In this paper, I will be arguing that the most recent incarnation of AI research -- that of embodied robotics and situated cognition -- demonstrates a strict and remarkable parallel with the work of mid-century French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and that through this parallel we see demonstration and confirmation of ideas about minds, bodies, and what Merleau-Ponty often called a 'dialogue with the world'. Seeing these theories confirmed in AI research will ultimately provide us with evidence that suggests our traditional (...) understanding of minds as these isolated entities shuffling symbolic representations around in the absence of interaction is simply absurd, and in fact dialogue itself comes first -- dialogue with others and dialogue with the world itself. (shrink)

The concept of yinyang lies at the heart of Chinese thought and culture. The relationship between these two opposing, yet mutually dependent, forces is symbolized in the familiar black and white symbol that has become an icon in popular culture across the world. The real significance of yinyang is, however, more complex and subtle. This brilliant and comprehensive analysis by one of the leading authorities in the field captures the richness and multiplicity of the meanings and applications of yinyang, including (...) its visual presentations. Through a vast range of historical and textual sources, the book examines the scope and role of yinyang, the philosophical significance of its various layers of meanings and its relation to numerous schools and traditions within Chinese philosophy. By putting yinyang on a secure and clear philosophical footing, the book roots the concept in the original Chinese idiom, distancing it from Western assumptions, frameworks and terms, yet also seeking to connect its analysis to shared cross-cultural philosophical concerns. (shrink)

The trial of Socrates -- Socrates in court -- How the system worked -- The charge of impiety -- The war years -- Alcibiades, Socrates, and the aristocratic milieu -- Pestilence and war -- The rise and fall of Alcibiades -- The end of the war -- Critias and Civil War --- Crisis and conflict -- Symptoms of change -- Reactions to intellectuals -- The condemnation of Socrates -- Socratic politics -- A cock for Asclepius.

"By combining recent advances in the physical sciences with some of the novel ideas, techniques, and data of modern biology, this book attempts to achieve a new and different kind of evolutionary synthesis. I found it to be challenging, fascinating, infuriating, and provocative, but certainly not dull."--James H, Brown, University of New Mexico "This book is unquestionably mandatory reading not only for every living biologist but for generations of biologists to come."--Jack P. Hailman, Animal Behaviour , review of the first (...) edition "An important contribution to modern evolutionary thinking. It fortifies the place of Evolutionary Theory among the other well-established natural laws."--R.Gessink, TAXON. (shrink)

This book treats Chinese philosophy today as a global project, presenting the work of both Chinese and Western philosophers.

Harris-McCoy offers a scholarly commentary, with translation and introduction, to Artemidorus' Oneirocritica, a treatise on dream-divination and interpretation. Providing insight into the ancient mind, he gives particular emphasis to the Oneirocritica's composition and construction, and intellectual and philosophical context.

This paper examines the sophistic practice of antilogikê or antilogic, which consists in, as G. B. Kerferd described, “causing the same thing to be seen by the same people now as possessing one predicate and now as possessing the opposite or contradictory predicate.” Although, since Plato, antilogic has been cast in a cloud of suspicion, understood primarily as the dubious practice of making the weaker argument stronger, I explore a contrary interpretation that antilogic was a technique for pursuing the suspension (...) of judgment, or epochê. In this paper, I define the practice of antilogic through the tale of Corax and Tisias and the surviving fragments of Protagoras and Gorgias. In so doing, I hypothesize that antilogic was a method for averting the natural tendency of language to assign stability and durability to being. Through the perpetual displacement of one logos by another, antilogic grants thought access to the ceaseless flux and becoming of nature. As it barred language from assigning stability to being, so too did it provide a “way out” of the inexorable human drive captured in the opening line of Aristotle’s Metaphysics: “All humans naturally desire to know.”. (shrink)

Plato’s Protagoras plays off the genre of Greek comedy in its expression of its philosophical meaning. This dialogue at points invites us to re-envision Socrates against the backdrop of Aristophanes’ criticisms of Socrates and the sophists. The Protagoras follows some of the conventions of Greek comedy but interrupts its form with moments of lengthier rational discussion absent in Greek comedy. The dialogue’s logos and antilogos lead to aporia, but this aporia shows a limit to reason that recognizes human incompleteness without (...) leading to misology. In contrast to performed drama, the written form of the dialogue both engages its audience’s emotions while allowing the reader to return to the text and to continue their rational assessment of the arguments. (shrink)

