The history of the relationship between science and metaphysics is riddled with controversy. Aristotle and his followers see metaphysics as providing the foundations on which science and other human intellectual endeavors build. In opposition to the thoughts of Aristotle, Plato and his followers separate metaphysics from science as independent and unrelated sciences. With the Logical positivists, the debate is a reject of metaphysics in favour of science. Metaphysics then is seen as a pseudo-science. Rudolf Carnap's the "Elimination of Metaphysics through (...) the Logical Analysis of Language" and Alfred Jules Ayer's elimination of metaphysics from the domain of knowledge are examined, while Heidegger is brought in to salvage the situation given that he holds on to the superiority of metaphysics over science. (shrink)

Since the time Nietzsche declared the death of God, while Auguste Comte postulated in the Law of Three Stages that humankind had gone pass the religious/mythical stage as well as the metaphysical/speculative stage and was now living in the positive/scientific stage, there has been the consistent institutionalization of atheism and secularism. The early part of the 20th century saw Freud’s publication of the Future of an Illusion in which he predicted that as science continues to advance, religion will become obsolete. (...) The logical positivist too lumped up metaphysical and religious propositions as meaningless and nonsensical. It is within this atmosphere that Alfred North Whitehead comes into philosophy. The main question that this paper seeks to answer is: Why does the concept of God occupy an eminent place in Whitehead’s system when all his contemporaries consider God a hypothesis they no longer needed as Laplace had earlier maintained? Of great interest here is the fact that before 1925 Whitehead’s writings had no concern for God. However, in his 1925 Science and the Modern World, the chapter on “Abstractions” required that there be such an explanatory factor, reason for which it is immediately followed by the chapter on “God”. The last part of his Process and Reality treats elaborately the nature of the relationship between God and the world. This paper explores the reasons why Whitehead places a lot of interest on God and the role that this God plays in his system. (shrink)

This paper focuses on how building human potentialities in education can enhance learning competencies in students for the development of the self and the society. Human potential refers to a possibility human beings are capable of achieving. Montessori believes that the traditional system of education directs students to learn through memorization and recitation techniques and does not lay much emphasis on helping students to bring out their maximum potential. What goal can we attribute to education today? Our focus shall be (...) to answer the questions, what are the favorable conditions under which education can help to build human potentialities? Is Montessori’s view essential in enhancing creativity and building the necessary competencies of the learners in our society today? Education is a natural process carried out by the human individual. It is not what the teacher gives and is not acquired by listening to words but by experiences upon the environment. Montessori opts that education should help the learners develop confidence in their emerging abilities and offer them the opportunity to gain independence in daily tasks. The pedagogic significance of this work serves as a guide for the educational system in Africa and Cameroon in particular. It serves as a guide for curriculum developers and policy makers to bring out programs that will enhance the building of individual competencies for eventual development. Thus Montessori’s idea of education to build human potentialities is indispensible to our educational system today. (shrink)

In this paper we concur with Alfred North Whitehead that education with inert ideas is harmful and useless to the student and the society at large. Inert ideas constitute dead knowledge, that is, knowledge that does not relate to one’s day-to-day experiences nor to knowledge gained from other disciplines. Knowledge acquired by students should have an impact on their lived existential situatedness and it should have a link or correlation with knowledge gained from other disciplines. How do we avoid inert (...) ideas in education? Whitehead admonishes us to keep knowledge alive. This, to him, is the central problem of education. We argue in this paper that in an age dominated by fake news, alternative facts and deep fakes, critical thinking and self-examination are no longer options in the process of education. Thus, the traditional banking system of education is outmoded and should be replaced by the cultivation of critical thinking skills in the child. To do this we must take seriously Whitehead’s two commandments of education; the rhythm of education which implies giving the child knowledge appropriate to their age; and the trilogy of freedom-discipline-freedom. (shrink)

Ever since Hume launched a book-burning campaign against metaphysics, and Kant declared the “end of metaphysics”, supported by the Law of Three Stages of Comte and the rejection of metaphysics by the Logical Positivists, we are seen to be living in a post metaphysical era. This paper situates the historical roots of the rejection of metaphysics and then argues forcefully that metaphysics is indispensably relevant in our era. We may theoretically be living after the era of metaphysics, but in practice, (...) in all academic and scientific endeavors, we cannot do without metaphysical presuppositions and assumptions. Those proclaiming the death of metaphysics are in fact valorizing metaphysics since at the base of their arguments are metaphysical principles. (shrink)

Central to this chapter is a basic philosophical concept of the nature of modern science which exists amongst positivists, like Auguste Comte, who rejects as illegitimate all that cannot be directly observed in the investigation and study of any subject. Our daily experience of the nature of science continues to give us reasons to unlearn what can be considered as prejudices and errors in our conception of the nature of science. Consequently, the question "what is the nature of modern science?" (...) still perplexes us, and the answers we provide to this question often reveal how distorted our vision of history and thought has become over the years. This chapter shall, via the method of critical analysis in philosophy pass through Comte's three stages of arriving at the truth. This approach rejects as non-scientific all that cannot be directly observed in the investigation and study of any subject against Whitehead's approach in which he tries to make a “dispassionate consideration of the nature of things, antecedently to any special investigation into their details”. This is a standpoint Whitehead terms “metaphysical.” This explains why he developed a comprehensive metaphysical system for the understanding of science, society, and self as found in his major texts. In this light, science cannot be done without taking metaphysics into account. (shrink)

