Revolution In Philosophy Research Articles

The Resiliency Model

Abstract The health education and prevention professions are in the midst of a philosophical revolution attempting to build upon negative directioned risk reduction programs, which are driven by the medical model, to competency models. Noted psychologists and psychiatrists have suggested that competency and resiliency characteristics are strengths that are more protective than risk reduction efforts. Many suggested traits have been proposed for the resilient individual. This article reviews those characteristics but more importantly, describes the traits within the resiliency model as a process applicable to health education. This expanded view of prevention includes perspectives on the value of personal disruption and adversity as avenues to promote growth and increased protective factors. The process of psychological reintegration is the ability to learn new skills from the disruptive experience and put life's perspective back in a way that will increase abilities to negotiate life events. The model als...

„Philosophieren im Geleit der Geometrie”—Annäherung an Galilei unter mathematikdidaktischem Blickwinkel

There is a triple didactical interest in studying Galileo’s work and life: Galileo discovered and described in a mathematical way the laws of falling bodies, and these laws are an essential part of mathematics education for all and for ever. In addition, Galileo is not only a creative physicist and astronomer but the initiator of a new thinking at all. Our present situation, highly formed by sciences and technologies, can not really be understood without knowing its origins in what is called „Galilean philosophical revolution”. Finally, the main books of Galilei („Dialogo” and „Discorsi”) may be regarded as didactical works themselves as far as Galileo intends to explain scientifical objects by brilliant Platonian dialogues.

Gorilla adaptations to naturalistic environments

In the past few decades there have been increased investigations into the effects of captive environments on behavior. Simultaneously, zoological gardens have undergone a revolution in philosophy and design, resulting in a proliferation of “naturalistic” habitats. Complex environments such as these have been found to affect the behavior of captive animals favorably, including increasing reproductive and rearing success, encouraging the expression of species‐typical behavior patterns, and decreasing abnormal behaviors. In June 1988, Zoo Atlanta completed four naturalistic habitats for western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla). These new habitats afforded a unique opportunity to study the adaptation of lowland gorillas to novel, naturalistic habitats. During the first year of habitation, a total of 451 hours of data were collected on 11 gorillas housed in three harem groups. Focal animal sampling with a behavioral change scoring system was used to obtain information on behavior, substrate, environmental components utilized, and location in sun or shade. Instantaneous scans at 15 minute intervals provided information on location and behavior of all individuals. Adaptation to the environments was assessed by using the indices of: time spent manipulating objects across the course of the study, the percent of the habitats utilized, and the dispersal of individual animals over the habitats. Trends in these behaviors indicated that exploration of the environments significantly decreased, but that this decline in exploration took over six months to occur. Several interpretations of these findings are presented including the unfamiliarity of these naturalistic habitats to these subjects.

Reviews and notes

Polling a People of Paradox Thomas Ferguson and Joel Rogers, Right Turn: The Decline of the Democrats and the Future of American Politics (New York: Hill and Wang, 1986). Richard F. Hamilton and James D. Wright, The State of the Masses (New York: Aldine Publishing Company, 1986). James R. Kluegel and Eliot R. Smith, Beliefs About Inequality: Americans’ Views of What Is and What Ought to Be (New York: Aldine De Gruyter, 1986). Reeve Vanneman and Lynn Weber Cannon, The American Perception of Class (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987). Habermas and the Foundations of Critical Theory, by Rick Roderick, St. Martin's Press, 1986, 194 pages. $12.95. By Raya Dunayevskaya: Women's Liberation and the Dialectics of Revolution: Reaching for the Future (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1985), 308 pp., $38.50 hardcover, $15.95 paper. Rosa Luxemburg, Women's Liberation, and Marx's Philosophy of Revolution (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1982), 250 pp., $19.95 hardcover, $10.95 paper. Philosophy and Revolution from Hegel to Sartre, and from Marx to Mao (New York: Delacorte Press, 1973), out of print. Marxism and Freedom from 1776 until Today (New York: Twayne Publishing, 1958), out of print. Originary Politics: Dick Howard's From Marx to Kant Nomadology: The War Machine by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guatteri, trans. Brian Massumi (New York: Semiotext(e) Press, 1986), 147 pp., $4.95.

