This book, formed as a series of essays in honour of Professor Carl Baudenbacher, addresses the very art of judicial reasoning, and features contributions from many of the foremost current or former national, supranational, or international judges. This unique volume is intended first and foremost for legal scholars, but its approachable style makes it readily accessible for students and for those with a general interest in the application of the law and justice in today's multi-layered world. The collection of essays (...) is rather more philosophical and reflective as opposed to doctrinal. Each contribution focuses on the nature and operation of justice, the independence of the judiciary, and on judicial style primarily from the perspective of the judges themselves. The book provides perspectives on what it means to be accountable and independent as a judge, the role of language and languages in the quest for justice, while other contributions acquaint readers with the some of the structures of courts themselves, or indeed question for whom judgments are written. Each chapter has been written by a presiding judge, or head of an institution and the book is divided into three parts: - Part I Art and Method - Part II Justice and the Judiciary - Part III Reasoning and Language(s). (shrink)

A central exegetical problem in Aristotelian studies is deciding how best to deal with apparent inconsistencies in his writings. Early this century, Werner Jaeger, challenging unitarian approaches of the previous century, argued that conflicting views could be reconciled by relegating them to different stages of Aristotle's philosophical career. Although scholars have questioned some of Jaeger's specific proposals, genetic explanations of inconsistencies are still widely adopted.

Hayek and the Efficient Market Hypothesis are often seen as proposing a similar theory of prices. Hayek is seen as proposing to understand prices as information conveyer, incorporating inform...

L'interrogation sur le rôle que jouent aujourd'hui les convictions religieuses en philosophie des sciences peut paraître une démarche surprenante, car trop souvent la religion est rejetée hors du champ de l'enquête philosophique. Cet ouvrage ose au contraire demander dans quelle mesure les options religieuses d'un penseur influencent sa conception de l'ordre cosmique. L'examen du concept de loi de la nature s'inscrit dans une quête plus large : il permet de tester la façon dont les choix épistémologiques d'un individu dépendent de (...) sa vision du monde et ainsi de porter une attention particulière aux interactions entre science, épistémologie et religion. L'étude porte sur quatre figures des plus marquantes du débat contemporain sur les lois de la nature : David Armstrong, Nancy Cartwright, David Lewis et Bas van Fraassen. L'analyse de leurs écrits, approfondie d'entretiens personnels, fait ressortir pour chacun les liens qui existent entre sa posture religieuse et son compte rendu de la légalité naturelle. (shrink)

Winner of the 2000-2002 outstanding publication award of the Section on Environment and Technology of the American Sociological Association.Risk as we now know ...

La figure de l’entrepreneur est aujourd’hui utilisée dans une grande variété de discours publics. Ce travail cherche à remonter à l’une des sources théoriques de la constitution de cette figure : la théorie de l’entrepreneur de Schumpeter (1911a et 1911b). Ce retour montre que Schumpeter, dans son contexte intellectuel et théorique, est amené à importer une anthropologie philosophique en économie, celle de Nietzsche, auteur largement lu dans l’Autriche du début du xxe siècle. En transposant, à l’intérieur de sa théorie économique, (...) certaines caractéristiques majeures du grand homme créatif nietzschéen dans la figure de l’entrepreneur, Schumpeter développe une explication originale de la nature dynamique du marché et de l’évolution économique. Néanmoins il importe aussi de Nietzsche une série d’ambiguïtés, notamment en ce qui concerne l’origine de l’exceptionnalité individuelle de l’entrepreneur, et plus particulièrement de sa puissance créatrice. Une seconde ambiguïté est très largement héritée, qui concerne l’extension du modèle de l’individu entrepreneur : constitue-t-il une théorie de l’action valable pour tous les individus ou uniquement pour un type d’individus particuliers? Comment concilier exceptionnalité de l’entrepreneur et norme d’un entreprenariat pour tous? La dernière partie de ce travail s’attache ainsi à explorer ces ambiguïtés, qui apparaissent chez Schumpeter et ses successeurs, notamment Israël Kirzner.Codes JEL : B13, B25, B31, B40. (shrink)

This book argues that sometimes we have reasons to overcome repression and that these reasons are unlike any other reasons for action typically recognized by philosophers.

Altersarmut, Bildungsunterschiede, eine wachsende Kluft zwischen Arm und Reich - die deutsche Gesellschaft spaltet sich, und viele fordern mehr Soziale Gerechtigkeit. Die Autorin untersucht, wie sich das Verstandnis von Sozialer Gerechtigkeit in Philosophie und Politik gewandelt hat, und hinterfragt, inwieweit Politiker Soziale Gerechtigkeit als Akzeptanzmittel fur ihre Entscheidungen nutzen.

