The purpose of this article is to consider Collingwood’s Idea of History in the wider context of his thoughts on historical knowledge, and in the light of criticisms which have often been less than generous in giving a certain latitude to what he meant to convey. The article shows how the main doctrines, that are often taken in isolation and forensically analysed and criticized, may be defended and made more intelligible when considered as an integrated whole. Such an idea as (...) re-enactment, for example, need not be considered to lend itself to intuitionism in philosophy, nor methodological individualism in interpretation. It is possible to understand Collingwood presenting the theory of re-enactment as at once a method for the attainment of historical knowledge, which doesn’t simply come about fortuitously, while also being an ontological condition of understanding, that is, when historical knowledge is attained, something will have happened to us, that is, we will have thought exactly the same thoughts, broadly speaking, as the historical subjects themselves. (shrink)

Macrocephaly is present in about 2–5% of the general population. It can be found as an isolated benign trait or as part of a syndromic condition. Brain overgrowth has been associated with neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism during the first year of life, however, evidence remains inconclusive. Furthermore, most of the studies have involved pathological or high-risk populations, but little is known about the effects of brain overgrowth on neurodevelopment in otherwise neurotypical infants. We investigated the impact of brain overgrowth (...) on basic perceptual learning processes during the first year of life. We recorded high density electroencephalograms in 116 full-term healthy infants aged between 3 and 11 months, 35 macrocephalic and 81 normocephalic classified according to the WHO head circumference norms. We used an adapted oddball paradigm, time-frequency analyses, and auditory event-related brain potentials to investigate differences between groups. We show that brain overgrowth has a significant impact on repetition effects and change detection response in the 10–20 Hz frequency band, and in N450 latency, suggesting that these correlates of sensorial learning processes are sensitive to brain overgrowth during the first year of life. (shrink)

This is the first comprehensive study of the political philosophy of the British philosopher R. G. Collingwood, best known for his contributions to aesthetics and the philosophy of history. However his political thought, and in particular his book The New Leviathan, have been neglected, even dismissed in some quarters. Professor Boucher argues for the importance of this political theory and provides a perspicuous account of its development and originality. He contends that The New Leviathan is an attempt to reconcile (...) philosophy and history, theory and practice. Collingwood's distinctive contribution to modern political and social thought is seen as his sustained project of distinguishing utility from right, and right from duty; the passion for history coincides with the ethical thought because Collingwood wishes to identify dutiful, or moral, action with a historical civilization. Drawing on a wealth of manuscript material, this book will prove invaluable to political philosophers and intellectual historians. (shrink)

Children’s ability to pretend, and the apparent lack of pretence in children with autism, have become important issues in current research on ‘theory of mind’, on the assumption that pretend play may be an early indicator of metarepresentational abilities.

This paper argues that professionals who make boundary-related decisions should be guided by relationship-based practice. In our roles as service users and professionals, drawing from our lived experiences of professional relationships, we argue we need to move away from distance-based practice. This includes understanding the boundary stories and narratives that exist for all of us – including the people we support, other professionals, as well as the organisations and systems within which we work. When we are dealing with professional boundary (...) issues, we should centre relationship-building skills that are central to many other aspects of our work. Skills that foster relationships at all levels – between professionals, service users, and services – need to be revalued. Our final recommendation is to create, develop, and foster safer spaces within and outside of organisations, as well as inter-professionally, for the discussion and exploration of boundary-related issues and practice. We are interested in hearing from those with experiences of being marginalised by boundaries so that they can inform a reshaping of our collective ideas around boundary related practices. To foster relationship-based practices in organisations, we have outlined several recommendations here; however, we recognize that these do not go far enough, and that collective action is needed to inform systemic change. (shrink)

This is the long-awaited publication of a set of writings by the British philosopher, historian, and archaeologist R.G. Collingwood on critical, anthropological, and cultural themes only hinted at in his previously available work. At the core are six essays on folktale and magic in which Collingwood applies the principles of his philosophy of history to problems in the long-term evolution of human society and culture. The volume opens with three substantial introductory essays by the editors, authorities in their various fields, (...) who provide their explanatory and contextual notes to guide the reader through the texts. The Philosophy of Enchantment highlights the broad range of Collingwood's intellectual engagements, their integration, and their relevance to current areas of debate in the fields of philosophy, cultural studies, social and literary history, and anthropology. (shrink)

