In this essay, I argue that Gilbert Ryle’s 1949 _The Concept of Mind_ owes much to the little-known work of Margaret Macdonald. In 1937, Macdonald presented to Ryle her expansion of the pragmatist ideas she found in C. S. Peirce and F. P. Ramsey: (1) beliefs are dispositions; (2) there is a distinction between _knowledge how_ and _knowledge that_; and (3) laws are inference tickets or rules with which we meet the future. It is my contention that Ryle drew on, (...) without acknowledgment, Macdonald’s presentation of these pillars of the pragmatist position. This argument will not only bring the superb analytic philosopher Margaret Macdonald back into the light where she belongs, but will also elaborate the important insights of pragmatism about generalizations, hypotheses, and causal laws, all of which remain influential. (shrink)

Drawing on social exchange theory, we examine the conditions under which employees’ good intentions motivate them to engage in unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB) and the psychological mechanism behind this behavioral decision. Findings from a time-lagged field study and a scenario study indicate (1) an interactive effect between perceived organizational support and employee performance on UPB; (2) that low performers who perceive high levels of organizational support are more likely to engage in UPB; and (3) that feelings of indebtedness to the (...) organization mediate the interactive effect on UPB. Therefore, the paper highlights the importance of conditional factors in motivating UPB by combining employee ‘good intentions’ and ‘disadvantageous situations’ to understand the UPB decision process. The paper concludes with theoretical and practical implications. (shrink)

Despite of the fact that Reichenbach clearly acknowledged his indebtedness to Hilbert, the influence of this leading mathematician of the time on him is grossly neglected. The present paper demonstrates that the decisive years of the development of Reichenbach as a philosopher of science coincide with, and also partly followed the “philosophical” turn of Hilbert’s mathematics after 1917 that was fixed in the so called “Hilbert’s program”. The paper specifically addresses the fact that after 1917, Hilbert saw the axiomatic method (...) as an instrument for providing the foundations not only of mathematics but also of other sciences. In particular, Hilbert’s axiomatic program was closely connected with the theoretical physics and arguably helped Einstein to discover the general theory of relativity. In this context, one can see Reichenbach’s project to axiomatize Einstein’s theory of relativity as a continuation of this project. Under Russell’s influence, after 1914 Hilbert also developed an interest in mathematical logic. Reichenbach experienced similar transition from axiomatics to logic which went together with turn of his interest from Hilbert to Russell. Reichenbach’s rapprochement to Russell also supported the transition of his interests from epistemology to ontology. (shrink)

Richard Rorty’s naturalism has been characterized as “tactical” rather than “ontological” – a distinction that, while accurate given Rorty’s general avoidance of ontological commitments, has obscured the depth of Darwin’s influence on his thought. This article addresses this oversight by providing a detailed analysis of Rorty’s use of Darwin. The analysis proceeds in two steps. First, it elucidates Darwin’s role in Rorty’s negative project of renouncing Platonism. Second, it highlights Darwin’s importance for Rorty’s positive project of developing an account of (...) linguistic evolution. By pressing the analogy between language and biology, the article reveals that Darwin’s role in Rorty’s work is more than a rhetorical device; it is a substantive influence that shapes his thinking about cultural change in fundamental ways. Unearthing the “evolutionary Rorty” opens new ways to understand his pragmatism, by illuminating the relation between his naturalism and his thinking about cultural change. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉL'interprétation de la philosophie pratique de Donald Davidson proposée par Robert Myers représente correctement maints aspects fondamentaux de sa pensée. Myers soutient à juste titre que Davidson évite les incohérences entre la position internaliste, l'objectivité éthique et le modèle croyance-désir en modifiant des éléments centraux de ce modèle, et que l'alternative proposée par Davidson rend légitime l'extension des arguments de l'interprétation et de la triangulation dans la sphère pratique. Cependant, Myers s’égare à une bifurcation cruciale de la route interprétative. Davidson (...) suit G.E.M. Anscombe sur une voie différente, une voie qui considère les désirs individuels comme constitués en partie par des jugements évaluatifs. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: I II III IV V VI.

