Autobiography and Teacher Development in China investigates the roles of autobiography in teacher education, as several scholars in China recontextualize Western conceptions of teacher development, combining them with uniquely Chinese cultural conceptions to articulate a reconceptualization of teacher development that holds worldwide significance. Framed by the work of Zhang Hua and William F. Pinar, these theoretical and practical essays point to an internationally inflected reconceptualization of teachers' professional development, pre-service and in-service. This volume addresses multiple movements of teacher education (...) reform worldwide, focused on crafting a nationally distinctive course not only internationally, but also culturally, historically, and locally. (shrink)

The larger project of which this volume forms part is an attempt to craft a coherent doctrine of divine eternity and God's relationship to time.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

The late Jerry Cohen struggled to reconcile his egalitarian political principles with his personal style of life. His efforts were inconclusive, but instructive. This comment locates the core of Cohen’s discomfort in an abstract principle that connects what we morally ought to be compelled to do and what we have a duty to do anyway. The connection the principle states is more general and much tighter than Cohen and others, e.g. Thomas Nagel, have seen. Our principles of justice always put (...) our personal integrity to the test, unless those principles are designed not to. But to craft principles with an view to avoiding that test is, as Cohen argued, itself to undermine both justice and our integrity. (shrink)

Wittgenstein's lack of sympathy for Shakespeare's works has been well noted by George Steiner and Harold Bloom among others. Wittgenstein writes in 1950, for instance: "It seems to me as though his pieces are, as it were, enormous sketches, not paintings; as though they were dashed off by someone who could permit himself anything, so to speak. And I understand how someone may admire this & call it supreme art, but I don't like it." Of course, the animosity of one (...) great mind for another has its own interest. But the interest here is increased by two factors: (1) Wittgenstein's brief but specific critique of Shakespeare's similes, of interest particularly since he identifies his own philosophical strength half-deprecatingly but still seriously as one of crafting beautiful similes; and (2) Wittgenstein's and Shakespeare's shared concern, as revealed in Stanley Cavell's writings, with the human impulse to skepticism. The present paper considers the importance of these two factors in weighing Wittgenstein's judgment. It suggests that Wittgenstein's frequent charge that Shakespeare is "completely unrealistic" is not a misunderstanding of the Bard (Wittgenstein distinguishes his "failure to understand" from others' willingness to misunderstand Shakespeare) but rather an expression of Wittgenstein's anxiety over Shakespeare's wholly original use of language to represent the sound of the raw motives to skepticism. (shrink)

People’s perception of their own efficacy is a critical precursor for adaptive behavioural responses to the threat posed by climate change. The present study investigated whether components of climate efficacy could be enhanced by short video messages. An online study (N = 161) compared groups of participants who received messages focusing on individual or collective behaviour. Relative to a control group, these groups showed increased levels of response efficacy but not self-efficacy. However, this did not translate to increased climate commitment; (...) mediation analysis suggested that the video messages, while increasing efficacy, may also have had a counterproductive effect on behavioural intentions, possibly by reducing the perceived urgency of action. This finding reinforces the challenge faced by climate communicators seeking to craft a message that boosts efficacy and simultaneously motivates adaptive responses to the climate crisis. (shrink)

The Quest for Meaning explores the deep-seated human need to create a life that is meaningful. In an effort to understand this need, author William Cooney examines the works of philosophers from Plato to Sartre as well as the insights of artists, poets, writers, psychologists, and film-makers. He discusses the nature of humanness, creation, freedom, and choice, all of which are facets of a meaningful life. Cooney also addresses postmodernism, arguing that it does not offer real guidance for those (...) seeking a life of significance. Maintaining that some ways of creating meaning are preferable to others, he concludes that it is up to each individual to craft a meaningful life and that this process must take place within a context of giving and receiving. (shrink)

The encounter occurred aboard the presidential yacht USS Potomac, the same steel-hulled craft that, half a century ago, carried Roosevelt to his meeting with Churchill wherein they secretly plotted World War II. It cruised on the San Francisco Bay as helicopters hovered above, dropping smoke flares to mark a jumper from the Golden Gate Bridge.