In Zizek and Politics, Geoff Boucher and Matthew Sharpe go beyond standard introductions to spell out a new approach to reading Zizek, one that can be highly critical as well as deeply appreciative. They show that Zizek has a raft of fundamental positions that enable his theoretical positions to be put to work on practical problems. Explaining these positions with clear examples, they outline why Zizek's confrontation with thinkers such as Derrida, Foucault and Deleuze has so radically changed how (...) we think about society. They then go on to track Zizek's own intellectual development during the last twenty years, as he has grappled with theoretical problems and the political climate of the War on Terror. This book is a major addition to the literature on Zizek and a crucial critical introduction to his thought. (shrink)

Thomas Kuhn had little to say about scientific change in biological science, and biologists are ambivalent about how applicable his framework is for their disciplines. We apply Kuhn’s account of paradigm change to evolutionary microbiology, where key Darwinian tenets are being challenged by two decades of findings from molecular phylogenetics. The chief culprit is lateral gene transfer, which undermines the role of vertical descent and the representation of evolutionary history as a tree of life. To assess Kuhn’s relevance to this (...) controversy, we add a social analysis of the scientists involved to the historical and philosophical debates. We conclude that while Kuhn’s account may capture aspects of the pattern of an episode of scientific change, he has little to say about how the process of generating new understandings is occurring in evolutionary microbiology. Once Kuhn’s application is limited to that of an initial investigative probe into how scientific problem-solving occurs, his disciplinary scope becomes broader. (shrink)

Since van Fraassen first put forward the suggestive idea that many philosophical positions should be construed as ‘stances’ rather than factual beliefs, there have been various attempts to spell out precisely what a philosophical stance might be, and on what basis one should be adopted. In this paper I defend a particular account of stances, the view that they are pragmatically justified perspectives or ways of seeing the world, and compare it to some other accounts that have been offered. In (...) Sect. 2 I consider van Fraassen’s argument for construing empiricism as a stance, and look at some responses to it. In Sect. 3 I outline my conception of stances as perspectives or ways of seeing, and explain how stances so understood may be justified. I illustrate this conception by way of a discussion of the model pluralist position with respect to the units of selection debate in biology, and suggest that on the model pluralist view different perspectives on the units of selection, such as the gene’s eye view, are in fact van Fraassian stances. In Sect. 4 I discuss the view put forward by Teller and Chakravartty among others that stances should be understood as epistemic policies, and argue that it is consistent with the conception of stances as perspectives. In the final section I criticise Rowbottom’s attempt to assimilate stances to Kuhnian paradigms. I argue that he has overlooked some important disanalogies between stances and paradigms, so that the comparison obscures more than it reveals. (shrink)

