Modernity, that amorphous and perhaps unhappy creation of periodisation, is both a mystery and a problem (in the sense of providing exis...

This article seeks to develop the Marxist conception of social structure by incorporating developments within critical realist philosophy. It rejects forms of economic determinism such as the base-superstructure model and those reconstructions—like Cohen’s—that attribute primacy to productive forces in explaining history and society. It argues instead that society is the product of complex, often contradictory combinations of many different structures and mechanisms. They form a structural ensemble, hierarchically arranged, but where each element has its own dynamics and emergent powers. It (...) concludes that society is best understood through critical realist conceptions of stratification, emergence, transformation, and overdetermination. (shrink)

Modernity, that amorphous and perhaps unhappy creation of periodisation, is both a mystery and a problem (in the sense of providing exis...

Secondary education around the world has been significantly disrupted by covid-19. Students have been forced into new ways of independent learning, often using remote technologies, but without the social nuances and direct teacher interactions of a normal classroom environment. Using data from the School Attitudes Survey—which surveys students regarding the perceived level of difficulty, anxiety level, self-efficacy, enjoyability, subject relevance, and opportunities for creativity with regards to each of their school subjects—this study examines students' responses to this disruption from two (...) very different schools with two very different experiences of the pandemic. This paper reports on the composite attitudinal profiles of students in the senior secondary levels at each school. The findings challenged our expectation that the increased difficulty and anxiety caused by the disruption would reduce perceived opportunities for creativity. Indeed, our analyses showed that the students at both schools demonstrated generally positive attitudes toward their learning and strongly associated opportunities for creativity with other attitudinal constructs including enjoyability, subject relevance, and self-efficacy. These complex associations made by the students appear to have buffered the impacts of the disruption, and they may even have supported creative resilience. (shrink)

This paper argues that children as members of a perennial psychoclass represent one potential vanguard of an emergent shift in Western subjectivity, and that adult–child dialogue, especially in the context of schooling, is a key locus for the epistemological change that implies. I argue from Herbert Marcuse’s prophetic invocation of a “new sensibility,” which is characterized by an increase in instinctual revulsion towards violence, domination and exploitation and, correspondingly, a greater sensitivity to all forms of life. As the embodiment of (...) a form of philosophical “post-animism” or hylozoism, it represents the evolutionary shift that, it could be argued, our species requires for survival at this historical moment. I suggest that the evolutionary phenomenon of neoteny—the long formative period of human childhood and the pedomorphic character of humans across the life cycle—makes of the adult-collective of school a primary site for the reconstruction of belief. After exploring child–adult dialogue more broadly as a form of dialectical interaction between what John Dewey called “impulse” and “habit,” I argue for a form, or archetype of schooling first articulated in ancient Greece called skholé, a space that functions, according to Jan Masschelein and Maarten Simons, as a “meeting place,” a “form of gathering and action” dedicated to inquiry, and not to the production of calculated, preordained outcomes—a space removed from the world of production, and characterized by a form of temporality associated with childhood: aion, or “timeless time,” as opposed to kronos, or linear time. Skholé is dedicated to emergence and cultural reconstruction, which follows from an educative relationship between adults and children based on understanding the latter as bearers of the “novel,” and on a faith in the “reorganizing potentialities” of childhood impulse, or interest—that is, on natality as a fundamental principle of cultural evolution. (shrink)

