In this paper I analyze the difficult question of the truth of mature scientific theories by tackling the problem of the truth of laws. After introducing the main philosophical positions in the field of scientific realism, I discuss and then counter the two main arguments against realism, namely the pessimistic metainduction and the abstract and idealized character of scientific laws. I conclude by defending the view that well-confirmed physical theories are true only relatively to certain values of the variables that (...) appear in the laws. (shrink)

Background and Objectives: In this research article, the researcher addresses the issue of creating public understanding in a democratic society about the progress of science, with an emphasis on pluralism from philosophers of science. The idea that there is only one truth and that there are just natural laws awaiting discovery by scientists has historically made it difficult to explain scientific progress. This belief motivates science to develop theories that explain the unity of science, and it is thought that diversity (...) in the way different ideas presented by scientists is a problem that results in time being wasted in search of the most accurate theory. Some scientists perceive a benefit in having a range of scientific hypotheses, though. One benefit that is frequently cited is that scientific diversity as a whole contributes to the development of a democratic society that permits the expression of a range of viewpoints. The road to accountable scientific pluralism is fraught with difficulties, though. Therefore, it is crucial to take into account both pluralism's advantages and disadvantages. This research aims at: 1. analyzing in an epistemological way the interpretation of scientific theories and the progress of science from the perspectives of scientific pluralists; 2. analyzing the relationship between science and democracy in explaining scientific significance and progress; and 3. synthesizing new knowledge on epistemic dependentism and to argue that it plays a significant role in evaluating research issues related to scientific pluralism. Methodology: The research methodology involves the application of documentary investigation along with philosophical discourse. The method of philosophical argumentation involves analyzing the lines of arguments found in relevant academic publications in order to assess their validity and soundness. Main Results: One key argument of the pluralists is the use of the concept of theoretical pluralism, which suggests that scientific knowledge is created from a variety of perspectives according to the social and cultural context of knowledge creation. It is found that part of Longino's argument is based on the negation of rational/social dichotomy. Moreover, her theory is a departure from philosopher of science Philip Kitcher, who advocates the creation of scientific knowledge and the evaluation of scientific progress through the means of democratic society. He explains that these procedures will lead to "well-ordered science" in democratic society. Discussions: The researcher examines the underlying ideas accepted by these two philosophers of science and finds that although their opinions differ, they have common ground in the acceptance of consensus. However, the views of both philosophers still lack weight in explaining the knowledge itself. The researcher argues that the acceptance of pluralism as a way of understanding scientific progress necessarily lends itself to dependentism, which points to interdependence in comparisons of superiority/inferiority between scientific theories. It is undeniable that the situation has emerged all the time, even though the success of the scientific theories being compared to each other comes from different social and cultural grounds of thought. Conclusions: Some popular models of scientific pluralism in the philosophy of science still lack a compelling justification, particularly on the epistemic grounds. By elucidating the epistemic significance of the interdependence of these things, scientific pluralism can be strengthened by incorporating the notion of epistemic dependentism into the analysis of scientific progress. (shrink)

Most Enlightenment thinkers believed that the World’s order (as ultimately based on divine laws) is good and thus every gain of knowledge will have good consequences. Scientific process was assumed to entail moral progress. In fact some moral progress did occur in the Western civilization and science contributed to it, but it is widely incommensurate with the progress of science. The Enlightenment’s concept of a concerted scientific and moral progress proved largely wrong for several reasons. (1) Public morality and science (...) evolve largely independently and may either enhance or inhibit each other. (2) There are no objective values to be read in the World’s order and simply followed. Instead, our real, subjective values and the moral systems they fuel have all been generated and shaped by evolution rather than designed to be universally good, and thus ought to be managed rather than simply followed. (3) Our evolved morality is flawed, deficient, prone to doctrinal manipulation and refractory to progress. (4) The majority of people show metaethical incompetence in failing to take a reasoned critical stand toward the principles and assumptions of received morals. This makes moral progress largely dependent on those who reach metaethical competence by transcending the conventional stages of moral development. (shrink)

This book's core is exploring Islam Tan Malaka, later characterized as progressive Islamic thought. To demonstrate this, the author uses the theory sociology of knowledge formulated by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, as well as the philosophy of science of critical realism formulated by Roy Bhaskar, as an approach to analysis. The result is the concept of Madilog as a progressive Islamic method that gave birth to the concept of monotheism as the foundation for the existence of (...) social justice, which later became the foundation for Human Rights (HAM), gender equality, pluralism, and unity of ummah. These concepts are conditionally interconnected based on the principle of causality and the laws of dialectics. This conceptual construction is what the author calls progressive Islam Tan Malaka. (shrink)

While it is often said that robotics should aspire to reproducible and measurable results that allow benchmarking, I argue that a focus on benchmarking can be a hindrance for progress in robotics. The reason is what I call the ‘measure-target confusion’, the confusion between a measure of progress and the target of progress. Progress on a benchmark (the measure) is not identical to scientific or technological progress (the target). In the past, several academic disciplines have been led into pursuing only (...) reproducible and measurable ‘scientific’ results – robotics should be careful to follow that line because results that can be benchmarked must be specific and context-dependent, but robotics targets whole complex systems for a broad variety of contexts. While it is extremely valuable to improve benchmarks to reduce the distance be- tween measure and target, the general problem to measure progress towards more intelligent machines (the target) will not be solved by benchmarks alone; we need a balanced approach with sophisticated benchmarks, plus real-life testing, plus qualitative judgment. (shrink)

The law confers rights on non-human entities, namely nature, machines (AI), and animals. While doing so, the law is either viewed as progressive or sometimes as abstract and ambiguous. Despite the critique, it is undeniable that many of the rights of non-humans have come to solidify in statutory and constitutional rules of different systems. In the context of these developments, the article sheds light on the core justifications for advancing the rights of non-human entities. In addition, it discusses the (...) conditions for the emergence of these rights and the non-binding normative statements adopted by different stakeholders for advocacy. These include the Charter on the Law of the Living (2021), the Toulon Declaration (2019), and the Vienna Manifesto on Digital Humanism (2019), etc. The paper also discusses the relevant theoretical frames, namely post-humanism, digital humanism, and multi-species justice, followed by selective critical views on the subject. (shrink)

The recent progression in AI, nanomedicine and robotics have increased concerns about ethics, policy and law. The increasing complexity and hybrid nature of AI and nanotechnologies impact the functionality of “law in action” which can lead to legal uncertainty and ultimately to a public distrust. There is an immediate need of collaboration between Central Asian biomedical scientists, AI engineers and academic lawyers for the harmonization of AI, nanomedicines and robotics in Central Asian legal system.

A rapidly growing body of scholarship embraces virtue jurisprudence, a series of (often ad hoc) attempts to incorporate the philosophical tradition of virtue ethics into legal theory. Broadly understood, virtue ethics describes an approach to moral questions that emphasizes the importance of developing and embodying various virtues, often as manifestations of human flourishing. Scholars typically contrast virtue ethics with deontological and consequentialist moral theories, tracing virtue-centered analysis to ancient Greek philosophers, and in particular to Aristotle. Virtue ethics has experienced a (...) revival over the past 65 years; but, long before that, it proved especially influential in Catholic moral thought, particularly through the work of Aquinas. Perhaps relatedly, scholars have seized on virtue jurisprudence to defend a range of politically conservative positions, such as originalist constitutional interpretation and the propriety of utilizing the law to regulate ostensibly “private” immoralities. This Article reveals the radically underappreciated progressive promise of virtue jurisprudence. Virtue jurisprudence requires no religious commitments whatsoever, but a strong version entails acceptance of the moral significance of developing one’s character—both within and without the law. On a compelling understanding of the virtues, rejecting a state of perpetual disadvantage under the law is a meaningful marker of the virtue of self-respect, and a repudiation of the vice of servility that would otherwise be imposed by the legal system itself. Thus, contrary to the predominant tenor of research on the subject, virtue jurisprudence can ground significant resistance to—and even defiance of—the law. In making this argument, the Article also draws novel connections between virtue jurisprudence and literature on (inter alia) race, feminism, and sexual orientation to reveal the unnoticed potential of virtue jurisprudence to push forward work in those and related areas. At a time when massive and widespread protests across the United States reflect a groundswell of support for overturning certain long-standing, legally-ingrained, systemic disadvantages of people of color, many might be surprised to learn that virtue jurisprudence can serve as a potent theoretical ally. (shrink)