Against the separation of metaphysics and science advocated for by Plato and his followers and against the rejection of metaphysics in favour of science the Logical Positivists, this work argues that 'a new link' between metaphysics and science is all the more necessary for man to better understand nature. This is precisely what Whitehead's process metaphysics purports to do. But why is 'a new link' necessary It is necessary because Aristotle and his followers already established a link 'an old link' (...) by making metaphysics the foundation of all the sciences. Yet, Aristotelian metaphysics is a substance based metaphysics while Whitehead's metaphysics takes process and especially the category of relation seriously. Whitehead's Process metaphysics prioritizes process over permanence, becoming over being, relation over substance. Why does Whitehead have such preference for process metaphysics over classical metaphysics The answer, as shall be shown in this paper, lies in science with the demise of Newtonian science and the rise of Einsteinian science based on the theory of relativity. In an era when the concept of depassement de la metaphysique has become such a dominant feature of modern and postmodern thought, it is therefore our point of interest to find out why Whitehead who situates himself within this period takes up metaphysics as the foundation of his philosophizing Why does Whitehead embark on reconciling science and metaphysics when all his contemporaries are dissociating themselves from the former These questions will be the main concern of my research in this paper. (shrink)

Some bioethicists argue that a doctor may frame treatment options in terms of effects on survival rather than on mortality in order to influence patients to choose the better option. The debate over such framing typically assumes that the survival and mortality frames convey the same numerical information. However, certain empirical findings contest this numerical equivalence assumption, demonstrating that framing effects may in fact be due to the two frames implying different information about the numerical bounds of survival and mortality (...) rates. In this paper, I use these findings to argue that framing is presumptively wrong because it violates the duty of proper disclosure. Along the way, I highlight morally relevant features affecting the permissibility of framing, tackle three objections and draw some general lessons for the ethics of nudging. (shrink)

In ‘Measuring the Consequences of Rules’, Holly Smith presents two problems involving the indeterminacy of compliance, which she takes to be fatal for all forms of rule-utilitarianism. In this reply, I attempt to dispel both problems.

Suppose an agent is choosing between rescuing more people with a lower probability of success, and rescuing fewer with a higher probability of success. How should they choose? Our moral judgments about such cases are not well-studied, unlike the closely analogous non-moral preferences over monetary gambles. In this paper, I present an empirical study which aims to elicit the moral analogues of our risk preferences, and to assess whether one kind of evidence—concerning how they depend on outcome probabilities—can debunk them. (...) I find significant heterogeneity in our moral risk preferences—in particular, moral risk-seeking and risk-neutrality are surprisingly popular. I also find that subjects’ judgments aren't probability-dependent, thus providing an empirical defense against debunking arguments from probability dependence. (shrink)

Considerable recent research in neurosciences has dealt with the topic of consciousness, even though there is still disagreement about how to identify and classify conscious states. Recent behavioral work on the topic also exists. We survey recent behavioral and neuroscientific literature with the aims of commenting on strengths and weaknesses of the literature and mapping new directions and recommendations for experimental psychologists. We reconcile this literature with a view of human information processing (Cowan, 1988; Cowan et al., 2024) in which (...) a capacity-limited focus of attention is embedded within the activated portion of long-term memory, with dual bottom-up and top-down control of the focus of attention. None of the many extant theories fully captures what we propose as the organization of conscious thought at cognitive and neural levels. It seems clear that information from various cognitive functions, based on signals from various brain areas, is integrated into a conscious whole. In our new proposal, the integration involves funneling information to a hub or focus of attention neurally centered in the parietal lobes and functionally connected to areas representing the currently attended information. This funneling process (bringing information from diverse sensory and frontal sources to contact a small parietal area where attended information is coordinated and combined) may be the converse of global broadcasting, from other proposals (Baars et al., 2021; Baars & Franklin, 2003; Dehaene & Changeux, 2011). The proposed system incorporates many principles from previous research and theorization and strives toward a resolution of the relation between consciousness and attention. Keywords: consciousness, attention, embedded processes model, experimental psychology, neuroscience. (shrink)

A debunking argument contends that some target moral judgments were produced by unreliable processes and concludes that such judgments are unjustified. Debunking arguments face a regress challenge: to show that a process is unreliable at tracking the moral truth, we need to rely on other moral judgments. But we must show that these relied-upon judgments are also reliable, which requires yet a further set of judgments, whose reliability needs to be confirmed too, and so on. Some argue that the debunker (...) faces an insurmountable regress, which disables the debunking conclusion. In this paper, I explore and defuse this regress challenge. (shrink)

