This book presents 12 original essays on historical and contemporary philosophical discussions of judgment. The central issues explored in this volume can be separated into two groups namely, those concerning the act and object of judgment. What kind of act is judgment? How is it related to a range of other mental acts, states, and dispositions? Where and how does assertive force enter in? Is there a distinct category of negative judgments, or are these simply judgments whose objects are negative? (...) Concerning the object of judgment: How many objects are there of a given judgment? One, as on the dual relation theory of Frege and Moore? Or many as in Russell's later multiple relation theory? If there is a single object, is it a proposition? And if so, is it a force-neutral, abstract entity that might equally figure as the object of a range of intentional attitudes? Or is it somehow constitutively tied to the act itself? These and related questions are approached from a variety of historical and contemporary perspectives. This book sheds new light on current controversies by drawing on the details of the distinct intellectual contexts in which previous philosophers' positions about the nature of judgment were formulated. In turn, new directions in present-day research promise to raise novel interpretive prospects and challenges in the history of philosophy. istorical and contemporary perspectives. This book sheds new light on current controversies by drawing on the details of the distinct intellectual contexts in which previous philosophers' positions about the nature of judgment were formulated. In turn, new directions in present-day research promise to raise novel interpretive prospects and challenges in the history of philosophy. (shrink)

Virtue Reliabilism and Virtue Responsibilism are two theories within the enterprise of Virtue Epistemology. The former considers virtues to be those competences whose reliability is what confers justification on its product beliefs. The latter considers virtues as being those deep-seated intellectual traits that are part of a person's very character, and so when such virtues are possessed and exercised by an agent, they achieve beliefs that are justified via being the products of virtue. Both theories face difficult objections, however. Virtue (...) reliabilism is challenged by the generality problem which claims that since justification is determined by how reliable the belief-forming process is, what we have to do to figure out just how reliable a process is will be by coming up with a proper description of the relevant process. However, there is no principled way to come up with such descriptions in order to determine the correct level of generality regarding the description of a belief-forming process. Virtue responsibilism is challenged by the situationist critique which claims that virtues do not do the kind of work we think they do. Rather, when agents morally and intellectually act in praiseworthy ways, their success is due to situational features of their experience and not to anything like what we think of as virtue. What both problems have in common is that they require their respective target theories to come up with explanations that accurately describe what's going on when people get things right epistemically. As such, virtue reliabilism and virtue responsibilism both face the same sort of problem. In this dissertation, I attempt to provide a contextual response to the generality problem that doesn't solve that problem per se, but suggests that the problem itself is problematic. In requiring the reliabilist to come up with a universal principle(s) that allows the epistemic practitioner to determine the relevant description for reliable belief-forming processes, the proponent of the generality problem assumes that processes are relevantly alike in all instances of belief formation. But our epistemic practices show otherwise. Indeed, standards for belief justification vary between different situations and contexts. Some contexts have quite stringent standards regarding how reliable a process must be in order to be considered reliable enough while other contexts are not so stringent. As such, that there could be some universal standard or principle for process description is impossible. This dissertation argues for a contextual resolution to the generality problem. Furthermore, it argues that the Virtue Reliabilism of Ernest Sosa seems to have embedded in it a very congenial affinity to attributor contextualism. In light of (i) those arguments, (ii) the similar contextual nature of neo-Aristotelian aretaic thought, (iii) as well as the similarity of the situationist critique to the generality problem, a similar contextual response to that critique is then offered. (shrink)

Why are some arguments fallacious? Since argumentation is an intellectual activity that can be performed better or worse, do we evaluate arguments simply in terms of their content, or does it also make sense to evaluate the arguer in light of the content put forward? From a ‘virtue’ approach, I propose understanding fallacies as having some link with intellectual vice. Drawing from recent work by Paul Grice, Linda Zagzebski, Andrew Aberdein, and Douglas Walton, this essay argues that if there (...) is some sense of argumentation where an argument is truth-propagating and not put forward in order to ‘win’, fallacies may be the vicious element in arguments that undermines, most often because the arguer’s goal is only. From this perspective, fallacies may not only be improper ‘moves’ in an argument, but may also reveal something lacking in the arguer’s intellectual character. (shrink)

