Ferdinand Tönnies, the founder of sociology, has been characterised as contributing to the “destruction of reason,” although he viewed himself as a champion of Enlightenment with a social vocation. Here, we shall consider Tönnies’s discussion of the epistemological bases of what he called “rationalism”: his theory of the state, based on the rationalism of Hobbes, and of society, based on the philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment, Smith and Hume; his implicit development of rationalist ethics and the positions he took on (...) Spinoza and Kant; and the relationship between his philosophy of history and that of his philosophical forebear, Adam Ferguson, who wrote in the age of bourgeois emancipation that marked the high Enlightenment. We shall conclude with reflections on the grounds on which Tönnies has been read as an opponent to rationalism and even as a foe of Enlightenment. (shrink)

Niall Ferguson lleva a cabo, en esta obra, un trabajo de gran envergadura al construir una teoría general de los desastres. No se trata solamente del coronavirus en particular, o las pandemias en general, sino de todo tipo de catástrofes, ya sean geológicas, geopolíticas, biológicas o tecnológicas. Si alguien quiere conocer, por tanto, qué lecciones pueden extraerse de los desastres, debe leer este libro.

The paper explores the insights of Mahmood Mamdani regarding recent U.S. military actions in Iraq and the U.S. role in setting up a new government there. The majority of the paper does not, however, rely on sources of Mamdani addressing this topic directly. Rather the author consults Mamdani's work on colonialism and imperialism to find clues as to what is at heart wrong with the colonial approach to ruling. Four key attributes of colonialism that also play a role in recent (...) U.S. actions in Iraq are the use of indirect rule, the politicization of indigeneity, economic domination, and the »civilizing mission.« While some advocates of imperialism such as Niall Ferguson think that there can be a good imperial power, Mamdani's analysis leads to a different conclusion. In Mamdani's early works we find that colonialism always sows the seeds of its own destruction; this insight is applied to the current Iraq situation as a cautionary tale. (shrink)

In this book, J.H. Plumb investigates the way that humankind has, since the beginning of recorded time, molded the past to give sanction to their institutions of government, their social structure and morality. The past has also been called upon to explain the nature of our destiny in order both to strengthen the objectives of society and to reconcile us to our lot. J.H. Plumb questions this sanction of the past, the force that it has on our sense of destiny (...) and its relevance to our own times. This classic text is now reissued with a new introduction by Niall Ferguson, placing it within a contemporary context, and with a new foreword by the eminent historian Simon Schama, a former student of J.H.Plumb himself. (shrink)

In Alan Bennett’s play The History Boys, Irwin, a sixth-form history tutor destined for a media career (based, it is rumored, on that specialist in historical controversy Niall Ferguson) sets out his views on how a difficult change in the law that will affect individual rights should be dealt with. The tactic Irwin advocates is for the Government to insist that the Bill, rather than reducing the liberty of the subject “amplifies it.” The use of paradox, notes Irwin, (...) “works well . . . the loss of liberty is the price we pay for freedom type thing” (Bennett 2004, 3). Thus, in a few sentences, Bennett encapsulates one of the greatest, or, at least, what we in the West have come to think of as one of the greatest, of .. (shrink)

Bashabi Fraser is a poet in her own right. She is also a creative translator. This is a review of her edited volume on the Partition of Bengal. The review highlights our need to read the partition event as a warning for future and ongoing genocides. The review also shows the superiority of literature over history. And finally it has something to say about translation and separately, on P Lal. For instance, this reviewer in many other reviews too insists on (...) the superiority of Fr Mignon SJ over Prof Lal's understanding of translation. (shrink)

Can epistemic luck be captured by modal conditions such as safety from error? This paper answers ‘no’. First, an old problem is cast in a new light: it is argued that the trivial satisfaction associated with necessary truths and accidentally robust propositions is a symptom of a more general disease. Namely, epistemic luck but not safety from error is hyperintensional. Second, it is argued that as a consequence the standard solution to deal with this worry, namely the invocation of content (...) variation, fails. Third, it is considered whether the condition can serve some restricted theoretical role; the hypothesis is rejected. Finally, it is tentatively suggested that epistemic luck’s hyperintensionality derives from its being an explanatory notion, and an analogy is drawn with failures of probabilstic conceptions of explanation in the philosophy of science. (shrink)