Moral metasemantic theories explain how our moral thought and talk are about certain properties. Given the connection between what our moral terms are about and which moral claims are true, it might be thought that metasemantic theorising can justify first-order ethical conclusions, thus providing a novel way of doing moral epistemology. In this paper, we spell out one kind of argument from metasemantic theories to normative ethical conclusions, and argue that it fails to transmit justification from premises to conclusion. We (...) give three reasons for this transmission failure, which together pose a serious challenge to such metasemantic arguments. (shrink)

Debunking arguments in ethics contend that our moral beliefs have dubious evolutionary, cultural, or psychological origins—hence concluding that we should doubt such beliefs. Debates about debunking are often couched in coarse-grained terms—about whether our moral beliefs are justified or not, for instance. In this paper, I propose a more detailed Bayesian analysis of debunking arguments, which proceeds in the fine-grained framework of rational confidence. Such analysis promises several payoffs: it highlights how debunking arguments don’t affect all agents, but rather only (...) those agents who updated on their intuitions using a specific range of evidentiary weights; it underscores how the debunkers shouldn’t conclude that we should reduce confidence beyond some threshold, but rather only that we should reduce confidence by some amount; and it proposes a method of integrating different kinds of evidence—about the kinds of epistemic flaws at play, about the different possible origins of our moral beliefs, about the background normative assumptions we’re entitled to make—in order to arrive at a rational moral credence in light of debunking. (shrink)

The behavior/structure methodological dichotomy as locus of scientific inquiry is closely related to the issue of modeling and theory change in scientific explanation. Given that the traditional tension between structure and behavior in scientific modeling is likely here to stay, considering the relevant precedents in the history of ideas could help us better understand this theoretical struggle. This better understanding might open up unforeseen possibilities and new instantiations, particularly in what concerns the proposed technological modification of the human condition. The (...) sequential structure of this paper is twofold. The contribution of three philosophers better known in the humanities than in the study of science proper are laid out. The key theoretical notions interweaving the whole narrative are those of mechanization, constructability and simulation. They shall provide the conceptual bridge between these classical thinkers and the following section. Here, a panoramic view of three significant experimental approaches in contemporary scientific research is displayed, suggesting that their undisclosed ontological premises have deep roots in the Western tradition of the humanities. This ontological lock between core humanist ideals and late research in biology and nanoscience is ultimately suggested as responsible for pervasively altering what is canonically understood as “human”. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 42.1 (2004) 113-115 [Access article in PDF] Wilhelm Dilthey. The Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences. Edited with an Introduction by Rudolf A. Makkreel and Frithjof Rodi. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002. Pp xiii + 399. Cloth $55.00. The first complete English translation of Wilhelm Dilthey's (1833-1911) most important mature work—a seminal work for hermeneutics, phenomenology, critical theory, and the (...) philosophy of history and the human sciences—is to be greatly welcomed. This excellent translation conveys the subtlety and richness of Dilthey's German. Its innovative translations of key terms will provide renewed stimulus to interpreting Dilthey's works.This edition includes Dilthey's investigation of the structures of consciousness in his three preliminary "Studies toward the Foundation of the Human Sciences," his exploration [End Page 113] of the import of the productive systems of historical life for knowledge in The Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences, and his final and perhaps best formulation of hermeneutics in "The Understanding of Other Persons and Their Manifestations of Life."Although Carnap and others utilized the word Aufbau in the sense of epistemic "construction," Makkreel and Rodi clarify how Dilthey used it in the sense of "formation." The formation of the historical world refers to its articulation in the human sciences which themselves theoretically reflect this historical world (GSW3: 1). They also argue that Dilthey's theory of the human sciences is not merely an epistemology (Erkenntnistheorie), but a theory of knowledge (Theorie des Wissens) that relates knowing to its context. Whereas epistemology seeks to establish the foundations of conceptual cognition (Erkenntnis), Dilthey places the epistemology of the human sciences within a larger context of the knowledge (Wissen) embodied in social practices and historical forms of life. Knowledge encompasses not only the conceptual cognition of reality, but also the values and purposes established about it.Dilthey accordingly situated the human sciences, which are determined by their respective object and how the object is given (SW3: 38), in relation to a pretheoretical life-nexus and its forms of elementary or ordinary understanding. These are tied up with the temporality, historicity, and structures of social life; with an epochal "objective spirit." Objective spirit indicates the ways in which the past has been objectified and continues to shape contemporary practices and it is analyzed in the human sciences as cultural systems and the external organization of society. A significant characteristic of the Formation is the development of the notion of "productive system or nexus." This new translation of Wirkungszusammenhang suggests a historical efficacy or productivity prior to any analysis of it as either causal or teleological (SW3: 4).The human sciences include the study of dynamic interconnected systems that articulate the intersection of meaning, value, purpose, and force. Dilthey interpreted these temporally, such that meaning primarily concerns how humans are determined by their past, value is based on their present feeling of life, and purpose is projective striving into the future in the face of productive forces (Kräfte) which cannot always be predicted or controlled.For Dilthey, understanding (verstehen) is intrinsically interpretive. Humans can cognize themselves and others only indirectly (SW3: 108), since we are conscious and reflective beings who are bound to the facticity of our bodies and world. Given that we know ourselves and others primarily through actions, life-expressions, and their effects—rather than through introspection or intuition—and that everyday understanding can face breakdowns and what seems distant or strange, elementary understanding leads to higher forms of understanding and interpretation; i.e., hermeneutics. Dilthey's project of a critique of historical reason proceeds from the context of life in all of its complexity and concreteness to the conceptual cognition of the sciences and, finally, to reflective awareness (Besinnung). This reflection is made possible by the prereflective reflexivity (Innesein or Innewerden) of the human subject and, with its double meaning of "sense" (Sinn) as meaning and bodily awareness, constitutes the basic movement of Dilthey's thought.Understanding provides more than scientific access to... (shrink)