G. E. M. Anscombe gave a lecture in 1970 on the shift in attitudes toward usury between medieval and modern times. Over the course of this lecture she says a great deal about the ontology of money. Although she seems less than completely aware of the fact, her discussion marks the difference between a Roman conception of money, according to which money’s proper use destroys it, and Marx’s analysis of capitalist money, which, like a cancer, can grow endlessly. I analyze (...) this discussion of money, identify some of its shortcomings, and connect Anscombe’s lecture to earlier, more familiar strands in her thought. (shrink)

The decline of Naturphilosophie deeply polarized the philosophical and scientific debate. Naturalistic–materialistic positions gained powerful influence, but the latent role of the Kantian critical position also re-emerged in the context of an “ideal-realism”. I will first consider in detail two opposing treatments of Kant’s perspective. After Lotze had criticized his earlier materialistic position, advising him to read Kant, Czolbe finally addressed Kant, thereby progressing to a non-materialistic form of naturalism. However, whether to defend or to dismiss naturalism, neither philosopher addresses (...) Kant as a transcendentalist thinker, and I go on to examine this common feature in their writings. This invites us to reconsider what exactly in Kant’s system conflicts with naturalism. Is transcendentalism too broad a requisite for that task? Within “ideal-realism”, the realist part actually implies a denial of transcendental idealism; still, it shows how a realism which refuses to be naturalism could well learn from Kant. (shrink)

Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community.

In this paper I examine two substantial interpretations of Wittgenstein’s criticisms of Frege’s conception of logic. One is based on Frege’s rejection of psychologism and alleges that this rejection engenders a tension that is resolved in the Tractatus. The other is based on the claim that there are patterns of inference involving what are now known as propositional attitude ascriptions that Frege’s conception of logic is not equipped to handle. I show that neither of these interpretations present a compelling criticism (...) of Frege. I then argue that Wittgenstein inherited from Frege the ideas of affirmation, denial, and the “opposite” of a thought, but came to see that these conflict with Frege’s conception of negation as a truth-function. This leads to the Grundgedanke of the Tractatus: neither negation nor any other “logical constant” is a representative in our picturing of the world. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Locke: Sensibilism and Subjectivism Berkeley and Hume: The Separability Principle and the Paradox of Necessary Relations.

An analysis of theological and philosophical understandings of debt and its role in contemporary capitalism. Max Weber’s account of the rise of capitalism focused on his concept of a Protestant ethic, valuing diligence in earning and saving money but restraint in spending it. However, such individual restraint is foreign to contemporary understandings of finance, which treat ever-increasing consumption and debt as natural, almost essential, for maintaining the economic cycle of buying and selling. In The Debt of the (...) Living, Elettra Stimilli returns to this idea of restraint as ascesis, by analyzing theological and philosophical understandings of debt drawn from a range of figures, including Saint Paul, Schmitt and Agamben, Benjamin and Marx, Nietzsche and Freud, and Foucault. Central to this analysis is the logic of “profit for profit’s sake”—an aspect of Weber’s work that Stimilli believes has been given insufficient attention. Following Foucault, she identifies this as the original mechanism of a capitalist dispositif that feeds not on a goal-directed rationality, but on the self-determining character of human agency. Ascesis is fundamental not because it is characterized by renunciation, but because the self-discipline it imposes converts the properly human quality of action without a predetermined goal into a lack, a fault, or a state of guilt: a debt that cannot be settled. Stimilli argues that this lack, which is impossible to fill, should be seen as the basis of the economy of hedonism and consumption that has governed global economies in recent years and as the premise of the current economy of debt. Elettra Stimilli is research fellow of theoretical philosophy at Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Italy. Arianna Bove is the translator of many books, including Factory of Strategy: Thirty-Three Lessons on Lenin, by Antonio Negri. (shrink)

