The selected effects or ‘etiological’ theory of Proper function is a naturalistic and realist account of biological teleology. It is used to analyse normativity in philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, philosophy of medicine and elsewhere. The theory has been developed with a simple and intuitive view of natural selection. Traits are selected because of their positive effects on the fitness of the organisms that have them. These ‘selected effects’ are the Proper functions of the traits. Proponents argue that this (...) analysis of biological teleology has the unique advantage that the selected effect function of a trait is also a causal explanation of the trait: the trait exists because it performs this function. We show, however, that selected effect functions as currently defined explain the existence of traits only under highly restrictive assumptions about evolutionary dynamics. In many common scenarios in which traits evolve by natural selection, selected effect functions do not explain those traits. This is because definitions of selected effect function extract from any evolutionary scenario only the information that would be explanatorily relevant in the simple evolutionary scenario implicit in those definitions. When applied to more complex scenarios selected effect functions omit the key information that is explanatorily relevant in those scenarios. The assumptions required for selected effect functions to be explanatory are particularly unlikely to hold in the domain that its proponents care most about - the evolution of representation. A more adequate selected effects theory of Proper functions may be possible, but will require much greater attention to the structure of actual evolutionary explanations. (shrink)

Background: In prevalence studies of sexually transmitted infections (STIs), investigators often provide syndromic management for symptomatic participants, but may not provide specific treatment for asymptomatic individuals with positive laboratory test results due to the delays between sample collection and availability of results as well as logistical constraints in recontacting study participants. Methods: To characterize the extent of this issue, 80 prevalence studies from the World Health Organization’s Report on global sexually transmitted infection surveillance, 2018, were reviewed. Studies were classified as (...) to whether clinically relevant positive results were returned or if this was not specified. Results: More than half (56%) of the cited studies did not specify if participants were notified of clinically relevant positive STI test results. The percentages were similar for low- and middle-income country populations (57%) and high-income country populations (53%). Conclusions: The absence of documentation of the provision of test results raises the possibility that in some instances, results may not have been communicated, with potential negative effects for participants, their sexual partners, and newborns. From an ethical perspective, clinically relevant results should be returned to study participants and treating clinicians in a timely fashion to ensure appropriate management of identified infections. Study authors should document if they returned test results to study participants and report on numbers lost to follow-up. (shrink)

This paper is an evaluation of John Locke's labour theory of property. Section I sets out Locke's labour view. Section II addresses several possible objections, including against the conceptual coherence of Locke's argument, against the metaphysical implications of his view, as well as foundational criticisms of the moral significance of labour and of my relations with objects that are grounded in labour under certain conditions and circumstances. I attempt to address each of these criticisms in a Lockian spirit, which will (...) require strange metaphysical moves. The final Section raises further objections that are more significant because they cannot be squared with the labour view. (shrink)

Research on the capacity to understand others' minds has tended to focus on representations ofbeliefs,which are widely taken to be among the most central and basic theory of mind representations. Representations ofknowledge, by contrast, have received comparatively little attention and have often been understood as depending on prior representations of belief. After all, how could one represent someone as knowing something if one does not even represent them as believing it? Drawing on a wide range of methods across cognitive science, (...) we ask whether belief or knowledge is the more basic kind of representation. The evidence indicates that nonhuman primates attribute knowledge but not belief, that knowledge representations arise earlier in human development than belief representations, that the capacity to represent knowledge may remain intact in patient populations even when belief representation is disrupted, that knowledge (but not belief) attributions are likely automatic, and that explicit knowledge attributions are made more quickly than equivalent belief attributions. Critically, the theory of mind representations uncovered by these various methods exhibits a set of signature features clearly indicative of knowledge: they are not modality-specific, they are factive, they are not just true belief, and they allow for representations of egocentric ignorance. We argue that these signature features elucidate the primary function of knowledge representation: facilitating learning from others about the external world. This suggests a new way of understanding theory of mind – one that is focused on understanding others' minds in relation to the actual world, rather than independent from it. (shrink)

This research studied the interaction influence of demographic characteristics (marital status, job rank, gender and age) and occupational stress level, on the work performance of faculty members in Calabar Metropolis. The descriptive survey design was utilized for this investigation. A sample of 150 respondents was identified using the systematic random sampling procedure from a population of 400 Faculty of Education lecturers from two public universities in Calabar Metropolis. A four-point scale validity and reliability certified questionnaire was used for data collection. (...) Data generated was analyzed using the two-way analysis of variance. Hypotheses were all tested at the 0.05 alpha level. Findings revealed a significant interactive effect of demographic variables (age, gender, job rank and marital status) and stress levels on lecturers' jobs. Results also indicated that the stress level of lecturers affects the degree or quality of job performance, with those having average stress levels reporting better job performance in the universities studied. Recommendations were made that all lecturers, irrespective of age, gender, marital status or rank, should develop or adopt good stress management skills and disengage/reduce extra jobs and other unnecessary stress-inducing activities. ©. (shrink)

Some stories of moral exemplars motivate us to emulate their admirable attitudes and behaviors, but why do some exemplars motivate us more than others? We systematically studied how motivation to emulate is influenced by the similarity between a reader and an exemplar in social or cultural background (Relatability) and how personally costly or demanding the exemplar’s actions are (Attainability). Study 1 found that university students reported more inspiration and related feelings after reading true stories about the good deeds of a (...) recent fellow alum, compared to a famous moral exemplar from decades past. Study 2A developed a battery of short moral exemplar stories that more systematically varied Relatability and Attainability, along with a set of non-moral exemplar stories for comparison. Studies 2B and 2C examined the path from the story type to relatively low stakes altruism (donating to charity and intentions to volunteer) through perceived attainability and relatability, as well as elevation and pleasantness. Together, our studies suggest that it is primarily the relatability of the moral exemplars, not the attainability of their actions, that inspires more prosocial motivation, at least regarding acts that help others at a relatively low cost to oneself. (shrink)

The personality traits of social work leaders are important factors influencing ethical decision-making in organisations. The lack of empirical evidence with regard to the relationship between personal authenticity and ethical decision-making in social work stimulated the present study. Two hundred thirty-eight leaders (81.9% female) from organisations working in various fields of social work were administrated with the Authenticity Scale, Managerial Ethical Profile, and conducted two free association tasks with the cue words authenticity and self. Authenticity was positively correlated with ethical (...) decision-making. In contrast, authenticity was not correlated with the tendency to make decisions in an effort to maximise economic profit for the organisation. The results of the present study have important practical implications for the social work sector. The positive correlation of authenticity with ethical decision-making indicates that positive reinforcement of authenticity in leaders could possibly lead to supporting ethical decision-making within an organisation. Therefore, supporting authenticity in leaders working in social work may also help foster quality services and prevent unethical behaviour. (shrink)

