In his commentary, Oaksford makes two main claims: (1) that the externalisation method used by Green, Over, and Pyne (1997) enforces the correlation observed between probability estimates and selection, and (2) that these estimates support the prediction of a downward revision of P(p) when P(p) > P(q). In this reply, we rebut claim 1 by describing the instructions more comprehensively, and claim 2 by reiterating the importance of making certain theoretical distinctions which Oaksford does not make. Our interest is (...) the psychological process of reaching decision: externalisation methods provide a means of exploring this process and of assessing the value of Bayesian approaches. (shrink)

This edited book examines conditionals from a number of interdisciplinary perspectives, drawing on research from fields as diverse as linguistics, psychology, philosophy and logic. Across 13 chapters, the authors not only investigate and examine various commonly-held perceptions about conditionals, but they also challenge many of the assumptions underpinning current conditionals scholarship, setting an agenda for future research. Based in part on the papers presented at a unique international summer school - Conditionals in Paris - this volume represents the cutting edge (...) in the study of conditionals, and it will be of interest to scholars in fields including linguistics and psychology, semiotics, philosophy and logic, and artificial intelligence. (shrink)

This is a new volume of original essays on the metaphysics of quantum mechanics. The essays address questions such as: What fundamental metaphysics is best motivated by quantum mechanics? What is the ontological status of the wave function? Does quantum mechanics support the existence of any other fundamental entities, e.g. particles? What is the nature of the fundamental space of quantum mechanics? What is the relationship between the fundamental ontology of quantum mechanics and ordinary, macroscopic objects like tables, chairs, and (...) persons? This collection includes a comprehensive introduction with a history of quantum mechanics and the debate over its metaphysical interpretation focusing especially on the main realist alternatives. (shrink)

Accounts of the nature of unpleasant pain have proliferated over the past decade, but there has been little systematic investigation of which of them can accommodate its badness. This paper is such a study. In its sights are two targets: those who deny the non-instrumental disvalue of pain's unpleasantness; and those who allow it but deny that it can be accommodated by the view—advanced by me and others—that unpleasant pains are interoceptive experiences with evaluative content. Against the former, I (...) argue that pain's unpleasantness does indeed have noninstrumental disvalue; against the latter I argue both that my critics’ own desire-theoretic accounts of pain's unpleasantness cannot accommodate such disvalue, and that my evaluativist view can—either by appealing to “anti-unpleasantness” desires or by exploiting pain's perceptuality. (shrink)

This book develops some of the most important themes of Sen's works over the last decade. He argues in a rich and subtle approach that we should be concerned with people's capabilities rather than their resources or welfare.

In my reply to michael devitt, It is argued, First, That quine fails to appreciate the force of plato's "one over many" argument for universals. It is argued, Second, That quine's failure springs in part at least from his doctrine of ontological commitment: from the view that predicates need not be treated with ontological seriousness. Finally, An attempt is made to blunt the force of devitt's contention that realists cannot give a coherent explanation of the way that universals stand (...) to particulars. (shrink)

How is grounding related to metaphysical explanation? The standard view is that the former somehow “backs”, “undergirds” or “underlies” the latter. This view fits into a general picture of explanation, according to which explanations in general hold in virtue of a certain elite group of “explanatory relations” or “determinative relations” that back them. This paper turns the standard view on its head: grounding doesn't “back” metaphysical explanation but is in an important sense downstream from it. I call this view “grounding (...) idealism”, since it structurally resembles an analogous view about causation that is known as “causal idealism” and has been endorsed by philosophers like Michael Scriven and Philip Kitcher. I formulate a specific version of grounding idealism, Metaphysical Explanation‐First Idealism (MEFI), according to which the semantic value of ‘grounding’ is an abundant, gerrymandered relation settled by the metaphysical explanation facts. Then I offer some theoretical considerations that support MEFI over rival accounts of the relation between grounding and metaphysical explanation. Finally, I address the question of what role is left for grounding to play, if not that of “backing” metaphysical explanations. (shrink)

David Braddon-Mitchell and Frank Jackson’s popular introduction to philosophy of mind and cognition is now available in a fully revised and updated edition. Ensures that the most recent developments in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science are brought together into a coherent, accessible whole. Revisions respond to feedback from students and teachers and make the volume even more useful for courses. New material includes: a section on Descartes’ famous objection to materialism; extended treatment of connectionism; coverage of the (...) view that psychology is autonomous; fuller discussion of recent debates over phenomenal experience; and much more. (shrink)

'If' is one of the most important words in the English language, being used to express hypothetical thought. The use of conditional terms such as 'if' distinguishes human intelligence from that of all other animals. In this volume, Jonathan Evans and David Over present a new theoretical approach to understanding conditionals. The book draws on studies from the psychology of judgement and decision making, as well as philosophical logic.