In the latter period of his work, Samuel Beckett began to devote much of his writing to exploring the nature of the voice and the gaze. Even those works that directly concerned silence and blindness implicitly thematized the voice and the gaze by embodying their absence. With later works, Beckett began to call into question the way in which these phenomena contributed to the constitution of subjects, modes of self-identification, and their relation to chosen objects of desire. In the 1950s (...) and 1960s, Beckett produced dozens of short pieces of prose and theatrical works that wholly dispensed with traditional plot and character in favor of a series of experimental reductions, for example, to breath and light, to a disembodied voice, or to a mouth illuminated by a point of light. Jacque Lacan, who would come to secure the place of the voice and the gaze in the philosophical canon, wrote and lectured on these concepts at the same time. If brought into dialogue, the work of each thinker—each highly nuanced and complex in its own right—can serve as a hermeneutic tool for better elucidating the function of the voice and the gaze and the role that they play in the formation of subjects. A great deal of critics have erroneously overlooked Lacan’s insistence that when he invokes these concepts he is not speaking about the phenomenal voice or the gaze of perception as such; similarly, Beckett’s work, though it directly thematizes their phenomenal aspects, treats these concepts in a thoroughly Lacanian manner. (shrink)

This paper presents 59 new studies (N = 72,310) which focus primarily on the “bat and ball problem.” It documents our attempts to understand the determinants of the erroneous intuition, our exploration of ways to stimulate reflection, and our discovery that the erroneous intuition often survives whatever further reflection can be induced. Our investigation helps inform conceptions of dual process models, as “system 1” processes often appear to override or corrupt “system 2” processes. Many choose to uphold their intuition, (...) even when directly confronted with simple arithmetic that contradicts it – especially if the intuition is approximately correct. (shrink)

In their book Identity, Personhood and the Law,1 authors Charles Foster and Jonathan Herring seek, among other things, to show that the law is based on overly simplistic assumptions about the nature of personal identity. In their Author Meets Critics précis, they summarise the main contentions of the book on this issue. Difficulties in the law’s simplistic approach are, they claim, exposed when we think about people with dementia, ‘where [in advanced cases] I may turn into a person with no (...) apparent continuity at all with my own self’ and where: > X2 will simply inhabit a body composed of some of the same cells as belonged to X1. Deep brain stimulation ‘may similarly transform ‘my’ attributes to such an extent that it seems false to continue to talk about ‘me’ at all.’ Other examples, including cases of patients suffering severe anorexia or who have fallen into a permanent vegetative state, are given. All of them ‘call into question the atomistic, billiard-ball model of identity used by the law and by our uninterrogated intuitions.’ The authors’ approach is to begin with these and a number of other examples and raise several philosophical and ethical issues. They then discuss the issues and develop principles which they apply to the same examples at the end of the book. In this commentary, I cannot do justice to all the claims and challenges to the law the authors make in their rich and highly recommended book. I will focus only on the issue of personal identity and their remarks about the simplistic assumptions made by the courts on this issue. Although my comments will not always be in agreement with theirs, these remarks should be taken …. (shrink)

Governing bodies in golf, in particular the R&A and USGA, are proposing to introduce an elite golf ball for their tournaments (the Open and the US Open) in 2026 (see https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/gol...

