Instrumentalists about need believe that all needs are instrumental, i.e., ontologically dependent upon ends, goals or purposes. Absolutists view some needs as non-instrumental. The aims of this article are: clearly to characterize the instrumentalism/absolutism debate that is of concern (mainly §1); to establish that both positions have recent and current adherents (mainly §1); to bring what is, in comparison with prior literature, a relatively high level of precision to the debate, employing some hitherto neglected, but important, insights (passim); to show, (...) on grounds not previously to the fore in the literature, that insofar as instrumentalism’s advocates have provided arguments for the position, these are unsound (§2); to argue against instrumentalism using a new dilemma concerning whether ‘end’, ‘goal’ and ‘purpose’ are interpreted in a mentalistic manner (§3); to elucidate the implications of the needs/need-satisfiers and preconditions/means distinctions for the debate (§4). (shrink)

Agonism emerged three decades ago as an assault on the overemphasis in political theory on justice and consensus. It has now become the norm. But its character and relation to core values of democracy are not as unproblematic today as is often thought, an issue that becomes more pressing as contemporary politics increasingly seem locked into notions of unrelenting conflict between “friends” and “enemies.” This essay traces alternative ontological roots and ethical implications of agonism, distinguishing between “imperializing” and “tempered” modes. (...) The former, exemplified in the popular Schmitt-Mouffe formulation, is shown to be fundamentally flawed in its failure to conceive politics in a fashion that does not allow the dynamic of friend–enemy to imperially trump appeals to democratic norms. In a world of insurgent white nationalism in democratic polities, this is no small fault. “Tempered” agonists, such as William Connolly and Bonnie Honig, offer ontologies where democratic norms can gain traction. Despite the admirable qualities of these alternatives, their formulations are nevertheless not fully persuasive. The difficulty lies in their underarticulated accounts of equality. I suggest an alternative formulation of agonism that embraces a central role for the idea of the moral equality of voice, a value that resides in the seam between notions of difference, resistance, and conflict emphasized by agonists, on the one hand, and the idea of fairness emphasized by notions of democratic justice, on the other. (shrink)

We characterize, more precisely than before, what Rawls calls the “analytical” method of drawing up a list of basic liberties. This method employs one or more general conditions that, under any just social order whatever, putative entitlements must meet for them to be among the basic liberties encompassed, within some just social order, by Rawls’s first principle of justice (i.e., the liberty principle). We argue that the general conditions that feature in Rawls’s own account of the analytical method, which employ (...) the notion of necessity, are too stringent. They ultimately fail to deliver as basic certain particular liberties that should be encompassed within any fully adequate scheme of liberties. To address this under-generation problem, we provide an amended general condition. This replaces Rawls’s necessity condition with a probabilistic condition and it appeals to the standard liberal prohibition on arbitrary coercion by the state. We defend our new approach both as apt to feature in applications of the analytical method and as adequately grounded in justice as fairness as Rawls articulates the theory’s fundamental ideas. (shrink)

In this paper I take issue with Rainer Forst's claim that his account of the demand for justification that is at the core of the idea of justice provides our political thinking with a final “fundamentum inconcussum”.

‘Quantified pure existentials’ are sentences (e.g., ‘Some things do not exist’) which meet these conditions: (i) the verb EXIST is contained in, and is, apart from quantificational BE, the only full (as against auxiliary) verb in the sentence; (ii) no (other) logical predicate features in the sentence; (iii) no name or other sub-sentential referring expression features in the sentence; (iv) the sentence contains a quantifier that is not an occurrence of EXIST. Colin McGinn and Rod Girle have alleged that standard (...) first-order logic cannot adequately deal with some such existentials. The article defends the view that it can. (shrink)

