많은 학자들이 지적하듯이, 『순수이성비판』 변증론 부록에 등장하는 ‘상상의 초점’(focus imaginarius) 개념은 1766년 출판된 전(前) 비판기 저작 『시령자의 꿈』에 등장하는 ‘상상의 초점’ 개념과 연관되어 있다. 그런데 대부분의 학자들은 두 저작에서 칸트가 동일한 용어를 통해 광학적 유비를 사용하고 있다는 표면적 유사성만을 간략히 지적하는 것으로 그친다. 그러나 『시령자의 꿈』에 등장하는 ‘상상의 초점’ 개념을 세세히 분석해 보면, 유사성보다는 오히려 차이가 두드러진다. 무엇보다 두 저작에서 ‘상상의 초점’ 개념이 도입된 목적이 다르다. 『순수이성비판』에서 ‘상상의 초점’ 개념이 초월적 이념의 규제적 역할에 대한 이해를 돕기 위해 도입된 (...) 데에 반해서, 『시령자의 꿈』에서 ‘상상의 초점’ 개념은 주관적으로 만들어낸 표상과 객관적으로 주어진 표상을 구별하는 생리적 기능을 설명하기 위해 도입된다. 이런 차이로 인해 『시령자의 꿈』에서 ‘상상의 초점’ 개념은 『순수이성비판』과 달리 초월적 이념의 세 가지 근본적 특성, 즉 가상성, 초험성, 불가피성을 제대로 반영하지 못한다. 이를 보이기 위해 우리는『시령자의 꿈』에서 ‘상상의 초점’ 개념이 사용되는 세 가지 경우를 구별하고 각각의 경우에서 『순수이성비판』의 ‘상상의 초점’ 개념과 어떻게 유사하고 어떻게 다른지 살펴볼 것이다. 이를 통해 우리는 두 저작에서 사용된 ‘상상의 초점’ 개념의 연관성을 구체적으로 밝혀낼 것이다. (shrink)

O objeto dessa investigação é o status sistemático da ideia transcendental como “focus imaginarius” na Crítica da razão pura de Kant. Tentar-se-á mostrar que a teoria da auto-referência do eu fracassa, se for pensada na forma de uma objetivação do eu como objeto. Nesse sentido, a ideia regulativa marca o ponto central de um equívoco tanto da razão especulativa como da prática, como também das consequências resultantes dessa objetivação nos níveis epistemológico, psicológico e da teoria da ação.

Going back to Jacobi, commentators have often considered Kant’s notion of the transcendental object (thing in itself, monad, or object = X) to be concerned merely with empirical affection. Although most agree that this argument of Kant’s forbids the understanding from making illegitimate claims regarding the transcendental object, it is often assumed that no positive function can be ascribed to metaphysical illusions produced by reason. I will show in this paper, in contrast to most commentators, that a positive notion of (...) transcendental illusion is brought about by the cooperation of the imagination and reason in the latter’s pursuit of positing transcendental objects––in the same way that the imagination aids the understanding in determining objects of empirical cognition. When describing reason’s pursuit of systematicity, Kant writes that the transcendent ideas serve as a focus imaginarius that unifies cognition as such (A644/B672). It is not merely the case that metaphysical illusions regarding the soul, the world as such, and God are entirely useless, just because the understanding is prohibited from claiming having knowledge of such concepts.I take it that the transcendental object so considered in Kant’s Dialectic refers only to a representation of the imagination. I show that all three transcendental ideas––namely, God, the World as such, and the soul––are imaginary projections of unity carried out by the power of reason. Drawing on Kant’s notion of the focus imaginarius, I claim that reason regards transcendental illusions as being real objects. This holds as much for the schema of scientific knowledge, which is merely regulative, as it does for the three transcendental ideas. Unlike most commentators, I do not take Kant’s consideration of the transcendental object to concern empirical affection. Rather, reason posits this object in order to transcend the limits of the understanding, and to thereby use its own inner illusions for systematic purposes (cf. A250–53 and A393). To my mind, reason necessarily posits ideas, but the imagination often leads reason into holding that the focus imaginarius of the idea is an actual object. The critical use of reason must then put limits on the imagination (cf. A770/B798). But the imagination nonetheless serves reason’s interest by allowing it to put otherwise negative illusions to work for the sake of systematicity. (shrink)