The frontispiece of Hobbes's Leviathan is justly renowned as a powerful visual advertisement for his political philosophy. Consequently, its rich imagery has been the subject of extensive scholarly commentary. Surprisingly, then, its gendered dimensions have received relatively limited attention. This essay explores this neglected facet of the frontispiece. I argue that the image initially appears to present a hypermasculine sovereign. However, upon closer inspection, and considered alongside Hobbes's economic theory, it yields to a reading of the sovereign as an ambiguously (...) gendered figure. Reading the frontispiece through the prism of gender and the economy reveals not a static image of unwavering male power but rather one of an equivocally-sexed creature teeming with life, contradictions, and complexities worthy of continued examination. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to explore in what respects Thomas Hobbes may be regarded as foundational in international thought. It is evident that in contemporary international relations theory he has become emblematic of a realist tradition, but as David Armitage suggests this was not always the case. I want to suggest that it is only in a very limited sense that he may be regarded as a foundational thinker in international relations, and for reasons very different from those (...) for which he has become infamous. In the early histories of international thought Hobbes is a cameo figure completely eclipsed by Grotius. In early histories of political literature, the classic jurists were often acknowledged for their remarkable contributions to international relations, but Hobbes is referred to exclusively as a philosopher of a positvist ethics and absolute sovereignty. It is among the jurists themselves that Hobbes is believed to have made important conceptual moves which set the problems for international thought for the next three centuries. He conflates natural law and the law of nations, arguing that they differ only in their subjects—the former individuals, the latter nations or states. This entailed transforming the sovereign into an artificial man, not in the Roman Law sense of an entity capable of suing and being sued; rather, as a subject not party to a contract, but created by a contract among individuals who confer upon it authority. This subject is not constrained by the contractors, but is, as individuals were in the state of nature, constrained by the equivalent of natural law, the law of nations in the international context. Throughout, the methodological implications are drawn for modern historians of political thought and political philosophers who venture to theorise about international relations. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Significance of R. G. Collingwood’s Principles of HistoryDavid BoucherThe Principles of History is the work that Collingwood saw as his principal philosophical enterprise, the book for which his whole intellectual life had been a preparation. It was to have been a work divided into three books. 1 In the first there was to be a discussion of the characteristics that make the special science of history distinctive. In (...) the second history was to be compared with other sciences. Third, he intended to investigate the relationship between history and practical life. He thought of beginning his project by giving a brief account of the different senses of the concept of history. Book one was divided into four chapters. The first was to concentrate on evidence and testimony relating them to scissors-and-paste history. Chapter two was to present a theory of action, res gestae, or action expressive of thought, in contrast with the idea of process, or change, associated with pseudo-history. In chapter three reenactment was to be discussed and contrasted with the idea of a dead past. Chapter four was to argue that history in contrast with other purported pretenders to the title can justifiably claim to be the science of the mind. Book two was divided into three chapters. Chapter one was to discuss history and natural science, showing that neither could be reduced to each other. He also wanted to contend that the natural sciences are themselves historical achievements in that they depend upon the historical facts of observation and thought. Chapter two was to deal with history and the human sciences, such as economics, which he describes as crypto-histories. In the third chapter Collingwood intended to explore the relation between history and philosophy. In book three, which is described less precisely, he wanted to argue that history overcomes the distinction between theory and practice, and that reenactment overcomes the dualism between mind and its objects. This, he thought, would enable him to give a characterization of historical morality and historical civilization in contrast with their utilitarian counterparts.He began writing the book on 15 February 1939 and had finished the first three chapters by 23 February. Over a month later, on 26 and 27 March, he began chapter four but was unable to formulate his thoughts on the past, and the relation between history and philosophy. At this point he stopped, never to return to the manuscript again. What we have left of The Principles of History deviates considerably from the original plan. Only three chapters were written, the third of which does not contain the crucial discussion of re-enactment. In addition, uncompleted fragments of the beginnings of a fourth chapter remain.In this paper I intend to look at why Collingwood’s explicit authorization to publish the Principles of History was disregarded by Knox and Oxford University Press. In addition, I want to look at three aspects of the rediscovered manuscript. In the second and third sections, on the method and subject matter of history respectively, I examine the extent to which Knox’s suppression of the Principles of History contributed to a good deal of the confusion surrounding the interpretation of Collingwood’s key ideas. What emerges from the pages of the Principles of History is how integral The Principles of Art and An Essay on Metaphysics are to understanding Collingwood’s later philosophy of history, a connection that is distorted by the patchwork nature of The Idea of History.In the fourth section of the paper I suggest that the most significant omission to which Collingwood never returned was the theory of reenactment. Reenactment more than any other aspect of his writings has been placed by interpreters at the centre of Collingwood’s philosophy of history. W. H. Dray’s new book is wholly focused upon this theme. Dray did not, however, see The Principles of History in time to incorporate the implications for reenactment theory of Collingwood’s broadening of the subject matter of history to include the emotions. 2 The theory of reenactment could no longer be sustained by the earlier argument found in The Idea of History, because Collingwood, in The Principles of... (shrink)

In recent years there has been a noticeable yet largely unacknowledged ‘pragmatic turn’ in the scientific realism debate, inspired in part by van Fraassen’s work on ‘epistemic stances’. Features of this new approach include: an ascent to the meta-level (the focus is not so much on whether scientific realism is true, but on the prior questions of the nature of the positions in this debate, how to decide whether to be a scientific realist, etc.); a reinterpretation of scientific realism and (...) anti-realism as (or as closely associated with) stances or frameworks, rather than theories or beliefs; a move away from the previously dominant empirical-explanatory (i.e. quasi-scientific or naturalistic) conception of scientific realism, anti-realism, and their justification; and a stress on the pragmatic and values-based elements in the debate. The traditional scientific realism debate is concerned with determining which position is true, or most epistemically justified. The new approach by contrast is concerned with determining which position best serves certain values, e.g. is most useful, fruitful, or otherwise prudentially preferable. In this paper we try to bring together the various strands in this new orientation, summarise its key features, contrast it with superficially similar but opposing views, and explore the similarities and differences among some of its adherents. Given we are advocates of the turn, we also offer a defence of the value and fruitfulness of this reconceptualization of the debate. (shrink)

Van Fraassen has argued that many philosophical positions should be understood as stances rather than factual beliefs. In this paper I discuss the vexed question of whether and how such stances can be rationally justified. Until this question has been satisfactorily answered, the otherwise promising stance approach cannot be considered a viable metaphilosophical option. One can find hints, and the beginnings of an answer to this question, in van Fraassen’s (and others’) writings, but no general, fully clear and convincing account (...) has been offered. I aim to provide such an account. In the first section I introduce the concept of a stance. In the second section I argue that stances may be justified pragmatically, in terms of both their epistemic fruits, and their coherence with values. In the third section I further consider the relationship between stances and values, arguing that the value-ladenness of a stance does not render it immune to rational scrutiny. In the final section I look at van Fraassen’s version of epistemological voluntarism, which plays a central role in his conception of the basis on which a stance may be rationally adopted. I show that voluntarism provides a theoretical framework, and approach to epistemology, within which the forms of justification appropriate to stance choice I outline in sections 2 and 3 find a natural home. (shrink)

