bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Measuring the Intentional World
Authors: Trout J. D.
Published: February 2006

Scientific realism has been advanced as an interpretation of the natural sciences but never the behavioral sciences. This book introduces a novel version of scientific realism, Measured Realism, that characterizes the kind of theoretical progress in the social and psychological sciences that is uneven but indisputable. It proposes a theory of measurement, Population-Guided Estimation, that connects natural, psychological, and social scientific inquiry. Presenting quantitative methods in the behavioral sciences as at once successful and regulated by the world, the book will engage philosophers of science, historians of science, sociologists of science, and scientists interested in the foundations of their own disciplines. Part I introduces measured realism beginning with a novel realist theory of measurement (Population-Guided Estimation, or PGE). It examines two other versions of scientific realism — minimal (Hacking) and robust (Boyd, Putnam, and Newton-Smith) — and advances measured realism as best supported by the evidence in the behavioral sciences. It also critically evaluates the anti-realist arguments of van Fraassen, Laudan, and Fine. Part II formulates and develops a version of epistemological naturalism most appropriate to measured realism. Drawing upon the realist theory of measurement developed earlier, it favorably appraises a variety of statistical methods in the behavioral sciences against selected criticisms. It concludes that traditional, narrative methods in the behavioral and social sciences are unreliable by the measures of epistemological naturalism.
Measured Realism
Authors: Trout J. D.
Published: February 2006

This chapter defends a relatively modest but distinctive version of scientific realism, measured realism, that steers a middle course between minimal and robust realism. Measured realism includes four theses: (1) at least some of the quantitative methods and practices of science reliably detect and identify some of the central posited entities, processes, states, properties, and events in the social and behavioral sciences; (2) sometimes behavioral and social scientific theories, more often the generalizations that constitute them, are confirmed by the application of accepted methodological standards in the field; (3) in our best psychological and social theories, confirmation relations important to theoretical progress in those sciences are epistemically bite-sized and, accordingly, some parts of the tested theory are typically confirmationally adipose or extraneous; and (4) the reality described by our best psychological and social theories is independent of us as observers of, or as thinkers about that reality. Drawing on scientific evidence, psycholinguistics, signal processing, and paleontology, it is argued that these four theses provide the best explanation for the reliability of methodology in the social and behavioral sciences. The epistemic relation of mercenary reliance — the remote dependence upon experts outside of one’s discipline — provides a clear and novel illustration of adipose theory and bite-sized theoretical commitments.
Statistical Designs as Instruments
Authors: Trout J. D.
Published: February 2006

This chapter aims to advance a realist conception of statistical designs according to which they are instruments of measurement. These instruments are best understood as detecting theoretical entities, particularly because improvements in design are guided by theoretical considerations. Drawing on designs from psychological research on the frequency effect and semantic priming, this chapter attempts to reveal the implausibility of the competing empiricist analysis. It then assesses how this realist treatment of statistical design fares against empiricist alternatives using experimental speech perception data. Empiricist efforts to avoid a realist understanding of this subject matter fail for the same reason that the operationalist analysis of lab instrumentation failed: the instruments/(designs) reflect, and scientists treat them as reflecting, sensitivity to real and unobservable causal features of the world.
Statistical Testing and the World's Contribution to Rationality
Authors: Trout J. D.
Published: February 2006

Many of the background theories in the social sciences and psychology are unreliable, and so theoretical improvement often requires the experimental strain of statistical predictions. Significance testing is the primary method for establishing causal relationships in psychology, and proposes conditions that are diagnostic of the reality of a theoretical entity in psychology. The fulfillment of these conditions reflect a principle of robustness which states that real psychological effects are: (1) reproducible by similar methods, (2) detectable by diverse means, and (3) able to survive theoretical integration. The principle of robustness explains why spurious significant findings perish under the strain of persistent tests of their robustness. The resulting vindication of significance testing confers on the world a role in determining the rationality of a method, and provides a realist explanation for the fast progress of “hard” areas of psychology.
Failed Attempts: The Frailties of Narrative Methods
Authors: Trout J. D.
Published: February 2006

The epistemological naturalism expressed by Population-Guided Estimation supports measured realism about the social and behavioral sciences, but also has striking implications for the way traditional narrative social science has been done. Social science and psychology have overcome humble beginnings, and in their current form, owe a profound debt to the resources of statistical methods. Elegant and learned narratives — the classics of early social science — led readers through a world of charismatic leaders, diplomats’ diaries, peasant uprisings, cartel formation, courtly intrigue, workers’ movements, and wars of religion and capital. However, except in cases where the processes or events described were especially robust, these anecdotal techniques proved a poor guide to the existence of any postulated social entities and an unreliable basis for generalization. This claim is grounded on a survey of recent results in cognitive psychology on the biases of human judgment (results spawned by Tversky, Kahneman, and their colleagues), and in a discussion of disposition to neglect important yet simple actuarial features that guide reliable inductive reasoning.
Akan and Euro‐American Concepts of the Person
Authors: Appiah K. Anthony
Published: February 2006

