Are there any bona fide boundaries, i.e., boundaries that carve at the joints? Or is any boundary —hence any object—the result of a fiat articulation reflecting our cognitive biases and our so-cial practices and conventions? Does the choice between these two options amount to a choice between realism and wholesome relativism?

Democracy is rule by the demos, but by what criteria is the demos constituted? Theorists of democracy have tended to assume that the demos is properly defined by national boundaries or by the territorial boundaries of the modern state. In a recent turn, many democratic theorists have advanced the principles of affected interests and coercion as the basis for defining the boundaries of democracy. According to these principles, it is not co-nationals or fellow citizens but all affected or all subjected (...) to coercion who constitute the demos. In this paper, I argue that these recent approaches to the boundary problem are insufficiently attentive to the conditions of democracy. Democracy is not merely a set of procedures; it also consists of substantive values and principles. Political equality is a constitutive condition of democracy, and solidarity is an instrumental condition of democracy. The affected interests and coercion principles create serious problems for the realization of these conditions – problems of size and stability. Building on this critique, this paper presents democratic considerations for why the demos should be bounded by the territorial boundaries of the state, grounded in the state’s role in (1) securing the constitutive conditions of democracy, (2) serving as the primary site of solidarity conducive to democratic participation, and (3) establishing clear links between representatives and their constituents. I examine and reject a third alternative, a global demos bounded by a world state, and conclude by considering some practical implications of my argument. (shrink)

I argue that moral skill is limited and precarious. It is limited because global moral skill—the capacity for morally excellent behaviour within an über action domain, such as the domain of living, or of all-things-considered decisions, or the same kind of capacity applied across a superset of more specific action domains—is not to be found in humans. It is precarious because relatively local moral skill, while possible, is prone to misfire. My arguments depend upon the diversity of practical structures confronting (...) human agents, the limitations of human skill learning and reason-sensitivity, and the failure of moral considerations to respect the social and institutional boundaries we develop to structure our practical lives. (shrink)

The Holy Scriptures can be considered a specific kind of normative texts, whose use to assess practical moral cases requires interpretation. In the field of ethics, this interpretative problem results in the necessity of bridging the gap between the normative source – moral precepts – and the specific cases. In the history of the Church, this problem was the core of the so-called casuistry, namely the decision-making practice consisting in applying the Commandments and other principles of the Holy Scriptures (...) to specific cases or moral problems. By taking into account the sin of lying, this paper argues that casuistic texts reveal an extremely sophisticated interpretative method, grounded on “pragmatic” contextual and communicative considerations and argumentative structures that resemble the ones used in legal interpretation. These works show how the underspecified biblical text expressing an abstract norm was enriched pragmatically by completing it and modulating its meaning so that it could be used to draw a conclusion in a specific context on a specific case. The mutual interdependence between biblical interpretation, pragmatics, and argumentation sheds light on a much broader phenomenon, namely the pragmatic nature of argumentation. (shrink)

The tenth volume of the Frontiers of Japanese Philosophy focuses on the theme of “transition,” dealing with transitory and intermediary phenomena and practices such as translation, transmission, and transformation. Written in English, German and Japanese, the contributions explore a wide range of topics, crossing disciplinary borders between phenomenology, linguistics, feminism, epistemology, aesthetics, political history, martial arts, spiritual practice and anthropology, and bringing Japanese philosophy into cross-cultural dialogue with other philosophical traditions. As exercises in “thinking in transition,” the essays reveal (...) novel modes of doing philosophy as a way of boundary crossing that takes transition not only as an object of inquiry, but also as a method of philosophical practice itself. (shrink)

In this paper, we explore the conceptual problems arising when using network analysis in person- centered care (PCC) in psychiatry. Personalized network models are potentially helpful tools for PCC, but we argue that using them in psychiatric practice raises boundary problems, i.e., problems in demarcating what should and should not be included in the model, which may limit their ability to provide clinically-relevant knowledge. Models can have explanatory and representational boundaries, among others. We argue that we can make (...) more explicit what kind of questions personalized network models can address in PCC, given their representational and explanatory boundaries, using perspectival reasoning. (shrink)

The justification of criteria for the delineation and composition of democratic communities poses a significant challenge for democratic theory. The article argues that the all-subjected principle (ASP), advocated inter alia by Robert Dahl, fails to provide a convincing solution of the democratic boundary problem. Based on a detailed critique of the ASP, an alternative approach that builds on the right of association and a territorial principle is suggested. In contrast to non-territorial associations, such as religious communities, territorially organized states (...) have specific obligations to permanent residents that include the granting of voting rights. In response to possible objections it is argued that the freedom of association can be sensibly applied to the creation and maintenance of states. Moreover, it is shown that the territorial principle on which the proposed solution of the democratic boundary problem relies differs from the ASP in important respects. Finally, some practical consequences for controversial cases, such as immigrants, anarchists, and expatriates, are elucidated. (shrink)

The distinction between clinical research and clinical practice directs how we partition medicine and biomedical science. Reasons for a sharp distinction date historically to the work of the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, especially to its analysis of the “boundaries” between research and practice in the Belmont Report (1978). Belmont presents a segregation model of the research-practice distinction, according to which research and practice form conceptually exclusive sets of (...) activities and interventions. This model is still the standard in federal regulations today. However, the Commission’s deliberations and conclusions about the boundaries are more complicated, nuanced, and instructive than has generally been appreciated. The National Commission did not conclude that practice needs no oversight comparable to the regulation of research. It debated the matter and inclined to the view that the oversight of practice needed to be upgraded, though the Commission stopped short of proposing new regulations for its oversight, largely for prudential political reasons. (shrink)

Our experiences with the external world are possible mainly through vision, hearing, taste, touch, and smell providing us a sense of reality. How the brain is able to seamlessly integrate stimuli from our external and internal world into our sense of reality has yet to be adequately explained in the literature. We have previously proposed a three-dimensional unified model of consciousness that partly explains the dynamic mechanism. Here we further expand our model and include illustrations to provide a better conception (...) of the ill-defined space within the self, providing insight into a unified mind-body concept. In this article, we propose that our senses “super-impose” on an existing dynamic space within us after a slight, imperceptible delay. The existing space includes the entire intrapersonal space and can also be called the “the body’s internal 3D default space”. We provide examples from meditation experiences to help explain how the sense of ‘self’ can be experienced through meditation practice associated with underlying physiological processes that take place through cardio-respiratory synchronization and coherence that is developed among areas of the brain. Meditation practice can help keep the body in a parasympathetic dominant state during meditation, allowing an experience of inner ‘self’. Understanding this physical and functional space could help unlock the mysteries of the function of memory and cognition, allowing clinicians to better recognize and treat disorders of the mind by recommending proven techniques to reduce stress as an adjunct to medication treatment. (shrink)

This article, based on the Analects and other texts related to Confucius, uses the concept of “cosmopolitanism,” which has a long history in Western cultural tradi­tions, as a point of reference. Through an examination of both Confucius’ thoughts and practices, it argues that Confucius was a cosmopolitan. On this basis, it further identifies the characteristics and significance of Confucius’ “rooted cosmopolitanism,” which not only embodies the core consensus of all forms of cosmopolitanism—transcending regional and ethnic boundaries— but also centers on (...) universal human values. It avoids the issues of extreme cosmopolitanism, which can become abstract, generalized, and detached, by maintaining a balance between “one principle” and “many manifestations.” -/- . (shrink)

Eugenics is often referred to in debates on the ethics of reproductive technologies and practices, in relation to the creation of moral boundaries between acceptable and unacceptable technologies, and acceptable and unacceptable uses of these technologies. Historians have argued that twentieth century eugenics cannot be reduced to a uniform set of practices, and that no simple lessons can be drawn from this complex history. Some authors stress the similarities between past eugenics and present reproductive technologies and practices (what I define (...) throughout the paper as ‘the continuity view’) in order to condemn the latter. Others focus on the differences between past and present practices (what I define throughout the paper as ‘the discontinuity view’) in order to defend contemporary reproductive technologies. In this paper, I explore the meanings of the word ‘eugenics’ and the relationship between its past and present uses in terms of contemporary debates on reproductive technologies and practices. I argue that moral disagreement about present technologies originate in divergent views of condemnable and justifiable features of the past. (shrink)

This article aims to distinguish and depict the features of communications and collaborations in contemporary universities through the concept of trading zones. The author also considers the role that the idea of a digital university might play in shaping interactions in transforming local context where different actors can find a common ground of exchange. The new contexts, including the pragmatic orientation of contemporary society and new technologies and environments, contribute to reconsidering the idea of the classical university, in which interactions (...) between professors and students have outstepped customary collaborations in laboratories, as well as the idea of education and research integration. This article focuses on distinguishing new forms of interactions, boundary practices, and environments, which are suggested by today’s universities. Proceeding from them, the author argues that new concepts of the university, such as the digital university, and renovated campuses—to some extent—contribute to the adaptation of a renewed idea of Humboldt’s Bildung. (shrink)