Recent work in quantum information science has produced a revolution in our understanding of quantum entanglement. Scientists now view entanglement as a physical resource with many important applications. These range from quantum computers, which would be able to compute exponentially faster than classical computers, to quantum cryptographic techniques, which could provide unbreakable codes for the transfer of secret information over public channels. These important advances in the study of quantum entanglement and information touch on deep foundational issues in both physics (...) and philosophy. This interdisciplinary volume brings together fourteen of the world's leading physicists and philosophers of physics to address the most important developments and debates in this exciting area of research. It offers a broad spectrum of approaches to resolving deep foundational challenges - philosophical, mathematical, and physical - raised by quantum information, quantum processing, and entanglement. This book is ideal for historians, philosophers of science and physicists"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 10.3 (2003) 227-231 [Access article in PDF] World Traveling as a Clinical Methodology for Psychiatric Care Suzanne M. Jaeger Keywords embodiment, dialogical consciousness, interpersonal communication, epistemic responsibility, self-knowledge, understanding IN HER ARTICLE "Moral Tourists and World Travelers," Nancy Potter suggests a way in which psychiatrists and psychologists could gain a better understanding of their mentally ill patients' experiences. Rather than assuming that hallucinations and (...) incoherent speech and behavior are merely senseless disconnections from reality, Potter argues that mental health care clinicians ought to spend time engaging patients on their own terms. Even when mental illness is a result of brain disease, much can be learned about the patient's experiences of their disease by temporarily setting aside the scientific frameworks of diagnosis and medical treatment. Potter uses Maria Lugones' concept of world traveling and recommends playfully accepting, and even entering into the patient's world (Lugones 1990). She calls world traveling a methodology and explains it in some detail. Moreover, at the close of her essay, Potter suggests that clinicians have a moral obligation to understand the mentally ill patient's world from the patient's perspective. This obligation is based on an appeal to our sense of what it is to be a responsible knower who attends to issues of trust and truth. Relying on arguments made by Lorraine Code (1987), Potter asserts that to try to understand the other's perspective is the responsible thing to do.My discussion focuses on the notion of play to which Potter appeals, as well as on what she sees as the moral obligation of clinicians to communicate with their mentally ill patients in extra-professional ways. This moral obligation arises because (a) the theoretical and professional frameworks of medical science are seen as inadequate, and (b) playfulness opens up mutually respectful, authentic interaction between persons. I generally agree with Potter's claims, and I want to situate them in the wider framework of an epistemological debate about the status of our knowledge of others. A broader context will help to elucidate the strengths of Potter's analysis as well as some points for critical discussion. I begin with the relationship of trust between clinicians and patients.Few people would disagree with the claim that patients need to be able to trust that their physicians are not harming them, but helping them to get better. If patients feel misunderstood, they will not trust their caretakers. This is probably even truer for psychiatric patients, whose conditions and loss of autonomy make establishing trust even more challenging. Psychiatric patients [End Page 227] often have their own ways of compensating for the symptoms of their mental illness. If either their will to survive or their compensatory strategies go unrecognized or misinterpreted, patients may respond by rejecting the well-intentioned efforts of caretakers to restore them to a degree of ease, measured as it must be by the standards of the professionals under whose care the patient remains. 1 Despite the fact that these standards are established through scientific testing procedures for the treatment of diseases, they may be experienced by patients as indifferent to the particular and unique features of their condition. Nestled within the issue of trust is thus a question of truth.Although current scientific knowledge of the human brain, and of human behavior, has made available a range of sophisticated therapies and psychotropic drugs, there are still many mental illnesses that leave families and clinicians wondering whether the treatment plans are providing any help. Alzheimer's disease and schizophrenia are two examples. There is a difference between, on the one hand, containing the patient's behavior by admitting the patient to a psychiatric ward and managing symptoms with psychotropic medications, and, on the other hand, understanding what is happening for the patient, from his or her perspective. Although psychiatric patients may not have a realistic sense of either their abilities or the extent and nature of their disease, there may be much about their experiences that ought to be known and understood by the professionals caring for them... (shrink)

Sample quotes from emails sent by visitors to Mary Klages's successful literary theory web pages on which this book is based: 'Finding your course was a godsend ...

