Abstract:How might identity and identity politics inform music teachers' practices and assumptions about disability? In this article, we engage in a critical discussion about how music educators might respond to disability. This article is presented in three parts as a collaborative dialogue between the two authors, using the landscape of identity politics to frame the discussion. In the first part, Warren Churchill discusses Tobin Siebers' theorizing of "the ideology of ability" as it relates to music education's dominant response to (...) disability. Building on his idea of "complex embodiment," Siebers lays out a justification for disabled individuals to actively engage in identity politics for self-advocacy. Churchill connects Siebers' ideology to Joseph Abramo's epistemology of sound. In the second part, Cara Faith Bernard makes a counter-argument against deploying identity politics in the music classroom, drawing upon Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's notion of strategic essentialism to examine its potential risks with regards to music education curricula, in which essentialism may lead to establishing detrimental "best practices" for students. Thereafter, in Part Three, the authors join together to make sense of these seemingly contradictory philosophical outlooks on identity politics, in the hope of furthering conversation about music education's ongoing response to disability. (shrink)

International Law in Context is a pedagogy-forward textbook. It reflects the recent paradigm shift in legal education, which focuses more on what students actually learn rather than the material to which they are exposed. The text aims to prepare the next generation of U.S. lawyers to engage with our interconnected world and to critically evaluate the U.S.'s role within the international legal order. The work is divided into three parts that accomplish these goals. Part One lays a foundation. It covers (...) the various actors within the system, the theories that help explain their behavior, and the principles and sources of law they create. Part Two turns to the fora that define and support the international order, the historical and political contexts that impacted their design, and their efficacy. Part Three is a capstone section that asks students to weave together everything they have learned in Parts One and Two. Students will engage in normative development regarding climate change, including the existing international treaty regime and U.S. implementation options, and the law of war in the modern age. The cornerstone of this book is its organization. The text groups material into conceptual frameworks that promote understanding and retention. For example, rather than consider the various dispute resolution fora in isolation, Part Two asks students to consider them in the context of what types of disputes arise and what legal rules can be employed to resolve them in various international and domestic fora. The institutions also are presented in chronology. In this way, students are encouraged to chart the developmental progression and to make connections and comparisons between various institutions. The use of conceptual frameworks continues within each part. For example, Chapter Six covers the sovereign State as a conflict resolution forum. Under this umbrella, the author discusses (a) State Jurisdiction; (b) The Reception of International Law into the Domestic Sphere; (c) The Qualification as a State Forum or State Litigant (i.e., Recognition of States & Governments); and (d) Protections Afforded Within the Forum: Sovereign, Diplomatic, and Consular Immunity. A typical coursebook might locate this material in four different chapters. The conceptual framework approach, however, allows students to see the big picture and the relationship between concepts. In addition to the frameworks, there are several other innovative pedagogical devices that support student learning. There are Foundation Questions that initially direct readers through the material and cumulatively help students confirm whether they have grasped key takeaways from each section. There also are Assessment Sets in each section, which provide students with immediate opportunities to apply material and gauge their understanding, and "Why Is This Important (a/k/a WITI Moment)" prompts designed to delve deeper into the underpinnings and consequences of various rules. Finally, there are directed reading notes before some more complex readings and margin annotations to keep readers oriented. (shrink)

The ancient philosophical school of Epicureanism tried to argue that death is "nothing to us." Were they right? James Warren provides a comprehensive study and articulation of the interlocking arguments against the fear of death found not only in the writings of Epicurus himself, but also in Lucretius' poem De rerum natura and in Philodemus' work De morte. These arguments are central to the Epicurean project of providing ataraxia (freedom from anxiety) and therefore central to an understanding of Epicureanism (...) as a whole. They also offer significant resources for modern discussions of the value of death--one which stands at the intersection of metaphysics and ethics. If death is the end of the subject, and the subject can not be benefited nor harmed after death, is it reasonable nevertheless to fear the ceasing-to-be? If the Epicureans are not right to claim that the dead can neither be benefited nor harmed, what alternative models might be offered for understanding the harm done by death and do these alternatives suffer from any further difficulties? The discussion involves consideration of both ethical and metaphysical topics since it requires analysis not only of the nature of a good life but also the nature of personal identity and time. A number of modern philosophers have offered criticisms or defences of the Epicureans' views. Warren explores and evaluates these in the light of a systematic and detailed study of the precise form and intention of the Epicureans' original arguments. Warren argues that the Epicureans also were interested in showing that mortality is not to be regretted and that premature death is not to be feared. Their arguments for these conclusions are to be found in their positive conception of the nature of a good and complete life, which divorce the completeness of a life as far as possible from considerations of its duration. Later chapters investigate the nature of a life lived without the fear of death and pose serious problems for the Epicureans being able to allow any concern for the post mortem future and being able to offer a positive reason for prolonging a life which is already complete in their terms. (shrink)