This paper explores space as a core source of aesthetic pleasure in various codes of football. The paper begins by applying Kant’s distinction between the agreeable and the pleasurable to sport, arguing that the appreciation of sport entails more than just excitement. Pleasure comes from an appreciation of the rules, strategies and history of the game. The significance of the rules of various codes of football in articulating our experience of space will be taken as fundamental to such appreciation. Drawing (...) on the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty and the ‘topoanalysis’ of Gaston Bachelard, it will be argued that the aesthetic appreciation of football lies, not simply in recognising the complexity and subtlety of the movement of players and ball about the pitch, but more significantly in the creative and poetic imagination that the player embodies, and the striving of the player to create places within the course of play within which they can exercise their own competence as a player, and inhibit the competence of their opponents. A poetics of football is suggested to lie in the response that poetry and reverie about football can make through the metaphorical articulation and explication of the player’s embodied imagination and their experience of the game. (shrink)

This paper explores space as a core source of aesthetic pleasure in various codes of football. The paper begins by applying Kant’s distinction between the agreeable and the pleasurable to sport, arguing that the appreciation of sport entails more than just excitement. Pleasure comes from an appreciation of the rules, strategies and history of the game. The significance of the rules of various codes of football in articulating our experience of space will be taken as fundamental to such appreciation. Drawing (...) on the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty and the ‘topoanalysis’ of Gaston Bachelard, it will be argued that the aesthetic appreciation of football lies, not simply in recognising the complexity and subtlety of the movement of players and ball about the pitch, but more significantly in the creative and poetic imagination that the player embodies, and the striving of the player to create places within the course of play within which they can exercise their own competence as a player, and inhibit the compete.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Preservation and Protest: Theological Foundations for an Eco-Eschatological Ethics by Ryan Patrick McLaughlinJennifer Janzen-BallPreservation and Protest: Theological Foundations for an Eco-Eschatological Ethics Ryan Patrick McLaughlin MINNEAPOLIS: FORTRESS PRESS, 2014. 460 PP. $49.00Ryan Patrick McLaughlin's book on ecological-eschatological ethics explores four different taxonomies of "nonhuman theological ethics": anthropocentric and cosmocentric conservation ethics, which fall under values-based ethics, and anthropocentric and cosmocentric transfiguration ethics, which fall under teleological-based ethics (1–2). (...) McLaughlin's focus is a constructive [End Page 206] ethics of cosmocentric transfiguration whereby the entire cosmos "shares in the eschatological hope of a harmonious participation in God's triune life that entails the end of suffering, predation, and death" (2). The title of the book reflects an internal tension based on the protection of nature and honoring the integrity of ecosystems (entailing the recognition of suffering, predation, and death that occurs in nature) and the protest or "witness" against these violent aspects of nature, with hope for eschatological transformation of them (400).The bulk of McLaughlin's book outlines his taxonomical classification of various ecological ethics. Relying heavily on the work of Jürgen Moltmann and Andrew Linzey, McLaughlin focuses on the theological areas of cosmology, anthropology, and eschatology, addressing issues of "both salvation and value" (24). He engages in this strategy to point out potential weaknesses in other ecological ethics paradigms that can then be addressed in his construction of cosmocentric transfiguration.While the taxonomies and reviews are clear, the overall effect of such lengthy exploration of others' work is that McLaughlin's creative theo-ethical work is really limited to two chapters (and a third if you include the chapter responding to potential critiques). For McLaughlin, "the good is always the promotion of life and the alleviation of suffering" (394)—a cogent point central to his thesis, and yet this becomes obscured in some ways because of the detailed exposition of others' work. Moreover, his reliance on white male scholars engaged in this field limits the effectiveness of his review and diversity of perspectives. His system of classification may also restrain creative engagement with others' work and the possibilities of cosmocentric transfiguration since the taxonomy may force the work into particular boxes that obscure nuances within the paradigm and the field itself.This book explores an as-yet underdeveloped field within ecological ethics. As such, the audience is primarily other scholars, from Orthodox to evangelical. The in-depth theological exploration of cosmology, anthropology, and eschatology within the framework of cosmocentric transfiguration offers new insights for ecological ethics and thus furthers the conversation. McLaughlin also points toward some concrete actions that people can take to witness against suffering (e.g., vegetarianism), which allows this book to be a valuable contribution to practical and applied ethics in ecology. One area that I believe warrants further consideration and exploration is the dialogue around suffering and death (redemptive or not) as well as finitude. While there is much suffering and death that is not redemptive in any way from a Christian perspective, there is also value to some forms of suffering and death.The book could be used pedagogically in an advanced graduate seminar in ecological ethics, particularly as a helpful secondary source to be read in conjunction with the primary sources McLaughlin draws on in the first ten chapters. His review of various eco-theologians is certainly extensive and [End Page 207] commendable. McLaughlin's construction of cosmocentric transfiguration is worth wrestling with as he continues to refine and develop this perspective within the field of ecological ethics.Jennifer Janzen-BallSt. Andrew's College, SaskatoonCopyright © 2017 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

