The idea of human cruelty to animals so consumes novelist Elizabeth Costello in her later years that she can no longer look another person in the eye: humans, especially meat-eating ones, seem to her to be conspirators in a crime of stupefying magnitude taking place on farms and in slaughterhouses, factories, and laboratories across the world. Costello's son, a physics professor, admires her literary achievements, but dreads his mother’s lecturing on animal rights at the college where he teaches. His colleagues (...) resist her argument that human reason is overrated and that the inability to reason does not diminish the value of life; his wife denounces his mother’s vegetarianism as a form of moral superiority. At the dinner that follows her first lecture, the guests confront Costello with a range of sympathetic and skeptical reactions to issues of animal rights, touching on broad philosophical, anthropological, and religious perspectives. Painfully for her son, Elizabeth Costello seems offensive and flaky, but—dare he admit it?—strangely on target. In this landmark book, Nobel Prize–winning writer J. M. Coetzee uses fiction to present a powerfully moving discussion of animal rights in all their complexity. He draws us into Elizabeth Costello’s own sense of mortality, her compassion for animals, and her alienation from humans, even from her own family. In his fable, presented as a Tanner Lecture sponsored by the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University, Coetzee immerses us in a drama reflecting the real-life situation at hand: a writer delivering a lecture on an emotionally charged issue at a prestigious university. Literature, philosophy, performance, and deep human conviction—Coetzee brings all these elements into play. As in the story of Elizabeth Costello, the Tanner Lecture is followed by responses treating the reader to a variety of perspectives, delivered by leading thinkers in different fields. Coetzee’s text is accompanied by an introduction by political philosopher Amy Gutmann and responsive essays by religion scholar Wendy Doniger, primatologist Barbara Smuts, literary theorist Marjorie Garber, and moral philosopher Peter Singer, author of Animal Liberation. Together the lecture-fable and the essays explore the palpable social consequences of uncompromising moral conflict and confrontation. (shrink)

The paradoxographer Apollonius preserves the memory of a singular occurrence which Aristoxenus had recorded as having happened in southern Italy in his own time. A strange insanity afflicted women. They would suddenly leap up in the middle of dinner, hearing the call of a voice, and rush out into the country.μαντενομένοις δ τος Λοκρος κα ‘Ρηγίνοις περ τς παλλαγς το πάθους επεν τν θεόν, παινας ιδειν αρινος †δωδεκατης† μέρας’.

Medical ethics changed dramatically in the past 30 years because physicians and humanists actively engaged each other in discussions that sometimes led to confrontation and controversy, but usually have improved the quality of medical decision-making. Before then medical ethics had been isolated for almost two centuries from the larger philosophical, social, and religious controversies of the time. There was, however, an earlier period where leaders in medicine and in the humanities worked closely together and both fields were richer for it. (...) This volume begins with the 18th century Scottish Enlightenment when professors of medicine such as John Gregory, Edward Percival, and the American, Benjamin Rush, were close friends of philosophers like David Hume, Adam Smith, and Thomas Reid. They continually exchanged views on matters of ethics with each other in print, at meetings of elite intellectual groups, and at the dinner table. Then something happened, physicians and humanists quit talking with each other. In searching for the causes of the collapse, this book identifies shifts in the social class of physicians, developments in medical science, and changes in the patterns of medical education. Only in the past three decades has the dialogue resumed as physicians turned to humanists for help just when humanists wanted their work to be relevant to real-life social problems. Again, the book asks why, finding answers in the shift from acute to chronic disease as the dominant pattern of illness, the social rights revolution of the 1960's, and the increasing dissonance between physician ethics and ethics outside medicine. The book tells the critical story of how the breakdown in communication between physicians and humanists occurred and how it was repaired when new developments in medicine together with a social revolution forced the leaders of these two fields to resume their dialogue. (shrink)