I set up a dilemma, concerning metaphysical modality de re, for the essentialist opponent of a ‘two senses’ view of necessity. I focus specifically on Frank Jackson's two-dimensional account in his From Metaphysics to Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). I set out the background to Jackson's conception of conceptual analysis and his rejection of a two senses view. I proceed to outline two purportedly objective (as opposed to epistemic) differences between metaphysical and logical necessity. I conclude that since one (...) of these differences must hold and since each requires the adoption of a two senses view of necessity, essentialism is not consistent with the rejection of a two senses view. (shrink)

Lists of species underpin many fields of human endeavour, but there are currently no universally accepted principles for deciding which biological species should be accepted when there are alternative taxonomic treatments (and, by extension, which scientific names should be applied to those species). As improvements in information technology make it easier to communicate, access, and aggregate biodiversity information, there is a need for a framework that helps taxonomists and the users of taxonomy decide which taxa and names should be used (...) by society whilst continuing to encourage taxonomic research that leads to new species discoveries, new knowledge of species relationships, and the refinement of existing species concepts. Here, we present 10 principles that can underpin such a governance framework, namely (i) the species list must be based on science and free from nontaxonomic considerations and interference, (ii) governance of the species list must aim for community support and use, (iii) all decisions about list composition must be transparent, (iv) the governance of validated lists of species is separate from the governance of the names of taxa, (v) governance of lists of accepted species must not constrain academic freedom, (vi) the set of criteria considered sufficient to recognise species boundaries may appropriately vary between different taxonomic groups but should be consistent when possible, (vii) a global list must balance conflicting needs for currency and stability by having archived versions, (viii) contributors need appropriate recognition, (ix) list content should be traceable, and (x) a global listing process needs both to encompass global diversity and to accommodate local knowledge of that diversity. We conclude by outlining issues that must be resolved if such a system of taxonomic list governance and a unified list of accepted scientific names generated are to be universally adopted. (shrink)

This essay responds to the characterization Ted Miller offers (in his December 2008 essay in Political Theory) of the kind of nonfoundationalism I have referred to as "weak ontology," and that Gianni Vattimo frequently calls "weak thought." Miller argues that such a position embodies, first, a philosophy of history in which strong ontologies (e.g., religion) are assessed categorically as passé, and, second, are associated essentially with violence. I show that while these characterizations may be appropriate for Vattimo's thought, they are (...) not for weak ontology as I understand it. Finally, I suggest that the former might more usefully be categorized as "antifoundationalism" and the latter as "nonfoundationalism.". (shrink)

I reply to criticisms of my book, _A Democratic Bearing: Admirable Citizens, Uneven Injustice and Critical Theory_ from Simone Chambers, Rainer Forst, and Sharon Krause.

In this article I explore the character and importance of a democratic ethos. Ferrara develops such a concept around the idea of ‘openness’ as part of his broader ideal of seeking to foster exemplary expansions of political identity with the goal of better accommodating the ‘hyperpluralism’ polities face today. I argue that ‘openness’ has several drawbacks that hinder its possible functioning in such a role, contending rather that ‘presumptive generosity’ is to be preferred. The latter can contribute more effectively than (...) the former to enhancing Ferrara’s notion of exemplarity. (shrink)

Is the critique of modern, liberal subjectivity warranted, and, if so, how do we proceed in its aftermath? This article clarifies the ways in which such a critique is valid, as well as the ways in which it both misses its mark and gives us little in the way of resources for thinking further about subjectivity. I argue that thinking in the aftermath must articulate a weak ontological portrait of subjectivity that vivifies the value of both political generosity (emphasized by (...) critics like William Connolly) and equal respect (as emphasized by the defenders of liberalism like Charles Larmore). (shrink)

Rather than think about citizenship in minimal terms, I argue for a more aspirational “bearing” of the public self, one appropriate for the challenges of globalizing, late-modern political life. For left democratic theory this is hardly an abstract issue, given how successful groups like the Tea Party have been in articulating a right-leaning aspirational portrait. What might a counter-portrait look like that was comparably scripted for the middle classes in affluent liberal democracies? An answer is not immediately clear, given that (...) left democratic theory’s attention has been traditionally focused on an overly simple, two-entity social ontology: elites and demos. The question I consider is what script might be articulated for middle segments of society in relation to how they should bear themselves toward less advantaged segments of society? This does not replace thinking about the demos, but rather supplements it with reflection on the complex alignments of contemporary political life. (shrink)