Crime is a serious social problem, but its causes are not exclusively social. There is growing consensus that explaining and preventing it requires interdisciplinary research efforts. Indeed, the landscape of contemporary criminology includes a variety of theoretical models that incorporate psychological, biological and sociological factors. These multi-disciplinary approaches, however, have yet to radically advance scientific understandings of crime and shed light on how to manage it. In this paper, using conceptual tools on offer in the philosophy of science in combination (...) with theoretical work represented in this special volume of Psychology, Crime and Law, I provide some perspective on why explanatory progress in criminology has remained elusive and evaluate some positive proposals for attaining it. -/- . (shrink)

The legal progression in China is portrayed negatively by western scholars who often argue that the state institutions in China are subordinate to the control of Chinese Communist Party’s leadership which makes these institutions politically insignificant. We consider that the legal progression in China has an instrumental role in achieving “Harmonious Socialist Society.” The purpose of this thesis is to provide an analytical literature review of scholastic work to explain the legality of rule of law in China and to elaborate (...) the outcomes of China’s recent legal developments. This paper has two main subjects. First, it examines the nature of law and rule of law in China through the prism of different legal theories. Secondly, by arguing from different political theories, it explains the necessity of customized legal system in China for establishing a Harmonious Socialist Society. By giving different examples from contemporary China, this thesis argues that the legality of the rule of law in China ought to be understood in the context of China’s economic and social progression rather than the western legal scholarship. China’s economic progress demands a customized legal system. In our thesis, we claim that the regular upgradation of laws and introduction of constitutional amendments in China, should be recognized as important achievement which is required for the institutional innovation. Legal progression in China during last decade perfectly fit into the framework of “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” and is very crucial for building a harmonious socialist society. It is vivid from China’s economic growth and developed international relations. Finally, this paper suggests that the Chinese legal progression can be taken as successful example of legal experimentalism. (shrink)

The dominant view today on evolutionary progress is that it has been thoroughly debunked. Even value-neutral progress concepts are seen to lack important theoretical underpinnings: natural selection provides no rationale for progress, and natural selection need not even be invoked to explain large-scale evolutionary trends. In this paper I challenge this view by analysing how natural selection acts in heterogeneous environments. This not only undermines key debunking arguments, but also provides a selectionist rationale for a pattern of “evolutionary unfolding”, where (...) life radiates across an increased range of exploitation of environmental heterogeneity. (shrink)

We reconstruct Kuhn’s philosophy of measurement and data paying special attention to what he calls the “fifth law of thermodynamics”. According to this "law," there will always be discrepancies between experimental results and scientists’ prior expectations. The history of experiments to determine the values of the fundamental constants offers a striking illustration of Kuhn’s fifth law of thermodynamics, with no experiment giving quite the expected result. We highlight the synergy between Kuhn’s view and the systematic project of iteratively determining the (...) value of physical constants, initiated by spectroscopist Raymond Birge, that was ongoing when Kuhn joined Berkeley in 1956. Our analysis sheds light on various underappreciated aspects of Kuhn’s thought, especially his notion of progress as improvement in measurement accuracy. (shrink)

“De jure naturae multa fabulamur” — after 450 years, Luther's statement has lost none of its original validity. After a brief pseudo-renaissance following WWII, one now hears far less in legal theory about natural law, which appears finally to have fallen victim to what Weber early in the century characterized as “a progressive decomposition and relativization of all meta-legal axioms” — a destruction resulting partly “from legal rationalism itself,” and partly “from the skepticism which characterizes modern intellectual life generally.” (...) Law today, wrote Weber, “is all too tangibly (in the great majority of its determinations, and especially in many which are particularly important in terms of principle) revealed to be both the product and the technical medium of a compromise of interests,”. (shrink)

After examining the ethical and political writings of Immanuel Kant, one finds an apparent paradox in his philosophy as his perfectionist moral teachings appear to be linked to his anti-perfectionist political theory. Specifically, he writes that the perfection of moral character can only take place for an individual who is inside of civil society, a condition where no laws may legitimately be implemented expressly for the purpose of trying to make individuals moral. Kant believes that living in civil society is (...) a necessary condition for an individual to refine his talents and reason completely, a process required by morality. I believe, however, that the connection between his moral and political theory runs much deeper than simply facilitating the refinement of talents. Kant's moral theory focuses on an individual's cultivation of virtue, but this cultivation cannot be most satisfactorily completed unless that individual is a member of civil society. Put differently, civil society plays a necessary role in cultivating an individual's character so that he is able to act from maxims consistent with the moral law, out of the respect for the law itself. However, because he believes that civic laws primarily intended to encourage moral cultivation cannot be implemented legitimately, it seems curious that this condition should play such a significant role in Kant's moral philosophy. Through this examination of Kant's moral and political theory, it will be shown that Kant's political society establishes a condition necessary for an individual's complete cultivation of virtue, not by implementing laws that make men moral but by weakening the forces of heteronomy, thereby removing barriers to moral action. (shrink)

The chapter concerns some aspects of Russell’s epistemological turn in the period after 1911. In particular, it focuses on two aspects of his philosophy in this period: his attempt to render material objects as constructions out of sense data, and his attitude toward sense data as “hard data.” It examines closely Russell’s “breakthrough” of early 1914, in which he concluded that, viewed from the standpoint of epistemology and analytic construction, space has six dimensions, not merely three. Russell posits a three-dimensional (...) personal or “perspective” space that is inhabited by sense data. This space then forms the basis for constructing the three dimensional space of physics (and of public things). I am concerned with the specifics of this construction: with the properties of the private spaces, the relations among those spaces, and their relation to physical space and to constructed “things,” such as pennies or tables. There are difficulties of interpretation with respect to these relations, which stem from the difficulty of finding a coherent interpretation of Russell’s claim that objects such as tables and pennies look smaller at a greater distance (or look trapezoidal or elliptical from some points of view). I don’t mean to challenge the phenomenal claim that objects do, in some sense, look small in the distance. Rather, I raise difficulties with Russell’s analysis of this fact, in which he appeals to both phenomenal experience and the findings of sensory psychology. I hold that if he wishes to maintain his phenomenal claim about objects appearing smaller with greater distance, he must alter or redescribe aspects of his construction of ordinary things. However, if his construction of things and physical space is based on a problematic description of the private spaces, then his claim that private or perspective spaces are very well known and provide the hard data for knowledge of the physical world faces a challenge. (shrink)

Scholars in Central Asia have long started exploring the nexus between law and technology. Contemporary Central Asian legal academia is producing research which stands at the junction of law, philosophy, and technology. Central Asia is comparatively not advanced in technology production and imports most the technologies from neighboring tech giants. These technologies are imported as a package along with the laws and regulations proposed by the technology manufacturing country. It has been observed that these regulations don‘t correlate with the existing (...) local and regional legal systems. To meet these demands, this article proposes a new discipline / branch of legal sciences named as ―Central Asia Tech Law to accommodate the technological progression of the 4th industrial revolution. This branch of law strives to promote globalized legal mechanisms to treat technology as per the demands of the Central Asian region and in line with the international norms and standardization. Another purpose of Central Asia Tech Law is to increase the interaction with regional social and applied scientists to set regional technological standards and preferences for Central Asia. (shrink)

The history of civil disobedience until the 1960s is, historians and political theorists have shown, the history of a fundamentally anticolonial, anticapitalistic, and antimilitaristic political practice. This history was progressively erased from our political imagination as the phrase was reconceptualized by American liberal lawyers and scholars in the late-1960s and early-1970s. These liberals argued that civil disobedience was not a revolutionary but an essentially reformist form of action, at a time when social movements were accused of endangering American democracy amidst (...) rising crime rates in the United States. Civil disobedience, the argument ran, would encourage a criminal attitude toward a legitimately elected government. In the midst of conservative calls for law and order and the election of Richard Nixon to the presidency, affirming that civil disobedience was not a radical form of political action became a key rhetorical strategy for American liberals during the so-called War on Crime. In this essay, I retrace debates about civil disobedience and criminality in this context. I consider in closing how liberal conceptualizations of peaceful protest have served to delegitimize and criminalize activism until today. (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)