Cet article montre, à partir du cas des abeilles domestiques et du travail apicole et agricole, comment des êtres vivants participent à façonner des temporalités nocturnes. La nuit, du fait de l’absence de luminosité, les abeilles se rassemblent à l’intérieur de leur ruche et ne butinent plus. Ce comportement, issu de l’expérience que les abeilles ont des heures nocturnes, est mis à profit dans un ensemble de pratiques : d’une part, par les apiculteurs dans la réalisation de la transhumance des (...) abeilles, un travail de nuit exigeant lors duquel ces professionnels doivent se coordonner avec la temporalité nocturne de leurs abeilles ; d’autre part, par les agriculteurs dans l’utilisation des pesticides, encadrée juridiquement à partir d’une qualification de la nuit chez l’abeille. Au gré des contextes et de ces différentes pratiques relationnelles avec l’abeille, la nuit apparaît comme un moment vécu de multiples manières. C’est à partir d’un terrain ethnographique en vallée du Rhône (... (shrink)

them. Though Aristotle does not say so, presumably the questioner who conceals in this way must be prepared, when challenged, to show that the conclusion...

Can we respond to injustices in the world in ways that do more than just address their consequences? In this book, Brooke A. Ackerly argues that what to do about injustice is not just an ethical or moral question, but a political question about assuming responsibility for injustice. Ultimately, Just Responsibility offers a theory of global injustice and political responsibility that can guide action.

Many normative political theorists have engaged in the systematic collection and/or analysis of empirical data to inform the development of their arguments over the past several decades. Yet, the approach they employ has typically not been treated as a distinctive mode of theorizing. It has been mostly overlooked in surveys of normative political theory methods and methodologies, as well as by those critics who assert that political theory is too abstracted from actual political contestation. Our aim is to unearth this (...) grounded normative theory (GNT) approach – to identify its definitive practices and highlight its potential significance. We detail four overlapping commitments characteristic of GNT. These include commitments to expanding the comprehensiveness of input for normative arguments through original empirical research and/or analysis, recursivity in the development of normative claims, attentiveness to the systematic inclusion of a range of voices and ways of knowing, and accountability to those engaged by the theorist in empirical contexts. We discuss methodological distinctions within GNT, including between more- and less-solidaristic approaches. We discuss how GNT answers calls for theorists to engage more closely with empirical political dynamics and we consider responses to possible critiques. (shrink)

In the Law of Civilisation and Decay, Adams considers various societies and civilisations by the symbolism, manner and influence of their coinage, and concludes that a society or civilisation becomes sapped of its culture-vigour, when entering a cycle where money becomes the dominant factor rather than merely serving as a mechanism.

The Republic presents the sophist in three ways: through an example, an abstract description in Book Six, and an image. Thrasymachus presents a coherent understanding of justice and is not inconsistent, as some commentators have argued. Both the philosopher and the sophist are intellectuals who value wisdom, but on Socrates’ account, the sophist equates the necessary with the good. The philosopher separates the necessary and the good, and orients himself to a truth outside of himself. However, the Republic suggests that (...) there is no meta-philosophical position by which the philosopher and the sophist can be judged. The separation of the philosopher from the sophist makes sense only from the viewpoint of the philosopher. Socrates’ emphasis on the incompleteness of wisdom also suggests that the philosopher’s understanding of his own activity must remain open to change. (shrink)

This paper focuses on independent training providers (ITPs) – in other words, private companies – as suppliers of vocational education and training in post-war England. Whilst acknowledging the central role of further education (FE) colleges in delivering vocational learning, it draws attention to a large, diverse sector of ITPs operating alongside FE colleges, particularly during the 1960s and 1970s. Data suggest that around 15–20% of vocational learners were enrolled as fee-paying customers with private providers at that time – a figure (...) broadly similar to today. There are, it is argued, three related reasons for this. First, the post-war policy environment, and the varied and uneven nature of colleges at that time, allowed significant room for ITPs to operate as alternative providers of vocational education. Second, the far-reaching ‘efficiency’ gains required since FE colleges left local authority control have largely attenuated the space in which ITPs previously operated. Third, neoliberal assumptions about the superiority of private enterprise mean that ITPs now receive significant funding from the state, largely to deliver Apprenticeships and other programmes of work-related learning – which has, somewhat perversely, reduced the incentive for them to act as bone fide commercial providers of a broader range of vocational learning. (shrink)

The struggle which Plato has Socrates recommend to his interlocutors in Gorgias - and to his readers - is the struggle to overcome the temptations of worldly success and to concentrate on genuine morality. Ostensibly an enquiry into the value of rhetoric, the dialogue soon becomes an investigation into the value of these two contrasting ways of life. In a series of dazzling and bold arguments, Plato attempts to establish that only morality can bring a person true happiness, and to (...) demolish alternative viewpoints. It is not surprising that Gorgias is one of Plato's most widely read dialogues. Philosophers read it for its coverage of central moral issues; others enjoy its vividness, clarity and occasional bitter humour. This new translation is accompanied by explanatory notes and an informative introduction. (shrink)

The first English-language biography of the well-known traditionalist metaphysican René Guénon, including a separate section assessing the impact of his work in the Western world, and an extensive annotated bibliography.

