By Clément RossetEdited and translated by David F. Bell (NHC Fellow, 1990–91) In Joyful Cruelty, Clément Rosset attempts to formulate a philosophical practice that refuses to turn away from the world and thereby accepts a confrontation with reality (what he calls real) in all of its immediacy. Such a direct confrontation, in the absence of … Continued
Edited by Barry Loewer (NHC Fellow, 1988–89) and Georges Rey Even in the eyes of many of his critics, Fodor is widely regarded as the most important philosopher of psychology of his generation. With Noam Chomsky at MIT in the 1960s he mounted a strenuous attack on the behaviourism that then dominated psychology and most … Continued
By W. D. Falk (NHC Fellow, 1979–80)
Edited by Michael D. Bayles (NHC Fellow, 1984–85) During the last half of the twentieth century, legal philosophy (or legal theory or jurisprudence) has grown significantly. It is no longer the do main of a few isolated scholars in law and philosophy. Hundreds of scho lars from diverse fields attend international meetings on the subject. … Continued
By William G. Lycan (NHC Fellow, 1998–99) Logicians have written a great deal on the semantics of conditional sentences. This book contends that insufficient attention has been paid to the syntax of conditionals, as investigated by linguists. Syntactic data are used to make the case that "If"-clauses tacitly quantify over items called "events," "circumstances," or … Continued
By Ronald N. Giere (NHC Fellow, 1997–98) Debate over the nature of science has recently moved from the halls of academia into the public sphere, where it has taken shape as the "science wars." At issue is the question of whether scientific knowledge is objective and universal or socially mediated, whether scientific truths are independent … Continued
By Ruth W. Grant (NHC Fellow, 1999–00) Incentives can be found everywhere—in schools, businesses, factories, and government—influencing people’s choices about almost everything, from financial decisions and tobacco use to exercise and child rearing. So long as people have a choice, incentives seem innocuous. But Strings Attached demonstrates that when incentives are viewed as a kind of power … Continued
By Ian Proops (NHC Fellow, 2012–13) Kant conceived of 'critique' as a kind of winnowing exercise, with the aim of separating the wheat of good metaphysics from the chaff of bad. He used a less familiar metaphor to make this point, namely, that of 'the fiery test of critique'-not a medieval ordeal of trial by … Continued
Edited by Bruce Kapferer (NHC Fellow, 2004–05) The powerful individualist and subjectivist turn in anthropology – a turn that cannot be easily separated from larger political processes of neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism – is one factor resulting in notions of the social and of society as becoming little else than empty shells of small or no … Continued
By Ludwig WittgensteinTranslated by M. S. Lourenço (NHC Fellow, 1979–80) A Portuguese translation of Wittgenstein's classic Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.