My primary goal in this article is to provide a historical reconstruction of Heidegger’s relationship to Hermann Lotze’s logic of validity (Logik der Gültigkeit). Lotze’s characterization of truth’s “actuality” solidifies the fallacious presupposition that the essence of truth is to be understood primarily in terms of logical assertions. In Heidegger’s view, the predicates “true” and “false,” as the paradigmatic attributes of propositions and judgments, are derivatives of a fundamental and “primary being of truth” known as disclosedness (Erschlossenheit). Heidegger marks this (...) decisive position in §44 of Being and Time and gains its methodological purchase by deconstructing traditional logic (kritischer Abbau der überlieferten Logik). Heidegger’s treatment, however, is abbreviated, and his sources remain notoriously concealed. For this reason, much is to be gained by examining the supplement provided one year earlier in a lecture course titled Logic: The Question of Truth (WS 1925–26). Heidegger devotes nearly 100 pages to the contemporary situation of philosophical logic. In this course, Heidegger critically evaluates a core principle of both phenomenology and neo-Kantian Erkenntnistheorie: the concept of validity (Geltung). This term originates from Lotze’s Platonic Ideenlehre, which asserts that Platonic “ideas” correspond to thoughts through a logical necessity. Consequently, they are deemed valid and eternally self-identical but do not need to exist in the world. For the purposes of this study, I show the historical significance and influence of Lotze’s Logic on twentieth-century Neo-Kantianism and Phenomenology. I provide a detailed account of Lotze’s interpretation of the Platonic theory of ideas, which supports his theory of validity. By returning to Lotze’s text, I provide an in-depth review of Heidegger’s reading of Lotze, whom he charges with misleading twentieth-century epistemology. If successful, this article provides the necessary and historical context to understand what is left unsaid and concealed in §44 of Being and Time. This article also serves the auxiliary purpose of acting as a prolegomenon for Heidegger’s urgent return to Aristotle’s thought and accurately determining the essence of truth. (shrink)

We present evidence from a pre-registered experiment indicating that a philosophical argument––a type of rational appeal––can persuade people to make charitable donations. The rational appeal we used follows Singer’s well-known “shallow pond” argument (1972), while incorporating an evolutionary debunking argument (Paxton, Ungar, & Greene 2012) against favoring nearby victims over distant ones. The effectiveness of this rational appeal did not differ significantly from that of a well-tested emotional appeal involving an image of a single child in need (Small, Loewenstein, and (...) Slovic 2007). This is a surprising result, given evidence that emotions are the primary drivers of moral action, a view that has been very influential in the work of development organizations. We did not find support for our pre-registered hypothesis that combining our rational and emotional appeals would have a significantly stronger effect than either appeal in isolation. However, our finding that both kinds of appeal can increase charitable donations is cause for optimism, especially concerning the potential efficacy of well-designed rational appeals. We consider the significance of these findings for moral psychology, ethics, and the work of organizations aiming to alleviate severe poverty. (shrink)

Until recently, psychologists have conceptualised and studied trust in God (TIG) largely in isolation from contemporary work in theology, philosophy, history, and biblical studies that has examined the topic with increasing clarity. In this article, we first review the primary ways that psychologists have conceptualised and measured TIG. Then, we draw on conceptualizations of TIG outside the psychology of religion to provide a conceptual map for how TIG might be related to theorised predictors and outcomes. Finally, we provide a research (...) agenda for future empirical work in this area, as well as practical applications for counsellors and religious leaders. (shrink)

My primary goal in this paper is to demonstrate the inadequacy of Hubert Dreyfus’ use of understanding (Verstehen) for Artificial Intelligence (AI). My complementary goal is to provide a principled account of Martin Heidegger’s concept of understanding (Verstehen). Dreyfus and other verificationists argue that understanding (Verstehen) is socially purposive action and skillful embodied coping. Understanding (Verstehen), conceived of in this way, purportedly challenges cognitive models of Artificial Intelligence (AI) that rely on formal rules, ‘rational’ decisionmaking, and the explicit representation (...) of knowledge. This account is unsatisfactory for two reasons. First, it maintains an extrinsic, goal-oriented intentionality that is susceptible to the success of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Second, it ignores the systematic and constitutive analysis of self-understanding (Seinsverständnis) that is fundamental to Heidegger’s ontology. Recent exegetical work replicates these inadequacies and fails to improve discussions on Heidegger’s relationship to Artificial Intelligence (AI). To resolve this oversight, I bridge the gap between Heidegger’s concept of understanding and disclosedness (Erschlossenheit) (SZ §44 / 256-278). I argue that understanding characterizes the pre-theoretical grasp of entities and the pre-ontological structure that initiates the question of self-understanding (Seinsverständnis). (shrink)

Throughout the biological and biomedical sciences there is a growing need for, prescriptive ‘minimum information’ (MI) checklists specifying the key information to include when reporting experimental results are beginning to find favor with experimentalists, analysts, publishers and funders alike. Such checklists aim to ensure that methods, data, analyses and results are described to a level sufficient to support the unambiguous interpretation, sophisticated search, reanalysis and experimental corroboration and reuse of data sets, facilitating the extraction of maximum value from data sets (...) them. However, such ‘minimum information’ MI checklists are usually developed independently by groups working within representatives of particular biologically- or technologically-delineated domains. Consequently, an overview of the full range of checklists can be difficult to establish without intensive searching, and even tracking thetheir individual evolution of single checklists may be a non-trivial exercise. Checklists are also inevitably partially redundant when measured one against another, and where they overlap is far from straightforward. Furthermore, conflicts in scope and arbitrary decisions on wording and sub-structuring make integration difficult. This presents inhibit their use in combination. Overall, these issues present significant difficulties for the users of checklists, especially those in areas such as systems biology, who routinely combine information from multiple biological domains and technology platforms. To address all of the above, we present MIBBI (Minimum Information for Biological and Biomedical Investigations); a web-based communal resource for such checklists, designed to act as a ‘one-stop shop’ for those exploring the range of extant checklist projects, and to foster collaborative, integrative development and ultimately promote gradual integration of checklists. (shrink)