The dramatic increase in the number of overseas students studying in the United Kingdom and other Western countries has required academics to reevaluate many aspects of their own, and their institutions', practices. This article considers differing cultural values among overseas students toward plagiarism and the implications this may have for postgraduate education in a Western context. Based on focus-group interviews, questionnaires, and informal discussions, we report the views of plagiarism among students in 2 postgraduate management programs, both of which had (...) a high constituency of overseas students. We show that plagiarist practices are often the outcome of many complex and culturally situated influences. We suggest that educators need to appreciate these differing cultural assumptions if they are to act in an ethical manner when responding to issues of plagiarism among international students. (shrink)

Realists about fictional characters posit a certain theoretical role and a candidate to fill this role. I will delineate the role realists take fictional characters like Emma Woodhouse to fill, and I will argue that it is better filled by what I will call ‘characterisations’. In explaining what I mean by ‘characterisations’, I will show that the existence of these entities is comparatively uncontroversial. Realists should acknowledge their existence, but doing so, I will argue, obviates the need to acknowledge the (...) existence of Emma and other fictional individuals. (shrink)

Northern researchers and service providers espousing modernist theories of development in order to understand and aid countries and peoples of the South ignore their own non-universal starting points of knowledge and their own vested interests. Universal ethics are rejected in favor of situated ethics, while a modified empowerment development model for aiding women in the South based on poststructuralism requires building a bridge identity politics to promote participatory democracy and challenge Northern power knowledges.

Knowledge excludes luck. According to the received view, this intuition reveals that knowing is essentially modal in character. This paper demurs. Either knowledge does not exclude luck, or the entailment reveals nothing about its conceptual character. It is argued that knowledge excludes accidentality, and that this notion is not modal but causal‐explanatory. There are three central tasks. The first is to explicate the concept of accident. The second is to argue that the concepts of luck and accident are “intensionally distinct,” (...) which is to say that no member of the intension of either holds on both. The third is to argue that an anti‐accident requirement on knowledge is preferable to an anti‐luck analogue on abductive grounds. (shrink)

The Health (Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy) Act 2018 was commenced on 01/01/2019 in Ireland. The Act provides for legal termination of pregnancy under defined circumstances including for any reason at < 12 weeks gestation; and where two doctors agree there is ‘a condition affecting the foetus that is likely to lead to the death of the foetus either before, or within 28 days of, birth’. As such, abortion for congenital anomaly (CA) can occur at a number of time points, (...) depending on the adjudged severity. Infants born with CAs frequently require significant medical intervention and account for a high proportion of admissions to paediatric intensive care units (PICUs). The purpose of this paper was to evaluate the number of infants with CAs admitted to an Irish PICU in the period before and after the implementation of the Act. All PICU admissions < 1 month of age to a single Irish paediatric hospital between 2012 and 2021 were analysed. CAs were recorded, and the periods before and after the commencement of the Act compared. We found a difference in admissions involving CAs, particularly those related to congenital heart disease involving single ventricle anatomy. It is plausible that this difference was as a result of improved access to abortion services following the implementation of the Act. This article explores the legal conditions related to the abortion of a foetus with a CA in Ireland, and the possible impact of the Independent Review of the Operation of the Health ( Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy) Act 2018. (shrink)

What is the Bare Particular Theory? Is it committed, like the Bundle Theory, to a constituent ontology: according to which a substance’s qualities—and according to the Bare Particular Theory, its substratum also—are proper parts of the substance? I argue that Bare Particularists need not, should not, and—if a recent objection to ‘the Bare Particular Theory’ succeeds—cannot endorse a constituent ontology. There is nothing, I show, in the motivations for Bare Particularism or the principles that distinguish Bare Particularism from rival views (...) that entails a constituent ontology. I outline a version of Bare Particularism that in rejecting a constituent ontology avoids the New Objection. I argue against Theodore Sider that this really is a distinct theory to the version of Bare Particularism that endorses a constituent ontology, and not a mere terminological variant. I show that this, the best version of the Bare Particular Theory, is also defensible against the old objections. (shrink)

This theoretical paper argues for prioritarianism as an ethical underpinning for digital health in contexts of extreme disadvantage. In support of this claim, the paper develops three prioritarian principles for making ethical decisions for digital health programme design, grounded in the normative position that the greater the need, the stronger the moral claim. The principles are positioned as an alternative view to the prevailing utilitarian approach to digital health, which the paper argues is not sufficient to address the needs of (...) the worst off. As researchers of digital health, we must ensure that the most globally marginalised are not overlooked by overtly technocentric implementation practices. Consequently, the paper concludes by advocating for use of the three principles to support stronger critical reflection on the ethics involved in the design and implementation of digital health programmes. (shrink)