In den Abschnitten X und XI der Dialoge über Natürliche Religion legt Hume seine Ansichten zum traditionellen theologischen Problem des Übels dar. Humes Anmerkungen zu diesem Thema scheinen mir eine reichhaltige Mischung aus Einsichten und Irrtümern zu enthalten. Mein Ziel in diesem Aufsatz besteht darin, diese entgegengesetzten Elemente seiner Diskussion zu entwirren.

Markets sit in places and knowledge produced in these places also constitute the very foundation of markets’ viability and market actors’ performative competitive edge. However, not all markets are created equal primarily in the context of their importance in the global economy. Thus conceived, we imagine a world economy or markets populated by people in front of wide computer screens making sense of financial algorithms and derivatives. In a way, here, we see a market that is run by codified knowledge, (...) or scientific knowledge that transcends boundaries. But what about a conception of market that recognizes the production of knowledge in the periphery, and this instance, fish markets, where place-based knowledge marks the contours of engagement of fishmongers to their wider world and yet, concomitantly, also underscores their attachment to place? In this article, in an ethnographic study of four fish markets in a small coastal town in southern Philippine, fishmongers engage with market processes via their production and deployment of vernacular knowledge which is performed in the form of public specialized knowledge, tacit knowledge and network knowledge. In these forms of vernacular knowledge, we become cognizant of the complexities of market processes even in places that are relegated to the margins, where knowledge plays a crucial role in sensing the world and making it lived and real. (shrink)

In diesem Aufsatz, werde ich die Frage des Naturalismus in Plessners Philosophie des organischen Lebens und seiner amerikanischen Rezeption, in besonders die philosophischen-biologischen Schriften von Marjorie Grene, untersuchen. Die amerikanische Philosophin Grene war die Hauptvertreterin Plessners im Englischen Sprachraum in 20sten Jahrhundert, die Plessners anthropologischen Argumentation in ihren Schriften zur Philosophie der Biologie aufgenommen und verwendet hat. Grene kritisierte in ihren frühen Schriften Heidegger, Sartre, und die Existenzphilosophie, die das menschliche Dasein von der Natur radikal absondert und die negative Affekte (...) wie Angst hervorhebt, in Vergleich mit Plessners weiterem Blick der Leibhaften, Sinnlichen, Tierischen Entwicklung des menschlichen Lebens. Die menschliche Existenz kann nicht dualistisch, wo „keine Brücke über den Abgrund zwischen Mensch und Tier führt,“ sondern nur biologisch-lebensphilosophisch oder ökologisch verstanden werden. Plessner und Grene setzen sich mit dem Reduktionismus des modernen Naturalismus auseinander und zeigen, wie das Natürliche weiter und ergänzt gedacht werden muss, weil der Naturalismus keine ausreichenden Begriffe für die Auslegung der Erscheinungen und Ausdrucksformen des organischen Lebens besitzt. Die Unterscheidung zwischen der "zentrischen Positionalität" des Tiers und der "exzentrischen Positionalität" des menschlichen Tiers ermöglicht eine holistisch aber differenzierte Beschreibung der Natur und Kultur, insbesondere die natürlichen Künstlichkeit, die der Kultur und das des gesellschaftlichen Lebens. Diese sind Grundlage für die geschichtliche und soziale Bildung, Aufbau, und Strukturierung der natürlichen Spontaneität, Produktivität, und Expressivität des Lebens und ermöglichen die dezentrierte, utopische, und persönliche Individuation der einzelnen Menschen im Lebenszusammenhang, was wichtige soziologische und auch ethische und politische Konsequenzen für Plessner und Grene hat: Der Mensch ist ein natürliches biologisches Individuum, das durchaus fähig ist, eine verantwortliche Person zu werden , und zwar durch die umfassende Beteiligung an (oder als ein einzigartiger Ausdruck) einer Kultur. (shrink)