Purity is known as an ideal of proof that restricts a proof to notions belonging to the ‘content’ of the theorem. In this paper, our main interest is to develop a conception of purity for formal (natural deduction) proofs. We develop two new notions of purity: one based on an ontological notion of the content of a theorem, and one based on the notions of surrogate ontological content and structural content. From there, we characterize which (classical) first-order natural deduction proofs (...) of a mathematical theorem are pure. Formal proofs that refer to the ontological content of a theorem will be called ‘fully ontologically pure’. Formal proofs that refer to a surrogate ontological content of a theorem will be called ‘secondarily ontologically pure’, because they preserve the structural content of a theorem. We will use interpretations between theories to develop a proof-theoretic criterion that guarantees secondary ontological purity for formal proofs. (shrink)

What responsibility do individuals bear for structural injustice? Iris Marion Young has offered the most fully developed account to date, the Social Connections Model. She argues that we all bear responsibility because we each causally contribute to structural processes that produce injustice. My aim in this article is to motivate and defend an alternative account that improves on Young’s model by addressing five fundamental challenges faced by any such theory. The core idea of what I call the “Role-Ideal Model” is (...) that we are each responsible for structural injustice through and in virtue of our social roles, i.e. our roles as parents, colleagues, employers, citizens, etc., because roles are the site where structure meets agency. In short, the Role-Ideal Model explains how individual action contributes to structural change, justifies demands for action from each particular agent, specifies what kinds of acts should be undertaken, moderates between demanding too much and too little of individual agents, and provides an account of the critical responses appropriate for holding individuals accountable for structural injustice. (shrink)

This is Thomas Reid's greatest work. It covers far more philosophical ground than the earlier, more popular Inquiry. The Intellectual Powers and its companion volume, Essays on the Active Powers of Man, constitute the fullest, most original presentation of the philosophy of Common Sense. In the process, Reid provides acutely critical discussions of an impressive array of thinkers but especially of David Hume. In Reid's eyes, Hume had driven a deep tendency in modern philosophy to its ultimate conclusions by creating (...) a phantom-world of so-called 'ideas' that sprang from objects of observation; the self was a conglomeration of perceived ideas; and the will as the source of action was nothing but the balance of passionate impulses. -/- Reid's Common Sense philosophy answers these problems by suggesting that sceptics, such as Hume, unavoidably affirm what they purport to deny, namely the existence of a stable external world, of other minds, of the continuity of their own minds, and of their own and other people's ability to ascribe and accept responsibility for actions. We can understand all of this by proper empirical observation and philosophical analysis of the activity of the mind. Reid's major positive contribution to philosophy is a detailed account of the various innate powers of the mind. While particularly influential in the first half of the nineteenth century, Reid's work has retained a significant role in philosophy, not least in recent years. At the same time, his role in the Scottish Enlightenment is becoming much better understood. -/- This is the only properly established text. It is accompanied by manuscript lectures on the nature and immortality of the soul, as well as helpful editorial annotation and introduction, making it useful to a wide variety of readers. -/- Key Features: -/- Accurate, reliable and critically established text; The Introduction explains the work's genesis and its place in Reid's system; Annotations provide an understanding of Reid's context; An Appendix contains manuscript material covering an important topic not represented in the hitherto published work. (shrink)

Robin McKenna argues that we need to make space for an approach to epistemology that avoids the idealizations typical of the field. He applies this approach to topics in applied and social epistemology, such as what to do about science denial, whether we should try to be intellectually autonomous, and what our obligations are to other inquirers.

This 1990 book is a survey of the critical reaction to Beethoven's music as it appeared in the major musical journals, French as well as German, of his day, and represents the first published history of Beethoven reception. The author discusses the philosophical and analytical implications of these reviews and reassesses what has come to be the accepted view of a nineteenth-century musical aesthetics rooted in Romantic Idealism. Wallace sees Beethoven's critics as in fact providing a link between two apparently (...) antithetical approaches to music: the eighteenth-century emphasis on expression and extra-musical interpretation and the nineteenth-century emphasis on 'absolute' music and formal analysis. This book thus provides, in addition to a carefully documented study of Beethoven's critical reception, a re-evaluation of his oeuvre and its significance in music history. An index of all reviews cited is provided, and a further appendix contains the quoted material in its original language. (shrink)