El presente trabajo tiene por propósito analizar las funciones de las ideas de la razón pura, centrándose en el tratamiento que recibe esta temática en el Apéndice que cierra la Dialéctica trascendental de la Crítica de la razón pura. En particular, se aborda la función sistematizadora de las ideas y el problema del uso hipotético o regulativo de las mismas, así como el vínculo entre ambas funciones. Se mostrará cómo la búsqueda de la unidad sistemática por parte de la razón (...) posibilita el uso coherente del entendimiento, y cómo las ideas, a modo de focus imaginarius, orientan al entendimiento y ensanchan el conocimiento y el ámbito de la experiencia dada desde fuera del campo del conocimiento empírico posible. (shrink)

Critics of the notion of Necessary Being, and critics of arguments for the existence of God, have often claimed to find flaws in the notion or the arguments, and to find flaws that are due to the presence of concealed tautologies. No theist who recalls the unfortunate of St Anselm and its rejection by St Thomas would dare to claim, his hand on his heart, that tautology has never lurked like a serpent in the garden of natural theology. But the (...) ways in which tautology and talk about God come together on occasion may or may not undermine natural theology in general. I for one am loath to abandon arguments for the existence of God, or give up talk of Necessary Being, since, unlike Professor Findlay, I am unwilling to reverence, much less to worship, a focus imaginarius and I want a real God, or none at all. One of the questions is, of course: does the religious believer want a God who must be too real to be real at all? Another question is: if one can sensibly talk of a God so real as to be Necessary, are there grounds for saying that this possible Necessary Being exists? Between them these questions cover a great part, though by no means all, of the ground of modern discussions on the matter of God. (shrink)

In the theoretical philosophy of Immanuel Kant, the term object has an extensive and far-reaching significance, and it can therefore be understood as a theory of objects. This becomes particularly clear when it is observed that all of his guidelines can be traced to different concepts of objects and their combination. With his concept of the object of experience, he attempts to mediate incompatible aspects in this: in relation to the object of experience, we have apodictic claims but at the (...) same time our knowledge of the object develops and contains the possibility of historical progress. This theory of objects was elaborated by Kant with regard to natural science and the claim of its metaphysical foundation. For this reason, Kant’s concept of object is inherently linked with his concept of science. Astronomy is at the core of his investigation, because it represents a perfect example of a so-called proper and rational natural science. (shrink)

This article presents and discusses one of the most prominent inferential strategies currently employed in cognitive neuropsychology, namely, reverse inference. Simply put, this is the practice of inferring, in the context of experimental tasks, the engagement of cognitive processes from locations or patterns of neural activation. This technique is notoriously controversial because, critics argue, it presupposes the problematic assumption that neural areas are functionally selective. We proceed as follows. We begin by introducing the basic structure of traditional “location-based” reverse inference (...) and discuss the influential lack of selectivity objection. Next, we rehearse various ways of responding to this challenge and provide some reasons for cautious optimism. The second part of the essay presents a more recent development: “pattern-decoding reverse inference”. This inferential strategy, we maintain, provides an even more convincing response to the lack of selectivity charge. Due to this and other methodological advantages, it is now a prominent component in the toolbox of cognitive neuropsychology. Finally, we conclude by drawing some implications for philosophy of science and philosophy of mind. (shrink)

“Complexity sciences” are an interdisciplinary and transnational domain of study that aims at modeling natural and social “complex systems.” They appeared in the 1970s in Europe and the United States, but were boosted in the mid-1980s by the Santa Fe Institute under the formula of “science of complexity.” This small but famous institution is the object of the present article. According to their promissory ambitions and to the enthusiastic claims of some scientific journalists, complexity sciences were going to revolutionize all (...) of knowledge and even private and public actors who had learned to master them. In the light of this, one would expect to observe a well-established and autonomous research and educational field, capable of reproducing itself through professional institutions. Yet this is not the case. To explain the paradox, I propose to combine different models of history and sociology of emergent and declining domains, in order to give account of the rise and failure of complexity sciences. (shrink)