The widely accepted two-dimensional circumplex model of emotions posits that most instances of human emotional experience can be understood within the two general dimensions of valence and activation. Currently, this model is facing some criticism, because complex emotions in particular are hard to define within only these two general dimensions. The present theory-driven study introduces an innovative analytical approach working in a way other than the conventional, two-dimensional paradigm. The main goal was to map and project semantic emotion space in (...) terms of mutual positions of various emotion prototypical categories. Participants (N = 187; 54.5% females) judged 16 discrete emotions in terms of valence, intensity, controllability and utility. The results revealed that these four dimensional input measures were uncorrelated. This implies that valence, intensity, controllability and utility represented clearly different qualities of discrete emotions in the judgments of the participants. Based on this data, we constructed a 3D hypercube-projection and compared it with various two-dimensional projections. This contrasting enabled us to detect several sources of bias when working with the traditional, two-dimensional analytical approach. Contrasting two-dimensional and three-dimensional projections revealed that the 2D models provided biased insights about how emotions are conceptually related to one another along multiple dimensions. The results of the present study point out the reductionist nature of the two-dimensional paradigm in the psychological theory of emotions and challenge the widely accepted circumplex model. (shrink)

In real-time, Twitter strongly imprints world events, popular culture, and the day-to-day; Twitter records an ever growing compendium of language use and change; and Twitter has been shown to enable certain kinds of prediction. Vitally, and absent from many standard corpora such as books and news archives, Twitter also encodes popularity and spreading through retweets. Here, we describe Storywrangler, an ongoing, day-scale curation of over 100 billion tweets containing around 1 trillion 1-grams from 2008 to 2020. For each day, we (...) break tweets into 1-, 2-, and 3-grams across 150+ languages, record usage frequencies, and generate Zipf distributions. We make the data set available through an interactive time series viewer, and as downloadable time series and daily distributions. We showcase a few examples of the many possible avenues of study we aim to enable including how social amplification can be visualized through ‘contagiograms’. (shrink)

Experiments in particle physics have hitherto failed to produce any significant evidence for the many explicit models of physics beyond the Standard Model (BSM) that had been proposed over the past decades. As a result, physicists have increasingly turned to model-independent strategies as tools in searching for a wide range of possible BSM effects. In this paper, we describe the Standard Model Effective Field Theory (SM-EFT) and analyse it in the context of the philosophical discussions about models, theories, and (bottom-up) (...) effective field theories. We find that while the SM-EFT is a quantum field theory, assisting experimentalists in searching for deviations from the SM, in its general form it lacks some of the characteristic features of models. Those features only come into play if put in by hand or prompted by empirical evidence for deviations. Employing different philosophical approaches to models, we argue that the case study suggests not to take a view on models that is overly permissive because it blurs the lines between the different stages of the SM-EFT research strategies and glosses over particle physicists' motivations for undertaking this bottom-up approach in the first place. Looking at EFTs from the perspective of modelling does not require taking a stance on some specific brand of realism or taking sides in the debate between reduction and emergence into which EFTs have recently been embedded. (shrink)

Recent work in cognitive science suggests that conscious thought plays a much less central role in the production of human behavior than most think. Partially on the basis of this work, Peter Carruthers has advanced the claim that humans never consciously decide to act. This claim is of independent interest for action theory, and its potential truth poses a problem for theories of free will and autonomy, which often take our capacity to consciously decide to be of central importance. (...) In this article, I examine the nature of conscious deciding and I argue that Carruthers fails to establish the claim that humans never consciously decide to act. (shrink)

The paper provides an analysis of Martin Buber’s intellectual conversion and shows how it facilitates a deeper understanding of the phenomenon of nationalism. Buber, who is today known mainly as a key representative of dialogical philosophy, was in the 1910s part of the double wave of German and Jewish nationalism which strongly affected the German-speaking Jewish public. Buber provided intellectual support for this wave of nationalism and interpreted World War I as a unique chance for the spiritual unification of (...) European Jewry. Consequent to his conflict with Gustav Landauer Buber underwent a complex intellectual and existential transformation. He abandoned key concepts of his pre-dialogical thought and laid the foundations of his dialogical thought. He rejected his endorsement of Geman nationalism and substantially reevaluated his political positions. The analysis of Buber’s intellectual development sheds light on some important aspects of the dynamics of nationalism. (shrink)

It is a matter of fact that Europe is facing more and more crucial challenges regarding health and social care due to the demographic change and the current economic context. The recent COVID-19 pandemic has stressed this situation even further, thus highlighting the need for taking action. Active and Assisted Living technologies come as a viable approach to help facing these challenges, thanks to the high potential they have in enabling remote care and support. Broadly speaking, AAL can be referred (...) to as the use of innovative and advanced Information and Communication Technologies to create supportive, inclusive and empowering applications and environments that enable older, impaired or frail people to live independently and stay active longer in society. AAL capitalizes on the growing pervasiveness and effectiveness of sensing and computing facilities to supply the persons in need with smart assistance, by responding to their necessities of autonomy, independence, comfort, security and safety. The application scenarios addressed by AAL are complex, due to the inherent heterogeneity of the end-user population, their living arrangements, and their physical conditions or impairment. Despite aiming at diverse goals, AAL systems should share some common characteristics. They are designed to provide support in daily life in an invisible, unobtrusive and user-friendly manner. Moreover, they are conceived to be intelligent, to be able to learn and adapt to the requirements and requests of the assisted people, and to synchronise with their specific needs. Nevertheless, to ensure the uptake of AAL in society, potential users must be willing to use AAL applications and to integrate them in their daily environments and lives. In this respect, video- and audio-based AAL applications have several advantages, in terms of unobtrusiveness and information richness. Indeed, cameras and microphones are far less obtrusive with respect to the hindrance other wearable sensors may cause to one’s activities. In addition, a single camera placed in a room can record most of the activities performed in the room, thus replacing many other non-visual sensors. Currently, video-based applications are effective in recognising and monitoring the activities, the movements, and the overall conditions of the assisted individuals as well as to assess their vital parameters. Similarly, audio sensors have the potential to become one of the most important modalities for interaction with AAL systems, as they can have a large range of sensing, do not require physical presence at a particular location and are physically intangible. Moreover, relevant information about individuals’ activities and health status can derive from processing audio signals. Nevertheless, as the other side of the coin, cameras and microphones are often perceived as the most intrusive technologies from the viewpoint of the privacy of the monitored individuals. This is due to the richness of the information these technologies convey and the intimate setting where they may be deployed. Solutions able to ensure privacy preservation by context and by design, as well as to ensure high legal and ethical standards are in high demand. After the review of the current state of play and the discussion in GoodBrother, we may claim that the first solutions in this direction are starting to appear in the literature. A multidisciplinary debate among experts and stakeholders is paving the way towards AAL ensuring ergonomics, usability, acceptance and privacy preservation. The DIANA, PAAL, and VisuAAL projects are examples of this fresh approach. This report provides the reader with a review of the most recent advances in audio- and video-based monitoring technologies for AAL. It has been drafted as a collective effort of WG3 to supply an introduction to AAL, its evolution over time and its main functional and technological underpinnings. In this respect, the report contributes to the field with the outline of a new generation of ethical-aware AAL technologies and a proposal for a novel comprehensive taxonomy of AAL systems and applications. Moreover, the report allows non-technical readers to gather an overview of the main components of an AAL system and how these function and interact with the end-users. The report illustrates the state of the art of the most successful AAL applications and functions based on audio and video data, namely lifelogging and self-monitoring, remote monitoring of vital signs, emotional state recognition, food intake monitoring, activity and behaviour recognition, activity and personal assistance, gesture recognition, fall detection and prevention, mobility assessment and frailty recognition, and cognitive and motor rehabilitation. For these application scenarios, the report illustrates the state of play in terms of scientific advances, available products and research project. The open challenges are also highlighted. The report ends with an overview of the challenges, the hindrances and the opportunities posed by the uptake in real world settings of AAL technologies. In this respect, the report illustrates the current procedural and technological approaches to cope with acceptability, usability and trust in the AAL technology, by surveying strategies and approaches to co-design, to privacy preservation in video and audio data, to transparency and explainability in data processing, and to data transmission and communication. User acceptance and ethical considerations are also debated. Finally, the potentials coming from the silver economy are overviewed. (shrink)

