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In this paper the strategy for the eliminative reduction of the alethic modalities suggested by John Venn is outlined and it is shown to anticipate certain related contemporary empiricistic and nominalistic projects. Venn attempted to reduce the alethic modalities to probabilities, and thus suggested a promising solution to the nagging issue of the inclusion of modal statements in empiricistic philosophical systems. However, despite the promise that this suggestion held for laying the ‘ghost of modality’ to rest, this general approach, tempered modal eliminativism, is shown to be inadequate for that task. © 2004 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

To live effectively is to live with adequate information. Thus, communication and control belong to the essence of man's inner life, even as they belong to his life in society. Norbert Wiener SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND ETHICS. Major scientific and technological innovations often have profound social and ethical effects. For example, in Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Copernicus, Newton, and other scientists developed a powerful new model of the universe. This stunning scientific achievement led to increased respect for science and for the power of human reasoning. During that same era, recently invented printing-press technology made it possible to spread knowledge far and wide across Europe, instead of leaving it, as before, in the hands of a privileged minority of scholars. Inspired by these scientific and technological achievements, philosophers, such as Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, re-examined human nature and the idea of a good society. They viewed human beings asrational agentscapable of thinking for themselves and acquiring knowledge through science and books. In addition, they interpreted society as a creation of informed, rational citizens working together throughsocial contracts. These philosophical developments laid foundations for ethical theories such as those of Bentham and Kant, and for political changes such as the American Revolution and the French Revolution. Today, after far-reaching scientific achievements in physics, biology, and cybernetics – and after recent technological advances in digital computing and information networks – philosophers are again rethinking the nature of human beings and of society. © Cambridge University Press 2008 and 2009.

It is an assumed view in Chinese philosophy that the grammatical differences between English or Indo-European languages and classical Chinese explain some of the differences between the Western and Chinese philosophical discourses. Although some philosophers have expressed doubts about the general link between classical Chinese philosophy and syntactic form of classical Chinese, I discuss a specific hypothesis, i. e., the mass-noun hypothesis, in this essay. The mass-noun hypothesis assumes that a linguistic distinction such as between the singular terms and the predicates is sufficient to justify or necessarily leads to a specific ontological distinction such as the distinction between the particular and the universal. I argue that one cannot read off semantic properties simply from syntactic ones and hence the syntactic differences do not automatically translate into the semantic differences between languages, that the syntactic features of Chinese nouns do not have explanatory significance in explaining why the particular-universal problem does not arise in the classical period of Chinese philosophy, and that the part-whole ontology allegedly informed by the mass-noun-like semantics does not provide a natural or intuitive picture of the language-world relation. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V.2011.

This article traces shifts in Heidegger's stance toward metaphysics after fundamental ontology and argues that these shifts reflect changes in his conceptions of ontological difference and temporality that pave the way for his mature thought. Copyright © 2012 The Pennsylvania State University.

An interview with Juan-David Nasio. In A Psychoanalyst on the Couch, we find the noted psychoanalyst and Lacan commentator Juan-David Nasio on the analyst's couch himself. In the interview that makes up this book, he provides insight into his forty-year career as a writer and practitioner, elaborating on Freudian and Lacanian concepts important to his work and reflecting on broad issues related to psychology and culture-as well as personal remembrances. The result is an intimate and wide-ranging look at the man and thinker, both an introduction to his work and a deeper look at his approach and outlook. © 2012 State University of New York. All rights reserved.

This article considers the second treatise of Schelling's Abhandlungen zur Erläuterung des Idealismus der Wissenschaftslehre (Treatises Explaining the Idealism of the Science of Knowledge, 1796/97), a lesser-known work from the early Schelling. Here, Schelling proposes to defend the critical position insofar as it purports to be a system based on human reason, but instead he issues a backhanded critique of the assumption on behalf of the critical philosophers to try and limit the bounds of pure reason by means of their own use of reason. Schelling then offers an alternative way to think about the relationship of mind (Geist) and matter in nature. This article argues that Schelling's actual explanation of the critical philosophy as a position founded by reasonable minds ultimately belies his promise to defend it, thus calling into question that Schelling's thought prior to 1800 was a mere reiteration of Kantian/Fichtean transcendentalism. Copyright © 2015 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA.

In Aristotle's Physics iv 10-14, Aristotle argues for a time concept derived with, on a weak version, sense perception, and, on a strong version, from sense perception along with intellection (nous), from change in nature. On both accounts, actualized time for Aristotle requires cognitive faculties. Aristotle's time concept has thus been linked with Kant's treatment of time in the Transcendental Aesthetic of his First Critique. More importantly, the conclusion that time is "unreal" for Aristotle elicits charges of adulterating Aristotle's conclusions by reading Aristotle's Physics with a Kantian lens. In this paper, I examine the context of Kant's conclusions about time and, by way of a contrast between the Aristotelian and Kantian projects, argue for a fundamental dissimilarity of their accounts. And yet, I reserve the possibility that one both ascent to this fundamental dissimilarity and hold that Aristotle was not a temporal realist. © 2015. Idealistic Studies.

Despite the language we saw in the previous chapter, which allowed for time apprehension by perception and marking, in Physics iv 14, Aristotle famously argues that time is dependent on nous. © 2015, The Author(s).

Contemporary discourse about human rights makes pragmatic use of the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights, as the Declaration presents a set of guidelines that are based on assumptions about the nature of human beings: Their thoughts, ideas, freedom of expression and freedom of association.1 Article 1 of the Declaration states, for example, that ‘All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.’ The document engages the idea of the human being as having rights, regardless of ethnicity or gender. Such rights include life, protection from harm, and access to the latest in scientific technology.2 © Philipa Rothfield, Cleo Fleming and Paul A. Komesaroff 2008.