In early 1864, disappointed by the response to his previous work, the young Manchester academic W. Stanley Jevons announced that he was undertaking a study of the so-called coal question: ‘A good publication on the subject would draw a good deal of attention … it is necessary for the present at any rate to write on popular subjects’. When Jevons's The Coal Question was published in April 1865, however, it received comparatively little attention and sales were slow. Jevons and his (...) publisher, Alexander Macmillan, then began sending complimentary copies to luminaries such as Sir John Herschel and Alfred Tennyson. In February 1866 the marketing campaign produced its first substantial return. Macmillan had sent CQ to William Gladstone who responded with letters to both Macmillan and Jevons, noting that the book had strengthened his ‘conviction’ on the necessity for reducing the National Debt. In April, John Stuart Mill praised CQ in the House of Commons, calling for action on the Debt and, three weeks later, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gladstone introduced the budget using half his speech to examine the Debt situation and referring to CQ in support for a proposed measure of Debt reduction. With the extensive publicity given to CQ following Mill's speech and the budget, Jevons had achieved his objective in writing the text which went into a second edition in 1866. On the face of it, CQ 's success was due to its effect of introducing a change in budget policy and this is the impression given by some accounts of the episode. (shrink)

Claims by historians that history is both an art and a science are used to avoid the rigor appropriate to the sciences and to remain blind to the imaginative innovations characteristic of modern art. Few modern historians have approached the intellectual courage of Burckhardt's "impressionist" view of the Renaissance; yet such courage--even to contemplate the dissolution of historiography as we now know it--is required before artists and scientists will be willing to take history seriously.

Historicism is often regarded as a distortion of properly "historical" understanding; but if one attends to the rhetorical aspects of historical discourse, it appears that ordinary historical narrative prefigures its subject by the language chosen for description no less than historicism does by its generalizing and theoretical interests. Descriptive language is, in fact, figurative and emplots events to suit one or another type of story. Rhetorical analysis shows even an apparently straightforward passage to be an encodation of events in the (...) form of pseudo-tragedy. Generic story-types constitute the latent meaning of narratives and are understood by readers, often subliminally, through the figurative language of the story. The acknowledgement of linguistic determinism resolves a number of problems of historical theory and entails a qualified relativism of historical accounts. (shrink)

Michel Foucault's Les Mots et les choses correctly asserts that the attempts of the human sciences of the past five hundred years to represent the world in language have failed because these sciences did not recognize the opacity or thingness of language itself. Foucault pretends to have written a plotless anti-history of the human sciences which stresses the discontinuities that characterize the succession of one "'episteme" by another. In fact, he has explained these vicissitudes by the changes of tropological strategy (...) that underlie epistemic shifts. Although he disavows the movement, Foucault's interest in revealing the poetic basis of all linguistic representations of reality places him in the eschatological wing of the structuralist establishment. (shrink)

The criticism has been made that Kant looks racist, at least in his early work. This, however, is to insist on a literal reading. I explore Kant’s use of irony and satire as he battles to defend his vision. I show the rhetoric of irony in a pivotal text, looking at what happens and why.

It has been widely held that presentism cannot easily accommodate Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity account of the relativity of simultaneity because presentism privileges successively unique times ontologically. Recently Brogaard and Marlow argued that presentism does not deserve the attribution of this defect because it may well be that Einstein’s account of the relativity of simultaneity is defective, leaving it open to establishing a view of absolutist simultaneity friendlier to presentism. Specifically Brogaard and Marlow present an argument against one of (...) Einstein’s most famous accounts of the relativity of simultaneity, and moreover raise doubts about whether Einstein availed himself of absolutist frames in some of his explanations of relativity. I will dismiss both of these charges, and thus argue that the complaint against presentism from SR stands. (shrink)