The hermeneutical dimensions of Chinese philosophy from the Changes of Zhou through its Confucian, Daoist, and contemporary developments have been a creative inspirational source and guiding intellectual thread in the thought of Chung-ying Cheng. Cheng's extensive engagement with the Classic of Changes, its role in the formation of the Chinese philosophical tradition and its comparative interconnections with occidental philosophies, has disclosed its deep hermeneutical orientation. The Yijing encompasses processes of empirical observation, empathetic feeling, and self-reflection in the generation of “images,” (...) or prototypical models that are “form-objects” or “process-events,” which performatively enact a comprehensive ontological and situationally appropriate understanding of nature, society, and one self. I examine three issues in outline arising from Cheng's works in this situation: to what extent Chinese philosophy is hermeneutical with respect to modern European understandings of hermeneutics, and the possibility of the distinctive “onto-generative hermeneutics” that has been articulated for over forty years in the context of Chinese and Western thought in Cheng's prolific works concerning the Yijing. (shrink)

Based on Maldonado-Torres’s formulation of the term, we conceive the decolonial turn as a form of liberating and decolonising reason beyond the liberal and Enlightened emancipation of rationality, and beyond the more radical Euro-critiques that have failed to consistently challenge the legacies of Eurocentrism and white male heteronormativity (often Eurocentric critiques of Eurocentrism). We complement Maldonado-Torres’s account of the decolonial turn in philosophy, theory and critique by providing an analysis of the trajectories of academic philosophy and clarifying the relevance of (...) decolonising philosophy and of the decolonial turn for current efforts in transforming philosophy in face of the challenges of social movements such as the Third World Liberation Front and Black Lives Matter in the United States, and Rhodes Must Fall in South Africa and England. After a brief analysis of the trajectory and current status of philosophy as a discipline in the modern Western research university, we provide examples of the decolonial turn and of decolonising philosophy in three areas: the engagement with (1) Asian and (2) Latin American philosophies, and (3) debates in the philosophy of race and gender. (shrink)

This paper explores the possibility that Hobbesian jurisprudence is best understood as a ‘third way’ in legal theory, irreducible to classical natural law or legal positivism. I sketch two potential ‘third theories’ of law -- legal pragmatism and legal dualism -- and argue that, when considered in its broadest sense, Leviathan is best viewed as an example of legal pragmatism. I consider whether this legal pragmatist interpretation can be sustained in the examination of Leviathan’s treatment of civil law, and argue (...) that the pragmatic interpretation can only be successful if we can resolve two textual issues in that chapter. First, while Hobbes argues that law entails the existence of public (sharable) reasons, he does not adequately defend the view that the sovereign is the unique authority over such reasons in all cases, especially as far as they concern known collective emergencies. Second, Hobbes both affirms and denies that a sovereign can fail to do justice, which is paradoxical. Both problems are best resolved by legal pragmatism, though the second problem resists a fully satisfying resolution. The upshot is that, although Leviathan ought to be regarded as an episode of legal pragmatism, there are trade-offs on every reading. (shrink)

The purpose of this essay is to look at whether Aquinas teaches in De veritate [DV], q. 1, a. 4, that truth is a form inherent in things. I take up this investigation because I am examining Lawrence Dewan's account of Aquinas's teaching on truth.1 On Dewan's account, a significant development occurs in Aquinas's teaching as regards truth as it is found in things. Before the Summa theologiae [ST], Aquinas thought that in addition to truth being in the intellect, it (...) was also in things. In ST, most explicitly in I, q. 16, a. 6, Aquinas no longer thinks that it is in things, but only in the mind. When Dewan says that before the ST truth is "in things" and in the ST it is not "in things," in both cases, by "in things," Dewan means "as a form inherent in things." What exactly this means for Dewan will be gradually brought out as I examine the text Dewan thinks most clearly teaches that truth is a form inherent in things: DV, q. 1, a. 4. (shrink)

PDF with introduction and front and back materials. Abstract: A provocative examination of the consequences of Levinas’s and Adorno’s thought for contemporary ethics and political philosophy. This book unfolds a dialogue between Emmanuel Levinas and Theodor W. Adorno, using their thought to address contemporary environmental and social-political situations. Eric S. Nelson explores the “non-identity thinking” of Adorno and the “ethics of the Other” of Levinas with regard to three areas of concern: the ethical position of nature and “inhuman” material (...) others such as environments and animals; the bonds and tensions between ethics and religion and the formation of the self through the dynamic of violence and liberation expressed in religious discourses; and the problematic uses and limitations of liberal and republican discourses of equality, liberty, tolerance, and their presupposition of the private individual self and autonomous subject. Thinking with and beyond Levinas and Adorno, this work examines the possibility of an anarchic hospitality and solidarity between material others and sensuous embodied life. -/- “This is an extremely impressive, original, and thorough treatment of two key twentieth-century thinkers and their applicability to the most pressing social and political issues of our time.” — Jeffrey A. Bernstein, author of Leo Strauss on the Borders of Judaism, Philosophy, and History -/- “This book is an excellent and timely contribution to political and environmental philosophy, located around a nuanced historical and philosophical approach to Levinas and Adorno. It will be of great interest to anyone concerned with these figures or with the current moment.” — Martin Shuster, author of Autonomy after Auschwitz: Adorno, German Idealism, and Modernity. (shrink)

