Bücher veröffentlicht von sakshih193

This thesis considers how persistent, coherent patterns of imagery explain the fundamental laws and processes of Lucretius' science and philosophy. It will show how these patterns, taken from human experience, serve to guide the reader through the difficult, and at times unpalatable, doctrines of Epicureanism. Frequently they take the form of metaphors explaining scientific realities, but often they are employed literally, which in turn strengthens their metaphorical application. Inspired by Lucretius' weaving metaphors for argumentation, and the complex web these images form, I have labelled them 'conceptual threads'. This term expresses how they develop and intertwine as the epic progresses. The present work builds on existing scholarship which has established the importance of imagery to Lucretius' De Rerum Natura (DRN) and its interpretation, but the coherence of the patterns of imagery across the whole poem has not hitherto been appreciated. In 1949 Stella Pope wrote as follows: 'It is possible that some of the problems in Lucretius will be resolved by a consideration of his imagery in its richness and variety, the reality which it gives to theoretic processes, and the clarity with which abstractions are realized. In this may lie the explanation of the passionate invocation to Venus at the outset of the poem attacking orthodox religion, and the emotional fervour which pervades Lucretius' exposition of his scientific philosophy. Certainly when one has tried to understand his imagery the rigid cleavage which some have seen between scientific and poetic parts of the De Rerum Natura no longer seems to exist.'1

Formostofmylife,Ididn'tknowwhatanaardvarkis.AsfarasIcouldtell,aardvarks couldhavebeentropicalbirds,or'aardvark'couldhavebeenaNorwegianwordfor nightmare.Ifoundoutabouttheexistenceofthewordbyreadingphilosophicalarticles onconcepts,andlearntthattheaardvarkisakindofAfricanmammal,similartothe anteater,bybrowsingtheInternetforinformationaboutaardvarks.Thisistheshort andunremarkablestoryofhowIlearnttheconceptaardvark.Itisveryclearthat itisn'tthefullpsychologicalstoryofhowIlearncertainconcepts,andmuchlessis itaphilosophicalstoryofhownewconceptsarelearnt.BeforeIcanbegintoengage suchcompleteaccountsofthispartofhumancognition,Iwanttoshowwhatkindsof storiesonehastotelltogiveafullphilosophicalorpsychologicalaccountofconcept learning.

Slurs-racist, sexist, and homophobic epithets-are powerful. Their very utterance can offend, appal, enrage, and intimidate. The use of such terms is a problem as it makes life worse for those they target. For philosophers of language, slurs are also often treated as a kind of puzzle. These words seem to straightforwardly refer to certain groups of people, as well as convey something negative about that group. However, there is substantial disagreement about just what this additional negative content is.

Here Chisholm clearly articulates the widely accepted thought that a person is morally responsible for what he did only if it was, in some important sense, up to the person himself whether he performed the action in question. Moreover, Chisholm says, if it was up to the person whether he performed the action, then the person could have done something else (or perhaps nothing at all) instead. Together these two claims yield the principle that a person is morally responsible for what he did only if he could have done otherwise. In an influential article, Harry Frankfurt (1969) dubbed this ¿the principle of alternate possibilities,¿ and the name stuck

The contemporary divisions of knowledge are familiar to most of us: mathematics belongs with the sciences, music with the creative arts, and philosophy with the humanities. These divisions, in general, seem natural and obvious to us and, despite a growing interest in 'interdisciplinary studies', the work done in these various fields generally hews to the lines that divide them. To point out that these boundaries are historically contingent or that they were erected relatively recently in history is not exactly a novel point. However, while most would acknowledge this, it can be difficult to shed our preconceptions about where these divisions in our body of knowledge lie. As a result, it is all too often the case that we bring these preconceptions with us into our study of intellectual history, especially in the form of assumptions about which topics belong to which fields and the ways in which these topics can interact. The aim of this dissertation is to give an account of a particular issue, the problem of musical consonance, that historically does not fit neatly into the disciplinary divisions with which we are now familiar. In particular, I will discuss 17th century approaches to this issue with the aim of showing that this problem, and the solutions proposed to it, had a wide-ranging influence on a number of areas in philosophy and science