This article presents a novel argument for the existence of God based on the metaphysical concept of grounding. Using the methodology of Inference to the Best Explanation, as conceptualised by Peter Lipton, it evaluates six foundationalist theories: Trope-Theoretic Theism, Monistic Substantivalism, Pure Stuff Theory, Mereological Bundle Theory, Extended Simples Theory, and Priority-Based Structural Realism-for their ability to explain the existence of grounding relations in reality. Through rigorous internal and external assessments focusing on coherence, simplicity, unification, and evidential virtues, the (...) paper argues that Trope-Theoretic Theism, which conceives of God as a maximal power trope, provides the most satisfactory explanation for grounding relations. This conclusion offers a new abductive argument for Theism and demonstrates the potential for productive dialogue between metaphysics and religion. (shrink)

My first section considers Walter J. Ong’s influential analyses of the logical method of Peter Ramus, on whose system Milton based his Art of Logic. The upshot of Ong’s work is that philosophical logic has become a kind monarch over all other discourses, the allegedly timeless and universal method of mapping and diagramming all concepts. To show how Milton nevertheless resists this tyrannical result in his non-Logic writings, my second section offers new readings of Milton’s poems Il Penseroso and (...) Sonnet 16: “On His Blindness”, along with his prose epilogue to his elegies (and thereby the entire collection entitled Poems). These readings attempt to show (1) the original admixing of philosophy and poetry (under the heading of “thoughtfulness”), (2) the shadow-hidden superiority of poetry in connection to the effeminising disability of blindness, and (3) the potential irony of an apology that arguably suggests poetry’s superiority to philosophy. Finally, I rest my case for Milton’s rebellion by offering an interpretation of Paradise Lost which affirms the character of Satan qua dark, queer, poetic figure of classical republicanism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 42.2 (2004) 219-220 [Access article in PDF] Jack Zupko. John Buridan: Portrait of a Fourteenth-Century Arts Master. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003. Pp. xix + 446. Cloth, $70.00. Paper, $40.00. What does the name "John Buridan" call to mind? For many, including medievalists, not much at all—at best, perhaps, a set of apparently unrelated ideas: nominalism; an impetus theory of (...) projectile motion; and a peculiar account of the will (although "Buridan's ass," the indecisive donkey caught between two equally appetizing bales of hay, is not found in Buridan's writing). In correcting this ignorance—an injustice to arguably the most famous and influential philosopher of the early-to-mid-fourteenth century—the temptation might have been to articulate Buridan's "positions" on "the big questions," allowing readers to fit Buridan into received categories. Thankfully, the present work, the first book-length study of Buridan in any language, resists this temptation. The John Buridan that emerges from Jack Zupko's skillful "exercise in philosophical portraiture" doesn't serve to simply fill gaps in our awareness of the historical record, but to enlighten and challenge our understanding of the practice of philosophy and the study of its history.Zupko emphasizes throughout that Buridan was a teacher, a master of arts in Paris. Buridan's pedagogical concerns help make sense of his central work in logic. As the basis for his arts lectures, Buridan chose Peter of Spain's Summulae Logicales, but in commenting on Peter, Buridan moves beyond creative exegisis to comprehensive renovation. Buridan (c. 1300-c. 1361) naturally wanted to accommodate terminist or via moderna supposition theory; but more importantly, he wanted a logic text that would set out a general plan of philosophical inquiry, "a compendium of methods, a 'how-to' book for the philosopher" (135). Buridan thus designed his own Summulae de Dialectica as a new authoritative logic text, and Zupko persuasively argues that its "nominalism" should be understood as less a set of doctrines in theoretical logic, than a program of logical practice, an education in logic as the ars artium, the universal intellectual tool.Zupko's portrait of "Buridan's vision of the philosophical enterprise" is thus appropriately divided into two parts. The first summarizes Buridan's method as described in the individual treatises of his Summulae. The second displays the method in practice, rehearsing and evaluating some of Buridan's arguments on various subjects. Many scholars will gravitate first to the latter part, where Zupko offers important interpretations and clarifications of Buridan's views. In these chapters, Zupko helps us to appreciate, among other things: how the problem of universals served to help Buridan define the scope of philosophy (ch. 10); the philosophical modesty of Buridan's account of the intellectual soul's presence in the body (ch. 11); the relationship between Buridan's epistemology and the skepticism of his Parisian contemporary Nicholas of Autrecourt (ch. 12); the sense in which Buridan is an "empiricist," viz an epistemic naturalist and reliabilist (ch. 13); how Buridan regarded moral psychology as applied physics, treating virtue as a kind of impetus (ch. 14); how Buridan's account of freedom can be regarded as a "perfection" of Thomistic intellectualism (ch. 15).Throughout these discussions, Zupko always keeps in sight his larger purpose of illustrating Buridan's conception of philosophical inquiry. Zupko makes much of the fact that [End Page 219] Buridan never wrote as a theologian, remaining his entire career in the arts faculty, where he wanted logic to organize secular inquiry. As Zupko notes, in this way Buridan's scholastic project seems to prefigure the "modern." But Buridan seems modern in another way as well. As Zupko points out in his "Introduction," though a cleric, Buridan never joined a religious order, so that his ideas developed independently of the Franciscan and Dominican traditions. He was, then, a teacher without a tradition—at least without deliberate allegiance to tradition, although he was in many ways the product of traditional scholastic intellectual discipline.Perhaps this... (shrink)