This essay explores the theories of the person within Western and Akan traditions. It identifies six obstacles to theory comparison. It argues that there may be no non-question begging way of comparing theories since these theories themselves play key roles in understanding how each is to be used.
Truth and an African Language
Authors: Wiredu Kwasi
Published: February 2006

This essay compares the conceptions of truth within Akan and Western languages. It explores Western conceptions of truth, focusing on the correspondence, coherence, and pragmatic theories of truth. It argues that the Akan language helps clarify thinking about how to know what can be characterized as truth. The unification of the three competing Western theories of truth is possible by an infusion of the Akan conception of truth.
An Outline of a Theory of Destiny
Authors: Gbadegesin Segun
Published: February 2006

This essay explores the concept of destiny in Yoruba philosophical discourse. It argues that the Yoruba concept of destiny is complex, and that this complexity may be the source of the problems encountered by scholars. References to the concept of destiny in traditional Yoruba philosophy, the problem of choice, interconnectedness of destinies, individual and communal destinies, reincarnation, and the significance of destiny are discussed.
Physical and Metaphysical Understanding
Authors: Menkiti I. A.
Published: February 2006

This essay contends that traditional African culture is largely misunderstood. It is not rooted in supernaturalism and its metaphysics are empirically grounded. Westerners should acquire a more informed perspective on traditional African thought and have much to learn from traditional African thought that will help them solve salient philosophical concerns within Western philosophy.
Witchcraft, Science, and the Paranormal in Contemporary African Philosophy
Authors: Mosley Albert
Published: February 2006

This essay explores the traditional African philosophical foundations that gave rise to current perspectives on the supernatural within contemporary African philosophical thought. It rejects the comparative Western tenet that while Western ontology is grounded on facts about nature, traditional African ontology is rooted in metaphysical fantasy. Critiquing African ontology outside the contextual framework that gives it structure and meaning will result in unjustifiable biases.
Bashful Eggs, Macho Sperm, and Tonypandy Paul R. Gross
Authors: Gross Paul A.
Published: February 2006

For the last decade, feminist academics including feminist epistemologists and a number of sociologists and historians of science, have derogated the “masculinism” of natural science. A favored example thereof is the supposed elevation of the spermatozoon and diminution of the egg, and of their respective roles in fertilization and embryonic development. This essay examines the history and the reproductive biology that are adduced as evidence of this bias. Both are either false or nonexistent.
Is Darwinism Sexist? (And if It Is, So What?)Michael Ruse
Authors: Ruse Michael
Published: February 2006

A major complaint of critics, especially feminists, is that Darwinism is sexist. It is argued that this criticism is based on very selective reading of the texts, and that for every sexist Darwinian there has been an ardently pro-feminism Darwinian. The implications of this for the nature of science are explored.
When Experiments FailIs “Cold Fusion” Science as Normal? William J. McKinney
Authors: McKinney William J.
Published: February 2006

Collins and Pinch contend that the cold fusion episode illustrates their claim that the evaluation of science hypotheses is strongly influenced by the interests of the parties concerned instead of epistemic factors. This essay looks at this case in detail, and concludes that it offers no support for the Science, Technology, and Society Studies (STS) account.
Do Mutants Die of Natural Causes? The Case of Atomic Parity Violation Allan Franklin
Authors: Franklin Allan
Published: February 2006

Andrew Pickering’s Constructing Quarks claims that the scientific community’s evaluation of atomic parity violation experiments was determined by career considerations, and not the quality of the experimental observations. This essay argues that scientists had good evidential reasons to accept atomic parity violation as a strong confirmation of the Weinberg-Salam Standard Model of weak interactions.
Alchemy, Domination, and Gender William R. Newman
Authors: Newman William R.
Published: February 2006

Evelyn Fox Keller and Carolyn Merchant claimed that the alchemical worldview was an attractive alternative to the repressive, patriarchal mechanical philosophy, which succeeded it. This essay shows that alchemy was hardly the rose-tinted framework that feminists, following Jung and Eliade, believed it to be, and actually contained some of the violent imagery that they decried in later science.
Reflections on Bruno Latour's Version of the Seventeenth Century Margaret C. Jacob
Authors: Jacob Margaret C.
Published: February 2006