How should inquiry into ethical-political life come to terms with “depth experience”? I mean by this extraordinary experience that breaks into the familiar frames of meaning and reasoning that undergird everyday life, bringing some sort of transformation of commitments or identity. I speculate broadly about such experience, expanding the focus beyond theistic experiences, such as being “born-again.” When one does this, depth experience need not be thought, as it often is, anathema to political theory. I show rather that it can (...) be cultivated so as to animate an admirable “bearing” on the part of citizens of affluent, late-modern societies. (shrink)

A plausible scenario for the future of electronic mass media news goes something like this. On the one hand, there will be the nightly television news, some of it brought to us by public entities and some by private, increasingly concentrated, corporate entities. On the other hand, there will be continually streaming sources of news available over the internet; and each of us will be able to construct, in effect, a tailor-made, continually revisable package of news. What I want to (...) do in this paper is reflect on the normative ideals in terms of which we ought to assess developments along these two paths. I will be assuming, along with the conference organizers, that these ideals must draw upon our notion of democratic dialogue. But what exactly is our notion of democratic dialogue? And how exactly should we bring it to bear on the two media paths? (shrink)

Working within weak subsystems of second-order arithmetic Z2 we consider two versions of the Baire Category theorem which are not equivalent over the base system RCA0. We show that one version (B.C.T.I) is provable in RCA0 while the second version (B.C.T.II) requires a stronger system. We introduce two new subsystems of Z2, which we call RCA+ 0 and WKL+ 0, and show that RCA+ 0 suffices to prove B.C.T.II. Some model theory of WKL+ 0 and its importance in view of (...) Hilbert's program is discussed, as well as applications of our results to functional analysis. (shrink)

© 2015, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.Genetic studies have identified single nucleotide polymorphisms associated with the risk of prostate cancer. It remains unclear whether such genetic variants are associated with disease aggressiveness. The NCI-SPORE Genetics Working Group retrospectively collected clinicopathologic information and genotype data for 36 SNPs which at the time had been validated to be associated with PC risk from 25,674 cases with PC. Cases were grouped according to race, Gleason score and aggressiveness. Statistical analyses were used to compare the frequency (...) of the SNPs between different disease cohorts. After adjusting for multiple testing, only PC-risk SNP rs2735839 was significantly and inversely associated with aggressive and high-grade disease in European men. Similar associations with aggressive and high-grade disease were documented in African-American subjects. The G allele of rs2735839 was associated with disease aggressiveness even at low PSA levels in both European and African-American men. Our results provide further support that a PC-risk SNP rs2735839 near the KLK3 gene on chromosome 19q13 may be associated with aggressive and high-grade PC. Future prospectively designed, case-case GWAS are needed to identify additional SNPs associated with PC aggressiveness. (shrink)

Let ω be the set of natural numbers. For functions f, g: ω → ω, we say f is dominated by g if f < g for all but finitely many n ∈ ω. We consider the standard “fair coin” probability measure on the space 2ω of in-finite sequences of 0's and 1's. A Turing oracle B is said to be almost everywhere dominating if, for measure 1 many X ∈ 2ω, each function which is Turing computable from X is (...) dominated by some function which is Turing computable from B. Dobrinen and Simpson have shown that the almost everywhere domination property and some of its variant properties are closely related to the reverse mathematics of measure theory. In this paper we exposit some recent results of Kjos-Hanssen, Kjos-Hanssen/Miller/Solomon, and others concerning LR-reducibility and almost everywhere domination. We also prove the following new result: If B is almost everywhere dominating, then B is superhigh, i. e., 0″ is truth-table computable from B ′, the Turing jump of B. (shrink)