Bucher ascertains that Butler's description of the temporalized process of structuration, which seeks to avoid recourse to political voluntarism, or the sovereign intentionality of the autonomous individual, yields powerful insights into social identity. He asserts further that Butler's description of the dominant heterosexual culture in terms of melancholia, and her insights into the structures of repetition and difference that make up the social conventions that produce cultural norms, represent important resources in thinking about contemporary cultural conflicts.
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Michael Oakeshott shared the general concerns of British idealists and leaned heavily upon their conclusions. As with any mode of understanding, historv creates its own object of inquiry. History is an activity built upon postulates and capable of generating conclusions appropriate to itself. The past in history is different from any other past. It can only be evoked by means of subscription to the historical present in which each artifact is recognized as the vestige of a performance which is transformed (...) into circumstantial evidence of a past which has not survived. A great deal of what Oakeshott has to say, especially about coherence, continuity, and identity in difference, stands in sharp contrast to Collingwood's ideas on the reenactment of the past. A living past, relevant to the present or evocative of a future state of affairs, is modally irrelevant to history. (shrink)

In this article I intend to give more attention to Pufendorf's ideas than has been the custom among international relations theorists. The main focus will be upon Pufendorf's distillation and conceptualization of the implications of Westphalia in terms of sovereignty and the integrity of states. Furthermore, his extension of the Aristotelian classification of types of state, and his attempts to go beyond Bodin's and Hobbes's theories of sovereignty, provide the vocabulary and concepts in terms of which the different international actors (...) of the late seventeenth century could be understood. In this respect the focus is altogether different from Linklater. My emphasis upon the historical and emblematic character of the Peace of Westphalia, the personification of the state and its animation by sovereignty, which serves to facilitate Pufendorf's exploration of the idea of a system of states, and my suggestion that his ideas are not wholly redundant and may be used to explore some facets of a modern states system, serve considerably to extend Forsyth's brief analysis. (shrink)

“Would you like to think about,” Thomas Mann famously asked Theodor Adorno, while writing his masterpiece, Doctor Faustus, “what sort of music you would write if you were in league with the devil?” Subtitled The Life of the Composer Adrian Leverkühn, As Told by a Friend, the novel presents the narrative, by humanist professor, Serenus Zeitblom, of the descent into madness of the musical genius, Adrian Leverkühn. In the story, Leverkühn achieves an avant-garde breakthrough into atonal dissonance that is modelled (...) on the twelve tone row procedure of Arnold Schönberg, as represented to Mann by the work’s “musical adviser,” Adorno. Over the space of a year, Adorno’s response to Mann went far beyond the “few significant details” requested by the author, extending to 20 pages of text and notation, and embracing not just the diabolical breakthrough of Leverkühn’s Apocalipsis cum figuris, but also the redemptive retraction of The Lamentations of Doctor Faustus. It is at this point that we must pause. The combination of the authorship controversy between Mann and Schönberg over the inspiration for the works of Leverkühn, the fact that Mann’s Leverkühn is in the main a transcription of Adorno’s Schönberg, and the fact that Adorno only wrote the second half of Philosophy of Modern Music in 1948, after the collaboration with Mann had finished, has generated a major critical lapse. The general assumption is that the music that Adorno would write in league with the Devil is the music of Schönberg. But that assumption is false. The music that Adorno would write in league with the Devil is the music of Stravinsky. Leverkühn’s diabolically-inspired masterpiece, Apocalipsis, is definitely “Stravinskyian”. By contrast, the redemptive Lamentation is clearly “Schönbergian”. I intend to demonstrate this by highlighting the distinctive characteristics of “Schönberg” and “Stravinsky” in Philosophy of Modern Music, and then comparing these characteristics with those of Leverkühn’s imaginary works. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: The Criteria of State Conduct Against Realism and Natural Law The Kantian Inheritance Rawls's Debt to Rousseau ‐ the Third Criterion Conclusion Notes.