Because some historians of 17th-century science did not understand the vast differences in the political positions taken by Robert Boyle and Thomas Hobbes, they concluded that not much difference would have resulted had Hobbes’s absolutism become the English form of government in the 17th century. The actual autonomy of parliament and relative freedom of civil society seemed relatively insignificant. Not being an historian but undeterred by his inexperience, Bruno Latour jumped into the field and argued that modernity, representative institutions, and the freedom of civil society, like the science of either of these great theorists, offered little that was distinctively different from the forms of government in France or Spain at the time. “We Have Never Been Modern” argued that position, and this essay seeks to show how wrong-headed it is.
The End of Science, the Central Dogma of Science Studies, Monsieur Jourdain, and Uncle Vanya Norman Levitt
Authors: Levitt Norman
Published: February 2006

John Horgan’s well-known book, The End of Science, maintains that much of science has reached a stage where it can only generate “ironic” ideas, so called because there is little hope that they can be scientifically accurate in a straightforward sense. Horgan, in claiming that in several key areas, science is now confronted by impenetrable barriers to achieving new and valid knowledge, is heavily influenced by postmodern and constructivist theories of knowledge. Though in some ways he departs from the epistemological nihilism of the postmodernists, he nonetheless echoes them in suggesting that the search for new, deep knowledge can at best produce mere narratives instead. Horgan’s position is refutable, but it is interesting in that it illuminates the cultural pessimism and the resentment that underlie the radical critiques of science that have proliferated in the academic world as well as in popular writing.
The Millennial New World
Authors: Graziano Frank
Published: February 2006

The opening chapter of this book defines millennialism in its broadest sense, encompassing apocalypticism, messianism, and utopia. The subsequent chapters explore a wide range of colonial and modern movements, myths, and ideologies. as they pursue millennial themes through Latin American history. The study of Spanish messianic imperialism and perceptions of the New World as Eden and New Jerusalem provide European precedents. Extensive treatment of nativist and syncretic millennialism includes the Land-without-Evil, Taqui Onqoy, the Tzeltal Rebellion, the Caste War of the Yucatan, and the myths of Inkarrí and Quetzalcóatl, among many others. End-of-the-world sects and their messiahs are also considered, as are utopian communities, Pentecostalism, Liberation Theology, military messianism, and popular Catholicism. The discussion further encompasses the secular millennialism of revolutionaries and populists, including such figures as Lope de Aguirre, Túpac Amaru, Simón Bolívar, Augusto César Sandino, Juan and Evita Perón, Che Guevara, and Shining Path’s Abimael Guzmán.
Introduction
Authors: Graziano Frank
Published: February 2006

This chapter defines the key terms millennial, millennialism, messianism, messiah, apocalypse, apocalyptic, and apocalypticism, then provides an overview of the attributes of millennial thought and action. The overview introduces such themes as messianic responses to social crisis, charisma, legitimacy, fragmentation and unification, ritual and symbolic violence, symbolic inversion, and polarization.
Crisis and Salvation
Authors: Graziano Frank
Published: February 2006

This chapter treats eschatological and apocalyptic themes through a range of cases from Latin America and early modern Spain. Of particular focus are the imminent end of the world, the messianic imperialism of Spanish colonization and its impact on indigenous peoples, the Last World Emperor, cyclical and periodized time, prophesy, and the collective death of adherents to millennial movements. It also discusses the influence of Joachim of Fiore on Spanish missions and syncretic myths.
The Promise of Paradise
Authors: Graziano Frank
Published: February 2006

This chapter surveys utopian ideas in Latin America, from the European myths projected onto the New World during exploration to more recent endeavors to discover or build paradise on earth. Themes include pursuit of allusive utopian islands and enclaves, the relation of utopia and subversion, the projection of utopia into the future, and reunification of a fragmented world. The case studies focus on the Tupí-Guaraní Land-without-Evil, El Dorado, Christopher Columbus’s belief that he discovered terrestrial paradise, and the utopian missions founded by priests and friars, including the Jesuit Reductions of Paraguay and the missions of Bartolomé de Las Casas.
The Messiah
Authors: Graziano Frank
Published: February 2006

This chapter presents a study of messianic leaders, beginning with a general discussion of the supernatural means by which messianic power is acquired and maintained. Subsequent sections explore the dialogical relation between the charismatic and his followers, and the catastrophic consequences when the charismatic’s promises are broken. The case studies focus on Lope de Aguirre, Simón Bolívar, Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, Juan and Evita Perón, the messiahs of Brazil (including Antonio Conselheiro), and Ezequiel Ataucusi Gamonal.
Spinoza's Substance Monism
Authors: Rocca Michael Della
Published: February 2006

This essay supports a so-called identification-oriented interpretation of the argument for substance monism. It emphasizes the conceptual barrier between different attributes and the conceptual-independence condition in the definition of substance. It argues that certain features of Spinoza’s notion of attributes enable him to defend his argument for substance monism from a number of challenges: (1) the fact that, for Spinoza, each attribute of a substance, independently of the modes of the substance and independently of other attributes, is sufficient for conceiving of the substance; and (2) the fact that, for Spinoza, because of the conceptual independence of the attributes, no attribute of a substance can prevent that substance from having any other attribute.
Concrete Logic
Authors: Mason Richard
Published: February 2006