In September of 1869, while studying sponges off the Norwegian island of Gisoe, Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) discovered a tiny, flagellated ball-shaped organism swimming about in his samples. Appearing first to be the planula larva of an invertebrate marine animal further observation revealed it to be a colony of flagellated cells with a complex life cycle transitioning between multicellular and single-cell stages and several distinct forms of protozoa. Haeckel named it Magosphaera planula (the "magician's ball") and it eventually assumed (...) a central role in his theories of animal evolution, appearing as the modern exemplar of the blastaea stage in his gastraea theory of metazoan evolution. Throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth it was an object of considerable scientific interest, and yet it was only ever observed by Haeckel himself and then only the once. Eventually it faded altogether from scientific discussion. This paper traces the rise and fall of Magosphaera as an important epistemic object in the theories of Haeckel and other biologists, and an attempt is made to identify what exactly the organism (or organisms!) was that Haeckel observed in the fall of 1869. (shrink)

Events that violate the laws of nature are, by definition, impossible, but recent research suggests that people view some violations as “more impossible” than others. When evaluating the difficulty of magic spells, American adults are influenced by causal considerations that should be irrelevant given the spell’s primary causal violation, judging, for instance, that it would be more difficult to levitate a bowling ball than a basketball even though weight should no longer be a consideration if contact is no longer (...) necessary for support. In the present study, we sought to test the generalizability of these effects in a non-Western context – China – where magical events are represented differently in popular fiction and where reasoning styles are often more holistic than analytic. Across several studies, Chinese adults showed the same tendency as American adults to honor implicit causal constraints when evaluating the plausibility of magical events. These findings suggest that graded notions of impossibility are shared across cultures, possibly because they are a byproduct of causal knowledge. (shrink)

This paper is devoted to the mathematical rationale of the Kapitsa's hypothesis about interference nature of the phenomenon known as “ball lightning.” It is shown that (i) there are exact solutions of the free Maxwell equations in vacuum describing closed spherical magnetic surfaces (with a tangential time dependent magnetic field, and without an electric field) and (ii) ring-like formations with tangential time-dependent electric field (and with a zero magnetic field everywhere on the ring). It is concluded that the form (...) of these spheres and rings does not suffer changes with time. (shrink)

Our motor system can generate representations which carry information about the goals of another agent's actions. However, it is not known whether motor representations play a deeper role in social understanding, and, in particular, whether they enable tracking others' beliefs. Here we show that, for adult observers, reliably manifesting an ability to track another's false belief critically depends on representing the agent's potential actions motorically. One signature of motor representations is that they can be disrupted by constraints on an observed (...) agent's action capacities. We therefore used a `mummification' technique to manipulate whether the agent in a visual ball-detection task was free to act or whether he was visibly constrained from acting. Adults' reaction times reliably reflected the agent's beliefs only when the agent was free to act on the ball and not when the agent was visibly constrained from acting. Furthermore, it was the agent's constrained action capabilities, rather than any perceptual novelty, that determined whether adult observers' reaction times reliably reflected the agent's beliefs. These findings signal that our motor system may underpin more of social cognition than previously imagined, and, in particular, that motor representations may underpin automatic false-belief tracking. (shrink)