Peter Lamarque recently reported on current trends in aesthetics in the Postgraduate Journal of Aesthetics. Noticeably absent from his list, however, is the emergence and acceptance of feminist approaches in aesthetics, especially among analytic philosophers. Yet feminism is an important movement, one that should have been included among those he discusses. Indeed, my goal is to convince you that feminism should have made it onto Lamarque’s list. Rather than criticize him, however, I want to use his oversight to ask (...) why feminist philosophers working in analytic aesthetics have trouble getting the recognition they deserve. My suggestion will be that the specificity of feminist critiques in aesthetics is often what makes it difficult for philosophers to appreciate their significance. I will also argue that it is precisely because of this specificity that feminism is a uniquely important movement in contemporary aesthetics. (shrink)

Martine Nida-Rümelin (1996) argues that color science indicates behaviorally undetectable spectrum inversion is possible and raises this possibility as an objection to functionalist accounts of visual states of color. I show that her argument does not rest solely on color science, but also on a philosophically controversial assumption, namely, that visual states of color supervene on physiological states. However, this assumption, on the part of philosophers or vision scientists, has the effect of simply ruling out certain versions of functionalism. While (...) Nida-Rümelin is quite right to search for empirical tests for claims about the nature of visual states, philosophical issues remain pivotal in determining the correctness of these claims. (shrink)

The structure of my investigation is as follows. I will begin with Schopenhauer’s very brief explicit mention of dance, and then try to understand the exclusion of dance from his extended discussion of the individual arts. Toward this latter end I will then turn to Francis Sparshott essay, which situates Schopenhauer’s thought in terms of Plato’s privileging of dance (in the Laws) as the consummate participatory art, and which observes that Schopenhauer’s dance is that of Shiva, lord of death. In (...) light of these two moments, I will then offer a brief examination of the Laws’ account of dance, and two essays by Avanthi Meduri’s on classical Indian dance. Next, to help explain Schopenhauer’s negative position vis-à-vis Plato and Vedantic thought, I will invoke Schopenhauer’s own conception of madness qua disconnection. Finally, I will attempt to cure this “madness” in Schopenhauer—as Wendy did for Peter Pan when he lost his shadow and could not reattach it himself—by sewing together Schopenhauer’s conceptions of embodiment and music, and in effect reattaching the shadow to the body of Schopenhauer’s position on dance using the thread of his own philosophy. In short, I will show how even a thought as life-denying as Schopenhauer’s can—with the help of dance—overcome itself into life-affirmation. (shrink)

The focus in the literature on scientific explanation has shifted in recent years towards model-based approaches. In recent work, Alisa Bokulich has argued that idealization has a central role to play in explanation. Bokulich claims that certain highly-idealized, structural models can be explanatory, even though they are not considered explanatory by causal, mechanistic, or covering law accounts of explanation. This paper focuses on Bokulich’s account in order to make the more general claim that there are problems with (...) maintaining that a structural criterion can capture the way that highly-idealized models explain. This paper examines Bokulich’s claim that the structural model explanation of quantum wavefunction scarring, featuring semiclassical mechanics, is deeper than the explanation provided by the local quantum model. The challenge for Bokulich is to show that the semiclassical model answers a wider range of w-questions, as this is her method of assessing structural information. I look at two reasonable approaches employing w-questions, and I argue that neither approach is ultimately satisfactory. Because structural similarity has preferences for more fundamental models, I argue that the local quantum model provides explanations that at least as deep as the semiclassical ones. The criterion either wrongly identifies all models as explanatory, or prefers models from fundamental theory. Either way, it cannot capture the way that highly-idealized models explain. (shrink)

Available reports provide an account of academic staff’s poor job performance in higher education institutions and universities in particular. Consequently, a growing body of research has been attracted to this area, including those seeking ways to understand the problem and others aimed at proffering solutions. This study contributes to the literature by investigating the influence of occupational stress on the job performance of academic staff in universities. Three null hypotheses directed the study in line with the quantitative ex-post facto research (...) design. A sample of 150 respondents was obtained using the systematic random sampling technique from a population of 400 lecturers in the Faculty of Education from two public universities in Nigeria. A 31-item questionnaire was used for data collection. The null hypotheses were tested at the .05 alpha level using simple linear regression analysis. It was revealed that remuneration is a significant positive predictor of academic staff job performance. The prediction of workload was negatively non-significant on the job performance of academics. The provision of institutional amenities has a positive but non-significant prediction on academic staff job performance in the two public universities. It was concluded that occupational stress significantly influences the job performance of lecturers in universities. The study recommended that the government constantly pay lecturers’ salaries as and when due. Institutional managers should reward lecturers with outstanding performance to boost their morale for effective service delivery. (shrink)

In this chapter, I approach the subject of peace by way of Andrew Fiala’s pioneering, synthetic work on “practical pacifism.” One of Fiala’s articles on the subject of peace is entitled “Radical Forgiveness and Human Justice”—and if one were to replace “Radical Forgiveness” with “Peace,” this would be a fair title for my chapter. In fact, Fiala himself explicitly makes a connection in the article between radical forgiveness and peace. Also in support of my project, Fiala’s article names four of (...) the six historical figures who are central to my chapter, namely Marcus Aurelius, King, Arendt, and Nietzsche. Moreover, Fiala also insists there “forgiveness must be held in creative tension with justice,” and it is this very tension that forms the basis of my new conception of socially-just peace. To wit, I propose that socially-just peace is lovingly generous reimagining (peace) through intuitively self-overcoming tension (social justice). (shrink)

My central research focus over the past 30 years has been the articulation of what I call a radically temporal approach to philosophy. In the papers below, written between 2001 and 2022, I treat the varying ways in which radically temporal thinking manifests itself in the phenomenological perspectives of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger and Eugene Gendlin. I also discuss Jacques Derrida's deconstructive project and George Kelly's personal construct theory as examples of radically temporal thinking. With the aim of clarifying (...) and further defining the nature of this family of orientations, I have delineated the important ways in which it differs from a range of interlinked approaches in philosophy and psychology that includes hermeneutic and radical constructivisms, social constructionism, 4EA (Embodied, Embedded, Enactive, Extended, and Affective) cognition, Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of corporeal intersubjectivity, autopoietic self-organizing systems theory and American pragmatism. Among the authors whose work I have submitted to critique from the radically temporal perspective are: Francisco Varela (autopoietic self-organizing systems), Shaun Gallagher, Evan Thompson, Matthew Ratcliffe, Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, Dan Zahavi, Hanne De Jaegher, Michel Bitbol, Thomas Fuchs (enactive, embodied ('4EA') cognition), Gilles Deleuze (Deleuzian biopolitics), Ken Gergen and John Shotter ( social constructionism), Kym Maclaren ( critical phenomenology) and Jan Slaby (critical neuroscience). I argue that these authors' accounts of the relation between affect, motivation and intention, attention , reflective and pre-reflective self-consciousness, the basis of mathematical naturalism and sensori-motor models of behavior, and the relation between the body, language and culture remain burdened by traditional presuppositions that the radically temporal philosophies of Heidegger et al put into question. (shrink)