I argue that a Kantian inspired investigation into animal morality is both a plausible and coherent research program. To show that such an investigation is possible, I argue that philosophers, such as Korsgaard, who argue that reason demarcates nonhuman animals from the domain of moral beings are equivocating in their use of the term ‘rationality’. Kant certainly regards rationality as necessary for moral responsibility from a practical standpoint, but his distinction between the noumenal and phenomenal means that he can only (...) establish it as a marker for morality from a theoretical standpoint. This means that when it comes to evaluating the moral capabilities of others, rationality can be neither necessary nor sufficient for morality, leaving open the possibility of other empirical markers for moral responsibility. I argue that the higher faculties, character, implicit knowledge of universality, and antecedent practical pleasures (which provide a way to distinguish between morally motivated behaviour and other types of socially motivated behaviour) can all serve as empirical markers for morality. There is empirical evidence that at least some animals have conceptual capabilities and therefore the empirical marker of the higher faculties. In addition, there is suggestive evidence that merits further investigation for the other three markers. While this will not provide a definitive answer on whether animals are capable of acting morally, it will provide a Kantian outlook that can be used to evaluate empirical and philosophical work on animal morality. (shrink)

As moral injury is a still-emerging concept within the area of military mental health, prevalence estimates for moral injury and its precursor, potentially morally injurious events (PMIEs), remain unknown for many of the world’s militaries. The present study sought to estimate the prevalence of PMIEs in the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF), using data collected from CAF personnel deployed to Afghanistan, via logistic regressions controlling for relevant sociodemographic, military, and deployment characteristics. Analyses revealed that over 65% of CAF members reported exposure (...) to at least one event that would be considered a PMIE. The most commonly PMIEs individuals reported included seeing ill or injured women and children they were unable to help (48.4%), being unable to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants (43.6%), and finding themselves in a threatening situation where they were unable to respond due to the rules of engagement under which they were required to operate (35.4%). These findings provide support for both the presence of exposure to PMIEs in CAF members and the need for formal longitudinal data collection regarding PMIE exposure and moral injury development. (shrink)

Psychiatry has witnessed a new wave of approaches to clinical phenotyping and the study of psychopathology, including the National Institute of Mental Health’s Research Domain Criteria, clinical staging, network approaches, the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology, and the general psychopathology factor, as well as a revival of interest in phenomenological psychopathology. The question naturally emerges as to what the relationship between these new approaches is – are they mutually exclusive, competing approaches, or can they be integrated in some way and used (...) to enrich each other? In this opinion piece, we propose a possible integration between clinical staging and phenomenological psychopathology. Domains identified in phenomenological psychopathology, such as selfhood, embodiment, affectivity, etc., can be overlaid on clinical stages in order to enrich and deepen the phenotypes captured in clinical staging (‘high resolution’ clinical phenotypes). This approach may be useful both ideographically and nomothetically, in that it could complement diagnosis, enrich clinical formulation, and inform treatment of individual patients, as well as help guide aetiological, prediction, and treatment research. The overlaying of phenomenological domains on clinical stages may require that these domains are reformulated in dimensional rather than categorial terms. This integrative project requires assessment tools, some of which are already available, that are sensitive and thorough enough to pick up on the range of relevant psychopathology. The proposed approach offers opportunities for mutual enrichment: clinical staging may be enriched by introducing greater depth to phenotypes; phenomenological psychopathology may be enriched by introducing stages of severity and disorder progression to phenomenological analysis. (shrink)

Rhythm is generally taken to refer to a temporal pattern of events. Yet in recent years, across diverse fields in the arts, humanities, and social sciences, it has come to serve as the conceptual marker for a wide range of new approaches to understanding relations and relationality, following most explicitly from the late work of Henri Lefebvre. This article explores the temporal aspect of such relational thinking, in particular asking how time is implicated in relations, and how it can be (...) meaningful in those relations. The sense of time is surveyed from the perspectives of both cognition and metaphysics as well as with reference to music scholarship and social theory, and key threads are drawn, from the writings of Gaston Bachelard and Charles Sanders Peirce in particular, in order to suggest that time can be a sign, and that the signifying properties of rhythm have critical social consequences. (shrink)

While there has been significant philosophical debate on whether nonlinguistic animals can possess conceptual capabilities, less time has been devoted to considering 'talking' animals, such as parrots. When they are discussed, their capabilities are often downplayed as mere mimicry. The most explicit philosophical example of this can be seen in Brandom's frequent comparisons of parrots and thermostats. Brandom argues that because parrots (like thermostats) cannot grasp the implicit inferential connections between concepts, their vocal articulations do not actually have any conceptual (...) content. In contrast, I argue that Pepperberg's work with Alex (and other African grey parrots) provides evidence that the vocal articulations of at least some parrots have conceptual content. Using Frege's insight that numbers assert something about a concept, I argue that Alex's ability to answer the question "How many?" depended upon a prior grasp of conceptual content. Developing this claim, I argue that Alex's arithmetical abilities show that he was capable of using numbers as both concepts and objects. Frege's theoretical insight and Pepperberg's empirical work provide reason to reconsider the capabilities of parrots, as well as what sorts of tasks provide evidence for conceptual content. (shrink)

