A conscious being is characterized by its ability to cope with the environment--to perceive it, sometimes change it, and perhaps reflect on it. Surprisingly, most studies of the mind's place in nature show little interest in such interaction. It is often implicitly assumed that the main questions about consciousness just concern the status of various entities, levels, etc., within the individual. The intertwined notions of " experience" and " consciousness" are considered. The predominant use of these notions in cognitive science (...) can be traced back to Cartesianism. What is important is the survival of the central methodological commitments despite seemingly profound changes of metaphysical outlook. The author argues that cognitive scientists typically assimilate perception to sensation, thereby ignoring ways in which descriptions of perception and descriptions of the environment are logically intertwined; that this involves methodological solipsism and an unacknowledged sceptical position that was originally part of Descartes' Dream argument; and that it is impossible to identify the object supposedly to be studied by a science of the phenomenal consciousness. A somewhat parallel argument is identified in Kant's critique of rationalist psychology. (shrink)

A central issue in debates about Kant and nonconceptualism concerns the nature of intuition. There is sharp disagreement among Kant scholars about both whether, prior to conceptualization, mere intuition can be considered conscious and, if so, how determinate this consciousness is. In this article, I argue that Kant regards pre-synthesized intuition as conscious but indeterminate. To make this case, I contextualize Kant's position through the work of H.S. Reimarus, a predecessor of Kant who influenced his views on animals, infants, and (...) the role of attention. I use Reimarus to clarify Kant's otherwise ambiguous commitments on the determinacy of intuition in animals and newborns, and the role attention, concepts, and judgment play in making intuited contents determinate. This contextualization helps to shed light on Kant's discussion of pre-synthesized intuition in the threefold synthesis of the A-Deduction by demonstrating that Kant's theory of mind in the deduction offers transcendental grounding for empirical accounts of infant development like Kant and Reimarus's. The upshot is a Kant at odds with many recent interpretations of his theory of mind: pre-synthesized intuition is conscious but indeterminate. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss two influential pictures of communication and the relation between them. One picture holds that successful communication requires identity of content: The speaker has a belief that she expresses with her utterance, and the hearer acquires a belief with the same content by understanding the utterance. The second picture was proposed by Lewis in his classic work Convention and then refined in “Languages and Language.” It sees communication as coordination among speakers—a technical notion that Lewis draws (...) from game theory. Samuel Cumming has recently provided an elegant and insightful synthesis of the two pictures, arguing that Lewisian coordination among speakers is in fact a form of content identity. In this paper, my negative goal is to argue against Cumming’s attempt to construe coordination as content identity, showing that it yields incorrect predictions about certain cases of successful communication. My positive goal is to show how we can avoid Cumming’s problematic interpretation of coordination and still do justice to the relevant data within a coordination-based framework. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.

In the xvii century, William Molyneux asked John Locke whether a newly-sighted person could reliably identify a cube from a sphere without aid from their touch. While this might seem an easily testable question, answering it is not so straightforward. In this paper, I illustrate this question and claim that some distinctions regarding the concept of consciousness are important for an empirical solution. First, I will describe Molyneux’s question as it was proposed by Molyneux himself, and I’ll briefly say something (...) about its early debates. Second, I will go over some empirical attempts to solve this question, including recent experiments coming from neuroscience. Third, I will introduce some distinctions with regards to consciousness, and in the following section I will apply them to the Molyneux case. Finally, I will shortly consider some consequences of this approach. I conclude by suggesting researchers pay attention to different senses in which Molyneux’s question might be posed for empirical purposes. (shrink)

It is argued that George Berkeley’s term ‘common sense’ does not indicate shared conviction, but the shared capacity of reasonable judgement, and is therefore to be classed as a mental ability, not a belief-system. Common sense is to be distinguished from theoretical understanding which, in Berkeley’s view, is frequently corrupted either by learned prejudice, or by language that lacks meaning or camouflages contradiction. It is also to be distinguished from the deliverances of divine revelation, which—however enlightening Berkeley supposed them to (...) be—are not necessarily available to all people. This interpretation of common sense is supported both by attention to Berkeley’s own texts, including his sermons, letters and philosophical writings, and by attention to the views of John Locke and René Descartes, who also understand ‘common sense’ as susceptibility to the ‘natural light’. In addition, this interpretation renders Berkeley’s appeal to common sense in support of his immaterialism a straightforward appeal to the reader’s native reason. No longer, then, are we forced to see Berkeley as improbably maintaining that the denial of matter is really the view of ‘the common people’, but rather that those who have least attachment to theory and doctrine will be best able to grasp the case for immaterialism. (shrink)