Pediatricians provided expert testimony that, in the case of Baby K, provision of ventilator support goes beyond accepted standards of care for anencephalic infants and so is medically futile. This argument, however reasonable, does not persuade those who believe in the absolute value of even a fraction of human life. In Baby K, court records indicate that Ms. H, Baby K's mother, persistently adheres to the sanctity-of-life principle on religious grounds.While I think that quality-of-life considerations have a role in medical (...) decision making, those who reject such considerations must be respected. This article makes the following claims, on behalf of religious dissenters: the Baby K case should be interpreted in light of the freedom of religion guaranteed in the First Amendment ; religious beliefs should not be trivialized in clinical ethics, even if reason, not belief, is the language of the public forum; the time-honored free exercise clause is essential to the American experiment in liberty and should not be overridden in the name of a concept as vague as futility; and free exercise of religion deserves serious discussion in the futility debate, and significant religious accommodation must be included in any hospital or societal futility policies. In the concluding section, issues are raised regarding the balance between religious consideration and resource allocation. (shrink)

Pediatricians provided expert testimony that, in the case of Baby K, provision of ventilator support goes beyond accepted standards of care for anencephalic infants and so is medically futile. This argument, however reasonable, does not persuade those who believe in the absolute value of even a fraction of human life. In Baby K, court records indicate that Ms. H, Baby K's mother, persistently adheres to the sanctity-of-life principle on religious grounds.While I think that quality-of-life considerations have a role in medical (...) decision making, those who reject such considerations must be respected. This article makes the following claims, on behalf of religious dissenters: the Baby K case should be interpreted in light of the freedom of religion guaranteed in the First Amendment ; religious beliefs should not be trivialized in clinical ethics, even if reason, not belief, is the language of the public forum; the time-honored free exercise clause is essential to the American experiment in liberty and should not be overridden in the name of a concept as vague as futility; and free exercise of religion deserves serious discussion in the futility debate, and significant religious accommodation must be included in any hospital or societal futility policies. In the concluding section, issues are raised regarding the balance between religious consideration and resource allocation. (shrink)

I respond to Vladas Griskevicius and Douglas T. Kendrick (G&K) and Gad Saad's (S) defenses of the view that Consumer Studies would benefit from the appeal to evolution in all work aimed at understanding consumer behavior. I argue that G&K and S's reliance on one theoretical perspective, that of evolutionary psychology, limits their options. Further, I point out some specific problems with the theoretical perspective of evolutionary psychology. Finally, I introduce some alternative evolutionary approaches to studying human behavior that could (...) profitably be adopted in consumer research. -/- . (shrink)

Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya, one of the preeminent Indian philosophers of the 20th century, proposed that the absolute appears in three alternative forms - truth, freedom and value. Each of these forms are for Bhattacharyya absolute, ultimate, not penultimate. Each is different from the other, yet they cannot be said to be one or many. He contends that these absolutes are incompatible with each other and that an articulation of the relation between the three absolutes is not feasible. This paper will review (...) Bhattacharyya 's presentation of the absolute in its alternative forms and will place these abstractions within the context of three specific religious traditions that he sees illustrating his point. Then, using a model based upon holography, I will illuminate with 'concrete images' that which Bhattacharyya could deductively formulate but could not logically integrate. Holography, the process by which three-dimensional images are produced from an imageless film - a film in which each part can reproduce the whole - will be used as a heuristic device to illuminate the simultaneous and mutually interpenetrating existence of the absolute in three forms. This model will illumine how these three forms can be conceived of as not the same yet not other and how these forms can be incompatible as absolutes, but metaphysically inseparable. (shrink)