The chapter presents Laclau and Mouffe’s theory and then outlines some of the most important criticism of their discourse analysis. After a brief summary of key terms, such as hegemonic articulation and constitutive outside, the chapter positions Laclau and Mouffe within the post-Althusserian moment, arguing that they inherit certain unresolved problems from this origin. The first problem concerns the application of categories derived from the theory of ideology to the entirety of the social field, which leads to what the chapter (...) calls ‘descriptive indeterminacy.’ The second problem concerns the suppression of the normative dimension in the theory of social subjectivity, which leads to an oscillation between neutral description and partisan intervention. In both cases, Laclau and Mouffe’s response to these criticisms is explored and evaluated. (shrink)

François Boucher | : Dans cet article, j’examine le rôle des villes dans l’aménagement de la diversité ethnoculturelle. Je me penche sur l’idée voulant que la prise en compte des spécificités du contexte urbain et de l’échelle géographique de la ville ait une certaine fonction heuristique. Une telle prise en compte nous mène à réviser notre compréhension des agent.e.s responsables d’honorer une conception de la justice, à revoir l’ordre du jour de la philosophie politique normative en mettant en lumière (...) des questions et problématiques spécifiques à ce contexte et, enfin, à discerner certaines possibilités et stratégies politiques visant à promouvoir la justice et le bien commun. Plus spécifiquement, dans le cadre d’une réflexion sur le multiculturalisme, une attention portée au contexte de la ville porte la promesse d’enrichir notre compréhension des politiques publiques susceptibles de promouvoir ou de compromettre l’intégration et la cohésion sociale dans les sociétés pluralistes. Ainsi, l’idéal de ville interculturelle propose de faire de la promotion des interactions interculturelles dans les espaces urbains un des piliers de la planification urbaine. Après avoir exploré le rôle spécifique des villes dans la mise en place d’une politique d’aménagement de la diversité ethnoculturelle visant à promouvoir l’intégration, je soulignerai quelques limites auxquelles se heurte l’idéal de la ville interculturelle. | : In this article, I examine the role of cities in the accomodation of ethnocultural diversity. I study the idea that there is a certain heuristic function in taking into consideration the specificities of the urban context and the geographic dimensions of the city. Such consideration leads us to revise our understanding of the agents called upon to honour a conception of justice; to take a second look at the agenda of normative political philosophy while shedding light on the questions and issues specific to this context; and, finally, to discern certain political possibilities and strategies aiming to promote justice and the common good. More specifically, paying attention to the context of the city within a reflection on multiculturalism promises to enrich our understanding of the public policies likely to promote or to jeopardize integration and social cohesion in pluralist societies. Thus, the ideal of the intercultural city offers to make the fostering of intercultural interactions in urban spaces one of the pillars of urban planning. (shrink)

The idea of the rule of law is central in the European Union’s conception of itself, and stands as one of the most important political criteria of the enlargement process. Some clarification of this core concept is essential if it is to play a meaningful role in enlargement and, indeed, if we are able to make a judgement about whether the criterion is substantive or merely rhetorical. In other words, what purpose must the rule of law serve within a state, (...) beyond the rather trite beliefs that the law rather than individuals rule, and that no one is above the law, if a state is to be admitted to the European Union of states? I want to suggest that its principal purpose has been to guard against arbitrary rule, and if the rule of law is to be a substantive criterion for expansion of the European Union it must be cognizant of what the criterion entails, and face up to the implications for admitting states with cultures where the rule of law has not featured significantly in their political and social landscapes. The article looks at one of the most sophisticated attempts to delineate the ideal character of the rule of law in recent philosophy, namely that of Michael Oakeshott, to clarify the meaning that it has in its use in modern European history and in relation to the modern European state. (shrink)

This paper defends global realism about the units of selection, the view that there is always (or nearly always) an objective fact of the matter concerning the level at which natural selection acts. The argument proceeds in two stages. First, it is argued that global conventionalist-pluralism is false. This is established by identifying plausible sufficient conditions for irreducible selection at a particular level, and showing that these conditions are sometimes satisfied in nature. Second, it is argued that local pluralism – (...) the view that while realism is true of some selection regimes, pluralist conventionalism holds for others – should also be rejected. I show that the main arguments for local pluralism are consistent with global realism. I also suggest that local pluralism offers an unacceptably disunified view of the metaphysics of selection. It follows that we should accept global realism. But this leaves open the question of how to classify so called ‘multi-level selection type 1’ (MLS1) processes, such as Wilson’s classic trait-group model for the evolution of altruism: should they be interpreted as particle selection or collective selection? On the assumption of global realism, at most one of these is correct. I argue, against global realists such as Sober, that MLS1 processes should be understood as particle, not collective, selection, due to three features of MLS1: the reducibility of collective fitness, the absence of collective reproduction, and the dispensable role of collectives. (shrink)

Stephen Jay Gould’s views on the ontology of species were an important plank of his revisionist program in evolutionary theory. In this paper I cast a critical philosopher’s eye over those views. I focus on three central aspects of Gould’s views on species: the relation between the Darwinian and the metaphysical notions of individuality, the relation between the ontology of species and macroevolution, and the issue of contextualism and conventionalism about the metaphysics of species.