Everyday joint remembering, from family remembering around the dinner table to team remembering in the operating theatre, relies on the successful interweaving of multiple cognitive, bodily, social and material resources, anchored in specific cultural ecosystems. Such systems for joint remembering in social interactions are composed of processes unfolding over multiple but complementary timescales, which we distinguish for analytic purposes so as better to study their interanimation in practice: (i) faster, lower-level coordination processes of behavioral matching and interactional synchrony occurring (...) at timescale t1; (ii) mid-range collaborative processes which re-evoke past experiences in groups, unfolding at timescale t2; (iii) cooperative processes involved in the transmission of memories over longer periods occurring at timescale t3; and (iv) cultural processes and practices operating within distributed socio-cognitive networks over evolutionary and historical timeframes, unfolding at timescale t4. In this paper we survey studies of how the processes operating across these overlapping and complementary timescales constitute joint remembering in social interactions. We describe coordination, collaboration, cooperation, and culture as complementary aspects of interacting to remember, which we consider as a complex phenomenon unfolding over multiple timescales (t1, t2, t3, t4). (shrink)

Everyday joint remembering, from family remembering around the dinner table to team remembering in the operating theatre, relies on the successful interweaving of multiple cognitive, bodily, social and material resources, anchored in specific cultural ecosystems. Such systems for joint remembering in social interactions are composed of processes unfolding over multiple but complementary timescales, which we distinguish for analytic purposes so as better to study their interanimation in practice: faster, lower-levelcoordination processesof behavioral matching and interactional synchrony occurring at timescale t1; (...) mid-rangecollaborative processeswhich re-evoke past experiences in groups, unfolding at timescale t2; cooperative processesinvolved in the transmission of memories over longer periods occurring at timescale t3; and cultural processesand practices operating within distributed socio-cognitive networks over evolutionary and historical timeframes, unfolding at timescale t4. In this paper we survey studies of how the processes operating across these overlapping and complementary timescales constitute joint remembering in social interactions. We describe coordination, collaboration, cooperation, and culture as complementary aspects of interacting to remember, which we consider as a complex phenomenon unfolding over multiple timescales. (shrink)

Readers have struggled to interpret an image from the end of Juvenal's fifth satire, a poem which focusses upon the poor hospitality shown to a dinner guest, Trebius, at the hands of his host, Virro. After repeatedly juxtaposing the luxurious food served to Virro with the scant fare served to Trebius, Juvenal describes the final course of thecena. He again contrasts the host's hyper-abundance with his guest's mere scraps (5.149–55):Virro sibi et reliquis Virronibus illa iubebitpoma dari, quorum solo pascaris (...) odore,qualia perpetuus Phaeacum autumnus habebat,credere quae possis subrepta sororibus Afris:tu scabie frueris mali, quod in aggere roditqui tegitur parma et galea, metuensque flagellidiscit ab hirsuta iaculum torquere capella.Virro will demand that he and the rest of his entourage receive these apples—though you'll dine on their smell alone—like those the endless autumn of the Phaeacians used to yield, which you could believe stolen away from the African sisters: you will enjoy the scab of an apple, which, on the Embankment, is gnawed by someone who is protected by a buckler and helm and who, fearing a whipping, learns to hurl a javelin from atop a shaggy goat.While the core contrast between the quality of each type of fare is clear, the concludingqui-clause is less intelligible. Who could this entity be? On line 153, the scholiast comments:quale simia manducat. Whilequalecould refer to the object being eaten (scabie mali quod) rather than to thequi-antecedent, it is clear in any case that the ancient reader felt that 5.153–5 evoked the image of an ape. Recent commentaries on Juvenal's fifth satire reflect a scholarly consensus: J.D. Duff, Edward Courtney, Susanna Braund and Biagio Santorelli all follow the scholiast's suggestion and believe that the passage describes a trained ape, as do recent readers of the poem. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2014 Heft: 202 Seiten: 555-569.

This dialogue is on the nature of thought and thinking. The five disputants are Socrates, an imaginary neuroscientist from California, an Oxford don from the 1950s, a Scottish post-doctoral student, and John Locke. The discussion takes place in Elysium in the late afternoon. They examine the idea that thinking is an activity of the mind or the brain, whether the medium of thought consists of words or ideas, whether thoughtful speech is speech accompanied by thought, whether thinking, i.e. reasoning and (...) inferring, is a process, and what is meant by the claim that ‘thinking is the last interpretation’. The dialogue ends when the protagonists go to dinner, but will be resumed after the meal. (shrink)