This volume gathers essays by fourteen scholars, written to honor Fred Dallmayr and the contributions of his political theory. Stephen F. Schneck's introduction to Dallmayr's thinking provides a survey of the development of his work. Dallmayr's “letting be,” claims Schneck, is much akin to his reading of Martin Heidegger's “letting Being be,” and should be construed neither as a conservative acceptance of self-identity nor as a nonengaged indifference to difference. Instead, he explains, endeavoring to privilege neither identity nor difference, the (...) hermeneutic circle for Dallmayr must also be one of thoroughgoing critique and praxis. And, indeed, what joins together Dallmayr's many essays and explorations, what inheres within his “cosmopolitan” understanding of the contemporary world, and what lends his analyses their imperative, is this same “letting be.” "How many of us, over the last forty years, have opened up this or that book by Fred Dallmayr to acquaint ourselves with a new thinker or intellectual movement? It has happened to me several times. Each time, something else happens too. I become alert again to the distinctive and noble temper expressed in Dallmayr's work. _Letting Be_ consists of a series of essays by leading scholars who articulate and appreciate this temper, particularly as it has found expression in his thought about global politics work over the last two decades. This is a fine study, devoted to a thinker whose temper of critical responsiveness deserves wide emulation." —_William E. Connolly, Krieger-Eisenhower Professor, Johns Hopkins University_ _ _ "These essays constitute a marvelous, extended conversation on how political theory should delineate its future tasks. The reader is treated to a lively debate about a crucial set of questions: what strands of traditional Western political thought offer the best resources today; how do we think more comparatively about the foundations of political life; how do we engage more fruitfully Islamic, Indian, and_ mestizo_ contributions; and how do we best envision cross-cultural dialogue and imagine the shape of a "cosmopolis" in ways that will do greater justice to human dignity and diversity? All in all a rich feast honoring a remarkable man and scholar, Fred Dallmayr." —_Stephen K. White, James Hart Professor, University of Virginia_ “This is not the first Festschrift for Dallmayr, and it may not be the last, but it is the first that begins to be in a position to assess his long career with all its twists and turns. I have never fully understood Dallmayr as a creative thinker in his own right until now, and even when I sensed he was, I couldn't precisely say how. Now I can.” —_C. Fred Alford, University of Maryland_. (shrink)