In “Tropes and Ordinary Physical Objects”, Kris McDaniel argues that ordinary physical objects are fusions of monadic and polyadic tropes. McDaniel calls his view “TOPO”—for “Theory of Ordinary Physical Objects”. He argues that we should accept TOPO because of the philosophical work that it allows us to do. Among other things, TOPO is supposed to allow endurantists to reply to Mark Heller’s argument for perdurantism. But, we argue in this paper, TOPO does not help endurantists do that; indeed, we argue (...) that anyone who accepts TOPO should reject endurantism. (shrink)

Amit's Hebbian model risks being overexplanatory, since it does not depend on specific physiological modelling of cortical ANNs, but concentrates on those phenomena which are modelled by a large class of ANNs. While offering a strong demonstration of the presence of Hebb's “cell assemblies,” it does not offer an equal account of Hebb's “phase sequence” concept.

Amit's efforts to provide stronger theoretical and empirical support for Hebb's cell-assembly concept is admirable, but we have serious reservations about the perspective presented in the target article. For Hebb, the cell assembly was a building block; by contrast, the framework proposed here eschews the need to fit the assembly into a broader picture of its function.

A distinction should be made between the formation of stimulus-driven associations and cognitive concepts. To test the learning mode of a neural network, we propose a simple and classic input-output test: the discrimination shift task. Feed-forward PDP models appear to form stimulus-driven associations. A Hopfield network should be extended to apply the test.

On a reproché au modèle perceptuel de la connaissance morale d'être inadéquat en ce qu'il serait incapable d'expliquer le signe distinctif et fondamental de l'éthique, à savoir son caractère normatif. Je tente de montrer que la critique n'est pas pertinente, car le normatif n'a en réalité qu'une place dérivée en morale : l'éthique est d'abord une question de valeurs, entités dont il est tout à fait plausible de dire que nous les percevons. Pour justifier la place dérivée du normatif, je (...) m'appuie sur les études de Max Scheler et sur l'examen de certains traits de la psychologie morale, qui tendent à montrer que le normatif n'est qu'un cas particulier de l'axiologique, mettant en évidence les caractères de force des valeurs, de risques de transgression et de contrainte.The perceptual model of moral knowledge has been the target of criticisms: it could be unable to explain the basic character of ethics, namely its normative character. I try to show that this criticism is misguided: in fact normativity is not central but lateral to ethics. What matters in ethics first and foremost are values, and it is quite appropriate to say we perceive values. To justify the lateral character of normativity, I rely on some analysis of Max Scheler and turn to some traits of moral psychology. It suggests that the normativity is a province of the axiological, characterized by strength of values, risks of transgression and constraint. (shrink)

The philosophical debate surrounding the moral status of the embryo has reached the public arena. The author of this paper examines some of the common arguments against embryo experimentation, including an influential article by Professor Ian Kennedy. He concludes that these arguments do not succeed in demonstrating that the intentional creation of embryos for research purposes is wrong, unless they also succeed in demonstrating that contemporary liberal abortion laws are also wrong. The author also criticises the conclusions of the Warnock (...) Report, and suggests that the reasons for permitting embryo research must be given a wider public audience. (shrink)

This paper discusses George Boole’s two distinct approaches to the explanatory relationship between logical and psychological theory. It is argued that, whereas in his first book he attributes a substantive role to psychology in the foundation of logical theory, in his second work he abandons that position in favour of a linguistically conceived foundation. The early Boole espoused a type of psychologism and later came to adopt a type of anti-psychologism. To appreciate this invites a far-reaching reassessment of his philosophy (...) of logic. (shrink)

Robert Cummins [(1996) Representations, targets and attitudes, Cambridge, MA: Bradford/MIT, p. 1] has characterized the vexed problem of mental representation as "the topic in the philosophy of mind for some time now." This remark is something of an understatement. The same topic was central to the famous controversy between Nicolas Malebranche and Antoine Arnauld in the 17th century and remained central to the entire philosophical tradition of "ideas" in the writings of Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Reid and Kant. However, the scholarly, (...) exegetical literature has almost no overlap with that of contemporary cognitive science. I show that the recurrence of certain deep perplexities about the mind is a systematic and pervasive pattern arising not only throughout history, but also in a number of independent domains today such as debates over visual imagery, symbolic systems and others. Such historical and contemporary convergences suggest that the fundamental issues cannot arise essentially from the theoretical guise they take in any particular case. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Volume 103, Issue 3, Page 687-709, November 2021.

