bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
L'ambiguïté du sens esthétique transcendantal. Notes sur la troisième Critique
Authors: Foisy Suzanne
Published: April 2010

Peut-on s'entendre en matière d'esthétique? Y a-t-il une objectivité possible des jugements dans ce domaine marginal de la philosophie? La question du sens commun dans la Critique de la faculté de juger, semble, aux dires de certains, mener directement à cette problématique contemporaine. Nous ne reprendrons pas ici les multiples articles et ouvrages sur le sensus communis parus dans la dernière décennie à la suite de l'impact conceptuel du thème de la rationalité communicationnelle. Notre intention est plutôt, au-delà de la “dérive” du célèbre paragraphe 40 vers une idée plus actuelle (et aussi plus banale) de “consensus”, de repérer les tensions entre le versant transcendantal et le versant empirique du sens commun qui surgissent significativement à l'occasion de cette dérive. Avant d'aborder le sens esthétique défini dans la troisième Critique et de le confronter aux interprétations qui nous semblent plus déterminantes comme celles de L. Ferry de J.-F. Lyotard ou de J. Habermas nous voudrions d'abord examiner l'usage général de cette notion dans l'histoire de la philosophie précritique pour vérifier ensuite la spécificitÉ qu'elle acquiert chez Kant.
Subjectivity, Objectivity and Nagel on Consciousness
Authors: Foss Jeffrey
Published: April 2010

The strong intuition that the facts concerning the subjectivity of consciousness are simply beyond the grasp of objective science is the highest barrier to an intuitively convincing materialism in the philosophy of mind. We are steeped in a tradition which has it that there is, to state it from the first-person point of view, an epistemic difference in principle between my introspectible experience, which only I can apprehend and know, and the things which everyone can apprehend and which form the domain of the natural sciences. This contrast is sometimes cast as that between the subjective stuff of first-person introspectible consciousness and the objective stuff of the natural sciences. In this essay, I will try to budge the view of the subjective-objective distinction which underlies this tradition from its position as tacit dogma.
Hegel, Nature and the Rationalization of Experience: On Allen Wood's Hegel's Ethical Thought
Authors: Giovanni George Di
Published: April 2010

It is a curious feature of Hegelian studies in English that its practitioners seem incapable of tackling their subject without first disclaiming any adherence to the more metaphysical side of Hegel's thought, be it called “speculative metaphysics,” “dialectical logic” or whatever. I say “curious” because I doubt that the same scholars would feel obliged to enter an equivalent disclaimer at the head of a study on, say, Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza or even Newton—even though all of these classics have a metaphysical side at least as abstruse as any of Hegel's worse romantic excesses. Hegel himself, if he could witness the practice, would be flattered by it. He would not see it as an indication that “the problems of [his] logic remain alien and artificial to us in ways that the problems of Cartesian and Kantian philosophy do not” (p. 5) but, on the contrary, as a hidden acknowledgement that, whether for good or bad, his philosophy is still alive, still so close to our culture that we instinctively feel the need of exorcizing it ritually, like a demon capable of frightening us.
The Theory and Practice of Applied Ethics
Authors: Hoffmaster Barry
Published: April 2010

Applied ethics is at a watershed. In all its domains a gulf between the theory of applied ethics and the practice of applied ethics is now being recognized. In medical ethics, for example, it has been observed that “practicing clinicians often feel let down by bioethics.” The disappointment of clinicians is attributed in part to their own unrealistic expectations but is also said to be a function of

the extent to which bioethics as a discipline doesn't seem to be in possession of the realities of practice. Bioethicists tend to leave the “facts” of clinical medicine to the doctors; their task is then to apply elegant and compelling arguments drawn from first principles of ethics … to these undisputed and indisputable facts. Unfortunately, when the relationship between clinical medicine and bioethics is conceived … [in this way], the result is a very sterile discourse.
Do the Poor Really Pay for the Higher Education of the Rich?
Authors: George Rolf
Published: April 2010

In the last several years, ethicists have discussed problems of medical, professional, business and environmental ethics with much animation, and political philosophers have shown more interest than before in details of public policy. Yet this “applied turn,” as it has been called, has not swept much philosophical attention in the direction of taxation and public finance, though they offer numerous conceptual challenges. Nor have these subjects engaged the attention of those in the critical thinking business, though distortions in representing them are common enough.
Theological Question-Begging
Authors: MacIntosh J. J.
Published: April 2010

In the first section of this paper I offer a necessary condition (Moore's maxim) for members of a particular class of arguments to be acceptable asproofs. (Throughout I ignore proofs within formal systems.) In the second section, I point out that a plausible extension of this principle reveals that a number of additional arguments cannot function successfully as proofs. Finally, I note that a number of theological arguments, particularly cosmological and ontological arguments, are suspect in the light of this extended principle. Standardly in the ontological argument, criticism falls on the conditional, modality-enriching premise which involves a move from possibility (or conceivability) to actuality. I offer two defences of this premise, and argue that—as the use of Moore's extended maxim shows—the problem lies with the premise that asserts mere possibility.
Paul of Venice on Obligations
Authors: Sinkler Georgette
Published: April 2010