This dialogue on thought and language is a sequel to my dialogue ‘Thought and Thinking’, but can be read independently of it. The five disputants are the same as in the previous dialogue, namely Socrates; an imaginary neuroscientist from California ; an Oxford don from the 1950s ; a Scottish post-doctoral student; and John Locke. The discussion takes place in Elysium in the early evening after dinner. They discuss the relationship between what one thinks and what one says, examine (...) the reasons for supposing that there must be a language of thought and show why there cannot be one, investigate the supposition that thought must have a medium – that one must think in something – and demonstrate that it cannot have one. They investigate whether there can be non-linguistic thinking and whether non language-using animals can be said to think, and determine the limits of thought and thinking. (shrink)

We are told in the introduction to this volume that what holds together such an apparently diverse collection of essays under a single rubric is the theme of "human nature." And this is fair enough: themes ranging from Kant's reflections on physiology, to his investigation of the vexed notion of what it is that constitutes a race, to his reflections on philosophy of history, to his lectures on pedagogy all fit reasonably enough under the rubric of "human nature." All point (...) us, that is, toward a clearer understanding of how Kant would have answered the question, "What is a human being?" Yet this straight-laced, somewhat mundane description of this volume's contents belies the quirky, unexpected, and downright strange reflections that can be found therein. Perhaps those familiar with Kant's famous dinner parties would have expected him to say that "[b]odily motions prescribed by a doctor who is not a philosopher weaken the invalid's body, unless they are seasoned with some social amusement and affect the body favorably". But who would have expected Kant to recommend that "[i]n. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:128 Feminist Studies 46, no. 1. © 2020 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Rosetta Marantz Cohen There Were Six of Us at Dinner A Sestina There were six of us at dinner: Partnered for life, three women and three men. We were staid, civilized, three women And three men, all of a certain age. Having weathered the worst and best Of life, we had, in a sense, arrived. (...) It was late. We had all of us arrived At that comfortable place after dinner When we suspected that this was the best Our lives would ever be. Men Spoke about their teams, their stocks; women About clothes, the indignities of age. One said, “I have finally reached the age When I am invisible to men; arrived At a place where I am, in a sense, post-woman.” There was silence then, among us women at dinner. “... And I’m glad of it,” she said, “to be free of men’s Sexual assessment. In school, I was always the best In my class, straight A’s, but the best Thing about me, I always knew, was my age And my beauty. I knew my professors, all men, Saw only this when I would arrive At their office hours, or over dinner, Later, with male clients—my sexual power as a woman.” Rosetta Marantz Cohen 129 And then the second of us spoke, the second woman: “I called it ‘flattery’ in those days,” she said, “Putting the best Face on what was harassment; dinners That ended in groped kisses from men twice my age.” And then I told them about the teacher who arrived At my door at night, drunk, saying “I’m a man; What do you expect?” How I had felt manipulated but ashamed, and had never told another woman, Even though I knew the same man arrived At other doors asking the same question. Perhaps it was best, We said, that we had kept these secrets. It was another age; We still ended up here after all: well-heeled, happy, among friends at dinner. We studied our husbands as they spoke: good men, Certainly; middle-aged fathers of daughters; and wondered If other women were right now speaking about them at dinner.... (shrink)

Writing from a scientifically and philosophically informed perspective, the authors provide a critical overview of the conceptual difficulties encountered in many current neuroscientific and psychological theories.

A long-standing theme in discussion of perception and thought has been that our primary cognitive contact with individual objects and events in the world derives from our perceptual contact with them. When I look at a duck in front of me, I am not merely presented with the fact that there is at least one duck in the area, rather I seem to be presented withthisthing (as one might put it from my perspective) in front of me, which looks to (...) me to be a duck. Furthermore, such a perception would seem to put me in a position not merely to make the existential judgment that there is some duck or other present, but rather to make a singular, demonstrative judgment, that that is a duck. My grounds for an existential judgment in this case derives from my apprehension of the demonstrative thought and not vice versa. (shrink)

This book defends antitheodicism, arguing that theodicies, seeking to excuse God for evil and suffering in the world, fail to ethically acknowledge the victims of suffering. The authors argue for this view using literary and philosophical resources, commencing with Immanuel Kant's 1791 "Theodicy Essay" and its reading of the Book of Job. Three important twentieth century antitheodicist positions are explored, including "Jewish" post-Holocaust ethical antitheodicism, Wittgensteinian antitheodicism exemplified by D.Z. Phillips and pragmatist antitheodicism defended by William James. The authors argue (...) that these approaches to evil and suffering are fundamentally Kantian. Literary works such as Franz Kafka'sThe Trial, Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, are examined in order to crucially advance the philosophical case for antitheodicism. (shrink)