If we divide our physical theories into theories of matter and theories of spacetime, quantum field theory is our most fundamental empirically successful theory of matter. As such, it has attracted increasing attention from philosophers over the past two decades, beginning to eclipse its predecessor theory of quantum mechanics in the philosophical literature. Here I survey some central philosophical puzzles about the theory's foundations.

On the Friday afternoon of the 3 rd test at Trent Bridge in 2001, the series was in the balance. The Australians had won the first two tests easily, but England now found themselves in a position of some strength. They had restricted Australia to a first-innings lead of just 5 runs, and had built a lead of 120 with six wickets in hand. Mark Ramprakash was in and had been batting steadily for well over an hour. Even though (...) this Australian side was as strong as any in cricket history, England had real hopes of getting back into the series. (shrink)

According to Humeanism about the laws, the laws of nature are nothing over and above certain kinds of regularities about particular facts. Humeanism has often been accused of circularity: according to scientific practice laws often explain their instances, but on the Humean view they also reduce to the mosaic, which includes those instances. In this paper I formulate the circularity problem in a way that avoids a number of controversial assumptions routinely taken for granted in the literature, and against (...) which many extant responses are therefore ineffective. I then propose a solution that denies the alleged Humean commitment that laws are explained by their instances. The solution satisfies three desiderata that other solutions don’t: it provides independent motivation against the idea that Humean laws are explained by their instances; it specifies the sense in which Humean laws are nonetheless “nothing over and above” their instances; and it gives an alternative account of what does explain the laws, if not their instances. This solution, I will argue, is not only the simplest but also the oldest one: it appeals only to tools and theses whose first appearance predates the earliest statements of the circularity problem itself. (shrink)

This chapter is devoted to the most influential and important Soviet philosopher of the post-Stalin era: Evald Vasilevich Ilyenkov. Ilyenkov burst on the scene in the early 1950s, arguing that Ilyenkov should be understood, not as a meta-science concerned to formulate the most general laws of being, but as “the science of thought.” The chapter explores how Ilyenkov developed this idea, beginning with the controversial Ilyenkov-Korovikov theses and his unpublished “phantasmagoria,” “The Cosmology of Spirit.” Bakhurst then turns to Ilyenkov’s influential (...) writing on scientific method, which portrays cognition as an “ascent from the abstract to the concrete,” and to his now-famous solution to “the problem of the ideal,” which represents the concept of activity as the key to understanding both the nature of objectively existing ideal forms and the possibility of human minds. Bakhurst shows how Ilyenkov’s views on these issues inform his critique of scientism and positivism in Soviet thought and inspire his distinctive conception of education, exemplified by his contribution to Alexander Meshcheryakov’s work on the education of blind-deaf children. Although Ilyenkov styled himself as a dialectical materialist and a Leninist, his ideas were in tension with orthodox Soviet philosophy and he was often in trouble with the Soviet philosophical establishment, which found it hard to tolerate what it saw as Ilyenkov’s dalliance with idealism as well as his call for the cultivation of critical, free, creative thinkers. Bakhurst concludes by reflecting on the many crises Ilyenkov experienced during his career, exploring how he was frequently subject to criticism and persecution. This, combined with his disappointment over the suppression of the Prague Spring, eventually led to his untimely death by his own hand in March 1979. (shrink)

The two main psychological theories of the ordinary conditional were designed to account for inferences made from assumptions, but few premises in everyday life can be simply assumed true. Useful premises usually have a probability that is less than certainty. But what is the probability of the ordinary conditional and how is it determined? We argue that people use a two stage Ramsey test that we specify to make probability judgements about indicative conditionals in natural language, and we describe experiments (...) that support this conclusion. Our account can explain why most people give the conditional probability as the probability of the conditional, but also why some give the conjunctive probability. We discuss how our psychological work is related to the analysis of ordinary indicative conditionals in philosophical logic. (shrink)