This dissertation identifies and explains four major contributions of the Laws and related late dialogues to Plato's moral and political philosophy. -/- Chapter 1: I argue that Plato thinks the purpose of laws and other social institutions is the happiness of the city. A happy city is one in which the city's parts, i.e. the citizens, are unified under the rule of intelligence. Unlike the citizens of the Republic, the citizens of the Laws can all share the same true judgments (...) of value, and this unanimity explains the city's unity. Plato thinks that aiming at the city's happiness is justified, moreover, because a unified city contributes to the universe's order. -/- Chapter 2: In the Laws, Plato holds that the sick, poor, ugly, weak, but virtuous are happy, and that health, wealth, beauty, and strength benefit the virtuous but harm the vicious. Only in the Laws does Plato commit himself to all these claims simultaneously, and I explain how the moral psychology of the Laws permits Plato to maintain them coherently. -/- Chapter 3: I argue that, in the Laws, becoming virtuous is the same as becoming like God. Becoming like God does not require escape from the world of change as it does in the Theaetetus, however. Rather, becoming like God requires bringing "measure" or appropriate order to the world of change, especially to those entities over which we have the most control—our own souls. In the Laws, citizens achieve this order as they learn to be just and to understand the nature of reality. -/- Chapter 4: Unlike the Republic and Statesman, the Laws holds that obedience of the citizens to their laws should be effected, if possible, with rational persuasion. I argue that Plato wishes such persuasion to educate the citizens of the reasons for the laws. Understanding the laws' justification is the principal way in which citizens acquire the good judgment necessary for virtue. The city becomes more happy as the citizens progress in virtue, so rational persuasion is a necessary means to the lawgiver's overall aim. (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)

Reedition of papers in English spanning from 1986 to 2009 /// Historical background -- An imposed legacy -- Twentieth century contemporaneity -- Appendix: The philosophy of teaching legal philosophy in Hungary /// HISTORICAL BACKGROUND -- PHILOSOPHY OF LAW IN CENTRAL & EASTERN EUROPE: A SKETCH OF HISTORY [1999] 11–21 // PHILOSOPHISING ON LAW IN THE TURMOIL OF COMMUNIST TAKEOVER IN HUNGARY (TWO PORTRAITS, INTERWAR AND POSTWAR: JULIUS MOÓR & ISTVÁN LOSONCZY) [2001–2002] 23–39: Julius Moór 23 / István Losonczy 29 // (...) ON THE SURVIVAL OF ILMAR TAMMELO’S LETTER AND MANUSCRIPT ADDRESSED TO PROFESSOR MOÓR [2009] 41–44 // PROFESSIONAL DISTRESS AND SCARCITY: ALEXANDER HORVÁTH AND THE LEGACY OF NATURAL LAW IN HUNGARY [2005] 45–50 // HUNGARIAN LEGAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE 20TH CENTURY [2011] 51–72: I. The Pre-war Period [1. Bódog (Felix) Somló (1871–1920) 52] / II. The Inter-war Period [2. Gyula (Julius) Moór (1888–1950) 54 / 3. Barna Horváth (1896–1973) 55 / 4. József Szabó (1909–1992) 57 / 5. István Bibó (1911–1979) 58 / 6. Tibor Vas (1911–1983) 59 / 7. István Losonczy (1918–1980) 60] III. The Post-war Period (Communism) 61 [8. Imre Szabó (1912–1991) 62 / 9. Vilmos Peschka (1929–2006) 63 / 10. Kálmán Kulcsár (1928–2010) 65] IV. Contemporary Trends and Perspectives 66 [11. Csaba Varga (b. 1941) 66 / 12. András Sajó (b. 1949) 69 / 13. Béla Pokol (b. 1950) 70] V. Our Understanding of the Law Today 71 --- AN IMPOSED LEGACY -- LOOKING BACK [1999] 75–94: 1. On Ideologies and Marxism in general 75 / 2. Life of an Intellectual in Communism 79 / 3. On Marxism and its Socialist Cultivation in Particular 82 / 4. Legal Philosophising [4.1. Approaches to Law 87 / 4.2. Arriving at a Legal Ontology 91] 5. Conclusion 94 // LEGAL PHILOSOPHY OF THE MARXISM OF SOCIALISM: HUNGARIAN OVERVIEW IN AN INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE [2003] 95–151: I. Development and Balance of Marxist Philosophising on Law in Hungary [1. Preliminaries (until 1948) 96 / 2. Stalinism (from the Soviet Occupation on) {a) Liquidation of the »Residues« 98 / b) Soviet-type Uniformisation [Gleichschaltung] 99 / c) Denial of the Past, with a Dual Effect 99 / d) »Socialist Legality«, Drawn from the Progressive Past of Western Europe 103 / e) Search for the Germs of Scholarly Evolution 103} 3. Institutionalisation Accompanied by Relaxation (from the 1960s) [a) Epigonism Becoming the Scholarly Ideal 104 / b) Stalinism in a Critical Self-perspective 105 / c) Disciples Diversified Launching their own Trends 107 / d) Comparatism 110 / e) (Re)discovery of the Western Legal Philosophy as a Competitor 112 / f) A Leading Mediatory Role within the »Socialist World Order« 114} 4. Disintegration (in the 1980s) {a) Attempt at Laying New Foundations for Marxism with Epigonism Exhausted 115 / b) Competitive Trends Becoming Exclusive 115 / c) Western Legal Philosophy Acknowledged as a Fellow-traveller within the Socialist Orbit Proper 116 / d) Hungarian Legal Theory Transforming into a National Corpus 118 / e) The Practical Promotion of Some Balance 119} 5. End-game for a Substitute State Religion (in the 1990s) 120] II. Marxist Legal Philosophising in an International Perspective [Ad 1: To the Preliminaries 122 / Ad 2: To Stalinism 124 / Ad 3: To Institutionalisation Accompanied by Relaxation {a) Late Separation from Vishinskiy’s Theory 125 / b) From Ideological Self-closure to an Apparently Scholarly Openness 127 / c) From Political Ideology to Genuine Scholarship 130 / d) International Recognition of Socialist Jurisprudence as an Independent Trend 135 / e) Together with Western Trends 137} Ad 4: To Disintegration {a) Loss of Attraction as Mere Epigonism 139 / b) Exclusivity of Competing Trends 139 / c) Fellowship with »Bourgeois« Trends 140 / d) An own Trend, Internationally Recognised 141 / e) A yet Progressive Role 142} Ad 5: To the Present state 143] III. A Temporary Balance 145 // AUTONOMY AND INSTRUMENTALITY OF LAW IN A SUPERSTRUCTURAL PERSPECTIVE [1986] 151–175: 1. The Strange Fate of Concepts 151 / I. A Relational Category 2. Basis and Superstructure: The Genuine Meaning 154 / 3. Exerting Social Influence as a Conceptual Minimum 156 / 4. Relationships within the Prevailing Totality 158 / 5. Attempts at Interpretation in Hungary 159 / 6. The Lukácsian Stand 162 / 7. Lukács’s Recognitions 168 / 8. Some Criticism 169 / II. The Law’s Understanding 171 / 9. Law Interpreted as Superstructure 171 / 10. Conclusions Drawn for the Law’s Understanding 173 // LEGAL THEORY IN TRANSITION (A PREFACE FROM HUNGARY) [2000] 177–186 // DEVELOPMENT OF THEORETICAL LEGAL THOUGHT IN HUNGARY AT THE TURN OF THE MILLENNIUM [2006] 187–215: 1. International Environment 188 / 2. The Situation in Hungary 190 / 3. Outlook I: The Historical-comparative Study of Legal Cultures and of the Lawyerly Way of Thinking 203 / 4. Outlook II: The Paradigmatic Enigma of the Transition to Rule of Law 207 / 5. Incongruity in Practice 213 / 6. Perspectives 214 --- TWENTIETH CENTURY CONTEMPORANEITY -- CHANGE OF PARADIGMS IN LEGAL RECONSTRUCTION: CARL SCHMITT AND THE TEMPTATION TO FINALLY REACH A SYNTHESIS [2002] 219–234: 1. Dangers of Intellectualism 219 / 2. Schmitt in Facts 221 / 3. Schmitt and Kelsen 222 / 4. On Bordering Conditions 226 / 5. With Kelsen in Transubstantiation 230 / 6. Polarisation as the Path of Theoretical Development 232 // KELSENIAN DOCUMENTS IN HUNGARY: CHAPTERS ON CONTACTS, INCLUDING THE GENESIS OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY [2006] 235–243: 1. Preludes 235 / 2. The Search for Moór’s Bequeath 235 / 3. Moór’s Collegiality 238 / 4. Bibó as a Disciple Translating 241 // THE »HART-PHENOMENON« [2002] 245–267: I. The Hart-miracle 246 [1. The Scene of Britain at the Time 247 / 2. The Personal Career 250 / 3. The Opus’ Career 252 / 4. Verbal Sociologism 255 / 5. Growing into the British Pattern 259] II. The Hart-phenomenon 260 [6. Origination of a Strange Orthodoxy 261 / 7. Mastering Periods of the 20th Century 263 / 8. Raising the Issue of Reception in Hungary 365] // LITERATURE? A SUBSTITUTE FOR LEGAL PHILOSOPHY? [2007] 269–287: 1. The Enigma of Law and its Study 269 / 2. “Law and Literature” 271 / 3. Varieties of “Law and Literature” 274 / 4. The German Study of Artistic Representations 280 / 5. Some Literary Reconsiderations 285 / 6. Conclusion 287 --- APPENDIX -- THE PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING LEGAL PHILOSOPHY IN HUNGARY [2007] 291–320: I. Why and How to Philosophise in Law? 291 / II. The State of Teaching Legal Philosophy 294 / III. The Philosophy of Teaching Legal Philosophy 296 / IV. Programme at the Catholic University of Hungary 300 [1. Graduate Studies 300 {a) Basic Subjects 301 / b) Facultative Seminars 305 / c) Closing Subjects 309 / d) Written Memoranda and the Thesis 312} 2. Postgraduate Studies 313 / 3. Conclusion 317] V. Perspectives 318 /// Index of Subjects 321 / Index of Normative Materials 328 / Index of Names 329 . (shrink)