Purpose Although surrogate decision-making is prevalent in intensive care units and concerns with decision quality are well documented, little is known about how clinicians help family members understand the surrogate role. We investigated whether and how clinicians provide normative guidance to families regarding how to function as a surrogate. Subjects and methods We audiorecorded and transcribed 73 ICU family conferences in which clinicians anticipated discussing goals of care for incapacitated patients at high risk of death. We developed and applied a (...) coding framework to identify normative statements by clinicians regarding what considerations should guide surrogates’ decisions, including whether clinicians explained one or more of Buchanan and Brock’s three standard principles of SDM to family members. Results Clinicians made at least one statement about how to perform the surrogate role in 24 conferences ). We observed three general types of normative guidance provided to surrogates, with some conferences containing more than one type of guidance: counselling about one or more standard principles of SDM ; counselling surrogates to make decisions centred on the patient as a person, without specifying how to accomplish that ; and counselling surrogates to make decisions based on the family’s values. Conclusions Clinicians did not provide normative guidance about the surrogate role in two-thirds of family conferences for incapacitated patients at high risk for death. When they did, clinicians’ guidance was often incomplete and sometimes conflicted with standard principles of SDM. Future work is needed to understand whether providing explicit guidance on how to perform the surrogate role improves decision-making or mitigates surrogates’ psychological distress. (shrink)

Purpose Although surrogate decision-making is prevalent in intensive care units and concerns with decision quality are well documented, little is known about how clinicians help family members understand the surrogate role. We investigated whether and how clinicians provide normative guidance to families regarding how to function as a surrogate. Subjects and methods We audiorecorded and transcribed 73 ICU family conferences in which clinicians anticipated discussing goals of care for incapacitated patients at high risk of death. We developed and applied a (...) coding framework to identify normative statements by clinicians regarding what considerations should guide surrogates’ decisions, including whether clinicians explained one or more of Buchanan and Brock’s three standard principles of SDM to family members. Results Clinicians made at least one statement about how to perform the surrogate role in 24 conferences ). We observed three general types of normative guidance provided to surrogates, with some conferences containing more than one type of guidance: counselling about one or more standard principles of SDM ; counselling surrogates to make decisions centred on the patient as a person, without specifying how to accomplish that ; and counselling surrogates to make decisions based on the family’s values. Conclusions Clinicians did not provide normative guidance about the surrogate role in two-thirds of family conferences for incapacitated patients at high risk for death. When they did, clinicians’ guidance was often incomplete and sometimes conflicted with standard principles of SDM. Future work is needed to understand whether providing explicit guidance on how to perform the surrogate role improves decision-making or mitigates surrogates’ psychological distress. (shrink)

Intellectual history—the attempt to write the history of consciousness-in-general, rather than discrete histories of, say, politics, society, economic activity, philosophical thought, or literary expression—is comparatively new as a scholarly discipline; but it can lay claim to a long ancestry. It is arguable that intellectual history has its remote origins in the sectarian disputes of ancient philosophers and theologians, who, by constructing “histories” of their opponents’ doctrines, sought to expose the interests that had led them into error or to locate the (...) precise point at which they had strayed from the path of truth or righteousness. An especial interest in the history of thought and expression is, of course, characteristic of transitional ages in the lives of cultures; it arises when received traditions in thought and mythic endowments appear to have lost their relevance to current social problems or their presumed coherency, as in the Hellenistic age or the late Middle Ages. During such times, thinkers may try, by means of what is usually called “historical perspective,” to gain some purchase on their cultural legacy and to distinguish between “what is living and what is dead” within it. (shrink)

The first in a two-volume anthology of Hayden White's uncollected essays from the last two decades of his life, revealing White as a public intellectual. It places White's thought in context, explaining its major themes, sources, and frames of reference, and features five previously unpublished lectures as well as more complete versions of several published essays.

After learning about the concept of determinism, a natural tendency is to conclude that if anyone actually believed in the determinism of human nature, then all future human actions are "set out for us" or "cut and dried" and, in some sense, utterly unavoidable. Another way of referring to such inevitability is that human action appears to be..

Of course you know the movie, just by cultural assimilation if not by having seen it. There’s this young elephant, Dumbo, who has laughably big ears and has been pitiably separated from his mom. He’s aided by a friendly talking mouse[ii] into translating those otherwise hapless ears into the power of flight, which he eventually uses to rescue his mom and live happily ever after. The way the wily mouse gets Dumbo to believe that he could fly is to give (...) him a “magic feather” which, held in his trunk, demonstrably imparts the gift of flight. Naturally the mouse believes throughout all this that Dumbo can fly anyway, but he also knows that Dumbo needs the feather as a confidence-builder to do so. At the critical juncture of the tale Dumbo loses the feather after being pushed off a precipice, and he thus plummets perilously towards earth—only to find at the last moment that he can indeed fly on his own. (shrink)

All right, first off I need to disappoint some people who despise reading the fine print on things or just plain love to speed-read only large fonts: this is not only not my last lecture, I m not even retiring anytime soon. So sorry to those of you poised to shout Good riddance to bad rubbish! at the end of this soliloquy. You re going to have to be patient a while longer.