Recent work in various branches of philosophy has reinvigorated debate over the psychology behind moral judgment. Using Marc Hauser's categorization of theories as “Kantian,” “Humean,” or “Rawlsian” to frame the discussion, I argue that the existing evidence weighs against the Kantian model and partly in favor of both the Humean and the Rawlsian models. Emotions do play a causal role in the formation of our moral judgments, as the Humean model claims, but there are also unconscious principles shaping our (...) moral judgments, as the Rawlsian model predicts. Thus, Hauser's tripartite division of possible models of moral psychology is inadequate. Drawing on research in cognitive neuroscience, clinical and behavioral psychology, and psychopathology, I sketch a new, developmental sentimentalist model of moral psychology. I call it a “Mencian” model, after the Confucian philosopher Mencius. On this model, moral judgments are caused by emotions, but because of the way emotions are mapped onto particular actions, moral judgments unconsciously reflect certain principled distinctions. (shrink)

Law is the expression of public reason. I want to explicate and justify this assertion, which lies at the core of a normative theory of law. Primarily, I want to focus on the concept of public reason, showing what it is, relating it to private or individual reason, and finding its rationale in that relation. I shall then argue that public reason exhausts the normative space where law may be found. Appealing to public reason, I shall show that the authority (...) that law claims over the judgments and actions of citizens must ultimately be grounded in their own rationality. (shrink)

Assuming ${2^{{N_0}}}$ = N₁ and ${2^{{N_1}}}$ = N₂, we build a partial order that forces the existence of a well-order of H(ω₂) lightface definable over ⟨H(ω₂), Є⟩ and that preserves cardinal exponentiation and cofinalities.

In this collection, leading experts evaluate the status of this controversial field, providing a critical analysis of its main hypotheses These hypotheses have ...

This paper examines the impact of a week-long philosophy summer camp on middle and high school-age youth with specific attention paid to the development of intellectual humility in the campers. In June 2016 a university in Texas hosted its first philosophy summer camp for youth who had just completed sixth through twelfth grades. Basing our camp on the pedagogical model of the Philosophy for Children program, our aim was specifically to develop a community of inquiry among the campers, providing them (...) with a safe intellectual space to be introduced to philosophy and philosophical discussion. In 2017 we launched a formal longitudinal study to determine what impact a week-long philosophy summer camp would have on teens and tweens. Examining quantitative and qualitative data collected from 2016–2020, we found that the camp has had a significant impact on the teenagers who have attended. In particular, we found that intellectual humility increased over the duration of their camp experience and that this increase correlates with an increased affinity for philosophy and philosophical discussion. (shrink)

Giorgio Agamben's work develops a new philosophy of life. On its horizon lies the conviction that our form of life can become the guiding and unifying power of the politics to come. Informed by this promise, _The Power of Life_ weaves decisive moments and neglected aspects of Agamben's writings over the past four decades together with the thought of those who influenced him most. In addition, the book positions his work in relation to key figures from the history of (...) philosophy. This approach enables Kishik to offer a vision that ventures beyond Agamben's warning against the power _over_ life in order to articulate the power _of_ life and thus to rethink the biopolitical situation. Following Agamben's prediction that the concept of life will stand at the center of the coming philosophy, Kishik points to some of the most promising directions that this philosophy can take. (shrink)

We show that Dependent Choice is a sufficient choice principle for developing the basic theory of proper forcing, and for deriving generic absoluteness for the Chang model in the presence of large cardinals, even with respect to $\mathsf {DC}$ -preserving symmetric submodels of forcing extensions. Hence, $\mathsf {ZF}+\mathsf {DC}$ not only provides the right framework for developing classical analysis, but is also the right base theory over which to safeguard truth in analysis from the independence phenomenon in the presence (...) of large cardinals. We also investigate some basic consequences of the Proper Forcing Axiom in $\mathsf {ZF}$, and formulate a natural question about the generic absoluteness of the Proper Forcing Axiom in $\mathsf {ZF}+\mathsf {DC}$ and $\mathsf {ZFC}$. Our results confirm $\mathsf {ZF} + \mathsf {DC}$ as a natural foundation for a significant portion of “classical mathematics” and provide support to the idea of this theory being also a natural foundation for a large part of set theory. (shrink)

