A response to Lindsay Craig's essay, The So-Called Extended Synthesis and Population Genetics.

Introduction au Numéro spécial de la Revue Philosophique de Louvain.

This volume deals with the general theory of pleasure of Plato and his successors.The first part describes the two paradigms between which all theories of ...

The philosophy of the art of living asks the age-old question of orienting one’s own life: ‘How can I live well?’ An art of living is always called for when people do not know what to do and how to go on, when the ways of life are no longer self-evident, when traditions, conventions, rules, and norms lose their plausibility and individuals begin to worry about themselves. The art of living and of its philosophy has a practical aim: It is (...) not concerned with ethical principles, but with the concrete practice of people’s everyday life, with their individual and successful lives. Friedrich Nietzsche, as he often did, pushed the problem of the art of living to the extreme, making it palpable both in its dignity and in its force. For him, the modern uncertainty of human orientation caused by nihilism pointed to art and aesthetics, which, he supposed, makes life if not justifiable, at least bearable. The arts open up a multi-perspectival seeing and hearing, they experiment with alternative forms and techniques, and create the finest sensibilities for both – Nietzsche himself, with his rich forms of philosophical writing, is an outstanding example of this. -/- The volume we present here, entails contributions of German-speaking scholars on Nietzsche and the ways of living he proposes, especially, but not alone in Dawn. The papers are selected from a book series on the common issue “Critical Art of Living,” edited by Günter Gödde, Jörg Zirfas, and others, and translated on behalf of the Foundation for Philosophical Orientation. (shrink)

It is a popular thought that emotions play an important epistemic role. Thus, a considerable number of philosophers find it compelling to suppose that emotions apprehend the value of objects and events in our surroundings. I refer to this view as the Epistemic View of emotion. In this paper, my concern is with a rivaling picture of emotion, which has so far received much less attention. On this account, emotions do not constitute a form of epistemic access to specific axiological (...) aspects of their objects. Instead it proposes that they are ways of taking a stand or position on the world. I refer to this as the Position-Taking View of emotion. Whilst some authors seem sympathetic to this view, this it has so far not been systematically motivated and elaborated. In this paper, I fill this gap and propose a more adequate account of our emotional engagement with the world than the predominant epistemic paradigm. I start by highlighting the specific way in which emotions are directed at something, which I contrast with the intentionality of perception and other forms of apprehension. I then go on to offer a specific account of the valence of emotion and show how this account and the directedness of emotions makes them intelligible as a way of taking a position on something. (shrink)

Goethe's objections to Newton's theory of light and colours are better than often acknowledged. You can accept the most important elements of these objections without disagreeing with Newton about light and colours. As I will argue, Goethe exposed a crucial weakness of Newton's methodological self-assessment. Newton believed that with the help of his prism experiments, he could prove that sunlight was composed of variously coloured rays of light. Goethe showed that this step from observation to theory is more problematic than (...) Newton wanted to admit. By insisting that the step to theory is not forced upon us by the phenomena, Goethe revealed our own free, creative contribution to theory construction. And Goethe's insight is surprisingly significant, because he correctly claimed that all of the results of Newton's prism experiments fit a theoretical alternative equally well. If this is correct, then by suggesting an alternative to a well-established physical theory, Goethe developed the problem of underdete... (shrink)