Thought and Nature. Studies in Rationalist Philosophy (review)

482 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 26:3JULY 1988 Arthur W. Collins. Thought and Nature. Studiesin RationalistPhilosophy. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1985. Pp. xi + 248. $24-95. "If the revolution in philosophy that Descartes introduced must be set aside... ; if dualism is an irrevocably mysterious metaphysics; and if the idealist epistemology that follows the internalization of all objects of consciousness is inherendy barren, then the roots of Cartesian thinking have to be very much more fully understood than they are understood in current discussions" (23). Thus Collins' rationale for this collection of essays focussing on the metaphysics and epistemology of Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Kant. Collins is a realist in the two-fold sense of holding that an independent physical world exists and that we perceive that world. He believes that careful study of the history of philosophy should aim at the illumination of this commonsense, realistic metaphysics by, presumably, locating and understanding the mistakes which lead away from this realism. Accordingly, having identified one such mistake in the Cartesian "internalization thesis," Collins devotes some space (17-24) to explaining his provocative charge that contemporary behaviorists and materialists, indeed, even some of their most illustrious opponents (e.g., Saul Kripke) share that thesis with Descartes. In addition, he suggests that one way to avoid dualism (as well as behaviorism and mindbrain materialism) might be to abandon the notion "that believing and desiring are things that are present in men, or go on in men" (55). Now this is indeed a way of avoiding dualism, particularly if the analysis is extended to include perception. But it is worth noting that in this latter case it will also allow Collins to avoid the objectionable consequence of the internalization thesis: If perceivings are not "things that are present in men," then perceptual objects, despite their causal origins, will not be such things either. Ironically, this curious view may be a consequence of Collins' own commitment to the internalization thesis, a commitment so deep that, like Thomas Reid whom he quotes with approval (18), Collins is prevented from seeing any alternative to a representationalist interpretation of Descartes' perceptual idea. What Collins misses is that Arnauld sawjust such an alternative when, arguing that he was the true Cartesian, he advanced an "act" interpretation of Descartes ' perceptual idea in the face of Malebranche's "object" account. Although Malebranche's (and Reid's) reading of Descartes has been the overwhelmingly popular one, the failure to discuss Arnauld's other alternative is a serious omission in Thought and Nature, particularly given recent literature on the issue and the avowals expressed in the passage with which I opened this review. Moreover, given Collins' two-fold realism, it is arguable that the omission is self-defeating: without acts a realistic ontology of perception is impossible. Be this as it may, Collins' aim here is not to reap the benefits of historical analysis but, less ambitiously, to do that analysis. And in this, the results are far more satisfying. The essays on Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz are excellent--the Leibniz by itself being worth the price of admission. The two essays on Kant are as full of illuminating details as the earlier essays, but they are less satisfying, mainly because Collins insists on reading Kant as a realist while downplaying all that is inconsistent with realism (196-97; 936-42 ). As good as the Spinoza and Leibniz essays are, however, one omission flaws both of BOOK REVIEWS 483 them, and for this reason is worth especial attention. It occurs first in connection with Spinoza's proof of Proposition I:v (there cannot be two substances with the same attribute). Here Collins deftly discusses the interesting question of why Spinoza "does not try to rule out the possibility that two substances might have one attribute in common but differ nonetheless, not in virtue of the shared attribute, but in virtue of two other attributes, one possessed exclusively by one of the substances and the other possessed exclusively by the other substance" (82-83); indeed, Collins' discussion illuminates the central ambiguity in Spinoza's notorious definition of 'attribute'. But he does not make clear--in fact he is entirely...