A SECOND COMPLETELY REVISED EDITION OF THIS TEXTBOOK ON INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH WAS PUBLISHED WITH AMSTERDAM UNIVERSITY PRESS IN 2022. Check out that version here and a PDF of its ToC and Introduction, as this first edition (AUP 2016) is no longer available. [This book (128 pp.) serves as an introduction and manual to guide students through the interdisciplinary research process. We are becoming increasingly aware that, as a result of technological developments and globalisation, problems are becoming so complex that they (...) can only be solved through cooperation between multiple disciplines. Healthcare, climate change, food security, energy, financial markets and quality of life are just a few examples of issues that require scientists and academics to work in a crossdisciplinary way. As a result of these developments, an interdisciplinary approach is becoming increasingly popular in higher education and must be considered an absolute necessity. Young academics are being called on to step beyond the boundaries of traditional disciplines in order to contribute to addressing fundamental problems and solving challenges facing society. There is a need for people who are not afraid to ask critical questions, who can work together well and can look beyond the boundaries of their own field. This means students need to learn more about how they can integrate and apply knowledge, methods and skills from different fields. Interdisciplinary research projects and practical training courses offer students more than one perspective on the same subject. Comparing and contrasting, connecting, adding and adapting concepts, theories and methodologies from different disciplines ultimately results in new insights and better answers to complex problems.]. (shrink)

Bioethics, neuroscience, medicine are contributing to a debate on the definition and criteria of death. This topic is very controversial, and it demonstrates clashing views on the meaning of human life and death. Official medical and legal positions agree upon a biological definition of death as irreversible cessation of integrated functioning of the organism as a whole, and whole-brain criterion to ascertain death. These positions have to face many criticisms: some scholars speak of logical and practical inconsistency, some others of (...) invalid scientific theory about the supreme integrator. In this paper some criticisms are exposed and discussed in order to reconstruct the state of the art in bioethical debate. -/- . (shrink)

This paper examines Nietzsche’s conflicted relation to Epicurus, an important naturalistic predecessor in the ‘art of living’ tradition. I focus in particular on the Epicurean credo “live unnoticed” (lathe biōsas), which advocated an inconspicuous life of quiet philosophical reflection, self-cultivation and friendship, avoiding the public radar and eschewing the larger ambitions and perturbations of political life. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the idea looms largest and is most warmly received in Nietzsche’s middle period writings, where one finds a repeated concern with prudence, withdrawal (...) and concealment, and where the primary emphasis is on private pluralistic experiments in therapeutic self-cultivation among small groups of free spirits. The idea of the Epicurean Garden appeals greatly to Nietzsche at this time as well, and I suggest that Zarathustra’s Blessed Isles are best understood as a friendship community along these lines. However, Nietzsche’s growing impatience with human imperfections and the siren song of great politics eventually lead him away from Epicurus and back to Plato. Beginning with Zarathustra, the paradigm of the modest, hidden helpful philosopher-therapist is replaced by the more ambitious philosopher-legislator who takes upon himself the task of determining the future of humanity. Nonetheless, I argue that we can profit more from the modest, practical insights of Nietzsche’s Epicurean art of living. (short version). (shrink)

In the early 1990’s, many feminist philosophers found that the practice of the women´s movement as well as those of other new social movements, could be articulated most adequately in terms of citizenship. The classical political vocabulary of citizenship seemed to offer a viable alternative to the vocabularies that until then had been dominant in feminist political theory: the individualistic, rights-oriented discourse of liberalism, and the structuralist, interest-oriented perspectives of socialism and marxism.

Social Justice is a concept familiar to most Indians but one whose meaning is not always understood as it signifies a variety of government strategies designed to enhance opportunities for underprivileged groups. By tracing the trajectory of social justice from the colonial period to the present, this book examines how it informs ideas, practices and debates on discrimination and disadvantage today. After outlining the historical context for reservations for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes that began under British colonial rule, the (...) book examines the legal and moral strands of demands raised by newer groups since 1990. In addition the book shows how the development of quota policies has been significantly influenced by the nature and operation of democracy in India. It describes the recent proliferation of quota demands for reservations in higher education, private sector and for women and religious minorities in legislative assemblies. The book goes on to argue that while proliferation of demands address unequal incidence of poverty, deprivation and inequalities across social groups and communities, care has to be taken to ensure that existing justifications for quotas for discriminated groups due to caste hierarchies are not undermined. Providing a rich historical background to the subject, the book is a useful contribution to the study on the evolution of multiple conceptions of social justice in contemporary India. (shrink)

This essay reads Oakeshott’s views on practice, politics, and aesthetics in the manner of the ‘hypothetical history’ of civilization in Rousseau’s Second Discourse. Under conditions of progress in the arts and sciences the future-oriented world of practice suffers under the law of ruin and practical selves become more inept at acting practically over time. This degeneration has a direct impact on the two tasks of civil association: progress favors the accumulation of power with its future-oriented temporality while it (...) undermines the cultivation of authority which is past-orientation. But only authority is the distinct concern of civil association. Consequently, civil association requires from its ruling offices to be increasingly artful in managing the imbalance between the two. Aesthetics with its temporality of presentness may come to their aid as it restores the present world from the oblivion of progressive practice by detaching its components from practical use. The political art thus requires the protection of the voice of poetry from the tendency of practice to overgrow its own boundaries. This dependence of politics on aesthetics is symbolized by the poets who ‘rule’ solely through authority and without any concern for power. In this hypothetical history the survival of civil association hinges not on the refusal to accumulate more power, but on its ever more demanding virtuous use for the sake of poetry. (shrink)

The connection between Chinese sexism and Confucianism has been a subject of study on the condition of Chinese women in the West since the rise of feminist consciousness in the 1970s. However Confucianism in feminist scholarship is inescapably construed as a misogynous ideology that is incapable of self-rectification in regards to the issue of gender parity. Hence, conceptually the eradication of Confucianism becomes the necessary condition for the liberation of Chinese women, and the adoption of Western ideology let it be (...) Marxist-socialism, Liberalism, or Existentialism is then a logical next step for Chinese women. Yet, such a dichotomization of the West as a superior moral subject and the East as a passive object victimized by their "sexist" tradition is nevertheless an oversimplification of the condition and the liberation of women in the developing world. In the end, it is essentially a neo-colonial discourse in a feminist disguise. This dissertation sets itself up to accomplish two tasks: first, it is to obtain a conceptual clarity of what constitutes Confucianism and its connection with dominant sexist, social practices; second, it is to go beyond a mere critique of Confucianism and feminism as an ally of Chinese patriarchal family structure and Western imperialism respectively, and to lay a foundation for a future construction of a gender theory based on Confucianism as a theoretical ground to explain the cultural construct of Chinese women and to conceive an alternative ethical ground for women's liberation. Eventually, the whole project can be seen as an act of self-affirmation of my ethnic identity as a Chinese and an act of reconciliation with my feminist identity in the modern world. (shrink)

This paper discusses the implications for public participation in science opened by the sharing of information via electronic media. The ethical dimensions of information flow and control are linked to questions of autonomy, authority and appropriate exploitation of knowledge. It argues that, by lowering the boundaries that limit access and participation by wider active audiences, both scientific identity and practice are challenged in favor of extra-disciplinary and avocational communities such as scientific enthusiasts and lay experts. Reconfigurations of hierarchy, mediated (...) by new channels of information flow, are increasingly visible at the interface between professional and non-professional practice. Setting the scene by surveying the role of the media in defining twentieth-century contexts of lay science, the paper illustrates the appropriation and recuperation of scientific authority being played out in two contemporary models of active public engagement: so-called “citizen science” and varieties of “crowd-sourced science”. Both participatory models are increasingly reliant on information exchange via social media, but may be implemented to support distinctly different societal goals and beneficiaries. (shrink)

The study highlights the advantages telemedicine offers, such as increased flexibility, reduced commuting time, and better time management. It also examines the challenges doctors face, including the demands of always being digitally accessible, the learning curve of new technologies, and the difficulty in maintaining boundaries between personal and professional life. Using both quantitative and qualitative data, this research compares the telemedicine adaptation experiences of doctors in public versus private hospitals, considering factors such as hospital infrastructure, support systems, and patient load.

Are there any bona fide boundaries, i.e., boundaries that carve at the joints? Or is any boundary—hence any object—the result of a fiat articulation reflecting our cognitive biases and our social practices and conventions? Does the choice between these two options amount to a choice between realism and wholesome relativism?