This essay presents a novel approach to specifying the meaning of the concept of populism, on the political position it occupies and on the nature of populism. Employing analytic techniques of concept clarification and recent analytic ideology critique, it develops populism as a political kind in three steps. First, it descriptively specifies the stereotype of populist platforms as identified in extant research and thereby delimits the peculiar political position populism occupies in representative democracies as neither inclusionary nor fascist. Second, it (...) specifies on this basis analytically–normatively the particular stance towards liberal representative democracy (in particular towards popular sovereignty and democratic legitimacy) that unifies populism’s political position and explains how populist politics can be compelling for democratic citizens. The normative core (populist ideology) turns out to require no more than two general principles of legitimizing political authority by elections. Surprisingly, it does not need a separate anti-pluralist or exclusionary commitment: it entails it. Third, this normative model allows a response to a contested question in the theoretical discussion, namely, whether populism (properly specified) can be democracy-enhancing. The article defends the negative answer in virtue of the normative core alone and does so as much vis-à-vis a minimal (purely electoral) as vis-à-vis a normatively ambitious (liberal) conception of democracy. The reconstruction of the normative core of populist ideology enables a novel argument to show that populism is incompatible with the continued democratic legitimation of political authority even in the normatively most austere conception of ‘electoral democracy’, not just with ‘liberal democracy’. Assuming a normatively more ambitious concept of democratic legitimation in terms of political autonomy, the model also produces an extremely direct argument showing that populists cannot fulfil their promise of ‘taking back control’ over political decision-making to the population. (shrink)

A new conceptual essay introducing one of the classics of the evolutionary biological literature.

This contribution focuses on three aspects of Nietzsche’s art of living that have become relevant today especially in the United States (but not only here): first, regarding some facets of the economic-political conditions of any contemporary art of living; second, the widespread adoption of Nietzsche’s notion of self-overcoming and artistic self-design in entrepreneurship and individual’s lives; and third, how his notion of ‘incorporation’ has been further developed in current approaches to habit design. Eventually I will show via the example of (...) Anthony Robbins that some notions of Nietzsche’s art of living have become most popular outside of academia, namely in the commercial industries of what has been called ‘self-growth’ or ‘self-development.’. (shrink)

Nietzsche and Shaw are famous and infamous: famous for their innovative and influential forms of writing, but infamous for their apparent support of totalitarianism and Nazism. However, while it has long been shown that Nietzsche’s provocative language about “breeding” and “masters and slaves” was intended to enhance culture through competition, it is still an open question how and when Shaw supported biological eugenics. Via Nietzsche’s “philosophical breeding,” this article presents a new reading of Shaw’s Man and Superman: on the one (...) hand, it contrasts Nietzsche’s philosophical Übermensch with Shaw’s eugenic Superman; and on the other hand, it connects Nietzsche’s agonistic enhancement of culture with Shaw’s philosophical reflections in “Don Juan in Hell.” In contrast to Tanner’s support of eugenic breeding in his Revolutionist’s Handbook, Shaw’s Don Juan remarkably resembles Nietzsche’s notion of “philosophical breeding” toward a more competent, truthful, and autonomous orientation that is needed in increasingly complex global politics. (shrink)

Ziel dieses Papiers ist es die Ordnungsethik – einen bereichsethischen Ansatz, der derzeit vor allem für wirtschaftsethische Fragestellungen benutzt wird – als eine universelle Methode zur Analyse von bereichsethischen Fragestellungen vorzustellen. Um das Vorhaben handhabbar zu machen, muss es in zweierlei Hinsicht eingeschränkt werden. Zum einen kann es sich hier natürlich nicht um eine voll ausgearbeitete Methodologie für die Analyse von bereichsethischen Fragestellungen handeln, sondern nur um eine methodische Skizze. Zum anderen soll es in diesem Papier im Wesentlichen um solche (...) bereichsethischen Fragestellungen gehen, deren Lösung die Implementierung von formellen wie informellen Regeln erfordert. (shrink)

This essay investigates, via the concepts of the philosophy of orientation, Annie Duke’s decision-making theory in "Thinking in Bets" and scrutinizes as to what extent one can universalize the 'orientation skill' of decision-making with regard to our everyday and professional life.

Article presenting basic methodological tenets in Goodman's philosophical development with their mutual connections, like the new riddle of indutcion, counterfactual conditionals and his use of reflective equilibrium as a methodological basis.