Moral agency is limited, imperfect, and structurally constrained. This is evident in the many ways we all unwittingly participate in widespread injustice through our everyday actions, which I call ‘structural wrongs’. To do justice to these facts, I argue that we should distinguish between summative and formative moral criticism. While summative criticism functions to conclusively assess an agent's performance relative to some benchmark, formative criticism aims only to improve performance in an ongoing way. I show that the negative sanctions associated (...) with summative responses are only justifiably imposed under certain conditions when persons exercise their agency wrongly — conditions that do not always hold for structural wrongs. Yet even in such cases we can still use formative responses, which are warranted whenever agents fall short of moral ideals. Expanding our repertoire of moral criticism to include both summative and formative responses enables us to better appreciate both the powers and limitations of our agency, and the complexity of moral life. (shrink)

Gender classifications often are controversial. These controversies typically focus on whether gender classifications align with facts about gender kind membership: Could someone really be nonbinary? Is Chris Mosier really a man? I think this is a bad approach. Consider the possibility of ontological oppression, which arises when social kinds operating in a context unjustly constrain the behaviors, concepts, or affect of certain groups. Gender kinds operating in dominant contexts, I argue, oppress trans and nonbinary persons in this way: they marginalize (...) trans men and women, and exclude nonbinary persons. As a result, facts about membership in dominant gender kinds should not settle gender classification practices. (shrink)

From the diverse work and often competing insights of women's human rights activists, Brooke Ackerly has written a feminist and a universal theory of human rights that bridges the relativists' concerns about universalizing from particulars and the activists' commitment to justice. Unlike universal theories that rely on shared commitments to divine authority or to an 'enlightened' way of reasoning, Ackerly's theory relies on rigorous methodological attention to difference and disagreement. She sets out human rights as at once a research ethic, (...) a tool for criticism of injustice and a call to recognize our obligations to promote justice through our actions. This book will be of great interest to political theorists, feminist and gender studies scholars and researchers of social movements. (shrink)

We want to know what gender is. But metaphysical approaches to this question solely have focused on the binary gender kinds men and women. By overlooking those who identify outside of the binary–the group I call ‘genderqueer’–we are left without tools for understanding these new and quickly growing gender identifications. This metaphysical gap in turn creates a conceptual lacuna that contributes to systematic misunderstanding of genderqueer persons. In this paper, I argue that to better understand genderqueer identities, we must recognize (...) a new type of gender kind: critical gender kinds, or kinds whose members collectively destabilize one or more pieces of dominant gender ideology. After developing a model of critical gender kinds, I suggest that genderqueer is best modeled as a critical gender kind that destabilizes the ‘binary axis’, or the piece of dominant gender ideology that says that the only possible genders are the binary, discrete, exclusive, and exhaustive kinds men and women. (shrink)

In Political Theory and Feminist Social Criticism, Brooke Ackerly demonstrates the shortcomings of contemporary deliberative democratic theory, relativism and essentialism for guiding the practice of social criticism in the real, imperfect world. Drawing theoretical implications from the activism of Third World feminists who help bring to public audiences the voices of women silenced by coercion, Brooke Ackerly provides a practicable model of social criticism. She argues that feminist critics have managed to achieve in practice what other theorists do only incompletely (...) in theory. Complemented by Third World feminist social criticism, deliberative democratic theory becomes critical theory - actionable, coherent, and self-reflective. While a complement to democratic theory, Third World feminist social criticism also addresses the problem in feminist theory associated with attempts to deal with identity politics. Third World feminist social criticism thus takes feminist theory beyond the critical impasse of the tension between anti-relativist and anti-essentialist feminist theory. (shrink)

Ordinary discourse is filled with discussions about ‘sexual orientation’. This discourse might suggest a common understanding of what sexual orientation is. But even a cursory search turns up vastly differing, conflicting, and sometimes ethically troubling characterizations of sexual orientation. The conceptual jumble surrounding sexual orientation suggests that the topic is overripe for philosophical exploration. This paper lays the groundwork for such an exploration. In it, I offer an account of sexual orientation – called ‘Bidimensional Dispositionalism’ – according to which sexual (...) orientation concerns what sex[es] and gender[s] of persons one is disposed to sexually engage, and makes no reference to one’s own sex and gender. (shrink)

Postmodernism and Education responds to the interest in postmodernism as a way of understanding social, cultural and economic trends. Robin Usher and Richard Edwards explore the impact which postmodernism has had upon the theory and practice of education, using a broad analysis of postmodernism and an in-depth introduction to key writers in the field, including Lacan, Derrida, Foucault and Lyotard. In examining the impact which this thinking has had upon contemporary theory and practice of education, Usher and Edwards concentrate (...) particularly upon how postmodernist ideas challenge existing concepts, structures and hierarchies. (shrink)