This essay explores logical and physical readings of Spinoza’s Ethics. It argues that Spinoza made logic more like physics, rather than making physics into logic. A dichotomy between the metaphysical and physical is inappropriate in thinking about his work. One way to understand his approach is through quasi-Kantian terms, of making physics possible, although his work has left the question of what exists to those pursuing research to find out.
Mirroring Spinoza's Mind
Authors: Dalton Peter
Published: February 2006

This essay explores Spinoza’s theory of the mind. It argues that Spinoza’s theory is marred by obscurities, omissions, questionable inferences, a heavy dependence on theological view of reality, and incoherence. Fourteen Spinozistic theses about the mind are presented, and the most serious problems of the reconstructed theory are discussed. A model that functions like a Spinozistic mind that solves or avoids the problems is then described.
Leibniz, Spinoza, and Tschirnhaus
Authors: Kulstad Mark A.
Published: February 2006

This essay explores the philosophical relationship of Spinoza and Leibniz. It argues that the relationship is best viewed as three-cornered metaphysical transaction beginning with Spinoza, continuing to Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus’s exchanges with Spinoza, and leading to reflections by Leibniz on a Spinoza mediated by these exchanges. It focuses on two topics that exemplify this three-cornered relationship: (1) the relationship between God and things, and the derivation of things from God; and (2) the critical Leibnizian topic of possible worlds.
A Theory of Art
Authors: Berger Karol
Published: February 2006

What, if anything, has art to do with the rest of our lives, and in particular with those ethical and political issues that matter to us most? This book shifts the focus of inquiry from the usual question of what art is, to the question of what the function of art should be if art is to have a value for us. It examines the role of art in the overall economy of our ethical lives and compares the uses of art with those of history, philosophy, and religion. Instead of the usual focus on either poetry or painting, musical modernity represents the central features and dilemmas of the social and historical situation of art today in a particularly radical, acute, and clear fashion. The range of questions asked is not limited to those traditionally asked by writers on aesthetics, but also includes issues in poetics and hermeneutics, such as diegesis and mimesis, narrative and lyric, and the validity of interpretation. Thus, the two areas of inquiry that all too often ignore one another, the philosophical aesthetics and literary theory, are brought together here.
Aesthetics II. The Uses of Art
Authors: Berger Karol
Published: February 2006

The repertory of mediated experiences allows us to begin deliberating on the question of how we should live, to choose the extent that it is possible through our actions and passions, and to justify our choices. The most basic kinds of works — history, art, science, and philosophy — divide among themselves various tasks that allow us to understand ourselves and our world, to know how we should live. Since philosophy uses arguments to make explicit, criticize, and improve the norms that govern our already current practices, and hence its arguments cannot exist in separation from the representations of history and art, Hegel’s thesis of the end of art cannot stand. But art is more than an instrument of self-knowledge and self-invention; no less important than education is pleasure. The various views concerning the possible worth of the disinterested aesthetic pleasure that have been historically derived from Kant’s analysis: all variants of the claim that to the extent that we value human freedom, we must also value those activities in which the possibility of such freedom is most clearly and characteristically demonstrated, do not persuade; any pleasure, unless it is harmful, is self-evidently valuable and does not require any further arguments in its favor. It is argued that there is nothing inartistic or improper in deriving interested pleasures from the experience of art. Against puritanical moralists, it is argued that such interested pleasures may function not only as a means of self-escape or of corrupting the young and irresponsible, but also as a means of self-discovery, in which pleasure is edification.
Poetics II. Narrative and Lyric: The Poetic Forms and the Object of Artistic Presentation
Authors: Berger Karol
Published: February 2006

This chapter clarifies the essential nature of the two fundamental poetic forms of composition — those of the narrative and the lyric — and shows how these two forms can be seen to operate not only in literature, but also in painting and music. Narrative is a kind of form in the constitution of which the essential role is played by time, that is, the temporal form; the kind of form in which the whole consists of a number of phases or parts which succeed one another in a determined order, their succession governed by the relationships of causing and resulting by necessity or probability. Lyric, by contrast, is the atemporal form, the kind of form in the constitution of which time plays no essential role, its parts, whether existing simultaneously or succeeding one another, governed by the relationship of the necessary or probable mutual implication, rather than the necessary or probable causation. The two forms are correlated with two kinds of contents: the narrative is the kind of form properly suited for representing human actions, and the lyric for states of mind. The interplay of narrative and lyric then maps the complete field of not only artistic forms, but also human ways of being in the world, that is, of everything that one might want to represent in art if one treats art as an instrument of human self-revelation.
Hermeneutics. Interpretation and Its Validity
Authors: Berger Karol
Published: February 2006