This article offers a novel account of a key concept in Hannah Arendt’s political thought: amor mundi. In political theory’s ethical turn, theorists have increasingly turned to amor mundi as a source of ethical guidance and inspiration for politics. However, in doing so, they have elided Arendt’s distinct understanding of care. This article recovers Arendt’s understanding of amor mundi as care for the world by reconstructing the central concerns of her dissertation, Der Liebesbegriff bei Augustin, and tracing them to the (...) “Crisis” essays of Between Past and Future. It shows that amor mundi emerges in the dissertation as part of a question: if love is our fundamental orientation toward the world, how can we love the world without instrumentalizing it? The two “Crisis” essays provide the following answer: if love is to avoid—and perhaps militate against—the instrumentalization of the world, it must take the form of care. Following this analysis, this article contends that the contribution of amor mundi to the ethical turn is best understood, not as the ethos needed to guide action in the political realm, but as a key pre- or nonpolitical ethos needed to conserve the world where politics takes place—and thus the very possibility of politics. (shrink)

It is one of the central aims of the philosophy of science to elucidate the meanings of scientific terms and also to think critically about their application. The focus of this essay is the scientific term predict and whether there is credible evidence that animal models, especially in toxicology and pathophysiology, can be used to predict human outcomes. Whether animals can be used to predict human response to drugs and other chemicals is apparently a contentious issue. However, when one empirically (...) analyzes animal models using scientific tools they fall far short of being able to predict human responses. This is not surprising considering what we have learned from fields such evolutionary and developmental biology, gene regulation and expression, epigenetics, complexity theory, and comparative genomics. (shrink)

In this paper, we examine a number of relevant logics’ variable sharing properties from the perspective of theories of topic or subject-matter. We take cues from Franz Berto’s recent work on topic to show an alignment between families of variable sharing properties and responses to the topic transparency of relevant implication and negation. We then introduce and defend novel variable sharing properties stronger than strong depth relevance—which we call cn-relevance and lossless cn-relevance—showing that the properties are satisfied by the weak (...) relevant logics and , respectively. We argue that such properties address a sort of semantic lossiness of strong depth relevance. (shrink)

This paper argues that the inappropriate framing and implementation of plagiarism detection systems in UK universities can unwittingly construct international students as ‘plagiarists’. It argues that these systems are often implemented with inappropriate assumptions about plagiarism and the way in which new members of a community of practice develop the skills to become full members of that community. Drawing on the literature and some primary data it shows how expectations, norms and practices become translated and negotiated in such a way (...) that legitimate attempts to conform with the expectations of the community of practice often become identified as plagiarism and illegitimate attempts at cheating often become obscured from view. It argues that this inappropriate framing and implementation of plagiarism detection systems may make academic integrity more illusive rather than less. It argues that in its current framing – as systems for ‘detection and discipline’ – plagiarism detection systems may become a new micro-politics of power with devastating consequences for those excluded. (shrink)

'There is nothing outside the text.' Possibly no single statement has caused such a storm in critical theory as this famous observation by the French philosopher, Jacques Derrida. While it is often misunderstood as meaning that nothing is real and that political actions are therefore pointless, Debating Derrida demonstrates that Derrida's philosophy does not lack political conviction. Niall Lucy examines three key terms - text, writing and differance - as they are used in three famous debates: Derrida's disputes over (...) speech-acts with John R. Searle, over discourse with Michel Foucault and over apartheid. Lucy also takes up the issue of Derrida's relationship to postmodernism and questions the 'political imperative' of the need to justify philosophy and the humanities in general according to a notion of their 'usefulness'. Debating Derrida decisively shows that instead of disagreeing with Derrida, we should rather be defending him. (shrink)

This article explores Academic Service Learning as a teaching method which bridges the gap between academic requirements for learning and the need of society to have individuals willing to give their time and effort to benefit others in need. Students as part of a course learning requirement engaged in a consulting project whereby a non-profit organization was advised on both short term and long term planning. Students were exposed to the operational needs of the organization as well as the dependency (...) of the needy on their services. A pre- and post- survey was administered which focused on any perceived changes in Emotional Intelligence experienced by the students upon completion of the project. The results indicated that student’s EI was affected by the learning project in terms of how they feel about themselves and their overall effort levels. (shrink)