Medical students commonly learn how to administer pelvic exams by practicing on unconscious patients, often without first obtaining explicit consent from patients to do so. While twenty-one states currently have laws that require teaching hospitals to obtain consent from patients to participate in this educational experience, opposition from the medical community has stymied legislative progress. In this paper, I respond to the two most common reasons offered to oppose legislation, which appeal to (1) the educational benefits of these exams, or (...) (2) protecting institutional autonomy. Kantian ideas about autonomy help to illuminate the problematic ways in which these arguments supplant the importance of women’s choices over how their bodies are used while seeking medical treatment. Ultimately, neither argument offers sufficient reason to oppose laws that require explicit consent before administering training pelvic exams. (shrink)

This study is about the Quality. Here I have dealt with the quality that differs significantly from the common understanding of quality /as determined quality/ that arise from the law of dialectics. This new quality is the quality of the quantity /quality of the quantitative changes/, noticed in philosophy by Plato as “quality of numbers”, and later developed by Hegel as “qualitative quantity. The difference between the known determined quality and qualitative quantity is evident in the exhibit form of these (...) two qualities. The exhibit form of the known determined quality from the law of dialectics /or it transformation/ is related with discreteness and abrupt changes. The exhibit form of the qualitative quantity /and it transformation/ is related with the continuity and gradual transition from one condition, to a different condition, without any abrupt changes. In my paper “Quality of the quantity”, I have argued that one of the most ancient implementation of quality of the number can be found in the dimensional mathematical model of point – line – surface – figure - introduced by Plato. The most whole presentation of the idea of quality of number in Plato is embeded in his teaching about the "eidical number". The quality of the quantity emerges as criteria for recognizing the difference between the eidical numbers and natural arithmetical number. The thesis concerning Plato is based on the The Unwritten Doctrine of Plato and one of the most original works in the history of philosophy written in the 20th century - “Arete bei Platon und Aristoteles” – “Arete in Plato and Aristotle” /Heidelberg 1959/ written by Hans Joachim Krämer. The new quality as the quality of the quantity /quality of the quantitative changes/, first noticed in philosophy by Plato as “quality of numbers” was developed in Hegel as “qualitative quantity”. Hegel proclaimed the Qualitative quantity, or Measure in the both of his Logics -The Science of Logic / the Greater Logic/ and The Lesser Logic/ Part One of the Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences: The Logic. In my paper I have offered the arguments that the concept of quality of the quantity should be enhanced with the adopted methodological approach of analogy with an implementation in the field of the Topology - Analysis Situs, developed by the Jules Henri Poincare. In the topology we could see homeomorphism as exhibit form of Quality on the Quantity. The explicit form of the quality of the quantity transformation is the continuous deformation – typically known in topology as homeomorphism. The concept of qualitative quantity is linked with the concept “structural stability” and nonequilibrum phase transition. The concept of structural stability is related with the topological homeomorphism. In his book “Synergetics: Introduction and Advanced Topics” /Springer, ISBN 3-540-40824/, in the Chapter 1.13. Qualitative Changes: General approach, p. 434-435, Hermann Haken explores and illustrate the structural stability with an example /figure 1.13, p.434/ given by of D'Arcy W. Thompson, the Scottish biologist, mathematician and classics scholar and pioneering mathematical biologist, Nobel Laureate in Medicine /1960/, the author of the book, On Growth and Form, /1917/. The quality of the quantity could be seen in the Herman Haken’s citation on the D'Arcy W. Thompson. My thesis is that the topological homeomorphism is the explicit form of the quality of the quantity transformation. The qualitative quantity change which becomes phenomenon, according to Émile Boutroux, is the subject of study in Cultural Phenomenology of Qualitative quantity. Our approach to this subject is Poincaré Model of the Subconscious Mind in Mathematics, which is the most suitable tool to unfold the arhetype of qualitative quantity. (shrink)

This essay is titled "Critique the Postulation of the Historical Law Theory and relate it to African Law. The postulation of the historical law school that law emanates from customs through an ordered pattern of systematized progress into a codified system in relation to African law forms the crust of this essay. To achieve this task, this essay adopts a critical method in exposing c postulation of the historical law school and the African Law (keeping in mind the Ukelle communal (...) Law System). This essay questions whether there can be an independent law made or promulgated without targeting a given people or that there can be a people-free law? This essay claims that like the historical law school, laws emanate from their ground norms but insists that unlike the historical law school, laws in Ukelle Traditional System do not necessarily have to submit to through the rigor of systematic and strict evolutionary pattern of progress. Like Herder, this essay avers that there is a unique character with each culture, and as such Ukelle Traditional Law does not have to submit to any universal character of law. (shrink)

There is an old and powerful argument for the claim that divine foreknowledge is incompatible with the freedom to do otherwise. A recent response to this argument, sometimes called the “dependence response,” centers around the claim that God’s relevant past beliefs depend on the relevant agent’s current or future behavior in a certain way. This paper offers a new argument for the dependence response, one that revolves around different cases of time travel. Somewhat serendipitously, the argument also paves the way (...) for a new reply to a compelling objection to the dependence response, the challenge from prepunishment. But perhaps not so serendipitously, the argument also renders the dependence response incompatible with certain views of providence. (shrink)

Corporate governance is developing rapidly in many countries across the world. In this article, the existing state of corporate governance in Jordan is examined. Jordan does not have a corporate governance code per se. The article reveals that overall Jordan has in place some of the features of corporate governance best practice, but that there remains further progress to be made in areas such as independence of directors, compensation, and correlation between shareholding and entitlement to seats on the board. The (...) article recommends legal reforms in order to enhance corporate governance in Jordan. (shrink)

Suppose Molinism is true and God placed Adam in the garden because God knew Adam would freely eat of the fruit. Suppose further that, had it not been true that Adam would freely eat of the fruit, were he placed in the garden, God would have placed someone else there instead. When Adam freely eats of the fruit, is he free to do otherwise? This paper argues that there is a strong case for both a positive and a negative answer. (...) Assuming such cases are possible under Molinism, we are left with a puzzling question: if Molinism is true, what can you do? (shrink)

Let (leeway) incompatibilism be the thesis that causal determinism is incompatible with the freedom to do otherwise. Several prominent authors have claimed that incompatibilism alone can capture, or at least best captures, the intuitive appeal behind Jorge Luis Borges's famous “Garden of Forking Paths” metaphor. The thought, briefly, is this: the “single path” leading up to one's present decision represents the past; the forking paths that one must decide between represent those possible futures consistent with the past and the laws (...) of nature. But if determinism is true, there is only one possible future consistent with the past and the laws and, hence, only one path to choose from. That is, if determinism is true, then we are not free to do otherwise. In this paper, I argue that this understanding of the Garden of Forking Paths faces a number of problems and ought to be rejected even by incompatibilists. I then present an alternative understanding that not only avoids these problems but still supports incompatibilism. Finally, I consider how various versions of (leeway) compatibilism fit with the Garden of Forking Paths as well as the broader question of whether metaphors, however intuitive, have any dialectical force in the debates over freedom. (shrink)

