The identification and valorization of unacknowledged, feminized forms of economic productivity has been an important task for feminist theory. In this article, we expand and rethink existing definitions of labour, in order to recognize the essential economic role women play in the stem cell and regenerative medicine industries, new fields of biomedical research that are rapidly expanding throughout the world. Women constitute the primary tissue donors in the new stem cell industries, which require high volumes of human embryos, oöcytes, foetal (...) tissue and umbilical cord blood. Such material is generally given for free in the advanced industrial democracies, constituted as a surplus (‘spare’ embryos) or waste (umbilical cord ‘afterbirth’, cadaveric foetuses, poor quality oöcytes) whose generative powers should not be withheld from others. At the same time, among impoverished female populations in developing nations, such biological material is now often procured through frankly transactional relations, where women undertake risky procedures for small fees. In each case, female bodily productivity is mobilized to support bioeconomic research, yet the economic value involved in these relations is largely unacknowledged. In this article, we consider both the gift economy and the transactional economy for reproductive tissues as a form of labour. In order to fully conceptualize the specificities of feminized productivity in the bioeconomy, we distinguish between earlier feminist theories of reproductive labour and the emerging practices generated by stem cell research, which we term regenerative labour. We consider how historical transformations in the regulation of feminized labour and the technical repertoires of stem cell research renegotiate the productivity limits of female reproductive biology, opening it out to novel and profitable forms of surplus value and enrolling women in complex negotiations over their role in bioeconomic activity. (shrink)

This article looks at the history of the stem cell as an experimental life-form and situates it within the context of biological theories of cellular ageing which emerged in the 1960s, under the banner of ‘biogerontology’. The field of biogerontology, I argue, is crucially concerned not only with the internal limits to a cell's lifespan, but also with the possibility of overcoming limits. Hence, the sense of ‘revolution’ that has surrounded the isolation of human embryonic stem cells. The article goes (...) on to situate the problematic of cellular ageing within the larger historical transition from Fordist to post-Fordist modes of production – a transition whose effects on the life sciences have been insufficiently theorized – and points to resonances between the concerns of biogerontology and an emerging political rhetoric on the crisis of ageing and limits to growth. Having surfaced in parallel with the neo-liberal euphoria of the 1990s, the field of regenerative medicine presents itself as a biomedical solution to the problem of limits to growth. What is at stake in the contemporary biosciences, I suggest, is not so much the mass commodification of life itself as its transformation into a source of speculative surplus value. (shrink)

By examining the global public good nature of pandemic preparedness we can identify key social justice issues that need to be confronted to increase citizens’ voluntary compliance with prevention and mitigation measures. As people tend to cooperate on a voluntary basis only with systems they consider fair, it becomes difficult to ensure compliance with public health measures in a context of extreme inequality. Among the major inequalities that need to be addressed we can find major differences in the extensiveness and (...) intensiveness of quarantine experiences, lack of opportunities to participate in common efforts, hardship in complying with disease control recommendations, and an unfair distribution of the cooperative surplus. (shrink)

A situation, in which a finite set of players can obtain certain payoffs by cooperation can be described by a cooperative game with transferable utility, or simply a TU-game. A (point-valued) solution for TU-games assigns a payoff distribution to every TU-game. In this article we discuss a class of equal surplus sharing solutions consisting of all convex combinations of the CIS-value, the ENSC-value and the equal division solution. We provide several characterizations of this class of solutions on variable (...) and fixed player set. Specifications of several properties characterize specific solutions in this class. (shrink)

A situation, in which a finite set of players can obtain certain payoffs by cooperation can be described by a cooperative game with transferable utility, or simply a TU-game. A (point-valued) solution for TU-games assigns a payoff distribution to every TU-game. In this article we discuss a class of equal surplus sharing solutions consisting of all convex combinations of the CIS-value, the ENSC-value and the equal division solution. We provide several characterizations of this class of solutions on variable (...) and fixed player set. Specifications of several properties characterize specific solutions in this class. (shrink)