No interpretation can escape the need to use figurative language of some sort: not even the closest of reading, paraphrase, or analysis where we stay within the confines of the interpreted artworld itself (text) and elucidate its internal structure, and certainly not the interpretation proper in which the results of analysis are confronted and compared with other represented and interpreted worlds so that the significance of the interpreted work for its author and his audience may emerge. To interpret is to invent new metaphors, but an interpreted artworld is not only a metaphor, it is also a metonymy. In an artworld, a visible or audible fragment implies a much larger, hidden whole; a whole way of life, of acting and suffering, and it is a job of the critic to bring this hidden whole out into the open. Based on the pragmatist’s rather than the fundamentalist’s side in the dispute over what constitutes a valid interpretation, it is argued that all we need are art interpretations that persuade us because like interpretations we provisionally accept in all other domains, they are consistent with lots of other beliefs we hold. They allow us to use the interpreted artworld as we want to use it, to amuse and to edify us. This position is qualified by showing that there are kinds of interpretation where it is proper to raise the issue of legitimacy and not to be satisfied with persuasion alone. In particular, it is shown that the pragmatic view of the nature of interpretation is compatible with a hermeneutic practice that appeals to the rules and constraints of the social practice within the framework of which the interpreted object has been made when construing the meaning of this object, and that insists on the primacy of the interpretation of meaning as a prerequisite to any criticism of significance.
The Logical Structure of Thought Experiments
Authors: Sorensen Roy A.
Published: February 2006

This chapter lays out a classification scheme for thought experiments. A good scheme consolidates knowledge in a way that minimizes the demand on your memory and expedites the acquisition of new knowledge by raising helpful leading questions. Thought experiments are all reducible to two highly specific forms of paradox — one targeting statements implying necessities, the other targeting statements implying possibilities. By treating a thought experiment as a stylized paradox, the idea that it reveals inconsistencies is matured. The chapter also exposes the structure of our ensuing ambivalence, as well as the structure of resolutions.
Conflict Vagueness and Precisification
Authors: Sorensen Roy A.
Published: February 2006

This chapter focuses on the property that excited Kuhn's interest in thought experiments: conflict vagueness. This property often generates inconsistent beliefs but is not itself inconsistency. Although it is absent from most thought experiments, a substantial portion of the most provocative thought experiments do spring from this species of vagueness; for they motivate conceptual reform by touching a nerve of indeterminacy. Hence, study of conflict vagueness reveals the ways thought experiments restructure our conceptual scheme.
The Evolution of Thought Experiment
Authors: Sorensen Roy A.
Published: February 2006

This chapter seeks to define “thought experiment” and dig to its origin. It argues that thought experiments evolved from experiment through a process of attenuation. This builds inductive momentum behind the theme that thought experiments are experiments.
Are Thought Experiments Experiments?
Authors: Sorensen Roy A.
Published: February 2006

This chapter addresses the suspicion that “thought experiment” is systematically misleading. It itemizes how “thought experiment” is actually a systematically leading expression. This catalogue of hot tips raises a variety of issues ranging from how thought experiments differ from simulations to the ethics of fantasy.
Fallacies and Antifallacies
Authors: Sorensen Roy A.
Published: February 2006

This chapter examines the hazards and pseudohazards of thought experiment. It attacks most skepticism about thought experiment as arbitrary. It argues that once the standards that are customary for compasses, stethoscopes, and other testing devices are applied, thought experiments measure up. They should be used as part of a diversified portfolio of techniques. Although all these devices are individually susceptible to abuse, fallacy, and error, they provide a network of cross-checks that make for impressive collective reliability.
Kant's Teachers in the Exact Sciences
Authors: Kuehn Manfred
Published: February 2006

This paper describes the local context of Kant’s scientific education. It provides an informed sense of what Kant’s scientific training was like by presenting each relevant member of the philosophy faculty at the university in Königsberg where Kant was a student, and the scientific activities each one was engaged in. On the basis of this picture, it is argued that Kant’s relationship with one of his teachers, Martin Knutzen (who is often thought to have been Kant’s favorite teacher), may have been much more negative or critical than is typically supposed. This evaluation has important implications especially for understanding Kant’s early works in natural philosophy.
Kant on Science and Common Knowledge
Authors: Ameriks Karl
Published: February 2006