Philosophers of mind and language who advance causal theories face a sort of conjunction problem. When we say that the thing had in mind or the thing referred to is a matter of what causally impacted the thinker or speaker, we must somehow narrow down the long conjunction of items in a causal chain, all of which contributed to the having in mind, but only one of which becomes the object of thought or the linguistic referent. Here, I sketch a (...) notion of cognitive focus intended to do this narrowing. The notion borrows three key aspects from visual focus and some technological aides—causation, amplification, and suppression. I suggest a broader application of this framework to address the conjunction problem not only in ordinary contexts of perceptual focus but also in evidence cases involving non-perceptual cognitive focus. I further suggest cognitive focus is helpful in distinguishing referential vs. attributive thought. (shrink)

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the media have repeatedly praised healthcare workers for their ‘heroic’ work. Although this gratitude is undoubtedly appreciated by many, we must be cautious about overuse of the term ‘hero’ in such discussions. The challenges currently faced by healthcare workers are substantially greater than those encountered in their normal work, and it is understandable that the language of heroism has been evoked to praise them for their actions. Yet such language can have potentially negative consequences. Here, I (...) examine what heroism is and why it is being applied to the healthcare workers currently, before outlining some of the problems associated with the heroism narrative currently being employed by the media. Healthcare workers have a clear and limited duty to treat during the COVID-19 pandemic, which can be grounded in a broad social contract and is strongly associated with certain reciprocal duties that society has towards healthcare workers. I argue that the heroism narrative can be damaging, as it stifles meaningful discussion about what the limits of this duty to treat are. It fails to acknowledge the importance of reciprocity, and through its implication that all healthcare workers have to be heroic, it can have negative psychological effects on workers themselves. I conclude that rather than invoking the language of heroism to praise healthcare workers, we should examine, as a society, what duties healthcare workers have to work in this pandemic, and how we can support them in fulfilling these. (shrink)

In order to enable firms to successfully deal with issues of corporate sustainability, the firms' stakeholders would need to participate in sustainability accounting and management. In practice, however, participative sustainability accounting and management are often unfeasible. The resulting consequence is the risk of misbalancing single aspects of sustainability. The purpose of this article is to show that reflexivity in sustainability accounting and management, that is, an ongoing reflection on the relationship between the goals of corporate sustainability and the overarching objective (...) of sustainable development can, at least, mitigate this problem. Reflexivity has the potential to initiate processes of collective learning and could eventually bring about the realization of business models that integrate economic, ecological, and social considerations. (shrink)

Bioethics scholarship considering the possibility of gestating an embryo to full term in an artificial womb (ectogenesis) often overstates the capacities of current technologies and underestimates the barriers to the development of full ectogenesis. Moreover, this debate causes harm by (1) neglecting more immediate problems in the development of artificial wombs, (2) treating abortion as a “problem with a technological solution,” bolstering anti-abortion rhetoric, and (3) presuming the stability of women’s reproductive rights. The ectogenesis conversation must consider anticipated uses of (...) the technology (neonatal intensive care) and acknowledge the immediate context (recognizing abortion as essential healthcare and existing reproductive inequities). (shrink)

This volume brings together J.S. Mills On Liberty and a selection of important essays by such eminent scholars as Isaiah Berlin, Alan Ryan, John Rees, C.L. Ten and Richard Wollheim. As well as providing authoritative commentary upon On Liberty , the essays reflect a broader debate about the philosophical foundations of Mill's liberalism, particularly the question of the connection betweenMill's professed utilitarianism and his commitment to individual liberty. Introduced and edited by John Gray and G.W. Smith, the book will be (...) of interest to students of Mill, to ethical and political philosophers and to anyone interested in the contemporary status of liberalism. (shrink)

The concept of corporate social responsibility has been the subject of several academic contributions, but in the health sector the development of an interest in this subject is very recent. Although many practices in healthcare are already socially responsible, progressing from a series of socially responsible behaviours to a socially responsible organization entails a more consolidated awareness of the health sector’s mission and the needs of its participants. In this paper, we will review the different studies published that address the (...) relationship between the healthcare sector’s corporate responsibility and society, with the aims of individuating the prevailing foci that are emerging and categorizing the proposed contributions according to these foci: social responsibility and organization; social responsibility and social impact; social responsibility and competitiveness. Finally, the paper finishes with a personal definition of CSR and its correlated ethical roots. (shrink)

William James offers an ethical view consistently arising out of valorization of energy of his days, and effecting a counter-tendency to the two great popular ...