The article considers a surprisingly resilient argument, going back to Adam Smith, for the fairness of proportionate taxation: that proportionate taxation represents the fair way to divide the surplus value produced by social cooperation among all of society's members. The article considers two recent variants on that argument, one by Richard Epstein in Takings and one by David Gauthier in Morals by Agreement. It concludes that the normative and empirical assumptions that underlie these, and all other variants, of the (...) argument are so implausible as to suggest the argument cannot be taken seriously as a defense of proportionate taxation. The article concludes by considering other possible explanations for the enduring attraction of proportionate taxation for political philosophers, particularly those with libertarian and quasi-libertarian leanings. Footnotes I am grateful to participants in faculty workshops at Vanderbilt, NYU, Virginia and Stanford Law Schools and the Qunnipiac College School of Law Conference on Law and Philosophy, as well as the anonymous outside readers for this journal, for their very helpful comments on earlier drafts. (shrink)

David Cooper explores and defends the view that a reality independent of human perspectives is necessarily indescribable, a "mystery." Other views are shown to be hubristic. Humanists, for whom "man is the measure" of reality, exaggerate our capacity to live without the sense of an independent measure. Absolutists, who proclaim our capacity to know an independent reality, exaggerate our cognitive powers. In this highly original book Cooper restores to philosophy a proper appreciation of mystery-that is what provides a measure of (...) our beliefs and conduct. (shrink)

Paradigmatically, natural kinds are the kinds of thing or stuff that are classified by the natural sciences. The periodic table provides perhaps the best example of the potential importance of natural kinds for science. In the philosophy of psychiatry, debates over whether mental disorders can be natural kinds emerge because kinds of mental disorder are manifestly different from chemical kinds in various ways. While chemical kinds are precise, psychiatric kinds are fuzzy. While chemical kinds are objective, the identification of psychiatric (...) kinds is value-laden. Psychiatric classification involves classifying people, and unlike chemical elements, those people can respond to being classified in various ways. This chapter goes through these differences, one-by-one, and argues that despite them, mental disorders may be natural kinds. (shrink)

This popular book has now been revised to ensure that it continues to meet the needs of the growing number of people interested in all the main philosophical ...

A British diplomat and foreign affairs expert presents his radical interpretation of the post-Cold War new world order and offers controversial advice on how civilized nations should deal with terrorism. Reprint.

Part I. Social theory -- Part II. Philosophy -- Part III. History of science -- Notes on contributors -- Index.

Logicians and theoretical physicists will also benefit from this book.

TERENCE Irwin's Socrates will be a familiar figure to many readers of his new translation and philosophical commentary on the Gorgias. In his widely read Plato's Moral Theory: The Early and Middle Dialogues, Irwin presented a comprehensive interpretation of the moral theory underlying Socrates' examination of his various interlocutors in Plato's early dialogues. Central to this interpretation is Irwin's conception of what Socrates is committed to by the reliance on the analogy between virtues and crafts that is so prominent a (...) feature of his argumentation. Irwin thinks Socrates' craft analogy commits him to holding that the virtues have a product that is totally distinct from them, and by reference to which they do their work of selecting particular actions and general plans for living. The result is that virtuous ways of living cannot be any part of the goal of life on Socrates' theory, but can only be rightly chosen as the best way of securing some good or goods whose nature and existence are totally independent of them. So Irwin's Socrates not only holds, as other interpreters have supposed, that all desires are for the agent's overall good and that virtues like courage and justice are nothing but cognitive states, with nothing merely affective about them. He is also committed to a solely instrumental relation between each of these virtues and the agent's overall good. Hence for Irwin there is no difficulty in Socrates' apparent championing of the hedonism of ordinary people in the Protagoras. If hedonism is true then this supposed commitment of Socrates' will find a ready vindication: the virtues are just the most effective instrumental means to happiness construed as the maximum excess of pleasure over pain over one's whole lifetime. (shrink)

The fundamental ideas concerning computation and recursion naturally find their place at the interface between logic and theoretical computer science. The contributions in this book, by leaders in the field, provide a picture of current ideas and methods in the ongoing investigations into the pure mathematical foundations of computability theory. The topics range over computable functions, enumerable sets, degree structures, complexity, subrecursiveness, domains and inductive inference. A number of the articles contain introductory and background material which it is hoped will (...) make this volume an invaluable resource for specialists and non-specialists alike. (shrink)

This book discusses both the philosophy of language and linguistic philosophy.

In The Classrooms All Young Children Need, Patricia M. Cooper takes a synoptic view of Paley’s many books and articles, charting the evolution of Paley’s ...

