We study the isomorphism and bi-embeddability relations on the spaces of Kazhdan groups and finitely generated simple groups.

Altruism is a popular economic explanation for a wide range of pro-social decisions and actions. It has been applied frequently in several different streams of literature, and is a descriptively compelling model of behavior. This paper provides a theoretical framework for the existence of ordinal and cardinal altruistic value functions, as well as altruistic utility functions, based on an altruistic preference relation. Representation theorems are developed to specify relatively weak conditions under which altruistic value and utility functions can be shown (...) to exist. In addition, conditions that lead to additive forms of these functions are provided. (shrink)

We estimate that 208,000 deep brain stimulation (DBS) devices have been implanted to address neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders worldwide. DBS Think Tank presenters pooled data and determined that DBS expanded in its scope and has been applied to multiple brain disorders in an effort to modulate neural circuitry. The DBS Think Tank was founded in 2012 providing a space where clinicians, engineers, researchers from industry and academia discuss current and emerging DBS technologies and logistical and ethical issues facing the field. (...) The emphasis is on cutting edge research and collaboration aimed to advance the DBS field. The Eighth Annual DBS Think Tank was held virtually on September 1 and 2, 2020 (Zoom Video Communications) due to restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The meeting focused on advances in: (1) optogenetics as a tool for comprehending neurobiology of diseases and on optogenetically-inspired DBS, (2) cutting edge of emerging DBS technologies, (3) ethical issues affecting DBS research and access to care, (4) neuromodulatory approaches for depression, (5) advancing novel hardware, software and imaging methodologies, (6) use of neurophysiological signals in adaptive neurostimulation, and (7) use of more advanced technologies to improve DBS clinical outcomes. There were 178 attendees who participated in a DBS Think Tank survey, which revealed the expansion of DBS into several indications such as obesity, post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction and Alzheimer’s disease. This proceedings summarizes the advances discussed at the Eighth Annual DBS Think Tank. (shrink)

Michigan State University faculty, staff, alumni, and students travel the world on "study abroad" programs, research and development projects, and personal vacations; many document their experiences photographically. "MSU Global Focus" is an international photography competition created in 1999 by MSU's Office of International Studies and Programs, to foster the sharing of such photographs. Global Focus: Images of a Land-Grant Tradition is a blend of images and words, of artistic expression and historical documentation, of past and present, and of the perspectives (...) of many people. Many of the archival and current photographs have never before been published. More than 60 winning photographs from the first five years of the competition are featured in this book. These photos are juxtaposedwith more than 100 images depicting the breadth of M.S.U.'s international involvements, stretching from as long ago as the 1870s to the present day. Michigan State University has a long history of international involvement. The institution was among the handful of U.S. colleges and universities involved in supporting and establishing foreign programs immediately after World War II. Those efforts involved hun-dreds of faculty members and initiated the tradition of strong international involvement that continues today. In her preface to the book, M.S.U. President Lou Anna K. Simon said, "Advancing Knowledge. Transforming Lives. That is how we sum up our land-grant mission today. And at its core, that means we make a difference in people's lives--not just those people who come to Michigan State, but all of the people whose lives we touch around the world. The photos and text in this book tell an important part of that story, one that helps define who we are and one in which all of us who are part of Michigan State can take tremendous pride.". (shrink)

The 85th birthday of Zygmunt Bauman in November 2010 presented the occasion for TCS to publish a special section of commissioned commentary pieces on a number of central themes in his work. The section, edited and introduced by editorial board member Roy Boyne, featured articles by Martin Jay, John Milbank and Julia Hell, and concentrated respectively upon the themes of modernity, the role of the intellectual, and the gaze of/at the other, highlighting the dependence on metaphor and the significance of (...) ‘looking’ in his writing. This interview takes that special section as its starting point, and asks Bauman to respond to some of the claims and suggestions made in those articles. In doing so, he argues for the continuing salience of the ‘liquid modernity’ concept for understanding the ‘purpose behind the effort’, and explains in detail his view of the intellectual and the role such an intellectual should play in the context of liquid modernity. (shrink)