D. M. Armstrong is an eminent Australian philosopher whose work over many years has dealt with such subjects as: the nature of possibility, concepts of the particular and the general, causes and laws of nature, and the nature of human consciousness. This collection of essays explores the many facets of Armstrong's work, concentrating on his more recent interests. There are four sections to the book: possibility and identity, universals, laws and causality, and philosophy of mind. The contributors comprise an (...) international group of philosophers from the United States, England and Australia. An interesting feature of the volume is that Armstrong himself has written responses to each of the essays. There is also a complete bibliography of Armstrong's writings. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the claim that early Buddhism could be interpreted as an empirical philosophy. Made in a time when verifiable foundations were thought to lend credence to a system of belief, the assertion served to differentiate Buddhism from a “mystical” Hinduism and even to give it a leg up over theistic religions. The position of this paper is that the Buddhist Empiricism Thesis is most certainly false. That position is arrived at via (...) a close examination of Buddhist means to knowledge and doctrinal content, which unfortunately entails taking only the most shallow view of a deep subject matter. This superficiality is no reflection on Buddhist belief, but rather is the necessary effect of refuting empirical claims for beliefs which are much more than merely “verifiable”. (shrink)

Two experiments using a realistic version of the selection task examined the relationship between participants' probability estimates of finding a counter example and their selections. Experiment 1 used everyday categories in the context of a scenario to determine whether or not the number of instances in a category affected the estimated probability of a counter-example. Experiment 2 modified the scenario in order to alter participants' estimates of finding a specific counter-example. Unlike Kirby 1994a, but consistent with his proposals, both studies (...) showed that probability estimates significantly predicted selection. Overall results point to the value of understanding selections in terms of their subjective expected utility. (shrink)

Much philosophical effort has been exerted over problems having to do with the correct analysis and application of the concept of epistemic justification. While I do not wish to dispute the central place of this problem in contemporary epistemology, it seems to me that there is a general neglect of the belief condition for knowledge. In this paper I offer an analysis of 'degrees of belief' in terms of a quality I label 'conviction', go on to argue that one (...) requires more conviction in a proposition in order to know it than to merely believe it, and conclude by suggesting that some current epistemological issues admit of new insight when we begin taking conviction seriously. (shrink)

BackgroundThe demand for peer reviewers is often perceived as disproportionate to the supply and availability of reviewers. Considering characteristics associated with peer review behaviour can allow for the development of solutions to manage the growing demand for peer reviewers. The objective of this research was to compare characteristics among two groups of reviewers registered in Publons.MethodsA descriptive cross-sectional study design was used to compare characteristics between individuals completing at least 100 peer reviews from January 2018 to December 2018 as and (...) a control group of peer reviewers completing between 1 and 18 peer reviews over the same time period. Data was provided by Publons, which offers a repository of peer reviewer activities in addition to tracking peer reviewer publications and research metrics. Mann Whitney tests and chi-square tests were conducted comparing characteristics of mega peer reviewers to the control group of reviewers.ResultsA total of 1596 peer reviewers had data provided by Publons. A total of 396 M peer reviewers and a random sample of 1200 control group reviewers were included. A greater proportion of mega peer reviews were male as compared to the control reviewers. Mega peer reviewers demonstrated a significantly greater average number of total publications, citations, receipt of Publons awards, and a higher average h index as compared to the control group of reviewers.ConclusionsMega peer reviewers registered in the Publons database also had a higher number of publications and citations as compared to a control group of reviewers. Additional research that considers motivations associated with peer review behaviour should be conducted to help inform peer reviewing activity. (shrink)

Today there is almost universal agreement among scientists and philosophers that no factual statement or hypothesis about the world of fact has meaning apart from experienceable phenomena. In general we say we must find evidence for every hypothesis or theory before we can consider it as even probably true. But when we state the relationship between hypotheses and evidence in this way, by implication we are still holding that hypotheses have priority over data or that the function of data (...) is to support pre-conceived ideas. This is, by implication, and acknowledgment of the primacy of rationalism over empiricism or of reason over sense data, or of explanation over that which is to be explained. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper explores the relationship between phenomenology and body dysmorphia. This is, to explain, a disorder in which the sufferer perceives, and is obsessed by, defects in appearance which are either non-existent or severely exaggerated. I will see how Husserl’s and Sartre’s analyses of embodiment can explain the radical uncertainty, and anxiety, about appearance that underscores this condition. Their accounts of the body-as-lived reveal first of all an essential intimacy between body and self that the “objective”, material, view of the (...) body covers over. Second, however, their analyses show that there is always also an essential elusiveness of the body before our attempts to grasp or know it. Taken together, these points indicate how body dysmorphia arises. If there is an essential project of the self to know the body, but this is necessarily frustrated, then we can see how an obsession and anxiety surrounding bodily appearance can emerge. (shrink)