Heidegger hielt die unter dem Titel Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs angekundigte Vorlesung im Sommer-Semester 1925 in der Marburger Universitat. Er gelangte jedoch nicht mehr zur Ausfuhrung der zentralen Thematik. Der Themenkreis der Vorlesung ist mit der Nennung des Untertitels abgesteckt: Prolegomena zu einer Phanomenologie von Geschichte und Natur. Heideggers thematische Uberlegungen beginnen mit einer Kennzeichnung der Situation von Philosophie und Wissenschaft in der zweiten Halfte des 19. Jahrhunderts und stellen das seiner Deutung nach entscheidende Ereignis dieser Zeit heraus: den Durchbruch der (...) Phanomenologie als philosophische Forschung. Er untersucht ihre wesentlichen Entdeckungen, verteidigt sie gegen Missverstandnisse, um dann seinerseits Kritik vorzubringen, wo die Phanomenologie ihrer Forderung zu den Sachen selbst nicht gerecht wird. (shrink)

'... diese 'Einführung in die Metaphysik' [ist] echte Einführung in Heidegger... keines der Werke Heideggers [ist] so lebendig zu lesen und so unmittelbar aufzufassen...' Universitas 4 (1954) 'Unter dem Titel dieser Vorlesung aus dem Jahre 1935 verbirgt sich in Wirklichkeit eine große Auseinandersetzung mit den Grundlagen unserer planetarischen Situation.' Süddeutsche Zeitung vom 7./8.11.1953.

In the Philippines, all transplant centers are mandated by the Department of Health (DOH) to have a Hospital Transplant Ethics Committee (HTEC) to ensure that donations are altruistic, voluntary and free of coercion/commercial transactions. This study was undertaken primarily to describe the organizational and functional profile of existing HTECs and identify areas for improvement. This is a descriptive cross‐sectional study. There was variation in their logistical arrangements (support from hospital, filing systems, office spaces), operations (length and frequency of meetings, number (...) of referrals) and membership (composition, qualifications, occupation, training). The approval rate for donor‐recipient pairs is high with the majority of cases made by living non‐related donors. Appropriate reasons were cited for rejection. The perception of HTECs is that they are competent and confident in their decision‐making. However, there is a need to standardize HTEC composition, provide operating procedures and additional training which can be done by the DOH. (shrink)

En quoi consiste, ou devrait consister, l'éthique professionnelle en enseignement? Comment se manifeste-t- elle dans les gestes pédagogiques? Selon quels critères peut-on la juger? Comment développer l'éthique professionnelle dans le cadre des formations initiale et continue en enseignement? En tenant compte du contexte social et culturel du Québec, des principes éthiques déjà énoncés par le ministère de l'Education ainsi que des lois, codes et conventions ayant des incidences sur la pratique enseignante, les auteures présentent des éléments à considérer pour la (...) réflexion éthique sur l'agir professionnel. Elles proposent des clarifications conceptuelles et un certain nombre de repères et de balises afin de guider les enseignants et de stimuler la discussion sur l'éthique professionnelle, non seulement dans la classe, mais aussi dans l'école et dans la société. (shrink)

Evolutionary systems biology (ESB) aims to integrate methods from systems biology and evolutionary biology to go beyond the current limitations in both fields. This article clarifies some conceptual difficulties of this integration project, and shows how they can be overcome. The main challenge we consider involves the integration of evolutionary biology with developmental dynamics, illustrated with two examples. First, we examine historical tensions between efforts to define general evolutionary principles and articulation of detailed mechanistic explanations of specific traits. Next, these (...) tensions are further clarified by considering a recent case from another field focused on developmental dynamics: stem cell biology. In the stem cell case, incompatible explanatory aims block integration. Experimental approaches aim at mechanistic explanation while dynamical system models offer explanation in terms of general principles. We then discuss an ESB case in which integration succeeds: search for general attractors using a dynamical systems framework synergizes with the experimental search for detailed mechanisms. Contrasts between the positive and negative cases suggest general lessons for achieving an integrated understanding of developmental and evolutionary dynamics. The key integrative move is to acknowledge two complementary aims, both relevant to explanation: identifying the space of possible dynamic states and trajectories, and mechanistic understanding of causal interactions underlying a specific phenomenon of interest. These two aims can support one another in a joint project characterizing dynamic aspects of evolving lineages. This more inclusive project can lead to insights that cannot be reached by either approach in isolation. (shrink)