This book is the first history of odious debt. This five-hundred-year history shows that the origins of debates on legitimate and illegitimate state debts date back to Hugo Grotius’ moral critique of the Spanish Empire. Latin American rebels and rulers harnessed these ideas as they sought to establish what their nations owed the Spanish Crown. Commutative debt continued to shape relations in the Catholic Spanish Empire while contracts became the law of the land in Protestant Europe and North (...) America. With a focus on Mexico, Colombia, and Argentina, this book draws on archival sources in seven countries, overlooked congressional debates, and understudied thinkers. It analyses how officials who drafted Latin America’s first constitutions reconciled Catholic ideas of moral economy with visions of justice embedded in the Protestant law of nations. Debates over slavery, reprisal, and property rights shaped the creation of the new Latin American states. When constitutions failed and interventions over unpaid debts increased, Latin Americans sought to turn the law of nations into a code for a global moral economy. The sanctity of contracts was used to legitimate interventions and yet, as Latin American thinkers countered, the use of violence undermined the sacred purpose of debt: to fulfil the state’s obligations to the community. Today, as China’s global financial expansion grows by the day and international politics are increasingly dominated by debates on reparations, Latin America can reframe what it owes to the world and what the West owes to the rest. (shrink)

This study assessed external debts and the financing of education in Nigeria using time series data obtained from World Bank, and CBN Statistical Bulletin covering a period of 31 years from 1988 -2018. The model of the study was derived, while the data collected were analysed using the Ordinary Least Squares. Diagnostic tests such as Augmented Dickey- Fuller (ADF) unit root test, Johansen co-integration, Vector Error Correction (VEC) techniques of estimation, and Granger Causality tests were all performed. Findings revealed a (...) significant long-run relationship between external debts and the financing of education; external debts have a significant effect (F=39.07055, p<.05) on the financing of education in Nigeria; external debt stock and external debt service payment have no significant effect on the financing of education; real GDP and Exchange rate have a significant effect on the financing of education in Nigeria respectively. Based on these findings, it was concluded that external debt is a big hindrance to the financing of education and consequently, the economic growth of Nigeria. It was recommended amongst others that the government should use borrowed funds from external sources for productive capital projects or development initiatives such as investment in education and the eradication of illiteracy. (shrink)

In this article I discuss the conditions under which sovereign debts are not morally binding for a state. Following an old legal doctrine, I call non-binding debts ‘odious'. I proceed as follows. First, I argue that alternative accounts on the morality of debts are unsatisfactory. The problem these accounts have are that they do not clearly identify the philosophical issues that underlie the notion of odious debts, or that they fail to specify what exactly the immorality of odious debts consists (...) in. Second, I defend the view that a debt is odious when two conditions are satisfied: borrowed funds were used by public officials for purposes for which they were not authorised lenders knew, or should have known, about possible unauthorised uses of those funds. If these two conditions are both satisfied, debts should not be considered debts of the state, but rather personal debts of rulers. Third, I discuss the feasibility of my approach by exploring how it would work in the current world. Finally, I d.. (shrink)

If the present generation refuses to bear the burden of mitigating global heating, could we motivate sufficient action by shifting that burden to our descendants? Several writers have proposed breaking the political impasse by funding mitigation through public debt. Critics attack such proposals as both unjust and infeasible. In fact, there is reason to think that some debt financing may be more equitable than placing the whole burden of mitigation on the present generation. While it might not be (...) viable for all countries to take this route simultaneously, a vanguard state, or group of states, could use public debt to fund an ambitious programme to develop inexpensive forms of clean low- or no-emission technology. This would ensure that vanguard actor or set of actors a leading role in those sectors while at the same time benefiting future generations around the world. -/- Key policy insights: (a) Debt-financed clean technology research can shift part of the burden of greenhouse gas mitigation to our descendants, breaking the political impasse of inaction or delayed action. (b) Far from being an injustice to future generations, this could actually be fairer than expecting the present generation to bear the full burden of mitigation. (c) Such an initiative may be most feasible if pursued by a vanguard actor. (shrink)