Field theories have been central to physics over the last 150 years, and there are several theories in contemporary physics in which physical fields play key causal and explanatory roles. This paper proposes a novel field trope-bundle (FTB) ontology on which fields are composed of bundles of particularized property instances, called tropes and goes on to describe some virtues of this ontology. It begins with a critical examination of the dominant view about the ontology of fields, that fields are properties (...) of a substantial substratum. (shrink)

This book offers an exciting re-interpretation of Auguste Comte, the founder of French sociology. Following the development of his philosophy of positivism, Comte later focused on the importance of the emotions in his philosophy resulting in the creation of a new religious system, the Religion of Humanity. Andrew Wernick provides the first in-depth critique of Comte's concept of religion and its place in his thinking on politics, sociology and philosophy of science. He places Comte's ideas in the context of (...) post-1789 French political and intellectual history, and of modern philosophy, especially postmodernism. Wernick relates Comte to Marx and Nietzsche as seminal figures of modernity and examines key features of modern and postmodern French social theory, tracing the inherent flaws and disintegration of Comte's system. Wernick offers original and fascinating insights in this rich study which will attract a wide audience from sociologists and philosophers to cultural theorists and historians. (shrink)

1 Introducing Monsieur Foucault Stephen J. Ball Michel Foucault is an enigma, a massively influential intellectual who steadfastly refused to align himself ...

From the legendary inventor Daedalus to Goethe's tragic Faust, from the automata-making magicians of E.T.A Hoffmann to Mary Shelley's Victor Frankenstein – ...

One of the key achievements of critical realism has been to expose the modernist myth of universal reason, which holds that authentic knowledge claims must be objectively ‘pure’, uncontaminated by the subjectivity of local place, specific time and particular culture. Wright aims to address the lack of any substantial and sustained engagement between critical realism and theological critical realism with particular regard to: (a) the distinctive ontological claims of Christianity; (b) their epistemic warrant and intellectual legitimacy; and (c) scrutiny of (...) the primary source of the ontological claims of Christianity, namely the historical figure of Jesus of Nazareth. As such, it functions as a prolegomena to a much needed wider debate, guided by the under-labouring services of critical realism, between Christianity and various other religious and secular worldviews. This important new text will help stimulate a debate that has yet to get out of first gear. This book will appeal to academics, graduate and post-graduate students especially, but also Christian clergy, ministers and informed laity, and members of the general public concerned with the nature of religion and its place in contemporary society. (shrink)

Against a view currently popular in the literature, it is argued that Kant was not a niıve realist about perceptual experience. Naive realism entails that perceptual experience is object-dependent in a very strong sense. In the first half of the paper, I explain what this claim amounts to and I undermine the evidence that has been marshalled in support of attributing it to Kant. In the second half of the paper, I explore in some detail Kant’s account of hallucination and (...) argue that no such account is available to someone who thinks that veridical perceptual experience is object-dependent in the naive realist sense. Kant’s theory provides for a remarkably sophisticated, bottom-up explanation of the phenomenal character of hallucinatory episodes and is crucial for gaining a proper understanding of his model of the mind and its place in nature. (shrink)

Philosophers interested in the fitting attitude analysis of final value have devoted a great deal of attention to the wrong kind of reasons problem. This paper offers an example of the reverse difficulty, the wrong kind of value problem. This problem creates deeper challenges for the fitting attitude analysis and provides independent grounds for rejecting it, or at least for doubting seriously its correctness.

Foucault, Power, and Education invites internationally renowned scholar Stephen J. Ball to reflect on the importance and influence of Foucault on his work in educational policy.

