ZusammenfassungAnhand unterschiedlicher Fallbeispiele aus dem 5. Jahrhundert wird gezeigt, dass die Mobilität barbarischer Verbände in der Regel ein temporäres Phänomen darstellte. Der Alterungsprozess der Kerngruppen kriegerischer mobiler Verbände erhöhte mit der Zeit den Druck auf den Anführer, nach Ansiedlungsmöglichkeiten zu suchen. Der Prozess der Ansiedlung selbst überführte den Anführer einer mobilen Kriegergemeinschaft in die neue Rolle eines Herrschers über ein stehendes Heer. Er war mit enormem ökonomischem Aufwand verbunden und führte offenbar dazu, dass die Herrscher sich verstärkt um dynastische Absicherung (...) bemühten, obwohl eine solche während der liminalen Phase des Übergangs in der Regel zum Scheitern tendierte. (shrink)

In this paper, we draw attention to an unintended but severe side effect of just war thinking: the fact that it can impose barriers to making peace. Investigating historical material concerning a series of conflicts in China during the early twentieth century, we suggest that operating in a just war framework might change actors' identities and interests in a way that makes peacemaking an unavailable action. But since just war theory places significant normative constraints on how long wars can (...) be continued, it might thus be self-defeating, in the sense that those who adopt it may undermine the very goals which it is supposed to serve. Whether this finding calls for a revision of existing ethical frameworks governing warfare will depend on whether there are possible alternatives to just war theory that perform better at reining in unjust violence. (shrink)

Stephen Biddle explores the increasingly blurry lines between international wars and civil wars in the twenty-first century through an analysis of military strategy and tactics across several scena...

When discussing whether or not our elected governments should intervene to end genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity in other countries, the humanitarian intervention debate has largely been assuming that liberal democracies bear no responsibility for the injustice at hand: someone else is committing shameful acts; we are merely considering whether or not we have a positive duty to do something about it. Here I argue that there are important instances in which this dominant third party perspective (...) (TPP) is empirically false and normatively misguided. Much before our positive ?responsibility to protect? potential victims from mass atrocities, we violate our negative duty not to harm these victims. Employing work by Thomas Pogge and Leif Wenar, I argue that this harm currently comes about as our elected governments either buy, or allow our corporations to buy, the world's most precious resources from brutal dictators and warlords, who dominate some of the states that are at the heart of intervention discussions. In these cases, democracies' most immediate duty is not intervention but rather humanitarian disintervention: boycotting severely oppressive regimes, and in particular stopping to recognizing these regimes ? whether dictators or civil warriors ? as possessing legitimate authority to sell their peoples' resources. I begin with a brief survey of the intervention literature, followed by the foundations for the disintervention alternative. I then elaborate the conceptual and practical advantages of disintervention, concluding with thoughts on the reasons for TPP's lasting dominance. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:RusselL on Chinese Civilization 23 RUSSELL ON CHINESE CIVILIZATIONI Yu DONG Ph}losophy / McMaster University Hamilton, Ont., Canada L8s 4K1 1 I am indebted to Nicholas Griffin for his valuable comments and encouragement. I thank Marty Fairbairn and Perer Lovrick for many corrections in the paper. I am also greatly indebred to Ken Blackwell for his helpful criticisms and suggesrions. • (London: Allen & Unwin, 1922), p. 20. 3 (...) Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (Princeron: Princeton U. P.), p. 173· B ertrand Russell arrived in China with Dora Black in October 1920. World War I had deepened his disillusionment with both the capitalist system and Western civilization in general. Seeking a socialist solution, he had visited Soviet Union just a few months before. But he had found that the Communist state there presented an unappealing alternative to the capitalist West in that it treated its citizens as slaves. The sad mood in which he "set out for China to seek a new hope"2 was described in his The Problem of China, published in 1922 after his nine-month visit: "It was on the Volga, in the. summer of 1920, that I first realized how profound is the disease in our Western mentality, which the Bolsheviks are attempting to force upon an essentially Asiatic population, just as Japan and the West are doing in China" (p. 18). The 1920S were a time when China, both as a nation and as a civilization, was in deep trouble. Her young people were eagerly looking outside their country to find a way of saving her. Since the 1840 Opium War, the Western Powers had poured into China, which had been a closed society, at least in Karl Popper's sense,3 for more than 3,000 years. With the collapse of the Qing dynasty in 19I1, China had been thrown into a state of anarchy by feuding warlords. The Great World Powers had both politically and economically dominated China through successive wars with her;4 through demanding indemnities, the cession of territory, fixed tariffs, etc.; and through controlling the corrupt and inept central government and warlords. Meanwhile, China was plagued by famine, piracy, brigandage, incipient rebellion,5 and the failures of various attempts at reform and revolution.6 China was well on the way toward disintegration, divided into "spheres of influence" by Britain, Germany, France, Russia and, especially, Japan. In the 1920S, China was also in the period of the May Fourth Movement-named after a popular student protest on 4 May 1919against foreign imperialism and an impotent Chinese government. It was agitated by the Treaty of Versailles which transferred, at the request ofJapan, the properties and privileges of the German sphere of influence in the Shandong Peninsula to Japan. This movement advocated learning science and adopting democratic principles in order to save China. It is important in Chinese history as a symbol of Chinese awareness of the need for the most profound changes in her tradition. All of these factors constituted the background to Russell's visit to China and thus affected the formation of his distinct view of the problem of China.? The invitation to him was a part of Chinese efforts in seeking methods from the West to save their country. Russell had already been known in China as a great philosopher, not only for his philosophy of logic and science, but also for his views on social problems. Some Chinese had access to his books: Principles ofSocial Reconstruction (1916), Political Ideals (1917), Roads To Freedom (1918), and magazine publication of parts of The Practice and Theory ofBolshevism (1920).8 Considering this background, it is quite understandable why 4 For example, Brirain and France 1856-60, Japan 1894-95, 1914-15. 5 For example, Taiping 1850-65, and the Boxer Rebellion of 1900. 6 The revolution of 1911 actually just changed the name of the government, rather than the reality of society. 7 A detailed description of this background as "psychological roots" can be seen in S. P. Odgen, "The Sage in the Inkpot", Modern Arian Studies, 16 (1982): 529-600. 8 For example, Zhang Shenfu, a student originally majoring in mathematics in Beijing University, had read almost all of... (shrink)