Abstract:This paper offers a short account of Prospect-Refuge theory, Jay Appleton's pioneering contribution to landscape aesthetics published as The Experience of Landscape in 1975. I discuss the theory's influence on a variety of writers, and introduce the photographic exhibition that Professor Appleton and I produced in the year before his death, featuring views of Britain that articulate his key principles. The paper ends with the suggestion that current phenomenological approaches in the Humanities give a new relevance to Appleton's work, which (...) always stressed the significance of the imagination interpreting and recreating the world. (shrink)

En el estudio de los partidos y movimientos contemporáneos de extrema derecha hay una laguna reiteradamente enunciada por los estudiosos de la materia: el análisis de su sustrato ideológico. La razón principal de esta situación radica en la heterogeneidad, la fragmentación, el oportunismo y la ocultación planificada característicos de estos movimientos extremistas. En este artículo se pretende realizar un análisis de elementos fundamentales de la ideología del Front National recurriendo al modelo de Totalismo Ideológico formulado por ROBERT JAY LIFTON como (...) herramienta heurística de reducción de la complejidad. Ello nos permitirá comprobar que el discurso del Front National agrupa, en diferente grado pero de un modo claro, todos los componentes que posibilitan calificarlo de discurso y movimiento totalista. (shrink)

This book makes a contribution to the growing literature on philosophy of culture and cultural criticism, an area of philosophy that has typically attracted less attention in the Anglo-American philosophical world than in Europe. In sections of varying length and quality, Jay Newman analyzes the cultural criticism of Plato, Augustine, Erasmus, Voltaire, Nietzsche, Thorstein Veblen, and Allan Bloom. The discussion of Plato is the lengthiest one, while Augustine, Erasmus, and Voltaire receive rather cursory treatment; Newman’s treatment of Nietzsche is especially (...) fair and nuanced. The inquiry is interestingly interdisciplinary, and, as the author discusses a number of diverse thinkers from philosophy and the social sciences as well as theology, this book should be of interest to students from a number of disciplines. In a closing chapter on the contemporary relevance of the ideas discussed, Newman analyzes the roles of television and professional public relations and of the academy and religion. (shrink)

Debating the interpretation of the Burgess Shale fossil records, Stephen Jay Gould and Simon Conway Morris have formulated two conflicting theses regarding the nature of evolutionary processes. While Gould argued that evolution is essentially a contingent process whose outcomes are unpredictable, Conway Morris claimed that the omnipresence of convergence testifies that it is in fact deterministic, leading to predictable and inevitable outcomes. Their theses have been extensively researched from various perspectives. However, a systematic parallel analysis of the core arguments (...) each of them offered in support of their thesis has been lacking. I argue Conway Morris has successfully exposed the core weaknesses of Gould's thesis and offered a comprehensive account in favor of the major role of convergence in evolutionary history. On the other hand, I will point out some of the weak points in the latter's arguments supporting the deterministic view of life's evolution. Although Conway Morris has been more successful in arguing for the deterministic nature of the evolutionary processes, both theses could be improved if their shortcomings are taken into consideration. (shrink)

Conway Morris argues against Stephen Jay Gould's argument that the history of life is radically contingent by describing the abundance of convergences, wherein different lineages starting in different states, arrive at the same adaptations. A standard example is the evolution of the camera eye. This review assesses the validity of Conway Morris' argument.

Simon J. Evnine explores the view that some objects have matter from which they are distinct but that this distinctness is not due to the existence of anything like a form. He draws on Aristotle's insight that such objects must be understood in terms of an account that links what they are essentially with how they come to exist and what their functions are. Artifacts are the most prominent kind of objects where these three features coincide, and Evnine develops (...) a detailed account of the existence and identity conditions of artifacts, and the origins of their functions, in terms of how they come into existence. He then extends this account to organisms, where evolution accomplishes what is effected by intentional making in the case of artifacts, and to actions, which are seen as artifactual events. (shrink)

Which political principles should govern global politics? In his new book, Simon Caney engages with the work of philosophers, political theorists, and international relations scholars in order to examine some of the most pressing global issues of our time. Are there universal civil, political, and economic human rights? Should there be a system of supra- state institutions? Can humanitarian intervention be justified?