The Deep Ecology Movement: A Review

Although Aldo Leopold recognized significance of ecology much earlier, calling it the outstanding discovery of twentieth century, it was not until 1960s with rise of Age of Ecology that wider public became aware of science of ecology and its relevance to environmental matters. During that period foundations were laid for religious and philosophical revolution of first magnitude. As G. Tyler Miller observed: ecological revolution will be most all-encompassing revolution in history of mankind. Warwick Fox added that deep ecologists were contributing to a 'paradigm shift' of comparable significance to that associated with Copernicus. That new philosophical challenge was directed at pervasive metaphysical and ethical anthropocentrism that has dominated Western culture with classical Greek humanism and Judeo-Christian tradition since its inception. ' It is generally acknowledged that Rachel Carson's Silent Spring ushered in what can appropriately be called Age of Ecology. Her attack on pesticides coincided with increasing public awareness of extent of pollution and overall environmental destruction that had taken place since Second World War. Carson's indictment of pesticide use confirmed growing doubts concerning technological ability of humans to manage resources of planet successfully. She also challenged anthropocentrism: 'control of nature' is phrase conceived in arrogance, born of Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy, when it was supposed that nature exists for convenience of man.'2 Given state of environmental deterioration by early 1960s, administration of John F. Kennedy was about to launch third major effort of century (the first two occurred during administrations of two Roosevelts). Secretary of Interior Stewart Udall signaled that effort with publication of The Quiet Crisis in 1963. Like Silent Spring, it too was best seller and outlined conservation crisis. Although there was no extended discussion of Aldo Leopold, in footnote Udall observed that Sand County Almanac was one book that pointed to a noble elegy for American earth and plea for new land ethic. Udall's book, however, reflected dominant American anthropocentric resource approach to environmental crisis. The revolutionary ecocentric ideas of Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and Leopold either

Raya Dunayevskaya, Rosa Luxemburg, Women's Liberation, and Marx's Philosophy of Revolution. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1982. 234 pp. - Raya Dunayevskaya, Women's Liberation and the Dialectics of Revolution: Reaching for the Future. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press International, 1985. 302 pp.

Raya Dunayevskaya, Rosa Luxemburg, Women's Liberation, and Marx's Philosophy of Revolution. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1982. 234 pp. - Raya Dunayevskaya, Women's Liberation and the Dialectics of Revolution: Reaching for the Future. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press International, 1985. 302 pp.

Nominalismus und Gesellschaft

Ever since the so-called linguistic revolution in philosophy, the problem of universals has become the question of whether or not abstract/general terms refer. Nominalism gives a negative answer to that question. But there is, let us say, a Continental side to nominalism which this paper sets out to explore. It examines thesocial consequences of a nominalist approach to questions of knowledge. In particular it looks in detail at 17th century science and Merton's scientific ethos and describes the effects of nominalism as a social norm of research in both fields. According to this interpretation nominalism links up cognitive and social factors. As an intermediary stage the paper examines Nietzsche's analysis of the social function of abstract terms and his view of science. Lastly, the paper indicates how a methodical nominalism can make a significant contribution towards solving the problem of relativism.

Realism and Truth by Michael Devitt, Causal Realism: An Essay on Philosophical Method and the Foundations of Knowledge by John C. Cahalan

BOOK REVIEWS 168 Certainly, a good case can be made for the proposition that the modern revolution in philosophy resulted in no small degree from the changed view of the cosmos wrought by Nicholas of Cusa, Copernicus, Galileo, and others, culminating in a mechanistic world devoid of quality and purpose. The starting point, thus, may have pertained more to ontology than to noetics. But epistemology rather than ontology (or natural philosophy) might still have been the primary base of operations for the philosophers from Descartes to Hume. Indeed, the very agreement upon the mechanical character of the world among the intelligentsia of the early seventeenth century led to the problem of how to reground human knowing after immediate knowledge of the external world had come to be seen as impossible, and here the initial choice was between (1) turning to putative revelatory ("innate") ideas in the mind-rationalism and (2) making the best of sensory and reflective data as all that we haveempiricism . Finally, even if we have misgivings about the argument just offered (and left undeveloped out of concern for keeping this review decently short), the empiricist-rationalist division might still be more significant for us than the alternative division advocated by Loeb. If so, then, after we have given due acknowledgment to other ways of coming at preKantian modern philosophy, we could still legitimately follow the good old " standard" division. Nonetheless, it must be said that Loeb presents his case well. His work deserves to be carefully considered and has the very real merit that it calls us to a healthy reexamination of our entrenched suppositions-a better response than grumpily and peremptorily rejecting proposals that threaten our mental inertia. Dominican House of Studies Washington, D.O. NORMAN E. FENTON, O.P. Realism and Truth. By MICHAEL DEVITT. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984. Pp. ix + 250. $25.00. Causal Realism: An Essay on Philosophical Method and the Foundations of Knowledge. By JOHN C. CAHALAN. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1985. Pp. x + 503. $19.25 (paper); $36.50 (hardbound). Converging views in philosophy-where members of distinct and historically opposed traditions begin to find themselves more and more in mutual agreement-are as time-honored as philosophy itself. In the 164 BOOK BEVIEWS eighteenth century, empiricism and rationalism crept closer together as English and French thought found rapprochement. In the nineteenth century, idealism and scholasticism gave birth to the phenomenological movement which inaugurated the twentieth. So too scholastic realism and analytical empiricism begin to find more cause for common vision as the one polishes its lenses and the other casts away its blinders. Both Realism and Truth and Causal Realism argue for a full-blooded common sense realism and a return from the interstel:ar space of logical constructionism , the first from the analytic, the second from the scholastic perspective . Both books argue for a correspondence theory of truth. But the approaches are so different that the mutual exchange of advantages is far from ready to begin. In Realism and Truth the author defends two particular theories: A. Truth by correspondence: that sentences of a given type are true or false in virtue of their structure, the objective referential relations between their parts and reality, and the objective nature of that reality; B. Realism: that tokens of the most current common-sense, and scientific, physical types objectively exist independently of the mental. Central to the author's case is the logical independence of both A and B, an independence not at all surprising. For clearly an idealist, a realist, a Kantian , and a pragmatist can all assent to A; each will understand objectivity after his fashion. Nor need a realist embrace B; for commitment to the entities of common sense and current science is compatible with a Tarskian theory of truth in which semantic satisfaction is analytically more primitive than referential correspondence. The real heart of the book and its most notable achievement is the sustained app~ication of A and B to various contemporary ontologies. And here the very thorough treatment given current anti-realistic and anti-correspondence programs is enough to recommend the book. But caution, too, is needed. Many will regard the thesis expressed...