This paper sets Kant in the broader context of modern philosophy as a whole by suggesting that Kant not be understood primarily as attempting to i) defeat skepticism, ii) promote “scientism”, or iii) develop a radically new ontology. It suggests that Kant’s philosophy aims to take the claims of common sense at face value and then attempts to mediate between such claims and the apparently conflicting claims of science. Accordingly, philosophy is a systematic articulation of the sphere of conceptual frameworks that mediate between the extremely informal and the highly formal levels of judgment within our complex objective picture of the world. Thus, for Kant, philosophy lies in between common sense and science by attempting to mediate between them.
Kant's Theory of Matter and His Views on Chemistry
Authors: Carrier Martin
Published: February 2006

This paper analyzes Kant’s notorious claim that psychology cannot become a science “properly so-called”. Contrary to widespread opinion, he does not hold any of the following three implausible views: (i) psychological phenomena cannot be mathematized, (ii) they cannot be explained in by reference to mathematical causal laws, and (iii) they cannot be dealt with in causal terms at all. Instead of claiming something about psychological phenomena, Kant argues against a specific conception of psychology: the then popular introspective psychologies. Only this reading explains why he is also concerned with the possibility of psychological experiments, and it does justice to how he himself treats phenomena of thinking, willing, and so on.
Kant on Understanding Organisms as Natural Purposes
Authors: Ginsborg Hannah
Published: February 2006

This paper explains why Kant thinks that organisms must be regarded as purposes, and how this can be done while respecting their status as natural products rather than artifacts. Kant’s premise that organisms are mechanically inexplicable is interpreted as the claim that biological regularities are irreducible to regularities in the behavior of matter as such (attraction and repulsion). His conclusion that they are purposive is interpreted as the claim that they must be regarded in normative terms. This conclusion is defended on the grounds that biological enquiry cannot, even today, avoid regarding living things as subject to normative standards.
Organisms and the Unity of Science
Authors: Guyer Paul
Published: February 2006

This paper considers Kant’s understanding of organisms by undertaking a developmental approach to the issue. It presents three different arguments Kant posits in the third Critique regarding the kind of explanation organisms require, and then considers how Kant ultimately seems to find these arguments wanting in the Opus postumum. Due to Kant’s sustained reflections on how to incorporate teleological explanations of organisms into his natural philosophy toward the end of his career, it is argued that it is ultimately our awareness of the freedom of our own purposiveness that leads us to understand organisms in terms of purposes, which causes a fundamental split between the teleological and mechanical views of nature. In this way, Kant can establish an important link between his theoretical and practical philosophy.
Nietzsche's Middle Period
Authors: Abbey Ruth
Published: February 2006

This book offers a close study of the works that have come to be known as constituting Friedrich Nietzsche’s middle period: Human, All Too Human, Daybreak, and the first four books of The Gay Science. Some of the value in reading these works is genealogical — they show how the later Nietzsche became the thinker he did. A related benefit of reading them is the help they give in avoiding generalizations about Nietzsche — views and attitudes associated with Nietzsche come to be seen as peculiar to one of his periods or some of his texts. However, it is also argued that these are rich and fruitful works, deserving attention in their own right. The Nietzsche delivered by a reading of these works is a more careful, moderate, and modest thinker than he is usually interpreted to be. In these works, Nietzsche offers many subtle psychological insights, and has a powerful sense of the dialogical nature of identity. He values relationships like marriage and friendship, and eschews some of the misogyny, individualism, and elitism of the later works.
The Genealogist's Apprenticeship
Authors: Abbey Ruth
Published: February 2006

The middle period represents Nietzsche’s apprenticeship as a genealogist of morals. The appeal to history operates in several ways in these texts — to historicize morality in general, and to show, in particular, the origins of certain current moral values and beliefs. It also has scholarly and practical purposes — Nietzsche believes that his genealogical analysis provides a truer understanding of morality that will also weaken the grip of some moral concepts on human hearts and minds. He argues that traditionally, morality’s function has been to preserve the collective whatever the cost to individuality. The naturalism of the middle period’s accounts of morality is critically examined, and the rationalism of Nietzsche’s approach is drawn out.
Nietzsche as Psychologist
Authors: Abbey Ruth
Published: February 2006

The middle period works attest to what a careful, sensitive analyst of moral life Friedrich Nietzsche could be, offering a range of nuanced and delicate analyses of the psyche. The exaggeration, extremism, overstatement, and reductionism that characterize some of the later Nietzsche’s thought are far less evident in the works of the middle period. The ancient pursuit of self-knowledge emerges as an ideal in these texts, but it is wedded to a conception of the self as complex, multiple, and changeable. In this chapter’s exploration of the middle period’s analysis of psychology, Nietzsche’s critique of free will is examined, and its link with his aesthetic approach to the self is scrutinized.
The Greatest Danger?
Authors: Abbey Ruth
Published: February 2006