This article highlights major results of a study into the ethical norms and rules governing biobanks. After describing the methodology, the findings regarding four topics are presented: (1) the ownership of human biological samples held in biobanks; (2) the regulation of researchers’ use of samples obtained from biobanks; (3) what constitutes “collective consent” to genetic research, and when it is needed; and (4) benefit sharing and remuneration of research participants. The paper then summarizes key lessons to be drawn from the (...) findings and concludes by reflecting on the importance of such empirical research to inform future governance norms and practices. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Reforming the Law of Nature: The Secularization of Political Thought, 1532–1689 by Simon P. KennedyFrancis J. BeckwithKENNEDY, Simon P. Reforming the Law of Nature: The Secularization of Political Thought, 1532–1689. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2022. ix + 125 pp. Cloth, $110.00In this monograph Simon P. Kennedy offers an account of the desacralization of politics in the West by critically examining the works of five central (...) figures in the Protestant Reformed tradition: John Calvin (1509–64), Richard Hooker (1554–1600), Johannes Althusius (1557–1638), Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), and John Locke (1632–1705). He dedicates a chapter to each thinker. The core of Kennedy's thesis is that desacralization is the result of a shift in the way modern thinkers like Hobbes and Locke reimagined the nature of natural law. The medieval tradition, having found its fullest expression in the work of St. Thomas Aquinas, saw natural law as one of four different types of law: eternal law (the eternal plan of creation in the mind of God), natural law (the rational creature's participation in the eternal law), human law (civil laws that are derived from the natural law), and divine law (the Old and New Testaments). According to Kennedy, the eventual desacralization of politics was set in motion with the development of arguments for natural rights that relied on a natural law that was in [End Page 553] practice severed from eternal law. But in that case, our political institutions—which are founded on the natural law—are purely human constructions and thus entirely secular.The usual story is that the Protestant Reformation constituted the decisive break with the medieval tradition and that it was the political theology of the reformers and their immediate successors that made the secularization of politics nearly inevitable. Kennedy wants to push back against that story. He argues, quite convincingly, that Calvin, Hooker, and Althusius, all Reformed Protestants, were in continuity with their medieval predecessors. Although Calvin is often depicted by his contemporary followers—especially among American Evangelicals—as hostile to the natural law tradition, Kennedy marshals an impressive case that shows that classical natural law seemed almost second nature to Calvin. My own sense is that the confusion over Calvin is the result of his contemporary readers expecting him to use the vocabulary of an Aquinas or a Duns Scotus. But not finding that vocabulary, they conclude that he rejected the natural law. Kennedy dispels that confusion by showing that Calvin in fact was fully committed to the four types of law absent the technical jargon of medieval scholasticism.Hooker and Althusius, writes Kennedy, continue in that tradition, though with a bit of a twist that some argue portends to Hobbes and Locke. Hooker and Althusius use the language of contract to account for the origin of certain aspects of political life. But Kennedy insists that it is a mistake to interpret them as proto-contractarians (as one finds in Hobbes and Locke), for they still held that the natural law participates in the eternal law, and that any agreements employed in the service of political life are under the authority of, and guided by, the natural law. One could argue, then, that these "contracts," like constitutions and treaties, are nonstatutory manifestations of the human law, which is perfectly consistent with classical natural law. So like Calvin before them, Hooker and Althusius were, as Kennedy puts it, theistic political naturalists.Hobbes and Locke are a different story. According to Kennedy, they both defended desacralized views of politics, with Hobbes being the more extreme of the two. Although I think he is correct in that assessment, I am not sure he locates the cause of the desacralization in the right place. For example, he says that because for Locke politics is artificial and not natural—that is, it is the result of a social contract to insulate members of society from the instability of a state of nature—politics is desacralized, even though God is the ultimate source of the natural law. But it is not clear how that in and of itself desacralizes politics. After all, Aquinas, the paradigm case of a classical natural lawyer, held... (shrink)

As the modern West struggles with a rolling crisis of political legitimacy and our persistent inability to keep religion out of politics, intellectual historians remain busy with efforts to uncover...

A revision of George Kennedy's translation of, introdution to, and commentary on Aristotle's On Rhetoric. His translation is most accurate, his general introduction is the most thorough and insightful, and his brief introductions to sections of the work, along with his explanatory footnotes, are the most useful available.

The classical tradition of testimony in topics -- Three medieval traditions : Augustine, Boethius, and Cassiodoras -- Two renaissance traditions : Ciceronian and Augustinian -- The long influence of the port-royal logic -- Appreciating Aristotle : Thomists, Scots, and Oxford noetics -- Testimony becomes experience : the rise of critical thinking.

Simone Weil (1909-1943) was a defining figure of the twentieth century; a philosopher, Christian, resistance fighter, anarchist, feminist, labor activist and teacher. She was described by T. S. Eliot as "a woman of genius, of a kind of genius akin to that of the saints," and by Albert Camus as "the only great spirit of our time." Originally published posthumously in two volumes, these newly reissued notebooks, are among the very few unedited personal writings of Weil's that still survive today. (...) Containing her thoughts on art, love, science, God and the meaning of life, they give context and meaning to Weil's famous works, revealing a unique philosophy in development and offering a rare private glimpse of her singular personality. (shrink)

Particle indistinguishability has always been considered a purely quantum mechanical concept. In parallel, indistinguishable particles have been thought to be entities that are not properly speaking objects at all. I argue, to the contrary, that the concept can equally be applied to classical particles, and that in either case particles may (with certain exceptions) be counted as objects even though they are indistinguishable. The exceptions are elementary bosons (for example photons).

The relationship of part to whole is one of the most fundamental there is; this is the first and only full-length study of this concept. This book shows that mereology, the formal theory of part and whole, is essential to ontology. Peter Simons surveys and criticizes previous theories, especially the standard extensional view, and proposes a more adequate account which encompasses both temporal and modal considerations in detail. 'Parts could easily be the standard book on mereology for the next twenty (...) or thirty years.' Timothy Williamson, Grazer Philosophische Studien. (shrink)

Does Augustine put his finger on time? -- Time for history -- Determination -- Self-determination -- Time, knowledge and truth.