Recently, several authors have utilized the notion of dependence to respond to the traditional argument for the incompatibility of freedom and divine foreknowledge. However, proponents of this response have not always been so clear in specifying where the incompatibility argument goes wrong, which has led to some unfounded objections to the response. We remedy this dialectical confusion by clarifying both the dependence response itself and its interaction with the standard incompatibility argument. Once these clarifications are made, it becomes clear both (...) (1.) that the dependence response does not beg the question against the proponent of the incompatibility argument and (2.) that the dependence response advances the dialectic whether it is developed as a version of Ockhamism or as a version of multiple-pasts compatibilism. (shrink)

Is the virtue of the good citizen the same as the virtue of the good man? Aristotle addresses this in Politics 3.4. His answer is twofold. On the one hand, (the account for Difference) they are not the same both because what the citizen’s virtue is depends on the constitution, on what preserves it, and on the role the citizen plays in it, and because the good citizens in the best constitution cannot all be good men, whereas the good man’s (...) virtue is uniform. On the other hand, (the account for Identity) the two virtues are identical in the good men in the best constitution, in which all are good citizens, each possessing the ability for ruling and for being ruled. This nuanced answer can be seen as Aristotle’s synthesis of a Periclean view (contribution to state blots out personal wrongs) and a Socratic view (no good citizen is without justice). Its nuances reflect the extent to which Aristotle’s conceptions of good citizenship and the best constitution accommodate deviations of what is probable from the human ideal set out in his ethical writings. In the present chapter, I will first address three puzzles regarding the nuances of Aristotle’s answer. Second, I will consider one question about its implication: Does Aristotle’s account for Difference turn out to entail something ultra-Periclean: that no one can simultaneously be a good man and a good citizen in any constitution other than the best? I shall argue the negative. (shrink)

Libertarian views of freedom claim that, although determinism would rule out our freedom, we are nevertheless free on some occasions. An odd implication of such views (to put it mildly) seems to be that indeterminism somehow enhances or contributes to our agency. But how could that be? What does indeterminism have to offer agency? This paper develops a novel answer, one that is centred around the notion of explanation. In short, it is argued that, if indeterminism holds in the right (...) places, then the best explanation of the history of the world necessarily cites facts about our agency. Along the way, alternative proposals regarding the significance of indeterminism are considered and, ultimately, rejected in favour of the one developed in this paper. (shrink)

Review of Causation and Free Will by Carolina Sartorio, Oxford University Press, 2016. viii + 188 pp. £35.00.

In the TACITUS project for using commonsense knowledge in the understanding of texts about mechanical devices and their failures, we have been developing various commonsense theories that are needed to mediate between the way we talk about the behavior of such devices and causal models of their operation. Of central importance in this effort is the axiomatization of what might be called commonsense metaphysics. This includes a number of areas that figure in virtually every domain of discourse, such as granularity, (...) scales, time, space, material, physical objects, shape, causality, functionality, and force. Our effort has been to construct core theories of each of these areas, and then to define, or at least characterize, a large number of lexical items in terms provided by the core theories. In this paper we discuss our methodological principles and describe the key ideas in the various domains we are investigating. (shrink)

Some progress has been made in recent decades to articulate corporate social responsibility (CSR) and, more recently, to associate CSR with international enforcement of human rights. This progress continues to be hampered, however, by the ability of a multinational corporation (MNC) that violates human rights not only to shift liability from itself to a nation-state but even to win compensation from that nation-state for loss of profits due to restrictions on its business activities. In the process, the nation-state’s sovereignty is (...) diminishing; and, in effect, though still attributed to nation-states, it is being transferred to the MNC. The main aim of this article is (1) to draw on normative considerations to claim that this MNC proto-sovereignty should be modified and (2) to contend that this can eventually be accomplished by adding to corporate adoption of CSR guidelines a regimen of global human rights enforcement. I base this contention on expectations about the internationalization of corporate criminal law and the globalization of civil society in general and of NGOs in particular. I consider various jurisdictions but I focus on US jurisprudence. (shrink)

Bernard Williams argues that philosophy is in some deep way akin to history. This article is a novel exploration and defense of the Williams thesis —though in a way anathema to Williams himself. The key idea is to apply a central moral from what is sometimes called the analytic philosophy of history of the 1960s to the philosophy of philosophy of today, namely, the separation of explanation and laws. I suggest that an account of causal explanation offered by David Lewis (...) may be modified to bring out the way in which this moral applies to philosophy, and so to defend the Williams thesis. I discuss in detail the consequences of the thesis for the issue of philosophical progress and note also several further implications: for the larger context of contemporary metaphilosophy, for the relation of philosophy to other subjects, and for explaining, or explaining away, the belief that success in philosophy requires a field-specific ability or brilliance. (shrink)

In The Context of Laws of Nature Structural Humeanism vs. Classical Humeanism -/- In the context of the laws of nature, philosophers of science have developed some views in order to adopt an attitude towards recurring events in nature. In this respect, it has been discussed whether there is any driving force underlying the regular behaviours and movements we encounter in nature, and two approaches have emerged as a result of the discussion: A view that there are certain driving forces (...) or causal relations in the ground, and an opposing view that claims that there are no causal relations in the ground, but there are regularities in nature. Views such as the latter are generally described as the Humean view. Such views are also called regularity theories. Throughout this article, the statements referred to as regularity are characterised as the Humean view. Since the article will be centred on the Humean view, views such as the first view, such as dispositional essentialism or structural realism, are not the concern of this article. The article favours the Structural Humean approach over the classical Humean approach. The classical Humean approach is centred on the views of David Lewis and is concerned with distinguishing between laws of nature seen as accidental generalisations and regularities. While it tries to make such a distinction by constructing nature through a mosaic, the Structural Humean approach is an approach that develops Lewis’s claims and tries to shape nature with the concept of structure rather than mosaic. Thus, it is seen as an approach that provides more information than the Classical Humean approach in terms of creating a philosophical infrastructure for explaining nature in terms of modern physics. Through Psillos, Structural Humeanism tried to place the concept of natural pattern into the structure in order to gain metaphysical solidity and tried to bring the Structural Humean approach closer to the Structural Realism camp. Thus, the classically epistemologically important Humean approach has made a significant progress in positioning it on the realist wing. As a result of all these studies, the Structural Humean approach has been defended as a philosophical approach that offers useful arguments for modern physics compared to the Classical Humean approach. -/- Keywords: Humeanism, Regularity, Laws of Nature, Best System Account, Structural Humeanism, Natural Patterns. (shrink)

This book gives an account of work that I have done over a period of decades that sets out to solve two fundamental problems of philosophy: the mind-body problem and the problem of induction. Remarkably, these revolutionary contributions to philosophy turn out to have dramatic implications for a wide range of issues outside philosophy itself, most notably for the capacity of humanity to resolve current grave global problems and make progress towards a better, wiser world. A key element of the (...) proposed solution to the first problem is that physics is about only a highly specialized aspect of all that there is – the causally efficacious aspect. Once this is understood, it ceases to be a mystery that natural science says nothing about the experiential aspect of reality, the colours we perceive, the inner experiences we are aware of. That natural science is silent about the experiential aspect of reality is no reason whatsoever to hold that the experiential does not objectively exist. A key element of the proposed solution to the second problem is that physics, in persistently accepting unified theories only, thereby makes a substantial metaphysical assumption about the universe: it is such that a unified pattern of physical law runs through all phenomena. We need a new conception, and kind, of physics that acknowledges, and actively seeks to improve, metaphysical presuppositions inherent in the methods of physics. The problematic aims and methods of physics need to be improved as physics proceeds. These are the ideas that have fruitful implications, I set out to show, for a wide range of issues: for philosophy itself, for physics, for natural science more generally, for the social sciences, for education, for the academic enterprise as a whole and, most important of all, for the capacity of humanity to learn how to solve the grave global problems that menace our future, and thus make progress to a better, wiser world. It is not just science that has problematic aims; in life too our aims, whether personal, social or institutional, are all too often profoundly problematic, and in urgent need of improvement. We need a new kind of academic enterprise which helps humanity put aims-and-methods improving meta-methods into practice in personal and social life, so that we may come to do better at achieving what is of value in life, and make progress towards a saner, wiser world. This body of work of mine has met with critical acclaim. Despite that, astonishingly, it has been ignored by mainstream philosophy. In the book I discuss the recent work of over 100 philosophers on the mind-body problem and the metaphysics of science, and show that my earlier, highly relevant work on these issues is universally ignored, the quality of subsequent work suffering as a result. My hope, in publishing this book, is that my fellow philosophers will come to appreciate the intellectual value of my proposed solutions to the mind-body problem and the problem of induction, and will, as a result, join with me in attempting to convince our fellow academics that we need to bring about an intellectual/institutional revolution in academic inquiry so that it takes up its proper task of helping humanity learn how to solve problems of living, including global problems, and make progress towards as good, as wise and enlightened a world as possible. (shrink)