This article analyzes whether Brandom’s ISA (inferential-substitutional-anaphoric) semantics as presented in Making It Explicit (MIE) and Articulating Reasons (AR) can cope with problems resulting from inferentialism’s near-implied meaning holism. Inferentialism and meaning holism entail a radically perspectival conception of content as significance for an individual speaker. Since thereby its basis is fixed as idiolects, holistic inferentialism engenders a communication-problem. Brandom considers the systematic difference in information among individuals as the „point“ of communication and thus doesn’t want to diminish these effects (...) of inferentialism. Instead, explains communication with a model of “navigating among perspectives without sharing contents”. The crucial element in this navigation-model is the functioning of anaphoric connections between tokens uttered in discourse that can be used by every individual speaker in their own perspectival semantic substitution-economies. The heart of Brandom’s semantics is the thesis of the purely inferential, hence non-referential nature of anaphora, coupled with the claim that anaphoric-inferential semantic mechanisms yield sufficient conditions for mutually successful “information-extraction” or interpretation. This article disputes the thesis and denies the claim. Regarding the former it is observed that all of Brandom’s plausible reconstructions of anaphoric discourse-structures rely on covert “reference-infiltrations” that can’t be eliminated. Regarding the latter, a new argument based on context-sensitive semantic phenomena in anaphoric settings shows that the crucial distinction between initiator or anaphoric antecedent and anaphoric dependent cannot be drawn according to Brandom’s own premises without overt and irreducible referential premises. The article concludes that either Brandom’s semantics can offer determinate contents, but then must accept genuinely referential semantic primitives, or else it leaves utterance-contents undeterminable and hence cannot explain communication. (shrink)

The focus of this article is on the pragmatic presuppositions involved in the use of general terms in inductive practices. The main thesis is that the problem of characterizing the assumptions underlying the projection of predicates in inductive practices and the ones underlying the classification of crtain general terms as «natural kind terms» coincide to a good extent. The reason for this, it is argued, is that both classifications, «projectibility» and «natural kind term», are attempts to answer to the same (...) semantico-epistemological phenomenon, viz. underdertermination. It is proposed a «deflationary» reading of the so-called «theory of direct reference» as to enable an evaluation of its contribution to epistemological problems associated with this kind of phenomena, as well as it is argued that a purely de facto account of projectibility is not viable. The resulting hypothesis is that the conception of «natural kind terms» is only interesting insofar as they are seen as a kind of projectible general terms and thus as parts of classifications used in natural science, more generally, in inductive practices, and that this is a perspective that makes undue metaphysical readings avoidable. (shrink)

I present three versions –Grimm, Offe and Streeck—of a general argument that is often used to establish that the EU-institutions meets a legitimacy-disabling condition, the so called “no demos” argument (II), embedding them in the context of the notorious “democratic deficit” suspicions against the legal system and practice of the EU (I). After examining the logical structure behind the no-demos intuition considered as an argument (III), I present principled reasons by Möllers and Habermas that show why the “no demos” argument (...) fails to have bite in discussions of the legitimacy and status of the supranational level in the multi-level EU-architecture. These are complemented by another principled reason arising from John Dewey’s conception of the “public” as a clearer alternative for the “popular” requirement of democratic legitimation (IV). I conclude that all three conceptions together suggest that the hunt after pre-politically existing peoples as foundations of democratic legitimacy expresses no more than methodological nationalism without any footing in the material and conceptual requirements of democratic legitimation. Given the absence of a principled problem with the legitimacy of the priority and interference of supranational EU-law in the national legal and political orders, there are thus also no principled reasons to abandon or discredit the European project in the absence of a European nation or society. (shrink)