According to new mechanists, mechanisms explain how specific biological phenomena are produced. New mechanists have had little to say about how mechanisms relate to the organism in which they reside. A key feature of organisms, emphasized by the autonomy tradition, is that organisms maintain themselves. To do this, they rely on mechanisms. But mechanisms must be controlled so that they produce the phenomena for which they are responsible when and in the manner needed by the organism. To account for how (...) they are controlled, we characterize mechanisms as sets of constraints on the flow of free energy. Some constraints are flexible and can be acted on by other mechanisms, control mechanisms, that utilize information procured from the organism and its environment to alter the flexible constraints in other mechanisms so that they produce phenomena appropriate to the circumstances. We further show that control mechanisms in living organisms are organized heterarchically—control is carried out primarily by local controllers that integrate information they acquire as well as that which they procure from other control mechanisms. The result is not a hierarchy of control but an integrated network of control mechanisms that has been crafted over the course of evolution. (shrink)

This is a brief dictionary entry on the Greek word "techne" (art or skill) as used in ancient Greek philosophy, in particular in the work of Plato and Aristotle. A techne may be a manual craft, such as carpentry, or a science, such as medicine. A techne is based on universal principles and is capable of being taught.

William Coperthwaite is a teacher, builder, designer, and writer who for many years has explored the possibilities of true simplicity on a homestead on the north coast of Maine. In the spirit of Henry David Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, and Helen and Scott Nearing, Coperthwaite has fashioned a livelihood of integrity and completeness—buying almost nothing, providing for his own needs, and serving as a guide and companion to hundreds of apprentices drawn to his unique way of being. A Handmade Life (...) carries Coperthwaite’s ongoing experiments with hand tools, hand-grown and gathered food, and handmade shelter, clothing, and furnishings out into the world to challenge and inspire. His writing is both philosophical and practical, exploring themes of beauty, work, education, and design while giving instruction on the hand-crafting of the necessities of life. Richly illustrated with luminous color photographs by Peter Forbes, the book is a moving and inspirational testament to a new practice of old ways of life. (shrink)

Throughout the Cold War, we heard public cries that nuclear war would destroy us. Many citizens rejected the governmentally crafted myth of protection. They did not believe in the 1960s that a fallout shelter boom or in the 1980s that a star wars boom would protect them from the big boom. Instead, they thought the Big Boom would bring on global doom. Currently, we are hearing our initial post-Cold War version of the myth of protection. This time the star wars (...) fallacy is being repackaged as a missile defense system. Then, following the events of 11 September 2001, a further shift occurred. Now, we hear that the Office of Homeland Security will protect us from terrorists and from weapons of mass destruction, whether nuclear, chemical, or biological. (shrink)

This book offers a copious selection of insights about the world and life, crafted in engaging language by Jewish sages, scholars, rabbis, and literary luminaries, from ancient to modern times. These remarkable explanations, queries, and proposals are connected by expository comments and comparisons by the author. The passionate care for human values which underlies much of Jewish thinking is made accessible in this comprehensive work. In it the reader may find counsel on how to achieve a good and satisfying life (...) while responding to the joys and sorrows that touch us all. (shrink)

Responding to comments on “Imre Lakatos and the Inexhaustible Atom: The Hidden Marxist Roots of History and Philosophy of Science,” an argument is made for reviving a missed opportunity for integrating sociological and normative approaches to science. Lakatos’ mature philosophy of science, though jettisoning a political commitment to Marxism, retains a dialectical approach developed during his Hungarian career. Through his carefully crafted debate with Feyerabend, Lakatos continued to promote a dialectical approach that offers a useful model for integrating the history (...) of science and normative assessments focused on the viability of approaches that challenge dominant perspectives. (shrink)