The positive operator (valued) measures (POMs) allow one to generalize the notion of observable beyond the traditional one based on projection valued measures (PVMs). Here, we argue that this generalized conception of observable enables a consistent notion of unsharp reality and with it an adequate concept of joint properties. A sharp or unsharp property manifests itself as an element of sharp or unsharp reality by its tendency to become actual or to actualize a specific measurement outcome. This actualization tendency—or potentiality—of (...) a property is quantified by the associated quantum probability. The resulting single-case interpretation of probability as a degree of reality will be explained in detail and its role in addressing the tensions between quantum and classical accounts of the physical world will be elucidated. It will be shown that potentiality can be viewed as a causal agency that evolves in a well-defined way. (shrink)

How is hope to be found amid the ethical and political dilemmas of modern life? Writer and philosopher Mary Zournazi brought her questions to some of the most thoughtful intellectuals at work today. She discusses "joyful revolt" with Julia Kristeva, the idea of "the rest of the world" with Gayatri Spivak, the "art of living" with Michel Serres, the "carnival of the senses" with Michael Taussig, the relation of hope to passion and to politics with Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto (...) Laclau. A dozen stimulating minds weigh in with their visions of a better social and political order. The result is a collaboration - of writing, of thinking, and of politics - that demonstrates more clearly than any single-authored project could how ideas encountering one another can produce the vision needed for social change. (shrink)

Plato famously promised to complement the Sophist and the Statesman with another work on a third sort of expert, the philosopher--but we do not have this final dialogue. Mary Louise Gill argues that Plato promised the Philosopher, but did not write it, in order to stimulate his audience and encourage his readers to work out, for themselves, the portrait it would have contained. The Sophist and Statesman are themselves members of a larger series starting with the Theaetetus, Plato's investigation (...) of knowledge, and the whole series relies on the Parmenides, the second part of which presents a philosophical exercise, introduced as the first step in a larger philosophical program. Gill contends that the dialogues leading up to the missing Philosopher, though they reach some substantive conclusions, are philosophical exercises of various sorts designed to train students in dialectic, the philosopher's method; and that a second version of the Parmenides exercise, closely patterned on it, spans parts of the Theaetetus and Sophist and brings the philosopher into view. This is the exercise about being, the subject-matter studied by Plato's philosopher. Plato hides the pieces of the puzzle and its solution in plain sight, forcing his students (and modern readers) to dig out the pieces and reconstruct the project. Gill reveals how, in finding the philosopher through the exercise, the student becomes a philosopher by mastering his methods. She shows that the target of Plato's exercise is internally related to its pedagogical purpose. (shrink)

Recent years have seen a surge in accounts motivated by information theory that consider language production to be partially driven by a preference for communicative efficiency. Evidence from discourse production (i.e., production beyond the sentence level) has been argued to suggest that speakers distribute information across discourse so as to hold the conditional per-word entropy associated with each word constant, which would facilitate efficient information transfer (Genzel & Charniak, 2002). This hypothesis implies that the conditional (contextualized) probabilities of linguistic units (...) affect speakers’ preferences during production. Here, we extend this work in two ways. First, we explore how preceding cues are integrated into contextualized probabilities, a question which so far has received little to no attention. Specifically, we investigate how a cue's maximal informativity about upcoming words (the cue's effectiveness) decays as a function of the cue's recency. Based on properties of linguistic discourses as well as properties of human memory, we analytically derive a model of cue effectiveness decay and evaluate it against cross-linguistic data from 12 languages. Second, we relate the information theoretic accounts of discourse production to well-established mechanistic (activation-based) accounts: We relate contextualized probability distributions over words to their relative activation in a lexical network given preceding discourse. (shrink)

"Charming, interesting, thought-provoking and a great read." Rosalind Hursthouse The daughter of a pacifist rector who answered "No!" when his congregation asked him "Is everything in the bible true?", perhaps Mary Midgley was destined to become a philosopher. Yet few would have thought this inquisitive, untidy, nature-loving child would become "one of the sharpest critical pens in the west." This is her remarkable story. Probably the only philosopher to have been in Vienna on the eve of its invasion by (...) Nazi Germany in 1938 and dance in Trafalgar Square on VE day seven year later, she studied philosophy at Oxford in the same year as Iris Murdoch, Elizabeth Anscombe and Philippa Foot, all of whom became close friends. Midgley tells us in vivid and humorous fashion how they cut a swathe through the arid landscape of 1950s British philosophy, writing and arguing - often with each other - about the grand themes of character, beauty and the meaning of rudeness while the spectral figure of Ludwig Wittgenstein hovered in the background. She also charts the highs and lows of philosophy and academia in Britain. On joining the Reading philosophy department on £400 a year in 1949, she doubled its staff complement. But her many years at Newcastle University - where Mike Brearley, who later captained England at cricket, also used to teach - were rewarded with the closure of the philosophy department in the 1980s. The mother of three children, her journey is also one of a woman who in the 1950s and 1960s was fighting to combine a professional career with raising a family. In startling contrast to many of the academic stars of her generation, we learn that Midgley nearly became a novelist and started writing philosophy only when in her fifties, suggesting that Minerva's owl really does fly at dusk. Plainly told like her philosophy, this is an elegiac and moving account of friendships found and lost, bitter philosophical battles and of a profound love of teaching all too rarely acknowledged today. (shrink)