The present paper introduces a simple framework for modeling the relationship between environmental states, perceptual states, and action. The framework represents situations where an agent’s perceptual state forms the basis for choosing an action, and what action the agent performs determines the agent’s payoff, as a function of the environmental conditions in which the action is performed. The framework is used as the basis for a simulation study of the sorts of correspondence between perceptual and environmental states that are important (...) for successful navigation of the world. Some of the results are surprising and conflict with long held views about the kind of perception-to-environment correspondence that is important for knowledge of the world. The results also raise doubts concerning the view that our perceptual states provide a basis for knowledge of the real structure of the external world. (shrink)

The mind–body problem is analyzed in a physicalist perspective. By combining the concepts of emergence and algorithmic information theory in a thought experiment, employing a basic nonlinear process, it is shown that epistemologically emergent properties may develop in a physical system. Turning to the significantly more complex neural network of the brain it is subsequently argued that consciousness is epistemologically emergent. Thus reductionist understanding of consciousness appears not possible; the mind–body problem does not have a reductionist solution. The ontologically emergent (...) character of consciousness is then identified from a combinatorial analysis relating to universal limits set by quantum mechanics, implying that consciousness is fundamentally irreducible to low-level phenomena. (shrink)

Many now accept that Frankfurt-style cases refute the principle of alternative possibilities (PAP). But, in this paper I argue that even if Frankfurt-style cases refute PAP they do not refute a related principle: the principle of avoidable blame (PAB). My argument develops from the observation that an agent in a Frankfurt-style case can be aware of the nature of their situation without this undermining their moral responsibility. I then argue that PAB captures all that is important about PAP such that (...) the refutation of PAP is of no concern as long as PAB survives. (shrink)

Hebbian cell-assembly theory and attractor networks are good starting points for modeling cortical processing. Detailed cell models can be useful in understanding the dynamics of attractor networks. Cell assemblies are likely to be distributed, with the cortical column as the local processing unit. Synaptic memory may be dominant in all but the first couple of seconds.

A theory of representation is incomplete if it states “representations areX” whereXcan be symbols, cell assemblies, functional states, or the flock of birds fromTheaetetus, without explaining the nature of the link between the universe ofXs and the world. Amit's thesis, equating representations with reverberations in Hebbian cell assemblies, will only be considered a solution to the problem of representation when it is complemented by a theory of how a reverberation in the brain can be a representation of anything.

When we begin to investigate the persistence of objects through time, we find immediately that the sort of concerns embodied in Leibniz's Law cause philosophers to divide themselves into the two major camps of Purdurantists and Endurantists. What is required according to each for a given object at a given time to be identified with a given object at another time is held to be dramatically different, even while both often look to the same general sort of indicators for their (...) answers to identity questions: identity or similarity of physical properties, including relational properties like spatial location. I believe, however, that logically prior to the problem of the persistence of objects through time will be questions regarding the composition of objects--we must have coherent notions of what an object is, what it means for parts to compose an object, and what is required for an object to be considered to exist at a single time before we can discuss the continued existence of objects at other times. I believe that posing the problem of temporal gaps for both the Perdurantist and Endurantist to solve can help us uncover reasonable answers to these more basic questions, and thereby help us judge the comparative coherence of the parent theories. Towards this goal, we investigate here some of the assumptions of persistence theories--that Perdurantists are four-dimensionalists and Endurantists are Presentists, for example--before moving on to find reasonable explanations of the composition of objects from within each theory. Important at this stage is clarifying such concepts as parthood and the present. When we at length turn our attention to the problem of gaps, it becomes useful to distinguish two sorts of gaps, each with their own difficulties: a 'gap' as a length of time during which the proper parts of an object are scattered through space, and a 'gap' as a length of time during which the proper parts of an object do not exist in space at all. My contention here is that Perdurantism, paired with four-dimensional spacetime, provides the most coherent answers to the challenges presented throughout. (shrink)

