This dissertation studies Grosseteste's attempt in his De libero arbitrio to develop a theory of non-temporal modality which severs possibility and changeability. It consists in close philosophical analysis of Grosseteste's views, based on new editions and translations of De libero arbitrio, De scientia Dei, and De veritate propositionis contained in the Appendices. ;After studying the theories of modality proposed by Boethius, Abelard, and twelfth century logic texts, together with the logico-linguistic framework thirteenth century writers drew from them, I examine the (...) basic assumptions and motivations of Grosseteste's discussion: the notions of sentences and dicta, time-variable truth-value, the notion of power, the problem of reconciling divine knowledge and human free will. ;I identify two main modal theories in Grosseteste, one linking possibility with changeability of truth-value and bearing similarities with as well as important differences from the theories of the twelfth century logicians; the other presented as a reaction to this theory and, in particular, to its unusual claim that true sentences about future contingents are necessary. I attempt to make sense of this by a reconstruction of the theory, making use of the notion of dense time. ;I then investigate in detail Grosseteste's theory of the eternal truths, with an eye to its relation to his theories of modality. I show that Grosseteste's sophisticated theory is not a theory of modality; the theory is seen, nonetheless, to highlight obscurities in Grosseteste's account of non-temporal modality. ;The account of non-temporal modality rests on the notion of a dictim's eternal power; these powers are reduced to God's eternal powers. I critically examine Grosseteste's defense of the idea of divine power, highlighting the difficulties he viewed the notion of the actualizability of a power and of its priority to act as posing. His views on these matters are compared with those of Scotus. ;I investigate the theory of non-temporal modality erected on this basis and, in particular, its reduction to divine powers, the adequacy of the strategy, and Grosseteste's use of the theory to solve the problem divine knowledge poses for free will. (shrink)

Few figures of the Middle Ages command the attention of so many modern disciplines as Robert Grosseteste (c. 1170-1253). Theology, Philosophy, History, and Science are all areas which his life and thought continue to have significance and to inspire re-interpretation. Accompanied by a series of original commentaries, this new edition of Grosseteste's work, with English translation, draws together the perspectives of modern scientists and medieval specialists. Volume I of a six volume series, Knowing and Speaking presents two of the earliest (...) of Grosseteste's works, the treatises On the Liberal Arts and On the Generation of Sounds. These are accompanied by a significant Middle English treatise on the Seven Liberal Arts whose anonymous fifteenth-century author translated and excerpted passages from Grosseteste's treatises in a re-imagining of their structure and function.0Each work is treated separately within the volume, which is constructed in three parts. On the Liberal Arts sets Grosseteste's thoughts on the arts subjects and emphasises moral concerns about the purpose of learning. On the Generation of Sounds builds on the theories and statements of On the Liberal Arts in connection to the production of sound, elaborating the earlier position, relating the generation of sounds to human vocal and speech production. (shrink)

Disorders of volition are often accompanied by, and may even be caused by, disruptions in the phenomenology of agency. Yet the phenomenology of agency is at present little explored. In this paper we attempt to describe the experience of normal agency, in order to uncover its representational content.

Researchers from diverse disciplines, including organismal and cellular physiology, sports science, human nutrition, evolution and ecology, have sought to understand the causes and consequences of the surprising variation in metabolic rate found among and within individual animals of the same species. Research in this area has been hampered by differences in approach, terminology and methodology, and the context in which measurements are made. Recent advances provide important opportunities to identify and address the key questions in the field. By bringing together (...) researchers from different areas of biology and biomedicine, we describe and evaluate these developments and the insights they could yield, highlighting the need for more standardisation across disciplines. We conclude with a list of important questions that can now be addressed by developing a common conceptual and methodological toolkit for studies on metabolic variation in animals. (shrink)

This paper argues that analyses of the ways in which Big Data has been enacted in other academic disciplines can provide us with concepts that will help understand the application of Big Data to social questions. We use examples drawn from our Science and Technology Studies analyses of -omic biology and high energy physics to demonstrate the utility of three theoretical concepts: primary and secondary inscriptions, crafted and found data, and the locus of legitimate interpretation. These help us to show (...) how the histories, organisational forms, and power dynamics of a field lead to different enactments of big data. The paper suggests that these concepts can be used to help us to understand the ways in which Big Data is being enacted in the domain of the social sciences, and to outline in general terms the ways in which this enactment might be different to that which we have observed in the ‘hard’ sciences. We contend that the locus of legitimate interpretation of Big Data biology and physics is tightly delineated, found within the disciplinary institutions and cultures of these disciplines. We suggest that when using Big Data to make knowledge claims about ‘the social’ the locus of legitimate interpretation is more diffuse, with knowledge claims that are treated as being credible made from other disciplines, or even by those outside academia entirely. (shrink)