Kant holds that in order to have knowledge of an object, a subject must be able to “prove” that the object is really possible—i.e., prove that there is neither logical inconsistency nor “real repugnance” between its properties. This is (usually) easy to do with respect to empirical objects, but (usually) impossible to do with respect to particular things-in-themselves. In the first section of the paper I argue that an important predecessor of Kant’s account of our ignorance of real possibility can (...) be found in Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding. In the middle sections I discuss the way in which our inability to prove the real possibility of things-in-themselves motivates Kant’s famous prohibition on certain kinds of knowledge-claims about them. In the final section I examine Hegel’s attempts to dissolve this problem of real repugnance and thereby remove an inherited obstacle to speculative knowledge of the supersensible. -/- . (shrink)

We discuss the view that a hole is identical to the region of spacetime at which it is located. This view is more parsimonious than the view that holes are sui generis entities located at those regions surrounded by their hosts and it is more plausible than the view that there are no holes. We defend the spacetime view from several objections.

ObjectiveTo present the ethical issues, moral arguments, and reasons found in the ethical literature on organoid models.DesignIn this systematic review of reasons in ethical literature, we selected sources based on predefined criteria: The publication mentions moral reasons or arguments directly relating to the creation and/or use of organoid models in biomedical research; These moral reasons and arguments are significantly addressed, not as mere passing mentions, or comprise a large portion of the body of work; The publication is peer-reviewed and published (...) in an academic article, book, national-level report, working paper, or Ph.D. thesis; The publications collected are in English.AnalysisEach article was read in-depth for identifiable moral reasons, arguments, and concerns. These were then inductively classified and synthesized to create broader categories of reasons, and eventually an overarching conceptual scheme was created.ResultsA total of twenty-three sources were included and analyzed out of an initial 266 collected sources. Five themes of ethical issues and arguments were found: Animal Experimentation; Clinical Applications and Experiments; Commercialization and Consent; Organoid Ontology and Moral Status; and Research Ethics and Research Integrity. These themes are then further broken down into sub-themes and topics. Given the extensive nature of the topics found, we will focus on describing the topics that comprised of more in-depth reasons and arguments rather than few, passing mentions or concerns.ConclusionsThe ethics of organoids requires further deliberation in multiple areas, as much of the discussions are not presented as in-depth arguments. Such sentiments are also echoed throughout the organoid ethics literature. (shrink)

Despite his impressive influence on nineteenth-century philosophy, F. A. Trendelenburg's own philosophy has been largely ignored. However, among Kant scholars, Trendelenburg has always been remembered for his feud with Kuno Fischer over the subjectivity of space and time in Kant's philosophy. The topic of the dispute, now frequently referred to as the ?Neglected Alternative? objection, has become a prominent issue in contemporary discussions and interpretations of Kant's view of space and time. The Neglected Alternative contends that Kant unjustifiably moves from (...) the claim that we have a priori intuitions of space and time to the sceptical conclusion that space and time are exclusively subjective. Most current discussions trace the objection back to Trendelenburg and often use him to motivate the objection. However, to date Trendelenburg's actual arguments and reasons for rejecting the Kantian view of space and time have not been sufficiently uncovered; my goal here is to fill this lacuna. By better understanding what Trendelenburg actually argued, we will be in a better position to assess whether the Neglected Alternative objection against Kant is successful. But in addition, Trendelenburg's own system is of independent philosophical interest, and my work here will shed light on one part of it. (shrink)

The Music Instinct Philip Ball provides the first comprehensive, accessible survey of what is known--and what is still unknown--about how music works its magic, and why, as much as eating and sleeping, it seems indispensable to humanity. --from publisher description.

Part of a group commentary on Kant's Religion book. This chapter focuses on Part 2, section 2 on "The Evil Principle's Rightful Claim to Dominion over the Human Being, and the Struggle of the Two Principles with One Another" -/- .

Critical Realism and Marxism addresses controversial debates, revealing a potentially fruitful relationship; deepening our understanding of the social world and contibuting towards eliminating barbarism in contemporary capitalism.