According to what we could call the "liberal" theory of distributive justice, people do not deserve the money they are able to make in the market for contributing to the economy. Yet the standard arguments for that view, which center on the fact that persons have very limited control over the size of their contributions, would also seem to imply that persons cannot deserve admiration, appreciation, esteem, praise and so on for these and other contributions. The control asymmetry is (...) this: the first conclusion of these arguments is acceptable but the second not. This paper is an effort to defend that claim, but without appeal to the notion of control. (shrink)

In this paper I criticize the standard argument for deontological egalitarianism, understood as the thesis that there is a moral claim to have an equal share of well-being or whatever other good counts. That argument is based on the idea that equals should be treated equally. I connect the debate over egalitarianism with that over comparative justice. A common theme is a general skepticism against comparative claims. I argue (i) that there can be no claim to equality based (...) simply on the fact of equal worth as that fact itself does not have any value for the supposed claim holder; and (ii) intuitions that suggest otherwise can be explained away without appealing to comparative claims. (shrink)

Knauff and Gazzo Castañeda argue as much in support of revised mental model theory (RMMT) as they argue against talk of a new paradigm caused by the probabilistic approach in the psychology of reasoning. They claim that RMMT is not essentially different from classical mental model theory (CMMT) and not essentially different from the probabilistic approach. There are many serious questions to ask about RMMT. But RMMT is a massive modalization of aspects of the extensional CMMT, and it follows the (...) probabilistic approach in having an intensional focus that justifies talk of a new paradigm. (shrink)

In a series of works, Jody Azzouni has defended deflationary nominalism, the view that certain sentences quantifying over mathematical objects are literally true, although such objects do not exist. One alleged attraction of this view is that it avoids various philosophical puzzles about mathematical objects. I argue that this thought is misguided. I first develop an ontologically neutral counterpart of Field’s reliability challenge and argue that deflationary nominalism offers no distinctive answer to it. I then show how this reasoning (...) generalizes to other philosophically problematic entities. The moral is that puzzle avoidance fails to motivate deflationary nominalism. (shrink)

Oaksford & Chater (O&C) begin in the halfway Bayesian house of assuming that minor premises in conditional inferences are certain. We demonstrate that this assumption is a serious limitation. They additionally suggest that appealing to Jeffrey's rule could make their approach more general. We present evidence that this rule is not limited enough to account for actual probability judgements.

It is possible to control to a large extent, via semiproper forcing, the parameters measuring the guessing density of the members of any given antichain of stationary subsets of ω1 . Here, given a pair of ordinals, we will say that a stationary set Sω1 has guessing density if β0=γ and , where γ is, for every stationary S*ω1, the infimum of the set of ordinals τ≤ω1+1 for which there is a function with ot)<τ for all νS* and with {νS*:gF} (...) stationary for every α<ω2 and every canonical function g for α. This work involves an analysis of iterations of models of set theory relative to sequences of measures on possibly distinct measurable cardinals. As an application of these techniques I show how to force, from the existence of a supercompact cardinal, a model of in which there is a well-order of H definable, over H,, by a formula without parameters. (shrink)

The theories of Pierre Bourdieu and Theodor Adorno both conceive culture as legitimating the inequalities of modern societies. But they postulate different mechanisms of legitimation. For Bourdieu, modern culture is a class culture, characterized by socially ranked symbolic differences among classes that make some seem superior to others. For Adorno, modern culture is a mass culture, characterized by a socially imposed symbolic unity that obscures class differences behind a facade of leveled democracy. In his later writings, however, Bourdieu’s theory converges (...) with that of Adorno. He too begins to privilege the high culture of intellectuals over mass culture by employing the universal standard of autonomy from economic interests. But there remains one vital difference between these theories. Bourdieu grounds the origins of a critical, autonomous culture in specific social structures, while Adorno grounds it in technology. (shrink)

Given any subset A of ω1 there is a proper partial order which forces that the predicate xA and the predicate xω1A can be expressed by -provably incompatible Σ3 formulas over the structure Hω2,,NSω1. Also, if there is an inaccessible cardinal, then there is a proper partial order which forces the existence of a well-order of Hω2 definable over Hω2,,NSω1 by a provably antisymmetric Σ3 formula with two free variables. The proofs of these results involve a technique for (...) manipulating the guessing properties of club-sequences defined on stationary subsets of ω1 at will in such a way that the Σ3 theory of Hω2,,NSω1 with countable ordinals as parameters is forced to code a prescribed subset of ω1. On the other hand, using theorems due to Woodin it can be shown that, in the presence of sufficiently strong large cardinals, the above results are close to optimal from the point of view of the Levy hierarchy. (shrink)