In Beyond the Law’s Reach? Shmuel Nili examines the moral responsibilities of affluent democracies toward poorer countries to whose misfortunes they contributed. Because of their entanglement, Nili argues, affluent democracies are (often, but not always) morally barred from pursuing policies more obviously aligned with their moral preferences when another policy would benefit the weakened state more. In this essay, I discuss some of the challenges of trying to repay a moral debt between states. The affluent democracy has incentives to (...) underestimate the extent of its moral debt, while the weakened state benefits from overestimating the harm it suffered. Moreover, since the state is not a unitary actor, different members of a state might disagree on which actions should count as proper forms of atonement. I argue that moral debts cannot ever be fully repaid, but that such impossibility does not undermine the moral requirement to try to pay them; and, further, that the inability to fully settle a moral debt is not a shortcoming to lament, but closer to a blessing in disguise, because acknowledging past misdeeds and embracing the moral implications of deep entanglement may foster greater reciprocity and solidarity in the international realm. (shrink)

contents i. death and the mask ii. shifts in the TTC ad-space iii. a virus in a superposition iv. this virus has totally hacked us v. a test of Bayesian competence vi. a siege on the Local, by the Global vii. re lab-leak theory: God did it viii. we held ourselves apart by this telescope ix. Google knows we'll all be dead x. Uber gets us all to surveil xi. Netflix pretends to be my friend xii. can teleCOMM map my (...) interior? xiii. Library's a hi-rise, in lockdown xiv. so could the A.I. announce itself xv. N_BossTRON, Surveillance Daemon xvi. prediction markets make War Profiteers xvii. hide Fish in sea, Bird in forest xviii. the DJ and the human, too much credit xix. dumb TV, an ingenious production xx. WE THE NORTH xxi. Debt: The First 5,000 Years xxii. Theses on Kingship xxiii. when i google Zeus xxiv. your Hardcore History xxv. consumerism a pacification campaign xxvi. fascism is quiet now xxvii. a Chomsky need keep record. (shrink)

The government debt portfolio is usually the largest financial portfolio in the country. It often contains complex and risky financial structures and can generate significant risk to the state budget and the country’s financial stability. Therefore, governments are required to have sound risk management and sound public debt structures to limit exposure to market risk, debt financing or rolling risk, liquidity risk, credit, settlement and operational risk. In recent years, the debt market crises have highlighted the (...) importance of sound public debt management practices and related risks, and the need for an effective and well-developed domestic capital market. This may reduce the vulnerability of the economy to adverse economic and financial shocks. However, it is also important for the government to maintain a macroeconomic policy that ensures sound fiscal and monetary management. The aim of the research is to present the theoretical and practical aspects of extremely important issues such as public debt management and to indicate the most important implications for the financial stability of the country on the example of the Polish economy. The study uses a research method based on literature studies in the field of macroeconomics, economic policy and finance, as well as statistical analysis of the studied phenomenon. Results of research indicate that effective public debt management can reduce the economy’s vulnerability to financial threats, contribute to the financial stability of the country, maintain debt stability and protect the government’s reputation among investors. (shrink)

The dollar‑centric financial order entrenches asymmetry, externalises ecological costs, and records defensive load as growth. This paper proposes a counter‑model: a Global Commonwealth built on four structural invariants — Visibility, Symmetry, Contestability, and Repair — extended to the planetary scale. At its core is a Neutral Clearing Union with a Bancor unit of account, whose exchange rates are determined not by speculation but by each nation's value efficiency (nF/TPE), measured through Durable Flourishing Indices (DFIs). Surpluses trigger automatic demurrage, reinvested into (...) repair. New Bancors are minted only when defensive load decreases, aligning currency creation with flourishing. The Five Articles of Perpetual Commonwealth articulate reciprocity, law, visibility, dialogue, and repair as functional prerequisites for trust among nations. For BRICS and the Global South, this architecture offers a cooperative alternative to IMF conditionality and neoliberal austerity: debt denominated in flourishing, not dollars. The paper outlines institutional prototypes — Moralogy Institute, Court of Repair, Neutral Clearing Union — and sketches pathways for pilot implementation within BRICS+ frameworks. -/- . (shrink)