An obligation, in the sense in which it was of interest to medieval logicians from about the early thirteenth century to the end of the scholastic period, is, according to Paul of Venice, a relation limiting one to take some statement affirmatively or negatively. This relation is based on the actions of two individuals: one (the opponent) obligates the other (the respondent) by first putting forward a sentence which the respondent agrees to affirm or deny for a limited time. The sentence the respondent agrees to affirm is called the positum; that which he agrees to deny, the depositum; and his act of agreeing, the admissio. After this relation is established between the opponent and respondent, the opponent proceeds by putting forward a series of sentences to which the respondent replies by granting, denying, or doubting — all in accordance with certain rules the two individuals have previously accepted as governing their exchange. If the respondent at any time grants what is inconsistent with the sentence he agreed to uphold, or responds in a way that violates the accepted rules, the exchange comes to an end. The respondent has failed in his obligation.
Ce que l'on peut apprendre sur les chauves-souris à l'aide d'une télé couleur
Authors: Dumouchel Paul
Published: April 2010

Deux ou trois articles (plus ou moins) récents, Nagel (1974), Block (1978), Jackson (1982), forment la toile de fond de discussions actuelles au sujet des qualia et du caractère subjectif de l'expérience, du moins en philosophie de l'esprit. Ces articles ont ceci en commun qu'ils visent tous à montrer qu'un certain aspect de l'expérience consciente – les qualia ou sa dimension subjective – remet en cause l'une ou l'autre, ou l'ensemble (Jackson 1982, 1986) de nos théories psychophysiques. Ce qui est visé, au-delà des théories psychophysiques, c'est le physicalisme, entendu comme une théorie métaphysique portant sur l'ameublement de l'univers, comme l'affirmation que tout ce qui existe ce sont des objets physiques et des propriétés physiques ou des propriétés survenantes sur des propriétées physiqus. C'est pourquoi le point où l'attaque porte est le réductionnisme des théories qui affirment l'identité des états mentaux (ou des événements mentaux) et des états physiques (ou des événements physiques) du cerveau. Peu importe la forme précise de ces théories, qu'elles affirment l'identité des éats mentaux individuels avec des états individuels du cerveau (token identity) ou l'identité des types d'états mentaux avec des types d'états cérébraux, ou encore l'identité des états fonctionnels du cerveau avec les éetats mentaux, toutes sont censées trouver ici, dans deux ou trois expériences de pensée, leurs limites ou le sceau de leur échec.
Aristotle's Motionless Soul
Authors: Tweedale Martin
Published: April 2010

Whether or not we adopt some form of physicalism in our thinking about the psychology of humans and other organisms we all believe that a mind is something that comes into being, changes, develops and decays. The correlation of the development and then later the decay of our mental powers with changes in the brain post-dates our belief that the mental realm is as much an area where things ebb and flow, come to be and pass away, as is the physical. Even ancient authors who hold to the indestructibility of the soul allow that it changes in a host of ways. It is very odd, then, to discover that Aristotle appears to deny all this and feels impelled to treat the soul as unchanging and motionless. I propose to explore here exactly what Aristotle meant by saying the soul does not move and why he said it. In the end our investigation leads to some difficulties for Aristotle's psychological ontology which I am not able to resolve.
Waldron on Private Property
Authors: Narveson Jan
Published: April 2010

Do individuals have a right to private property? That is the question pursued in this lengthy investigation (445 pages). Waldron distinguishes utilitarian arguments from “Right-based” ones. That is hardly an exhaustive distinction, one would think; reliance on its being so would not bode well. But having made such a distinction, he believes that the question comes to whether there are “any good right-based arguments for private property.” This, he thinks, amounts to the question: are any important individual interests served “by the existence of private property as opposed to someother sort of property regime?” The alternative, he thinks, is to turn to utilitarian arguments about property institutions, “rather than having it treated as the basis of right” (p. 5). How we are to measure “importance,” and to whom the proposed regimes are to be important is not discussed. And of course some think that we can, too, have a utilitarian-based theory of rights. And there will be other complaints about Waldron's framework; but we will not be able to go further into such matters here.
Perelman et la philosophie anglo-saxonne
Authors: Marcil-Lacoste Louise
Published: April 2010

En parlant des rapports entre la Nouvelle Rhétorique et la France, Pierre-André Taguieff décrivait la situation comme celle d'un rendez-vous manqué. En parlant des rapports entre la philosophie pérelmanienne et la philosophie anglo-saxonne, il faut surtout parler de rendez-vous clandestins. Car dans l'ensemble, ces rendez-vous divers sont d'autant plus évidents (en termes pérelmaniens, interrogeables) qu'ils témoignent sans doute de l'influence réelle d'une philosophie. D'une philosophie dont on retrouve, dans le milieu anglo-saxon, un «air de famille» mais sans que Chaïm Perelman ne soit expressément nommé.
Emotions, Feelings and Contexts: A Reply to Robert Kraut
Authors: Solomon Robert C.
Published: April 2010

