John Dee’s autobiographical Compendious rehearsal, written in November 1592, not only reveals the close connection between occult philosophy and high Elizabethan politics through its contents, but also through the circumstances that brought it into existence. Dee’s Court career shows a clear pattern, in which events sometimes aligned to make his occult philosophy useful to senior politicians, boosting his status at Court. One such series of events occurred in 1591–2, when Lord Burghley used Dee’s prediction of a Spanish conquest of England (...) in 1592 to panic Queen Elizabeth into permitting a large scale, organized persecution of Catholic recusants, based on a Proclamation against Jesuits and missionary priests. This enabled Burghley to deflect Archbishop Whitgift’s campaign against the Presbyterians and re-establish his own influence over religious policy. However, the eventual failure of Dee’s prediction enabled Burghley to abandon Dee to Whitgift’s revenge, part of Whitgift’s cultural counter-revolution against all forms of occult philosophy, which be believed inspired political subversion. With the fall of Sir Walter Raleigh in the summer of 1592 it also left Dee vulnerable to criticism from Catholic exiles, and enables us to definitely identify Dee as the ‘conjuror’ associated with the fictional, atheistical ‘School of Night’ associated with Raleigh. (shrink)

c.4,000 word critical discussion of Fabre's book. Provides an overview of the book plus comments on the themes of (i) loyalty and treason and (ii) the ethics of spying and sex.

In this article, we focus on the mentoring process, and we argue that the internal and external pressures extant at research universities may create a research culture that may be antithetical to appropriate mentoring. We developed a scale based on motivation theory to determine the perceived research culture in departments and research laboratories, and a mentoring scale to determine approaches to mentoring graduate students. Participants were 610 faculty members across 49 departments at a research oriented university. The findings were that (...) a mastery-oriented research climate and an outcome-oriented research climate were manifested at the university. More importantly, each research climate had its own unique impact on how the faculty approached mentoring graduate students. A mastery research climate was related to a more supportive approach to mentoring than the outcome research climate. We concluded by suggesting that the outcome research climate may have an adverse effect on effective mentoring and on maintaining research ethics. (shrink)

One of the first envatted brains, the most cyborgian element of J. D. Bernal’s 1929 futuristic manifesto, The world, the flesh and the the devil, proposed a technological solution to the dreary certainty of mortality. In Bernal’s scenario the brain is maintained in an ‘out of body’ but ‘like-body’ environment—in a bath of cerebral–spinal fluid held at constant body temperature. In reality, acquiring prospective immortality requires access to very different technologies—those that allow human organs and tissues to be preserved in (...) a quite ‘inhuman’ life-world—the cryogenic storage chamber. Like Bernal, today’s cryonicists consider that immortality can be secured through preservation of the brain alone. In this article I trace attempts to preserve or suspend life, and especially brain function, through the application of new ‘technologies of immortality’. Drawing together historical information on the development of refrigeration, cryopreservation, transplantation, and nanotechnologies, I explore the uneasy relationship between cryonics and the technology on which it depends for its success—cryogenics. In so doing, I argue that the ability to successfully realize the science fiction fantasy of human immortality will rest on a moral and scientific parasitism: the capacity to use the biotechnological artifacts or proxies—cryogenically preserved brains, archived brains, tissues, and immortalized cell lines—derived from the dead, in order to prolong life. (shrink)

This article focuses on the recent work of Slavoj Žižek and his extensive critique of poststructuralism and deconstruction from a Lacanian perspective. In this context, it examines Žižek's provocative approach to questions of social reality, ideology and nationalism, and explores the potential of such an approach for an analysis of crucial themes in British political culture. In addition, the article investigates the nature of the encounter between psychoanalysis and deconstruction — and especially where explicit referral is made to the terrain (...) of politics — with a view to breaking the apparent deadlock that has emerged. Through the development of a post-Marxist critique, it is argued that an alternative perspective can be formulated which combines the insights of both psychoanalysis and deconstruction and, at the same time, is able to transcend the limitations of each. (shrink)

An abiding concern in Žižek’s writings is with a central taboo of the modern age: the taboo of terror. We disavow terror only at the cost of accepting implicitly the violence and terror contained in the global capitalist logics and the fantasmatic structures that support them. The ongoing ideological attempts to neutralize the status of the capitalist economy, Žižek argues, are simultaneously accompanied by increasingly violent and authoritarian measures taken for its reproduction. Moreover, by failing to politicize the economy and (...) its constitutive violence, Western democracy is being reduced steadily to technocratic forms of administration. Focusing on recent work – and, in particular, The Defense of Lost Causes – this paper seeks to address Žižek’s cultivation of a new type of politico-philosophical engagement that does not shrink from the dimension of terror. (shrink)

These studies in religion, which include comparisons of Hindu, Buddhist and Christian themes, examine the spiritual insights and philosophical reflections of prominent thinkers from different religious traditions.