Polanyi spoke of the commodification of money, and this chapter focuses on how interest-bearing debt became the major dynamic, also contributing to the commodification of land and labor. By the late third millennium BC the main way to obtain manual labor was to lend money and make debtors work off their debts as an antichretic interest charge. Personal debt became the lever for creditors to pry land out of the clan-based tenure system, mainly for sale under economic duress. (...) Debtors who pledged their crop or land rights usually ended up forfeiting them. This alienation catalyzed the ‘commodification’ of land. By tracing these debt dynamics, the new economic archaeology is compatible with Polanyi’s intuitions and recognition that market relations are embedded in social relations, and extends his analysis in tracing how administered pricing and monetary valuations created the preconditions for market exchange. The earliest markets, credit and land tenure systems were regulated. Administered pricing was a precondition for creating weights, measures and price equivalencies to enable market exchange to evolve more flexibly. (shrink)

This paper critically evaluates Peter Singer’s effective altruism (EA) from the perspective of economic justice. It argues that the focus on individual charitable actions may overlook the structural causes of global poverty, particularly the systemic role of interest-bearing debt. While Singer’s utilitarian framework prioritizes measurable and cost-effective interventions to alleviate suffering, this paper contends that such an approach, when overly concentrated on quantifiable outcomes, may hinder long-term justice and reform. Drawing on historical, ethical, and contemporary economic insights, the paper (...) highlights how modern debt structures perpetuate inequality and moral harm. It proposes that effective altruism must expand its focus to include advocacy for systemic change, such as debt relief, financial regulation, and institutional reform, in order to maintain ethical adequacy and genuinely address global suffering. (shrink)

This article examines the ambivalence of debt as a simultaneously moral and economic category. It argues that debt traverses two axes: existential and economic indebtedness, and debt as either mutuality or domination. Drawing on biblical prohibitions of usury, Jubilee legislation, medieval scholastic debates, and modern social contract theory, the article contends that the moral problem is not debt per se but its severance from covenantal relations of shared risk, trust, and limit. In premodern traditions, economic exchange (...) was subordinated to prior moral and political bonds; by contrast, financialised capitalism abstracts debt from these relations, treating it as a neutral instrument of contract between autonomous individuals. The result is a governance regime in which indebtedness concentrates power and erodes democratic agency. Recovering a theological grammar of mutuality enables a distinction between restorative and extractive debt, and offers resources for re-embedding economic life within just and participatory forms of common life. (shrink)

In contemporary society, private debt has substituted for other ways of financing the consumption of basic social goods like housing, education, and medical care. This is at least partially due to increased inequality, which has allowed costs to rise faster than median incomes, as well as due to stagnating public provisions. Debt-financed access to basic goods is problematic because it creates new kinds of unfreedom and undermines the value of the freedoms that the indebted do manage to keep (...) or acquire. Debt-financing qualifies freedom in this way by placing certain kinds of conditions on our acquisition and consumption of the goods that we buy. These conditions compromise the very freedom that we seek and value when acquiring and consuming these goods. It does so, first, by transferring the burden of providing basic goods from the public to private individuals, thereby further constraining those who already face the most constraints in accessing basic goods. And, second, the conditional character of debt-financed consumption undermines the value that we attach to having basic social goods. At the very least, this gives us strong reasons to want to regulate the conditions that creditors can place on debtors, at least with respect to basic social goods. Further, at best, the most desirable alternative to debt-financed consumption is the unconditional public provision of basic goods like housing, education, and medical care. (shrink)