In this paper I explore the pedagogical and political shift marked by the meaning and practice of diversity offered through New Labour education policy texts, specifically, the policy and practice of personalized learning (or personalization). The aim of this paper is to map the ways in which diversity relays and mobilizes a set of neoliberal positions and relationships in the field of education and seeks to govern education institutions and education users through politically circulating norms and values. These norms and (...) values, I want to argue, echo and redeem the kinds of frameworks, applications and rationalities typically aligned with modes of neoliberal or advanced liberal governance, e.g. marketization, monetarization, atomization and deregulation. I conclude the paper by considering how diversity in education renders problematic conventional antinomies of the citizen and consumer, public and private, state and civil society, etc., and forces us to confront the rhizomatic character of contemporary governance and education in the era of neoliberalism. (shrink)

Baghdad, California -- Calm down -- Clearing the dust -- Proof -- The big bang -- Evolution -- Evil -- Religion -- A crisis of reason.

Sand drawings are introduced in relation to the fieldwork of British anthropologists John Layard and Bernard Deacon early in the twentieth century, and the status of sand drawings as mathematics is discussed in the light of Wittgenstein’s idea that “in mathematics process and result are equivalent”. Included are photographs of the illustrations in Layard’s own copy of Deacon’s “Geometrical Drawings from Malekula and other Islands of the New Hebrides” (1934). This is a brief companion to my article “Wittgenstein on string (...) figures as mathematics” (2022), published in the journal Philosophical Investigations. (shrink)

The too-often unhappy 'marriage' of political theory and political science has long been a source of anguish for both partners. Should this troubled partnership be dissolved? Or might this marriage yet be saved? Ball answers the former question negatively and the latter affirmatively. Playing the part of therapist instead of theorist, he selectively recounts a number of episodes which estranged the partners and strained the marriage. And yet, he concludes that the conflicts were in hindsight more constructive than destructive, (...) benefiting both partners in heretofore unexpected ways and perhaps paving a path toward reconciliation and rapprochement. (shrink)

Unrestricted Composition (UC) is, roughly, the claim that given any objects at all, there is something which those objects compose. (UC) conflicts in an obvious way with common sense. It has as a consequence, for instance, that there is something which has as parts my nose and the moon. One of the more influential arguments for (UC) is Theodore Sider’s version of the Argument from Vagueness. (A version of the Argument from Vagueness was first presented by David Lewis (1986), pp. (...) 212–213). That argument purports to show that some plausible claims concerning the nature of vagueness entail (UC). In this paper I will suggest a response to this argument. I will show that the proponent of Supersubstantivalism (SS)—the view that material objects are identical to regions of spacetime—can reject a premise of Sider’s argument without denying the plausible claims concerning vagueness. Doing so requires only rejecting a certain view concerning the relationship between the proper sub-region relation and the proper parthood relation. So, proponents of (SS) are in a better position than many of us to side with common sense regarding composition. In the first section of the paper, I will present Sider’s argument. In the second section, I will introduce (SS) and briefly discuss some reasons one might have to believe that it is true. In the third section, I will show how the proponent of (SS) can avoid commitment to (UC) and reject a premise of Sider’s argument. Last, I’ll briefly consider and respond to some objections. (shrink)

Although recent years have seen an increase in professional learning communities, use of video and lesson study groups, most teachers still work and learn in isolation. What they know is personal and remains private; little opportunity exists for most teachers to develop shared knowledge or language. The scale of the teaching force, and the rapid turnover of new teachers, makes this lack of shared knowledge an acute problem. This paper explores the potential of records of practice for developing collective professional (...) knowledge about teaching and learning. We define and illustrate what we mean by records of practice and elaborate the meaning of the term collective professional knowledge. Three concrete examples of records of practice, originating in different contexts and times, are presented and their special features are analyzed and discussed. The paper clarifies that records are not in themselves professional knowledge, but constitute a valuable and unique resource for the study of practice and the generation of knowledge originating in and useful for practice. To illustrate varied approaches for studying practice, possible uses of records of practice for the generation of collective professional knowledge are described and analyzed. The paper concludes with questions about records of practice and their uses. (shrink)