Our engagement with time is a ubiquitous feature of our lives. We are aware of time on many scales, from the briefest flicker of change to the way our lives unfold over many years. But to what extent does this encounter reveal the true nature of temporal reality? To the extent that temporal reality is as it seems, how do we come to be aware of it? And to the extent that temporal reality is not as it seems, why does (...) it seem that way? These are the central questions addressed by Simon Prosser in Experiencing Time. He defends the B-theory of time, according to which the apparently dynamic quality of change, the special status of the present, and even the passage of time are all illusions. Prosser goes on to explore solutions to certain puzzles raised by experiences of temporal features such as changes, rates, and durations, and in doing so sheds light on broader issues in the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Deconstruction and pragmatism constitute two of the major intellectual influences on the contemporary theoretical scene; influences personified in the work of Jacques Derrida and Richard Rorty. Both Rortian pragmatism, which draws the consequences of post-war developments in Anglo-American philosophy, and Derridian deconstruction, which extends and troubles the phonomenological and Heideggerian influence on the Continental tradition, have hitherto generally been viewed as mutually exclusive philosophical language games. The purpose of this volume is to bring deconstruction and pragmatism into critical confrontation with (...) one another through staging a debate between Derrida and Rorty, itself based on discussions that took place at the College International de Philosophie in Paris in 1993. The ground for this debate is layed out in introductory papers by Simon Critchley and Ernesto Laclau, and the remainder of the volume records Derrida's and Rorty's responses to each other's work. Chantal Mouffe gives an overview of the stakes of this debate in a helpful preface. (shrink)

Scientific realism driven by inference to the best explanation (IBE) takes empirically confirmed objects to exist, independent, pace empiricism, of whether those objects are observable or not. This kind of realism, it has been claimed, does not need probabilistic reasoning to justify the claim that these objects exist. But I show that there are scientific contexts in which a non-probabilistic IBE-driven realism leads to a puzzle. Since IBE can be applied in scientific contexts in which empirical confirmation has not yet (...) been reached, realists will in these contexts be committed to the existence of empirically unconfirmed objects. As a consequence of such commitments, because they lack probabilistic features, the possible empirical confirmation of those objects is epistemically redundant with respect to realism. (shrink)

The author of the highly popular book Think, which Time magazine hailed as "the one book every smart person should read to understand, and even enjoy, the key questions of philosophy," Simon Blackburn is that rara avis--an eminent thinker who is able to explain philosophy to the general reader. Now Blackburn offers a tour de force exploration of what he calls "the most exciting and engaging issue in the whole of philosophy"--the age-old war over truth. The front lines of (...) this war are well defined. On one side are those who believe in plain, unvarnished facts, rock-solid truths that can be found through reason and objectivity--that science leads to truth, for instance. Their opponents mock this idea. They see the dark forces of language, culture, power, gender, class, ideology and desire--all subverting our perceptions of the world, and clouding our judgement with false notions of absolute truth. Beginning with an early skirmish in the war--when Socrates confronted the sophists in ancient Athens--Blackburn offers a penetrating look at the longstanding battle these two groups have waged, examining the philosophical battles fought by Plato, Protagoras, William James, David Hume, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Richard Rorty, and many others, with a particularly fascinating look at Nietzsche. Among the questions Blackburn considers are: is science mere opinion, can historians understand another historical period, and indeed can one culture ever truly understand another. Blackburn concludes that both sides have merit, and that neither has exclusive ownership of truth. What is important is that, whichever side we embrace, we should know where we stand and what is to be said for our opponents. (shrink)

Nietzsche famously attacked traditional morality, and propounded a controversial ethics of 'life-enhancement'. Simon May presents a radically new view of Nietzsche's thought, which is shown to be both revolutionary and conservative, and to have much to offer us today after the demise of old values and the 'death of God'.