Early Daoism, as articulated in the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi, indirectly addresses environmental issues by intimating a non-reductive naturalistic ethics calling on humans to be open and responsive to the specificities and interconnections of the world and environment to which they belong. "Dao" is not a substantial immanent or transcendent entity but the lived enactment of the intrinsic worth of the "myriad things" and the natural world occurring through how humans address and are addressed by them. Early Daoism potentially corrects (...) both anthropocentrism and biocentrism in environmental ethics by disclosing the things themselves in the context of the selfcultivation of life. Given increasing environmental devastation and the dominance of views, practices, and institutions reducing nature to a background and/or raw material for human activity, this "ethics of encounter" discloses the life of things as inexhaustibly more than human projects and constructs, extending ethical recognition and responsibility beyond social relations and the social self. (shrink)

Abstract: “Paley before Hume: How Not to Teach the Design Argument” Most philosophy of religion classes discuss the classic design argument for the existence of God, and many of these treat Paley’s Natural Theology (1802) before Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779). Following the syllabus of several leading anthologies, I did this for many years, but I now think that is a mistake, because it creates the impression that Hume was responding to Paley. Not only is it obvious on chronological (...) grounds that Hume could not have been responding to Paley; it is just as obvious on textual grounds that the reverse was true: Paley was in fact responding to Hume, and, e.g., carefully crafted a non-analogical version of the argument so as to avoid Hume’s famous criticisms of analogical arguments. (shrink)

This paper excavates the practice-oriented background and therapeutic significance of emptiness in the Madhyamaka philosophy attributed to Nāgārjuna and Sengzhao. Buddhist emptiness unravels experiential and linguistic reification through meditation and argumentation. The historical contexts and uses of the word indicate that it is primarily a practical diagnostic and therapeutic concept. Emptiness does not lead to further views or truths but, akin to yet distinct from Ajñāna and Pyrrhonian skepticism, the suspension of assertion. This sense of emptiness as a practice can (...) be traced in the intercultural transmission of Madhyamaka from Nāgārjuna, its paradigmatic philosopher, to Sengzhao 僧肇, its first pivotal indigenous Chinese representative. (shrink)

Daoism and Environmental Philosophy explores ethics and the philosophy of nature in the Daodejing, the Zhuangzi, and related texts to elucidate their potential significance in our contemporary environmental crisis. This book traces early Daoist depictions of practices of embodied emptying and forgetting and communicative strategies of undoing the fixations of words, things, and the embodied self. These are aspects of an ethics of embracing plainness and simplicity, nourishing the asymmetrically differentiated yet shared elemental body of life of the myriad things, (...) and being responsively attuned in encountering and responding to things. These critical and transformative dimensions of early Daoism provide exemplary models and insights for cultivating a more expansive ecological ethos, environmental culture of nature, and progressive political ecology. This work will be of interest to students and scholars interested in philosophy, environmental ethics and philosophy, religious studies, and intellectual history. (shrink)

In paradigmatic Confucian (Ruist) discourses, emotion (qing) has been depicted as co-arising with human nature (xing) and an irreducible constitutive source of human practices and their interpretation. The affects are concurrently naturally arising and alterable through how individuals react and respond to them and how they are or are not cultivated. That is, emotions are relationally mediated realities given in and transformed through how they are felt, understood, interpreted, and acted upon. Confucian discourses have elucidated the ethical character of the (...) emotions and sought to understand and cultivate emotional life as a hermeneutical and ethical task in establishing expectable patterns of human flourishing that orient virtues, roles, and relations. In this chapter, I explore the extent to which classical Ruist and Neo-Confucian discourses offer hermeneutical models for interpreting the complex interconnections between moral psychology and their mediations in the ethical life world. By examining a range of Confucian sources, the author argues that Confucian “moral psychologies” clarify affective dimensions of human existence within the interpersonal nexus of ethical life and indicate ways of cultivating affective awareness for relationally understanding and interpreting others, one’s world, and oneself. (shrink)

PDF includes the introduction. Abstract: In this wide-ranging and authoritative volume, leading scholars engage with the philosophy and writings of Wilhelm Dilthey, a key figure in nineteenth-century thought. Their chapters cover his innovative philosophical strategies and explore how they can be understood in relation to their historical situation, as well as presenting incisive interpretations of Dilthey's arguments, including their development, their content, and their influence on later thought. A key focus is on how Dilthey's work remains relevant to current debates (...) around art and literature, the biographical and autobiographical self, knowledge, language, science, culture, history, society, and psychology and the embodied mind. The volume will be important for researchers in hermeneutics, aesthetics, practical philosophy, and the history of German philosophy, providing a valuable introduction to Dilthey's work as well as detailed critical analysis of its ongoing significance. (shrink)