Since the resurgence of infinitism in contemporary epistemology, Peter Klein has been consistent in providing arguments against the three other possible solutions (i.e., foundationalism, coherentism, skepticism) to the Regress Problem, which in turn is a key aspect of the justification condition for the traditional account of knowledge as justified true belief. Klein’s successful effort in reviving the often-dismissed solution and further advancing it as the sole solution to the Regress Problem cannot be ignored as he finds it necessary to (...) not only raise problems for the viability of the three contenders but, more so, definitively invalidate them as equally possible solutions. This paper responds to Klein’s objection to foundationalism, the crucial reasons for which he offers in several of his works concerning infinitism and the Regress Problem: i) that foundationalism inevitably leads either to arbitrariness or to the continuation of the regress of reasons; ii) that a proposition continuously enhanced by reasons has more epistemic warrant than a proposition supported by a chain of reasons which ends at basic beliefs, and; iii) that basic beliefs are not tantamount to fully justified beliefs. For each, certain problems can be raised by employing foundationalist arguments in order to arrive at the conclusion that in spite of his astute reasoning, Klein’s objection is insufficient to rule out foundationalism as a possible solution to the Regress Problem. (shrink)

A curious feature in Immanuel Kant’s account of the mathematical sublime is the choice of examples, namely, the Pyramids of Egypt and St. Peter’s Basilica. In the paragraph following these examples, Kant suggests that the sublime does not exhibit itself in works of art. This ambiguity has led scholars to question the possibility of “artistic sublimity.” The scholarship has prompted discussions about whether works of art that evoke the sublime feeling are genuine sublime experiences. A representational account of artistic (...) sublimity restricts the sublime to experiences in raw nature. Art can depict the sublime stylistically; however, it cannot evoke the feeling of sublimity. On an opposing interpretation, the sublime occurs because of a conflict between imagination and reason; any work of art that provokes this conflict is sublime. As a result, the power of the sublime overrides and annihilates determinate ends, allowing pure aesthetic judgments. The alleged contradiction in Kant’s account of the mathematical sublime is also read as an interpretive issue regarding purity, prompting the pure-impure distinction. Art that has the power to evoke the feeling of sublimity is deemed “impurely sublime” because of the admixture of interest. Alternatively, if aesthetic judgments of the sublime are satisfied irrespective of the object, then art is purely sublime without needing a further determination. Following Henry Allison, I defend the view that we should preserve a pure–impure distinction. A concept of impure sublimity allows us to account for an emotionally motiving satisfaction akin to the sublime in the presence of some works of art while maintaining a close reading of the Kantian account of pure sublimity as an exclusive consequence of raw nature. (shrink)

A complex approach to Martin Buber’s oeuvre requires a consideration of both his dialogical and pre-dialogical writings. The latter include in some cases emphases that differ substantially from the emphases promulgated in Ich und Du. I will focus on three essays from the final stage of Buber’s pre-dialogical period which contain reflections on the fighting individual. The comparison with Ernst Jünger’s reflections on the same motif will show the intellectual proximity between the two authors and will help us understand (...) how Buber’s thought was positioned shortly before his dialogical turn. While after this turn Buber and Jünger could be easily seen as polar opposites, this is not the case when we juxtapose their early reflections on the fighting individual in World War I. There are striking similarities which I denote as a homology, as there is no evidence of influence in either direction. The presented analysis provides an insight into Buber’s controversial pre-dialogical positions as well as into the more general processing of the World War I experience in Germanophone philosophy. (shrink)

There can be no doubt that discrimination based on sex, race, ethnicity, religion or beliefs should not be tolerated in academia. Surprisingly, however, in recent years, policies of Diversity, Inclusion and Equity(DIE), officially introduced to counteract discrimination, have increasingly led to quite the opposite result: the exclusion of individuals who do not share a radical 'woke' ideology on identity politics (feminism, other gender activisms, critical race theory, etc.), and to the suppression of the academic freedom to discuss such dogmas. This (...) subversion of academia ― disguised Trojan-horse style as universal human rights advocacy ― is unacceptable because academia must be politically neutral and protect freedom of speech, a cornerstone of professional scholarly activity without which universities as we know them will slowly but surely suffocate. -/- Our purpose here is to put together some particularly illustrative cases of such repression in a single book, testifying to a ubiquitous trend within western culture, irreducible to a few isolated complaints. The essays contained here illustrate the abuse of power, censorship and witch-hunts at many universities and research centres in the name of DIE. -/- List of coauthors in alphabetical order: Dorian Abbot, Tomonori Agoh, Gerhard Amendt, Ivar Arpi, David Benatar, Peter Boghossian, Civitas Research Team, David Díaz Pardo de Vera, Pedro Domingos, Janice Fiamengo, Étienne Forest, Jorge Gibert Galassi, Norman Goldstuck, José L. González Quirós, Lawrence M. Krauss, Patrick LaBelle, Martín López Corredoira, Heather Mac Donald, Martin Malmgren, Erik. J. Olsson, Jordan Peterson, Constantin Polychronakos, Philip C. Salzman, Alessandro Strumia, Tom Todd, Andrei Yafaev. (shrink)

Welcome to my philosophy page. My central research focus is the elucidation of what I call the radically temporal approach to philosophy. In the papers below I endeavor to articulate the varying ways that radical temporality manifests itself in the phenomenological perspectives of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger and Eugene Gendlin. I also discuss Jacques Derrida’s deconstructive project and George Kelly’s personal construct theory as examples of radically temporal thinking. With the aim of clarifying and further defining the nature of (...) this orientation , I have delineated the important ways in which it differs from a range of interlinked approaches in philosophy and psychology that includes hermeneutic and radical constructivisms, 4EA (Embodied, Embedded, Enactive, Extended, and Affective) cognition, Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of corporeal intersubjectivity, autopoietic self-organizing systems theory and American pragmatism. Among the authors whose work I have submitted to critique from the radically temporal perspective are: Francisco Varela (autopoietic self-organizing systems), Shaun Gallagher, Evan Thompson, Matthew Ratcliffe, Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, Dan Zahavi, Hanne De Jaegher, Thomas Fuchs (enactive, embodied ('4EA') cognition), John Protevi (Deleuzian biopolitics), Kym Maclaren ( critical phenomenology) and Jan Slaby (critical neuroscience). -/- I argue that these authors’ accounts of intersubjectivity and empathy, and their integration of affect, motivation, intentionality and will, remain burdened by traditional presuppositions that the radically temporal philosophies of Heidegger et al put into question. -/- . (shrink)