The 1929 encounter between Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger in Davos, Switzerland is considered one of the most important intellectual debates of the twentieth century and a founding moment of continental philosophy. At the same time, many commentators have questioned the philosophical profundity and coherence of the actual debate. In this book, the first comprehensive philosophical analysis of the Davos debate, Simon Truwant challenges these critiques. He argues that Cassirer and Heidegger's disagreement about the meaning of Kant's philosophy is (...) motivated by their different views about the human condition, which in turn are motivated by their opposing conceptions of what the task of philosophy ultimately should be. Truwant shows that Cassirer and Heidegger share a grand philosophical concern: to comprehend and aid the human being's capacity to orient itself in and towards the world. (shrink)

Gilles Deleuze’s engagements with mathematics, replete in his work, rely upon the construction of alternative lineages in the history of mathematics, which challenge some of the self imposed limits that regulate the canonical concepts of the discipline. For Deleuze, these challenges provide an opportunity to reconfigure particular philosophical problems – for example, the problem of individuation – and to develop new concepts in response to them. The highly original research presented in this book explores the mathematical construction of Deleuze’s philosophy, (...) as well as addressing the undervalued and often neglected question of the mathematical thinkers who influenced his work. -/- In the wake of Alain Badiou’s recent and seemingly devastating attack on the way the relation between mathematics and philosophy is configured in Deleuze’s work, Simon Duffy offers a robust defence of the structure of Deleuze’s philosophy and, in particular, the adequacy of the mathematical problems used in its construction. By reconciling Badiou and Deleuze’s seeming incompatible engagements with mathematics, Duffy succeeds in presenting a solid foundation for Deleuze’s philosophy, rebuffing the recent challenges against it. -/- Simon B. Duffy is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Yale-NUS College, Singapore, and Honorary Research Associate in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Sydney, Australia. He is the author of The Logic of Expression: Quality, Quantity, and Intensity in Spinoza, Hegel and Deleuze (2006). (shrink)

Book synopsis: Simon May presents a fresh and wide-ranging critique of Nietzsche's famous attack on traditional morality, and of his controversial ethics of 'life-enhancement'. He reveals Nietzsche as both revolutionary and conservative–as one who repudiates traditional 'moral' conceptions of God, guilt, asceticism, pity, and truthfulness, and yet retains a demanding ethics of discipline, conscience, 'self-creation', generosity, and honesty. In particular, May shows how Nietzsche rejects truthfulness as an unconditional value and yet celebrates it as one of his own highest (...) values, whose worth is determined by who is pursuing it, for what end, and when in their lives. May is strongly critical of various aspects of Nietzsche's thought–his self-defeating conception of justice, his assumption that 'life-enhancement' necessarily demands world-affirmation, his ambition to de-deify the world, and the impossible and undesirable autonomy of the Übermensch. But Nietzsche is shown to offer modernity key elements of a coherent ethic, and to provide moral philosophy with important tools for reassessing some of its most cherished values and concepts. May's book will be illuminating not just for scholars and students of Nietzsche, in philosophy, literature, and history of ideas, but for anyone interested in current debates about ethics and modernity. (shrink)

In this article, I will discuss two prominent views on the relevance and irrelevance of ontological investigations for the social sciences, namely, ontological foundationalism and anti-ontological pragmatism. I will argue that both views are unsatisfactory. The subsequent part of the article will introduce an alternative role for ontological projects in the philosophy of the social sciences that fares better in this respect by paying attention to the ontological assumptions of actual social scientific theories, models, and related explanatory practices. I will (...) illustrate and support this alternative through discussion of three concrete cases. (shrink)

Practical mechanisms for aligning performance, ethics, and accountability are urgently needed. The context for this includes the organisational, technological, and regulatory transformations underlying current patterns of globalisation. These factors, combined with the associated emergence of civil action concerned with corporate accountability and deeper value-shifts, make such realignments a practical possibility.Social and ethical accounting, auditing, and reporting provides one of the few practical mechanisms for companies to integrate new patterns of civil accountability and governance with a business success model focused on (...) deepening stakeholder relationships around core non-financial as well as financial values and interests. (shrink)

