We start by considering the Alternate Strike (AS) scheme, a real-life arbitration scheme where two parties select an arbitrator by alternately crossing off at each round one name from a given panel of arbitrators. We find out that the AS scheme is not invariant to “bad” alternatives. We then consider another alternating-move scheme, the Voting by Alternating Offers and Vetoes (VAOV) scheme, which is invariant to bad alternatives. We fully characterize the subgame perfect (...) equilibrium outcome sets of these above two schemes in terms of the rankings of the parties over the alternatives only. We also identify some of the typical equilibria of these above two schemes. We then analyze two additional alternating-move schemes in which players’ current proposals have to either honor or enhance their previous proposals. We show that the first scheme’s equilibrium outcome set coincides with that of the AS scheme, and the equilibrium outcome set of the second scheme coincides with that of the VAOV scheme. Finally, it turns out that all schemes’ equilibrium outcome sets converge to the Equal Area solution’s outcome of cooperative bargaining problem, if the alternatives are distributed uniformly over the comprehensive utility possibility set and as the number of alternatives tends to infinity. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Number: C72. (shrink)

IN A Theory of Justice, John Rawls deployed a social contract theory to vindicate liberal political principles of civil liberty and distributive justice without appeal to a utilitarian calculus. Rawls described his conception of political justice as "justice as fairness." Rational contractors, deliberating behind a "veil of ignorance," agree to a scheme of justice prior to knowing how the scheme materially affects their individual interests or conceptions of moral or nonmoral good. Perhaps the most striking and certainly one (...) of the most controversial features of Rawls's Theory was his argument that "the right" subordinates not only material interests in the economic sphere, but also individuals' fully considered conceptions of the moral good, human flourishing, and final ends. Hence, Rawls's theory of justice was meant to be a systematic alternative both to the economic pragmatism of other modern contract theorists as well as to the classical tradition of perfectionism in political theory. (shrink)

The central question of this conference is whether the media can contribute to high quality social dialogue. The prospects for resolving that question positively in the “sound and fury” depend on recovering the idea of truth. At present the news media are lurching along from one crisis to another with an empty centre. We need to articulate a believable concept of truth as communication's master principle. As the norm of healing is to medicine, justice to politics, critical thinking to education, (...) craftsmanship to engineering, and stewardship to business, so truth-telling is the news profession's occupational norm. Truth-telling is the ethical framework that fundamentally reorders the media's professional culture and enables them to enrich social dialogue rather than undermine it.Historically the mainstream press has defined itself in terms of an objectivist worldview. Centred on human rationality and armed with the scientific method, the facts in news have been said to mirror reality. The aim has been true and incontrovertible accounts of a domain separate from human consciousness. In Bertrand Russell's formula, “truth consists in some form of correspondence between belief and fact” . In the received view, truth is defined in elementary epistemological terms as accurate representation. News corresponds to context-free neutral algorithms, and ethics is equated with impartiality.The attacks on this misguided view of human knowledge had already originated in Giambattista Vico's fantasia and Wilhelm Dilthey's verstehen in the counter-Enlightenment of the 18th century. They have continued with hermeneutics, critical theory in the Frankfurt School, American pragmatism, Wittgenstein's linguistic philosophy, Gramsci, and in their own way, Lyotard's denial of master narratives and Derrida's sliding signifiers; until the anti-foundationalism of our own day indicates a crisis in correspondence views of truth. Institutional structures remain Enlightenment-driven, but in principle the tide has turned currently toward restricting objectivism to the territory of mathematics, physics, and the natural sciences. In reporting, objectivity has become increasingly controversial as the working press' professional standard, though it will remain entrenched in our ordinary practices of news production and dissemination until an alternative mission for the press is convincingly formulated.The demise of correspondence views of truth has created a predicament for the notion of truth altogether. However, instead of appealing to coherence versions or abandoning the concept, truth needs to be relocated in the moral sphere. Truth is a problem of axiology rather than epistemology. With the dominant scheme no longer tenable, truth should become the province of ethicists who can reconstruct it as the news media's contribution to social dialogue.When truth is articulated in terms of a moral framework, we can mold its richly textured meaning around the Hebrew emeth , the Greek aletheia . In Serbo-Croatian the true is justified as with plumbline in carpentry. In the powerful wheel imagery of the Buddhist tradition, truth is the immovable axle. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa presumes that sufferings from apartheid can be healed through truthful testimony. In Ghandhi's “satyagrapha,” the power of truth through the human spirit eventually wins over force . Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Ethics contends correctly that a truthful account lays hold of the context, motives, and presuppositions involved .Telling the truth depends on the quality of discernment so that penultimates do not gain ultimacy. Truth means, in other words, to strike gold, to get at “the core, the essence, the nub, the heart of the matter” . For Henry David Thoreau – though addressing a different issue – when we are truthful, we attempt to “drive life into a corner and¼if it proves to be mean, why then to get the genuine meanness out of it and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by personal experience and be able to give a true account of the encounter” . For the former secretary general of the United Nations, Dag Hammarskjold, “the most dangerous of all moral dilemmas is when we are obliged to conceal truth in order to help the truth be victorious” . In the Talmud, the liar's punishment is that no one believes him.Augustine , professor of rhetoric at Milan and later Bishop of Hippo, illustrates a non-correspondence view of truth. His rhetorical theory is a major contribution to the philosophy of communication, contradicting the highly secular and linear view of the ancient Greeks. As with Aristotle, rhetoric entails reasoned judgement for Augustine; however, he “break[s] away from Graeco-Roman rhetoric, moving instead toward ¼rhetoric as aletheiac act” . Rhetoric for him is not knowledge-producing or opinion-producing but truth-producing . The Epistolae Doctrina Christiana scourges the value-neutral, technical language of “word merchants” without wisdom.Truth is not fundamentally a prescriptive statement. The aletheiac act in Augustine “tends to be more relational than propositional, a dialogically interpersonal, sacramentally charitable act rather than a statement¼taking into account and being motivated by [the cardinal virtues] faith, hope, and charity” . The truth for him does not merely make things clear, but motivates us to belief and action. In truthful communication for Augustine, “it is not enough to seek to move men's minds, merely for the sake of power; instead, the power to move is to be used to lead men to truth”. (shrink)