This research aims at examining three important things, i.e. students’ technique in paraphrasing, paraphrasing acceptability and obstacles in paraphrasing. A qualitative approach was used to carry out this study by purposively selecting 26 Indonesian college students of English as respondents. The data were collected by giving a paraphrasing task (consisted of 5 paragraphs) to the students and interviewed them to find out in-depth information on paraphrasing acceptably and obstacles. The research revealed that synonym technique was the most frequent technique sued (...) by the respondents due to the easiness of using this technique. On the other hand, the technique of changing positive into negative (vice versa), changing structure of idea, combining two sentences, and changing clause into phrase (vice versa) were found to be the less frequent techniques used for paraphrasing. The research also found that all students are not able to produce good paraphrasing sentences due to their incompetence to satisfy the criteria of good paraphrasing such as not giving citation sources, the tendency for doing plagiarism (changing words with their synonyms and keep the sentence structures still the same as the original. Regarding the respondents’ obstacles in paraphrasing, this study found some obstacles: (1) difficult to find out the appropriate synonyms to change words on original text, (2) difficult to understand unfamiliar terms (3) unable to restructure sentences in new ones, and (4) no idea on how to paraphrase texts effectively. All the obstacles occur due to some causal factors, i.e. (1) lack of vocabulary, (2) lack of paraphrasing practice, (3) ineffective class when learning, (4) teaching technique of lecturers, and (5) limited knowledge of paraphrasing techniques. (shrink)

According to Karl Popper, science cannot verify its theories empirically, but it can falsify them, and that suffices to account for scientific progress. For Popper, a law or theory remains a pure conjecture, probability equal to zero, however massively corroborated empirically it may be. But it does just seem to be the case that science does verify empirically laws and theories. We trust our lives to such verifications when we fly in aeroplanes, cross bridges and take modern medicines. We can (...) do some justice to this apparent capacity of science to verify if we make a number of improvements to Popper’s philosophy of science. The key step is to recognize that physics, in accepting unified theories only, thereby makes a big metaphysical assumption about the nature of the universe. The outcome is a conception of scientific method which facilitates the criticism and improvement of metaphysical assumptions of physics. This view provides, not verification, but a perfect simulacrum of verification indistinguishable from the real thing. (shrink)

We introduce the notion of complexity, first at an intuitive level and then in relatively more concrete terms, explaining the various characteristic features of complex systems with examples. There exists a vast literature on complexity, and our exposition is intended to be an elementary introduction, meant for a broad audience. -/- Briefly, a complex system is one whose description involves a hierarchy of levels, where each level is made of a large number of components interacting among themselves. The time evolution (...) of such a system is of a complex nature, depending on the interactions among subsystems in the next level below the one under consideration and, at the same time, conditioned by the level above, where the latter sets the context for the evolution. Generally speaking, the interactions among the constituents of the various levels lead to a dynamics characterized by numerous characteristic scales, each level having its own set of scales. What is more, a level commonly exhibits ‘emergent properties’ that cannot be derived from considerations relating to its component systems taken in isolation or to those in a different contextual setting. In the dynamic evolution of some particular level, there occurs a self-organized emergence of a higher level and the process is repeated at still higher levels. -/- The interaction and self-organization of the components of a complex system follow the principle commonly expressed by saying that the ‘whole is different from the sum of the parts’. In the case of systems whose behavior can be expressed mathematically in terms of differential equations this means that the interactions are nonlinear in nature. -/- While all of the above features are not universally exhibited by complex systems, these are nevertheless indicative of a broad commonness relative to which individual systems can be described and analyzed. There exist measures of complexity which, once again, are not of universal applicability, being more heuristic than exact. The present state of knowledge and understanding of complex systems is itself an emerging one. Still, a large number of results on various systems can be related to their complex character, making complexity an immensely fertile concept in the study of natural, biological, and social phenomena. -/- All this puts a very definite limitation on the complete description of a complex system as a whole since such a system can be precisely described only contextually, relative to some particular level, where emergent properties rule out an exact description of more than one levels within a common framework. -/- We discuss the implications of these observations in the context of our conception of the so-called noumenal reality that has a mind-independent existence and is perceived by us in the form of the phenomenal reality. The latter is derived from the former by means of our perceptions and interpretations, and our efforts at sorting out and making sense of the bewildering complexity of reality takes the form of incessant processes of inference that lead to theories. Strictly speaking, theories apply to models that are constructed as idealized versions of parts of reality, within which inferences and abstractions can be carried out meaningfully, enabling us to construct the theories. -/- There exists a correspondence between the phenomenal and the noumenal realities in terms of events and their correlations, where these are experienced as the complex behavior of systems or entities of various descriptions. The infinite diversity of behavior of systems in the phenomenal world are explained within specified contexts by theories. The latter are constructs generated in our ceaseless attempts at interpreting the world, and the question arises as to whether these are reflections of `laws of nature' residing in the noumenal world. This is a fundamental concern of scientific realism, within the fold of which there exists a trend towards the assumption that theories express truths about the noumenal reality. We examine this assumption (referred to as a ‘point of view’ in the present essay) closely and indicate that an alternative point of view is also consistent within the broad framework of scientific realism. This is the view that theories are domain-specific and contextual, and that these are arrived at by independent processes of inference and abstractions in the various domains of experience. Theories in contiguous domains of experience dovetail and interpenetrate with one another, and bear the responsibility of correctly explaining our observations within these domains. -/- With accumulating experience, theories get revised and the network of our theories of the world acquires a complex structure, exhibiting a complex evolution. There exists a tendency within the fold of scientific realism of interpreting this complex evolution in rather simple terms, where one assumes (this, again, is a point of view) that theories tend more and more closely to truths about Nature and, what is more, progress towards an all-embracing ‘ultimate theory’ -- a foundational one in respect of all our inquiries into nature. We examine this point of view closely and outline the alternative view -- one broadly consistent with scientific realism -- that there is no ‘ultimate’ law of nature, that theories do not correspond to truths inherent in reality, and that successive revisions in theory do not lead monotonically to some ultimate truth. Instead, the theories generated in succession are incommensurate with each other, testifying to the fact that a theory gives us a perspective view of some part of reality, arrived at contextually. Instead of resembling a monotonically converging series successive theories are analogous to asymptotic series. -/- Before we summarize all the above considerations, we briefly address the issue of the complexity of the {\it human mind} -- one as pervasive as the complexity of Nature at large. The complexity of the mind is related to the complexity of the underlying neuronal organization in the brain, which operates within a larger biological context, its activities being modulated by other physiological systems, notably the one involving a host of chemical messengers. The mind, with no materiality of its own, is nevertheless emergent from the activity of interacting neuronal assemblies in the brain. As in the case of reality at large, there can be no ultimate theory of the mind, from which one can explain and predict the entire spectrum of human behavior, which is an infinitely rich and diverse one. (shrink)