The English Catholic philosopher Sir Kenelm Digby (1603–1665) has enjoyed a recent spate of scholarly attention as a prodigious traveller, political figure, and man of diverse intellectual interests. This article contributes to this scholarship by assessing the commentary on salvation at the heart of Digby’s philosophy of the soul and the historical contexts in which it was produced. It argues that Digby’s thinking on the soul was a meditation on the worldly interactions a Catholic must undertake or avoid in order (...) to achieve salvation. As such, our intellectual historical understanding of Digby is much improved when he is viewed as a scholar who constructed an identity as a thinker adept at advising others on the correct path to beatitude. This article also makes the broader argument for salvation as an important conceptual tool for early modern intellectual historians wishing to accurately map the complex relationship between theology, scholarly argument, and scholarly ambition in the seventeenth century. (shrink)

This paper maintains (following Yougrau 1987; 2000 and Hinchliff 1996) that the dead and other former existents count as examples of non-existent objects. If the dead number among the things there are, a further question arises: what is it to be dead—how should the state of being dead be characterised? It is argued that this state should be characterised negatively: the dead are not persons, philosophers etc. They lack any of the (intrinsic) qualities they had while they lived. The only (...) facts involving the dead are facts about the relations they stand in—including the relations they bear to the qualities they formerly instantiated, and the intentional relations they stand in to us. Given an appropriate conception of qualities the dead can be said to be quality-less objects: bare particulars. The ‘Bare Particular Theory’ of individuals, it is argued, is coherent if and only if it concedes that the bare particulars it allows for don’t exist. The account of the dead and other former existents as bare particulars does justice to the misfortune of death, and points the way to a general theory of nonexistent objects. (shrink)

A Companion to Hermeneutics is a collection of original essays from leading international scholars that provide a definitive historical and critical compendium of philosophical hermeneutics. Offers a definitive historical, systematic, and critical compendium of hermeneutics Represents state-of-the-art thinking on the major themes, topics, concepts and figures of the hermeneutic tradition in philosophy and those who have influenced hermeneutic thought, including Kant, Hegel, Schleiermacher Dilthey, Heidegger, Gadamer, Ricoeur, Foucault, Habermas, and Rorty Explores the art and theory of interpretation as it intersects (...) with a number of philosophical and inter-disciplinary areas, including humanism, theology, literature, politics, education and law Features contributions from an international cast of leading and upcoming scholars, who offer historically informed, philosophically comprehensive, and critically astute contributions in their individual fields of expertise Written to be accessible to interested non-specialists, as well asprofessional philosophers. (shrink)

The dramatic increase in the number of overseas students studying in the United Kingdom and other Western countries has required academics to reevaluate many aspects of their own, and their institutions', practices. This article considers differing cultural values among overseas students toward plagiarism and the implications this may have for postgraduate education in a Western context. Based on focus-group interviews, questionnaires, and informal discussions, we report the views of plagiarism among students in 2 postgraduate management programs, both of which had (...) a high constituency of overseas students. We show that plagiarist practices are often the outcome of many complex and culturally situated influences. We suggest that educators need to appreciate these differing cultural assumptions if they are to act in an ethical manner when responding to issues of plagiarism among international students. (shrink)

The seventeenth-century French Benedictine philosopher Dom Robert Desgabets (1610–1678) has been taken by many historians as an idiosyncratic but ultimately loyal proponent of Cartesianism in the years following Descartes’ death. As a Catholic cleric aware of the importance of squaring the new philosophical conclusions of the seventeenth-century with Church theology, Desgabets wrote extensively on the ways in which this could be achieved with regard to the most contentious and complex theological Church dogma of the time: transubstantiation. Through an examination of (...) Desgabets’ writings on transubstantiation, this article argues that he was emboldened by his particular religious context and preoccupations to undertake an in-depth theological interrogation and revision of Descartes’ eucharistic thought, which motivated him to offer a more epistemologically and theologically ambitious account of transubstantiation than Descartes himself thought possible or wise. This article therefore uses Desgabets as an example of the complex interplay between theology and “new” philosophy in the early reception of Cartesianism. It shows how this interplay allowed early, theologically minded Cartesians like Desgabets to use the intellectual resources of the Catholic Church to fortify and safeguard the legacy of Cartesianism in a way Descartes himself did not do. (shrink)