G. K. CHESTERTON once mused over Noah's dinnertime conversations during those long nights on a And Noah he often said to his wife when he sat down to dine, "I don't care where the water goes if it doesn't get into the wine." Noah's insouciance has not been matched by defenders of his famous flood. For centuries, fundamentalists have tried very hard to find a place for the subsiding torrents. They have struggled even more valiantly to devise a source for (...) all that water. Our modern oceans, extensive as they are, will not override Mt. Everest. One seventeenth-century searcher said: "I can as soon believe that a man would be drowned in his own spittle as that the world should be deluged by. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 27.2 (2003) 341-362 [Access article in PDF] Virgin Father and Prodigal Son Stephen Brockmann I IN BOTH THE UNITED STATES and Germany—as well as in much of the rest of the Western world—the baby-boom generation now holds a controlling position in politics, economics, and culture. The election of Bill Clinton (born in 1946) to the Presidency signaled the generational shift in the United States as early (...) as 1992, and that shift was confirmed by the election campaign of 2000, in which both candidates, Al Gore (born in 1948) and George W. Bush (born in 1946), in spite of their differences, represented the same generation. In Germany the political shift in generations did not occur until 1998, when Gerhard Schröder (born slightly before the beginning of the German baby boom, in 1944) defeated Helmut Kohl (born in 1930).Significantly, Kohl is a member of the generation of Germans born during the 1930s and reared during the years of the Third Reich but too young to have played any significant role, either negative or positive, during the Nazi era. No member of this generation born in the 1930s ever became President in the United States, where the generation of World War Two veterans dominated national politics from Eisenhower to George Herbert Walker Bush. However what in America is a "silent generation" has been, in Germany, the generation most closely identified with the success of the Federal Republic of Germany: these were the so-called Flakhelfer (antiaircraft helpers) who had been children during the war. Kohl therefore famously referred to them as having the "grace of late birth," meaning that they, unlike the war veterans, were presumably untouched by any form of collective guilt for Nazi crimes against humanity. Whereas in the United States the Presidency was transferred directly from the World War Two veterans to [End Page 341] baby boomers—and in the case of the two Bush presidencies, literally, albeit indirectly, from father to son—in Germany the transition from the World War Two veterans (particularly former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt) to the baby boomers was interrupted by a long period of domination by the in-between generation of Flakhelfer.In both countries the baby-boom generation represents a significant shift in sensibilities and encompasses the generation involved in student protest and oppositional social movements in the 1960s and 1970s. In the United States these included the anti-Vietnam War movement, the feminist and gay-rights movements, the sexual revolution, the civil-rights movement, and the ecological movement, as well as, on the extreme fringes, terrorist groupings such as the Weather Underground and a great many religious sects and cults. In Germany the baby boomers formed many parallel groups and movements, including antiwar, feminist, ecological, and gay segments, as well as a proliferation of sectarian Marxist political groupings (so-called K-Gruppen, with the "K" meaning "Kommunist"). In the United States, Bill Clinton was an antiwar protester in the 1960s and 1970s, while both Gerhard Schröder and his Green Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer (born in 1948) had participated in left-wing political movements during the same period.In both West Germany and the United States the heyday of protest movements in the 1960s and 1970s signaled a generational split, with younger people—the very generation that is now in power in the two countries—accusing their elders of Machiavellian cynicism, imperialism, patriarchy, and worse. Such accusations can be recalled by the formerly popular slogans "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?" in the United States and "Unter den Talaren der Muff von tausend Jahren" ("under the academic regalia the stench of a thousand years") in Germany. The latter slogan was a reference not just to a generalized stodginess on the part of elderly German academics but to Hitler's invocation of a "Thousand-Year Reich;" German students were none-too-subtly suggesting that many of their professors had once been Nazis.The difference in these two slogans—one referring to past and the other to present sins—corresponds to a major distinction between the two baby... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Manufacturing Confucianism: Chinese Traditions and Universal CivilizationStephen C. AngleManufacturing Confucianism: Chinese Traditions and Universal Civilization. By Lionel M. Jensen. Durham: Duke University Press, 1997. Pp. xx + 444. Hardcover $59.95. Paper $19.95.Confucianisms, according to Lionel Jensen, in his Manufacturing Confucianism: Chinese Traditions and Universal Civilization, are the results of a four-century-long process of pious manufacture—pious because aimed at truth rather than manipulation, manufacture because the work has been (...) done out of materials close to hand. [End Page 120] These materials are the texts, words, and symbols out of which traditions are invented and reinvented. Jensen's book is simultaneously a meditation on the ecumenical goals of "traditionary invention" and a close study of the specific ways in which sixteenth- and twentieth-century communities have negotiated between inherited meanings and current circumstances. Its case studies splendidly exemplify its broader theoretical themes; I will look at each before returning to an assessment of the book's conclusion.The first two chapters explore what Jensen aptly calls the "sino-Jesuit community." He surveys the degrees to which the Jesuits were sinified and their efforts to find room for Chinese traditions in an expanded idea of natural religion, in part by redefining their own canon and seeing "Confucius" as an "ethnic philosopher" akin to Plato. Jensen argues that the Jesuits adopted and popularized the rarely used formulation "kong fu zi" as an appellation for their Chinese hero, and it is from this term that "Confucius" was ultimately derived.Jensen works to make us see things sympathetically from the inside: the challenges the Jesuits faced, and the reasonableness of their responses, from initially likening themselves to Buddhists to their later identification with the "ru." He criticizes Jacques Gernet's China and the Christian Impact: A Conflict of Cultures (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985) for being too ready to see the Jesuits as engaged in cynical manipulation for their own ends. Instead, Jensen urges us to see the Jesuits as working within the constraints of their adopted cultural universe to seek the truth as they understood it. This process of seeing universal significance in the particulars of Chinese culture is then repeated when a fairly crude version of the Jesuits' "Confucius" makes an appearance on the European stage— providing, for Europeans, evidence of the possibility of harmonious life under a benevolent monarchy—in the Confucius Sinarum Philosophus of 1687.The book's second pair of chapters take up two twentieth-century Chinese efforts to understand the early history of "ru," the term that, at least until modern times, functioned "as an emblem of the culture's central value system" (p. 155). For Zhang Binglin, with whose "The Etiology of Ru" Jensen begins, the ru began as a group of broadly talented gentlemen, but under the pernicious influence of the teacher Kongzi (a.k.a. Confucius), they turned toward the narrower concerns of government careerism. Reacting against the calls by some in his day to make "Kongjiao (Confucianism)" into a national religion, Zhang argued that the original goal of the "ru," and thus China's true intellectual heritage, was wide-ranging service to and direct engagement with China's people.Hu Shi's "Explaining Ru," on the other hand, argues for a positive connection between the ru and Kongzi. According to Hu, the ru had been priests in the Shang dynasty whose status declined after the Zhou conquest only to be revitalized and transformed by Kongzi, a sage prophesied to save the world. Jensen finds a number of parallels between Hu's picture of Confucius and Christian accounts of Jesus, and argues that these similarities are not coincidental. Hu was determined to find a way to make modern (universal) civilization "congenial and congruous" with Chinese civilization; this he accomplished, in Jensen's words, by collapsing China and the [End Page 121] West "into a single process of civilizational growth, the self-same identity of which was explicit in the patterned variation in the biographies of their spiritual exemplars, Kongzi and Jesus" (p. 263).While Jensen sometimes seems to want to confine the application of "Confucianism" to the Jesuits' sixteenth-century notion—arguing that at least... (shrink)