Quine claims that holism (i.e., the Quine-Duhem thesis) prevents us from defining synonymy and analyticity (section 2). In Word and Object, he dismisses a notion of synonymy which works well even if holism is true. The notion goes back to a proposal from Grice and Strawson and runs thus: R and S are synonymous iff for all sentences T we have that the logical conjunction of R and T is stimulus-synonymous to that of S and T. Whereas Grice and Strawson (...) did not attempt to defend this definition, I try to show that it indeed gives us a satisfactory account of synonymy. Contrary to Quine, the notion is tighter than stimulus-synonymy – particularly when applied to sentences with less than critical semantic mass (section 3). Now according to Quine, analyticity could be defined in terms of synonymy, if synonymy were to make sense: A sentence is analytic iff synonymous to self-conditionals. This leads us to the following notion of analyticity: S is analytic iff, for all sentences T, the logical conjunction of S and T is stimulus-synonymous to T; an analytic sentence does not change the semantic mass of any theory to which it may be conjoined (section 4). This notion is tighter than Quine's stimulus-analyticity; unlike stimulus-analyticity, it does not apply to those sentences from the very center of our theories which can be assented to come what may, even though they are not synthetic in the intuitive sense (section 5). Conclusion: We can have well-defined notions of synonymy and analyticity even if we embrace Quine's holism, naturalism, behaviorism, and radical translation. Quine's meaning skepticism is to be repudiated on Quinean grounds. (shrink)

This article presents a critical analysis of two influential readings of Kant’s Second Analogy, namely, Gerd Buchdahl’s “modest reading” and Michael Friedman’s “strong reading.” After pointing out the textual and philosophical problems with each, I advance an alternative reading of the Second Analogy argument. On my reading, the Second Analogy argument proves the existence of necessary and strictly universal causal laws. This, however, does not guarantee that Kant has a solution for the problem of induction. After I explain why (...) the empirical lawfulness of nature does not guarantee the empirical uniformity of nature, I examine the modal status of empirical laws in Kant and argue contra Buchdahl and Friedman that empirical laws express two different kinds of necessity that are not reducible to each other. -/- . (shrink)

Review of Simplicius: On Aristotle, On the Heavens 3.1-7, trans. Ian Mueller, London: Duckworth, 2009.

In this paper, we deal with the issue of contradictory beliefs, particularly with regard to Philosophical Counseling: both voices from the philosophical tradition (with no claim of being exhaustive!) and concepts developed by philosophical practitioners will be considered, in order to make clear what a wide range of resources for dealing with contradictions is available to the philosopher who may wish to engage in Philosophical Counseling. Among the philosophical practitioners, we devote special consideration to Ben Mijuskovic and Gerd Achenbach, (...) and this for two main reasons: first, because the issue of contradiction plays a central role in their concept of Philosophical Counseling and, accordingly, it is given special consideration in their writings; second, because their approaches to Philosophical Counseling are so different that by looking at them one can get an impression of the variety of the positions one can adopt in Philosophical Counseling with respect to the issue of contradiction. (shrink)

Unter Philosophischer Praxis versteht man professionell betriebene philosophische Lebensberatung. In diesem Artikel werden eine kontinentale Konzeption von Philosophischer Praxis und eine analytische – anhand von Aufsätzen von Gerd Achenbach und Ben Mijuskovic – gegenübergestellt und mit einigen Bemerkungen Wittgensteins in Beziehung gesetzt. Es zeigt sich, dass diese Bemerkungen als Korrektiv sowohl der kontinentalen als auch der analytischen Auffassung gelesen werden können.

Experiments are presented showing that visual search for Mueller-Lyer (ML) stimuli is based on complete configurations, rather than component segments. Segments easily detected in isolation were difficult to detect when embedded in a configuration, indicating preemption by low-level groups. This preemption—which caused stimulus components to become inaccessible to rapid search—was an all-or-nothing effect, and so could serve as a powerful test of grouping. It is shown that these effects are unlikely to be due to blurring by simple spatial filters at (...) early visual levels. It is proposed instead that they are due to more sophisticated processes that rapidly bind contour fragments into spatially-extended assemblies. These results support the view that rapid visual search cannot access the primitives formed at the earliest stages of visual processing; rather, it can access only higher-level, more ecologically-relevant structures. (shrink)