Most scientists would hold that science has not established that the cosmos is physically comprehensible – i.e. such that there is some as-yet undiscovered true physical theory of everything that is unified. This is an empirically untestable, or metaphysical thesis. It thus lies beyond the scope of science. Only when physics has formulated a testable unified theory of everything which has been amply corroborated empirically will science be in a position to declare that it has established that the cosmos is (...) physically comprehensible. But this argument presupposes a widely accepted but untenable conception of science which I shall call standard empiricism. According to standard empiricism, in science theories are accepted solely on the basis of evidence. Choice of theory may be influenced for a time by considerations of simplicity, unity, or explanatory capacity, but not in such a way that the universe itself is permanently assumed to be simple, unified or physically comprehensible. In science, no thesis about the universe can be accepted permanently as a part of scientific knowledge independently of evidence. Granted this view, it is clear that science cannot have established that the universe is physically comprehensible. Standard empiricism is, however, as I have indicated, untenable. Any fundamental physical theory, in order to be accepted as a part of theoretical scientific knowledge, must satisfy two criteria. It must be (1) sufficiently empirically successful, and (2) sufficiently unified. Given any accepted theory of physics, endlessly many empirically more successful disunified rivals can always be concocted – disunified because they assert that different dynamical laws govern the diverse phenomena to which the theory applies. These disunified rivals are not considered for a moment in physics, despite their greater empirical success. This persistent rejection of empirically more successful but disunified rival theories means, I argue, that a big, highly problematic, implicit assumption is made by science about the cosmos, to the effect, at least, that the cosmos is such that all seriously disunified theories are false. Once this point is recognized, it becomes clear, I argue, that we need a new conception of science which makes explicit, and so criticizable and improvable the big, influential, and problematic assumption that is at present implicit in physics in the persistent preference for unified theories. This conception of science, which I call aim-oriented empiricism, represents the assumption of physics in the form of a hierarchy of assumptions. As one goes up the hierarchy, the assumptions become less and less substantial, and more and more nearly such that their truth is required for science, or the pursuit of knowledge, to be possible at all. At each level, that assumption is accepted which (a) best accords with the next one up, and (b) has, associated with it the most empirically progressive research programme in physics, or holds out the greatest hope of leading to such an empirically progressive research programme. In this way a framework of relatively insubstantial, unproblematic, fixed assumptions and associated methods is created, high up in the hierarchy, within which much more substantial and problematic assumptions and associated methods, low down in the hierarchy, can be changed, and indeed improved, as scientific knowledge improves. One assumption in this hierarchy of assumptions, I argue, is that the cosmos is physically comprehensible – that is, such that some yet-to-be-discovered unified theory of everything is true. Hence the conclusion: improve our ideas about the nature of science and it becomes apparent that science has already established that the cosmos is physically comprehensible – in so far as science can ever establish anything theoretical. (shrink)

In Legality Scott Shapiro seeks to provide the motivation for the development of his own elaborate account of law by undertaking a critique of H.L.A. Hart's jurisprudential theory. Hart maintained that every legal system is underlain by a rule of recognition through which officials of the system identify the norms that belong to the system as laws. Shapiro argues that Hart's remarks on the rule of recognition are confused and that his model of lawis consequently untenable. Shapiro contends that a (...) new approach is vital for progress in the philosophy of law and, with his lengthy presentation of his own Planning Theory of Law, he aspires to pioneer just such an approach. Except for a very terse observation in the final main section, this article does not directly assess the strengths and shortcomings of Shapiro's piquant planning theory. Instead, I defend Hart against Shapiro's charges and thereby undermine the motivation for the development of the planning theory. (shrink)

Criminal law theory made a significant advance roughly thirty years ago when George Fletcher popularized the important conceptual distinction between justifications and excuses. In the intervening years, however, very little progress has been made in exploring the structure and function of justification defenses. The reason for this failure, I suggest, is a widely shared misconception about their place within the criminal law’s institutional structure. Contrary to what is generally believed, it is not up to trial courts to decide ex post (...) facto what conduct is justified and what is not. This determination is made ex ante by other institutional actors such as private fiduciaries, public officials, and sometimes, ordinary citizens caught in extraordinary circumstances. The court’s role is simply to review the validity of that prior exercise of decision-making discretion. More broadly, my study is intended to serve as a reminder of the importance of institutional structure in criminal law. It is almost always misleading to address issues in criminal law by way of abstract moral theorizing, as is often done, because this leaves out the crucial question of institutional division of labor. Before addressing the substantive aspect of particular questions—what conduct should be prohibited, justified, or excused—we must first address ourselves to the institutional questions that I have called the problems of authority, discretion, and legality. These institutional questions receive their most thorough treatment in two other areas of law: the private law of fiduciaries and public administrative law. If we wish to make progress in understanding justification defenses—and the institutional structure of criminal law more generally—I argue that it is to these areas of law that we should attend. (shrink)

Disciplinary issues -- Field studies -- Appendix: Theory of law : legal ethnography, or, the theoretical fruits of the inquiries into folkways. /// Reedition of papers in English spanning from 1995 to 2008 /// DISCIPLINARY ISSUES -- LAW AS CULTURE? [2002] 9–14 // TRENDS IN COMPARATIVE LEGAL STUDIES [2002] 15–17 // COMPARATIVE LEGAL CULTURES: ATTEMPTS AT CONCEPTUALISATION [1997] 19–28: 1. Legal Culture in a Cultural-anthropological Approach 19 / 2. Legal Culture in a Sociological Approach 21 / 3. Timely Issues of (...) Central and Eastern Europe 24 // COMPARATIVE LEGAL CULTURES? [2001] 29–48: 1. Legal Comparativism Challenged 29 / 2. Comparative Legal Cultures versus Comparative Law 34 / 3. Contrasting Fields 40 [a) The Historical Understanding of Socialist Law 42 / b) Convergence of Civil Law and Common Law 44] 4. Concluding Remarks 46 // THEATRUM LEGALE MUNDI: ON LEGAL SYSTEMS CLASSIFIED [2005] 49–75: 1. Preliminaries 49 / 2. Proposals 50 / 3. Impossible Taxonomy, or the Moment of Practicality in Legal Mapping 69 / 4. Diversity as a Fundamental Quality of Human Existence 74 // LEGAL TRADITIONS? IN SEARCH FOR FAMILIES AND CULTURES IN LAW [2004] 77–97: 1. Comparative Law and the Comparative Study of Legal Traditions 78 / 2. ‘System’, ‘Family’, ‘Culture’, and ‘Tradition’ in the Classification of Law 80 / 3. Different Traditions, Differing Ways of Thinking 85 / 4. Different Expectations, Differings Institutionalisations in Law 88 / 5. Different “Rationalities”, Differing “Logics” 92 / 6. Mentality in Foundation of the Law 94 / 7. Defining a Subject for Theoretical Research in Law 96 // SOMETHING NEW, SOMETHING OLD IN THE EUROPEAN IDENTITY OF LAW? [1995] 99–102 --- FIELD STUDIES -- MEETING POINTS BETWEEN THE TRADITIONS OF ENGLISH–AMERICAN COMMON LAW AND CONTINENTAL-FRENCH CIVIL LAW: DEVELOPMENTS AND EXPERIENCE OF POSTMODERNITY IN CANADA [2002] 105–130: I. Canadian Law in General 105 / II. Canadian Legal Developments in Particular [1. The Transformation of the Role of Precedents 112 / 2. The Transformation of Law-application into a Collective, Multicultural and Multifactorial Search for a Solution 116 / 3. Practical Trends of Dissolving the Law’s Positivity 120 / 4. New Prerogatives Acquired by Courts 125 {a) Unfolding the Statutory Provisons in Principles 126 / b) Constitutionalisation of Issues 127 / c) The Supreme Court as the Nation’s Supreme Moral Authority 129}] // MAN ELEVATING HIMSELF? DILEMMAS OF RATIONALITY IN OUR AGE [2000] 131–163: I. Reason and its Adventures 1. Progress and Advance Questioned 131 / 2. The Human Search for Safety Objectified 133 / 3. Knowledge Separated from Wisdom 135 / 4. Pure Intellectuality thereby Born 137 / II. The Will-Element Formalised in Law 5. Mere Voluntas in the Foundation of Legal Positivism 141 / 6. Formalism with Operations Fragmented 145 / III. The State of America Exemplified 7. “Slouching into Gomorrah” 147 / IV. Consequences 8. Utopianism-cum-Voluntarism 154 / 9. With Logic in Posterior Control of Human Formulations Only 159 / V. Perspectives 10. And a Final Resolution Dreamed about 161 // RULE OF LAW? MANIA OF LAW? ON THE BOUNDARY BETWEEN RATIONALITY AND ANARCHY IN AMERICA [2002] 165–180: {Transformation of American Law and Legal Mentality 165 / With Repercussions on the Underlying Ethos 168 / Legislation through Processualisation 170 / With Hyperrationalism Added 172 / Example: Finding Lost Property 172 / Practicalness Veiled by Verbal Magic 173 / Ending in Jurispathy 175 / Transubstantiating the Self-interest of the Legal Profession 178 / Post-modernity, Substituting for Primitiveness 178} // TRANSFERS OF LAW: A CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS [2003] 181–207: 1. Terms 182 / 2. Technicality 190 / 3. Contrasts in Transfers of Law 200 {Contrasts 200 / Criticisms 202 / Alternatives205} 4. Conclusions 206 // THE DANGERS FOR THE SELF OF BEING SELF-CENTRED: ON STANDARDS AND VALUES [2002] 209–212 --- APPENDIX -- THEORY OF LAW – LEGAL ETHNOGRAPHY, OR THE THEORETICAL FRUITS OF THE INQUIRIES INTO FOLKWAYS [2008] 213–234 1. Encounters 213 / 2. Disciplines 218 / 3. The Lawyerly Interest 223 / 4. Law and/or Laws 226 / 5. Conclusion 233 --- Index of Subjects 235 / Index of Normative Materials 242 / Index 244 . (shrink)