George G. Simpson (1902–1984) and Stephen J. Gould (1941–2002) were both engaged with the normative – i.e., social, cultural, political, and even ethical – consequences of their evolutionary theorizing. However, there is a normative point of departure between Simpson and Gould’s work in that regard that has received little attention. Yet, their motivations converge into a larger program of resistance and social protection from misconstrued and illegitimate overreaches of the biological sciences leading up to and after the peak of the (...) modern synthesis. (shrink)

_Purpose._ The author of this article aims to present and analyze the views of Józef Maria Bocheński concerning the issue of the question of life’s sense based on the text "Sens życia i inne eseje". From the philosopher’s reflections under the theme of the impossibility of life’s sense in the case of community, the author analyzes Ukrainian society and tries to find an answer to the question, can the human community’s sense exist? Among the tasks are the following: to apply (...) the views of Barry and Janae Weinhold and the polyvagal theory of Stephen Porges; to express reflections on individual and social sense; indicate the potential reasons for the failure in searching for the Ukrainian national idea before Russia’s attack on Ukraine in February 2022, as well as identify general trends in the development of the Ukrainian idea as a result of Russia’s war against Ukraine. _Theoretical basis._ The methodological basis of the investigation is an analysis, synthesis, generalization, and analogy. Given the interdisciplinary approach, historical and psychological methods were used. It is noted that the most important feature of any group is interaction, which unites a number of other features into a single whole. Exactly the lack of interaction in Ukraine that necessitated the search for a national idea. After a full-scale Russian attack on Ukraine in 2022, there is a huge possibility to work through Ukrainian traumas, create a common identity, without an artificial division into West and East, and rebuild the state. _Originality__._ The paper combines philosophical reflections and the latest psychological developments; in their application, firstly, in the universal plane, which applies to every person, and secondly, in relation to the Ukrainian, due to its history and politics. _Conclusions._ It has been argued that the search for the authentic sense of life occurs when a person has reworked their traumas and attained a stable state of mental health, when subconscious factors do not control a person. By analogy, the thesis is put forward that Ukrainian society must undergo psychotherapy, to overcome its historical, and military traumas. As a result of the brutal war, rapid integration processes are possible, the whole Ukrainian society is aware of the need to switch exclusively to the Ukrainian language and rethink Ukrainian identity and statehood, build a new historical narrative on the heroic attitude of Ukrainian society, new Ukrainian heroes, dead and alive. It is possible to use the Russian attack as a unifying factor for all Ukrainians, creating a sense of community, creating a modern image of Ukraine in the international arena as a defender of democratic rights, Europe, rethinking its history and in particular Ukrainian-Russian and Ukrainian-Polish relations; indicate the need to process new traumatic experiences. (shrink)