In my 1993 IJPS paper it was suggested that postmodernist verdicts on ‘the death of philosophy’ relied on a rejection of any ‘substantive’ or ‘metaphysical’ notion of truth. The present paper relates these verdicts to Wittgenstein’s alleged ‘philosophical quietism’. In both cases, for example, there is a rejection of ‘depth’. Various characterisations of Wittgenstein’s position are questioned, including the idea that his quietism consists in showing the impossibility of sceptical challenges to our ‘hinge’ propositions and beliefs. It is then argued, (...) however, that recognition of the groundlessness of beliefs (and practices), far from curing ‘vertigo’ or ‘Angst’, is apt to inspire it. In a final section, I propose that the ‘metaphysical horror’ at the impossibility of articulating grounds for our beliefs can be allayed only by the thought that these answer to a reality that cannot be articulated and must therefore remain a mystery. One role for philosophy might be to cultivate a sense of this mystery and trace its implications for how we should live. (shrink)

Dieter Grimm's accessible introduction to the concept of sovereignty ties the evolution of the idea to historical events, from the religious conflicts of sixteenth-century Europe to today's trends in globalization and transnational institutions. Grimm wonders whether recent political changes have undermined notions of national sovereignty, comparing manifestations of the concept in different parts of the world. Geared for classroom use, the study maps various notions of sovereignty in relation to the people, the nation, the state, and the federation, distinguishing between (...) internal and external types of sovereignty. Grimm's book will appeal to political theorists and cultural-studies scholars and to readers interested in the role of charisma, power, originality, and individuality in political rule. (shrink)

Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- The foundations of Hobbes's natural law philosophy -- Hobbesian moral and civil science : rereading the doctrine of severability -- Hobbes and the good of life -- The legal character of the laws of nature -- The essence of Leviathan : the person of the commonwealth and the common good -- Hobbes's natural law account of civil law -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Index.

In this extensively revised and updated edition, 168 alphabetically arranged articles provide comprehensive treatment of the main topics and writers in this area of aesthetics. Written by prominent scholars covering a wide-range of key topics in aesthetics and the philosophy of art Features revised and expanded entries from the first edition, as well as new chapters on recent developments in aesthetics and a larger number of essays on non-Western thought about art Unique to this edition are six overview essays on (...) the history of aesthetics in the West from antiquity to modern times. (shrink)

By constructing a maximal incomplete d.r.e. degree, the nondensity of the partial order of the d.r.e. degrees is established. An easy modification yields the nondensity of the n-r.e. degrees and of the ω-r.e. degrees.

In Selfless Cinema?, Sarah Cooper maps out the power relations of making, and viewing, documentaries in ethical terms. The ethics of filmmaking are often examined in largely legalistic terms, dominated by issues of consent, responsibility, and participantse(tm) or film-makerse(tm) rights, but Cooper approaches four representative French film-makers e" Jean Rouch, Chris Marker, Raymond Depardon, and Agns Varda e" in a far less juridical way, drawing on the ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. She argues that, in spite of Levinase(tm)s iconoclastic, anti-ocular (...) thinking, his concept of visage is richly applicable to film, and especially to documentary. (shrink)

Philosophers constantly discuss Responsibility. Yet in every discussion of which I am aware, a rather obvious point is ignored. The obvious point is that responsibility is ascribed to collectives, as well as to individual persons. Blaming attitudes are held towards collectives as well as towards individuals. Responsibility is often ascribed to nations, towns, clubs, groups, teams, and married couples. ‘Germany was responsible for the Second World War’; ‘The club as a whole is to blame for being relegated’. Such statements are (...) not rare. (shrink)

This important new work is a major analysis of the foundation of Eric Voegelin's political science.

A proof is given that 0′ is definable in the structure of the degrees of unsolvability. This answers a long-standing question of Kleene and Post, and has a number of corollaries including the definability of the jump operator.

Shaftesbury's Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times was published in 1711. It ranges widely over ethics, aesthetics, religion, the arts (painting, literature, architecture, gardening), and ancient and modern history, and aims at nothing less than a new ideal of the gentleman. Together with Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Addison and Steele's Spectator, it is a text of fundamental importance for understanding the thought and culture of Enlightenment Europe. This volume presents a new edition of the text together with an (...) introduction, explanatory notes and a guide to further reading. (shrink)