Nietzsche has been associated with naturalism due to his arguments that morality, religion, metaphysics, and consciousness are products of natural biological organisms and ultimately natural phenomena. The subject and its mental life are only comprehensible in relation to natural desires, drives, impulses, and instincts. I argue that such typical natu-ralizing tendencies do not exhaust Nietzsche’s project, since they occur in the context of his critique of “nature” and metaphysical, speculative, and scientific naturalisms. Nie-tzsche challenges otherworldly projections of this-worldly beings, as (...) his naturalistic in-terpreters claim, but further the idolization of immanent worldly natural phenomena, in-cluding science itself. “Nature” is an idealization of natural organisms and environments in which its construction, projection, and interpretation is forgotten. Nietzsche strategical-ly uses naturalistic scientific strategies of explanation and demystification, while demys-tifying science, positivism, and naturalism for the sake of life. These do not provide either certainties or foundations for knowledge or life. Naturalism would be anti-natural if it denies of multiplicity and conflict of the forces of life, bracketing the natural and his-torical conditions of existence, and the interpretive and perspectival character of life and knowledge. The nexus of nature and history in Nietzsche is better clarified through his portrayal of the feeling of life and its intensification, attenuation, and transformation in relation to the forces and conditions of life, which encompass processes of socialization and interpretive and artistic individuation in the context of a life. (shrink)

What did Heidegger learn and fail to learn from Laozi and Zhuangzi? This book reconstructs Heidegger's philosophy through its engagement with Daoist and Asian philosophy and offers a Daoist transformation of Heidegger on things, nothingness, and freedom. PDF includes the introduction, bibliography, and index.

One critique of the early Daoist texts associated with Laozi and Zhuangzi is that they neglect the human and lack a proper sense of ethical personhood in maintaining the primacy of an impersonal dehumanizing “way.” This article offers a reconsideration of the appropriateness of such negative evaluations by exploring whether and to what extent the ethical sensibility unfolded in the Zhuangzi is aporetic, naturalistic, and/or religious. As an ethos of cultivating life and free and easy wandering by performatively enacting openness (...) and responsiveness to things in an immanent this-worldly context, the Zhuangzi is oriented toward the relational attunement of disposition and practice rather than toward metaphysics or religion in a transcendent sense. It consequently suggests an immanent anarchic ethics without principles while neither forgetting nor reifying the sacred and the mundane in its playful illumination of the biospiritual dynamics of cultivating life. (shrink)

While it is philosophically contested whether nonlinguistic animals can have conceptual capabilities, it is also philosophically contested whether one can even empirically test for such capabilities. I draw from Sellars’ work on psychological nominalism to develop an empirically tractable means of distinguishing between tasks that require conceptual capabilities and those that do not. Tasks that require conceptual capabilities are those that require awareness of abstract relations, whereas tasks that can be solved merely through Sellarsian picturing do not. I argue that (...) relational matching-to-sample tasks cannot be solved through picturing and therefore require awareness of the abstract relations of same and different. Crows and amazons have both been able to succeed at relational matching-to-sample tasks; therefore, there are at least some nonlinguistic animals that have conceptual capabilities. Finally, I consider the objection that one cannot attribute conceptual capabilities without also attributing knowledge, and Sellarsian conditions for knowledge are beyond the capabilities of any nonlinguistic animal. In response, I argue that Sellarsian conditions for knowledge only require an implicit grasp of the is/looks distinction and empirical work with chimpanzees on their understanding of the appearance/reality distinction demonstrates that they can meet this standard. Therefore, language is not necessary for meeting Sellarsian conditions for knowledge. (shrink)

This collection of papers by prominent feminist thinkers advances the positive feminist project of remapping the moral by developing theory that acknowledges the diversity of women.

The hermeneutical tradition represented by Yorck, Heidegger, and Gadamer has distrusted Dilthey as suffering from the two sins of modernism: scientific “positivism” and individualistic and aesthetic “romanticism.” On the one hand, Dilthey’s epistemology is deemed scientistic in accepting the priority of the empirical, the ontic, and consequently scientific inquiry into the physical, biological, and human worlds; on the other hand, his personalist ethos and Goethean humanism, and his pluralistic life- and worldview philosophy are considered excessively aesthetic, culturally liberal, relativistic, and (...) subjective. This essay involves two tasks in response to this negative evaluation of Dilthey that has shaped our current understanding of his philosophical project; first, an interpretation of the issues at stake in Heidegger’s reception of and struggles with Dilthey. These issues touch upon language, historicity, and the nature of hermeneutics. Second, by pursuing this task in light of Guignon’s interpretation of Dilthey and Heidegger, I hope to question and challenge the “overcoming” of Dilthey’s epistemic and life-philosophical hermeneutics in the “ontological” or “philosophical” hermeneutics of Heidegger. (shrink)