Urban infrastructures serve as the backbone of modern economies, mediating global exchanges and responding to urban demands. Yet, our comprehension of these complex structures, particularly within diverse socio-political terrain, remains fragmented. In bridging this knowledge gap, this study delves into “boundary objects”—entities enabling diverse stakeholders to collaborate without a comprehensive consensus. Central to our investigation is the hypothesis that oceanic infrastructural developments are instrumental in molding the interface of urban, industrial, and energy sectors within marine contexts. Our lens is (...) directed at the Gulf of Mexico, which is distinguished by its industrial depth and expansive marine grid. We highlight the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway’s (GIWW) paramount role in regional movement and the ecological facets of practices such as dredging, which is vital for transport and coastal conservation. A striking revelation of our study is the transformation of offshore structures in the Gulf into vibrant marine habitats. Emphasizing the intertwined nature of marine infrastructures, we denote oceans as pivotal platforms for impending urban expansion, especially as land resources wane. Our research aspires to validate the role played by oceans as a nexus in the urban–industrial–energy fusion. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to investigate Nishida Kitarō’s way of philosophizing in the light of the concept of “transition” in order to deepen our understanding of both Nishida’s philosophy and our thinking about and in transitions, using the concept of “boundary” or “border” (Grenze) as a catalyst. For that purpose, we focus on Nishida’s essay “Place” (「場所」), passing through different parts of the text as if through successive gates on a path of transition between one place and (...) the next, until we reach the final place of “absolute nothingness.” Dwelling on this place, we turn our attention to its internal structure and try to depict it along the outlines of a boundary, following the movements taking place in Nishida’s essay. The second part proposes an interpretation of the place of nothingness as an interminable practice of boundary-crossing that doesn’t come to a halt in a final, all-encompassing place, but dynamically situates itself on countless intersecting planes. After a more or less abstract analysis of the concept of “boundary,” we will apply and concretize this approach by using the example of the skin. To this end, we expose five main features of the skin as boundary: permeability, enclosure, excessiveness, interstitiality and reciprocal self-formation. (shrink)

This issue of The Monist is devoted to the metaphysics of lesser kinds, which is to say those kinds of entity that are not generally recognized as occupying a prominent position in the categorial structure of the world. Why bother? We offer two sorts of reason. The first is methodological. In mathematics, it is common practice to study certain functions (for instance) by considering limit cases: What if x = 0? What if x is larger than any assigned value? (...) Physics, too, often studies the (idealized) initial and boundary conditions of a given system: What would happen in the case of a perfect sphere, or a perfectly black body? In the cognitive sciences, research often thrives on the analysis of cognitive errors, perceptual illusions, brain pathologies. Also in logic one can learn a lot by studying special, anomalous scenarios such as those exhibited by the paradoxes: it is unlikely that we actually find ourselves in a soritical context, or in a liar-like situation, but the fact that we might—or simply the fact that we can conceive of such a possibility—is important enough to deserve careful consideration. In short, the odd, the unfamiliar, the extra-ordinary, the limit cases are perfectly at home in scientific and more broadly intellectual discourse at various levels, where they can be fruitfully engaged in a sophisticated way (witness the existence of specific confining and managing strategies for dealing with them); and they are important precisely because they instruct us concerning the normal, the obvious, and the paradigmatic. The same goes for metaphysics, we submit. Although its major concern is, naturally, with such core entities as substances, properties, or hunks of solid matter, a lot may be learned by paying attention to those limit cases where we find ourselves dealing with entities of much lesser kinds, whether real or putative. (shrink)

Practice of knowledge management is often characterized by obstacles to creation, distribution, and transfer of knowledge from specific groups of settings. Obstacles or constraints to attempts to constitute knowledge as an organizational resource have been previously dealt within the context of organizational learning perspectives; however, there still remain barriers toward making learning available and all-pervasive throughout organizations. This is often as a result of two important factors: (i) bureaucratic and hierarchical forms of organization; and (ii) owing to the situated (...) and tacit character of knowledge. This paper is a result of theoretical exploration aimed at addressing these core issues, and proposes solutions to manage constraints and remove obstacles to knowledge management, as well as means to codify the tacit character of knowledge. The research offers a view that although it is reasonable to value knowledge in financial or economic terms, it is also important to consider the problems which make it difficult to extract and transfer knowledge within specific organizational settings. Addressing the issue of rising competitive pressure for innovation, this paper proposes several solutions to enable lateral flows of knowledge-sharing by overcoming the factors that affect acquisition of, and creation and distribution of knowledge across fluid social boundaries. (shrink)

Urban spaces, often emerging outside formal, recognized boundaries, underscore the pivotal role women play in shaping these environments. Despite the enduring influence of patriarchal and hierarchical structures that render these spaces overtly gendered, it is within these contexts that women’s actions become particularly transformative. Drawing from feminist urban theories of the global south, this paper investigates informal placemaking, feminist urban activism, revolutionary placemaking, online protest movements, and the networks that support women’s solidarity groups. Employing a mixed-methods approach that includes case (...) studies, interviews with activists, and social media analysis, this research focuses on Iran, with a specific emphasis on the recent ‘Women, Life, Freedom’ movement. This study not only highlights how women navigate, contest, and reshape urban spaces through feminist urban activism and informal revolutionary placemaking but also anticipates the broader implications of these actions for urban planning and policy. By analyzing and comparing these case studies, we aim to uncover the commonalities, differences, challenges, and opportunities between informal/formal, state-led/bottom-up, and revolutionary feminist placemaking practices in Iran. The findings of this paper are expected to contribute valuable insights into the dynamics of feminist urbanism and suggest avenues for future research in enhancing the inclusivity and responsiveness of urban spaces to gendered needs and activism. (shrink)

Among the tools of philosophical work, the dialogue, as form of live "transaction" between two or more persons, seems to have its beginning and its end with Socrates. Along the subsequent development of our philosophical tradition the dialogue reappears only as literary genre. The essay aims to suggest that the live philosophical dialogue, if offered in new forms as a distributed social practice arranged and supported by the professional skills of philosopher, shows some promise of widening the boundaries of (...) the examined life. (shrink)

Many healthcare practices expose people to risks of harmful outcomes. However, the major theories of moral philosophy struggle to assess whether, when and why it is ethically justifiable to expose individuals to risks, as opposed to actually harming them. Sven Ove Hansson has proposed an approach to the ethical assessment of risk imposition that encourages attention to factors including questions of justice in the distribution of advantage and risk, people’s acceptance or otherwise of risks, and the scope individuals have to (...) influence the practices that generate risk. This paper investigates the ethical justifiability of preventive healthcare practices that expose people to risks including overdiagnosis. We applied Hansson’s framework to three such practices: an ‘ideal’ breast screening service, a commercial personal genome testing service, and a guideline that lowers the diagnostic threshold for hypertension. The framework was challenging to apply, not least because healthcare has unclear boundaries and involves highly complex practices. Nonetheless, the framework encouraged attention to issues that would be widely recognised as morally pertinent. Our assessment supports the view that at least some preventive healthcare practices that impose risks including that of overdiagnosis are not ethically justifiable. Further work is however needed to develop and/or test refined assessment criteria and guidance for applying them. (shrink)

Our main research question is how pliable Norwegian meat consumption practices are. However it is not any type of elasticity we are interested in. We are specifically interested in the scope for what we dub the “4Rs” of responsible meat consumption within existing food systems: 1. Reducing the amount of animal-based proteins used 2. Replacing animal-based protein with plant-based, or insect-based alternatives 3. Refining processes of utilization of animal-based protein to minimize emissions, loss and waste 4. Recognising animal-based protein as (...) precious –i.e. recognising the people and the animals involved in meat production. -/- These four principles are derived by analogy to ethical principles guiding the use of animals in research, the so-called “3Rs”, namely: the imperatives to reduce the number of animals needed to make a scientific inference, to replace animal experiments with other types of research, and where not possible to replace ‘more’ with ‘less’ sentient creatures, and to refine the experimental setup so it minimises the discomfort and/or distress inflicted upon the animals (Russell and Burch, 1959). There are no such principles guiding the use of animals in farming, given the farming industry intrinsically relies on increasing its resources, of which animals are one. The current profile of climate change however opens up a way to re-appreciate meat –indeed what we articulate as the fourth principle of recognizing the preciousness of meat, above, given planetary boundaries. We proceed to reflect on how these 4Rs can be modulated, from a cultural-social perspective, that is, we look at cultural factors that could stretch current food practices along the 4R aspects. (shrink)

This dissertation concerns the methodology Kant employs in the first two sections of the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (Groundwork I-II) with particular attention to how the execution of the method of analysis in these sections contributes to the establishment of moral metaphysics as a science. My thesis is that Kant had a detailed strategy for the Groundwork, that this strategy and Kant’s reasons for adopting it can be ascertained from the Critique of Pure Reason (first Critique) and his (...) lectures on logic, and that understanding this strategy gains us interpretive insight into Kant’s moral metaphysics. At the most general level of methodology, Kant says there are four steps for the establishment of any science: 1) make distinct the idea of the natural unity of its material 2) determine the special content of the science 3) articulate the systematic unity of the science 4) critique the science to determine its boundaries The first two of these steps are accomplished by the genetically scholastic method of analysis, paradigmatically the method whereby confused and obscure ideas are made clear and distinct, thereby logically perfecting them and transforming them into possible grounds of cognitive insight that are potentially complete and adequate to philosophical purposes. The analysis of Groundwork I is a paradigmatic analysis that makes distinct what is contained in common understanding, i.e. its Inhalt or intension, making distinct the higher partial concepts that together define the concept of morality. The analysis of Groundwork II is an employment more specifically of the method of logical division, which makes distinct what is contained under the concept, i.e. its Umfang, by which the extension or object of morality is determined. Part I introduces Kant’s conception of moral metaphysical science and why he took it to be in need of establishment, explains the general method for establishing science and the scholastic method of analysis by which its first two steps are to be accomplished, then provides an interpretation of Groundwork I as an execution of this method. Part II details Kant’s determination of the special content of moral science in Groundwork II in relation to the central problem for moral metaphysics – how synthetic a priori practical cognition is possible. (shrink)