Word learning depends critically on the use of linguistic context to constrain the likely meanings of words. However, the mechanisms by which children infer word meaning from linguistic context are still poorly understood. In this study, we asked whether adults (n = 58) and 2‐ to 6‐year‐old children (n = 180) use discourse coherence relations (i.e., the meaningful relationships between elements within a discourse) to constrain their interpretation of novel words. Specifically, we showed participants videos of novel animals exchanging objects. (...) These videos were accompanied by a linguistic description of the events in which we manipulated a single word within a sentence (and vs. because) in order to alter the causal and temporal relations between the events in the discourse (e.g., “One animal handed the baby to the other animal [and/because] the baby started crying in the talfa's arms”). We then asked participants which animal (the giver or the receiver) was the referent of the novel word. Across two experiments, we found evidence that young children used the causal and temporal relations in each discourse to constrain their interpretations of novel words. (shrink)

In a conjuncture marked by the “resurgence of religion,” the problem of historical materialism’s relation to religious ideologies has acquired a new urgency. The work of Roland Boer, recently awarded the Deutscher Prize for his magnum opus on Marxism and Theology poses this question from a surprising perspective. While his main claim is that religious influences in Marxist theory represent a sort of theological unconscious in historical materialism, at the same time Boer also advances an original Marxist interpretation of the (...) Abrahamic religions, especially Christianity. This line of research, which extends from his dissertation on Jameson and Jeroboam through to his most recent work on The Sacred Economy, proposes that theology is a reflective representation of the social totality. In this article, I criticize Boer’s valorization of theology as a practical discourse that is postideological but non-theoretical, and conclude by indicating an alternative. (shrink)

This is the first comprehensive study of the political philosophy of the British philosopher R. G. Collingwood, best known for his contributions to aesthetics and the philosophy of history. However his political thought, and in particular his book The New Leviathan, have been neglected, even dismissed in some quarters. Professor Boucher argues for the importance of this political theory and provides a perspicuous account of its development and originality. He contends that The New Leviathan is an attempt to reconcile (...) philosophy and history, theory and practice. Collingwood's distinctive contribution to modern political and social thought is seen as his sustained project of distinguishing utility from right, and right from duty; the passion for history coincides with the ethical thought because Collingwood wishes to identify dutiful, or moral, action with a historical civilization. Drawing on a wealth of manuscript material, this book will prove invaluable to political philosophers and intellectual historians. (shrink)

In this article, we compare Ricard Zappata-Barrero’s interculturalism with Tariq Modood’s multiculturalism. We will discuss the relation between distinct elements that compose both positions. We examine how recent discussions on interculturalism have the potential to contribute to theories of multiculturalism without undermining their core principles. Our position is close to that of Modood’s as he has already carefully tried to incorporate interculturalist insights into his own multiculturalism. Yet we provide a raise a few questions regarding Modood’s treatment of the relation (...) between multiculturalism and interculturalism. After summarizing each author’s potion (I), we will comment on the following set of relations between their basic elements: (II) The relation between intercultural contact and intercultural dialogue; (III) The relation between contact at the local level and the societal/state level; (IV) The relation between group-specific measures, intercultural contact and mainstreaming. (shrink)

I consider the broad perspectives in biology known as ‘functionalism’ and ‘structuralism’, as well as a modern version of functionalism, ‘adaptationism’. I do not take a position on which of these perspectives is preferable; my concern is with the prior question, how should they be understood? Adapting van Fraassen’s argument for treating materialism as a stance, rather than a factual belief with propositional content, in the first part of the paper I offer an argument for construing functionalism and structuralism as (...) stances also. The argument draws especially on Gould’s insights concerning functionalism and structuralism, in particular their apparent historical continuity from the pre-Darwinian period through to today. In the second part of the paper I consider Godfrey-Smith’s distinction between empirical and explanatory adaptationism, and suggest that while the former is an empirical scientific hypothesis, the latter is closely related to the functionalist stance. (shrink)

Because it is time-dependent, parallel computation is fundamentally different from sequential computation. Parallel programs are non-deterministic and are not effective procedures. Given the brain operates in parallel, this casts doubt on AI's attempt to make sequential computers intelligent.