This article discusses the way the ancient Greeks dealt with public and private debts, focusing on one specific aspect: debt cancellation. On the one hand, ancient Greeks were aware of the risks entailed in debt relief as a tool for fuelling civic strife: sources describe it as a demagogic or even criminal action often in association with the political agenda of tyrants. On the other hand, however, Greeks knew well also the benefic effects of debt cancellation in (...) coping with financial and political crisis. In late accounts of archaic history, debt relief is the solution to civic strife and the foundation act of political order. Some public decrees of the Hellenistic period attest debt relief as a communal decision of the polis, dictated by the necessity of preventing or solving ongoing or imminent crises. This second meaning and purpose of debt cancellation should perhaps urge us to reconsider from a different perspective the “politics of debt” in today’s Europe. (shrink)

This essay examines the concept of sovereign debt in both political‐economic and theological registers. Elaborating the dynamics of monetary economy, I demonstrate how postures of indebtedness characterize the relationship between sovereign power and the governed. While taxation signals the debt of obedience and fealty owed to sovereignty, the monetary circuit reveals that sovereign power exists in a state of indebtedness to the governed. The morally valenced proximity between debt and guilt helps to perpetuate such relations. Tracing these (...) resonances and resemblances in the theological realm, I consider the centrality of debt as a structuring principle in key soteriological traditions within Christian thought. Not only does God appear to uphold debt logic, but God, I claim, becomes identified with debt and marked as a debtor. The divine sovereign as debtor and as enforcing debt provides cues for earthly sovereigns and legitimates cultures of debt. In light of the theopolitical legacy in the West, the mutual influence between theology and the political realm, refiguring this set of influential theological concepts may prove helpful in decentering debt as a governing principle in modern life. (shrink)

The article explores a range of social scientific representations of credit and debt in the United States and Britain and how these have been organized around the problem of freedom. On the one hand, credit is projected as productive, embodying and securing liberal values of individual autonomy and self-determination. On the other, debt is portrayed as consumptive, ensnaring the individual, subverting her or his will and undermining the capacity for self-determination. The classic cultural injunction against consumer borrowing is (...) captured under the rubric of the Puritan ethic which portrays indebtedness as contrary to the values of individual freedom and autonomy; however, it is shown here how the meanings attached to credit and debt have always been ambiguous in practice. Over the 20th century, and continuing today, a number of economic writers have attempted to legitimize the development of consumer credit by demonstrating how it contributes towards freedom and security. However, it is shown how these accounts shift in response to changing economic discourses as well as credit’s growing pervasiveness. In contrast, sociological writers have tended to criticize the accumulation of debt as damaging to both individual autonomy and societal welfare. Again, these accounts also manifest a notable change in emphasis over time in response to shifting constructions of the problem of social change. Finally, recent empirical work is drawn upon to demonstrate the ways in which freedom itself can be a contingent and contextual element in the production of consumer credit. (shrink)

This article examines the contrasting conceptions of gratitude in Early Confucian and Western philosophy. It focuses on a key difference: the presence of the notion of ‘debts of gratitude’ in Western thought and its absence in Confucianism. We explore how this difference is rooted in contrasting ethical outlooks and values. Western philosophy often conceives of gratitude as a duty of reciprocation, furthering the values of social equality and individual autonomy. By contrast, Early Confucians viewed gratitude as proper acknowledgement that strengthens (...) social relationships that are part of an ongoing collective project, spanning generations. This view reflects the importance of values such as community, harmony, and ritual propriety in Confucianism. Unlike the Western context, in the Early Confucian social world, there was no role for ‘debts of gratitude’ to play. There were no Confucian values that ‘debts of gratitude’ would help to realize, or would be responsive to, in the way that debts of gratitude further the values of equality and independence in the West. We conclude by noting that some Western philosophers express ideas about gratitude in collaborative contexts that align with Confucian ideas, suggesting some shared elements between Confucian and Western ethical outlooks. (shrink)