This dissertation concerns the central role of aporia in philosophical thought and Platonic philosophy. In contrast with the standard sense of aporia as a perplexity that clears away an interlocutor's ignorance and pretension, I argue that aporia is a necessary step in the movement from ignorance to knowledge. Aporia thus involves a kind of understanding that in principle leads one out of perplexity to knowledge. This conception of aporia also reveals, I argue a connection between Platonic metaphysical doctrines, such as (...) the Forms, and Socratic knowledge of ignorance, which is central to the practice of Socratic dialectic. ;I show how this conception of aporia plays out in a specific Platonic dialogue, the Meno, and provides a basis for understanding the dialogue as a whole. Specifically, I argue that the Meno consists of three attempts on Socrates' part to bring his interlocutor, Meno, into aporia. These attempts correspond to the main divisions of the dialogue---the opening section that involves ordinary, Socratic elenchus; the myth of recollection and the slave-boy argument; and the third section containing the hypothetical method. Following Brague , I argue that the dialogue deviates from the model of rational discourse, Socratic dialectic. This deviation is the consequence of Socrates' efforts to respond constructively to the state of Meno's soul. Meno is unable to participate in dialectic proper due to his geometric, or dianoetic, cast of mind, as well as the eros of his soul. By and large these character traits render Meno incapable of understanding the spirit of Socratic dialectic. ;The central importance of aporia to philosophy, which is worked out in the Meno, illuminates a number of features about philosophical thought. In particular, I argue that there is an essential connection between the soul's cognitive and moral powers, i.e., between learning and virtue. Because learning depends upon the soul's desire to learn, philosophical understanding is both promoted and limited by the perspective of the soul that attempts to learn. As we seen in the slaveboy argument, through aporia the perspective of the soul can broaden by becoming more knowledgeable. While this success provides rational confidence in the possibility of philosophical understanding, it falls short of a privileged standpoint from which comprehensive and certain knowledge could be attained. (shrink)

This essay explores Socrates’ argumentative strategy in the Philebus, which is a response to the view that pleasure is the good. Socrates leads his interlocutorsthrough a series of steps in order to demonstrate to them the “conditions and dispositions of soul” upon which hedonism rests. Socrates’ aim is not to refute the claim that pleasure is a good, but rather to show the dependence of the experience of pleasure on intellect and the other elements of the life of mind. In (...) this manner, Socrates is able to show the superiority of the life of mind, or philosophy, in terms that are intelligible to the pleasure-seeker. (shrink)

There has been extensive discussion of testimonial epistemic injustice, the phenomenon whereby a speaker’s testimony is rejected due to prejudice regarding who they are. But people also have their testimony rejected or preempted due to prejudice regarding what they communicate. Here, the injustice is content focused. We describe several cases of content focused injustice, and we theoretically interrogate those cases by building up a general framework through which to understand them as a genuine form of epistemic injustice that stands in (...) intertwined relationships to other forms of epistemic injustice. (shrink)

Stem cell research has important implications for medicine. The source of stem cells influences their therapeutic potential, with stem cells derived from early-stage embryos remaining the most versatile. Somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), a source of embryonic stem cells, allows for understandings about disease development and, more importantly, the ability to yield embryonic stem cell lines that are genetically matched to the somatic cell donor. However, SCNT requires women to donate eggs, which involves injection of ovulation-inducing hormones and egg retrieval (...) through laparoscopy or transvaginal needle aspiration. Risks from this procedure are fiercely debated, most notably risk of ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS). This review examines risk of OHSS resulting from oocyte donation. We conclude that risk posed by OHSS in egg donation is not significant enough to warrant undue concern, and much of this can be eliminated when proper precautions are taken. This bears relevance to the future of stem cell research policymaking. (shrink)

In their forthcoming article, Shavelson and colleagues (2023) identify a key ethical concern associated with medical aid-in-dying (MAiD) laws in the eleven US jurisdictions where the practice is le...

What is objectionable about “blacking up” or other comparable acts of imagining involving unethical attitudes? Can such imaginings be wrong, even if there are no harmful consequences and imaginers are not meant to apply these attitudes beyond the fiction? In this article, we argue that blackface—and imagining in general—can be ethically flawed in virtue of being oppressive, in virtue of either its content or what imaginers do with it, where both depend on how the imagined attitudes interact with the imagining’s (...) context. We explain and demonstrate this using speech act theory alongside a detailed case study of blackface. (shrink)