We argue that the interaction of biased media coverage and widespread employment of the recognition heuristic can produce epistemic injustices. First, we explain the recognition heuristic as studied by Gerd Gigerenzer and colleagues, highlighting how some of its components are largely external to, and outside the control of, the cognitive agent. We then connect the recognition heuristic with recent work on the hypotheses of embedded, extended, and scaffolded cognition, arguing that the recognition heuristic is best understood as an instance (...) of scaffolded cognition. In section three, we consider the double-edged sword of cognitive scaffolding. On the one hand, scaffolds can reduce the internal processing demands on cognitive agents while increasing their access to information. On the other hand, the use of scaffolding leaves cognitive agents increasingly vulnerable to forming false beliefs or failing to form beliefs at all about particular topics. With respect to the recognition heuristic, agents rely on third parties (such as the media) to report not just what’s true but also what’s important or valuable. This makes cognitive agents relying on these third parties vulnerable to two erroneous influences: 1) because they don’t recognize something, it isn’t important or valuable, and 2) because they do recognize something, it is important or valuable. Call the latter the Kardashian Inference and the former the Darfur Inference. In section four, we use Fricker’s (2007) concept of epistemic injustice to characterize the nature and harm of these false inferences, with special emphasis on the Darfur Inference. In section five, we use data-mining and an empirical study to show how Gigerenzer’s population estimation task is liable to produce Darfur Inferences. We conclude with some speculative remarks on more important Darfur Inferences, and how to avoid them by scaffolding better. One primary way to accomplish this it to shift the burden of embodying the virtue of epistemic justice from the hearer or consumer of media to the media themselves. (shrink)

John Corcoran and George Boger. Aristotelian logic and Euclidean geometry. Bulletin of Symbolic Logic. 20 (2014) 131. -/- By an Aristotelian logic we mean any system of direct and indirect deductions, chains of reasoning linking conclusions to premises—complete syllogisms, to use Aristotle’s phrase—1) intended to show that their conclusions follow logically from their respective premises and 2) resembling those in Aristotle’s Prior Analytics. Such systems presuppose existence of cases where it is not obvious that the conclusion follows from the premises: (...) there must be something deductions can show. Corcoran calls a proposition that follows from given premises a hidden consequence of those premises if it is not obvious that the proposition follows from those premises. By a Euclidean geometry we mean an extended discourse beginning with basic premises—axioms, postulates, definitions—1) treating a universe of geometrical figures and 2) resembling Euclid’s Elements. There were Euclidean geometries before Euclid (fl. 300 BCE), even before Aristotle (384–322 BCE). Bochenski, Lukasiewicz, Patzig and others never new this or if they did they found it inconvenient to mention. Euclid shows no awareness of Aristotle. It is obvious today—as it should have been obvious in Euclid’s time, if anyone knew both—that Aristotle’s logic was insufficient for Euclid’s geometry: few if any geometrical theorems can be deduced from Euclid’s premises by means of Aristotle’s deductions. Aristotle’s writings don’t say whether his logic is sufficient for Euclidean geometry. But, there is not even one fully-presented example. However, Aristotle’s writings do make clear that he endorsed the goal of a sufficient system. Nevertheless, incredible as this is today, many logicians after Aristotle claimed that Aristotelian logics are sufficient for Euclidean geometries. This paper reviews and analyses such claims by Mill, Boole, De Morgan, Russell, Poincaré, and others. It also examines early contrary statements by Hintikka, Mueller, Smith, and others. Special attention is given to the argumentations pro or con and especially to their logical, epistemic, and ontological presuppositions. What methodology is necessary or sufficient to show that a given logic is adequate or inadequate to serve as the underlying logi of a given science. (shrink)

