Particularity and Perspective Taking: On Feminism and Habermas's Discourse Theory of Morality

Seyla Benhabib's critique of Jürgen Habermas's moral theory claims that his approach is not adequate for the needs of a feminist moral theory. I argue that her analysis is mistaken. I also show that Habermas's moral theory, properly understood, satisfies many of the conditions identified by feminist moral philosophers as necessary for an adequate moral theory. A discussion of the compatibility between the model of reciprocal perspective taking found in Habermas's moral theory and that found in Maria Lugones's essay “Playfulness,‘World’‐Travelling, and Loving Perception” reinforces the claim that his moral theory holds as yet unrecognized promise for feminist moral philosophy.     

The topological approach to perceptual organization

To address the fundamental question of “what are the primitives of visual perception”, a theory of topological structure and functional hierarchy in visual perception has been proposed. This holds that the global nature of perceptual organization can be described in terms of topological invariants, global topological perception is prior to the perception of other featural properties, and the primitives of visual form perception are geometric invariants at different levels of structural stability. In Part I of this paper, I will illustrate why and how the topological approach to perceptual organization has been advanced. In Part II, I will provide empirical evidence supporting the early topological perception, while answering some commonly considered counteraccounts. In Part III, to complete the theory, I will apply the mathematics of tolerance spaces to describe global properties in discrete sets. In Part IV, I will further present experimental data to demonstrate the global-to-local functional hierarchy in form perception, which is stratified with respect to structural stability defined by Klein's Erlangen Program. Finally, in Part V, I will discuss relations of the global-to-local topological model to other theories: The topological approach reformulates both classical Gestalt holism and Gibson's direct perception of invariance, while providing a challenge to computational approaches to vision based on the local-to-global assumption.     

Thought and the social community

The anti‐Cartesian idea that a person's thoughts are not entirely fixed by what goes on inside that person's head is suggested by Hegel, and echoed in Wittgenstein and Frege. An argument for the view has recently been given by Tyler Burge. This paper claims that Burge's data can be explained better by an individualistic theory. The basic idea is that an individual's thoughts are specified analogically, in ordinary discourse, through the model of a language. Though the modelling‐sentences are public, the thoughts of the individual are inner states whose identity does not depend upon those sentences. They have content naturally, whether or not content happens to be ascribed to them.     

THE LOST LEGACY OF ANSELM'S ARGUMENT: RE‐THINKING THE PURPOSE OF PROOFS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

In his Proslogion, Anselm presents a proof for God's existence which has attracted a tremendous amount of scholarly attention. In spite of all that has been said about this proof and proofs for God's existence more generally, scholarly consensus seems to dissipate when it comes to determining whether theistic proofs are persuasive and sound. In this article, I will argue that there is a way to provide compelling proof for the existence of God. To substantiate this claim, I will not attempt to prove that God exists apart from His revelation in any of the ways that have been advocated by various philosophers of religion. Rather, I will endeavor to explain that Anselm's approach to offering evidence for God's existence is quite different from the approach that modern philosophers tend to attribute to him and to elaborate on what that approach involves by reading Anselm's argument in the context of Augustine's De Trinitate and the whole of the Proslogion.     

CREATIVE MUTUAL INTERACTION IN ACTION

In this article, I describe a multidisciplinary project at the interface of philosophy, science, and theology. The project is the product of an ongoing collaboration between the author and Christopher Southgate, to whom this special issue of Zygon is dedicated. At the philosophical core of the project is a development of C. S. Peirce's semiotics (theory of signs). The scientific branch of the project involves the application of semiotic theory to the problem of the origin of life, and to questions about human evolution and human distinctiveness. The theological branch of the project involves the articulation of a semiotic approach to the Christian concepts of Incarnation and Trinity, and to the ideas of vestiges of the Trinity in creation and of participation in God's life. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the project in terms of Robert John Russell's model of ‘creative mutual interaction’ between science and theology.     

My Heart Made Me Do It: Children's Essentialist Beliefs About Heart Transplants

Psychological essentialism is a folk theory characterized by the belief that a causal internal essence or force gives rise to the common outward behaviors or attributes of a category's members. In two studies, we investigated whether 4‐ to 7‐year‐old children evidenced essentialist reasoning about heart transplants by asking them to predict whether trading hearts with an individual would cause them to take on the donor's attributes. Control conditions asked children to consider the effects of trading money with an individual. Results indicated that children reasoned according to essentialism, predicting more transfer of attributes in the transplant condition versus the non‐bodily money control. Children also endorsed essentialist transfer of attributes even when they did not believe that a transplant would change the recipient's category membership (e.g., endorsing the idea that a recipient of a pig's heart would act pig‐like, but denying that the recipient would become a pig). This finding runs counter to predictions from a strong interpretation of the “minimalist” position, an alternative to essentialism.     