農業の工業化と機械技術 : 自然科学と哲学のつながり

農業の工業化と機械技術 : 自然科学と哲学のつながり

Korrespondenz 1773-1788. Volume 1 (review)

596 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 23:4 OCTOBER i98 5 Karl Leonhard Reinhold. Korrespondenz 1773-~788. Volume x. Edited by Reinhard Lauth, Eberhard Heller, and Kurt Hiller. Stuttgart: Friedrich Frommann Verlag /Gtinther Hoolzboog und Verlag der Osterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften , a983. Pp. xxix + 448. 315 DM. Karl Leonhard Reinhold (1757--1825) was the first successful popular expositor and defender of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. His Briefe fiber die kantischePhilosophie,first published in the Teutscher Merkur (a786-87), of which he was an editor, attracted more favorable attention to Kant from the learned public than any other writing. As a journalist, Reinhold in the Briefe said he spoke only of the "results" of the Kantian revolution in philosophy, without troubling the reader with the details of Kant's arguments; but Reinhold was also an accurate student of the more recondite aspects of Kant's work and was, in addition, an original philosopher. Largely on the basis of his exposition of Kant's philosophy to a member of the Weimar government (included here as letter no. 35), he was appointed Professor of Philosophy in Jena. There he lectured on the first Critique to large audiences, fought one of Kant's bitterest opponents, tried to start a journal like the later Kant-Studien, and wrote one of the first theories of knowledge based on Kant, his Versuch einerneuen Theoriedes menschlichen Vorstellungsverm6gens. The Versuch was one of the starting points in the development of post-Kantian German idealism. Like Solomon Maimon, F. H. Jacobi, and J. S. Beck, Reinhold objected to the pervasive dualisms in the Critiqueand attempted to replace them with more basic principles which would give rise to only derivative, not fundamental, dualisms. Instead of beginning, as he thought Kant did, with an irreducible ontological separation of subject and object, Reinhold tried to show how "the fact of consciousness " developed and differentiated itself into subject and intentional object. Hence Reinhold's so-called "Elementarphilosophie" was an important move in the direction from Kant to Fichte, who, incidentally, was Reinhold's successor in Jena. Most of the activity for which Reinhold merits our attention, however, occurred after the closing date of the correspondence in the present volume. The value of this correspondence for the student of the history of philosophy is therefore limited. The only letters likely to interest him are those between Kant and Reinhold, and he already knows them from the Akademie edition of Kant's correspondence. When the present volume is followed by others (approximately five more are projected), the letters included in this volume may assume a greater importance in the light of the later letters, which will undoubtedly have more philosophical content. If one takes a somewhat broader view of German intellectual history, one will find much of interest in Reinhold's early life and correspondence. The first letter is a pathetic complaint from the sixteen-year old novice in a Jesuit school in Vienna, written to his father when the school was closed and the Jesuits were about to be exiled. Reinhold moved into a Barnabite cloister, where he remained for ten years, some of the time as a teacher of philosophy. In 1783, however, he joined a freemasons ' lodge, and was from then on associated with the Illuminati and freemasons in their enlightenment efforts. The editors' notes are filled with information about this BOOK REVIEWS 597 phase of Reinhold's activities, but the threat of censorship or the destruction of letters kept most of this information out of the extant correspondence. Under threat of prosecution, Reinhold went to Leipzig, where he studied under Platner, and thence to Weimar, where he became assistant to Wieland in editing the TeutscherMerkur and married Wieland's daughter. He was converted to Protestantism by Herder, whose side he took in the controversy over Kant's review of the Ideen. The letters are mostly silent on Reinhold's clandestine political activities and his spiritual development; it is only from the copious notes supplied by the assiduous editors that we are able to follow Reinhold's odyssey from "Aberglaube und Unglaube " (as he wrote Kant, letter no. 66) or "from supernaturalism through materialistic atheism, Leibniz-Wolffianism, and theism, to...