We demonstrate that the quantum-mechanical description of composite physical systems of an arbitrary number of similar fermions in all their admissible states, mixed or pure, for all finite-dimensional Hilbert spaces, is not in conflict with Leibniz's Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles (PII). We discern the fermions by means of physically meaningful, permutation-invariant categorical relations, i.e. relations independent of the quantum-mechanical probabilities. If, indeed, probabilistic relations are permitted as well, we argue that similar bosons can also be discerned in all (...) their admissible states; but their categorical discernibility turns out to be a state-dependent matter. In all demonstrated cases of discernibility, the fermions and the bosons are discerned (i) with only minimal assumptions on the interpretation of quantum mechanics; (ii) without appealing to metaphysical notions, such as Scotusian haecceitas, Lockean substrata, Postian transcendental individuality or Adamsian primitive thisness; and (iii) without revising the general framework of classical elementary predicate logic and standard set theory, thus without revising standard mathematics. This confutes: (a) the currently dominant view that, provided (i) and (ii), the quantum-mechanical description of such composite physical systems always conflicts with PII; and (b) that if PII can be saved at all, the only way to do it is by adopting one or other of the thick metaphysical notions mentioned above. Among the most general and influential arguments for the currently dominant view are those due to Schrodinger, Margenau, Cortes, Dalla Chiara, Di Francia, Redhead, French, Teller, Butterfield, Giuntini, Mittelstaedt, Castellani, Krause and Huggett. We review them succinctly and critically as well as related arguments by van Fraassen and Massimi. (shrink)

Gravity and Grace was the first ever publication by the remarkable thinker and activist, Simone Weil. In it Gustave Thibon, the priest to whom she had entrusted her notebooks before her untimely death, compiled in one remarkable volume a compendium of her writings that have become a source of spiritual guidance and wisdom for countless individuals.

I show that frequentism, as an explanation of probability in classical statistical mechanics, can be extended in a natural way to a decoherent quantum history space, the analogue of a classical phase space. The result is a form of finite frequentism, in which Gibbs’ concept of an infinite ensemble of gases is replaced by the quantum state expressed as a superposition of a finite number of decohering microstates. It is a form of finite and actual frequentism (as opposed to hypothetical (...) frequentism) insofar as all the microstates exist, in keeping with the decoherence-based Everett interpretation, and some versions of pilot-wave theory. (shrink)

The central claim of this article is that post-truth requires a political and socio-economical perspective, rather than a moral or epistemological one. The article consists of two parts. The first part offers a critical examination of the dominant analyses of post-truth in terms of shifting standards of the origin and the evaluation of facts. Moreover, the claim that postmodernism is the cause of post-truth is examined and refuted. In the second part an alternative perspective is developed, centring around the notion (...) of gatekeepers. Rather than linking post-truth to bullshit and postmodernism, it should be understood as a symptom of a contemporary shift in the gatekeepers of truth and knowledge. Knowledge and truth are always mediated in society through the hands of gatekeeping institutions such as journalism or science. Post-truth is a symptom of a broader transformation of the gatekeeping institutions of our current society. It therefore requires a political philosophy of these institutional shifts and the new risks they involve. (shrink)

Into wrestling with that question, Simone Weil put the very substance of her mind and temperament.

"What is required if men and women are to feel at home in society and are to recover their vitality? Into wrestling with that question, Simone Weil put the very substance of her mind and temperament. The apparently solid edifices of our prepossessions fall down before her onslaught like ninepins, and she is as fertile and forthright in her positive suggestions . . . she can be relied upon to toss aside the superficial and to come to grips with the (...) essential and the profound." -- Time Literary Supplement. (shrink)

This is a very short introduction to ethics. It divides into three parts: first, introducing and discussing reasons for skepticism about ethics; second introducing themes of birth, death, happiness, desire and freedom to show how deeply our lives are interwoven with ethics; third, introducing attempts to found ethics, due to Aristotle, Kant, and the contractarian tradition.

One Stoic response to the skeptical indistinguishability argument is that it fails to account for expertise: the Stoics allow that while two similar objects create indistinguishable appearances in the amateur, this is not true of the expert, whose appearances succeed in discriminating the pair. This paper re-examines the motivations for this Stoic response, and argues that it reveals the Stoic claim that, in generating a kataleptic appearance, the perceiver’s mind is active, insofar as it applies concepts matching the perceptual stimulus. (...) I argue that this claim is reflected in the Stoic definition of the kataleptic appearance, and that it respects their more general account of mental representation. I further suggest that, in attributing some activity to the mind in creating each kataleptic appearance, and in claiming that the expert’s mind allows her to form more kataleptic appearances than the amateur, the Stoics draw inspiration from the wax tablet model in Plato’s Theaetetus (190e–196d), where Socrates distinguishes the wise from the ignorant on the basis of how well they match sensory input with its appropriate mental ‘seal’ (σφραγίς). (shrink)

The authors are members of the British Association Committee on Social Concern and Biological Advances. Following earlier discussions of legal and social problems arising from certain medical advances, they undertook, independently, to examine the Law Commission's study.