Philosophical Foundations of Precedent offers a broad, deep, and diverse range of philosophical investigations of the role of precedent in law, adjudication, and morality. The forty chapters present the work of a large and inclusive group of authors which comprises of well-established leaders in the discipline and new voices in legal philosophy. The magnitude of the resulting project is extraordinary, presenting a diverse array of innovative and creative philosophical investigations of the practice of adhering to past decisions, in law and (...) allied fields of practical reasoning. And by the same token, the contributions elucidate the reasons that courts and other decision-makers may have for departing from what has been done before. The phenomena under investigation include the law and practice of common law and civil jurisdictions around the world. In addition to its fundamental relevance to common law jurisdictions, this work will be of broad and significant interest to theoretically minded audiences in continental Europe, Latin America, and Asia because it involves an extensive study of practices of precedent in civil law systems as well as common law systems. (shrink)

The topic of this essay is what I name the idea that God the Creator and creatures comprise an exhaustive and mutually exclusive classification of the contents of reality. I am concerned with one of the most penetrating discussions of this issue to be found in the early thirteenth century, Robert Grosseteste’s treatment of challenges to Christian dualism.

In this article, we focus on the concept of leadership ethics and make observations about transformational, transactional and servant leadership. We consider differences in how each definition of leadership outlines what the leader is supposed to achieve, and how the leader treats people in the organization while striving to achieve the organization's goals. We also consider which leadership styles are likely to be more popular in organizations that strive to maximize short run profits. Our paper does not tout or degrade (...) any of these leadership theories. Instead, it points out which theories allow reason to play more than a minimal role in ethical decision-making, as well as those that are most consistent with a firm's desire to achieve efficiency in the short run. We explain our view that the way leadership is practiced in large, bureaucratic organizations suggests that ethics is often absent from the leader's decision-making process. Consequently, we suggest that before we engage in a meaningful dialogue about what kind of leaders we might really want in business, we must consider how much short-run profit we are willing to forego in exchange for more ethical corporate cultures. (shrink)

In medieval writers we find a distinction between body as a substance – corpus-substantia – and body as a quantity – corpus-quantitas (or quantum). One of the earliest uses of this distinction is in works written by Robert Grosseteste in the 1220s. In this paper I explore his use and understanding of this distinction. I argue that he understands corpus-substantia as such as a dimensionless composite of a first corporeal form, corporeity, and prime matter. Corporeity itself is an active power (...) for three dimensions. Through its infinite and necessary self-multiplication corporeity extends the prime matter it informs into three dimensions, thereby resulting in corpus-quantum. I explore how Grosseteste’s conception of corporeity, though probably based on ideas found in Avicenna, diverges from different understandings of Avicenna’s conception of corporeity proposed by medieval and modern commentators. (shrink)

For the past 30 years, Paget Henry has been one of the most articulate and creative voices in Caribbean scholarship, making seminal contributions to the study of Caribbean political economy, C.L.R. James studies, critical theory, phenomenology, and Africana philosophy. This volume includes some of his most important essays from across his remarkable career, providing an introduction to a broad range of pressing contemporary themes and to the unique mind of one of the leading Caribbean intellectuals of his generation.

In April 2017, scientists and science sympathizers held marches in the United Kingdom as part of a coordinated international March for Science movement that was held in over 600 cities worldwide. This article reports from participant-observation studies of the marches that took place in London and Cardiff. Supplemented with data from 37 interviews from marchers at the London event, the article reports on an analysis of the placards, focusing on marchers’ concerns and the language and images through which they expressed (...) those concerns. How did the protesters articulate their concerns and objectives, and how were these articulations used to build a community? The placards did not represent a clear, focused, and unifying message; they instead illustrated disparate concerns ranging from human-induced climate change, Trump and “alternative facts,” and local UK specific political issues concerning the country’s exit from the European Union. Our analysis shows that placards gave a playful and whimsical character to the march, with slogans displaying significant amounts of humor, often formulated through insider jokes, scientific puns, or self-deprecating appropriation of negative stereotypes about scientists. We analyze the march through the social movement literature and as a collective identity-building exercise for an community of scientists and sympathizers with long-term aims of establishing a louder voice for scientists, and experts, in public discourse. (shrink)

This article lays the ground for a sensuous appreciation of both the human body and the physical world. Drawing on the biographical account of the climber's embodied reflection of rock-climbing, the `climbing body' highlights our overwhelming tactile and kinaesthetic engagement with the phenomenal world. I Begin by emphasizing the need to consider the organic nature of human being, that we should understand how the awareness of death and our consequent sense of mutability provide a significant moment to remember the body. (...) I highlight how this might be achieved through the practice of adventure climbing. The increasing denial of the body's organicity, its mutability - perhaps a key impulse of modernity - is thereby usurped. This is followed by a structure of thought, based around the work of Georg Simmel, conveying the radical materiality of the phenomenal world. In doing so, I highlight the propensity of the environment to inscribe itself upon the human body. This idea is brought alive during the second half of the article, which focuses upon the climbing body and, in particular, the hands of the climber. As they navigate vertical ground climbers are guided by the sense of touch in order to `make sense' of the world. The climbing body orientates itself through tactile navigation: by feeling or grasp-ing its way through the world. To engage with the world tactually is to situate oneself consciously in that world and to have a potentially unmediated relationship with it. In doing so, the climber opens up the possibility for a corporeal reconceptualization of modernity. (shrink)

This book contains new critical editions of the Latin texts of Robert Grosseteste's 13th century treatise on free will, De libero arbitrio, with complete English translations. Included is a substantial study of the texts, their place in Grosseteste's body of works, doctrinal content, employment by later thinkers, and manuscript sources.