We know we have thoughts, but are we aware that we have styles of thought? This book, written by one of the most gifted and celebrated social thinkers of our time, is a contribution to understanding the rules of the different styles of thinking. Author Mary Douglas takes us through a range of thought styles from the vulgar to the refined. Throughout this fascinating journey, Thought Styles shows us how the different styles work and how outsiders can learn the (...) styles of insiders. The discussion ranges from the style of folklore to the styles of therapy, shopping, religion, and animal rights. The result is a book full of insight. Readers will find themselves thinking in new ways about the mechanics of communication in everyday life. Professionals and researchers in sociology, communication, and anthropology will especially appreciate this auspicious new book. (shrink)

This selection consists of extracts from writings of women concerned solely with the pursuit of abstract ideas, historically contextualized. The texts, for the most part, reflect issues widely debated in their contemporary societies. Extracts from lesser-known writers are also included, providing a diversity of arguments spanning four centuries and including some notable contemporary philosophers.

There is now considerable evidence that human sentence processing is expectation based: As people read a sentence, they use their statistical experience with their language to generate predictions about upcoming syntactic structure. This study examines how sentence processing is affected by readers' uncertainty about those expectations. In a self-paced reading study, we use lexical subcategorization distributions to factorially manipulate both the strength of expectations and the uncertainty about them. We compare two types of uncertainty: uncertainty about the verb's complement, reflecting (...) the next prediction step; and uncertainty about the full sentence, reflecting an unbounded number of prediction steps. We find that uncertainty about the full structure, but not about the next step, was a significant predictor of processing difficulty: Greater reduction in uncertainty was correlated with increased reading times. We additionally replicated previously observed effects of expectation violation, orthogonal to the effect of uncertainty. This suggests that both surprisal and uncertainty affect human RTs. We discuss the consequences for theories of sentence comprehension. (shrink)

In the article ”Against Physicalism-plus-God: How Creation Accounts for Divine Action in the World’, I defined a framework which allows us to make some progress in our understanding of how God acts in the world. In the present article, I apply this framework to the specific question of chance events. I show that chance does not provide an explanation for special divine action. Nevertheless, chance does not hamper God’s ability to act in the world, and creation provides a framework for (...) the understanding of chance, which is akin to what we see in modern science. (shrink)

A leader in the modern commentary on ethics and philosophy, Mary Warnock casts a critical eye over her life and times.

The logic of genetic discovery has changed little over time, but the focus of biology is shifting from simple genotype–phenotype relationships to complex metabolic, physiological, developmental, and behavioral traits. In light of this, the traditional reductionist view of individual genes as privileged difference‐making causes of phenotypes is re‐examined. The scope and nature of genetic effects in complex regulatory systems, in which dynamics are driven by regulatory feedback and hierarchical interactions across levels of organization are considered. This review argues that it (...) is appropriate to treat genes as specific actual difference‐makers for the molecular regulation of gene expression. However, they are often neither stable, proportional, nor specific as causes of the overall dynamic behavior of regulatory networks. Dynamical models, properly formulated and validated, provide the tools to probe cause‐and‐effect relationships in complex biological systems, allowing to go beyond the limitations of genetic reductionism to gain an integrative understanding of the causal processes underlying complex phenotypes. (shrink)

This study provides evidence for implicit learning in syntactic comprehension. By reanalyzing data from a syntactic priming experiment (Thothathiri & Snedeker, 2008), we find that the error signal associated with a syntactic prime influences comprehenders' subsequent syntactic expectations. This follows directly from error‐based implicit learning accounts of syntactic priming, but it is unexpected under accounts that consider syntactic priming a consequence of temporary increases in base‐level activation. More generally, the results raise questions about the principles underlying the maintenance of implicit (...) statistical knowledge relevant to language processing, and about possible functional motivations for syntactic priming. (shrink)