A rejection of the notion of substance, an emphasis on intraworldly experience and an incorporation of ideas from modern biology are just three of the distinctive features of Alfred North Whitehead’s process metaphysics or philosophy of organism. The last two features give his scheme a heavily naturalistic tinge, despite his positing of eternal objects or universal forms of definiteness, which - together with subjective aims or final causes - are instantiated in a divinity prior to worldly realization.1 Such a (...) naturalism might seem to preclude largely a comparison with the work of Jacques Derrida, with other differences between the two being left aside. Derrida began his career as a student of phenomenology and structuralism, and by far the greater number of his philosophical writings has been devoted to thinkers who are explicitly post-Kantian. Yet this does not mean that he is a transcendental philosopher who abandons experience and the empirical world in favour of language and consciousness. In this paper I argue that Derrida’s work - which has been shown to be heavily informed by systems theory and evolutionary biology - is not in fact shut off from the extra-conscious and extra-linguistic dimensions of actuality. I also suggest that his deconstructive approach is strikingly similar to Whitehead’s in rejecting essentialism, namely, the idea of fixed and determined essences that underlie accidental properties and changes. From a Derridean perspective, one might even see Whitehead’s alternative as insufficiently radical, since it seems to posit not just eternal objects and God, but a cosmology in which the most fundamental beings or “actual entities” undergo no essential changes or mutations in their respective histories. It is arguable, however, that the latter conclusion would only be consequent on a restrictive interpretation of the pathways of process possible in Whitehead’s metaphysics.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Proclus: Neo-Platonic Philosophy and Science by Lucas SiorvanesP.A. MeijerLucas Siorvanes. Proclus: Neo-Platonic Philosophy and Science. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996. Pp. xv+ 340. Cloth, $35.00.This book will be welcomed by scholars of Proclus and by readers unfamiliar with Proclus alike. There are not many introductory books on Proclus. And Siorvanes presents in an interesting way the latest developments in scholarship. [End Page 160]Siorvanes gives an account of (...) Proclus’s life and times, his position in the Athenian Neoplatonic school, and his influence and offers a panoramic view of Proclus’s philosophy in the chapters: “General Metaphysics,” “Knowledge and the levels of Being,” “Physics and Metaphysics,” and “Stars and Planets.” He presents not only Proclus’s views on physics and astronomy, but also his poetics (189).Siorvanes deals competently with Proclus’s metaphysics, analyzing it in its own right and as the indispensable background of his scientific views. His summaries are on the whole adequate and instructive. But a scheme or outline of levels of the multi-layered Proclean system of Gods (Henads), such as that offered by H. D. Saffrey and L. G. Westerink in Proclus, Théologie Platonicienne (Paris 1968) for example, would have facilitated understanding.In an impressive description of Proclus’s historical influence, Siorvanes establishes connections between Proclus’s ideas and modern views in metaphysics, mathematics, physics, logic and astronomy. Yet a warning would be appropriate in this context. There is, for instance, the strikingly modern Proclean theory that planets have satellites. Perhaps Siorvanes is too much enamoured with these modern Proclean theories. Though he recognizes that the theory about the satellites is really a consequence of Proclus’s metaphysics (268–271), he fails to emphasize that Proclus’s modern-seeming theories are no less speculative than other ancient theories. Neither Proclus’s metaphysics nor his mathematics can replace evidence as used in modern science. Thus, the rather triumphal tones Sioravanes sounds in this regard are somewhat out of place. The incidental similarities in theoretical structures and patterns that emerge in the course of history are interesting to note, but we should beware of becoming too enthusiastic about their significance. The so-called indirect influence may be due precisely to the structure of problems and the (limited) range of possible solutions.I would raise some objections to Siorvanes’s manner of translating and interpreting the Greek word for “to be” (einai) or “Being” (on). As is often done, especially in the Anglo-Saxon world, Siorvanes alternatively uses “being,” “existence” and “reality,” without being aware of the fact that in ancient philosophy the Greek words “on/ousia” (“Being”) generally do not admit of the translation “existence.” Such translations are anachronistic and wrong. “Reality” is entirely inappropriate as a translation. As an essentially medieval expression, the word “reality” (realitas) as such is nowhere to be found in antiquity. When Proclus presents his multilevel system of Being, there are no degrees of reality in the sense that one transcendent level is more real than another. There are only degrees of Being. The problematic nature of the issue stands out even more when one speaks about not being. “Being” interpreted as “reality” suggests that what is not being, has no reality. But that is not what Proclus meant to say. The translation “existence” is bound to bring about similar misunderstandings. The notion “existence” is seldom in the focus of the interest when an ancient philosopher uses “einai.” Thus, an innocent reader of Siorvanes’s book may despair when he encounters “real existence” as a translation for “ousia” (124). Do the levels of being other than the one called “ousia” exist or do they not exist? If they do not, Proclus’s entire philosophy would be incoherent, and our world would not even exist or possess “reality.” But this is not what Proclus or Siorvanes mean. To avoid misunderstandings, we should use only “Being” (and “to be”) as translations. [End Page 161]There are also problems with some aspects of Siorvanes’s description of participation. In picturing the connection of the entity that is participated (methekton), what is given to the participant (metechomenon) and the participant (metechon), the terms “predication” and... (shrink)