In the centennial year of John Dewey’s classic, Democracy and Education (1916), this paper revisits his thesis of the reciprocity of means and ends, arguing that it remains of central importance for debate over the aims of education. The paper provides a Dewey-inspired rebuttal of arguments for an ‘ultimate aim,’ but balances this with a development of the strong overlaps between proponents of pragmatism, intellectual virtues education (Jason Baehr) and critical thinking education (Harvey Siegel). Siegel’s ‘Kantian’ justification of critical thinking (...) as an ultimate aim is critiqued, and contrary to Siegel’s ‘generalist’ focus on logic, the paper concludes with specific suggestions for how the study of ecological rationality and dual-process theories (Gerd Gigerenzer; Keith Stanovich and others) should impact how we teach for critical thinking dispositions. -/- Presentation paper for ‘The Epistemic Aims of Education’ Workshop, Eidyn Research Center & University of Edinburgh, 2016. Special thanks to as IASH Center for sabbatical Fellowship support. (shrink)

: The purpose of this paper is to address from a normative perspective issues raised by John Mueller in Redeeming Economics: Rediscovering the Missing Element. Mueller criticizes economists, including Austrians, for failing to properly address unilateral transfers—in particular, charity, childcare, and crime—in economic thought. Mueller challenges economist Gary Becker’s position that giving increases the […] The post “Charity, Childcare, and Crime: From Objectivist Ethics to the Austrian School” appeared first on Libertarian Papers.

Largely neglected today, the work of Karl Philipp Moritz was a highly influential source for Early German Romanticism. Moritz considered the form of myth as essential to the absolute nature of the divine subject. This defence was based upon his aesthetic theory, which held that beautiful art was “disinterested”, or complete in itself. For Moritz, Myth, like art, constitutes a totality providing an idiom free from restriction in the imitation of the divine. This examination offers a consideration of Moritz’s aesthetics (...) and mythography, before turning briefly to consider his influence on the authors of Early German Romanticism. An understanding of the role of Moritz’s thought supports a number of recent claims that challenge the conventional reading of Romanticism. At the same time it allows us to see Romanticism’s unconventional realist theological programme, permitting us to overcome the problematic secularising readings of the movement. I would like to thank Kurt Mueller-Vollmer, as well as Fredrick Beiser and Lars Fischer for their help with this project. (shrink)

The article focuses on prosecutor's fallacy and interrogator's fallacy, the two kinds of reasoning in inferring a suspect's guilt. The prosecutor's fallacy is a combination of two conditional probabilities that lead to unfortunate commission of error in the process due to the inclination of the prosecutor in the establishment of strong evidence that will indict the defendant. It provides a comprehensive discussion of Gerd Gigerenzer's discourse on a criminal case in Germany explaining the perils of prosecutor's fallacy in his (...) application of probability to practical problems. It also discusses the interrogator's fallacy which was introduced by Robert A. J. Matthews as the error on the assumption that confessional evidence can never reduce the probability of guilt. (shrink)

Bounded rationality gets a bad rap in epistemology. It is argued that theories of bounded rationality are overly context‐sensitive; conventionalist; or dependent on ordinary language (Carr, 2022; Pasnau, 2013). In this paper, I have three aims. The first is to set out and motivate an approach to bounded rationality in epistemology inspired by traditional theories of bounded rationality in cognitive science. My second aim is to show how this approach can answer recent challenges raised for theories of bounded rationality. My (...) third aim is to clarify the role of rational ideals in bounded rationality. (shrink)

To approach the issue of the recent proposal of an Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES) put forth by Massimo Pigliucci and Gerd Müller, I suggest to consider the EES as a metascientific view: a description of what’s new in how evolutionary biology is carried out, not only a description of recently learned aspects of evolution. Knowing ‘what is it to do research’ in evolutionary biology, today versus yesterday, can aid training, research and career choices, establishment of relationships and collaborations, (...) decision of funding and research policies, in order to make the field advance for the better. After reviewing the concepts associated to the EES proposal (categorized for convenience as mechanisms, measures, fields, perspectives and applications), I show their transience, and sketch out ongoing disagreements about the EES. Then I examine the deep difficulties, i.e., the enormity and complexity of the covered field, affecting the achievement of trusted metascientific views; the insufficiency of conceptual analysis to capture the substance of scientific research; the entanglement between empirical and metascientific concepts, between multiple chronologies, and between descriptive and normative intentions; and the ineliminable stakeholding of any reviewer involved in the reviewed field. I propose that disciplines such as scientometrics, ethnography, sociology, economics and history, combined with conceptual analysis, inspire a more rigorous approach to the evolutionary biology scientific community, more grounded and shared, confirming or transforming claims for ‘synthesis’ while preserving their maintenance goals. (shrink)