This essay attempts to sharpen significantly the critical debate around Levinas's work by focussing on the question of politics, which is, it is argued, Levinas's Achilles'heel. Five problems in Levinas's treatment of politics are identified and discussed: fraternity, monotheism, androcentrism, the family, and Israel. It is argued that Levinas 's ethics is terribly compromised by his conception of politics. In order to save Levinasian ethics from this compromise, two possibilities are explored: first, to follow Derrida 's separation of ethical form (...) from political content in his recent reading of Levinas, which allows for a notion of political invention linked to ethical responsibility, and second, to link Levinas's conception of ethics to what is called in the essay the anarchistic disturbance of politics. In conclusion, this anarchistic experience of ethics in linked to a quite different understanding of politics as the dissensual space of democracy. (shrink)

This essay attempts to sharpen significantly the critical debate around Levinas’s work by focussing on the question of politics, which is, it is argued, Levinas’s Achilles’heel. Five problems in Levinas’s treatment of politics are identified and discussed: fraternity, monotheism, and rocentrism, the family, and Israel. It is argued that Levinas’s ethics is terribly compromised by his conception of politics. In order to save Levinasian ethics from this compromise, two possibilities are explored: first, to follow Derrida’s separation of ethical form from (...) political content in his recent reading of Levinas, which allows for a notion of political invention linked to ethical responsibility, and second, to link Levinas’s conception of ethics to what is called in the essay the anarchistic disturbanceof politics. In conclusion, this anarchistic experience of ethics in linked to a quite different understanding of politics as the dissensual space of democracy. (shrink)

This book is nominally about linguistic representation. But, since it is we who do the representing, it is also about us. And, since it is the universe which we represent, it is also about the universe. In the end, then, this book is about everything, which, since it is a philosophy book, is as it should be. I recognize that it is nowadays unfashionable to write books about every thing. Philosophers of language, it will be said, ought to stick to (...) writing about language; philosophers of science, to writing about science; epis temologists, to writing about knowing; and so on. The real world, however, perversely refuses to carve itself up so neatly, and, although I recognize that the real w,orld is nowadays also unfashionable, in the end I judged that one might get closer to the truth of various matters by going along with it. So I have done so. lt was Wilfrid Sellars who initially convinced me of the virtues of this way of proceeding. At this point one normally says something like "The debt that this book owes him is immense". I would say it too, were it not to understate the case, From Wilfrid, I learned to think about things. If the upshot of my thinking tends, as it obviously does, to show a general con silience with the upshot of his, it is primarily because he is so very good at it - and he had a head start. (shrink)

In 1962, the philosopher Richard Taylor used six commonly accepted presuppositions to imply that human beings have no control over the future. David Foster Wallace not only took issue with Taylor's method, which, according to him, scrambled the relations of logic, language, and the physical world, but also noted a semantic trick at the heart of Taylor's argument. _Fate, Time, and Language_ presents Wallace's brilliant critique of Taylor's work. Written long before the publication of his fiction and essays, Wallace's thesis (...) reveals his great skepticism of abstract thinking made to function as a negation of something more genuine and real. He was especially suspicious of certain paradigms of thought-the cerebral aestheticism of modernism, the clever gimmickry of postmodernism-that abandoned "the very old traditional human verities that have to do with spirituality and emotion and community." As Wallace rises to meet the challenge to free will presented by Taylor, we witness the developing perspective of this major novelist, along with his struggle to establish solid logical ground for his convictions. This volume, edited by Steven M. Cahn and Maureen Eckert, reproduces Taylor's original article and other works on fatalism cited by Wallace. James Ryerson's introduction connects Wallace's early philosophical work to the themes and explorations of his later fiction, and Jay Garfield supplies a critical biographical epilogue. (shrink)

Simon Feldman explores how the concept of authenticity has become an unrealistic ideal founded on metaphysically confused notions of the self. In Against Authenticity, Feldman argues for the validity and value of inauthenticity in our lives, providing an exciting challenge for studies of ethics, metaethics, metaphysics, and moral psychology.