I consider two attempts to combine realism with pluralism about the units of selection: Sober and Wilson’s combination of “model” and “unit” pluralism, and Sterelny and Griffiths’ “local pluralism”. I argue that both of these attempts fail to show that realism and pluralism are compatible. Sober and Wilson’s pluralism turns out, on closer inspection, to be a kind of monism in disguise, while Sterelny and Griffiths’ local pluralism involves a combination of realism and anti-realism about interactors, and the units of (...) selection, that is fundamentally unstable. My conclusion is that one must choose whether to be a realist or a pluralist in this area: one cannot be both. The question of which we should choose is a further question that I do not take a stand on. (shrink)

Bertand's Postulate is proved in Peano Arithmetic minus the Successor Axiom.

The relationship between jus ad bellum and jus in bello has been characterized differently throughout European history. There have been three main positions exemplified by Hugo Grotius, Samuel von Pufendorf and Emer de Vattel. They are, first, both the cause and the conduct of warfare must be just; second, the cause must be just, but the conduct of the war is unconstrained in order to achieve the goal of peace; and, third, we must assume justice on both sides, and concentrate (...) on ensuring just conduct in armed conflict. Each attempted to distil customary practices, which they saw in some relation to Natural Law, the ultimate source of moral obligation. Customary international law now serves the function of Natural Law in that even if treatises in which it is articulated lapse the customary constraining precepts remain, and are equally obligatory. It is contended that the relationship between just war and just conduct in war during the 20th and 21st centuries has mirrored the three classic positions, and since 9/11, with the advent of new dimensions to warfare in the war against terror, the relationship is in flux. Since 9/11 there has been a growing emphasis on jus ad bellum and a relative silence on the principles of jus in bello. Implicitly, there is an informal acceptance of something like Pufendorf’s position in which outlaw combatants are deemed to place themselves outside of the protection of customary law. (shrink)

Dienes & Perner's target article contains numerous but unsystematic references to the implicit or explicit knowledge of the temporal context of a known state of affairs such as may constitute the content of a propositional attitude. In this commentary, the forms of cognition that, according to D&P, require only implicit knowledge of time are contrasted with those for which explicit temporal knowledge is needed. It is suggested that the explicit representation of time may have been important in human evolution and (...) that certain developmental disorders including autism may be (partly) caused by defective ability to represent time. (shrink)

Van Fraassen’s view that many philosophical positions should be understood as stances rather than factual beliefs with propositional content, has become increasingly popular. But the precise relation between a philosophical stance, and the factual beliefs that typically accompany it, is an unresolved issue. It is widely accepted that no factual belief is sufficient for holding a particular stance, but some have argued that holding certain factual beliefs is nonetheless necessary for adopting a given stance. I argue against this claim, along (...) with the weaker claim that while there are no beliefs that are necessary for adopting a particular stance, those who share a stance must share some characteristic belief(s) in common. I outline and defend an alternative ‘cluster’ account, according to which, in order to accept a stance, one must hold some minimal subset of the set of theoretical beliefs characteristic of the stance in question. This view can accommodate the intuitions motivating those who defend the stronger necessity claims, while crucially allowing for the flexibility of a stance vis-à-vis the relevant factual beliefs, and its relative independence from those beliefs, which is central to van Fraassen’s main examples of stances and their nature. (shrink)

Government has come to mean governance. This article investigates this change, which, through an investigation of Foucault’s concept of governmentality, it will show to be a substantial modification of the concept of government.By the late 1970s, Foucault had begun to construct a political philosophy shorn of traditional power structures. He replaced these with the concept of governmentality, of which the “governmental rationality of liberalism” is one form. In this rationality, the government is no longer the final instance, but is rather (...) a process of structuring a field of action.Government ceases to be a specific method of organisation; the concept of governmentality is hence amorphous and is not limited to liberalism. But liberalism instituted a radical change: a hitherto unpracticed permeability between reasons of state and reasons of the market. Liberalism is characterised by frugal government. However, the check against excess in government does not emerge, as it did in other forms, through the rule of law or the balance of power of nations, both external to liberal rationality.Seeing the transactional economic model as the model of good governance, liberalism is frugal by its own nature. Unlimited economic productive power, necessary for the continuance of the liberal state, entails limited government, and anything that would limit economic transactions must limit from outside.Other rationalities, such as moral or judicial rationalities, are thus external to the nature of liberal rationality – they play no role in the only test liberalism uses to validate its actions: economic effect. This new rationality, which emerges in the middle of the 18th century as new concept of government, is the emergence of the political economy. (shrink)