This book is a collection of articles dealing with criticisms of Robert S. Hartman’s theory of formal axiology. During his lifetime, Hartman wrote responses to many of his critics. Some of these were previously published but many are published here for the first time. In particular, published here are Hartman’s replies to such critics as Hector Neri Castañeda, Charles Hartshorne, Rem B. Edwards, Robert E. Carter, G. R. Grice, Nicholas Rescher, Robert W. Mueller, Gordon Welty, Pete Gunter, George Kimball Plochmann, (...) William Eckhardt, and Robert S. Brumbaugh. Crticial essays and responses to them developed by Rem B. Edwards, Frank G. Forrest, and Mark A. Moore after Hartman’s untimely death in 1973 are also included. (shrink)

Kant's reasoning in his special metaphysics of nature is often opaque, and the character of his a priori foundation for Newtonian science is the subject of some controversy. Recent literature on the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science has fallen well short of consensus on the aims and reasoning in the work. Various of the doctrines and even the character of the reasoning in the Metaphysical Foundations have been taken to present insuperable obstacles to accepting Kant's claim to ground Newtonian science. (...) Gordon Brittan and Gerd Buchdahl, amongst others, have argued that Kant's stated aims in this case are not to be taken at face value, and that prior ontological commitments play a hidden but central role in Kant's special metaphysics. ;Michael Friedman has shown how Kant's stated aims can be taken seriously with his ingenious reconstruction of the Metaphysical Foundations as a demonstration of the a priori basis for our thinking bodies to be in true motion and in absolute space. However, Friedman does not address the issue of matter theory--despite the importance of the issue to Kant. I argue that a strict reading of both the stated aims and doctrines of the Metaphysical Foundations is possible, since much of Kant's reasoning about the empirical concept of matter can be explained by his views on how the construction of empirical concepts is possible. ;Kant's quasi-mathematical constructions are pivotal in Friedman's interpretation. Constructibility is Kant's criterion of acceptability for the concepts of natural science. Yet Kant notoriously fails to construct the dynamical concept of matter, and accepts this failure with an equally notorious complacency. I argue that Kant's criteria of empirical concept construction, apart from any prior ontological commitments, are enough to generate his views on matter. Kant's failure to construct the requisite concept of matter can be ascribed to a missing law of nature, a law of the relation of forces the discovery of which Kant thought imminent. I conclude that matter theory is central to the Metaphysical Foundations, but that this does not undermine Kant's stated aim of giving the a priori ground of Newtonian science. (shrink)

Even when they are defined with precision, one can often read and hear judgments about the vagueness of heuristics in debates about heuristic reasoning. This opinion is not just frequent but also quite reasonable. In fact, during the 1990s, there was a certain controversy concerning this topic that confronted two of the leading groups in the field of heuristic reasoning research, each of whom held very different perspectives. In the present text, we will focus on two of the papers published (...) in Psychological Review, wherein the arguments of each of these groups were presented:. (shrink)