Discourse theory trumps discourse theory: Wouter Hanegraaff's Esotericism and the Academy

This review article argues that Wouter Hanegraaff's Esotericism and the Academy is deeply influenced by a methodological cluster usually referred to as ‘discourse theory.’ That the author is not willing to classify his own approach as such is explained with recourse to his dispute with Kocku von Stuckrad, who, according to Hanegraaff, would embody discourse theory, whereas Hanegraaff would embody history. A comparison of Hanegraaff's Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012) and von Stuckrad's Locations of Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Esoteric Discourse and Western Identities (Leiden: Brill, 2010) reveals that this is a misleading classification and that Hanegraaff's study comes closer to what discourse theory is all about. As a consequence, Esotericism and the Academy is the very first study on ‘Western esotericism’ that offers a convincing justification of this particular label as an overarching discursive category.     

A new rank correlation coefficient with application to the consensus ranking problem

The consensus ranking problem has received much attention in the statistical literature. Given m rankings of n objects the objective is to determine a consensus ranking. The input rankings may contain ties, be incomplete, and may be weighted. Two solution concepts are discussed, the first maximizing the average weighted rank correlation of the solution ranking with the input rankings and the second minimizing the average weighted Kemeny–Snell distance. A new rank correlation coefficient called τ_x is presented which is shown to be the unique rank correlation coefficient which is equivalent to the Kemeny‐Snell distance metric. The new rank correlation coefficient is closely related to Kendall's tau but differs from it in the way ties are handled. It will be demonstrated that Kendall's τ_b is flawed as a measure of agreement between weak orderings and should no longer be used as a rank correlation coefficient. The use of τ_x in the consensus ranking problem provides a more mathematically tractable solution than the Kemeny–Snell distance metric because all the ranking information can be summarized in a single matrix. The methods described in this paper allow analysts to accommodate the fully general consensus ranking problem with weights, ties, and partial inputs. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Agent-causation and agential control

According to what I call the reductive standard-causal theory of agency, the exercise of an agent's power to act can be reduced to the causal efficacy of agent-involving mental states and events. According to a non-reductive agent-causal theory, an agent's power to act is irreducible and primitive. Agent-causal theories have been dismissed on the ground that they presuppose a very contentious notion of causation, namely substance-causation. In this paper I will assume, with the proponents of the agent-causal approach, that substance-causation is possible, as I will argue against that theory on the ground that it fails as a theory of agency. I will argue that the non-reductive agent-causal theory fails to account for agency, because it fails to account for agential control: it cannot explain why the stipulated irreducible relation between the agent and an action constitutes the agent's exercise of control over the action. This objection, I will argue, applies to the agent-causal theory in particular, and to the non-reductive approach in general.     

AI &; Law,Logic and Argument Schemes

This paper reviews the history of AI & Law research from the perspective of argument schemes. It starts with the observation that logic, although very well applicable to legal reasoning when there is uncertainty, vagueness and disagreement, is too abstract to give a fully satisfactory classification of legal argument types. It therefore needs to be supplemented with an argument-scheme approach, which classifies arguments not according to their logical form but according to their content, in particular, according to the roles that the various elements of an argument can play. This approach is then applied to legal reasoning, to identify some of the main legal argument schemes. It is also argued that much AI & Law research in fact employs the argument-scheme approach, although it usually is not presented as such. Finally, it is argued that the argument-scheme approach and the way it has been employed in AI & Law respects some of the main lessons to be learnt from Toulmin’s The Uses of Argument.     

REVISITING DESTRUCTION IN “THE USE OF AN OBJECT”

“The Use of an Object” (1969a) has been widely recognized as among Winnicott's great papers and has deservedly received a good deal of attention. Much of that attention has focused on the importance that the paper gives to the role of destruction in bringing about the experience of externality. Yet the nature of that destruction has too often been assumed based on Winnicott's earlier writings. In the view that follows from that, destruction is equated with the aggression that fails to destroy the object, and the experience of externality is regarded just as the result of that failure. In offering a rereading of “The Use of an Object,” the author suggests that, while this aspect of aggression/destruction indeed plays an important role in the establishment of externality, it is only part of the story, and that the central contribution of “The Use of an Object” is Winnicott's attempt to offer a new theory of primitive destruction, one that provides an impulsive basis for separation/externality itself. This theory and Winnicott's ongoing attempts to develop it after “The Use of an Object” led him to rethink the very nature of the drives.     

THE INTERPLAY OF DEDUCTIVE AND INDUCTIVE REASONING IN PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORIZING

Deductive and inductive reasoning both played an essential part in Freud's construction of psychoanalysis. In this paper, the author explores the happy marriage of empiricism and rationalism in Freud's use of deductive reasoning in the construction of psychoanalytic theory. To do this, the author considers three major amendments Freud made to his theory: (i) infant and childhood sexuality, (ii) the structural theory, and (iii) the theory of signal anxiety. Ultimately, the author argues for, and presents Freud as a proponent of, the epistemological position that he calls critical realism.     