Do demons and devils have free will? Does justice exist inMenzoberranzan? What’s the morality involved with playercharacters casting necromancy and summoning spells? Dungeons & Dragons and Philosophy probes the richterrain of philosophically compelling concepts and ideas thatunderlie Dungeons & Dragons, the legendary fantasyrole-playing game that grew into a world-wide cultural phenomenon.A series of accessible essays reveals what the imaginary worlds ofD&D can teach us about ethics, morality, metaphysics andmore. Illustrates a wide variety of philosophical concepts and ideasthat arise in Dungeons (...) & Dragons gameplay and presentsthem in an accessible and entertaining manner Reveals how the strategies, tactics, improvisations, androle-play employed by D&D enthusiasts have startlingparallels in the real world of philosophy Explores a wide range of philosophical topics, including thenature of free will, the metaphysics of personal identity, themorality of crafting fictions, sex and gender issues in tabletopgameplay, and friendship and collaborative storytelling Provides gamers with deep philosophical insights that can leadto a richer appreciation of D&D and any gamingexperience. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence is poised to eliminate millions of jobs, from finance to truck driving. But artisanal products are valued precisely because of their human origins, and thus have some inherent “immunity” from AI job loss. At the same time, artisanal labor, combined with technology, could potentially help to democratize the economy, allowing independent, small-scale businesses to flourish. Could AI, robotics and related automation technologies enhance the economic viability and environmental sustainability of these beloved crafting professions, perhaps even expanding their niche (...) to replace some job loss in other sectors? In this paper, we compare the problems created by the current mass production economy and potential solutions from an artisanal economy. In doing so, the paper details the possibilities of utilizing AI to support hybrid forms of human–machine production at the microscale; localized and sustainable value chains at the mesoscale; and networks of these localized and sustainable producers at the macroscale. In short, a wide range of automation technologies are potentially available for facilitating and empowering an artisanal economy. Ultimately, it is our hope that this paper will facilitate a discussion on a future vision for more “generative” economic forms in which labor value, ecological value and social value can circulate without extraction or alienation. (shrink)

Since 1995, students, researchers, and professionals have turned to The Craft of Research for clear and helpful guidance on how to conduct research and report it effectively. Now, master teachers Wayne C. Booth, Gregory G. Colomb, and Joseph M. Williams have completely revised and updated their classic handbook. The new edition will continue to help thousands of students and writers plan, carry out, and report on research to produce effective term papers, dissertations, articles, or books -- in any field, (...) at any level. (shrink)

In 1475, the Florentine humanist Piero Cennini sent a friend a letter in Latin, in which he described in detail both the Florentine baptistery and the yearly celebration of the feast of St John in late June. This article presents a full text and English translation of the document, with an introduction and notes. Cennini, a scribe and scholar, belonged to a distinguished family of Florentine goldsmiths, with whose members he collaborated on an edition of the commentaries of Servius on (...) Virgil. His description of the baptistery was informed by his knowledge of and pride in his family’s craft, as well as by the teachings of Leon Battista Alberti, which he had mastered. Cennini’s hybrid of craft and humanism enables him to fill his account of the celebration of St John with vivid detail, but his choice of Latin also makes it too artificial to convey the enchantment that the plays and processions, like the baptistery itself, inspired in other observers—a feature that helps to explain the author’s frustration with his remarkably vivid text. Drawing on contemporary texts and paintings, this article finally places Cennini’s vision on the spectrum between the magic of Florentine religion and its disenchantment. (shrink)

Thomas Williams Note: This is a preprint of my introduction to the forthcoming translation by Margaret Atkins of Thomas Aquinas’s Disputed Questions on the Virtues (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy). The basic procedure was simple. The topic would be announced in advance so that everyone could prepare an arsenal of clever arguments. When the faculty and students had gathered, the professor would offer a brief introduction and state his thesis. All morning long an appointed graduate student would take (...) objections from the audience and defend the professor’s thesis against those objections. (And if the graduate student began to flounder, the professor was allowed to help him out.) A secretary would take shorthand notes. The next day the group would reassemble. This time it would be the professor’s job to summarise the arguments on both sides and give his own response to the question at issue. The whole thing would be written up, either in a rough-and-tumble version deriving from the secretary’s notes or in a more carefully crafted and edited version prepared by the professor himself. Records of such academic exercises have come down to us under the title ‘disputed questions’. (shrink)