Authors from all over the world unite in an effort to cultivate dialogue between Asian and Western philosophy. The papers forge a new, East-West comparative path on the whole range of issues in Kant studies. The concept of personhood, crucial for both traditions, serves as a springboard to address issues such as knowledge acquisition and education, ethics and self-identity, religious/political community building, and cross-cultural understanding. Edited by Stephen Palmquist, founder of the Hong Kong Philosophy Café and well known for both (...) his Kant expertise and his devotion to fostering philosophical dialogue, the book presents selected and reworked papers from the Kant in Asia conference, held in Hong Kong in May 2009. In addition to keynote essays by Patricia Kitcher (Columbia), Günter Wohlfart (Wuppertal), and Cheng Chung-ying (Hawaii), the book contains 64 contributed essays. The latter include contributions from Andrew Brook, David Cummiskey, Rainer Enskat, Wolfgang Ertl, Hans Feger, Klaus-Gerd Giesen, Ronald Green, Martin Moors, Ulrich Seeberg, Susan Shell, Rein Vos, Günter Zoeller, and numerous Asian philosophers. (shrink)

The importance of unconscious cognition is seeping into popular consciousness. A number of recent books bridging the academic world and the reading public stress that at least a portion of decision-making depends not on conscious reasoning, but instead on cognition that occurs below awareness. However, these books provide a limited perspective on how the unconscious mind works and the potential power of intuition. This essay is an effort to expand the picture. It is structured around the book that has garnered (...) the most attention, Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink , but it also considers Gut Feelings by Gerd Gigerenzer and How Doctors Think by Jerome Groopman . These books help deepen the . (shrink)

This paper looks at Gregory of Nyssa's so-called "bundle theory" sensible individuals and matter (as recently argued by Gerd Van Riel and Thomas Wauters in a 2020 article) amidst the broader context of Gregory's view of created beings and his reception of Neoplatonist, Stoic, and Aristotelian conceptions of particulars and matter. I argue that Gregory's position is closer to an Aristotelian position, despite the parallels to Plotinus and other contemporaneous bundle theory positions: in arguing against prime matter, and insofar (...) as he emphasizes the identity of each kind of created being with its material substrate—understood as a "bundle" of properties—Gregory inadvertently upholds a reading of Aristotle that refutes an ontological notion of prime matter. (shrink)

En estas páginas hemos presentado varios argumentos para defender que existe una conexión entre el empleo de heurísticas y los procesos de deliberación. En lugar de caracterizar las heurísticas en función de las disciplinas, los campos y/o los ámbitos en que se emplean—tal y como hace, por ejemplo, el grupo ABC, i.e. racionalidad ecológica—las hemos proyectado sobre nuestros enclaves deliberativos, esto es, sobre un espacio eminentemente retórico y político. En dichos enclaves, tal y como solía recordarnos Quintín Racionero, la téchne (...) de la persuasión se nos presenta como parte del órganon de la filosofía práctica porque está aplicada a un espacio ontológico fundado por la comunicación humana. Y es en el seno de dicha comunicación como cabe entender la proliferación de razonamientos heurísticos encaminados al cálculo, la estimación y/o la ponderación, con ayuda de los cuales no sólo se orienta la acción colectiva sino las mismas fases de la deliberación. (shrink)

A precise overview of pediatric emergencies would require taxological considerations around the differences between strictly neurological factors, as modulated both via neuroanatomical differentiation in the context of normal vs. abnormal biological development, and underlying neurofunctional mechanisms, and the connection with such processes with the neuromodulated activation of digestive processes. Furthermore, an important distinction between nephrological considerations and urological considerations is necessary, more specifically, by focusing on the treatment of diseases affecting the kidneys and their ability to function in the first (...) case, and on the treatment of diseases affecting the urinary tract in the latter. In this paper, we will present a general overview of the most important aspects of each category, starting with the brief description of neurological emergencies as indicating a general (system-based vs. localized) deterioration of mental capacity, with added possible partial or full loss of cognitive capacities and/or impaired perceptual modalities and consciousness, with or without response to stimuli. (shrink)

Review of: Menachem Fisch; Simon Schaffer (Editors). William Whewell: A Composite Portrait. xiv + 403 pp., bibl., index. Oxford: Clarendon Press of Oxford University Press, 1991. $98.