When this article was first planned, writing was going to be exclusively about two things - the origin of life and human evolution. But it turned out to be out of the question for the author to restrict himself to these biological and anthropological topics. A proper understanding of them required answering questions like “What is the nature of the universe – the home of life – and how did it originate?”, “How can time travel be removed from fantasy and (...) science fiction, to be made scientific and practical?”, and “How can the proposed young age of genus Homo be made to actually be reasonable – when simply stating it would be solid ground for instant rejection and dismissal?” The result is that the article also talks about subjects like Artificial Intelligence, General Relativity, and cosmology. -/- From where did life originate? God? Evolution? Panspermia? If the tendency of humans and scientists to regard undiscovered science as pseudoscience can be overcome, Einstein gave another alternative to consider when he introduced General Relativity. Time isn’t linear – progressing in a straight line from past to present to future. That assumption ignores Relativity which states that space AND TIME are curved. Where did life and the genetic code come from? Can the answer build AI? -/- The first question can be answered by the section of this article titled SETI, Evolution, and Time which says life (possibly multicellular and intelligent) and the genetic code came from humans acquiring knowledge of these things over the centuries, then applying that knowledge – via terraforming, accumulation of raw materials like amino acids and nucleic acids, genetic engineering - to a time in the past when life didn’t exist. From that origin, life evolved through innumerable mutations and adaptations, with humans once again acquiring knowledge of it in cyclic (nonlinear) time. -/- The second question is answered by saying artificial intelligence (AI) as the product of life is only half of the equation. The other half refers to Relativity’s curved space-time and violation of the notion that time always travels from past to future. We have always lived in an artificially intelligent, non-probabilistic universe where everything in time and space is connected into one thing by quantum entanglement – making the brain and genes products of binary-digit activity or artificial intelligence (life is not merely dependent on biology’s “lock and key” mechanisms but also possesses AI). -/- The earliest documented representative of the genus Homo is Homo habilis, which evolved around 2.8 million years ago. Scientists used to believe there was a straight line from H. habilis to us, Homo sapiens. This article will use the “advanced” waves loved by Physics Nobel laureate Richard Feynman, view the history of science through the lens of Conic Sections applied to Relativity’s curved space-time, and incorporate the necessity of so-called imaginary time * – popularized by Prof. Stephen Hawking. While the evolutionary proposals are more in agreement with this early straight line than with modern theories, Albert Einstein’s General Relativity is used to transform the straight line into a curved line, ultimately concluding that Homo habilis (H. habilis) originated only (and unbelievably, as far as today’s science and technology is concerned) ~250,000 years ago. Other branches and dead ends of Homo – e.g. Neanderthals – are the result of mutations and adaptations, with the resultant modifications to anatomy and physiology. The surprisingly young age of H. habilis allows nearly 200,000 years for habilis, or one of its descendants, to reach Australia … if this country’s indigenous Aboriginal population did, as claimed, reach this “island continent” 60,000 years ago. -/- * The ultraviolet catastrophe, also called the Rayleigh–Jeans catastrophe, is a failure of classical physics to predict observed phenomena: it can be shown that a blackbody - a hypothetical perfect absorber and radiator of energy - would release an infinite amount of energy, contradicting the principles of conservation of energy and indicating that a new model for the behaviour of blackbodies was needed. At the start of the 20th century, physicist Max Planck derived the correct solution by making some strange (for the time) assumptions. In particular, Planck assumed that electromagnetic radiation can only be emitted or absorbed in discrete packets, called quanta. Albert Einstein postulated that Planck's quanta were real physical particles (what we now call photons), not just a mathematical fiction. From there, Einstein developed his explanation of the photoelectric effect (when quanta or photons of light shine on certain metals, electrons are released and can form an electric current). So it appears entirely possible that another supposed mathematical trickery (imaginary time and the y-axis of Wick rotation) will find practical application in the future. -/- The article includes mathematical references to cosmology (spoiler alert – you’ll read about things like Vector-Tensor-Scalar Geometry, topology, the “eternal present”, Einstein’s Unified Field, the inverse-square law, and there being no Big Bang and no multiverse - but there will also be no equations). -/- The other subheadings in this essay are – -/- NONLINEAR TIME AND ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING (about a 2009 electrical engineering experiment at America’s Yale University, and cosmic wormholes) -/- BITS AND TOPOLOGY (base-2 maths aka Binary digiTS, Mobius strips, and figure-8 Klein bottles) -/- WICK ROTATION, CAUSALITY, AND UNITING TIME (do past, present and future co-exist in an “eternal present”?) -/- DIGITAL BRAIN, DIGITAL UNIVERSE (if the brain and the universe are ultimately composed of binary digits, we'll someday be able to do the same things with the brain and universe that we now do with computers) -/- PROPOSAL: HUMAN AND ANIMAL INSTINCTS ARE THE RESULT OF THE UNIVERSE BEING UNIFIED BY BINARY DIGITS (AND TOPOLOGY) (If everything in the universe is ultimately composed of electronic BITS, then the universe must possess Artificial Intelligence - some prefer the term Cosmic Consciousness) -/- INFORMATION THEORY CONQUERS A RED GIANT (preserving Earth by keeping the Sun near today’s level of activity forever). 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Science and technology are undergoing rapid development and progress. It is due to the increasing number of modern inventions. Among the technological discoveries that are very important are in the medical field. With modern medical equipment, the suffering of a patient can be reduced. But in reality, there are still some patients who have severe suffering. Patients who experience prolonged illness invites empathy from the family. To relieve his suffering, the family who could not bear to see his condition asked (...) the doctor to take actions that could shorten the patient's life, this kind of action in the medical world is known as euthanasia. This study aims to find out how the study of active euthanasia in the view of Christian law. This study is a literature review using an ethical-theological approach by studying books and scientific works related to the discussed problem. (shrink)

Certain principle aspects of the fundamental science state in Ukraine as of 2014 were analyzed. It was shown that no awareness exists in the country that the main although not unique task of the science consists in the creation of new knowledge. The special attention was paid to state academies of science, in particular, to the National academy of science of Ukraine. It was demonstrated that the active law concerning science as well as the project of the new law have (...) substantial shortcomings from the judiciary viewpoint and inhibit a free progress of science in line with general trends of the developed countries. The existing status of the autonomous state academies, being a peculiar symbiosis the non-governmental organization and state institution, was criticized. The concept of a scientific elite was analyzed, which was used to determine its true level. Certain scientometric data on the Ukrainian science were presented. A very unsatisfactory situation with social sciences and humanities was shown. Criteria were discussed for the future audit of the Ukrainian science in order to reform it in the European style. (shrink)

My first goal is to motivate a distinctively metaphysical approach to the problem of induction. I argue that there is a precise sense in which the only way that orthodox Humean and non-Humean views can justify induction is by appealing to extremely strong and unmotivated probabilistic biases. My second goal is to sketch what such a metaphysical approach could possibly look like. After sketching such an approach, I consider a toy case that illustrates the way in which such a metaphysics (...) can help us make progress on the problem of induction. (shrink)

We generalize, by a progressive procedure, the notions of conjunction and disjunction of two conditional events to the case of n conditional events. In our coherence-based approach, conjunctions and disjunctions are suitable conditional random quantities. We define the notion of negation, by verifying De Morgan’s Laws. We also show that conjunction and disjunction satisfy the associative and commutative properties, and a monotonicity property. Then, we give some results on coherence of prevision assessments for some families of compounded conditionals; in (...) particular we examine the Fréchet-Hoeffding bounds. Moreover, we study the reverse probabilistic inference from the conjunction Cn+1 of n + 1 conditional events to the family {Cn,En+1|Hn+1}. We consider the relation with the notion of quasi-conjunction and we examine in detail the coherence of the prevision assessments related with the conjunction of three conditional events. Based on conjunction, we also give a characterization of p-consistency and of p-entailment, with applications to several inference rules in probabilistic nonmonotonic reasoning. Finally, we examine some non p-valid inference rules; then, we illustrate by an example two methods which allow to suitably modify non p-valid inference rules in order to get inferences which are p-valid. (shrink)

The art of legislation, that had got lost, is reborn in this book from the classic tradition, which conceives the laws like wise and eloquent civic speeches, and the rhetoric as its basic method, of a such way, that the return to the ancient will be a true progress.