Wittgenstein's picture‐theory of Language 1

I argue that the current view (as held by, eg., Warnock, Anscombe and Stenius) of Wittgenstein's theory of language in the Tractates is mistaken. This view maintains that Wittgenstein's theory is one of ‘isomorphism'; that, roughly, a sentence has meaning in virtue of its being a facsimile of a fact or possible fact. But a detailed study of significant passages in the Tractattis shows that Wittgenstein held no such view. His use of important terms, such as Salz, Bild, Sachverhalt, Tatsache, etc., has been crucially misunderstood. There is no isomorphism. The theory is not about sentences at all, but about talking sense.     

Women in Political Thought

The argument of this paper is that texts in the history of political thought are rather more loquacious on the question of women than has often been supposed. The argument is developed using examples from Plato's Republic, notably the sections on injustice and tyranny. The paper concludes by suggesting the general implications of its approach for the concerns and style of political theory, particularly as to the importance of understanding symbolic and mythic elements in works of political thought.     

On Hare's attempt to bridge the Kantian-consequentialist gap: A response to Forschler's rejoinder

In a paper in this journal (Wall 2016), the author of the present paper critiqued Scott Forschler's attempt (2013) to establish that Jens Timmermann's argument (2005) against R. M. Hare's attempt (1981) to bridge the Kantian-consequentialist gap is unsuccessful. Forschler's thesis is that Hare's utilitarianism is strictly normative, not metaethical. In Hare's ethical rationalism, which is metaethical but contains no intrinsic ends (Forschler 2013), reason determines the proper ends, and preference satisfaction has no value prior to reason's determinations (Forschler 2013). The present author responded that Hare's moral approach presupposes that preference satisfaction is the ultimate end (Wall 2016) and that an analysis of preference satisfaction in Hare's moral approach cannot be confined to normative ethics. Forschler's rejoinder (2017) suggests that Hare's moral theory was misinterpreted by the author, who now shows that such a judgment results from significant oversights concerning the foundation of Hare's moral theory and utilitarian foundations.     

Item Response Modeling of Paired Comparison and Ranking Data

The comparative format used in ranking and paired comparisons tasks can significantly reduce the impact of uniform response biases typically associated with rating scales. Thurstone's (1927, 1931) model provides a powerful framework for modeling comparative data such as paired comparisons and rankings. Although Thurstonian models are generally presented as scaling models, that is, stimuli-centered models, they can also be used as person-centered models. In this article, we discuss how Thurstone's model for comparative data can be formulated as item response theory models so that respondents' scores on underlying dimensions can be estimated. Item parameters and latent trait scores can be readily estimated using a widely used statistical modeling program. Simulation studies show that item characteristic curves can be accurately estimated with as few as 200 observations and that latent trait scores can be recovered to a high precision. Empirical examples are given to illustrate how the model may be applied in practice and to recommend guidelines for designing ranking and paired comparisons tasks in the future.     

Test-Anxiety,inferential reasoning and working memory load

Abstract

Subjects high and low in test-anxiety were presented with an inferential reasoning task requiring the verification of necessary and unnecessary inferences. The task was performed whilst holding either two or six digits in memory. On the verification task, the performance of high-test-anxious subjects was slower and less accurate than that of the low-test-anxious subjects. In addition, unnecessary inferences took longer to process than necessary inferences for the high-test-anxiety group only. The high-test-anxious subjects studied the memory loads for longer than the low-test-anxious group, but their recognition accuracy did not differ. Findings support Eysenck and Calvo's (Cognition and Emotion, 6, 409–434, 1992) processing efficiency theory. The high-test-anxious group's performance on the sentence verification task was impaired overall, and was particularly impaired when performing the unnecessary inference task. However, we also demonstrated that the high-test-anxious group's performance on a secondary memory task was unimpaired as a result of increased effort.     

An analogy between Hegel's theory of recognition and Ficino's theory of love

A widely debated question in current research centres on determining the precursors to G. W. F. Hegel's theory of recognition. Until now Fichte, Rousseau and Aristotle have been discussed. However, the present paper analyses a further surprising correspondence between Marsilio Ficino's theory of love and Hegel's theory of recognition. Here it is shown that Hegel studied Ficino in 1793 and that we can discover syntactical, semantical, and structural vestiges of Ficino's De amore II 8 in Hegel's early fragments on religion (1793) and love (1797), which are closely related to the general theory of recognition found in the Phenomenology of Spirit. Not only may this thesis be relevant for Hegel or Ficino scholarship, but it could also be a further indication that social theories with normative content are an integral characteristic of (early) modern self-consciousness.