The question of the affinity between Wittgenstein's philosophy and pragmatism is one that has been often discussed, usually by philosophers sympathetic to a broadly affirmative answer. Pragmatism came into being in 1867 in a reading group in Cambridge Massachusetts, the members of which included Peirce and James. Putnam observes that though the later Wittgenstein may not have been a pragmatist “in the strict sense”, he “shares a central, perhaps the central emphasis with pragmatism: the emphasis on the primacy of practice”. (...) Though Wittgenstein might have resisted the idea that he gave “primacy” to any concept, there is clearly a sense in which Putnam is right. Wittgenstein also admits a class of propositions he calls “grammatical propositions” or “norms of description”. James's most significant influence over Wittgenstein lies in the philosophy of psychology. James's method in psychology is empiricist and introspectionist, and he is a master of the description of mental life. (shrink)

We introduce a new method for building models of [Formula: see text], together with [Formula: see text] statements over [Formula: see text], by forcing. Unlike other forcing constructions in the literature, our construction adds new reals, although only [Formula: see text]-many of them. Using this approach, we build a model in which a very strong form of the negation of Club Guessing at [Formula: see text] known as [Formula: see text] holds together with [Formula: see text], thereby answering a (...) well-known question of Moore. This construction can be described as a finite-support weak forcing iteration with side conditions consisting of suitable graphs of sets of models with markers. The [Formula: see text]-preservation is accomplished through the imposition of copying constraints on the information carried by the condition, as dictated by the edges in the graph. (shrink)

Scholarship on borderline vagueness pinpoints Russell's 1923 essay titled “Vagueness” as the starting point for rigorous analysis. The importance of Russell's work over and above discussions of indeterminacy in antiquity and in the modern period is that Russell isolated borderline vagueness from indeterminacies that do not threaten classical logic. This paper argues that historical propriety concerning the analysis of borderline vagueness belongs to Peirce since he was the first to show that borderline vagueness is distinct from other forms of (...) indeterminacy (e.g., generality, unspecificity, and uninformativeness) and that the application of vague predicates to borderline cases involves an intrinsic uncertainty. (shrink)

"My work has had nothing to do with gay liberation," Michel Foucault reportedly told an admirer in 1975. And indeed there is scarcely more than a passing mention of homosexuality in Foucault's scholarly writings. So why has Foucault, who died of AIDS in 1984, become a powerful source of both personal and political inspiration to an entire generation of gay activists? And why have his political philosophy and his personal life recently come under such withering, normalizing scrutiny by commentators as (...) diverse as Camille Paglia, Richard Mohr, Bruce Bawer, Roger Kimball, and biographer James Miller? David M. Halperin's Saint Foucault is an uncompromising and impassioned defense of the late French philosopher and historian as a galvanizing thinker whose career as a theorist and activist will continue to serve as a model for other gay intellectuals, activists, and scholars. A close reading of both Foucault and the increasing attacks on his life and work, it explains why straight liberals so often find in Foucault only counsels of despair on the subject of politics, whereas gay activists look to him not only for intellectual inspiration but also for a compelling example of political resistance. Halperin rescues Foucault from the endless nature-versus-nurture debate over the origins of homosexuality and argues that Foucault's decision to treat sexuality not as a biological or psychological drive but as an effect of discourse, as the product of modern systems of knowledge and power represents a crucial political breakthrough for lesbians and gay men. Halperin explains how Foucault's radical vision of homosexuality as a strategic opportunity for self-transformation anticipated the new anti-assimilationist, anti-essentialist brand of sexual identity politics practiced by contemporary direct-action groups such as ACT UP. Halperin also offers the first synthetic account of Foucault's thinking about gay sex and the future of the lesbian and gay movement, as well as an up-to-the-minute summary of the most recent work in queer theory. "Where there is power, there is resistance," Michel Foucault wrote in The History of Sexuality, Volume I. Erudite, biting, and surprisingly moving, Saint Foucault represents Halperin's own resistance to what he views as the blatant and systematic misrepresentation of a crucial intellectual figure, a misrepresentation he sees as dramatic evidence of the continuing personal, professional, and scholarly vulnerability of all gay activists and intellectuals in the age of AIDS. (shrink)