This paper explores a distinction between two types of response- dependence (RD) account (shallow vs. deep). This distinction is inherent in much of the existing literature, however it is neither widely nor well understood, and has never been drawn explicitly. The distinction is often taken to be a metaphysical, or ‘realism-relevant’ one—i.e. deep RD accounts entail qualified realism (or perhaps anti-realism), while shallow RD accounts are metaphysically neutral. I argue that the distinction is not reliably realism-relevant. I formulate a weaker (...) version of the distinction that may help prevent some common and understandable confusion about RD biconditionals and their relationship to realism. The weaker distinction rests on the different roles assigned to RD biconditionals by the two types of account. (shrink)

Science is full of surprises. Fortunately, most of these surprises are small. A scientist, for example, might make an unexpected discoverey, but the discovery simply adds new data in support of an old theory. Or perhaps the discovery will endanger an existing theory, but one which has only local import. In cases like these, the existing theory will be modified, or perhaps even rejected; but the research tradition which surrounds the local theory will remain, by and large, unaffected and will (...) continue on.Small surprises are welcomed within science; they are part of the daily grist. Science needs them in order to advance in an orderly fashion. (shrink)

The papers in this issue of Christian Bioethics explore and challenge taken-for-granted ideas that inform judgments about the nature of Christian bioethics, the nature of Christian clinicians’ and healthcare organizations’ obligations, and the nature of who we are. In doing so, these leading scholars in the field address some of the most fundamental questions in Christian bioethics scholarship today.

We defend Laurence Nemirow’s and David Lewis’s Ability Hypothesis against Paul Raymont’s criticisms in defense of Jackson’s Knowledge Argument. According to the Ability Hypothesis, what Mary lacked when she was in her black-and-white room was a set of abilities; she did not know how to recognize or imagine certain types of experience. Her subsequent discovery of what it is like to experience color amounts to no more than her acquiring these abilities. Appealing to the Molyneux test, Raymont has argued that (...) knowledge of what an experience is like cannot be equated with the possession of any set of abilities, since one can be in possession of a recognitional ability concerning a certain type of experience without knowing what that experience is like. We argue that the intermodal recognitional ability in the Molyneux test and similar ones depends on previous experience and thus makes an implicit appeal to knowledge of what it is like. (shrink)

This paper traces missing links in the history of economic thought. In outlining Hume's concept of 'the reflexive mind' it shows that this opened frontiers between philosophy and psychology which Bertrand Russell denied and which logical positivism in philosophy and positive economics displaced. It relates this to Hume's influence not only on Smith, but also on Schopenhauer and the later Wittgenstein, with parallels in Gestalt psychology and recent findings from neural research and cognitive psychology. It critiques Kant's reaction to Hume's (...) claim that one may assume but cannot prove cause and effect and how Samuelson's Foundations of Economic Analysis has been Kantian but wrong in claims for axioms that are universal truths. It illustrates how Samuelson's presumption that language and mathematics are 'identical' was as mistaken as the logical atomism of Russell and the early Wittgenstein, relates this to Kleinian splitting, denial and projective identification and suggests that recovery of greater realism in economics needs to regain links with such philosophy and psychology. (shrink)

Erratum to: Axiomathes DOI 10.1007/s10516-014-9234-yIn the original publication of the article, some of the references were published incorrectly. Please find below the corrected version of these references.

This commentary questions the target articles inferences from a limited set of empirical data to support this model and conceptual scheme. Especially questionable is the attribution of internal representation properties to an assembly of cells in a discrete cortical module firing at a discrete attractor frequency. Alternative inferences are drawn from cortical cooling and cell-firing data that point to the internal representation as a broad and specific cortical network defined by cortico-cortical connectivity. Active memory, it is proposed, consists in the (...) sustained activation of the component neuron populations of the network. (shrink)

