis of certain principles. There are, one could say, two “schools”: those in favor of more contextual choices of terminology, and those striving for strict consistency. The first will be more inclined to distinguish between “technical” (...) and “non-technical” uses of the same term, and consider this to be part of the translator’s role. The latter will try to avoid making these distinctions, and leave as much room as possible for the reader to decide. The first also tend to see the translation as standing on its own, readily intelligible to those who are without any knowledge of the original language. The latter intend to serve primarily readers who are interested in developing some, progressively better, knowledge of the text in its original language. They will attach more importance to an extensive glossary, which ideally should be applicable to the translated author’s entire corpus. (shrink)

The FDA's new table of surrogate endpoints used for drug approvals is an important step forward for overseeing the use of biomarkers in clinical trials. Nevertheless, we present several ways in which the table can be improved.

Traditional debate on the metaphysics of gender has been a contrast of essentialist and social-constructionist positions. The standard reaction to this opposition is that neither position alone has the theoretical resources required to satisfy an equitable politics. This has caused a number of theorists to suggest ways in which gender is unified on the basis of social rather than biological characteristics but is “real” or “objective” nonetheless – a position I term social objectivism. This essay begins by making explicit the (...) motivations for, and central assumptions of, social objectivism. I then propose that gender is better understood as a real kind with a historical essence, analogous to the biologist’s claim that species are historical entities. I argue that this proposal achieves a better solution to the problems that motivate social objectivism. Moreover, the account is consistent with a post-positivist understanding of the classificatory practices employed within the natural and social sciences. (shrink)

From Immanuel Kant to Postmodernism, this volume provides an unparalleled student resource: a wide-ranging collection of the essential works of more than 50 seminal thinkers in modern European philosophy. Areas covered include Kant and German Idealism, Existentialism, Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, Marxism and the Frankfurt School, Structuralism, Psychoanalysis, Feminism, Deconstruction, and Postmodernism. Each section begins with a concise and helpful introduction, and all the texts have been selected for accessibility as well as significance, making the volume ideal for introductory and advanced levels (...) in philosophy, cultural studies, literary theory, and the history of modern thought. (shrink)

Moses and Monotheism brings together fundamental new contributions to discourses on Freud and Moses, as well as new research on the intersections of theology, political theory, and history in Freud's psychoanalytic work.

The concept of binding force is at stake in this book on two different levels: there is an investigation of how, within the work of Hobbes, Hegel and Heidegger, conscience is described as binding upon us; and further, Feldman considers how ...

Where Benjamin attempts an account of social and attention practices surrounding the artwork, Adorno accuses him of not being dialectical enough and of inadequately theorizing the artwork's autonomy.2 Adorno makes the same accusation in those places where Benjamin attempts to disrupt historicism with the "dialectical image." Although Adorno appears to offer the same criticism in both instances, I maintain that Adorno's blanket prescription for more dialectics covers over a chiastic relationship between his reactions in each case. That is, the worries (...) that inform Adorno's reaction to Benjamin's portrayal of the artwork are quite the opposite of the worries that inform his reaction to Benjamin's portrayal of the .. (shrink)

: Contemporary common sense holds that authenticity is an ethical ideal: that there is something bad about inauthenticity, and something good about authenticity. Here we criticize the view that authenticity is bad because it detracts from the wellbeing of the inauthentic person, and propose an alternative moral account of the badness of inauthenticity, based on the idea that inauthentic behaviour is potentially misleading.

From Immanuel Kant to Postmodernism, this volume provides an unparalleled student resource: a wide-ranging collection of the essential works of more than 50 seminal thinkers in modern European philosophy. Areas covered include Kant and German Idealism, Existentialism, Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, Marxism and the Frankfurt School, Structuralism, Psychoanalysis, Feminism, Deconstruction, and Postmodernism. Each section begins with a concise and helpful introduction, and all the texts have been selected for accessibility as well as significance, making the volume ideal for introductory and advanced levels (...) in philosophy, cultural studies, literary theory, and the history of modern thought. (shrink)

Among the important themes in Roderick Chisholm's epistemology are his commitment to internalism, his defense of the independence of epistemology from empirical science, and his assumption that we do know most of what we initially think we know. In “Roderick Chisholm and the Shaping of American Epistemology” Hilary Kornblith argues that Chisholm's views lead to a radical divorce between the factors that justify beliefs and the factors that cause beliefs, that Chisholm's views have the consequence that there is no connection (...) between justification and truth, and that Chisholm's kind of epistemology is unable to give epistemic advice. I argue that Chisholm's views do not have these consequences. (shrink)