Could each and every one of us, instead of interacting with actual objects, really be brains in a vat? In the first chapter of his new book, Reason, Truth and History, Professor Putnam raises this and related questions with the aim of undermining what he calls the “metaphysical realist” or “externalist” conception of reality. Putnam describes metaphysical realism as a view which holds that the world consists in “some fixed totality of mind-independent objects”; truth on this view amounts to a (...) correspondence between words or thoughts and these objects. Putnam contrasts metaphysical realism with a doctrine which he names “internalism” and calls on Kant to explicate its basic ideas. Putnam claims that Kant was the first philosopher to see clearly the difficulties inherent in metaphysical realism. The doctrine of transcendental idealism, says Putnam, represents Kant’s attempt to avoid externalism. But is Kant’s doctrine really just an early version of Putnam’s internalism? In this paper I shall argue that it is not. Although Kant obviously rejects the position Putnam calls “externalism,” I shall try to show that Kant’s metaphysical theory is distinct from internalism. Kant couples transcendental idealism with a second doctrine of empirical realism, and this enables Kant to circumvent both the internalist’s coherence theory of truth as well as a simple-minded correspondence theory. To be sure, one of Kant’s major concerns is to argue against the possibility of knowing things-in-themselves; Kant thus maintains, as Putnam correctly points out, that the nature of perceivers must figure in the nature of what is perceived. But this is not to say, as Putnam implies, that there is no mind-independent reality in Kant’s theory. On the contrary, Kant’s Refutation of Idealism—an argument that strikingly resembles the first horn of Putnam’s brain-in-a-vat dilemma—is designed to establish the existence of “matter,” which is Kant’s general term for what we might call the “external” or the “mind-independent.” Kant does argue that the perception of matter must accord with space and time, the two forms of sensibility, and this is the source of his transcendental idealism. But if we take this to mean that there cannot be anything independent of our minds or of our conceptual schemes, then we miss the point of Kant’s double doctrine of transcendental idealism and empirical realism, which is intended to avoid a coherence-only theory of truth while yet affirming that objects are knowable only as appearances. Putnam, by running together a number of Kantian notions, misrepresents Kant’s position and thus fails to see that Kant does offer an alternative to both metaphysical realism and internalism. I shall begin my defense of the claim that Kant does provide a third alternative by exploring more fully the debate between Putnam and the externalist concerning the BV dilemma. I shall then explore the Refutation of Idealism to support my claim that Putnam’s internalism is distinct from transcendental idealism. We shall see in section IV that in interpreting Kant on transcendental idealism Putnam makes two crucial mistakes which lead him to equate internalism with transcendental idealism. The result of these mistakes is discussed in section V. (shrink)

Although Michael Polanyi's model of science and his construal of the nature of the real are usually thought to be congenial to religion and although Polanyi himself says that “the stage on which we thus resume our full intellectual powers is borrowed from the Christian scheme of Fall and Redemption” (Polanyi 1958, 324), theologians have given little attention to the model of God he presents. The metaphysical and theological vision unfolded in part 4 of Personal Knowledge is a thoughtful (...) alternative to materialist versions of neo‐Darwinism and provides a platform for revisiting four long‐standing controversies at the interface of science and religion: whether life and mind can be completely specified in terms of physical analysis, whether nature can be adequately understood without appeal to final causes, whether natural selection adequately explains life's diverse forms, and whether knowledge can be fully objectified. Through an exploration of Polanyi's contribution to these discussions, we undertake to show not only that his treatment of God as a cosmic field is strikingly original but also that in reinstating activity as a metaphysical category, he reconstructs our understanding of our creaturely hope and calling. (shrink)