This is a book about the religious life of the Greeks from the eighth century BC to the fifth century AD, looked at in the context of a variety of different cities and periods. Simon Price does not describe some abstract and self-contained system of religion or myths but examines local practices and ideas in the light of general Greek ideas, relating them for example, to gender roles and to cultural and political life (including Attic tragedy and the trial (...) of Socrates). He also lays emphasis on the reactions to Greek religions of ancient thinkers - Greek, Roman, Jewish and Christian. The evidence drawn on is of all kinds: literary texts, which are translated throughout; inscriptions, including an appendix of newly translated Greek inscriptions; and archaeology, which is highlighted in the numerous illustrations. (shrink)

John Cook Wilson is an important predecessor of contemporary knowledge first epistemologists: among other parallels, he claimed that knowledge is indefinable. We reconstruct four arguments for this claim discernible in his work, three of which find no clear analogues in contemporary discussions of knowledge first epistemology. We pay special attention to Cook Wilson’s view of the relation between knowledge and forms of thinking (like belief). Claims of Cook Wilson’s that support the indefinability of knowledge include: that knowledge, unlike belief, straddles (...) an active/passive divide; that, rather than entailing belief, knowledge excludes belief; and that understanding forms of thinking other than knowledge (such as belief) depends on understanding knowledge. Reflecting on Cook Wilson’s framework highlights underappreciated concerns relevant to any attempt to define knowledge. (shrink)

This best-selling dictionary is written by one of the most famous philosophers of our time, and it is widely recognized as the best dictionary of its kind. Comprehensive and authoritative, it covers every aspect of philosophy from Aristotle to Zen. With clear and concise definitions, it provides lively and accessible coverage of not only Western philosophical traditions, but also themes from Chinese, Indian, Islamic, and Jewish philosophy. Entries include over 500 biographies of famous and influential philosophers, in-depth analysis of philosophical (...) terms and concepts, and a chronology of philosophical events stretching from 10,000 BC to the present day. The first edition of this dictionary became a market-leader and a standard work of reference, selling over 100,000 copies. Now the author, Professor Simon Blackburn, has revised it to include web links which provide up-to-date and valuable extra information via the Dictionary of Philosophy companion website. Fully cross-referenced and containing over 3,000 alphabetical entries, it is the ideal introduction to philosophy for anyone with an interest in the subject, and it is an indispensable work of reference for students and teachers. (shrink)

The ethics of advertising to children has been identified as one of the most important topics worthy of academic research in the marketing field. A fast growing advertising technique is product placement, and its use in children's films is becoming more and more common. The limited evidence existing suggests that product placements are especially potent in their effects upon children. Yet regulations regarding placements targeted at children are virtually non-existent, with advertising guidelines suggesting that it remains the prime responsibility of (...) the parents to provide guidance for children. This study measured the ethical evaluations of parents in the UK and Canada regarding product placements in children's films. After exposing parents to a four-type typology of product placements, results show that explicit placements of ethically charged products were perceived as the most unethical type of placements. Parents in the UK were more sensitive to the use of the technique and there was a significant difference in relativism between the two groups. Both sets of respondents would like to see more regulation on the use of placements, especially placements of alcohol, tobacco and fast foods. (shrink)

Humanitarian intervention has always been more popular in theory than in practice. In the face of unspeakable acts, the desire to do something,anything, is understandable. States have tended to be reluctant to act on such desires, however, leading to the present situation in which there are scores of books and countless articles articulating the contours of a right—or even an obligation—of humanitarian intervention, while the number of cases that might be cited as models of what is being advocated can be (...) counted on one hand. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that the consensus around normative standards for the ethics of research in clinical trials, strongly influenced by the Declaration of Helsinki, is perceived from various quarters as too conservative and potentially restrictive of research that is seen as urgent and necessary. We examine this problem from the perspective of various challengers who argue for alternative approaches to what ought or ought not to be permitted. Key themes within this analysis will examine these claims and argue (...) they have implications for the interests of the research subject, research governance and regulation. Using our work with TREAT-NMD, the neuromuscular clinical trials network, we posit that there is a place for advancing the discourse of moral rights and moral duties in the context of research, especially from the perspective of patients and their families, and for including the politics of patient activism and empowerment. At the same time we remain vigilant to the danger that the therapeutic misconception and other serious vulnerabilities for the patient population in clinical trials, are at risk of being overlooked. (shrink)