Do demons and devils have free will? Does justice exist in Menzoberranzan? What’s the morality involved with player characters casting necromancy and summoning spells? Dungeons & Dragons and Philosophy probes the rich terrain of philosophically compelling concepts and ideas that underlie Dungeons & Dragons, the legendary fantasy role–playing game that grew into a world–wide cultural phenomenon. A series of accessible essays reveals what the imaginary worlds of D&D can teach us about ethics, morality, metaphysics and more. Illustrates a wide variety (...) of philosophical concepts and ideas that arise in Dungeons & Dragons gameplay and presents them in an accessible and entertaining manner Reveals how the strategies, tactics, improvisations, and role–play employed by D&D enthusiasts have startling parallels in the real world of philosophy Explores a wide range of philosophical topics, including the nature of free will, the metaphysics of personal identity, the morality of crafting fictions, sex and gender issues in tabletop gameplay, and friendship and collaborative storytelling Provides gamers with deep philosophical insights that can lead to a richer appreciation of D&D and any gaming experience. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This project seeks to put material culture, craft, and community in conversation with the long-standing American mythology of self-sufficiency referenced not only in elite discourse by the founding statesmen of the United States but also in contemporary popular iterations of the “Green” and urban homesteading movements. Indeed, many of the individuals involved in these movements identify not only as artists but also as advocates of a form of social activism referred to as “craftivism” that explicitly links this American (...) iconographic tradition of self-sufficiency to contemporary mandates for a politics of sustainability, particularly in urban life. Accordingly, I examine the ways in which urban craftivists are preserving and/or reintroducing traditional folkways ranging from subsistence farming to blacksmithing and welding, hand-sewing, knitting and crocheting, and film photography. Offering specific case studies related to these practices, I argue that practitioners of contemporary American craftivisms lean heavily on discourses of memory and tradition, as well as on the material practices and folkways associated therewith, but do so with the intention of creating a new world order that embraces both local and global perspectives as well as resources to support a politics of ethical production reconciling discourses of “tradition” and “sustainability” within the United States and abroad. (shrink)

Mary Carruthers _The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric and the Making of Images, 400- 1200_ Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998 ISBN 0-521-582326 hardback xviii + 399 pp.

An assessment in historical context of how and what filmmakers, logicians and philosophers could have learned from one another about the rudiments of their crafts.

This semester-long research project examined the use of social studies trade books to thematically teach about six individuals who served as change agents in the United States during the late 19th century and early 20th century. Three of the individuals were African American men, Robert Smalls, Frederick Douglass, and John Roy Lynch, who took civic action to address racial discrimination faced by the Black community in the half century following the U.S. Civil War. The other three indivduals were women women, (...) Ida B. Wells, Clara Lemlich, and Jane Addams, who challenged social inequities and injustices within their communities. Over the course of the semester-long research project, sixth-grade U.S. history students read selected trade books, examined primary sources, completed graphic organizers, and crafted writing assessments about each of the six individuals. Students demonstrated complex historical thinking, integrated economic and civic thinking, and communicated thematic ideas of systemic oppression of minorities, women, and the poor. They struggled to make connections between examples of historic oppression and contemporary examples of societal oppression. (shrink)

This article explores the plausibility of some intuitions and counter intuitions about the anti-corruption efforts of MDBs and international organizations leveraging the power of the private sector. Regulation of a sizable percentage of global private sector actors now falls into a new area of international governance with innovative institutions, standards, and programs. We wrestle with the role and value of private sector partnerships and available informal and formal social controls. Crafting proportional informal controls (e.g., monitoring, evaluations, and sanctions) and proper (...) incentives to cooperative games across networks are the lynchpins of successful collective action programs. Ambivalence with informal social controls or effective incentives, we argue, risks far too much deference to private sector interests. (shrink)

Towards the end of Aline Medeiros Ramos’s study of John Buridan on craft as an intellectual virtue, she mentions William Ockham in passing and points towards his conception of craft. In this paper, I take up her implicit invitation to explore that conception. I begin by reconstructing Ockham’s notion of craft, and then proceed to discuss three consequences of that conception: the moral neutrality of craft, the role of deliberation in craftwork, and the epistemic status (...) of craft and the craftworker. I conclude by summarizing a number of issues that Buridan, according to Medeiros Ramos, finds it important to discuss, and which are noticeably absent from Ockham’s considerations. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In different yet resonating ways both William Morris and John Dewey turned their attention to utopian experience as everyday making and doing. Dewey developed a holistic analysis of human action that contains intimations of utopia as well as a critique of fractured experience. Morris is well known for his vivid picture of utopia as life lived artfully. Comparisons have been noted between Morris and Dewey but not explored in detail. This article looks at Morris’s view of utopian experience (...) from the perspective of Dewey’s pragmatist understanding of action, habit, and artful experience. It is argued that the craft of experience is an idea central to the utopian thinking of Morris and Dewey. (shrink)