Unwarranted antagonism between reason and the passions is an ancient problem, dating back at least to Plato. Even philosophers who sought to give the passions their due—David Hume for example—juxtaposed reason and emotion and contrasted them as slave and master (or vice versa). The point of a so-called “cognitive” theory of emotion, simply stated, is to deny this antagonism. The most succinct (if not very informative) statement of the cognitivist view is Nietzsche's: “as if every passion did not possess its quantum of reason.” Hume's own theory anticipated such a synthesis (in his awkward analysis of “ideas” as both necessary causes and effects of emotions) while Spinoza and Hobbes clearly defended cognitive theories with the wisdom of reconciliation in mind. The aim of a cognitive theory is not to reduce volatile emotion to cool and calm belief, nor is the emphasis on emotion a romantic attempt to extol the passions and excoriate reason—though that exercise may have its place in philosophy too; it is rather to understand reason and the passions together and appreciate their shared properties, similarities and complementarity as well as their obvious differences and oppositions. So understood, cognitive theories have, generically, gained widespread acceptance; only a few reactionaries in philosophy and psychology still insist on a cognition-free concept of emotion, however backhandedly cognitive concepts might be acknowledged as presuppositions, causal preconditions or criteria for the appropriate labelling of emotion rather than as proper constituents of emotion.
Logique et théorie de l'argumentation dans le «Guide de l'étudiant» (c. 1230–1240) du ms. Ripoll 109
Authors: Lafleur Claude
Published: April 2010

Depuis sa découverte par Martin Grabmann en 1927, la collection de questions (Quœstionensammlung) contenue dans le manuscrit de Barcelone, Archivo de la Corona de Aragón, Ripoll 109 (ff. 134ra–158va) est devenue familière aux historiens de la philosophie et des universités médiévales. Bien qu'on s'accorde à considérer cet écrit comme un document d'exceptionnelle importance à cause des informations qu'il nous fournit sur la nature de l'enseignement dispensé dans les facultés des arts au Moyen Âge, il n'est pourtant connu que par de brefs extraits, plus ou moins correctement édités, et l'on en réclame depuis longtemps la publication intégrale.
Grandeur et limites du Marx de Michel Henry
Authors: Cantin Serge
Published: April 2010

En 1976 paraissait le Marx de Michel Henry: ouvrage monumental de près de mille pages où la condamnation en bloc du marxisme, identifyé d'entrée de jeu à «l'ensemble des contresens qui ont été faits sur Marx» (I, p. 9), s'ordonne à l'ambitieux dessein d'exhumer le vrai Marx, enfoui sous «les thèses dogmatiques du matérialisme dialectique» (I, p. 21). Pour mener à bien son entreprise de restauration d'une «pensée de génie» (I, p. 23), M. Henry fait fond sur la méthode de la répétition appliquée par Heidegger au texte kantien. En bref, le travail que Michel Henry effectue sur la pensée marxienne consiste à en répéter les intuitions et les évidences fondamentales en fonction de la seule véritable question (c'est-à-dire philosophique) que Marx se serait jamais posée: qu'est-ce que la réalité?
Liberalism's Claim to Culture
Authors: Braybrooke David
Published: April 2010

At the heart of the argument in Kymlicka's book is a principle which is characteristic of liberalism as he conceives it: attachments to a community and to the culture that it embodies are to be honoured as indispensable to intelligible personal choice (p. 47–58, 165–66, 192–93), so long as everyone with the attachments is free to examine them critically and then revise them in any or all of their features (p. 13, 48, 50–51, 167, 172). In one part of the book, the argument moves inward—diastolically—aiming, as the heart is approached, to expose various communitarian objections to liberalism as mistakes about the conditions that liberalism accepts for intelligible personal choice. In the other part of the book, the argument moves outward—systolically—aiming to demonstrate the robust support that liberalism can give the cultures of minority communities like Canadian Indians even when that support requires some restriction of the liberties of other people.
Ruse and the Darwinian Paradigm
Authors: Gay Hannah
Published: April 2010

This collection of essays, written over the past fifteen years by one of the more intrepid defenders of current Darwinian theory, contains material that will be of interest both to historians and philosophers of science and, since Ruse writes well and in an accessible manner, to an even wider audience. A preliminary glance at the contents primes one to expect to be both engaged and provoked; one is not disappointed. The essays include historical speculation on some of the views of Charles Darwin, a defence of human sociobiology and discussion of its feminist critique, punctuated equilibria theory, teleology in biology, extraterrestrial biology and moral theory, the plate tectonic revolution in geology, and the relationship between evolutionary theory and Christian ethics.
L'effondrement empirique de la signification
Authors: Delpla Isabelle
Published: April 2010

Écrire un livre sur les fondements empiriques de la signification qui reprenne la question tant débattue de la critique de l'analycité, de la traduction radicale et de l'indétermination de la traduction, d'un point de vue éclairant, précis, et renouvelé à bien des égards, est la gageure que relève Martin Montminy avec son excellent livreLes fondements empiriques de la signification. La thèse simple mais convaincante de l'auteur est que la critique de l'analycité et de la distinction entre analytique et synthétique (DAS), comme critique de toute approche normative de la signification, est la voie d'entrée, le fil directeur et l'argument central des différentes thèses de Quine sur l'épistémologie naturalisée, le holisme épistémologique et l'indétermination de la traduction. C'est par ce biais qu'il défend une approche empirique de la signification liant toute théorie sémantique à des données empiriques en principe accessibles à un observateur.
Externalisme, rationalité et explanandum de la psychologie intentionnelle
Authors: Pacherie Élisabeth
Published: April 2010