Conference Report: The nursing process: revolutionary philosophy or passing phase?

Conference Report: The nursing process: revolutionary philosophy or passing phase?

Reviews : Michael Lowy, The Politics of Combined and Uneven Development, (Verso, 1981) and Raya Dunayevska, Rosa Luxemburg, Women's Liberation and Marx's Philosophy of Revolution (Humanities, 1982)

Reviews : Michael Lowy, The Politics of Combined and Uneven Development, (Verso, 1981) and Raya Dunayevska, Rosa Luxemburg, Women's Liberation and Marx's Philosophy of Revolution (Humanities, 1982)

The Computer Revolution in Philosophy: Philosophy, Science, and Models of Mind.

The Computer Revolution in Philosophy: Philosophy, Science, and Models of Mind.

The Computer Revolution in Philosophy: Philosophy, Science and Models of Mind.

The book presented deep important connections between Artificial Intelligence and Philosophy, based partly on an argument that both philosophy and science are primarily concerned with identifying and explaining possibilities contrary to a common view that science is primarily concerned with laws. The book attempted to show in principle how the construction, testing and debugging of complex computational models, explaining possibilities in a new way, can illuminate a collection of deep philosophical problems, e.g. about the nature of mind, the nature of representation, the nature of mathematical discovery. However it did not claim that this could be done easily or that the problems would be solved soon. 40 years later many of them have still not been solved, including explaining how biological brains made possible the deep mathematical discoveries made millennia ago, long before the development of modern logic, often wrongly assumed to provide foundations for all of mathematics. Later work on these ideas includes the author's Meta-Morphogenesis project, inspired by Alan Turing's work: http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/cogaff/misc/meta-morphogenesis.html Originally published in 1978 by Harvester Press, this went out of print. An electronic version was created from a scanned in copy and then extensively edited with corrections, addtional text, and notes, available online as html or pdf, intermittently updated. This pdf version was created on 2019/07/09.

The Computer Revolution in Philosophy.

The Computer Revolution in Philosophy.

Book Review: The computer revolution in philosophy: Philosophy, science and models of mind

Book Review: The computer revolution in philosophy: Philosophy, science and models of mind

Implications of artificial intelligence

Computer Revolution in Philosophy: Philosophy, Science and Models of Mind. By A. Sloman. Pp.304. (Harvester: Brighton, UK, 1978.) Hardback £12.50; paperback £5.50.

Tacit Knowing: Grounds for a Revolution in Philosophy

Tacit Knowing: Grounds for a Revolution in Philosophy

After Wittgenstein

In recent years the writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein have received much attention from philosophers in general and especially from philosophers interested in religion; and there is no doubt that Wittgenstein's legacy of thought is both highly suggestive and highly problematical. It seems likely, however, that the vogue which Wittgenstein now enjoys owes not a little to his peculiar place in the development of modern philosophy and, in particular, of that empiricist tradition in philosophy which stems from what has been called the revolution in philosophy in the early decades of the present century.