The present article is a critical assessment of the “Connection Principle” – the principle according to which the two key properties of mental states, intentionality and phenomenality , are necessarily co-instantiated. A theory of mind endorsing some version of this principle assumes that all intentional states are either conscious or otherwise potentially conscious. The Connection Principle, being a subject of much controversy in the past 15 years, has divided the community of philosophers of mind in two, as it were, irreconcilable (...) camps. What poses a special challenge to both friends and foes of the Connection Principle – albeit for different reasons – is a plausible explanation of intentional character of unconscious mental states. We want to point to and comment on certain weaknesses of Searle’s attempt to solve this problem – an attempt drawing on the idea that unconsciousmental states “retain” its “aspectual shape” while unconscious. Eventually, we will venture to show why the notion of aspectual shape cannot play the explanatory role assigned to it by Searle, and why a more restrictive and a more consistent criterion for ascribing intentionality to unconscious states is needed. This new criterion should be sensible to our folk-psychological intuition suggesting that there are dispositional states that play an indispensable causal role inour mental economy and, as such, build a genuine subset of all nconscious, i.e., purely neurophysiological states of our mind/brain.U tekstu se želimo kritički osvrnuti na Searleovo “načelovezanosti” – načelo prema kojemu su svojstvo intencionalnosti i svojstvo fenomenalnosti nužno koinstancirana. Svaka teorija uma koja uključuje neku varijantu tog načela polazi od pretpostavke da su sva intencionalna stanja ili svjesna ili potencijalno svjesna. Riječ je o stajalištu koje je polariziralo filozofe uma i u posljednjih petnaestak godina bilo predmetom zanimljivih rasprava. Moglo bi se reći da se prema stavu – bilo eksplicitnom bilo implicitnom – koji neki filozof uma zauzima prema načelu vezanosti može prepoznati opći istraživački program kojemu pripada. I za zagovornike i za protivnike načela vezanosti – doduše iz različitih razloga – osobiti izazov predstavlja objašnjenje intencionalnosti nesvjesnih mentalnih stanja. Cilj nam je ukazati na neke nedostatke Searleova pokušaja da riješi taj problem – pokušaja kojemu u osnovi leži zamisao da nesvjesna mentalna stanja zadržavaju svoju aspektualnost dok su nesvjesna. Konkretno, pokazat ćemo zašto pojam aspektualnosti ne može igrati eksplanatornu ulogu koju mu je Searle namijenio te zašto bi trebalo pronaći neki drugi, restriktivniji i konzistentniji kriterij pripisivanja intencionalnosti potencijalno svjesnim stanjima. Taj bi kriterij, prema našem shvaćanju, trebao biti kompatibilan s pučkopsihološkom intuicijom o postojanju dispozicijskih stanja koja igraju neizostavnu kauzalnu ulogu u našemmentalnom funkcioniranju i koja, kao takva, čine autentičan podskup svih nesvjesnih stanja našeg mozga/uma. (shrink)

The paper distinguishes between epistemic and ontic divisions of qualities into primary and secondary. It identifies two functions which ontic division has been called upon to fulfill - setting the limits on what a realist philosophy of science must achieve, And providing a means of judging between rival realist philosophies of science. It argues for an interaction pattern criterion of primacy, And concludes that while this enables the first function to be achieved, No primary/secondary distinction can fulfill the second.

By what empirical means can a person determine whether he or she is presently awake or dreaming? Any conceivable test addressing this question, which is a special case of the classical metaphysical doubting of reality, must be statistical (for the same reason that empirical science is, as noted by Hume). Subjecting the experienced reality to any kind of statistical test (for instance, a test for bizarreness) requires, however, that a set of baseline measurements be available. In a dream, or in (...) a simulation, any such baseline data would be vulnerable to tampering by the same processes that give rise to the experienced reality, making the outcome of a reality test impossible to trust. Moreover, standard cryptographic defenses against such tampering cannot be relied upon, because of the potentially unlimited reach of reality modification within a dream, which may range from the integrity of the verification keys to the declared outcome of the entire process. In the face of this double predicament, the rational course of action is to take reality at face value. The predicament also has some intriguing corollaries. In particular, even the most revealing insight that a person may gain into the ultimate nature of reality (for instance, by attaining enlightenment in the Buddhist sense) is ultimately unreliable, for the reasons just mentioned. At the same time, to adhere to this principle, one has to be aware of it, which may not be possible in various states of reduced or altered cognitive function such as dreaming or religious experience. Thus, a subjectively enlightened person may still lack the one truly important piece of the puzzle concerning his or her existence. (shrink)