The Epicurean philosophical system has enjoyed much recent scrutiny, but the question of its philosophical ancestry remains largely neglected. It has often been thought that Epicurus owed only his physical theory of atomism to the fifth-century BC philosopher Democritus, but this study finds that there is much in his ethical thought which can be traced to Democritus. It also finds important influences on Epicurus in Democritus' fourth-century followers such as Anaxarchus and Pyrrho, and in Epicurus' disagreements with his own Democritean (...) teacher Nausiphanes. The result is not only a fascinating reconstruction of a lost tradition, but also an important contribution to the philosophical interpretation of Epicureanism, bearing especially on its ideal of tranquillity and on the relation of ethics to physics. (shrink)

We face reality presented with the data of conscious experience and nothing else. The project of early modern philosophy was to build a complete theory of the world from this starting point, with no cheating. Crucial to this starting point is the data of conscious sensory experience – sense data. Attempts to avoid this project often argue that the very idea of sense data is confused. But the sense-data way of talking, the sense-data language, can be freed from every blemish (...) using ideas from contemporary metaontology. We can adopt a sense-data framework that vindicates the traditional claims of sense-data theories and leads to plausible theories of perception and color. We can, we should, and in a sense, we must. Yet when we do, we face the traditional problem of external world skepticism, head-on. The real challenge of skepticism is forced upon us; it cannot honestly be avoided using externalist tricks, burden of proof shifting, or other razzle dazzle. But the challenge can be met: we are rational to posit the external world as the best explanation of the many synchronic and diachronic patterns over our sense-data. This paper argues for all of these points and ends with a plea for analytic empiricism – a traditional sense-data version of empiricism that uses all of the tools of analytic philosophy while avoiding the more questionable doctrines of the Vienna Circle (phenomenalism, verificationism). Analytic empiricism is our last best hope for completing the great philosophical project of early modern philosophy. (shrink)

How do we teach for human dignity in a context where life is, generally speaking, not treated as precious? How do we carve spaces for humanity amidst inhumane contexts? In this paper, five experienced teachers share how they work from the cracks to expand spaces for human dignity in their schools. They write and act as teacher-philosophers, dually considering it means to teach for human dignity and practically speaking how it can be done.

Once upon a time, logical conventionalism was the most popular philosophical theory of logic. It was heavily favored by empiricists, logical positivists, and naturalists. According to logical conventionalism, linguistic conventions explain logical truth, validity, and modality. And conventions themselves are merely syntactic rules of language use, including inference rules. Logical conventionalism promised to eliminate mystery from the philosophy of logic by showing that both the metaphysics and epistemology of logic fit into a scientific picture of reality. For naturalists of all (...) stripes, this was paradise. Alas, paradise was lost. By the end of the twentieth century, logical conventionalism had been almost universally abandoned. But more recently, it has been revitalized. This chapter provides an overview of logical conventionalism and its history, clears away misunderstandings, and briefly responds to both the canonical objections to conventionalism (from Quine, Dummett, Boghossian, and many others) as well as new objections (from Field and Golan). From paradise lost, to paradise regained: logical conventionalism is back. (shrink)

In this article, I show how Bruschi’s Le matérialisme politique de Louis Althusser offers, against all attempts conjure up a self-generating general theory of history, a reconstruction of Althusser’s work that shows how its systematicity relies upon the unfinished, incomplete and provisional character of scientific research, always subject to constant rectification. I then claim that, from the conceptualisa-tion of the reproduction of the mode of production as dependent upon the singularity of the con-juncture, to the theorisation of the encounter as (...) the source of historical necessity, this constant re-working is crucial to Althusser’s ability to grasp the reality of class struggle. (shrink)

Why another book on Berkeley? For one thing, because he is so curiously modern. He was one of the pioneers of the empiricism and nominalism so popular today. He discussed with great clearness many of the issues with which present-day philosophers are concerned--the status of sense-data, the nature of causation, the relation of primary to secondary qualities, the problems of universals, the importance of language, the existence of other selves, and how we communicate with them.

Because of the “all-or-none” character of nervous activity, neural events and the relations among them can be treated by means of propositional logic. It is found that the behavior of every net can be described in these terms, with the addition of more complicated logical means for nets containing circles; and that for any logical expression satisfying certain conditions, one can find a net behaving in the fashion it describes. It is shown that many particular choices among possible neurophysiological assumptions (...) are equivalent, in the sense that for every net behaving under one assumption, there exists another net which behaves under the other and gives the same results, although perhaps not in the same time. Various applications of the calculus are discussed. (shrink)

Renouvier's place in nineteenth-century French thought -- Renouvier's critique of Comtean positivism -- Renouvier and mathematics -- Renouvier on evolution -- Kant, free will, and the social contract -- Hypothesis and convention in Renouvier's philosophy of science.