À l'occasion de la tenue à Paris des Conférences Jean-Nicod de philoso-phie cognitive dont il a été le premier invité au printemps 1993, Jerry Fodor a présenté le dernier état de la théorie qu'il défend en philosophie de l'esprit1. Cette théorie se fonde sur trois théses sur la signification et l'esprit qui, prises séparément, semblent chacune dotée d'une certaine plausibilité, mais dont la cohérence mutuelle apparaît sujette à caution. L'objet des conférences données par Fodor était de montrer que, contrai-rement aux apparences, ces trois doctrines peuvent être conciliées. Toute-fois, de l'aveu même de Fodor, une telle conciliation n'est pas sans avoir un coût. II concéde notamment que sa stratégic de conciliation impose une revision du statut de certains phénoménes traditionnellement considérés comme des explananda pour une psychologie intentionnelle. II soutient cependant que le coût de cette opération reste raisonnable puisque les phé-noménes écartés sont de toute fa§on des phénoménes rares et marginaux.
Consequentialist Rights: L. W. Sumner's The Moral Foundation of Rights
Authors: Copp David
Published: April 2010

It is commonplace to criticize utilitarianism on the ground that it does not take moral rights seriously; that it cannot account for the rights we have, and for their role in constraining our pursuit of the overall good. Wayne Sumner does not directly address this criticism in The Moral Foundation of Rights. Instead he attempts to show that consequentialism can defeat nihilism about rights: the view that there are no moral rights at all.
Absolute Spirit and Universal Self-Consciousness: Bruno Bauer's Revolutionary Subjectivism
Authors: Moggach Douglas
Published: April 2010

Recent literature on the Young Hegelians attests to a renewed appreciation of their philosophical and political significance. Important new studies have linked them to the literary and political currents of their time, traced the changing patterns of their relationships with early French socialism, and demonstrated the affinity of their thought with Hellenistic theories of self-consciousness. The conventional interpretative context, which focuses on the left-Hegelian critique of religion and the problem of the realisation of philosophy, has also been decisively challenged. Ingrid Pepperle emphasizes instead the centrality of practical philosophy, notably Hegel's dialectic of objectification, arguing that Bruno Bauer in particular derives from this a doctrine of autonomy with politically revolutionary implications.
Lewis' Indexical Argument for World-Relative Actuality
Authors: Gale Richard M.
Published: April 2010

David Lewis has shocked the philosophical community with his original version of extreme modal realism according to which “every way that a world could possibly be is a way that some world is”. Logical Space is a plenitude of isolated physical worlds, each being the actualization of some way in which a world could be, that bear neither spatiotemporal nor causal relations to each other. Lewis has given independent, converging arguments for this. One is the argument from the indexicality of actuality, the other an elaborate cost-benefit argument of the inference-to-the-best explanation sort to the effect that a systematic analysis of a number of concepts, including modality, causality, propositions and properties, fares better under his theory than under any rival one that takes a possible world to be either a linguistic entity or an ersatz abstract entity such as a maximal compossible set of properties, propositions or states of affairs. Lewis' legion of critics have confined themselves mostly to attempts at a reductio ad absurdum of his theory or to objections to his various analyses. The indexical argument, on the other hand, has not been subject to careful critical scrutiny. It is the purpose of this paper to show that this argument cannot withstand such scrutiny. Its demise, however, leaves untouched his argument from the explanatory superiority for his extreme modal realism.
Pascal's Great Experiment
Authors: Arnold Keith
Published: April 2010

Three hundred and forty-one years ago, on Saturday September 19, 1648, at eight a.m., Blaise Pascal's Great Experiment took place. Following Pascal's explicit instructions, his brother-in-law Florin Périer took two identical glass tubes and filled them with mercury. He inverted the tubes and submerged the open end in a bowl containing an inch of mercury. Thus he set up two Torricellian baroscopes in the garden of the Minim Monastery, at the base of the Puy-de-Dôme, one of the highest mountains in central France. The height of the mercury in each tube was carefully measured and marked on the glass. The measurements, which were identical, were recorded. One device was left in place, as a control baroscope, with an observer. The other was dismantled.
A New Old Meaning of “Ideology”
Authors: Mills Charles W. , Goldstick Danny
Published: April 2010

If there were a list of subjects about which it seems that there is definitely no more to be said—or that even if there were, nobody would want to hear it anyway—then surely the topics of ideology, in general, and ideology in Marxist theory, in particular, would have to rank very near the top. Diffusing outwards from Western Marxism's postwar preoccupation with the mechanisms of capitalist hegemony, the concept has now become virtually ubiquitous in the humanities and social sciences. Yet we feel reluctantly impelled to add one more paper to this already overflowing pile, hoping to catch readers' attention even as reflexive ennui glazes over their eyes. For a (though not, we trust, the only) virtue of the thesis we are going to propose is its originality in relation to the contemporary spectrum of opinion. If we are right, then, in one of Marx and Engels' main uses of the expression “ideology” they were not referring to ideas at all, but to the social superstructure itself. Even on purely scholarly grounds, it would be of some interest that so many commentators could have missed this meaning of “ideology” in texts as thoroughly scrutinized as these have been. But more importantly, if our analysis is correct, then certain very famous passages in the Marxist corpus (such as the 1859 “Preface” to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy and parts of the Critique of the Gotha Programme) have been misinterpreted for decades.
Fatalism and Time
Authors: Bernstein Mark
Published: April 2010