A notion of "good work," derived from William Morris and the Arts and Crafts Movement but also part of a wider tradition in philosophy (associated with pragmatism and Everyday Aesthetics) understanding the global significance of, and opportunities for, aesthetic experience, grounds both art making and appreciation in the organization of labor generally. Only good work, which can be characterized as "authentic" or as unalienated conditions of production and reception, allows the arts to thrive. While Arts and Crafts sometimes promotes (...) a limited aesthetic (both theoretically and stylistically) around handicraft, a good-work aesthetic theory encompasses a broader range of working methods and materials without compromising the core Arts and Crafts "authenticity" principles of control over production and creative autonomy. Moreover, it gives weight to the equally important role of spectators by linking their aesthetic education to good work in their working lives and, in turn, to the success of artworks. The theory delivers insights into the nature of works as collaborative projects and the developmental courses, participatory and esoteric, open to the arts generally; and it is a robust counter to anti-aestheticism and intellectualism in the theory and practice of the arts. William Morris and the artist-craftsmen and -women of the Arts and Crafts Movement have a theory of art and the aesthetic that has an importance beyond their own artistic work and its achievements. Morris delivered lectures on the arts in many British towns and cities in the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s; these were published as Hopes and Fears for Art and later as a volume of his collected works.1 The movement codified and publicized its practices through various societies and organizations like the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society and Charles Ashbee's Guild and School of Handicraft, each producing its own literature, which ranged from practical handbooks to political exhortations. Later, William Lethaby's lectures, often to organizations that were part of the movement, were published as Form in Civilisation.2 To that extent, then, a Morrisian or Arts and Crafts aesthetic theory has to be constructed from sources that were necessarily rhetorical, as well as being practical and theoretic. Morris and Lethaby were explicitly aiming to influence current artistic practice through their lectures to audiences usually composed of artists, architects, civic leaders, and so on (and this no doubt at least partly accounts for their neglect in philosophical aesthetics). Still, I will argue that this reconstructed theory is sufficiently coherent and sophisticated to be worth investigating for its relevance to contemporary debates in analytic aesthetics, particularly against those arguing for art as a nonaesthetic activity (of which the seminal text remains Arthur Danto's "The Artworld"), and for its arguments for art's connections (as an activity of both making and experiencing artworks) with other life experiences.3 In these respects, then, in the history of aesthetics it is a forerunner of, or at least has intellectual associations with, pragmatist aesthetics (yet it is often unacknowledged within that paradigm, so neither Dewey's Art as Experience nor the more recent pragmatist works by Richard Shusterman cite Morris) and shares ground associated with the Everyday Aesthetics movement.4In arguing for the theoretic and historic significance of a Morrisian aesthetic, I take encouragement and a lead from Paul Guyer's recent acknowledgement of the neglect of Morris in accounts of the history of philosophical aesthetics. Guyer names Morris, along with Schiller, Ruskin, and Dewey, as properly understanding the full significance of the distinctive character of aesthetic experience. As Guyer writes, they understood that aesthetic experience is distinctive in its freedom from our most immediate obsessions with purpose and utility, but that the freedom it thereby allows us is not a freedom for the simple contemplation of beauty with no further concerns or implications, but rather a freedom to develop our imaginative and cognitive capacities, to gain knowledge of ourselves and others, and to imagine new ways of life, a freedom that is valued not simply for its own sake but also because of the benefits the developments of these capacities can bring to the rest of our lives. (shrink)

The entwining of the craft worker’s body both with the materials of her artistic process and with the craft object itself is central to an understanding of craft aesthetics. This paper addresses embodied craft in Lia Cook’s weavings, which foreground the artist’s body and the embodying dynamics of woven art. Cook’s work is read in relation to the Lady of Shalott, a fictional textile artist portrayed in Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem by that name, and the painted (...) versions of it by William Holman Hunt and other Pre-Raphaelite artists. Cook’s work emerges as an elaboration upon Pre-Raphaelite ideas for the digital age, and a useful model for understanding the embodied dynamics of craft aesthetics. (shrink)

We tend to suppose that the ancient Greeks had primitive ideas of the self, of responsibility, freedom, and shame, and that now humanity has advanced from these to a more refined moral consciousness. Bernard Williams's original and radical book questions this picture of Western history. While we are in many ways different from the Greeks, Williams claims that the differences are not to be traced to a shift in these basic conceptions of ethical life. We are more like the ancients (...) than we are prepared to acknowledge, and only when this is understood can we properly grasp our most important differences from them, such as our rejection of slavery. The author is a philosopher, but much of his book is directed to writers such as Homer and the tragedians, whom he discusses as poets and not just as materials for philosophy. At the center of his study is the question of how we can understand Greek tragedy at all, when its world is so far from ours. Williams explains how it is that when the ancients speak, they do not merely tell us about themselves, but about ourselves. _Shame and Necessity_ gives a new account of our relations to the Greeks, and helps us to see what ethical ideas we need in order to live in the modern world. (shrink)