Just as he points to the power of egoism, so Friedrich Nietzsche is notorious for being a critic of pity. This chapter explores the dangers he detects in pity and its cognate emotions such as sympathy, empathy, and benevolence, in the middle period writings. The commonplace view that Nietzsche holds all such drives in contempt is questioned by a careful study of the middle period’s more nuanced portrayals of these emotions. While Nietzsche condemns the Christian-inspired morality of pity, he does not see all manifestations of fellow-feeling as base or spurious. The influence of La Rochefoucauld’s analysis of pity is discussed, and Nietzsche’s reflections of how to react to the suffering of a friend are also explored.
Equal among Firsts
Authors: Abbey Ruth
Published: February 2006

Friedrich Nietzsche acknowledged the important place that many ancient theorists accorded to friendship, and this chapter draws attention to the importance of friendship among higher individuals in the middle period writings. Recognizing this requires some reconsideration of the belief that Nietzsche holds great individuals to be utterly autonomous and indifferent to the judgements and opinions of others. Some of the characteristics of higher friendship are identified, and Nietzsche’s suggestion that such friendships can contribute to self-knowledge is discussed. The relationship between friendship and solitude is also drawn out.
The Pathologizing of Identity
Authors: Alcoff Linda Martín
Published: February 2006

This chapter examines the idea that social identity itself is an a priori problem; that identities, under any description, pose dangers and commits one to mistaken assumptions when they are believed to be real and/or acted upon politically. It discusses identity politics and the theories of Arthur Schlesinger. Schlesinger's arguments demonstrate that the critique of identity politics often manifests ambivalence about the relevance of identity to politics. He does not really want to eradicate all identities, but to keep non-European identities from dominating American identity. Given this, one might think that what we need is simply a more consistent opposition to identities, pursued with equality across both the dominant and the subaltern. However, it is argued that such a plan is neither wholly possible nor necessary for social justice. The real danger is not the likelihood of balkanization resulting from identity politics, but the split that results from a wholesale critique of identity that then perceives minority agendas as a threat to progressive politics. It is this mistaken idea that is endangering the future of progressive alliances.
Real Identities
Authors: Alcoff Linda Martín
Published: February 2006

The different positions people take on identity depend on the account one gives of identity's relation to the self, that is, the relationship between ascribed social categories and the lived experience of consciousness. Those who take identity to be an a priori problem assume a certain understanding of what consciousness is, or what the core of the self is, such that social ascriptions can operate only oppressively. This chapter develops the alternative to this account that aims to explain why the willful attachment to raced or sexed identities, identities created in conditions of oppression, is not necessarily pathological. It also explains how strongly felt identities can coexist with democratic politics and solidarity across difference. Most importantly, it explains how raced and sexed identities can be compatible with a plausible concept of autonomy and agency.
The Phenomenology of Racial Embodiment
Authors: Alcoff Linda Martín
Published: February 2006

When one realizes the indeterminacy of racial categories — their fluid borders, arbitrary criteria, and cultural variety — it may be tempting to adopt a nominalism about race, that race is no more real than phlogiston or witchcraft. This chapter resists this conclusion based on phenomenological grounds and insists that race is real. It explores reasons for the current confusion about race, considers various approaches to knowledge about race, and proposes a preliminary phenomenological account of racial identity as it is lived in the body of various racialized subjects at a given cultural moment. It is argued that only when we come to be very clear about how race is lived, in its multiple manifestations, and only when we can come to appreciate its often hidden epistemic effects and its power over collective imaginations can we entertain even the remote possibility of its eventual transformation.
On Being Mixed
Authors: Alcoff Linda Martín
Published: February 2006

This chapter explores the metaphysics and politics of being mixed, as well as the conditions (metaphysical, historical, etc.) under which being mixed creates an identity problem in the first place. It considers various proposed solutions to the problem, including assimilationism and nomadic subjectivity. It concludes with a description, assessment, and political analysis of the two main metaphysical options for conceptualizing mixed identity. The primary focus will remain on mixed racial identity, but race is mediated by ethnic and cultural identities in such a way that these cannot always be neatly disentangled.
Introduction
Authors: Alcoff Linda Martín
Published: February 2006

This introductory chapter begins with a discussion of the various issues surrounding social identity. Differences are widely believed to pose an a priori threat to alliance, unity, communication, and true understanding. This book aims to cast serious doubt on the suspicion of difference by explicating some of the important features of specific identities: race/ethnicity, sex/gender, and the new pan-Latino identity. It also addresses the general anti-identity trend of current (mainly white-dominant) public discourses, and develops a broad account of what social identities are. An overview of the subsequent chapters is presented.
Autonomy, Gender, Politics
Authors: Friedman Marilyn
Published: February 2006