A certain mythology has been perpetuated in discussions of philosophy of time. It has been contended that the adoption of a particular theory of time, what I will call the “Non-dynamic Theory of Time” (NDTT) results in a commitment to Fatalism. This unwanted, if not intolerable baggage, is said to be avoided only by jettisoning NDTT and espousing what I will call the “Dynamic Theory of Time” (DTT). What I hope to show is that the truth of the matter is almost completely the reverse; while NDTT has absolutely no Fatalistic ramifications, DTT, when it is conjoined with a most plausible supposition, does.
Reason, Love and Laughter
Authors: Burns Steven
Published: April 2010

Yes, this is the book that those who know Ronald de Sousa have been waiting for. Since long before his 1979 Dialogue article, there has been much interest in what de Sousa thinks about the rationality of emotions. Many promises are here fulfilled.

In our traditional patriarchal philosophy, the standard view is that reason ought to be the controlling element in human nature. Commonly in this tradition, emotion is considered an opposing force—a female power allied with the irrational, and devoted to dragging men from attending to the clarity and truth which are the proper objects of their devotion. In contemporary anglophone philosophy, the distinction between reason and emotion reached a certain pitch in emotivist accounts of ethics. Recently, beginning with the critique of emotivism, there have been gestures of revision to these views of how emotions are related to reason. Bernard Williams hinted at rethinking the traditional relationship when he remarked that, “the capacity for creative emotional response has the advantage of being, if not equally, at least broadly, distributed”.
Post-physicalism and Beyond
Authors: House D. Vaden , McDonald Marvin J.
Published: April 2010

It is becoming a commonplace in philosophical literature that physicalism need not be reductive. Non-reductive physicalism seems on the face of it to be a contradiction in terms. Some critics have called the idea of a physicalism without reduction “cheap materialism.” It is, of course, possible to quibble about who has the right to be called a physicalist and to play a game of “more physicalist than thou.” However, it would be more fruitful to develop a non-reductive version of physicalism and show that it retains something of the heart of the physicalist tradition while abandoning the reductionist program. John Post's Faces of Existence is just such a project. Post calls his position non-reductive physicalism. It might also be called Post-physicalist, post-dualist, post-relativist, post-everything. After Post, not much remains the same. While in many ways still just a sketch, Faces of Existence does attempt to do justice both to what he takes to be the basic intuitions of physicalism while jettisoning the reductionist program. There is no attempt to prove the truth of non-reductive physicalism in this book. The primary goal is to demonstrate the logical compatibility of a minimal physicalism and a non-reductive pluralism. Along the way we get an attempt to combine realist truth and the relativity of interpretation, to defend the objectivity of values, and to demonstrate the compatibility of some kind of theism with non-reductive physicalism.
Indétermination de la traduction et sous-détermination des théories scientifiques
Authors: Montminy Martin
Published: April 2010

La thèse de l'indétermination de la traduction de W. V. O. Quine est certainement une des thèses les plus controversées de la philosophie du langage. Le présent article explique en quoi consiste cette thèse et examine les liens qu'elle entretient avec la thèse de la sous-détermination des théories scientifiques. La première section montre comment la thèse de l'indétermination de la traduction découle de la conception behavioriste du langage de Quine. Les sections suivantes exposent deux façons de dériver la thèse de l'indétermination: par le holisme et le vérificationnisme dans la section 2 et par la thèse de la sous-détermination dans la section 3. La section 4 précise la formulation de la thèse de la sous-détermination proposée dans «On Empirically Equivalent Systems of the World» et la section 5 expose les critiques exprimées par W. Bechtel (1980) à propos de cette formulation. Ces critiques témoignent d'une mauvaise compréhension de la position de Quine et j'essaierai de montrer en quoi elles sont fautives. La section 6 traite des deux façons de dériver la thèse de l'indétermination, à la lumière des modifications apportées à la formulation de la thèse de la sous-détermination. Enfin, la section 7 s'intéresse aux questions de fait (facts of the matter) relatives à la sous-détermination des théories et à l'indétermination de la traduction.
Postscript, June 1985
Authors: Gombay André
Published: April 2010

The Editor has very kindly offered me a last word; and I avail myself of the offer not so much to defend, improve or retract what I wrote a year ago as to acquaint the readers of Dialogue with a legal development that has occurred since then. That is a decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in the so-called Perka case.
Sense and Signification in Reid and Descartes: A Critique of Yolton's Reading
Authors: Manns James W.
Published: April 2010

Le but de cet article est de mettre en évidence les différences entre Descartes et Reid au sujet du rôle que chacun assigne aux sensations dans le processus perceptuel. Dans Perceptual Acquaintance, John Yolton ne trouve quepeu de choses dans les conceptions de Reid qui ne soient pas déjà de quelque façon présentes chez Descartes. Je soutiens au contraire que la théorie des sensations-comme-signes de Reid constitue un développement considérable par rapport à celle de Descartes ou à quoi que ce soit que l'on trouve chez lui, non seulement parce qu'elle est évidemment plus claire et plus cohérente, mais aussi parce qu'elle introduit l'idée d'un élément a priori dans notre expérience perceptuelle et lui attribue un rôle indispensable. Cet élément crucial est tout à fait absent de la conception cartésienne.
Frege on the Individuation of Thoughts
Authors: Weitzman Leora
Published: April 2010