In "Individuals", Peter Strawson talks about identifying, discriminating and picking out particular objects, regarding discriminating and picking out as ways of identifying. I object that, strictly speaking, identification means to say of two things that they are the same. In contrast, discriminating an object from all others can be done by just ascribing some predicate to it that does not apply to the others. Picking out an object does not even seem to require to distinguish it from all others. (...) The object picked is distinct in that it is the picked one, but it is not clear - even in the context of sensorily picking out - that I have to be aware of this in order to do the picking. (shrink)

En este pequeño texto, resumo brevemente tres experimentos psicológicos que Peter Carruthers (2010) cita como evidencia para la tesis según la cual no tenemos un acceso introspectivo y exclusivo de la primera persona a nuestras actitudes proposicionales, sino sólo uno interpretativo. Si Carruthers tiene razón, sólo conocemos nuestras creencias, intenciones y otras actitudes a través de un proceso inconsciente de interpretación de nuestro propio comportamiento y, por ende, de la misma manera en que conocemos las mentes de otras personas. (...) Esta exposición tiene el propósito de mostrar la utilidad y necesidad de acercarse al problema del autoconocimiento desde una perspectiva interdisciplinaria. (shrink)

Martine Nida-Rümelin (1996) argues that color science indicates behaviorally undetectable spectrum inversion is possible and raises this possibility as an objection to functionalist accounts of visual states of color. I show that her argument does not rest solely on color science, but also on a philosophically controversial assumption, namely, that visual states of color supervene on physiological states. However, this assumption, on the part of philosophers or vision scientists, has the effect of simply ruling out certain versions of functionalism. While (...) Nida-Rümelin is quite right to search for empirical tests for claims about the nature of visual states, philosophical issues remain pivotal in determining the correctness of these claims. (shrink)

Martin and Deutscher’s causal theory of remembering holds that a memory trace serves as a necessary causal link between any genuine episode of remembering and the event it enables one to recall. In recent years, the causal theory has come under fire from researchers across philosophy and cognitive science, who argue that results from the scientific study of memory are incompatible with the kinds of memory traces that Martin and Deutscher hold essential to remembering. Of special note, these (...) critics observe, is that a single memory trace can be shaped by multiple past experiences. This appears to prevent traces from underwriting Martin and Deutscher’s distinction between remembering an event and merely forming an accurate representation of it. This paper accepts such criticisms of the standard causal theory and, through considering the phenomenon forgetting through repetition, raises several others. A substantially revised causal theory is then developed, compatible with the thesis that individual memory traces are shaped by multiple past experiences. The key strategy is to conceive of episodic remembering not as the simple retrieval and projection of a static memory trace, but as a complex quasi-inferential process that makes use of multiple forms of information and cues—“prop-like” memory traces included—in generating the experience known as episodic remembering. When remembering is understood as a multi-componential process, there are a variety of ways in which a representation of the past may be appropriately causally dependent upon a prior experience of the event remembered. (shrink)

Self-knowledge presents a challenge for naturalistic theories of mind. Peter Carruthers’s (2011) approach to this challenge is Rylean: He argues that we know our own propositional attitudes because we (unconsciously) interpret ourselves, just as we have to interpret others in order to know theirs’. An alternative approach, opposed by Carruthers, is to argue that we do have a special access to our own beliefs, but that this is a natural consequence of our reasoning capacity. This is the approach of (...) transparency theories of self-knowledge, neatly encapsulated in Byrne’s epistemic rule (BEL): If p, believe that you believe that p (Byrne 2005). In this paper, I examine an objection to Carruthers’s theory in order to see whether it opens up space for a transparency theory of self-knowledge: Is it not the case that in order to interpret someone I have to have some direct access to what I believe (cf. Friedman and Petrashek 2009)? (shrink)

The focus in the literature on scientific explanation has shifted in recent years towards modelbased approaches. The idea that there are simple and true laws of nature has met with objections from philosophers such as Nancy Cartwright (1983) and Paul Teller (2001), and this has made a strictly Hempelian D-N style explanation largely irrelevant to the explanatory practices of science (Hempel & Oppenheim, 1948). Much of science does not involve subsuming particular events under laws of nature. It is increasingly recognized (...) that science across the disciplines is to some degree a patchwork of scientific models, with different methods, strategies, and with varying degrees of successful prediction and explanation. And so accounts of scientific explanation have reflected this change of perspective and model-based approaches have flourished in the explanation literature (Batterman, 2002b; Bokulich, 2008; Craver, 2006; Woodward, 2003). (shrink)

In “Logic and Conversation,” H. P. Grice posits that in conversations, we are “always-already” implying certain things about the subjects of our words while abiding by certain rules to aid in understanding. It is my view, however, that Grice’s so-called “cooperative principle” can be analyzed under the traditional Heideggerian dichotomy of ready-to-hand and present-at-hand wherein language can be viewed as a “mere” tool that sometimes breaks. Ultimately, I contend that the likening of language to a tool allows for a more (...) robust understanding of it and conversational failures, while ontologically recategorizing language as an object of sorts. (shrink)

Dieter Henrich’s reconstruction of the transcendental deduction in "Identität und Objektivität" has been criticised (probably unfairly) by Guyer and others for assuming that we have a priori Cartesian certainty about our own continuing existence through time. In his later article "The Identity of the Subject in the Transcendental Deduction", Henrich addresses this criticism and proposes a new, again entirely original argument for a reconstruction. I attempt to elucidate this argument with reference to Evans’s theory of the Generality Constraint and a (...) remark of Strawson’s in Individuals. Its logical form of a sentence-operator requires that the "I think" be capable of accompanying every thought that we can form. Henrich seems to rely on this point, claiming in addition that we must be aware of this property of the "I think". I object that we cannot assume everyone to be capable of doing the philosophy of her own situation. (shrink)