The democratic boundary problem raises the question of who has democratic participation rights in a given polity and why. One possible solution to this problem is the all-affected principle, according to which a polity ought to enfranchise all persons whose interests are affected by the polity’s decisions in a morally significant way. While AAP offers a plausible principle of democratic enfranchisement, its supporters have so far not paid sufficient attention to economic participation rights. I argue that if one commits (...) oneself to AAP, one must also commit oneself to the view that political participation rights are not necessarily the only, and not necessarily the best, way to protect morally weighty interests. I also argue that economic participation rights raise important worries about democratic accountability, which is why their exercise must be constrained by a number of moral duties. (shrink)

Moral circles help define the boundaries of one’s moral consideration. One’s moral circle may provide insight into how one perceives or treats other entities. A data-driven model exploration was conducted to explore predictors and prediction models. Candidate predictors were built upon past research using moral foundations and political orientation. Moreover, we also employed additional moral psychological indicators, i.e., moral reasoning, moral identity, and empathy, based on prior research in moral development and education. We used model exploration methods, i.e., Bayesian model (...) exploration, Bayesian model averaging, and elastic-net regression. The study successfully replicated past research supporting the relationship between moral foundations, political orientation, and the moral circle. Additional moral psychological constructs, such as post-conventional moral reasoning and moral identity, significantly predicted the moral circle width. The identified components of the moral circle were conceptually related to phronesis, i.e., practical wisdom. We discussed the educational implications of the findings, particularly those related to moral education focusing on phronesis cultivation, multiculturalism and global citizenship, and climate justice. (shrink)

One of the most conspicuous features of contemporary modeling practices is the dissemination of mathematical and computational methods across disciplinary boundaries. We study this process through two applications of the Ising model: the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model of spin glasses and the Hopfield model of associative memory. The Hopfield model successfully transferred some basic ideas and mathematical methods originally developed within the study of magnetic systems to the field of neuroscience. As an analytical resource we use Paul Humphreys's discussion of computational and (...) theoretical templates. We argue that model templates are crucial for the intra- and interdisciplinary theoretical transfer. A model template is an abstract conceptual idea associated with particular mathematical forms and computational methods. (shrink)

The enactive approach to cognition distinctively emphasizes autonomy, adaptivity, agency, meaning, experience, and interaction. Taken together, these principles can provide the new sciences of language with a comprehensive philosophical framework: languaging as adaptive social sense-making. This is a refinement and advancement on Maturana’s idea of languaging as a manner of living. Overcoming limitations in Maturana’s initial formulation of languaging is one of three motivations for this paper. Another is to give a response to skeptics who challenge enactivism to connect “lower-level” (...) sense-making with “higher-order” sophisticated moves like those commonly ascribed to language. Our primary goal is to contribute a positive story developed from the enactive account of social cognition, participatory sense-making. This concept is put into play in two different philosophical models, which respectively chronicle the logical and ontogenetic development of languaging as a particular form of social agency. Languaging emerges from the interplay of coordination and exploration inherent in the primordial tensions of participatory sense-making between individual and interactive norms; it is a practice that transcends the self-other boundary and enables agents to regulate self and other as well as interaction couplings. Linguistic sense-makers are those who negotiate interactive and internalized ways of meta-regulating the moment-to-moment activities of living and cognizing. Sense-makers in enlanguaged environments incorporate sensitivities, roles, and powers into their unique yet intelligible linguistic bodies. We dissolve the problematic dichotomies of high/low, online/offline, and linguistic/nonlinguistic cognition, and we provide new boundary criteria for specifying languaging as a prevalent kind of human social sense-making. (shrink)

What position on dualism does medicine require? Our understanding of that ques- tion has been dictated by holism, as defined by the biopsychosocial model, since the late twentieth century. Unfortunately, holism was characterized at the start with con- fused definitions of ‘dualism’ and ‘reductionism’, and that problem has led to a deep, unrecognized conceptual split in the medical professions. Some insist that holism is a nonreductionist approach that aligns with some form of dualism, while others insist it’s a reductionist view (...) that sets out to eradicate dualism. It’s important to consider each version. Nonreductive holism is philosophically consistent and clinically unprob- lematic. Reductive holism, however, is conceptually incoherent—yet it is the basis for the common idea that the boundary between medical and mental health disorders must be vague. When we trace that idea through to its implementation in medical practice, we find evidence that it compromises the safety of patient care in the large portion of cases where clinicians grapple with diagnosis at the boundary between psychiatry and medicine. Having established that medicine must embrace some form of nonreduc- tionism, I argue that Chalmers’ naturalistic dualism is a stronger prima facie candidate than the nonreductive alternatives. Regardless of which form of nonreductionism we prefer, some philosophical corrections are needed to give medicine a safe and coherent foundation. (shrink)

The relationship between the One and the Multiple in mystic philosophy is a profound and central theme that explores the nature of existence, the cosmos, and the divine. This theme is present in various mystical traditions, including those of the East and West, and it addresses the paradoxical coexistence of the unity and multiplicity of all things. -/- In mystic philosophy, the **One** often represents the ultimate reality, the source from which all things emanate and to which all things return. (...) It is the absolute, the infinite, and the unchanging. The One is beyond all attributes and is often associated with the divine or the absolute truth. -/- The **Multiple**, on the other hand, represents the manifest world, the diversity of forms, and the realm of change and plurality. It is the world we experience through our senses, the domain of time and space, where differentiation and individuality are apparent. -/- The relationship between the One and the Multiple is not one of opposition but of emanation and unity. The Multiple is seen as a reflection, expression, or manifestation of the One. In this sense, the diversity of the world doesn’t contradict the unity of the One but rather demonstrates it in a myriad of forms. -/- Mystics seek to understand and experience this relationship through various practices and insights. They aim to transcend the illusion of separation and duality to experience the non-dual reality where the One and the Multiple are recognized as inseparable. -/- This concept can be illustrated by the metaphor of the ocean and its waves. The ocean represents the One—vast, deep, and all-encompassing—while the waves represent the Multiple—distinct, diverse, and ever-changing. Each wave is unique, yet it is not separate from the ocean. The wave’s existence is dependent on and made of the same substance as the ocean. In the same way, each individual entity in the Multiple is an expression of the One. -/- In summary, the relationship between the One and the Multiple in mystic philosophy is a dynamic interplay that challenges the conventional understanding of separation. It invites a deeper exploration of reality, where the apparent multiplicity of the world is a direct expression of the singular, underlying essence of all that is. -/- The relationship between the One and the Multiple in the context of mathematical philosophy is a profound topic that touches upon the very foundations of existence and knowledge. It’s a theme that has been explored by philosophers and mathematicians alike, often leading to the contemplation of unity and diversity within the structures of reality. -/- In mathematics, the concept of the One can be seen as the basis of unity from which all numbers derive. It’s the identity element in multiplication, the starting point in counting, and the foundation of dimension in geometry. The One is often associated with the concept of monism in philosophy, which posits that there is a single, underlying substance or principle that constitutes reality. -/- On the other hand, the Multiple represents the infinite variety and diversity of forms and numbers that arise from the One. It’s the embodiment of plurality and the complex interplay of different entities that mathematics seeks to understand and describe. This reflects the philosophical stance of pluralism, which acknowledges the existence of multiple realities or truths. -/- The interplay between the One and the Multiple can be seen in the mathematical concept of sets. A set can be thought of as a unity, a whole composed of distinct elements. Yet, each element within the set also retains its individuality, contributing to the diversity of the set’s composition. This duality is mirrored in the philosophical exploration of the universal and the particular, where the universal represents the One, and the particulars represent the Multiple. -/- In the realm of mathematical philosophy, this relationship often leads to questions about the nature of mathematical objects: Are they discovered as part of an objective reality (the One), or are they constructed by the human mind from a multitude of experiences (the Multiple)? This debate resonates with the philosophical inquiry into the nature of truth and reality. -/- Reflecting on the One and the Multiple can also lead to a deeper understanding of the self and the cosmos. Just as the number one is integral to the existence of all other numbers, the individual self can be seen as a unique expression of the universal whole. Similarly, the cosmos can be viewed as a grand unity composed of a multiplicity of forms and phenomena. -/- Gödel’s incompleteness theorems have a fascinating connection to the philosophical concepts of the One and the Multiple. These theorems, which are pivotal in mathematical logic and philosophy of mathematics, articulate the inherent limitations of formal axiomatic systems, particularly those sufficient to express the arithmetic of natural numbers. -/- Gödel’s incompleteness theorems have a fascinating connection to the philosophical concepts of the One and the Multiple. These theorems, which are pivotal in mathematical logic and philosophy of mathematics, articulate the inherent limitations of formal axiomatic systems, particularly those sufficient to express the arithmetic of natural numbers⁴. -/- The **first incompleteness theorem** reveals that within any such consistent system, there are propositions that are true but cannot be proven within the system itself. This reflects the idea of the Multiple in that there is an abundance of mathematical truths, a multiplicity that exceeds the unifying framework of any one system. It suggests that the realm of mathematical truth is more extensive than any single formal system can fully capture. -/- The **second incompleteness theorem** extends this by showing that a system cannot prove its own consistency. This relates to the concept of the One, as it implies that a system’s complete self-understanding, its unity and coherence, is unattainable from within. It must look beyond itself, to an external vantage point, to ascertain its consistency. -/- In the context of the One and the Multiple, Gödel’s theorems imply that the One (a consistent formal system) is inherently incomplete and cannot encompass the Multiple (the totality of mathematical truths). This resonates with philosophical discussions about the relationship between unity and plurality. Just as a single philosophical system cannot capture the entirety of truth, a single formal mathematical system cannot encapsulate all mathematical truths. -/- Moreover, Gödel’s work suggests that the pursuit of a single, unified theory of everything in mathematics—a One that encompasses all Multiples—is an inherently Sisyphean task. There will always be more truths (Multiples) than can be derived from any given set of axioms (the One). -/- In essence, Gödel’s incompleteness theorems provide a formal underpinning to the philosophical notion that the One cannot exist without the Multiple, and vice versa. They are interdependent, with the One giving rise to the Multiple, and the Multiple necessitating the One for its expression and comprehension. This interplay is a dance of limitations and possibilities, where the boundaries of logic, mathematics, and philosophy blur into one another. -/- The relationship between the One and the Multiple in the context of the mathematics of zero is a deeply philosophical inquiry that bridges the abstract world of numbers with the existential questions of being and non-being. -/- Zero, in mathematics, is a symbol of absence, a representation of nothingness, yet it holds a pivotal position as a number. It is the void from which all things emerge and to which they return. In the philosophy of mathematics, zero is the paradoxical junction where the One and the Multiple converge and diverge. -/- From the perspective of the One, zero can be seen as the origin—the singular point that precedes the existence of numbers. It is the empty set, the foundation upon which the edifice of mathematics is constructed. As the identity element in addition, zero maintains the integrity of numbers, for adding zero to any number leaves it unchanged, reflecting the immutable nature of the One. -/- Conversely, when we consider the Multiple, zero represents the infinite potentiality of creation. It is the canvas upon which the integers, both positive and negative, express their multitude. Zero is the balance point, the fulcrum around which the symphony of numbers dances. It embodies the plurality of possibilities, the beginning of the number line that stretches infinitely in both directions. -/- Philosophically, zero challenges our understanding of existence. It is both something and nothing—a number that quantifies the absence of quantity. This duality echoes the philosophical struggle to comprehend how the One gives rise to the Multiple. How does the unity of being manifest the diversity of the cosmos? Zero offers a mathematical metaphor for this mystery, as it encapsulates the transition from non-existence to existence, from the undifferentiated One to the differentiated Multiple. -/- In the realm of set theory, zero corresponds to the empty set—a set with no elements. This set is unique in that it is the only set that contains nothing, yet it is the foundation upon which all other sets are built. The empty set is the mathematical embodiment of the One, and all other sets, containing multiple elements, arise from it. -/- Reflecting on zero in the context of Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, we find a resonance with the idea that the One (a consistent formal system) cannot capture the entirety of the Multiple (the totality of mathematical truths). Zero, as the foundation of numbers, similarly suggests that from the nothingness of the One, the infinite complexity of the Multiple emerges—yet it can never be fully encompassed or expressed by any single system. -/- In conclusion, the mathematics of zero offers a profound reflection on the relationship between the One and the Multiple. It serves as a bridge between the abstract and the concrete, the known and the unknowable, challenging us to ponder the origins of existence and the nature of reality itself. -/- . (shrink)