Temporal Logic: From Ancient Ideas to Artificial Intelligence deals with the history of temporal logic as well as the crucial systematic questions within the field. The book studies the rich contributions from ancient and medieval philosophy up to the downfall of temporal logic in the Renaissance. The modern rediscovery of the subject, which is especially due to the work of A. N. Prior, is described, leading into a thorough discussion of the use of temporal logic in computer science and the (...) understanding of natural language. Temporal Logic: From Ancient Ideas to Artificial Intelligence thus interweaves linguistic, philosophical and computational aspects into an informative and inspiring whole. (shrink)

In his last book, David Armstrong sets out his metaphysical system in a set of concise and lively chapters each dealing with one aspect of the world. He begins with the assumption that all that exists is the physical world of space-time. On this foundation he constructs a coherent metaphysical scheme that gives plausible answers to many of the great problems of metaphysics. He gives accounts of properties, relations, and particulars; laws of nature; modality; abstract objects such as numbers; and (...) time and mind. (shrink)

Is consciousness a purely physical phenomenon? Most contemporary philosophers and theorists hold that it is, and take this to be supported by modern science. But a significant minority endorse non-physicalist theories such as dualism, idealism and panpsychism, among other reasons because it may seem impossible to fully explain consciousness, or capture what it's like to be in conscious states (such as seeing red, or being in pain), in physical terms. This Element will introduce the main non-physicalist theories of consciousness and (...) explain the most important arguments for them, and consider how they each respond to the scientific and other arguments in support of physicalism. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core. (shrink)

Western democracy is now at a critical juncture. Some worry that power has been wrested from the people and placed in the hands of a small political elite. Others argue that the democratic system gives too much power to a populace that is largely ill-informed and easily swayed by demagogues. This classic study of democratic principles is thus now more relevant than ever. A renowned historian of antiquity and political philosophy, Sir M.I. Finley offers a comparative analysis of Greek and (...) modern conceptions of democracy. As he puts the ancient Greeks in dialogue with their contemporary counterparts, Finley tackles some of the most pressing issues of our day, including public apathy, partisanship, consensus politics, distrust of professional politicians, and the limits of free speech. Including three lectures that Finley delivered at Rutgers University, plus two additional essays that further illuminate his thinking, _Democracy Ancient and Modern _explores the dramatic differences between the close-knit civil society of the ancient Greeks and our own atomized mass societies. By mapping out democracy’s past and its present manifestations, this book helps us plot a course for democracy’s future. (shrink)

The ideal introduction for students of semantics, Lexical Meaning fills the gap left by more general semantics textbooks, providing the teacher and the student with insights into word meaning beyond the traditional overviews of lexical relations. The book explores the relationship between word meanings and syntax and semantics more generally. It provides a balanced overview of the main theoretical approaches, along with a lucid explanation of their relative strengths and weaknesses. After covering the main topics in lexical meaning, such as (...) polysemy and sense relations, the textbook surveys the types of meanings represented by different word classes. It explains abstract concepts in clear language, using a wide range of examples, and includes linguistic puzzles in each chapter to encourage the student to practise using the concepts. 'Adopt-a-Word' exercises give students the chance to research a particular word, building a portfolio of specialist work on a single word. (shrink)

The concept of the receptive field, first articulated by Hartline, is central to visual neuroscience. The receptive field of a neuron encompasses the spatial and temporal properties of stimuli that activate the neuron, and, as Hubel and Wiesel conceived of it, a neuron’s receptive field is static. This makes it possible to build models of neural circuits and to build up more complex receptive fields out of simpler ones. Recent work in visual neurophysiology is providing evidence that the classical receptive (...) field is an inaccurate picture. The receptive field seems to be a dynamic feature of the neuron. In particular, the receptive field of neurons in V1 seems to be dependent on the properties of the stimulus. In this paper, we review the history of the concept of the receptive field and the problematic data. We then consider a number of possible theoretical responses to these data. (shrink)