Les caractérisations apparemment conflictuelles quepropose Frege des pensées comme étant à lafois vériconditionnelles et ordonnées à la cognition, peuvent être vues comme deux manifestations d'une unique conception unificatrice. Mais ni la conception unificatrice ni chacune des caractérisations divergentes ne conduisent a un véritable critère d'identité pour les pensées. Car aucune des voies qu'elles suggerent pour distinguer les pensées les unes des autres oupour les réidentifier nepeut être adoptée sans I'aide d'une façon préalable d'individuer les pensées.
Theological Foundations for Modern Science?
Authors: Wilson Catherine
Published: April 2010

It is often said that philosophy in the seventeenth century returned from a Christian otherworldliness to a pagan engagement, theoretically and practically, with material nature. This process is often described as one of secularization, and the splitting off of science from natural philosophy and metaphysics is a traditional figure in accounts of the emergence of the modern. At the same time, the historiographical assumption that early modern science had religious and philosophical foundations has informed such classics as E. A. Burtt'sMetaphysical Foundations of Natural Science(1932), Gerd Buchdahl'sMetaphysics and the Philosophy of Science(1969), and Amos Funkenstein'sTheology and the Scientific Imagination(1986). A recent collection testifies to continuing interest in the theme of a positive relationship between theology and science.
Rational Choice for Machines: A Research Program for Normative Philosophy
Authors: Morris Christopher W.
Published: April 2010

Why be moral? The question is very old. It takes many forms and is subject to many interpretations. On one interpretation, the question does not make sense (failed presupposition); to ask it is evidence of misunderstanding. This view is not as popular as it once was. The more fashionable answer today is that we have reasons to be moral. These reasons may themselves be moral, or they may be non-moral. In the first case, we may not have the answer we wanted to our question. If we think of reasons as considerations favouring a course of action, decisively in the absence of other reasons, then the fact that there are moral reasons to act morally merely tells us that there are moral considerations in favour of acts required or recommended by morality. It leaves open the question of whether we act against or contrary to reason simpliciter when we fail to act as we morally should. By contrast, if there are non-moral reasons to act morally, then to refrain from doing what is morally required of us is a failure of reason; it is to act contrary to the considerations relevant to the choices one faces.
De la beauté comme symbole de la paix perpétuelle
Authors: Thérien Claude
Published: April 2010

In this article I consider the Kantian preference for natural beauty from a socio-political point of view. Instead of only regarding the “intellectual” significance of beauty in nature as a symbol of morality, I show that the aesthetic appreciation of natural beauty must also be understood in its dialectical relation to society as “the place of antagonism.” By highlighting this dialectical understanding, I point out the socio-political contribution of aesthetic experience for the cultural progress of humanity. The fragility of beauty in the context of culture can be further interpreted as a symbol of the temporality of the project of perpetual peace in politics.
The Cows in the Dark Night
Authors: Harris H. S.
Published: April 2010

In the far-off days before the first World War, the British journalMindwas full of articles by writers who thought of themselves as “Neoidealists”. So when theenfant terribleof the groves of Academic Oxford in that generation—a “pragmatic Humanist” by the name of Ferdinand Canning Scott Schiller—played his most notorious practical joke upon his colleagues by publishing a mock-issue of the journal (under the titleMind!) he offered as a frontispiece “A portrait of the Absolute in the pink of condition”. Beneath a pale-pink semi-transparent tissue (which, except for its colour, was quite normal for the photographic plates in Victorian memoirs) one found a printed frame that embraced a perfectly blank white sheet of paper.
On Dramatic Performance
Authors: Daniels Charles B.
Published: April 2010

What is the difference between a reading of a play and a performance of it? In both, the same text is uttered. Both may occur on stage. In both different people may recite the lines of different characters. But unlike a mere reading, in a performance of a play what happens on stage conforms to the text being pronounced.
Aristote a-t-il fait l'hypothèse de pulsions inconscientes à l'origine du comportement humain?
Authors: Bodéüs Richard
Published: April 2010

J'aborde, ici, une question que personne, à ma connaissance, n'a soulevée sous cette forme en lisant Aristote et, en même temps, le commentaire d'un passage qui, toujours à ma connaissance, n'a reçu l'attention qu'il mérite chez aucun interprète.

Deux remarques préliminaires s'imposent, afin de préciser mon propos.
Le naturalisme esthétique de Taine: entre positivisme et idéalisme
Authors: Seys Pascale
Published: April 2010

Taine aspired to place his philosophical project in the synthesis of the two major theoretical tendencies of the nineteenth century: positivism, on the one hand, giving preference to the English tradition, and German metaphysics, mostly Hegelianism, on the other. What does this attempt mean in the field of aesthetics? Taine based his interpretation of the production of art on a series of objective laws, following the naturalist method, as he clearly stated at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Paris where he taught for several years from January 1864.
Are Mental Properties Causally Relevant?
Authors: Raymont Paul
Published: April 2010

