Thisnesses, Propositions, and Truth

Presentists, who believe that only present objects exist, should accept a thisness ontology, since it can do considerable work in defence of presentism. In this paper, I propose a version of presentism that involves thisnesses of past and present entities and I argue this view solves important problems facing standard versions of presentism

How Secular Should Democracy Be? A Cross-Disciplinary Study of Catholicism and Islam in Promoting Public Reason

I argue that the same factors (strategic and principled) that motivated Catholicism to champion liberal democracy are the same that motivate 21st Century Islam to do the same. I defend this claim by linking political liberalism to democratic secularism. Distinguishing institutional, political, and epistemic dimensions of democratic secularism, I show that moderate forms of political and epistemic secularism are most conducive to fostering the kind of public reasoning essential to democratic legitimacy. This demonstration draws upon the ambivalent impact of Indonesia’s Islamic parties in advancing universal social justice aims as against more sectarian policies

Mental stress acutely affects blood flow mechanics in the abdominal aorta [abstract]

Abstract only availableMental stress has deleterious cardiovascular effects and predicts adverse outcomes. However, detailed accounts of blood flow mechanics under mentally stressful conditions are lacking. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of acute mental stress on abdominal aortic hemodynamics. Thirteen rabbits were chronically instrumented for measurement of blood velocity and pressure in the abdominal aorta. All measurements were taken at baseline and after two minutes of air jet-induced mental stress in conscious animals. On a separate occasion, the same rabbits were taken through a sham procedure as a control. Raw velocity and pressure waveforms were acquired at 100 Hz and analyzed offline by a blinded investigator. Recordings were filtered at 50 Hz, and 10-sec blocks of artifact-free data were selected for analysis. Waveforms were converted from the time to frequency domain via 256-point averaging FFT to yield corresponding velocity and pressure spectra. Impedance was calculated as the ratio of pressure to velocity moduli; characteristic impedance was taken as the average of all moduli above 5 Hz. The effect of mental stress on hemodynamic parameters was assessed via two-way repeated measures ANOVA. Acute mental stress increased heart rate (P < 0.001) and mean aortic flow velocity (P = 0.042), as well as aortic mean (P < 0.001), systolic (P < 0.001), diastolic (P < 0.001), and pulse pressures (P = 0.002). Stress also increased characteristic impedance (P = 0.021), a measure of aortic stiffness, but had no effect on resistance (P = 0.208) or reflection coefficient (P = 0.224). However, stress did increase the effect of wave reflection on diastolic (P = 0.002) and pulse (P = 0.006) pressures, but not systolic (P = 0.666) pressure. These results indicate that acute mental stress induces hemodynamic changes in the abdominal aorta.National Institutes of Health, Office of Naval Researc

Vico’s New Science of Interpretation: Beyond Philosophical Hermeneutics and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion

The article situates Vico\u27s hermeneutical science of history between a hermeneutics of suspicion (Ricoeur, Habermas, Freud) and a redemptive hermeneutics (Gadamer, Benjamin). It discusses Vico\u27s early writings and his ambivalent trajectory from Cartesian rationalism to counter-enlightenment historicist and critic of natural law reasoning. The complexity of Vico\u27s thinking belies some of the popular treatments of his thought developed by Isaiah Berlin and others

Late Pragmatism, Logical Positivism, and Their Aftermath

Developments in Anglo-American philosophy during the first half of the 20th Century closely tracked developments that were occurring in continental philosophy during this period. This should not surprise us. Aside from the fertile communication between these ostensibly separate traditions, both were responding to problems associated with the rise of mass society. Rabid nationalism, corporate statism, and totalitarianism (Left and Right) posed a profound challenge to the idealistic rationalism of neo-Kantian and neo-Hegelian philosophies. The decline of the individual – classically conceived by the 18th-century Enlightenment as a self-determining agent – provoked strong reactions. While some philosophical tendencies sought to re-conceive the relationship between individual, society, and nature in more organic ways that radically departed from the subjectivism associated with classical Cartesianism, other tendencies sought to do just the opposite. This is one way of putting the difference between the two major movements within Anglo-American philosophy that I will be discussing in this essay. American pragmatism, which achieved the pinnacle of its popularity prior to 1940, traces its lineage back to empiricism as well as German Idealism. With the exception of William James, who is best known for his defense of radical empiricism, the other two important 20th century pragmatists, John Dewey (1859–1952) and George Herbert Mead (1863–1931), embraced a post-metaphysical version of Hegelian dialectics that was starkly antithetical to both Cartesian rationalism and atomistic empiricism. By contrast, logical positivism, which maintained a lively hold on Anglo-American thought as late as the sixties, reacted against Hegelian philosophy in all its forms, and accordingly resurrected both the Cartesian method of conceptual (logical) analysis as well as its atomistic ontology. In this respect, positivism is closer in spirit to Husserlian phenomenology and French structuralism, while pragmatism is closer in spirit to Heideggerian existentialism and its French progeny (the outstanding exception being Sartre’s early Cartesian existentialism). As a general rule, the pragmatists’ embrace of methodological holism served as counterpoint to the positivists’ endorsement of methodological individualism. However, in contrast to their continental counterparts, pragmatists and positivists shared the naturalistic approach to philosophical explanation that had been the hallmark of Anglo-American philosophy since Bacon

Critical Theory and Global Development

This chapter explores recent research by critical theorists concerning theories of (under)development. Drawing from the research of Thomas McCarthy, Axel Honneth, Jurgen Habermas, Amy Allen, Nancy Fraser, and others, the author explores some of the divergent responses critical theorists have given toward the theory and practice of global developmental assistance. Some theorists defending a strong modernist approach to development (e.g., McCarthy, Habermas and Honneth) appear to endorse a logic of development that works within a domesticated model of capitalist markets and lending practices; others (Allen and Fraser) reject this approach. The chapter raises questions about how development that fits within the traditional emancipatory aim of critical theory must also be (democratically?) empowering. Finally, it raises deeper philosophical questions about whether such a critical theory of development must or should instantiate a concept of progress and whether progress so construed should be interpreted principally in terms of expanding freedom (emancipation and empowerment) or simply expanding social welfare opportunity

Foucault and Habermas

The article is a comprehensive comparison of Foucault and Habermas which focuses on their distinctive styles of critical theory. The article maintains that Foucault\u27s virtue ethical understanding of aesthetic self-realization as a form of resistance to normalizing practices provides counterpoint to Habermas\u27s more juridical approach to institutional justice and the critique of ideology. The article contains an extensive discussion of their respective treatments of speech action, both strategic and communicative, and concludes by addressing Foucault\u27s understanding of parrhesia as a non-discursive form of truth-telling