What I have to offer here are some thoughts about the “research ethic,” and the ethics of research, in philosophy. There won't be any exciting stuff about the political wisdom or otherwise of research into racial differences in intelligence, or the ethics of scientists' treatment of laboratory animals, or moral issues concerning genetic engineering or nuclear technology, or anything of that kind. There will be only, besides some rather dry analysis of what constitutes genuine inquiry and how the real thing (...) can come to be corrupted, some rather uncomfortable reflections about the present condition of philosophy, its causes and its consequences. (shrink)

My paper picks up a long ignored suggestion of Sheldon Wolin - that we use Thomas Kuhn''s analysis of scientific revolutions to examine the crisis of "normal" political science. This approach allows us to see the connection between the state of the discipline and the larger crisis of meaning afflicting modernity. I then use Eric Voegelin''s notion of a multicivilizational "truth quest" - or search for meaning - to make a case for institutionalizing "extraordinary" or "revolutionary" political science. I attempt (...) such a discipline by following Voegelin - reflecting on "the full amplitude of human experience." Such a meditation takes place within the "first reality of existence" - Plato''s metaxy or the "in-between" - the experience of human existence between the sacred and the mundane. I bring to Voegelin''s exploration of the metaxy the realm of experience which is most radically "other" for modernity - the primal political order of paleolithic and contemporary hunting gathering societies. I argue that shamanic "Urreligion" and Socratic discussion share a boundary crossing logic which provides a basis for a discipline of "extraordinary political science." Finally I suggest that such a discipline is both the quest for, and, in a sense, a realization of, the Good Life - a source of order for the individual and society. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn this article I offer a critical analysis of the spatial cultures of modern Athens through the urban portraits presented in three fictive stories by Vangelis Raptopoulos—“At the Bottom of...

This paper argues for a pragmatic motivation for believing Presentism—the thesis that everything is present. After outlining a pragmatic source of justification for beliefs, in terms of their action-guiding aims, a pragmatic motivation for believing presentism is detailed and proffered. More specifically, the paper outlines two kinds of bases for our desires: a negative and a positive basis. The former concerns some dissatisfaction with a certain aspect of our present state, whilst the latter focuses instead on our potential future gratification (...) or contentment. An account of desire satisfaction needs to, in some sense, “answers” to either of these kinds of bases. However, it is argued that only presentism can support an adequate conception of desire satisfaction. And although non-presentists can support a form of desire prevention, this severely lessens the effectiveness of beliefs to fulfil their aims. Accordingly, presentism is best able to support beliefs in achieving their action-guiding aims. It is claimed that this provides some pragmatic justification for believing presentism. (shrink)

Amit argues that the local neuronal spike rate that persists (reverberating) in the absence of the eliciting stimulus represents the code of the eliciting stimulus. Based on the general argument that the inferred functional meaning of reverberation depends in part on the type of representational assumptions, reverberations may only be important for the encoding of contextual information.

Amit's work addresses a critical issue in cognitive science: the structure of neural representations. The use of Hebbian cell assemblies is a positive step, and we now need to consider its role in a larger cognitive theory. When considering the dynamics of a system built out of attractors, a more limited version of reverberation becomes necessary.

Subjective consciousness and self-representation Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-9 DOI 10.1007/s11098-011-9765-7 Authors Robert Van Gulick, Department of Philosophy, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, USA Journal Philosophical Studies Online ISSN 1573-0883 Print ISSN 0031-8116.

The problem of the relationship between “reason” and “law” has two different meanings depending on whether the first or the second of the two terms is considered to be the most important one. These two different meanings are revealed in the expressions “law of reason” and “legal reason,” respectively. In the first expression, “reason” is meant in its strong sense, that is, the faculty of grasping the essence of things, while in the second, “reason” is meant in a weak sense, (...) the ability to reason (calculate, infer, discuss). “Law of reason” and “legal reason” correspond to two different moments of the legal universe, the creation and, respectively, the application of law. Strong reason is that which discovers the rules to be obeyed, while weak reason is that which applies rules to an actual case. The first is legislating reason, while the second is judging reason. The main topic of the debate from the Greeks to Kant was that of legislating reason. Nowadays, instead, scholars in the field are interested in judging reason. Historicism and positivism mark the end of faith in the existence of rules which are objectively just, and which may be recognized by human reason. By now we have learned to do without the eternal truths in the knowledge of the world. However painful it may be, we are forced to resign ourselves to do without evident truths in ethics, as well. (shrink)