This book provides a definitive account of Jacques Derrida's involvement in debates about the university. Derrida was a founding member of the Research Group on the Teaching of Philosophy (GREPH), an activist group that mobilized opposition to the Giscard government's proposals to "rationalize" the French educational system in 1975. He also helped to convene the Estates General of Philosophy, a vast gathering in 1979 of educators from across France. Furthermore, he was closely associated with the founding of the International College (...) of Philosophy in Paris, and his connection with the International Parliament of Writers during the 1990s also illustrates his continuing interest in the possibility of launching an array of literary and philosophical projects while experimenting with new kinds of institutions in which they might take their specific shape and direction. Derrida argues that the place of philosophy in the university should be explored as both a historical question and a philosophical problem in its own right. He argues that philosophy simultaneously belongs and does not belong to the university. In its founding role, it must come from "outside" the institution in which, nevertheless, it comes to define itself. The author asks whether this irresolvable tension between "belonging" and "not belonging" might not also form the basis of Derrida's political thinking and activism where wider issues of contemporary significance are concerned. Key questions today concerning citizenship, rights, the nation-state and Europe, asylum, immigration, terror, and the "return" of religion all involve assumptions and ideas about "belonging"; and they entail constitutional, legal, institutional and material constraints that take shape precisely on the basis of such ideas. This project will therefore open up a key question: Can deconstruction's insight into the paradoxical institutional standing of philosophy form the basis of a meaningful political response by "theory" to a number of contemporary international issues? (shrink)

For several decades, a debate has been waged over how to interpret the significance of fossils from the Burgess Shale and Cambrian Explosion. Stephen Jay Gould argued that if the “tape of life” was rerun, then the resulting lineages would differ radically from what we find today, implying that humans are a happy accident of evolution. Simon Conway Morris argued that if the “tape of life” was rerun, the resulting lineages would be similar to what we now observe, implying (...) that intelligence would still emerge from an evolutionary process. Recent methodological innovations in paleontological practice call into question both positions and suggest that global claims about the history of life, whether in terms of essential contingency or predictable convergence, are unwarranted. (shrink)

Love—unconditional, selfless, unchanging, sincere, and totally accepting—is worshipped today as the West's only universal religion. To challenge it is one of our few remaining taboos. In this pathbreaking and superbly written book, philosopher Simon May does just that, dissecting our resilient ruling ideas of love and showing how they are the product of a long and powerful cultural heritage. Tracing over 2,500 years of human thought and history, May shows how our ideal of love developed from its Hebraic and (...) Greek origins alongside Christianity until, during the last two centuries, "God is love" became "love is God"—so hubristic, so escapist, so untruthful to the real nature of love, that it has booby-trapped relationships everywhere with deluded expectations. Brilliantly, May explores the very different philosophers and writers, both skeptics and believers, who dared to think differently: from Aristotle's perfect friendship and Ovid's celebration of sex and "the chase," to Rousseau's personal authenticity, Nietzsche's affirmation, Freud's concepts of loss and mourning, and boredom in Proust. Against our belief that love is an all-powerful solution to finding meaning, security, and happiness in life, May reveals with great clarity what love actually is: the intense desire for someone whom we believe can ground and affirm our very existence. The feeling that "makes the world go round" turns out to be a harbinger of home--and in that sense, of the sacred. (shrink)

The ethics of advertising to children has been identified as one of the most important topics worthy of academic research in the marketing field. A fast growing advertising technique is product placement, and its use in children's films is becoming more and more common. The limited evidence existing suggests that product placements are especially potent in their effects upon children. Yet regulations regarding placements targeted at children are virtually non-existent, with advertising guidelines suggesting that it remains the prime responsibility of (...) the parents to provide guidance for children. This study measured the ethical evaluations of parents in the UK and Canada regarding product placements in children's films. After exposing parents to a four-type typology of product placements, results show that explicit placements of ethically charged products were perceived as the most unethical type of placements. Parents in the UK were more sensitive to the use of the technique and there was a significant difference in relativism between the two groups. Both sets of respondents would like to see more regulation on the use of placements, especially placements of alcohol, tobacco and fast foods. (shrink)