Writings by a thinker—a psychiatrist, a philosopher, a cybernetician, and a poet—whose ideas about mind and brain were far ahead of his time. Warren S. McCulloch was an original thinker, in many respects far ahead of his time. McCulloch, who was a psychiatrist, a philosopher, a teacher, a mathematician, and a poet, termed his work “experimental epistemology.” He said, “There is one answer, only one, toward which I've groped for thirty years: to find out how brains work.” Embodiments of (...) Mind, first published more than fifty years ago, teems with intriguing concepts about the mind/brain that are highly relevant to recent developments in neuroscience and neural networks. It includes two classic papers coauthored with Walter Pitts, one of which applies Boolean algebra to neurons considered as gates, and the other of which shows the kind of nervous circuitry that could be used in perceiving universals. These first models are part of the basis of artificial intelligence. Chapters range from “What Is a Number, that a Man May Know It, and a Man, that He May Know a Number,” and “Why the Mind Is in the Head,” to “What the Frog's Eye Tells the Frog's Brain” (with Jerome Lettvin, Humberto Maturana, and Walter Pitts), “Machines that Think and Want,” and “A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity” (with Walter Pitts). Embodiments of Mind concludes with a selection of McCulloch's poems and sonnets. This reissued edition offers a new foreword and a biographical essay by McCulloch's one-time research assistant, the neuroscientist and computer scientist Michael Arbib. (shrink)

Warren Quinn was widely regarded as a moral philosopher of remarkable talent. This collection of his most important contributions to moral philosophy and the philosophy of action has been edited for publication by Philippa Foot. Quinn laid out the foundations for an anti-utilitarian moral philosophy that was critical of much contemporary work in ethics, such as the anti-realism of Gilbert Harman and the neo-subjectivism of Bernard Williams. Quinn's own distinctive moral theory is developed in the discussion of substantial, practical (...) moral issues. For example, there are important pieces here on the permissibility of abortion, the justification of punishing criminals when no particular good seems likely to result, and on the distinction between killing and allowing to die, a distinction crucial to the subject of euthanasia and other topics in medical ethics. The volume would be ideally suited to upper-level undergraduate courses and graduate seminars on the foundations of ethics. (shrink)

Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0048-3915%28198923%2918%3A4%3C334%3AAIACTD%3E2.0.CO%3B2-P..

Historical injustice and global inequality are basic problems embedded in territorial rights. In Global Justice and Territory Cara Nine advances a general theory of territorial rights adapting a theoretical framework from natural law theory to ground all territorial claims.

Objective Standards of care regarding obstetric management of life-threatening anomalies are not defined. It is hypothesised that physicians' management of these pregnancies is variable and influenced by demographic factors. Design A questionnaire was mailed to members of the Society of Maternal–Fetal Medicine with valid US addresses assessing obstetric management of both ‘uniformly lethal’ (eg, anencephaly, renal agenesis) and ‘uniformly severe, commonly lethal’ (eg, trisomy 13 and 18) anomalies. Respondents were asked to answer as if not limited by state/institutional restrictions. Fisher's (...) exact or χ2 tests were used as appropriate and correction made for multiple comparisons in analyses that were not prespecified. Results The response rate was 36% (732/2038). Nearly 100% of respondents discuss termination for both uniformly and commonly lethal anomalies. In continuing pregnancies, with patient request for obstetric non-intervention 99% of providers would comply for either uniformly or commonly lethal anomalies. The majority ‘encourage’ such management, but some were non-directive or discouraged this management. In continuing pregnancies, with patient request for full obstetric intervention the majority of respondents was willing to comply for both uniformly (71%) and commonly (82%) lethal anomalies. While most practitioners ‘discouraged’ full intervention, some were non-directive or encouraged this management. Demographics and severity of anomaly influenced counselling. Conclusion Discrepancies exist regarding the management of life-threatening fetal anomalies. Patients may be offered different options based on practitioner demographics. The majority of physicians comply with patient wishes. Differences were noted when comparing the management of lethal with that of severe commonly lethal anomalies, suggesting that practitioners make a distinction when counselling patients. (shrink)

This book evaluates the consequences of economic, social, environmental and cultural change on people living and working within Teesside in the North-East of England. It assesses the lived experiences, working lives, health and cultural perspectives of residents and key stakeholders in the wake of serious de-industralisation in the region. The narrative is embedded within the long-term industrial history of Stockton: an area once dominated by steel, coal and chemical industries. This past still continues to shape its future and influences the (...) ways in which that future is conceived and envisioned. The author explores a 'biography of place' analytical framework to offer a holistic view of the area, which considers the interaction between the social, economic, cultural, visual and environmental legacy of the community, which is firmly grounded in the past, present and future prospects of those who live and work there. (shrink)