At the most basic level architecture is building design, an artistic planning or rendering which constitutes some variety of shelter or enclosure. While this perception is not incorrect, it fails to acknowledge the primary facet of architecture: the interaction between us and the physical structure surrounding us, and the ways in which that physical structure is designed to interact with us. While architecture may seem a stiff, un-breathing form of art, then, it should be very much alive. This quality of architecture exists when we immerse ourselves within the structure, becoming aware of the ways that we interact with it and acknowledging how it was designed to interact with us

Hannah Arendt's The Human Condition, first published in 1958, considers the importance of worldy existence. She states: "with word and deed we insert ourselves into the human world."2 She then warns that, "A life without speech and without action...is literally dead to the world; it has ceased to be a human life because it is no longer lived among men."3 Speaking and acting allow us to appear before others and facilitate our life in a world made and inhabited by others who speak and act as well. Therefore, following Arendt, we might say that, to deny someone the ability to appear would be to deny his or her life among others.

The question guiding this paper is: how do we preserve patient dignity in the health care context? I propose and defend a relational and care approach to dignity where the basis of dignity is found in the relationships of care we bear to one another. More specifically, we each have individual equal worth because we have been cared for. Without care we would not reach maturity and thrive to the degree we are each able. It is in forging a relation of care with another, or the actual willingness of some to do so, that individual dignity is at once conferred and actualised. In a relational and care approach to dignity the basis of equal individual worth is not inextricably linked to a particular capacity or set of attributes we as individuals are assumed to possess. Rather than focusing on the 'what' of dignity - finding the essence of dignity - a relational approach allows us to focus on how and why respect for individual dignity is important. With this approach to individual dignity in mind, I suggest and defend that it is in the context of the practitioner-patient relationship that patient dignity is best promoted and preserved. If, as I claim, dignity is not tied to any capacity or set of attributes individual humans are presumed to possess then the principle of autonomy, so central to health care ethics, cannot adequately capture dignity. Autonomy and dignity are distinct concepts and how we go about respecting dignity can be quite different from the way we respect autonomy.

The standard story of action, also known as 'the causal theory', or 'causalism', is familiar to readers of contemporary philosophy of action. Established in the decades following the publication of Davidson's seminal essays, the standard theory promotes a concept of action as constituted by a bodily event, joined to certain mental conditions by a bond of causation. Because the standard or causal theory's definition of action is in terms of the components of action, the theory is properly understood as adopting a reductive approach. The causal theory is 'reductive', that is, in its presumption that analysis of behavioral events can and should begin at the level of the constituent elements of those events. The causal theory holds another important feature of interest, one that is perhaps related to its reductive approach. Philosophers have observed that causalists conceive of the primary causal relation as being placed 'between events or states of affairs or facts of which [the agent] is a constituent' (Broadie 2013: 574, italics mine).1 Because the causal theory's attitude towards the agent is that she too is a constituent of the causal relata productive of action (i.e., the events of an agent S's intending to A and S's A-ing, where A is a set of movements belonging to an agent S), the agent herself is conceptually divided into constituent parts of distinct types: she is 'split', for purposes of the causal analysis, as a constituent of events or facts of a mental type, and constituent of events or facts of a physical type. Thus the causal theory can also be described as 'post-Cartesian' in its treatment of mental and physical phenomena.2 The latter 'post-Cartesian' idea and its related reductive approach together constitute two assumptions that are central to the causal theory of action

In the first seven sections of A Treatise of Human Nature, David Hume establishes the foundation of his philosophy. The most basic tenet is that "all the perceptions of the human mind resolve themselves into two distinct kinds" (T 1.1.1.1; SBN 1). The first kind is impressions, namely, "our 1 sensations, passions and emotions, as they make their first appearance in the soul" (T 1.1.1.1; SBN 1). The second kind is ideas, which are faint images of impressions we use in thinking and reasoning (T 1.1.1.1; SBN 1). Impressions and ideas constitute the whole of Hume's ontological framework. Beyond that, Hume remains agnostic to the possibility of other ontological entities. That is, he adopts the view that manifold causes "must be resolv'd into original qualities of human nature," which he cannot pretend to explain (T 1.1.4.6; SBN 13). The ontology of these original qualities may be actual, but Hume prudently leaves the investigation to those best suited to it, namely, the natural philosophers and anatomists. Metaphysicians, to that end, must observe the limits of philosophical inquiry.