This is a book about the religious life of the Greeks from the eighth century BC to the fifth century AD, looked at in the context of a variety of different cities and periods. Simon Price does not describe some abstract and self-contained system of religion or myths but examines local practices and ideas in the light of general Greek ideas, relating them for example, to gender roles and to cultural and political life (including Attic tragedy and the trial (...) of Socrates). He also lays emphasis on the reactions to Greek religions of ancient thinkers - Greek, Roman, Jewish and Christian. The evidence drawn on is of all kinds: literary texts, which are translated throughout; inscriptions, including an appendix of newly translated Greek inscriptions; and archaeology, which is highlighted in the numerous illustrations. (shrink)

Romanis and Adkins explore the near-term prospect of artificial amnion and placenta technology (AAPT) which is being developed to supplement the gestational process following the premature ending of a pregnancy.1 While fetal-centric narratives prevail in discussions surrounding AAPT, the authors subvert this trend by centering the experience of pregnant persons with respect to pregnancy loss. The overarching aim of their paper is to move beyond a ‘philosophical understanding of pregnancy towards practical-orientated conclusions regarding the care pathways surrounding [AAPT]’ (Romanis and (...) Adkins,1 p1). This commentary will critically examine the viability of this aim. Romanis and Adkins use the term ‘pregnancy loss’ to refer to the phenomenon where individuals experience a complex set of emotions following the premature ending of pregnancy, despite the survival of the gestated entity. Following Golish and Powell, the authors note how parents may experience contradictory emotions, such as joy mixed with grief, as well as a range of negative feelings including shame, disappointment and a sense of failure.2 At present, this phenomenon has been recognised among parents, particularly the (formerly) pregnant person, in the context of neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) when the infant survives preterm delivery and …. (shrink)

We argue that the value of authenticity does not explain the value of self-knowledge. There are a plurality of species of authenticity; in this paper we consider four species: avoiding pretense (section 2), Frankfurtian wholeheartedness (section 3), existential self-knowledge (section 4), and spontaneity (section 5). Our thesis is that, for each of these species, the value of (that species of) authenticity does not (partially) explain the value of self-knowledge. Moreover, when it comes to spontaneity, the value of (that species of) (...) authenticity conflicts with the value of self-knowledge. (shrink)

Revelatory insights into the early life and thought of the preeminent French feminist philosopher Dating from her years as a philosophy student at the Sorbonne, this is the 1926-27 diary of the teenager who would become the famous French philosopher, author, and feminist, Simone de Beauvoir. Written years before her first meeting with Jean-Paul Sartre, these diaries reveal previously unknown details about her life and offer critical insights into her early philosophy and literary works. Presented here for the first time (...) in translation and fully annotated, the diary is completed by essays from Barbara Klaw and Margaret A. Simons that address its philosophical, historical and literary significance. The volume represents an invaluable resource for tracing the development of Beauvoir's independent thinking and influence on the world. (shrink)

This book presents a straightforward account of disease, the problems of practice, and the moral, legal and financial questions in the field.

自史蒂芬·霍金(Stephen Hawking) 的暢銷科普著作《時間簡史》(以下簡稱《簡史》) 在上世紀八十年代末問世以來，至今天二十一世紀，華人基督教界就他宇宙無起點的論述仍有相當之評論，但可惜對評論未有綜合分析。評論者因寫作目的，也甚少交代霍金宇宙學的來龍去脈。故本文嘗試略述霍金宇宙學的歷史 背景及發展經過，繼而舉出華人基督教界的評論，帶出其獨特性，並提出商確的地方，以反省未來可行路向。.

In this clear introduction to ethics Simon Blackburn tackles the major moral questions surrounding birth, death, happiness, desire and freedom, showing us how ...

Like all discourses on the ‘other’, Bataille’s heterology is faced with the problem of conceptualizing the heterogeneous, while preserving its alterity, its fundamental resistance to conceptual thought. This paper interrogates the potential parallels between this aspect of Bataille’s notion and some of the prevalent concerns of contemporary and traditional aesthetics. The argument is based on the idea that theories of the aesthetic, akin to Bataille’s heterology, are always inevitably confronted with the paradoxical task of conceptually framing an experience that, per (...) definition, resists philosophical or political appropriation. In relation to this my paper traces a development in Bataille’s thinking from an initial rejection of art and the aesthetic to their later reconfiguration as manifestations of sovereignty. Here I show how Bataille’s notion of sovereign art presents an implicit attempt to overcome some of the aporias to have surfaced in his earlier account of heterology. This development in Bataille’s thought is analysed in the context of his changing relationship with Surrealism. (shrink)