Science, thought and nature: Hegel’s completion of Kant’s idealism [Special Issue]

Focusing on Hegel’s engagement with Kant’s theoretical philosophy, the paper shows the merits of its characterisation as “completion”. The broader aim is to offer a fresh perspective on familiar historical arguments and on contemporary discussions of philosophical naturalism by examining the distinctive combination of idealism and naturalism that motivates the priority both authors accord to the topics of testability of philosophical claims and of the nature of the relation between philosophy and the natural science. Linking these topics is a question about how the demands of unification—imposed internally, relative to conceptions of the proper conduct of philosophical enquiry—can accommodate realism, a key element in establishing disciplinary parity between philosophy and the natural sciences. The distance that ultimately marks Kant’s and Hegel’s answers to this question justifies the interpretative claim about completion, while the conceptual patterns exemplified in the posing of the question and in their shared assumptions about its philosophical importance justifies the reconstructive claim about “idealist naturalism

Professor William Craig’s Criticisms of Critiques of Kalam Cosmological Arguments By Paul Davies, Stephen Hawking, and Adolf Grunbaum

Kalam cosmological arguments have recently been the subject of criticisms, at least inter alia, by physicists---Paul Davies, Stephen Hawking---and philosophers of science---Adolf Grunbaum. In a series of recent articles, William Craig has attempted to show that these criticisms are “superficial, iII-conceived, and based on misunderstanding.” I argue that, while some of the discussion of Davies and Hawking is not philosophically sophisticated, the points raised by Davies, Hawking and Grunbaum do suffice to undermine the dialectical efficacy of kalam cosmological arguments

Tests of Equilibrium Macroeconomics Using Contemporaneous Monetary Data

This paper uses contemporaneous monetary data to carry out econometric tests of the "equilibrium" approach to modeling the relation between monetary disturbances and macroeconomic fluctuations. The theoretical analysis introduces into an equilibrium macroeconomic model the availability of preliminary data on current monetary aggregates and the process of accumulation of revised monetary data. The econometric analysis tests two hypotheses derived from this extended model. One hypothesis concerns the neutrality of perceived monetary policy. The other hypothesis concerns the nonneutrality of errors in preliminary monetary data. The econometric results imply rejection of both of these hypotheses. These tests provide strong evidence against the reality of the equilibrium approach.

Communal and Institutional Trust: Authority in Religion and Politics

Linda Zagzebski’s book on epistemic authority is an impressive and stimulating treatment of an important topic. 1 I admire the way she manages to combine imagination, originality and argumentative control. Her work has the further considerable merit of bringing analytic thinking and abstract theory to bear upon areas of concrete human concern, such as the attitudes one should have towards moral and religious authority. The book is stimulating in a way good philosophy should be -- provoking both disagreement and emulation. I agree with much of what she says, and have been instructed by it, but it will be of more interest and relevance here if I concentrate upon areas of disagreement. Perhaps they are better seen as areas, at least some of them, where her emphases suggest a position that seems to me untenable, but that she may not really intend. In that event, I will be happy to have provoked a clarification or the dispelling of my misunderstanding. My focus will be upon problems in her account of communal authority and autonomy, especially with respect to religious and political authority. Here my worry is that she places too much trust in trust and not enough in what I call selective mistrust

“Lifted Moments”: Emily Dickinson, Hymn Revision, and the Revival Music Meme-Plex

This essay focuses on Dickinson’s poem “The Soul has Bandaged moments - ” (Fr360), placing it in relation to several interrelated hymns (Independent, Unitarian, and gospel) that share a common pattern of imagery deriving from the popular “Crowning Day” motif. Through a linked sequence of paired readings, it shows how connections between two loosely related texts sharpen and become meaningful when the two texts are brought into dialog with a third text. Juxtaposing three overlapping pairs of lyrics—first by Daniel Webster Whittle and William Channing Gannett, then by Philip Doddridge and Emily Dickinson, and, finally, by Gannett and Dickinson (with a brief coda on Frances Harper)—this essay illustrates how texts that probably did not bear on one another directly may have related to one another indirectly as they worked within and responded to a shared, dynamic network (or meme-plex) of hymns that underwent constant adaptation and recombination throughout the nineteenth century

Technical development and natural rights

Scientific and technical achievements can cause deep changes in spheres of morals and law. I am going to discuss some philosophical conclusions which follow from two significant ideas of contemporary civilization. First of them is a thesis about indistinguishability of natural from artificial, and the second one is an opportunity of creation of artificial human. The first thesis is a consequence of the principle of relativity of physical reality to conditions and a way of observation, on which both interpretations of quantum theory and Einstein’s theories of relativity are based. I show that the given principle deprives us of objective criteria to distinguish natural from artificial, freedom from necessity, freedom from violence. Today power of technique is directed not only on the external world, but also on a person. Due to information technology, and biotechnology an opportunity of creation of artificial and controlled individual increases. So human loses many features of a person and transforms to a part of a collective super individual subject. In modern time a search of the transcendental basis of law and power leads to impersonal human and recognition of super individuality. Traditional belief about natural rights will disappear. There is necessity of revision of such concept as right of freedom. Liberal belief about freedom as a condition of human existence is changing. Prospects of technical development make justified R. Dworkin's reflections about superiority of right of equality in comparison with right of freedom

Logic, Rational Agency, and Intelligent Interaction

... make a plea for recasting logic as a theory of interactive agency, and show how this perspective fits both old achievements and new broader ambitions for the field