Women have historically been prevented from living autonomously by systematic injustice, subordination, and oppression. The lingering effects of these practices have prompted many feminists to view autonomy with suspicion. This book defends the ideal of feminist autonomy. The book proposes that behavior is autonomous if it accords with the wants, cares, values, or commitments that the actor has reaffirmed and is able to sustain in the face of opposition. By this account, autonomy is socially grounded yet also individualizing and sometimes socially disruptive, qualities that can be ultimately advantageous for women. The book applies the concept of autonomy to domains of special interest to women. It defends the importance of autonomy in romantic love, considers how social institutions should respond to women who choose to remain in abusive relationships, and argues that liberal societies should tolerate minority cultural practices that violate women's rights so long as the women in question have chosen autonomously to live according to those practices.
Values of Autonomy
Authors: Friedman Marilyn
Published: February 2006

This chapter presents a variety of considerations suggesting that autonomy is a valuable ideal, focusing on its value for (many) women. The focus is on women for several reasons. First, autonomy has not always been idealized for women. Even though autonomy is more widely encouraged and supported in women than ever before, it is still not regarded as a particularly feminine value or virtue. If a case for autonomy can be made out for women in particular against this history, then the case for autonomy in general should prove easier to secure. Second, feminist philosophers have figured prominently among those who have expressed doubts and reservations about the value of autonomy. Focusing on the case of women's autonomy in particular helps to answer those criticisms.
Autonomy, Social Disruption, and Women
Authors: Friedman Marilyn
Published: February 2006

This chapter develops a point made in preceding chapters that autonomy, although socially grounded, has an individualizing dimension — a dimension that is defend against the worries of critics. The main thesis is that: at the same time that we embrace relational accounts of autonomy, we should also be cautious about them. Autonomy increases the risk of disruption in interpersonal relationships. While this is an empirical and not a conceptual claim about autonomy, nevertheless, the risk is significant and its bearing on the value of autonomy is therefore empirically significant. It makes a difference in particular to whether the ideal of autonomy is genuinely hospitable to women.
Introduction
Authors: Peach Lucinda
Published: February 2006

This introductory chapter begins with a discussion of the real-life conflicts that may arise between religious beliefs and lawmaking. It then analyzes the dilemma of religious lawmaking, and problems with liberal and communitarian approaches to lawmaking. An overview of the chapters included in this volume is presented.
A Pragmatist Approach to Religious Lawmaking
Authors: Peach Lucinda
Published: February 2006

This chapter presents a strategy that can protect the constitutional rights and interests of all parties better than either the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence or the liberal or communitarian approaches. The strategy is based on the philosopher George Herbert Mead’s theory of the social self. Mead’s ideas on the socially constructed character of the self and the special requirements of role-based morality provide a model for understanding that lawmakers, as public officials, are both practically able and morally obligated to take the attitudes of all of their constituents into account in their public policy making. In a culturally and religiously diverse society, this requires lawmakers to support their policy decisions with publicly accessible rationales.
A Legal Strategy for Addressing Religious Lawmaking
Authors: Peach Lucinda
Published: February 2006

This chapter describes a legal strategy that accommodates both the rights of religious lawmakers to the free exercise of their religious convictions and the free exercise and Citizenship Rights of other citizens. The proposed legal assessment model is based on an expanded test for Establishment Clause violations. It invalidates religiously influenced laws in a limited range of circumstances when Establishment Concerns are present, and when infringements on Citizenship Rights cannot be fully justified by a secular rationale and/or by a compelling state interest.
Knowledge and Coherence
Authors: Thagard Paul , Eliasmith Chris , Rusnock Paul , Shelley Cameron
Published: February 2006

This chapter shows how epistemic coherence can be understood in terms of maximization of constraint satisfaction, in keeping with computational models that have had a substantial impact in cognitive science. It is shown how explanatory coherence subsumes Haack's recent “foundherentist” theory of knowledge. An account of deductive coherence is provided, showing how the selection of mathematical axioms can be understood as a constraint satisfaction problem. Visual interpretation can also be understood in terms of satisfaction of multiple constraints. After a brief account of how conceptual coherence can also be understood in terms of constraint satisfaction, the chapter concludes with a discussion of how the “multicoherence” theory of knowledge avoids many criticisms traditionally made of coherentism.
The Evolutionary Roots of Intelligence and Rationality
Authors: Cummins Denise Dellarosa
Published: February 2006

This chapter argues that several important cognitive functions are shaped (through natural selection) by the exigencies of the social environment. These functions include (i) a biological predisposition to rapidly and effectively acquire implicit rules that specify what we are permitted, obligated, or forbidden to do within our social groups; and (ii) a domain-specific embedding function that enables us to effortlessly form hierarchically structured representations of what is socially crucial but essentially hidden from view, namely, the minds of others. The implication is that our capacity to form deeply embedded mental representations (and hence deeply embedded goal structures) emerged as an adaptation to the social environment. The pressure to compete and cooperate successfully with conspecifics constituted a crucible that necessitated and forged this crucial cognitive function.