Figure du mouvement Arts and Crafts et militant socialiste, William Morris (1834-1896) n’a jamais séparé ces deux versants de son existence : quand la pratique artisanale et artistique participe d’une défense du travail contre sa dénaturation moderne, l’engagement politique vise à produire les conditions d’une vie digne qui ne peut se concevoir sans beauté. En introduction à la traduction de deux conférences de Morris inédites en français, nous revenons ici sur le rôle central que joue la notion d’ornement dans (...) sa réflexion, puisqu’elle se trouve justement à la croisée de ses conceptions esthétiques et politiques. (shrink)

Former Google advertising strategist, now Oxford-trained philosopher James Williams launches a plea to society and to the tech industry to help ensure that the technology we all carry with us every day does not distract us from pursuing our true goals in life. As information becomes ever more plentiful, the resource that is becoming more scarce is our attention. In this 'attention economy', we need to recognise the fundamental impacts of our new information environment on our lives in order to (...) take back control. Drawing on insights ranging from Diogenes to contemporary tech leaders, Williams's thoughtful and impassioned analysis is sure to provoke discussion and debate. Williams is the inaugural winner of the Nine Dots Prize, a new Prize for creative thinking that tackles contemporary social issues. This title is also available as Open Access. (shrink)

Drawing on a passage from Ramsey's Truth and Probability, we formulate a simple, plausible constraint on evaluating the accuracy of credences: the Calibration Test. We show that any additive, continuous accuracy measure that passes the Calibration Test will be strictly proper. Strictly proper accuracy measures are known to support the touchstone results of accuracy-first epistemology, for example vindications of probabilism and conditionalization. We show that our use of Calibration is an improvement on previous such appeals by showing how it answers (...) or sidesteps problems that have been raised for previous work in this area. (shrink)

Bernard Williams's remarkable essay on morality confronts the problems of writing moral philosophy, and offers a stimulating alternative to more systematic accounts which seem nevertheless to have left all the important issues somewhere off the page. Williams explains, analyses and distinguishes a number of key positions, from the purely amoral to notions of subjective or relative morality, testing their coherence before going on to explore the nature of 'goodness' in relation to responsibilities and choice, roles, standards, and human nature. The (...) final chapters make a fascinating enquiry into what morality is about, looking beyond happiness to other human aims and ideals. This re-issue of a classic in moral philosophy includes a new foreword by the author. (shrink)

Information can be public among a group. Whether or not information is public matters, for example, for accounts of interdependent rational choice, of communication, and of joint intention. A standard analysis of public information identifies it with (some variant of) common belief. The latter notion is stipulatively defined as an infinite conjunction: for p to be commonly believed is for it to believed by all members of a group, for all members to believe that all members believe it, and so (...) forth. This analysis is often presupposed without much argument in philosophy. Theoretical entrenchment or intuitions about cases might give some traction on the question, but give little insight about why the identification holds, if it does. The strategy of this paper is to characterize a practical-normative role for information being public, and show that the only things that play that role are (variants of) common belief as stipulatively characterized. In more detail: a functional role for “taking a proposition for granted” in non-isolated decision making is characterized. I then present some minimal conditions under which such an attitude is correctly held. The key assumption links this attitude to beliefs about what is public. From minimal a priori principles, we can argue that a proposition being public among a group entails common commitment to believe among that group. Later sections explore partial converses to this result, the factivity of publicity and publicity from the perspective of outsiders to the group, and objections to the aprioricity of the result deriving from a posteriori existential presuppositions. (shrink)

Discusses what is involved in describing a person as responsible: she has responsibilities that she is duty-bound to undertake, and may be held responsible when she fails to fulfill these. Considers why societies and organizations divide responsibilities between persons. Also considers how questions of responsibility arise in the spheres of morality, law, organizational life and politics, and how different modes of holding responsible may be appropriate in each. Concludes with a brief discussion of some questions about collective responsibility.