What is a woman? The definition of this central concept of feminism has lately become especially controversial and politically charged. “Ameliorative Inquirists” have rolled up their sleeves to reengineer our ordinary concept of womanhood, with a goal of including in the definition all and only those who identify as women, both “cis” and “trans.” This has proven to be a formidable challenge. Every proposal so far has failed to draw the boundaries of womanhood in a way acceptable to the Ameliorative (...) Inquirists, since not all those who identify as women count as women on these proposals, and some who count as women on these proposals don’t identify as women. This is the Trans Inclusion Problem. Is there any solution? Can there be? Recently, Katharine Jenkins, pointing to the work of Mari Mikkola, suggests that the Trans Inclusion Problem can be “deflated” rather than solved. We will investigate this proposal, and show that, unfortunately, Jenkins is mistaken: Mikkola’s project will not help us answer the Trans Inclusion Problem. After that, we’ll look at Robin Dembroff’s suggestion that we “imitate” the linguistic practices of trans inclusive and queer communities, and we will evaluate whether this would help us solve the Trans Inclusion Problem. Unfortunately, this strategy also fails to solve the problem. By the end, we’ll have a better appreciation of the challenges faced by Ameliorative Inquirists in their project of redefining “woman,” and clearer view of why the Trans Inclusion Problem cannot, in fact, be solved. That’s primarily because, no matter what it means to be a woman, it’s one thing to be a woman, and another thing to identify as a woman. (shrink)

This thesis develops an account of ethics called the Linguistic Perspective, which is realist in a practical, non-theoretical sense, and is rooted Wittgenstein’s 'On Certainty'. On this account, normativity is intrinsic to human action and language; the norms of ethics are the logical limits of the most basic, unassailable concepts that practical reasoning requires for intelligibility. Part I lays the groundwork for this account by developing a Tractarian Reading of 'On Certainty'. Here, I contend that 'On Certainty' is primarily concerned (...) with the logical requirements and limits of language, and like the 'Tractatus' it develops these concerns in a realist direction. 'On Certainty', I argue, does so by advancing three key claims about logic: Everything descriptive of a language-game is part of logic; the boundary between logical and empirical propositions is not sharp; logic is founded on action. I investigate these claims, with particular emphasis on how natural human reactions provide logical conditions for the possibility of language. Hinge propositions, I argue, are rooted in these reactions; they point us to the limits of intelligibility of our concepts, though these limits are vague and inarticulable. In Part II, I discuss the practical syllogism and its validity. I argue that practical reasoning is distinct from theoretical reasoning and embodies a different standard of logical validity for inference. This standard is not strict and narrow, but creative and wide open; furthermore, it is an intrinsically ethical standard. Then, I advance my Linguistic Perspective on ethics, according to which human reactions provide the conditions for ethical normativity, just as they do for language. I argue that we can access ethical norms by reflecting on those linguistic concepts that are rooted in the most basic patterns of action, and by identifying the norms of behaviour that ensure the development of those concepts without contradiction. (shrink)

The aim of this commentary is to critically examine Matti Häyry’s article ‘Just Better Utilitarianism’, where he argues that liberal utilitarianism can offer a basis for moral and political choices in bioethics and thus could be helpful in decision-making. This commentary, while generally sympathetic to Häyry’s perspective, argues that Häyry should expand on who belongs to our moral community because, to solve practical ethical issues, we need to determine who (and what) deserves our moral consideration. Challenging Häyry’s principle of actual (...) or prospective existence, this commentary suggests that – at least sometimes – the quality of life of those who will never come into existence matters. In a similar vein, this commentary aims to show that determining how to treat mindless humans such as fetuses might pose difficulties for liberal utilitarianism unless the issue of the boundaries of the moral community is addressed. (shrink)

There are two important ways in which, when dealing with documents, we go beyond the boundaries of linear text. First, by incorporating diagrams into documents, and second, by creating complexes of intermeshed documents which may be extended in space and evolve and grow through time. The thesis of this paper is that such aggregations of documents are today indispensable to practically all complex human achievements from law and finance to orchestral performance and organized warfare. Documents provide for what we can (...) think of as a division of intellectual, instructional, and deontic labour, allowing plans, orders, and obligations to be enmeshed together in a way that often involves the use of diagrammatic elements, as for example in a musical score. (shrink)

The theoretical underpinnings of public international law have taken the sovereign status of the nation-state for granted since the beginning of the modern era. After centuries of evolution in legal and political thought, the state's definition as a bounded territorial unit has been strictly codified. The legal development of the nation-state was an ideological project informed by extra-legal considerations. Additionally, the ever-narrowing scope of the juridical idea of sovereignty functioned as a boundary mechanism instrumental in colonising Africa and other (...) regions. While international law claims universal liberalism today, the current system based on sovereign nation-states represents not social inclusion but fierce and dangerous exclusion. -/- The central thesis of this book is that the development of legal sovereignty was, rather than part of the modernist progress narrative, a historically contingent evolutionary regression. While other social systems such as economics and science became globalised, politics and law counterintuitively became more territorialised. It is argued that the nation-state today is not only anachronistic but is dangerously ill-equipped for facing international problems such as the climate crisis or global pandemics. Finally, it also leaves African states and many other formerly-colonised territories at a particular disadvantage by regulating their political practices into a predefined mould. (shrink)