I am going to argue that it is a cost of libertarianism that it holds our status as agents hostage to theoretical physics, but that claim has met with disagreement. Some libertarians regard it as the cost of doing business, not a philosophical liability. By contrast, Peter van Inwagen has addressed the worry head on. He says that if he were to become convinced that causal determinism were true, he would not change his view that humans are free and (...) morally responsible. Rather, he would give up at least one of the formerly-thought-to-be a priori truths that are elements in his argument for the incompatibility of causal determinism and the relevant sort of freedom. Thus, according to van Inwagen, our status as free and morally responsible agents would not be held hostage to the physicists or hang on a thread I think that van Inwagen’s strategy for securing our freedom and responsibility is unattractive. Somewhat tendentiously, I have called the rejection of an a priori ingredient in the incompatibilist’s argument, contingent upon learning that causal determinism is true, ‘metaphysical fip-flopping.’ -/- And it does seem that van Inwagen’s approach is implausible insofar as he is open to such metaphysical fip-fopping. That he is open to it—that he would fip-fop if he became convinced of the truth of causal determinism—is a problem for his actual philosophical position. Or so I will argue. (shrink)

The German Jewish philosophers Hermann Cohen, Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig introduced a critique and extension of Kant's transcendental philosophy that looks to us today like the foundations of a rabbinic semiotics. It is a theory about the semiotic character of our knowledge of the world, of other humans and of God. And it is a claim that such a theory is embedded in the classical literature of rabbinic Judaism. More recently, the American rabbinic thinker Max Kadushin presented a (...) more elaborate analysis of the logic of what he called the rabbis' "organic thinking." While influenced in some ways by Charles Peirce, Kadushin did not offer his analysis as a semiotic. In this paper, I suggest that Kadushin's analysis is better served if it is restated more precisely in the vocabulary of Peirce's semiotics. The resulting construction then serves as a complement to the work of the German Jewish philosophers. (shrink)

We do not normally speak of seeing experiences. Yet it is common to say that we have imagined an experience. Why the difference here? The deep affinities between sense perception and sensory imagination might have led one to expect that the limits of what we can sensorily imagine, using visual imagery, would align with what we can, in the right circumstances, see. We face a decision: either abandon this alignment of sensory imagination with perception, or conclude that we cannot, literally, (...) imagine experiences. This chapter pursues the second path: experiences are no more imaginable than they are visible. There are three components to the argument. First, it is argued that the implicit dilemma is not a false dilemma: we have strong reason to preserve an alignment between the objects of vision and the objects of visual-imagery-involving imagination. Second, the arguments of some—including Peacocke (1985) and Martin (2002)—that all sensory imagination in fact requires the imagining of an experience are challenged. Third, a framework for understanding the contents of visual imagination is provided and defended. This framework preserves an alignment between the contents of perception and the contents of imagination, while allowing us to appreciate the merely derivative, non-literal sense in which we can imagine experiences. Implications for perennial puzzles about consciousness are explored. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I survey 13th-14th century debates in medieval psychology and metaphysics, chiefly concerning the activity of the soul and the general nature of causation and causal co-operation. I give particular attention to a few notable “Augustinian” Franciscans, viz., Peter John Olivi, Gonsalvus of Spain, and John Duns Scotus. According to these figures, even our most basic acts of cognition primarily originate from within our cognitive powers, rather than from external objects. This view is motivated by both metaphysical (...) and empirical considerations, such as Neo-Platonic and Aristotelian causal principles and the apparent experiential effects of attention on cognition. As I discuss, active accounts of cognition are also forced to say something about how external objects can nonetheless play some role in cognition, and, thus, end up tied to generally interesting theories of asymmetric causal co-operation. In this survey, I also examine the peculiar Dominican, Durand of St. Pourçain. I argue that despite employing many common arguments and authoritative passages as Olivi, Gonsalvus, and Scotus, Durand offers a more minimal picture of cognition, in some ways, more extreme, but in other ways, more passive. (shrink)

A style of argument that calls into question our freedom (in the sense that involves freedom to do otherwise) has been around for millennia; it can be traced back to Origen. The argument-form makes use of the crucial idea that the past is over-and-done-with and thus fixed; we cannot now do anything about the distant past (or, for that matter, the recent past)—it is now too late. Peter van Inwagen has presented this argument (what he calls the Consequence Argument) (...) in perhaps its clearest and most forceful way, but debate over the argument has arguably reached a stalemate. -/- Recently, however, Wes Holliday has attempted to break this seeming stalemate by presenting a new argument for the Principle of the Fixity of the Past. Holliday’s argument is subtle and ingenious, and worthy of serious consideration, especially given the promise it holds for genuinely advancing this old debate. In what follows, however, we argue that despite its considerable ingenuity, Holliday’s argument fails to convince, and the stalemate appears to remain. (shrink)

This article is part of a For-Discussion-Section of Methods of Information in Medicine about the paper "Biomedical Informatics: We Are What We Publish", written by Peter L. Elkin, Steven H. Brown, and Graham Wright. It is introduced by an editorial. This article contains the combined commentaries invited to independently comment on the Elkin et al. paper. In subsequent issues the discussion can continue through letters to the editor.

Centred on 'Foams', the third volume of his Spheres trilogy, this article questions the privilege granted by Peter Sloterdijk to motifs of inclusion and exclusion, contending that whilst his prioritization of dwelling as a central aspect of human existence provides a promising counterpoint to the dislocative and isolative effects of post-industrial capitalism, it is compromised by its dependence upon an anti-cosmopolitan outlook that views cultural distantiation as a natural and preferable state of human affairs, and valorizes a purported ontological (...) security attained through defensive postures with respect to perceived foreigners or externalities. Sloterdijk’s conceptualization of culture as a kind of immune system, it is argued, although posited as a rebuke to models of essentialism and ethno-nationalism, provides ontological support to the xenophobic critiques of immigration that are today finding increasing currency. (shrink)

This article examines the ontology and politics of Peter Sloterdijk's Spheres trilogy, focusing in particular upon the notion of microspherical enclosure explicated in the first volume of this series. Noting Sloterdijk's unusual alignment of his philosophy with media theory, three main contentions are put forward. Firstly, that Sloterdijk's reconfiguration of Heidegger's fundamental ontology represents a largely unacknowledged renunciation of the primacy of Being-towards-death in the authentic existence of Dasein, foregrounding instead an originary co-belonging between mother and child. Secondly, that (...) Sloterdijk borrows from media theory a concern regarding the facticity of all communication, grounding philosophical discourse in the determinate locality of its origin, but does so while exalting a pre-natal communicative immediacy that would seem to disparage the everydayness of Dasein. Finally, that Sloterdijk's oft-justified scepticism regarding globalization often retreats into an anti-cosmopolitanism that, in its nostalgia for the comfort, security and immediacy of the matrixial co-belonging, evinces a covert but potentially noxious politics of exclusion. (shrink)