This book presents a collection of essays on institutional theory written by the German sociologist and Weber-expert M. Rainer Lepsius. Based on Weber's work, the author develops concepts of institutional theory, which he subsequently applies to topics such as National Socialism, democratization processes, German unification, and the institutionalization of the European Union. By showing how charismatic leadership can under certain circumstances threaten democratic structures and curtail individual freedoms, and by analyzing the structural and cultural conditions under which people develop trust (...) in political and social structures and ultimately come to support and comply with them, the author provides a sound analytical understanding of the development of democratic institutions and a democratic political culture. This collection of essays was edited, translated and commented on by Claus Wendt. (shrink)

The phenomenal powers view claims that phenomenal properties metaphysically necessitate their effects in virtue of how they feel, and thereby constitute non-Humean causal powers. For example, pain necessitates that subjects who experience it try to avoid it in virtue of feeling bad. I argue for this view based on the inconceivability of certain phenomenal properties necessitating different effects than their actual ones, their ability to predict their effects without induction, and their ability to explain their effects without appeal to laws (...) or regularities. I also offer a harmony argument according to which the view offers the best explanation for otherwise seemingly fortunate psychophysical regularities. I then outline the view’s main implications for the metaphysics of causation and philosophy of mind. (shrink)

The Ismaili Imam and Imamat -- Ethical foundations -- Tradition and modernity -- The ethos of modernism -- Pluralism and cosmopolitan ethics -- Cohesion within the Umma -- Islam and the West -- Cultivating and enabling environment -- Living the ethics of Islam -- Global convergence.

The socialist construction in Vietnam, aspect of human role.

Early in his Essays on Intellectual Powers, Reid draws a distinction between mental power, mental operation, and mental capacity (EIP 21). To the untrained eye, these terms could probably be used interchangeably, and Reid believes this is correct, up to a point. He argues that, if we are interested in understanding exactly how the human mind works, we must use these terms with more precise meanings. This is part of his more general strategy of trying to always use the words (...) with their common meanings, as much as possible, but also pointing out that certain philosophical distinctions are needed to carry out the project of laying out the foundations of the science of the mind. This paper explains what the distinction between power, operation, and capacity is, according to Reid, with the goal of understanding why it is important to draw such a distinction, not only for the Reidian project, but for action theory, more generally. (shrink)

The given is the state of a mind in its primary engagement with the world. A satisfactory epistemology—one, it turns out, that is foundationalist and includes a naïve realist view of perception—requires a certain account of the given. Moreover, knowledge based on the given requires both a particular view of the world itself and a heterodox account of judgment. These admittedly controversial claims are supported by basic ontological considerations. I begin, then, with two contradictory views of the world per se (...) and the structure one experiences. I draw out the consequences of these two views for what intentionality is. The two views yield incompatible accounts of the given. The definitive spontaneity of the one account, and passivity of the other, can be understood in terms of the structure (or lack thereof) in the given. In defense of the claim that a structured given is not an apt epistemic basis, I examine an attempt to found an epistemology on such an account in light of the so-called myth of the given. I maintain that the given, if it is to provide some justification for taking the world to be a particular way, must be unstructured. To support this, I first discuss a significant problem with traditional foundationalism. I then argue that a satisfactory (foundationalist) epistemology requires the rejection of the orthodox propositional view of judgment in favor of a non-propositional, reistic view. (shrink)

For over two centuries, Western scholars have discussed African philosophy and culture, often in disparaging, condescending terms, and always from an alien European perspective. Many Africans now share this perspective, having been trained in the western, empirical tradition. Makinde argues that, particularly in view of the costs and failings of western style culture, Africans must now mold their own modern culture by blending useful western practices with valuable indigenous African elements. Specifically, Makinde demonstrates the potential for the development of African (...) philosophy and even African traditional medicine. Following the lead of a number of countries with government policies of incorporating indigenous medicine with orthodox Western medicine, Makinde argues that traditional African practices should be taken seriously, both medically and scientifically. Further, he charges African scholars with the responsibility of investigating these and other elements of traditional African culture in order to dispel their mystery and secrecy through modern research and useful publications. (shrink)

A selection of important writings which together suggest that legal philosophy is the nerve of legal reasoning.

On Avicenna, 980-1037, a Muslim philosopher.