The goal of this chapter is to show that there are various ways to construe liberty. I am particularly interested in the incompatible aspects of different conceptions of liberty, which it is crucial to distinguish and be aware of when attempting to build a theory of liberty for oneself. I discuss the philosophers John Locke and Thomas Hobbes, who both develop influential theories of liberty, in order to show how conceptions of liberty can differ greatly. In this chapter I summarize the conceptions of liberty that Locke and Hobbes present in their respective works. The work that I draw upon for Hobbes is his famous essay, the Leviathan. For Locke I draw upon his ideas from The Second Treatise of Government. Locke and Hobbes build their political philosophies by creating a hypothetical situation called "the state of nature." Locke conceives of a drastically different state of nature than Hobbes, and this difference is the first key difference in understanding why they end up building different theories of liberty. I begin by explaining the differences between Hobbes' and Locke's respective conceptions of the state of nature, the law of nature, and ideal government. I then explain how they ground different conceptions of liberty

The constitutive principles approach to scientific theories is a neo-Kantian response to Quinean holism and philosophical naturalism. The approach attempts to be informed by, and inform, the best historical research in the history and philosophy of science. Proponents of the approach argue that there are some propositions (constitutive principles) in a scientific theory that in some way make possible (or, constitute) other propositions in the theory. Different versions of the approach will vary in how they flesh out the precise way in which constitutive principles 'make possible' other propositions. References to "constitution" in this literature are derived from the work of Kant. In Kant (1786), Kant attempts to give a firm metaphysical foundation to the science of Newtonian physics. Science, according to Kant, must be "ordered according to principles", and proper science (the paradigm of which is Newton's physics) must be ordered according to rational principles, that is, principles which hold by necessity and are known a priori.1 Kant demands that proper natural science be known with apodictic certainty, and this certainty can only be achieved on the basis of a science's "pure part", which grounds our a priori cognition of natural things.2 The concepts of proper science must be given constructions (in the vein of geometrical constructions) in intuition such that (1) these concepts are amenable to mathematization, and (2) these concepts are applicable to experience in a way such that laws may be generated through their deployment. The process by which Kant accomplishes (1) and (2) uses the resources of the analysis of cognition developed in Kant (1781). In particular, Kant's table of categories, which gives the concepts of pure understanding, must be adhered to in giving a complete construction of a new scientific concept, such as matter. In short, Kant identifies mental structures in his faculty psychology that order our experience of physical objects in a way that we can know for certain. These mental structures, according to Kant "constitute the object of knowledge" and make it possible for us to develop and test scientific theories. It is this notion of constitution, rather than the one found in contemporary metaphysics, that those who take the constitutive principles approach to scientific theories find inspiration in.

Is the problem of skepticism inevitable? Does it arise whenever philosophically reflective people consider epistemological questions? Is skepticism an issue lying deep within the human condition, waiting to be discovered along with other perennial problems of philosophy? In contemporary epistemology some philosophers, such as Barry Stroud, have taken the position that a concern about skepticism is an inevitable part of the human condition, while others, such as Michael Williams, argue that epistemology's contemporary concern about skepticism is the result of contingent theoretical presuppositions (Stroud 1984; Williams 1996). My plan for this chapter is to describe the debate between those who agree with Stroud, whose position I will call the "intuitive thesis," and those who agree with Williams that skepticism can be successfully "diagnosed" so that it is no longer a serious philosophical problem. I will also explain why I think this debate is important for epistemologists, and I will consider some Western discussions of the issue from Hume until today. After considering these attempted resolutions of the debate, I suggest that one way to come toward an answer is to look to other philosophical traditions, such as the rich philosophical traditions of India, to engage in an experiment in cross-cultural 2 philosophy. If we find something like a consideration of skepticism in Indian philosophy, then Stroud's theory gains some support. If not, then we have some reason to side with Williams. Before beginning this experiment in chapter two, I end this chapter with some methodological considerations and a preview of the chapters to come. These chapters will form an argument for the overall thesis of this dissertation that the problem of external-world skepticism does not seem to be an intuitive part of the human condition that forms a pervasive part of any epistemological tradition, but a concern about another kind of skepticism - skepticism about philosophy - is a cross-cultural phenomenon that is often a natural result of philosophical endeavors.