Army Officers face increased moral pressure in modern warfare, where character judgement and ethical judgement are vital. This article reports the results of a study of 242 junior British Army officers using the Army Intermediate Concept Measure, comprising a series of professionally oriented moral dilemmas developed for the UK context. Results are suggestive of appropriate application of Army values to the dilemmas and of ethical reasoning aligning with Army excellence. The sample does slightly less well, however, for justification than for (...) action reasoning, and there are differences following initial training for infantry and artillery officers versus other branches of service. Dilemmas involving anti-torture methods and not covering up soldiers' failings generated best results compared to those requiring balance between compassion and mission, and negotiating personal relationships with military needs. Gender differences favouring women were less than those observed for other professional groups using similar measures. This research further develops a much-needed measure of ethical reasoning among junior Army officers, with potential for use among other ranks. This approach is advocated for other professional groups. (shrink)

In their influential paper “The extended mind”, Andy Clark and David Chalmers argue for the possibility of the extended mind. Based on Clark and Chalmers’s views, Stephen Hetherington argues in his paper “The extended knower” that there are extended knowers, provided epistemic externalism holds. He also uses the argument and its conclusion to criticize Baron Reed’s scepticism in the paper “The long road to skepticism” : 236–262, 2007). In this chapter, I argue that both Hetherington’s notion of the extended knower (...) and his argument are problematic. This is because the conceptual intelligibility of his notion of the extended knower entails the highly counterintuitive consequence that, in some cases, some negative entities would have to be constitutive of the extended knower. I also show that Hetherington’s criticism of Reed’s scepticism is not successful, and that there is no reason to believe that Clark and Chalmers would hold that there is the extended knower in Hetherington’s sense. (shrink)

Plato. The republic.--Aristotle. Politics.--Cicero, M. T. On the commonwealth.--John of Salisbury. The prince versus the tyrant.--Machiavelli, N. The prince and the people.--Hobbes, T. The state of nature and the Leviathan.--Locke, J. The right of revolution.--Marx, K. and Engels, F. Bourgeois and proletarians.--Bakunin, M. A. The Paris Commune and the idea of the state.--Mill, J. S. On liberty.--Lenin, V. I. Marxism and the withering away of the state.--Hitler, A. Race and the folkish state.--Mao Tse-tung. From the masses, to the masses.--Che Guevara, (...) E. Create two, three, many Vietnams. (shrink)

. Around the journals. Australasian Journal of Philosophy: Vol. 27, No. 3, pp. 226-227.

Postmodernism has evoked great controversy and it continues to do so today, as it disseminates into general discourse. Some see its principles, such as its fundamental resistance to metanarratives, as frighteningly disruptive, while a growing number are reaping the benefits of its innovative perspective. In Political Theory and Postmodernism, Stephen K. White outlines a path through the postmodern problematic by distinguishing two distinct ways of thinking about the meaning of responsibility, one prevalent in modern and the other in postmodern perspectives. (...) Using this as a guide, White explores the work of Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard, and Habermas, as well as 'difference' feminists, with the goal of showing how postmodernism can inform contemporary ethical-political reflection. In his concluding chapter, White examines how this revisioned postmodern perspective might bear on our thinking about justice. (shrink)