The mathematician G.F.C. Griss is known for his program of negationless intuitionistic mathematics. Although Griss’s rejection of negation is regarded as characteristic of his philosophy, this is a consequence of an executability requirement that mental constructions presuppose agents’ executing corresponding mental activity. Restoring Griss’s executability requirement to a central role permits a more subtle characterization of the rejection of negation, according to which D. Nelson’s strong constructible negation is compatible with Griss’s principles. This exposes a ‘holographic’ theory of negation in (...) negationless mathematics, in which a full theory of negation is ‘flattened’ in a putatively negationless setting. (shrink)

This is the introduction to the special issue on Robert K. Meyer and the philosophy of arithmetic.

Much has been written about the ethics of eating meat. Far less has been said about the ethics of serving meat. In this paper I argue that we often shouldn’t serve meat, even if it is morally permissible for individuals to purchase and eat meat. Historically, the ethical conversation surrounding meat has been limited to individual diets, meat producers, and government actors. I argue that if we stop the conversation there, then the urgent moral problems associated with industrial animal agriculture (...) will go unsolved. Instead, we must also consider the important but overlooked role that midsized institutions play in addressing major collective problems. I focus mostly on the harms that industrial animal agriculture inflicts on humans, animals, and the environment, but the discussion bears on other global issues like climate change. Institutional choices are an underexplored avenue for driving social change—their power and influence outstrip individual actions, and they can shape behavior in modest ways that promote social goods. Here I highlight the paradigmatic case of catered events and suggest three ways that institutional actors can reduce meat consumption and shape cultural attitudes surrounding meat: large impact decisions, subtly shaping incentives, and consolidating burdens. (shrink)

Claude Bernard, the father of scientific physiology, believed that if medicine was to become truly scientiifc, it would have to be based on rigorous and controlled animal experiments. Bernard instituted a paradigm which has shaped physiological practice for most of the twentieth century. ln this paper we examine how Bernards commitment to hypothetico-deductivism and determinism led to (a) his rejection of the theory of evolution; (b) his minima/ization of the role of clinical medicine and epidemiological studies; and (c) his conclusion (...) that experiments on nonhuman animals were, "entirely conclusive for the toxicology and hygiene of man". We examine some negative consequences of Bernardianism for twentieth century medicine, and argue that physio/ogy's continued adherence to Bernardianism has caused it to diverge from the other biological sciences which have become increasingly infused with evolutionary theory. (shrink)

That's according to Niall Lucy in his latest book, PoMo Oz. Pitting his humour and intellect against the conservative power brokers, Lucy champions the notion that free thought, not free trade, is the basis of democracy.

Ferdinand T nnies' Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft, a work of global import and condensate of the history of ideas, was much influenced by the philosopher Friedrich Paulsen. The study of their friendship shows how these intellectuals chose to adopt and adapt paradigms of the European legacy—rationalism and empiricism on the one hand, rationalism and romantic historicism on the other—in achieving creative idiosyncratic syntheses of idealistic monism. Beyond the shared scientific agenda of monism, they were convinced of the vocation of intellectuals in (...) social legislation, which Paulsen pursued through pedagogy, while T nnies became a social activist. Their interest in forms of socialism, romanticism and pessimism had varying consequences due to the differences in temperament between the political realist Paulsen, whose choices were more expedient for career advancement, and the political idealist T nnies. Their relationship is an instance of the specific rapport that T nnies characterises as intellectual friendship. (shrink)

What I was looking for were folk music records and the first one I saw was Odetta on the Tradition label. I went into the listening booth to hear it. Odetta was great. I had never heard of her unti...

Bounds consequence provides an interpretation of a multiple-conclusion consequence relation in which the derivability of a sequent is understood as the claim that it is conversationally out-of-bounds to take a position in which each member of Γ is asserted while each member of Δ is denied. Two of the foremost champions of bounds consequence—Greg Restall and David Ripley—have independently indicated that the shape of the bounds in question is determined by conversational practice. In this paper, I suggest that the standard (...) treatments of bounds consequence have focused heavily on the matter of veridicality at the expense of ignoring other features by which conversational bounds are set, prime among them being the matter of content or subject-matter. Furthermore, I argue that the semantic behavior of propositions containing “monstrous” content—content whose introduction is inappropriate to a context independently of veridical considerations—leads to a weak Kleene account of bounds consequence. (shrink)