Les physicalistes non réductivistes sont de plus en plus souvent considérés comme des épiphénoménalistes involontaires, puisque leur refus de réduire les traits mentaux à des propriétés physiques implique, dit-on, que s'il y a bien des causes mentales, aucune d'elles, néanmoins, ne produit ses effets en vertu du type d'état mental qu'elle représente. Face à cette critique, j'examine, et rejette, la réponse qui fait appel à l'idée de «trope». Je tiens, cependant, pour instructif cet échec du modèle de la pertinence causale basé sur les tropes, dans la mesure où il illustre une confusion qui est au cœur même du concept de pertinence causale, un concept qui est central dans la critique du physicalisme non réductiviste. En identifiant cette confusion, j'espère dissiper l'idée que le physicalisme non réductiviste véhiculerait quelque engagement envers l'épiphénoménalisme.
Habermas, Taylor et le nationalisme québécois
Authors: Ipperciel Donald
Published: April 2010

This text views the case of Quebec nationalism from the vantage point of the debate between Habermas and Taylor on this question. This case highlights the problem of articulating the sphere of civic rights, whose claims are universalist, to that of culture and collective identity, whose essence is particularist. It seems that the multinational context of the Quebec-Canada confrontation needs to be approached in a manner that cannot be fulfilled by a strict proceduralism and a purely formal universalism. The Habermasian position will thus be criticized for these reasons, while Taylor's stance, which contemplates the integration of material considerations in a dialogue open to ideological alterity, will be taken into account so as to make up for the shortcomings of the former.
Le paralogisme de la simplicité
Authors: Sauvé Denis
Published: April 2010

L'épistémologie de Kant, dont le but principal est d'expliquer la possibilité des jugements synthétiques a priori, est une épistémologie du point de vue du sujet ou (comme on pourrait la désigner aussi) «à la première personne»: le «sujet connaissant», dit Kant, «…compare, lie ou sépare [les] représentations et travaille … la matière brute des impressions sensibles pour en tirer une connaissance des objets…». C'est l'esprit, ou le moi pensant, comme il le soutient aussi, qui construit à partir des impressions reçues des sens (le «divers» de la sensibilité) une représentation objective de l'univers en soumettant les phénomènes à ses formes a priori et à ses catégories. Mais de quelle nature peut être ce «moi» qui connaît? Est-il possible d'en dire quelque chose? Pour lui, «nous n'avons ni ne pouvons [en] avoir la moindre connaissance…». Le «je» du «Je pense», comme on le lit dans la déduction transcendantale des catégories, doit pouvoir «accompagner toutes mes représentations…», mais il ne peut être pour lui-même un objet de connaissance ou de représentation parce que «je ne saurais connaître comme objet cela même [le sujet] qu'il me faut supposer pour connaître en général un objet…».
The Philosophical Method of Spinoza
Authors: Maxwell Vance
Published: April 2010

The main purpose of this paper is to argue, against the formalist or hypothetico-deductivist approach now dominant, that God or substance is for Spinoza a discovery, or indeed a kind of revelation. In both TdlE and Ethics, Spinoza affirms substance as the outcome of a search for salvation. He could not have held that a postulate or presupposition, even if thought necessary, can save man through abstract entailment. Indeed, salvation depends on “the quality of the object to which we cling with love”, the object being “the eternal and infinite thing” (TdlE 8–10).
George Grant's Justice
Authors: Gauthier David
Published: April 2010

In 1974, George Grant delivered the Josiah Wood lectures at Mount Allison University on the themeEnglish-Speaking Justice. The lectures, first published in 1978, have been republished, and a volume of later essays on somewhat related themes has recently appeared. Grant's work offers an impressionistic but deep challenge to the conception of justice in modern moral thought and practice, a challenge paralleled, in interesting and important ways, by concerns about morality raised in the writings of such persons as Alasdair MacIntyre, Bernard Williams, and, perhaps more surprisingly, J. L. Mackie. In this review, I want briefly to expound Grant's treatment of justice, to exhibit its relationships to other disquieting accounts, and to suggest some of the resources available to contractarian moral theory for lightening what for Grant is a terrifying darkness.
Reply to Lawrence Resnick
Authors: Hunter J. F. M.
Published: April 2010

It is quite difficult to respond briefly and effectively to such a devastating charge as that the only merit your book has is that it is honest. My strategy will be, by showing that a few of Resnick's criticisms are ill-taken, to generate the presumption that the same could be said of a lot more of them. I will first discuss some minor points, and then two larger issues.
Not Quite By Accident
Authors: Adams Frederick , Enc Berent
Published: April 2010

In the etiology of teleological functions, what role can be played by accidental occurrences? Douglas Ehring's essay “Accidental Functions” constructs a theory of ideological functions which makes it possible for objects to have functions even when their causal origins are due entirely to accident—be they natural functions (the function of the heart) or artifact functions (the function of a watch). Ehring constructs this view on the basis of a set of putative counterexamples aimed largely at the theories of Enc and Adams. Both of these theories block the attribution of ideological function to structures with entirely accidental causal histories—accidental in originandin the way their effects are causally sustained.
Michel Foucault and the Semiotics of the Phenomenal
Authors: Ophir Adi
Published: April 2010