Biology lacks a central organism concept that unambiguously marks the distinction between organism and non-organism because the most important questions about organisms do not depend on this concept. I argue that the two main ways to discover useful biological generalizations about multicellular organization—the study of homology within multicellular lineages and of convergent evolution across lineages in which multicellularity has been independently established—do not require what would have to be a stipulative sharpening of an organism concept.

1990년대 초반 현실 사회주의의 몰락 이후 자본주의는 현실적 대안이 없는 체제라는 위상을 얻었다. 그후 30년 간 자본주의에 대한 불만과 더불어 설득력 있는 비판에 대한 갈증은 심해져 갔다. 그러나 여전히 자본주의 비판을 위한 유력한 모델은 없다. 이 글의 목적은 이러한 상황에서 프랑크푸르트학파 비판이론 전통에서 하버마스 이후 자본주의 비판을 모색하는 시도들에 대해 중간평가를 해보는 것이다. 이때 관심의 중심은 악셀 호네트와 낸시 프레이저의 작업이다. 이 두 이론가의 『분배냐, 인정이냐?』 논쟁 이후 호네트의 작업은 『자유의 권리』(Das Recht der Freiheit)로, 프레이저의 작업은 『좌파의 길. 식인 자본주의에 (...) 반대한다』로 이어졌다. 이 글은 자본주의 비판 전략에 초점을 맞춰 호네트와 프레이저의 작업을 비판적으로 살펴보고 그 성취와 한계를 평가해 보려고 한다. (shrink)

We present here the hypothesis that the unique microenvironmental pH landscape of acid‐base transporting epithelia is an important factor in development of epithelial cancers, by rendering the epithelial and stromal cells pre‐adapted to the heterogeneous extracellular pH (pHe) in the tumor microenvironment. Cells residing in organs with net acid‐base transporting epithelia such as the pancreatic ductal and gastric epithelia are exposed to very different, temporally highly variable pHe values apically and basolaterally. This translates into spatially and temporally non‐uniform intracellular pH (...) (pHi) patterns. Disturbed pHe‐ and pHi‐homeostasis contributes to essentially all hallmarks of cancer. Our hypothesis, that the physiological pHe microenvironment in acid‐base secreting epithelia shapes cancers arising in these tissues, can be tested using novel imaging tools. The acidic tumor pHe in turn might be exploited therapeutically. Pancreatic cancers are used as our prime example, but we propose that this concept is also relevant for other cancers of acid‐base transporting epithelia. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that an operational organism concept can help to overcome the structural deficiency of mathematical models in biology. In our opinion, the structural deficiency of mathematical models lies mainly in our inability to identify functionally relevant biological characters in biological systems, and not so much in a lack of adequate mathematical representations of biological processes. We argue that the problem of character identification in biological systems is linked to the question of a properly formulated organism concept. (...) Lastly, we demonstrate how a decomposition of an organism into independent characters in the context of a specific biological process—such as adaptation by means of natural selection—depends on the dynamical properties and invariance conditions of the equations that describe this process. (shrink)

In light of the development of “CRISPR” technology, new promising advances in therapeutic and preventive approaches have become a reality. However, with it came many ethical challenges. The most recent worldwide condemnation of the first use of CRISPR to genetically modify a human embryo is the latest example of ethically questionable use of this new and emerging field. Monotheistic religions are very conservative about such changes to the human genome and can be considered an interference with God’s creation. Moreover, these (...) changes could cause perpetual changes to future generations. The Muslim scholars establish their decisions by addressing five foundations of Islamic law i.e. “maqāṣid al sharı̄`a”; the purposes of the law. These are dın̄, nafs, nasl, `aql and māl. To achieve this, the five principles should all be met before approval of an experiment like the Chinese embryo modifications; Qaṣd which is achieved in this case as it aims to protect the embryo from HIV. Yaqın̄ and Ḍarar were not satisfied as they require strong scientific certainty of the procedures, and evidence of safety. Ḍarūra by which the alternatives being compared; in this case more established and proven safe alternatives to protect the HIV transmission from the father are available, so this principle is not met. The final principle is `Urf, by which the social context of using any contemporary technology should be taken in consideration, and clearly this was not achieved. Collectively, germline changes are rejected from an Islamic perspective until the five principles are fulfilled. In the Chinese Twins gene editing case, there was clearly no justification or support for it according to the Muslim Jurisprudence laws. These laws and approaches can serve as an ethical checklist for such controversial research, especially in early stages of the research. (shrink)