This essay uses the concept of reconstruction to make an argument and an intervention in relation to the practice and study of black aesthetics. The argument will have to do with the parochialism of John Dewey, the institutional inertia of professional philosophy, the aesthetic dimensions of the US politics of reconstruction, the centrality of reconstructionist politics to the black aesthetic tradition, and the staging of a reconstructionist argument in the film, Black Panther (Coogler 2018). The intervention aims to address (...) the fact that arguments like these tend not to register properly because of certain reflexive and customary limits on some common forms of philosophical inquiry. The sort of professional philosophy I was raised to practise and value tends not to be particularly inclusive and open-minded, especially when it comes to subjects that bear directly on the thoughts, lives, and practices of people racialized as black. black aesthetics, by contrast, is an inherently ecumenical enterprise, reaching across disciplinary and demographic boundaries to build communities of practice and exchange. Hence the need for an intervention: to create the space for arguments and the people who work with them to function across disciplinary and demographic contexts. (shrink)

In this book I show that science suffers from a damaging but rarely noticed methodological disease, which I call rationalistic neurosis. It is not just the natural sciences which suffer from this condition. The contagion has spread to the social sciences, to philosophy, to the humanities more generally, and to education. The whole academic enterprise, indeed, suffers from versions of the disease. It has extraordinarily damaging long-term consequences. For it has the effect of preventing us from developing traditions and institutions (...) of learning rationally devoted to helping us learn how to make progress towards a wiser, more civilized world. On our fragile earth, overcrowded, fraught with injustice, inequality and conflict, menaced by unprecedented and terrifying technological and industrial means for change and destruction, we urgently need to acquire a little more wisdom and civilization if we are to avoid repeating horrors of the kind suffered by so many during the 20th century (and already suffered by many in the first few years of the 21st century). We can ill afford to have in our hands instruments of learning botched and bungled from the standpoint of helping us learn how to live more wisely. It may seem scarcely credible that something as important as our institutions of learning can suffer from wholesale, structural defects. Why has this not been noticed before? Why have not armies of scientists and scholars appreciated the point and, long ago, put the matter right? The answer will emerge as my argument unfolds. I will show that one of the most damaging features of rationalistic neurosis is that it has built-in methodological and institutional mechanisms which effectively conceal that anything is wrong. But there is also an immediately obvious reason: specialization, and the resulting fragmentation of academia, has resulted in a situation in which hardly anyone takes responsibility for the overall ideals, the overall aims and methods, of academic inquiry. Academics, these days, are specialists, furiously trying to keep abreast of developments in their own specialist fields. They have no time, and no inducement, to lift their eyes from their particular disciplines, and look at the whole endeavour. Science has long been under attack, at least since the Romantic movement. Blake objected to “Single vision & Newton’s sleep” and declared that “Art is the Tree of Life... Science is the Tree of Death”. Keats lamented that science will “clip an Angel’s wings” and “unweave a rainbow”. Whereas the Enlightenment had valued science and reason as tools for the liberation of humanity, Romanticism found science and reason oppressive and destructive, and instead valued art, imagination, inspiration, individual genius, emotional and motivational honesty rather than careful attention to objective fact. Much subsequent opposition to science stems from, or echoes, the Romantic opposition of Blake, Wordsworth, Keats and many others. There is the movement Isaiah Berlin has described as the “Counter-Enlightenment” (Berlin, 1979, ch. 1). There is existentialism, with its denunciation of the tyranny of reason, its passionate affirmation of the value and centrality of irrationality in human life, from Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche to Heidegger and Sartre (see, for example, Barrett, 1962). There is the attack on Enlightenment ideals concerning science and reason undertaken by the Frankfurt school, by postmodernists and others, from Horkheimer and Adorno to Lyotard, Foucault, Habermas, Derrida, MacIntyre and Rorty (see Gascardi, 1999). The soul-destroying consequences of valuing science and reason too highly is a persistent theme in literature: it is to be found in the works of writers such as D.H. Lawrence, Doris Lessing, Max Frisch, Y. Zamyatin. There is persistent opposition to modern science and technology, and to scientific rationality, often associated with the Romantic wing of the green movement, and given expression in such popular books as Marcuse’s One Dimensional Man, Roszak’s Where the Wasteland Ends, Berman’s The Reenchantment of the World and Appleyard’s Understanding the Present. There is the feminist critique of science and conceptions of science: see, for example, Fox Keller (1984) and Harding (1986). And there are the corrosive implications of the so-called “strong programme” in the sociology of knowledge, and of the work of social constructivist historians of science, which depict scientific knowledge as a belief system alongside many other such conflicting systems, having no more right to claim to constitute knowledge of the truth than these rivals, the scientific view of the world being no more than an elaborate myth, a social construct (see Barnes and Bloor, 1981; Bloor, 1991; Barnes, Bloor and Henry, 1996; Shapin and Schaffer, 1985; Shapin, 1994; Pickering, 1984; Latour, 1987). This latter literature has provoked a counter-attack by scientists, historians and philosophers of science seeking to defend science and traditional conceptions of scientific rationality: see Gross and Levitt (1994), Gross, Levitt and Lewis (1996), and Koertge (1998). This debate between critics and defenders of science came abruptly to public attention with the publication of Alan Sokal’s brilliant hoax article ‘Transgressing the boundaries’ in a special issue of the cultural studies journal Social Text in 1996 entitled Science Wars: see Sokal and Bricmont (1998). What does this book have to contribute, given the above avalanche of criticism of science? The criticisms of science developed in this book are diametrically opposed to the above, in so far as the above criticisms oppose scientific rationality, seek to diminish or restrict its influence, or hold that it is unattainable. My central point is that we suffer, not from too much scientific rationality, but from not enough. What is generally taken to constitute scientific rationality is actually nothing of the kind. It is rationalistic neurosis, a characteristic, influential and damaging kind of irrationality masquerading as rationality. Science is damaged by being trapped within a widely upheld but severely defective philosophy of science; free science from this defective philosophy, provide it with a more intellectually rigorous philosophy, and it will flourish in both intellectual and humanitarian terms. And more generally, as we shall see, academic inquiry as a whole is damaged by being trapped within an intellectually defective philosophy of inquiry; free it from this defective philosophy, from its rationalistic neurosis, and it will flourish in intellectual and human terms. It is not reason that is damaging, but defective pretensions to reason — rationalistic neurosis —masquerading as reason. Thus what I seek to do here is the exact opposite of what all those who oppose science and scientific rationality do. I shall argue that Reason, the authentic article, arrived at by generalizing the progress-achieving methods of science, can have profoundly liberating and enriching consequences for all worthwhile, problematic aspects of life, and thus deserves to enter into every aspect of life. The bare bones of the argument of this book can be stated quite simply like this. Science cannot proceed without making the substantial metaphysical assumption that the universe is physically comprehensible (to some extent at least). But this conflicts with the orthodox view that in science everything is assessed impartially with respect to evidence, nothing being permanently assumed independently of evidence. So the metaphysical assumption of comprehensibility is repressed. Science pretends that no such assumption is made. But this damages science. For the assumption is substantial, influential and highly problematic. It needs to be made explicit within science so that it can be critically scrutinized, so that alternatives can be developed and considered. Pretending the assumption is not being made undermines the intellectual rigour of science, its intellectual value and success. And it does not stop there. For science also makes value assumptions. Quite properly, science is concerned to discover that which is of value. New factual knowledge devoid of all value (whether intellectual or practical) does not contribute to science. But the orthodox view of science holds that values have no place within science. As in the case of metaphysics, here too, science pretends that values have no role to play within the intellectual domain of science. And this damages science. For values are, if anything, even more influential and problematic than metaphysics (in influencing the direction of research). Here too, values need to be made explicit within science so that they can be scrutinized, so that alternatives can be developed and assessed. Pretending that values play no role within the intellectual domain damages science; both the intellectual and the practical aspects of science are adversely affected. Science fails to pursue those avenues of research that lie in the best interests of humanity. And it goes further. Science is pursued in a social, cultural, economic and political context. It is a part of various social, economic and political projects which seek to achieve diverse human objectives. But the idea that science is an integral part of humanitarian or political enterprises with political ends clashes, once again, with the official view of science that the aim of science is to improve factual knowledge. The political objectives of science are repressed. And, once again, this damages science. For, of course, the political objectives of science, like all our political objectives, are profoundly problematic. These need to be made explicit so that they can be scrutinized, so that alternatives can be developed and considered. The pretence that science does not have this political dimension once again undermines the intellectual rigour of science, and its human value. It lays science open to becoming a part of economic, corporate and political enterprises that are not in the best interests of humanity. The upshot of the line of argument just indicated is that we need to bring about a revolution in the aims and methods of science, and of academic inquiry more generally. Natural science needs to change; its relationship with the rest of academic inquiry, with social inquiry and the humanities, needs to change; and most importantly and dramatically, academic inquiry as a whole needs to change. The basic task of the academic enterprise needs to become to help humanity learn how to tackle its problems of living in more cooperatively rational ways than at present. We need to put the intellectual tasks of articulating our problems of living, and proposing and critically assessing possible solutions, possible and actual actions, at the heart of academic inquiry. The basic task needs to be to help humanity learn a bit more wisdom – wisdom being the capacity to realize what is of value in life, for oneself and others, wisdom including knowledge and technological know-how, but much else besides. Natural science, despite its flaws, has massively increased our knowledge and technological know-how. This in turn has led to a massive and sometimes terrifying increase in our power to act. Often this unprecedented power to act is used for human good, as in medicine or agriculture. But it is also used to cause harm, whether unintentionally (initially at least) as when industrialization and modern agriculture lead to global warming, destruction of natural habitats and rapid extinction of species, or intentionally, as when the technology of war is used by governments and terrorists to maim and kill. Before the advent of modern science, when we lacked the means to do too much damage to ourselves and the planet, lack of wisdom did not matter too much. Now, with our unprecedented powers to act, bequeathed to us by science, lack of wisdom has become a menace. This is the crisis behind all the other current global crises: science without wisdom. In these circumstances, to continue to pursue knowledge and technological know-how dissociated from a more fundamental quest for wisdom can only deepen the crisis. As a matter of urgency, we need to free science and academia of their neuroses; we need to bring about a revolution in the academic enterprise so that the basic aim becomes to promote wisdom by intellectual and educational means. At present science and the humanities betray both reason and humanity. The argument of this book, which I have just summarized, begins with a discussion of the philosophical and methodological problems that beset theoretical physics. At once, many of those who are concerned about moral, political and environmental issues that plague our world today, will feel impatient. What have the methodological problems of theoretical physics to do with third world poverty, war and the threat of war, pollution, extinction of species, the menace of conventional, chemical, biological and nuclear armaments? I can only plead with such a reader: patience. The root cause of the sickness of our times does indeed lie, I claim, with a methodological sickness of natural science or, even more specifically, of physical science. What makes the modern world so utterly different from all previous ages is our possession of modern science and technology. This is the instrument that has changed the conditions of human life almost beyond all recognition, and put unprecedented, and sometimes terrifying, powers into our hands. One should not dismiss out of hand the suggestion that a part of our problem may lie with this instrument, this engine, of rapid change. We see, here, too, the way in which intellectual specialization, referred to above, has effectively concealed from view the nature and extent of the problem that confronts us. The argument that I shall develop in what follows begins with physics, with problems concerning the aims and methods of physics. But it then leaps to social science, to philosophy, to the humanities, to education, to psychotherapy, and to politics: in the end there is scarcely an aspect of modern life that is not touched and, potentially, affected by the argument. How many academic experts are prepared to follow, to take seriously, an argument that ranges so recklessly across such a wide range of academic disciplines? How many non-academic non-experts? But just this is what the argument and message of this book requires. I hope that the reader will endure with patience the somewhat esoteric discussion concerning the aims and methods of physics pursued in chapter one. This may not seem to have anything much to do with the urgent problems of our times, but it does. This is in part how the intellectual disaster I seek to expose in this book conceals itself from view: it buries itself in the obscure, recondite field of the philosophy of physics. Those who devote their lives to the philosophy of physics are, by and large, too myopic to see how their specialized field of study has anything to do with the great and dreadful humanitarian problems and disasters of our age; and those who are above all concerned with these humanitarian disasters have no time at all for abstruse issues concerning the aims and methods of physics. And so the connection is never made. As it happens, the methodological neurosis of physics, with which we begin in chapter one, is actually a quite simple matter to grasp. It does not require any real knowledge of physics to understand. Indeed, physicists and philosophers of physics are much more likely to find the argument difficult to follow than are non-experts. We non-scientists can stand back and see the whole wood; scientists, trained to think in terms of the current orthodox conception of science, trapped in the thickets of research, will find this much harder to do. In an attempt to take this peculiar circumstance into account, I have arranged the exposition as follows. In chapter one I give a simple exposition of the case for declaring natural science to suffer from what I call "rationalistic neurosis"; this avoids all technicalities, and goes straight to the heart of the matter. In the appendix I tackle a host of more technical objections that may be made to the elementary argument of chapter one. So, those experts in the fields of the philosophy of physics and philosophy of science who find the argument of chapter one naïve and unconvincing, should consult the appendix before tossing the book away in disgust. I write in the hope that there will be a few who will not dismiss out of hand the suggestion that the question of how we are to go about learning how to live in wiser and more civilized ways might have something to learn from scientific learning, and will take the trouble to pursue the line of argument traced out in this book. I write in the hope that these few will grasp just how desperate our situation is, how urgent the need to change the status quo, and will do everything in their power to alert others to the need to heal the methodological sickness from which our institutions and traditions of learning at present suffer. To begin with, we need a campaigning organization, modelled perhaps on "Friends of the Earth", which might be called something like "Friends of Wisdom". (shrink)