It is widely acknowledged that metaphysical assumptions, commitments and presuppositions play an important role in science. Yet according to the empiricist there is no place for metaphysics as traditionally understood in the scientific enterprise. In this paper I aim to take a first step towards reconciling these seemingly irreconcilable claims. In the first part of the paper I outline a conception of metaphysics and its relation to science that should be congenial to empiricists, motivated by van Fraassen’s work on ‘stances’. (...) There has been a considerable amount of recent work devoted to van Fraassen’s ‘stance’ view, but it has not on the whole been noticed that the view has the potential to motivate a general empiricist conception of the relation between science and metaphysics. In the second and third sections I discuss two examples from biology to illustrate this conception: metaphysical punctuationism, and its relation to and influence on the thesis of punctuated equilibrium; and dialectical biology as defended by Levins and Lewontin. (shrink)

Cécile Laborde, philosophe française établie au Royaume-Uni, est déjà l'auteure d'une œuvre fournie et essentielle. Elle s'est, dans un premier temps, inscrite au sein de la philosophie républicaine, en publiant notamment Français, encore un effort pour être républicains! (2010), ouvrage en français adapté d'un livre précédemment publié en anglais, Critical Republicanism: The Hijab Controversy and Political Philosophy (2008). En partant des controverses liées à la loi de 2004 interdisant le...

Frankfurt School critical theory is perhaps the most significant theory of society to have developed directly from a research programme focused on the critique of political authoritarianism, as it manifested during the interwar decades of the 20th century. The Frankfurt School’s analysis of the persistent roots – and therefore the perennial nature – of what it describes as the ‘authoritarian personality’ remains influential in the analysis of authoritarian populism in the contemporary world, as evidenced by several recent studies. Yet the (...) tendency in these studies is to reference the final formulation of the category, as expressed in Theodor Adorno and co-thinkers’ The Authoritarian Personality, as if this were a theoretical readymade that can be unproblematically inserted into a measured assessment of the threat to democracy posed by current authoritarian trends. It is high time that the theoretical commitments and political stakes in the category of the authoritarian personality are re-evaluated, in light of the evolution of the Frankfurt School. In this paper, I review the classical theories of the authoritarian personality, arguing that two quite different versions of the theory – one characterological, the other psychodynamic – can be extracted from Frankfurt School research. (shrink)

W. H. Greenleaf has been widely acknowledged as a significant contributor to the gradual development of a more historically sensitive attitude to the study of political thought. J. G. A. Pocock and Quentin Skinner, two of the leading figures in the present methodological debate raging in the history of political thought, while disagreeing with some of Greenleaf’s ideas, pay tribute to his effort to change the character of the discipline. Pocock, for example, suggests that “Greenleaf’s important contribution is that he (...) compels us to regard English political thought in terms of the styles of legitimation and explanation currently available” in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Critics of Pocock and Skinner have maintained that Greenleaf’s historical perspective may prove to be the most fruitful for organizing the study of the history of political thought, and J. G. Gunnell asserts that much of what Skinner says echoes comments that Greenleaf had made as early as 1964. However, when Greenleaf is mentioned in methodological discussions he is given very little consideration. I know of only one article that devotes more than one or two paragraphs to outlining his ideas, and even its characterization proves to be inadequate because the views presented and criticized there draw only upon Greenleaf’s Order, Empiricism and Politics and neglect the subsequent development of his theoretical position. The essence of Lockyer’s criticism of Greenleaf’s articulation of the traditions of order and empiricism is that they “are static and ossified abstractions, and therefore of little use in explaining the development of ideas.” Lockyer suggests that in order to exhibit traditions as having a more fluid and dynamic content, the thoughts of Collingwood and Hegel can usefully be invoked. The irony of the criticism is that Greenleaf, after 1964, drew on a whole range of idealist thinkers, including Collingwood and Hegel, in order to present a view of traditions which captured the diversity of their content, while attempting to exhibit their unity through change. (shrink)

In "The Nature and Meaning of Numbers," Dedekind produces an original, quite remarkable proof for the holy grail in the foundations of elementary arithmetic, that there are an infinite number of things. It goes like this. [p, 64 in the Dover edition.] Consider the set S of things which can be objects of my thought. Define the function phi(s), which maps an element s of S to the thought that s can be an object of my thought. Then phi is (...) evidently one-to-one, and the image of phi is contained in S. Indeed, it is properly contained in S, because I myself can be an object of my thoughts and so belong to S, but I myself am not a mere thought. Thus S is infinite. (shrink)

A solution to the Liar must do two things. First, it should say exactly which step in the Liar reasoning - the reasoning which leads to a contradiction - is invalid. Secondly, it should explains why this step is invalid.