The concept of simultaneity, and the associated problems of synchronization of moving clocks and establishment of a universal time scale, were given little or no attention prior to the twentieth century. In 1905, however, Einstein analyzed the concept of simultaneity on the basis of two principal postulates: Absolute velocity is meaningless,The velocity of light in a vacuum is the same for all unaccelerated observers.

We will investigate the relation between the notion of the craft of ruling in the "Euthydemus" and in the "Republic". In the "Euthydemus", Socrates' search for an account of wisdom leads to his identifying it as the craft of ruling in the city. In the "Republic", the craft of ruling in the city is the virtue of wisdom in the city and the analogue of wisdom in the soul. Still, the craft of ruling leads to aporia in the former dialogue (...) while in the latter it is a central feature of Socrates' account of justice -- both in the city and in the soul. Some commentators hold that the aporia at the end of the second protreptic interlude of the "Euthydemus" shows that Socrates' account of wisdom is fatally flawed and must be rejected. However, the difficulty for this position is that the craft of ruling from the "Euthydemus" is a hardy notion that plays an extremely important role in the "Republic". Indeed, reflecting this fact, other commentators hold that the aporia is solved in the "Republic". Still, what is so far missing is an analysis that clearly shows the way to this solution in the "Republic". In what follows, we will analyze the two protreptic inter-ludes in the "Euthydemus" in order to see how the aporia arises. As we shall see, Socrates presents the aporia as a labyrinth. Indeed, it is a labyrinth with a little noticed step that -- once it is noticed -- shows the way out. The result will be that the aporia of the "Euthydemus" points to a solution in which ruling in the soul implies a command of one's appetites and emotions. (shrink)

Provides an opinionated overview of some recent debates within the ethics of war.

Of the many cosmological models developed during the past forty years, none is completely satisfactory; so work continues in the development of new models and in the checking of their predictions against the growing mass of experimental evidence. The validity of a model rests on its agreement with experimental data, particularly the data on distribution of galaxies and on redshifts.

Recession of the galaxies indicates a repulsive force and suggests that Newton's formulation of gravitation is not complete. A possible modification is proposed, and this Neo-Newtonian equation allows a quantitative treatment of Mach's principle. It also limits the velocity of matter to c and gives a correct prediction for the perihelion of Mercury.

Category-specific impairments of object recognition and naming are among the most intriguing disorders in neuropsychology, affecting the retrieval of knowledge about either living or nonliving things. They can give us insight into the nature of our representations of objects: Have we evolved different neural systems for recognizing different categories of object? What kinds of knowledge are important for recognizing particular objects? How does visual similarity within a category influence object recognition and representation? What is the nature of our semantic knowledge (...) about different objects? We review the evidence on category-specific impairments, arguing that deficits even for one class of object cannot be accounted for in terms of a single information processing disorder across all patients; problems arise at contrasting loci in different patients. The same apparent pattern of impairment can be produced by damage to different loci. According to a new processing framework for object recognition and naming, the hierarchical interactive theory, we have a hierarchy of highly interactive stored representations. HIT explains the variety of patients in terms of lesions at different levels of processing and different forms of stored knowledge used both for particular tasks and for particular categories of object. Key Words: category-specific deficits; functional imaging; hierarchical models; interactive activation models; neuropsychology; object recognition; perceptual and functional knowledge. (shrink)

This paper develops an inventory and conceptual map of espoused organizational values. We suggest that espoused values are fundamentally different to other value forms as they are collective value statements that need to coexist as a basis for organizational activity and performance. The inventory is built from an analysis of 3112 value items espoused by 554 organizations in the UK and USA in both profit and not-for-profit sectors. We distil these value items into 85 espoused value labels, and these are (...) assessed in terms of their similarity and difference through judgements made by 53 experienced individuals. The resulting conceptual map facilitates the evaluation of values which are espoused at the organizational level, as opposed to aggregations of personal values, an important distinction that is often ignored in the literature. This analysis identifies a number of distinct areas of emphasis occupied by espoused values. In particular, the richness of value labels that relates to broader ethical issues may be aimed at external stakeholder management, but also may have an increasing influence on organizational behaviour as they are embedded into organizational practices. By advancing our understanding of espoused values, through an analysis of those being used in practice, we provide a means by which future research into organizational values and ethical issues can progress. (shrink)

(2006). Gray’s Elegy for Progress. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy: Vol. 9, The Political Theory of John Gray, pp. 227-241.