ABSTRACT. May scientists rely on substantive, a priori presuppositions? Quinean naturalists say "no," but Michael Friedman and others claim that such a view cannot be squared with the actual history of science. To make his case, Friedman offers Newton's universal law of gravitation and Einstein's theory of relativity as examples of admired theories that both employ presuppositions (usually of a mathematical nature), presuppositions that do not face empirical evidence directly. In fact, Friedman claims that the use of such presuppositions is (...) a hallmark of "science as we know it." But what should we say about the special sciences, which typically do not rely on the abstruse formalisms one finds in the exact sciences? I identify a type of a priori presupposition that plays an especially striking role in the development of empirical psychology. These are ontological presuppositions about the type of object a given science purports to study. I show how such presuppositions can be both a priori and rational by investigating their role in an early flap over psychology's contested status as a natural science. The flap focused on one of the field's earliest textbooks, William James's Principles of Psychology. The work was attacked precisely for its reliance on a priori presuppositions about what James had called the "mental state," psychology's (alleged) proper object. I argue that the specific presuppositions James packed into his definition of the "mental state" were not directly responsible to empirical evidence, and so in that sense were a priori; but the presuppositions were rational in that they were crafted to help overcome philosophical objections (championed by neo-Hegelians) to the very idea that there can be a genuine science of mind. Thus, my case study gives an example of substantive, a priori presuppositions being put to use—to rational use—in the special sciences. In addition to evaluating James's use of presuppositions, my paper also offers historical reflections on two different strands of pragmatist philosophy of science. One strand, tracing back through Quine to C. S. Peirce, is more naturalistic, eschewing the use of a priori elements in science. The other strand, tracing back through Kuhn and C. I. Lewis to James, is more friendly to such presuppositions, and to that extent bears affinity with the positivist tradition Friedman occupies. (shrink)

Are interpersonal comparisons of desire possible? Can we give an account of how facts about desires are grounded, that underpins such comparisons? This paper supposes the answer to the first question is yes, and provides an account of the nature of desire that explains how this is so. The account is a modification of the interpretationist metaphysics of representation that the author has recently been developing. The modification is to allow phenomenological affective valence into the “base facts” on which correct (...) interpretation is grounded. To use this extra resource within that theory to vindicate interpersonal comparisons, we will need to appeal rational connections between level of valence and level of desire, which this paper sets out and examines. (shrink)

This is the first critical study of The Logic of Sense, Gilles Deleuze's most important work on language and ethics, as well as the main source of his vital philosophy of the event.James Williams explains the originality of Deleuze's work with careful definitions of all his innovative terms and a detailed description of the complex structure he constructs. This reading makes connections to his ground-breaking work on literature, to his critical but also progressive relation to the sciences, and to his (...) controversial denial of the priority of standard logics, human values and 'meaning' in thinking.This book will open new debates and develop current ones around Deleuze's work in philosophy, politics, literature, linguistics, cultural studies and sociology. (shrink)

Introduction: the advance of governmentality -- Foucault, power, and governmentality: introduction; what is governmentality?; beyond the microphysics of power?; from theory of the state to genealogy of the state; history of the art of government; pastoral power; raison d'état; liberal governmentality; five propositions on foucault and governmentality -- Governmentality 3.4.7.: introduction; governmentality after Foucault; governmentality and the political sciences; some problems in governmentality -- Foucault effect redux? some notes on international governmentality studies: constellation; a few preliminary observations; problems and debates (...) in international governmentality studies -- Reconnecting governmentality and genealogy: introduction; genealogy and governmentality; pluralizing genealogy; practicing genealogy; lines of descent: the family tree of power?; counter-memory and re-serialization; the retrieval of forgotten struggles and subjugated knowledges -- Conclusion: encountering governmentality: governmentality as a new cartography of power; from mapping to encountering; governmentality and politics. (shrink)

This new volume of philosophical papers by Bernard Williams is divided into three sections: the first Action, Freedom, Responsibility, the second Philosophy, Evolution and the Human Sciences; in which appears the essay which gives the collection its title; and the third Ethics, which contains essays closely related to his 1983 book Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. Like the two earlier volumes of Williams's papers published by Cambridge University Press, Problems of the Self and Moral Luck, this volume will be (...) welcomed by all readers with a serious interest in philosophy. It is published alongside a volume of essays on Williams's work, World, Mind, and Ethics: Essays on the Ethical Philosophy of Bernard Williams, edited by J. E. J. Altham and Ross Harrison, which provides a reappraisal of his work by other distinguished thinkers in the field. (shrink)

Acknowledged as perhaps _the_ masterpiece of materialist criticism in the English language, this omnibus ranges over British literary history from George Eliot to George Orwell to inquire about the complex ways economic reality shapes the imagination.