Les années 1930 et 1940 marquent une période de crise pour le libéralisme. Des auteurs aussi divers que Friedrich Hayek, Wilhelm Röpke, Walter Lippmann ou encore Michael Polanyi et Louis Rougier se réunissent lors de deux événements fondateurs, le colloque Walter Lippmann en 1938 et la création de la Société du Mont-Pèlerin en 1947, pour repenser le libéralisme. Cette refonte du projet libéral les pousse à établir un diagnostic relatif à la crise du libéralisme, remontant, pour les auteurs mentionnés, à (...) la Révolution française. Cet article se propose de montrer la cohérence du projet néolibéral à partir de leur diagnostic historique dans cette période de crise. En effet, en critiquant la Révolution française et ses effets comme participant d’un rationalisme néfaste, ayant donné naissance aussi bien au laissez-faire qu’aux divers collectivismes, les néolibéraux reprennent explicitement des concepts des critiques de la révolution, au premier rang desquels Edmund Burke. Le concept de tradition, compris comme recouvrant des règles sociales et juridiques ayant lentement évolué de façon à constituer des dispositifs de coordination permettant nos actions, est ainsi très largement repris et valorisé par les néolibéraux. Nous interprétons ainsi la théorie néolibérale à partir de cette recatégorisation du concept de tradition, et pointons les affinités des positions néolibérales avec le conservatisme philosophique. Ce rapprochement fait apparaître plusieurs tensions conceptuelles entre d’une part un évolutionnisme culturel et d’autre part la défense de valeurs occidentales substantielles. (shrink)

Explanation in terms of gene regulatory networks has become standard practice in evolutionary developmental biology. In this paper, we argue that GRNs fail to provide a robust, mechanistic, and dynamic understanding of the developmental processes underlying the genotype–phenotype map. Explanations based on GRNs are limited by three main problems: the problem of genetic determinism, the problem of correspondence between network structure and function, and the problem of diachronicity, as in the unfolding of causal interactions over time. Overcoming these problems requires (...) dynamic mechanistic explanations, which rely not only on mechanistic decomposition, but also on dynamic modeling to reconstitute the causal chain of events underlying the process of development. We illustrate the power and potential of this type of explanation with a number of biological case studies that integrate empirical investigations with mathematical modeling and analysis. We conclude with general considerations on the relation between mechanism and process in evo-devo. (shrink)

Introduction: Wonder and the births of philosophy -- Socrates' small difficulty -- The wound of wonder -- The death and resurrection of Thaumazein -- The Thales dilemma -- Repetition : Martin Heidegger -- Metaphysics small difficulty -- Wonder and the first beginning -- Wonder and the other beginning -- Theaetetus redux : the ghost of the Pseudes Doxa -- Once again to the cave -- Rethinking Thaumazein -- Openness : Emmanuel Levinas -- Passivity and responsibility -- The ethics of the (...) cave -- Infinity and astonishment -- Opening out : from existent to existence -- Closing down : from existence to existent -- Locking up : totality and infinity -- The phantom of the autrement -- Awakening -- Relation : Jean-Luc Nancy -- The problem of Mitsein -- Mitsein as essential inessentiality -- The myth of essentialism -- Unworking -- Interruption -- Repetition -- Decision : Jacques Derrida -- Thaumazein, the irresponsible, and the undecidable -- Hospitality -- Undecidability revisited -- Much madness is divinest sense (or, who comes after the decision?) -- How to avoid the subject (or, that's not my hedgehog!) -- Undecidability, take three : think here of Kierkegaard -- Mysterium tremendum -- Postlude: Possibility. (shrink)

Explores the teaching and learning of issues relating to the impact of science in society. This title offers practical guidance in devising learning goals and suitable learning and assessment strategies. It helps teachers to provide students with the skills and understanding needed to address these multi-faceted issues.

In Utopias, Dolphins and Computers Mary Midgley brings philosophy into the real world by using it to consider environmental, educational and gender issues. From "Freedom, Feminism and War" to "Artificial Intelligence and Creativity," this book searches for what is distorting our judgement and helps us to see more clearly the dramas which are unfolding in the world around us. Utopias, Dolphins and Computers aims to counter today's anti-intellectualism, not to mention philosophy's twentieth-century view of itself as futile. Mary (...) Midgley explains the point of philosophy: how to do it, why it is needed, what difficulties confront it and what topics need its attention. (shrink)