Comparative philosophy has been subjected to much criticism in the latter half of the last century, though some of these criticisms were appropriate and justified. However, in our present cultural milieu, where traditions and culture transcend their geographical boundaries, seeping through the global network of views and ideas, it seems to be a legitimate enterprise to understand one’s own traditions and culture through the critical lens of the ‘other culture’. It is such cross-cultural understanding that paved the way towards legitimizing (...) “human rights” as a universal discourse. So also, the discourse on “environmental ethics” has gained acceptance in a similar manner across cultures and traditions. The paper attempts at an understanding of “Indian Philosophy” as a theoretical practice by exemplifying the notion of “sādhanā” in the Yoga system of Indian Philosophy through a reading of the notion of ‘phenomenological reduction’ as espoused in the transcendental phenomenology of Husserl. Thus, we reject the claim that philosophy as a pure rational activity was unique to the West as proclaimed in some Eurocentric readings. It is pertinent to recall here that the Sāṅkhya philosophy, which the Yoga system accepts as an allied school of thought was atheistic in its origin and attempted to explain the universe in terms of an evolutionary theory—the “prakṛti pariṇāma vāda”. (shrink)

I assess the thesis that counterfactual asymmetries are explained by an asymmetry of the global entropy at the temporal boundaries of the universe, by developing a method of evaluating counterfactuals that includes, as a background assumption, the low entropy of the early universe. The resulting theory attempts to vindicate the common practice of holding the past mostly fixed under counterfactual supposition while at the same time allowing the counterfactual's antecedent to obtain by a natural physical development. Although the theory (...) has some success in evaluating a wide variety of ordinary counterfactuals, it fails as an explanation of counterfactual asymmetry. (shrink)

Chemical visualizations and models are special kinds of situated, inductive arguments. In this paper, I examine several historical case studies—an archive of images from museums, special collections, and popular magazines—as examples of emergent practices of physical modeling as theoretical play which became the basis for molecular biology and structural chemistry. Specifically, I trace a legacy of visualization tools that starts with Archibald Scott Cooper and Friedrich Kekulé in the late 1800s, crystallizes as material manipulatives in Kekulé’s student Jacobus Henricus Van’t (...) Hoff and his folded paper “toys,” is legitimized in the California lab of Linus Pauling, and is glorified in the popular imaginary with James Watson and Francis Crick’s model of DNA. My tracing then follows several threads into contemporary modeling practices. I ultimately argue that modeling play, originally outside of the boundary of deductive, positivist science, is now an accepted mode of inductive reasoning in these related chemical fields. (shrink)

New technological developments have fundamentally transformed human life. Throughout this process, fundamental questions about human beings have once again been posed. The paper examines how technological change affects understandings of human beings and their bodies, thereby requiring new approaches to anthropology. First, Section 2 illustrates how the use of technology has changed the understanding of human beings and their bodies. A new connection between the human being or the body and technology has emerged. Section 3 then moves onto considering the (...) increasing blurring of the boundaries between organisms and machines, showing how the understanding of humans and bodies is constantly being renegotiated in relation to machines. Based on this, Section 4 explores how the understanding of the human being and the body can be redesigned in the context of modern technology. To this end, approaches for a contemporary anthropology can be derived from critical posthumanism. Section 5 addresses concrete practice and examines the construction of identity in social media platforms such as Instagram. The paper argues that technological processes and social media are places where theology is constructed and appeals for a responsible theological co-creation of these places. It advocates that technology offers the opportunity to question traditional anthropological concepts and to renegotiate understandings of the human being and the body. -- Puzio, Anna: Digital and Technological Identities – In Whose Image? A philosophical-theological approach to identity construction in social media and technology. In: Cursor (2021). (shrink)

"Our literature is replete with complaints about the chaotic state of the systematics of psychoses and every psychiatrist knows that it is impossible to come to any common understanding on the basis of the old diagnostic labels. ... Thus, not even the masters of science can make themselves understood on the basis of the old concepts and with many patients the number of diagnoses made equals the number of institutions they have been too. ... Errors are the greatest obstacles to (...) the progress of science; to correct such errors is of more practical value than to achieve new knowledge. We have here eliminated chaos of terms behind which useful concepts of disease were mistakenly sought; we have eliminated a veritable forest of boundary posts, not one of which indicated any natural line of demarcation. ... By the term „dementia praecox“ or „schizophrenia“ we designate a group of psychoses whose course is at times chronic, at times marked by intermittent attacks, and which can stop or retrograde at any stage, but does not permit a full restitutio ad integrum. The disease is characterized by a specific type of alteration of thinking, feeling, and relation to the external world which appears nowhere else in this particular fashion." Eugen Bleuler. Dementia Praecox or the Group of Schizophrenias. Translated by Joseph Zinkin. International Universities Press, New York, 1950. (shrink)