We are far too willing to reject the belief that much of what we see in life is random.Uncertainty is an everyday experience in medical research and practice, but theory and methods for reasoning clearly about uncertainty were developed only recently. Confirmation bias, selective memory, and many misleading heuristics are known enemies of the insightful clinician, researcher, or citizen, but other snares worth exposing may lurk in how we reason about uncertainty in our everyday lives. Here we draw attention to (...) a cognitive bias that is little known—or possibly unknown—to those outside the field of probability pedagogy. Described by Konold as the... (shrink)

If all dependent expressions were adjacent some variety of immediate constituent analysis would suffice for grammar, but syntactic and semantic mismatches are characteristic of natural language; indeed this is a, or the, central problem in grammar. Logical categorial grammar reduces grammar to logic: an expression is well-formed if and only if an associated sequent is a theorem of a categorial logic. The paradigmatic categorial logic is the Lambek calculus, but being a logic of concatenation the Lambek calculus can only capture (...) discontinuous dependencies when they are peripheral. In this paper we present the displacement calculus, which is a logic of intercalation as well as concatenation and which subsumes the Lambek calculus. On the empirical side, we apply the new calculus to discontinuous idioms, quantification, VP ellipsis, medial extraction, pied-piping, appositive relativisation, parentheticals, gapping, comparative subdeletion, cross-serial dependencies, reflexivization, anaphora, dative alternation, and particle shift. On the technical side, we prove that the calculus enjoys Cut-elimination. (shrink)

This is a book symposium on Kevin Krein’s Philosophy and Nature Sports. Gunnar Breivik, Jim Parry and Irena Martínková, and Rebekah Humphreys provide critical commentary on the text. The critical comments are followed by a response from Krein. The discussion covers a broad range of topics. These include the definition of “sport,” comparisons between nature sports and friluftsliv, the role of risk in nature sports, the experience of flow and the sublime in nature sports, and the understanding of nature. (...) Krein argues, as he does in the book and elsewhere, that nature sports provide a framework that facilitates intimate and meaningful interactions with nature. He argues further that the discussion included here shows how deeply our understanding of nature, and our understanding of nature sports, influence both our experiences within those sports and our broader experience of the world. (shrink)

This book aims to provide fresh perspectives on Vattimo and Zabala's groundbreaking foundational text, Hermeneutic Communism, from 2011. The contributors to this collection of essays explore various facets of Vattimo and Zabala's "anarchic hermeneutics" and "weak communism" in order to investigate the concepts resulting from them, such as "framed democracies," "armed capitalism" and "conservative impositions." Vattimo and Zabala's text is one of the most innovative contributions to the current debate on Communism, in which authors such as Badiou, Negri, and Rancière (...) have been the protagonists so far. The unique and original contribution of Vattimo and Zabala's position consists in letting politics evolve from one of the anarchic origins of hermeneutics: the end of truth. This triggers the essential question of how far politics is possible without truth. One of the essential, methodologically innovative characteristics of this collection is its dialogical, hermeneutical form, which is achieved by inserting Vattimo and Zabala's personal reactions to each essay in the book. By responding to each chapter in turn, Vattimo and Zabala establish a hermeneutic dialogue with the contributors. Thus hermeneutics will not only be a central topic, but also an epistemological, concrete application of Vattimo and Zabala's theories. An indispensable critical tool for students, researchers, professors, activists and general readers interested in the philosophical and political debate on Communism, which encompasses a wide variety of disciplines such as philosophy, political science, sociology, postcolonial studies, critical theory and Latin American studies. Offering an innovative first analysis of the new concepts of Hermeneutic Communism, this book represents a vital contribution to the understanding of the intriguing interrelation between philosophical hermeneutics and political communism. (shrink)

In this response to Andrew Benjamin, I examine the manner in which Working With Walter Benjamin interweaves destruction and inauguration to account for the ‘othering’ of the social order. The question of where to locate the normative index of a radically altered social and political world is particularly at issue. While Professor Benjamin argues that the ontological fabric of human relationality bears a ‘counter-measure’ to State sovereignty and capitalism, I insist on the power of concrete historical struggles against oppression to (...) prefigure and orient a transformed world. (shrink)

Many variants of categorial grammar assume an underlying logic which is associative and linear. In relation to left extraction, the former property is challenged by island domains, which involve nonassociativity, and the latter property is challenged by parasitic gaps, which involve nonlinearity. We present a version of type logical grammar including ‘structural inhibition’ for nonassociativity and ‘structural facilitation’ for nonlinearity and we give an account of relativisation including islands and parasitic gaps and their interaction.

We present work demonstrating that the nature of an object for our visual system depends on the actions we are programming and on the presence of action relations between stimuli. For example, patients who show visual extinction are more likely to become aware of two objects if the objects fall in appropriate visual locations for a common action. This effect of the action relations between objects is modulated both by the familiarity of the positioning of the objects for action, and (...) by the mere possibility of action (the ‘affordance’) between the objects. In addition, the programming of an action to a part of an object alters the representation of that object, making the ‘part’ into the object selected by the visual system. These results point to object coding being a rather flexible process, affected not only by the perceptual properties of stimuli but also by the relations between these properties and action. We discuss the implications for theories of perception as well as considering why action information, in particular, may be important for perception. (shrink)