Gould's statement is relevant to my dissertation because this essay, too is concerned with the stories that are told when data is lacking. While Gould's proximate concern in the above citation is baseball, he is at pains to formulate a generalization about the ways we generally tell stories to ourselves, and about the ease with which many such stories are generated. (This caution is only appropriate from the foremost critic of "justso" stories in evolutionary biology - the adaptationist narratives that have been unreflectively applied or assumed by many biologists.) The statement applies with some legitimacy to the question of life's origin, where scientific data is, arguably, still lacking. That has not stopped the creation of stories accounting for the phenomenon. Only a century ago there were few if any serious scientific theories of life's origin; today there are many theories. And they are only tenuously supported by the data.

Thermodynamicsisaspecialtheoryindeed.Aprincipletheory,aphenomenological onemoreover,thatoutgrewitsinitialpurposeofadvancingnineteenthcentury engineeringalmostassoonasitwasborn1.Ceasingtobeameretoolforthe optimisationofsteamenginesandthelike,thermodynamicsinsteadbecameatheory about,well,'almosteverything'.Butthisisnottosaythatthermodynamicscan provideuswiththeanswerstoallscientificquestions,quitethecontrary:traditionally, itfocussesonanarrowrangeofprocesses,singledoutbytheusageoftermssuchas heat,entropyandtemperature.Whatmakesthermodynamicssospecial,whatsets itapartfromotherphysicaltheories,isthecomprehensiveapplicationofitslawsto thoseothertheories.Quantuminformationtheory,quantumfieldtheory,general relativityandevenstringtheory,nottomentionchemistryandbiology-thelaws ofthermodynamicsareubiquitousamongourscientifictheories.

Criminal law contains a set of powers and permissions that enable it to fulfil its functions. Although not all these normative incidents are unique to the criminal law, it is in this body of law-and this body of law alone-that they are made systematically available in respect of most of the wrongs regulated. Consider permissions first. Permissions exempt their beneficiaries from duties to perform or not to perform certain actions. As a consequence, conduct that would normally be wrongful is rendered legally permissible when undertaken by these beneficiaries. A distinguishing feature of the permissions contained in the criminal law is that they correspond to negative duties the violation of which often constitutes a criminal wrong. Let us note just a couple of examples to illustrate.1 The most recognisable is the infliction of punishment. The modes of hard treatment typically used as forms of punishment often amount to intentional and grave interferences with the offender's rights to freedom, property, or her bodily integrity which we are ordinarily under a duty, backed up by the criminal law, to refrain from. The same is true about the force deployed to perform an arrest, the restriction of freedom involved in a detention, and the infringement of the rights to property, privacy, or to our own bodies, attendant to a search. Permissions also attach to actions not generally thought of as coercive, the commission of which is nonetheless also often criminal

As technology advances, it becomes increasingly crucial that we explore the question of the moral status of Artificial Intelligences (AI). We already have computers with unbelievable computing power, and before long we might have machines far more "intelligent" than any human. We need to know how we ought to act towards such entities to avoid acting immorally. How advanced must machines become before we should treat them as having moral standing - or even as moral persons? Already we have machines with conversational ability nearly equal to a human's - under certain conditions, computers have already passed the Turing Test (or so it is claimed).1 Even if we deny that they have passed quite yet, there is little doubt that they will do so soon.