In every search for knowledge one presupposes that there is more to the phenomenal field one studies than what meets the eye. A play between those phenomena thatpresentthemselves to an observer andabsententities or phenomena, and the orders, structures or laws that govern these, lies at the heart of anysearchfor empirical knowledge. On the basis of this play of presence and absence read by a particular discourse into (or out of) a more or less defined phenomenal field, phenomena are constitutedquasigns for that discourse's participants.
McDonald and McDougal, Pride and Gain, and Justice: Comment on a Criticism of Gauthier
Authors: Narveson Jan
Published: April 2010

David Gauthier's impressive new book, Morals by Agreement, attempts to resuscitate something like Lockean natural rights on an essentially Hobbesian basis—a project eminently worth doing, if it can be done. Hubin and Lambeth offer some interesting criticisms of his project, and as they also raise some fundamental questions about the character and derivation of rights, it is important to see whether those criticisms hold up. I wish to comment on the one I think to be most crucial.
Ars inveniendi et théorie des modèles
Authors: Benis-Sinaceur Hourya
Published: April 2010

Dans son article nécrologique sur Abraham Robinson, Simon Kochen consignait une impression de Gödel qui ne manquera pas d'intéresser un grand nombre de spécialistes de Leibniz. Gödel, dont il faut rappeler l'intérêt particulier pour les travaux philosophiques de Leibniz, pensait en effet que, de tous les logiciens modernes, Abraham Robinson était celui qui avait le mieux réalisé l'idéal leibnizien d'une logique constituée en ars inveniendi pour les mathématiques. Nous voudrions examiner ici à quel aspect de l' ars inveniendi selon Leibniz ce jugement rend justice et quelle caractéristique de la logique contemporaine il fait ressortir. S'agissant des travaux d'Abraham Robinson, nous nous intéresserons surtout au secteur de la théorie des modèles, bien que celui-ci n'ait pas l'exclusivité de mettre en oeuvre l'idée que les résultats logiques sont propres à faciliter la découverte mathématique.
Reply to Thomas on Models of Courage
Authors: Walton Douglas N.
Published: April 2010

Thomas' remarks raise some interesting questions about the courage and cowardice of soldiers who happen to be fighting on the wrong side. These are interesting and complex questions of moral philosophy in their own right, and I did not feel that it was appropriate inCourageto dwell on them in too much detail. However, Thomas should have read more closely before declaring that “Walton does not even consider” cases of whether actions “on the part of the Axis soldiers would count as courageous”. For there is a substantial discussion inCourageof the case of the actions of Field Marshal Erwin Rommell for which he was decorated in both World Wars. But Thomas is surely right that further discussion of other cases of this type will help to advance our understanding of problems in ethics of courage.
Irony in Moral Discourse: Abnegation or Iron Fate? Some Considerations on Genealogy, Plurality, and Truth
Authors: Maxwell Bruce
Published: April 2010

Cet article présente une critique de la position dite de I' «ironie morale», une position philosophique passablement répandue dans la culture intellectuelle contemporaine et dont la caractéristique centrale est de mettre en question de façon radicale le concept de vérité morale. En m'appuyant sur la lecture de Foucault proposée par Robert Réal Fillion, je dégage les présuppositions qui sont au cœur de la position en question. Je souligne ensuite ses implications pragmatiques; en acceptant le gambit épistémologique, crucial en l'occurrence, selon lequel toutes les affirmations d'ordre moral sont en dernière analyse des descriptions fausses, nous renonçons en fait à notre capacité de juger d'une manière signifiante qu'un état de choses, une ligne de conduite, etc., est qualitivement supérieur à un autre. La question ici posée est done la suivante: ètant admis que la conception ironique de la moralité implique cette perte considérable, les raisons fournies en sa faveur sont-elles suffisamment bonnes pour étayer une attitude aussi forte et aussi radicale à I'endroit de la moralité et de la vérité? Ma thèse est qu'elles ne le sont pas et qu'en réalité on s'abuse en acceptant pour nécessaire et inévitable cette conception débilitante de la moralité. Les raisons sur la foi desquelles cette conclusion est admise semblent inattaquables à première vue, mais il se rèvèle à y regarder de plus près qu'elles sont non conduantes et inadéquates, ou qu'elles requièrent à tout le moins une révision sérieuse.
Value-Pluralism in Contemporary Liberalism
Authors: Newey Glen
Published: April 2010

Plusieurs libéraux modernes soutiennent que le pluralisme des valeurs a d'importantes conséquences pour l'élaboration des procédures et des institutions politiques. Mais les arguments fondés sur l'incommensurability et sur I'indétermination de la rationalité ou de la délibération se révèlent tous compatibles avec le monisme; et certaines formes de pluralisme sont compatibles soit avec une hiérarchisation des valeurs soit avec une hiérarchisation méta-éthique de certains types de concepts normatifs. En outre le «pluralisme» en tant que thèse métaphysique concernant les valeurs est souvent confondu avec la thèse descriptive qu'il existe une pluralité de conceptions du bien dans les sociétés modernes, qui, elle, fournit la véritable justification du libéralisme dans l'organisation politique. Or cette forme de pluralisme est également compatible avec le monisme des valeurs. Le libéral pluraliste se trouve ainsi confronté à un dilemme : soit certaines valeurs (comme celle de I'égalité de respect) sont d'importance prioritaire pour la justification de I'organisation politique, soit les consequences du pluralisme des valeurs en pareil domaine sont indéterminées.