PLEASE NOTE: This is the corrected 2nd eBook edition, 2021. ●●●●● _Critique of Impure Reason_ has now also been published in a printed edition. To reduce the otherwise high price of this scholarly, technical book of nearly 900 pages and make it more widely available beyond university libraries to individual readers, the non-profit publisher and the author have agreed to issue the printed edition at cost. ●●●●● The printed edition was released on September 1, 2021 and is now available through (...) all booksellers, including Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and brick-and-mortar bookstores under ISBN 978-0-578-88646-6. ●●●●● In light of the length of this book, readers who would like to have a more detailed description of the book's objectives and method may find it helpful to read the detailed and clearly written Wikipedia entry about this work: From the Wikipedia search page, use the search phrase "Critique of Impure Reason". At least at the time of this writing (11/29/2021), the Wikipedia entry is well-researched and accurate. ●●●●● In addition, a "Primer on Bartlett's CRITIQUE OF IMPURE REASON" has been made available by the author. It is available under its title through PhilPapers and other philosophy online archives. ●●●●● COMMENDATIONS OF THIS WORK, from the back cover of the published edition: ●●●●● “I admire its range of philosophical vision.” – Nicholas Rescher, Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh, author of more than 100 books. ●●●●● “Bartlett’s _Critique of Impure Reason_ is an impressive, bold, and ambitious work. Careful scholarship is balanced by original analyses that lead the reader to recognize the limits of meaning, knowledge, and conceptual possibility. The work addresses a host of traditional philosophical problems, among them the nature of space, time, causality, consciousness, the self, other minds, ontology, free will and determinism, and others. The book culminates in a fascinating and profound new understanding of relativity physics and quantum theory.” – Gerhard Preyer, Professor of Philosophy, Goethe-University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, author of many books including _Concepts of Meaning_, _Beyond Semantics and Pragmatics_, _Intention and Practical Thought_, and _Contextualism in Philosophy_. ●●●●● “[This work’s] goal is of a unique and difficult species: Dr. Bartlett seeks to develop a formal logical calculus on the basis of transcendental philosophical arguments; in fact, he hopes that this calculus will be the formal expression of the transcendental foundation of knowledge.... I consider Dr. Bartlett’s work soundly conceived and executed with great skill.” – C. F. von Weizsäcker, philosopher and physicist, former Director, Max-Planck-Institute, Starnberg, Germany. ●●●●● “Bartlett has written an American “Prolegomena to All Future Metaphysics.” He aims rigorously to eliminate meaningless assertions, reach bedrock, and place philosophy on a firm foundation that will enable it, like science and mathematics, to produce lasting results that generations to come can build on. This is a great book, the fruit of a lifetime of research and reflection, and it deserves serious attention.” — Martin X. Moleski, former Professor, Canisius College, Buffalo, NY, studies of scientific method, the presuppositions of thought, and the self-referential nature of epistemology. ●●●●● “Bartlett has written a book on what might be called the underpinnings of philosophy. It has fascinating depth and breadth, and is all the more striking due to its unifying perspective based on the concepts of reference and self-reference.” – Don Perlis, Professor of Computer Science, University of Maryland, author of numerous publications on self-adjusting autonomous systems and philosophical issues concerning self-reference, mind, and consciousness. ●●●●● ●●●●● The _Critique of Impure Reason: Horizons of Possibility and Meaning_ comprises a major and important contribution to philosophy. Thanks to the generosity of its publisher, this massive 885-page volume has been published as a free open access eBook (3.75MB) as well as an open access printed edition. It inaugurates a revolutionary paradigm shift in philosophical thought by providing compelling and long-sought-for solutions to a wide range of philosophical problems. In the process, the work fundamentally transforms the way in which the concepts of reference, meaning, and possibility are understood. The book includes a Foreword by the celebrated German philosopher and physicist Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker. ●●●●● In Kant’s _Critique of Pure Reason_ we find an analysis of the preconditions of experience and of knowledge. In contrast, but yet in parallel, the new _Critique_ focuses upon the ways—unfortunately very widespread and often unselfconsciously habitual—in which many of the concepts that we employ _conflict_ with the very preconditions of meaning and of knowledge. ●●●●● This is a book about the boundaries of frameworks and about the unrecognized conceptual confusions in which we become entangled when we attempt to transgress beyond the limits of the possible and meaningful. We tend either not to recognize or not to accept that we all-too-often attempt to trespass beyond the boundaries of the frameworks that make knowledge possible and the world meaningful. ●●●●● The _Critique of Impure Reason_ proposes a bold, ground-breaking, and startling thesis: that a great many of the major philosophical problems of the past can be solved through the recognition of a viciously deceptive form of thinking to which philosophers as well as non-philosophers commonly fall victim. For the first time, the book advances and justifies the criticism that a substantial number of the questions that have occupied philosophers fall into the category of “impure reason,” violating the very conditions of their possible meaningfulness. ●●●●● The purpose of the study is twofold: first, to enable us to recognize the boundaries of what is referentially forbidden—the limits beyond which reference becomes meaningless—and second, to avoid falling victims to a certain broad class of conceptual confusions that lie at the heart of many major philosophical problems. As a consequence, the boundaries of _possible meaning_ are determined. ●●●●● Bartlett, the author or editor of more than 20 books, is responsible for identifying this widespread and delusion-inducing variety of error, _metalogical projection_. It is a previously unrecognized and insidious form of erroneous thinking that undermines its own possibility of meaning. It comes about as a result of the pervasive human compulsion to seek to transcend the limits of possible reference and meaning. ●●●●● Based on original research and rigorous analysis combined with extensive scholarship, the _Critique of Impure Reason_ develops a self-validating method that makes it possible to recognize, correct, and eliminate this major and pervasive form of fallacious thinking. In so doing, the book provides at last provable and constructive solutions to a wide range of major philosophical problems. ●●●●● CONTENTS AT A GLANCE ▪▪▪▪▪ Preface ▪▪▪▪▪ Foreword by Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker ▪▪▪▪▪ Acknowledgments ▪▪▪▪▪ Avant-propos: A philosopher’s rallying call ▪▪▪▪▪ Introduction ▪▪▪▪▪ A note to the reader ▪▪▪▪▪ A note on conventions ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ PART I ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ WHY PHILOSOPHY HAS MADE NO PROGRESS AND HOW IT CAN ▪▪▪▪▪ 1 Philosophical-psychological prelude ▪▪▪▪▪ 2 Putting belief in its place: Its psychology and a needed polemic ▪▪▪▪▪ 3 Turning away from the linguistic turn: From theory of reference to metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 4 The stepladder to maximum theoretical generality ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ PART II ▪▪▪▪▪ THE METALOGIC OF REFERENCE ▪▪▪▪▪ A New Approach to Deductive, Transcendental Philosophy ▪▪▪▪▪ 5 Reference, identity, and identification ▪▪▪▪▪ 6 Self-referential argument and the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 7 Possibility theory ▪▪▪▪▪ 8 Presupposition logic, reference, and identification ▪▪▪▪▪ 9 Transcendental argumentation and the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 10 Framework relativity ▪▪▪▪▪ 11 The metalogic of meaning ▪▪▪▪▪ 12 The problem of putative meaning and the logic of meaninglessness ▪▪▪▪▪ 13 Projection ▪▪▪▪▪ 14 Horizons ▪▪▪▪▪ 15 De-projection ▪▪▪▪▪ 16 Self-validation ▪▪▪▪▪ 17 Rationality: Rules of admissibility ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ PART III ▪▪▪▪▪ PHILOSOPHICAL APPLICATIONS OF THE METALOGIC OF REFERENCE ▪▪▪▪▪ Major Problems and Questions of Philosophy and the Philosophy of Science ▪▪▪▪▪ 18 Ontology and the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 19 Discovery or invention in general problem-solving, mathematics, and physics ▪▪▪▪▪ 20 The conceptually unreachable: “The far side” ▪▪▪▪▪ 21 The projections of the external world, things-in-themselves, other minds, realism, and idealism ▪▪▪▪▪ 22 The projections of time, space, and space-time ▪▪▪▪▪ 23 The projections of causality, determinism, and free will ▪▪▪▪▪ 24 Projections of the self and of solipsism ▪▪▪▪▪ 25 Non-relational, agentless reference and referential fields ▪▪▪▪▪ 26 Relativity physics as seen through the lens of the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 27 Quantum theory as seen through the lens of the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 28 Epistemological lessons learned from and applicable to relativity physics and quantum theory ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ PART IV ▪▪▪▪▪ HORIZONS ▪▪▪▪▪ 29 Beyond belief ▪▪▪▪▪ 30 _Critique of Impure Reason_: Its results in retrospect ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ SUPPLEMENT ▪▪▪▪▪ The Formal Structure of the Metalogic of Reference ▪▪▪▪▪ APPENDIX I ▪▪▪▪▪ The Concept of Horizon in the Work of Other Philosophers ▪▪▪▪▪ APPENDIX II ▪▪▪▪▪ Epistemological Intelligence ▪▪▪▪▪ References ▪▪▪▪▪ Index ▪▪▪▪▪ About the author. (shrink)