This chapter contains sections titled: Influences Exemplarism, truth, and knowledge Body and soul Free will Future contingency and modality Cosmology Time and eternity The eternity of the world.

One of the first to teach the new Aristotle, Richard Rufus of Cornwall here presents exciting accounts of divisibility, growth, and Aristotelian mixture which transform our understanding of the introduction of Aristotelian natural philosophy to the West and provide insight into the early history and prehistory of chemistry.

This anthology concerns limit-decision problems, chiefly as treated in the fourteenth-century Latin West. A central problem taken up concerns the instant of change: in a change from ø to not-ø such that before instant t there is ø and after t not-ø, at t is there ø, or not-ø, or neither, or both? For medieval thinkers, the answer often depended on what kind of item was at issue. They standardly distinguished permanent items, the whole of which exists simultaneously, from successive (...) items, whose parts are non-simultaneous, and gave different type or type answers in the two cases.The papers in... (shrink)

The ability to take others’ perspectives on the self has important psychological implications. Yet the logically and developmentally prior question is how children develop the capacity to take others’ perspectives. We discuss the development of joint attention in infancy as a rudimentary form of perspective taking and critique examples of biological and individualistic approaches to the development of joint attention. As an alternative, we present an activity-based relational perspective according to which infants develop the capacity to coordinate attention with others (...) by differentiating the perspectives of self and other from shared activity. Joint attention is then closely related to language development, which makes further social development possible. We argue that the ability to take the perspective of others on the self gives rise to the possibility of language, rationality and culture. (shrink)

The ability to take others’ perspectives on the self has important psychological implications. Yet the logically and developmentally prior question is how children develop the capacity to take others’ perspectives. We discuss the development of joint attention in infancy as a rudimentary form of perspective taking and critique examples of biological and individualistic approaches to the development of joint attention. As an alternative, we present an activity-based relational perspective according to which infants develop the capacity to coordinate attention with others (...) by differentiating the perspectives of self and other from shared activity. Joint attention is then closely related to language development, which makes further social development possible. We argue that the ability to take the perspective of others on the self gives rise to the possibility of language, rationality and culture. (shrink)

In this article, we focus on the concept of leadership ethics and make observations about transformational, transactional and servant leadership. We consider differences in how each definition of leadership outlines what the leader is supposed to achieve, and how the leader treats people in the organization while striving to achieve the organization's goals. We also consider which leadership styles are likely to be more popular in organizations that strive to maximize short run profits. Our paper does not tout or degrade (...) any of these leadership theories. Instead, it points out which theories allow reason to play more than a minimal role in ethical decision-making, as well as those that are most consistent with a firm's desire to achieve efficiency in the short run. We explain our view that the way leadership is practiced in large, bureaucratic organizations suggests that ethics is often absent from the leader's decision-making process. Consequently, we suggest that before we engage in a meaningful dialogue about what kind of leaders we might really want in business, we must consider how much short-run profit we are willing to forego in exchange for more ethical corporate cultures. (shrink)

This collection by some of the leading scholars of Strauss's work is the first devoted to Strauss's thought regarding education. It seeks to address his conception of education as it applies to a range of his most important concepts, such as his views on the importance of revelation, his critique of modern democracy and the importance of modern classical education.

This chapter aims to attempt no more than to make some informal and unsystematic remarks on the transformation of analytic philosophy. It deals with a few sketchy remarks on the historiography of recent analytic philosophy. Writing in 1981, David Lewis described “a reasonable goal for a philosopher” as bringing one’s opinions into stable equilibrium. A natural comparison is between Lewis’s Quinean or at least post‐Quinean methodology and the methodology of Peter Strawson, Quine’s leading opponent from the tradition of (...) ordinary language philosophy. Analytic epistemology provides a good case study of the philosophical application of Gricean pragmatics outside the philosophy of language. On Michael Dummett picture of the history of philosophy, Descartes had made epistemology first philosophy, the engine for the rest of philosophy, and then Frege had replaced epistemology by the philosophy of language as first philosophy. The chapter suggests that philosophy sometimes already uses an abductive methodology and ought to use it more in the future. (shrink)

The Anthropology of Sport and Human Movement represents a collection of work that reveals and explores the often times dramatic relationship of our biology and culture that is inextricably woven into a tapestry of movement patterns. It explores the underpinning of human movement, reflected in play, sport, games and human culture from an evolutionary perspective and contemporary expression of sport and human movement.