Predictive genetic testing is now routinely offered to asymptomatic adults at risk for genetic disease. However, testing of minors at risk for adult-onset conditions, where no treatment or preventive intervention exists, has evoked greater controversy and inspired a debate spanning two decades. This review aims to provide a detailed longitudinal analysis and concludes by examining the debate's current status and prospects for the future. Fifty-three relevant theoretical papers published between 1990 and December 2010 were identified, and interpretative content analysis was (...) employed to catalogue discrete arguments within these papers. Novel conclusions were drawn from this review. While the debate's first voices were raised in opposition of testing and their arguments have retained currency over many years, arguments in favour of testing, which appeared sporadically at first, have gained momentum more recently. Most arguments on both sides are testable empirical claims, so far untested, rather than abstract ethical or philosophical positions. The dispute, therein, lies not so much in whether minors should be permitted to access predictive genetic testing but whether these empirical claims on the relative benefits or harms of testing should be assessed. (shrink)

In Sharing Territories, Cara Nine defends a river model of territorial rights. On a river model, groups are assumed to be interdependent and overlapping. Drawing on natural law philosophy, Nine's theory argues for the establishment of foundational territories around geographical areas like rivers.

We report on an effort to characterize (changes in) teachers’ and school and district leaders’ race consciousness within their visions of equitable mathematics instruction. We analyzed interviews conducted over multiple years within a project in an urban school district in the U.S. that focused on racism and racial equity in secondary mathematics and included multi-week professional learning opportunities for teachers during the months between school years. Our analysis yielded a 4-level trajectory modelling the development of race consciousness in participants’ discourse. (...) Distinctions across levels pertain to the presence of race in individuals’ discourse, the directness with which they talk about race, and the extent to which they locate sources of an historical accumulation of racial inequity within systems. (shrink)

_Taking Religious Claims Seriously_ is a systematic, critical, and comprehensive study of the fundamental questions of the philosophy of religion: religious experience, the existence and nature of God, religious knowledge and truth, good and evil, immortality of the soul, religious diversity, religious claims about the person, faith, and the religious way of life. In this study the author seeks to capture the reality and meaning of the religious as such: What is the foundation of religion? Under what conditions is an (...) authentic religious way of life possible? His method of inquiry is phenomenological. The author begins his discussion with a general characterization of the basic features of all the literate and illiterate religions of the world. He then identifies the ideas, beliefs, and concerns which are common to these religions: What are the central claims of these religions? How did the various religions understand these claims? The author makes a serious attempt to clarify these claims and explore the possibility for a reconcilation between them. For him, the foundation of religion is the religious experience, and the essence of this experience consists in a serious, cognitive, and meaningful encounter with the Ultimate Being. This being is the ground of the world and human life. This book is a comparative, pluralistic study of the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

**** Reprint of the Indiana U. Press edition of 1966--which is cited in BCL3. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

Ecological refugees are expected to make up an increasing percentage of overall refugees in the coming decades as predicted climate change related disasters will displace millions of people. In this essay, I focus on those rights ecological refugees may claim on the basis of collective self-determination. To this end, I will focus on a few specific cases that I call cases of ‘ecological refugee states’. Tuvalu, the Maldives, and to a certain extent, Bangladesh are predicted to be ecological refugee states (...) in the near future. These are states whose entire (or close to it) geographical territory is predicted to be lost to rising sea levels; the collective body of the people will itself become an ecological refugee.The question is: what may the people of an ecological refugee state legitimately claim on the basis of their right to self-determination? Should we redraw state borders to accommodate a New Tuvalu? I argue that a plausible position regarding territorial rights is that when (1) a people clearly is (or recently was) self-determining and has a legitimate claim to continue to be self-determining, and (2) the self-determination of a people is existentially threatened because the people lacks territorial rights, that (3) the people becomes a candidate for sovereign over a new territory. The result is that existing state borders may need to change to accommodate something like a New Tuvalu. To generate these results on behalf of ecological refugee states, I examine the principles of the system of territorial states. Because the system of territorial states is a system of exclusive rights over goods, especially land, it is possible that it is subject to the conditions of a Lockean proviso mechanism. This paper is dedicated mainly to adapting a version of the Lockean proviso for use in territorial rights theory. (shrink)

Quantifier variance is a well-known view in contemporary metaontology, but it remains very widely misunderstood by critics. Here we briefly and clearly explain the metasemantics of quantifier variance and distinguish between modest and strong forms of variance (Section I), explain some key applications (Section II), clear up some misunderstandings and address objections (Section III), and point the way toward future directions of quantifier-variance-related research (Section IV).