Of course you know the movie, just by cultural assimilation if not by having seen it. There’s this young elephant, Dumbo, who has laughably big ears and has been pitiably separated from his mom. He’s aided by a friendly talking mouse2 into translating those otherwise hapless ears into the power of flight, which he eventually uses to rescue his mom and live happily ever after. The way the wily mouse gets Dumbo to believe that he could fly is to give (...) him a “magic feather” which, held in his trunk, demonstrably imparts the gift of flight. Naturally the mouse believes throughout all this that Dumbo can fly anyway, but he also knows that Dumbo needs the feather as a confidence-builder to do so. At the critical juncture of the tale Dumbo loses the feather after being pushed off a precipice, and he thus plummets perilously towards earth—only to find at the last moment that he can indeed fly on his own. (shrink)

“Men can never be free, because they’re weak, corrupt, worthless and restless. The people believe in authority; they’ve grown tired of waiting for miracle or mystery. Science is their religion; no greater explanation exists for them.” (Cigarette Smoking Man, "Talitha Cumi" The X-Files 3X24).

Harry Frankfurt's famous examples of overdetermined moral agents who are nevertheless responsible for their actions and omissions have long been hailed as proofs that the ability and/or opportunity to do otherwise is not a necessary condition for moral responsibility. In this paper I use recent clarifications of some of these examples by Frankfurt himself to show that their force relies in part on tacit ceteris paribus assumptions concealing a reliance on PAP that concerns matters of fairness in assessing moral responsibility.

Analysis shows that statements of ability are disguised conditionals. More exactly, the correct analysis of 'X could have done A' is 'If X h decided (chosen, willed ...) to do A, X would have done A'. Therefore having acted freely--having been able to act otherwise than one fact did--is compatible with determinism (with the causal determination of one's acts).

Hud Hudson has argued that with a few assumptions one can prove that superluminal objects exist. I argue that even if the assumptions are true that his argument, if sound, leads to a proliferation of movers packing given spaces. I further argue that his argument as it stands cannot in fact entail that objects moving at any speed exist.

The author examines the single topic approach to the construction of introductory philosophy courses. The author considers the single topic approach to be an alternative to more historically- and topically-based approaches. The traditional approach to philosophy is often broad and difficult for students to engage with in classroom discussion. A narrow and detailed treatment of a standard area or topic facilitates classroom discussion and allows students to transfer insights and skills in areas of their own disciplines. The author outlines a (...) methodology that treats philosophical texts in an interdisciplinary context, which emphasizes to students that philosophy is not a detached field of study. (shrink)

Adam Smith and the philosophy of anti-history, by J. Weiss.--Towards a dissolution of the ontological argument, by A. C. Danto.--Romanticism, historicism, realism: toward a period concept for early 19th century intellectual history, by H. V. White.--History and humanity: the Proudhonian vision, by A. Noland.--Hintze and the legacy of Ranke, by M. Covensky.--Objections to metaphysics, by J. Cobitz.--The term expressionism in the visual arts, by V. H. Miesel.--Karl Löwith's anti-historicism, by B. Riesterer.--Antonio Gramsci; Marxism and the Italian intellectual tradition, by (...) J. Cammett.--Traditional Chinese historiography and local histories, by E. H. Pritchard.--From principle to principal: restoration and emperorship in Japan, by H. D. Harootunian.--National development and the evolution of the legal-rational bureaucracy: the prefectural governor in Japan, 1868-1945, by B. Silberman. (shrink)

"If" and "then," wrapped around enough content to form at least two propositions that seem to be conditionally assertible together as antecedent and consequent, are, of course, the key denizens of this very deep work. It's a commonplace among philosophers that what so innocently malingers in indicative language as, "If Bennett didn't write this excellent Guide, then someone else did," can rapidly morph by a little fancy into the eyebrow-arching subjunctive/counterfactual, "If Bennett hadn't written this marvelous work, then someone else (...) would have." The hulking literature on the logic and semantics of conditionals is cunning and daunting, and few thinkers on the world stage are equipped to corral and tame the beast as Bennett has. Even given his nontruth-functional stance on indicative conditionals, one might still rightly call Bennett "The Horseshoe Whisperer.". (shrink)