The concept of apocalypse is well established in all the major religions of the world, be they Semitic religions or Hinduism. The underlying idea behind the concept in all the religions remains the same, that is, the world will come to an end. The end itself, which has been called the Judgment Day, Day of Resurrection, or the Day of Retribution or Reckoning will be preceded by some signs. It has also been called the day of Apocalypse, the day when (...) the whole world will be destroyed. One of the distinct forms of it is Muslim Apocalypse about which a lot has been written. However, the argument of the present research paper shall be to examine the concept of the Mahdi primarily from the Shi’te Muslim point of view. The premise of the argument is that Shi’te argument or concept of the Mahdi is far more substantial having a solid theoretical foundation than the other perspectives about it. No wonder, therefore, the concept of the Mahdi has manifested itself in literature across cultures and ages. There are so many poets, primarily, Muslim poets who have highlighted this concept in their poetry and thus the research paper shall make an attempt to look at some of those poets and their understanding of it. (shrink)

This article is based on a public lecture hosted by the Monash University Centre for Human Bioethics in Melbourne, Australia on 11 April 2013. The lecture recording was transcribed by Vicky Ryan; and, the original transcript has been edited — for clarity and brevity — by Vicky Ryan, Michael Selgelid and Jonathan Moreno.

An absorbing introductory treatment of logic, ranging from classic philosophy to the fundamental building blocks of modern electronics.

The military-industrial complex, military operations, and wars are major contributors to exacerbating both climate change and biodiversity crises. However, their environmental impacts are often shadowed due to national security reasons. The current paper aims to go through the devastating impacts of military operations and wars on climate change and biodiversity loss and challenges that hinder the inclusion of military-related activities into environmental crisis mitigation efforts. The information blind spot induced by concerns about national security reasons jeopardizes the efforts (...) to involve the military-industrial complex and military operations in the global climate and biodiversity agendas. Besides that, many military-related challenges, such as specificity of operational requirements and lifecycles, dependence on fossil fuels, complex supply change, inadequate civilian technologies and innovations, and requirements of structural changes, can hinder emission reduction. Meanwhile, wars and conflicts not only threaten to drain all human and material resources available to tackle environmental problems but also inflict long-lasting destructions, pains, and trauma that can lead to hatred and distrust among nations and parties. With the rising hatred and distrust, global agreement and commitment to address climate change and biodiversity will hardly be achieved. Thus, promoting peace is the humanistic and planetary conscience. (shrink)

_Germany and the French Wars of Religion, 1560-1572_ explores how the first decade of the religious wars in France was interpreted by German Protestants and why they felt compelled to intervene.

At a time when scientific knowledge is systematically whisked out of the domain of education and converted into private capital, the essays in this volume are ...

One way to tell the story of contemporary ethics of war is as a gradual expansion of the period of time to which theorists attend in relation to war, from ad bellum and in bello to post bellum and ex bello. Ned Dobos, in his new book, Ethics, Security, and the War-Machine, invites us to expand this attention further to the period between wars, which he calls jus ante bellum. In this essay, I explore two significant implications of this (...) shift in normative focus. First, I argue that it opens up an important and productive field of the ethics of military policy-making outside of conflict, including procurement, training, force posture, and military diplomacy. Second, I argue that attending to the relationship between ante bellum and ad bellum considerations contains the seeds of a powerful pacifist argument. (shrink)

The debates between Bayesian, frequentist, and other methodologies of statistics have tended to focus on conceptual justifications, sociological arguments, or mathematical proofs of their long run properties. Both Bayesian statistics and frequentist (“classical”) statistics have strong cases on these grounds. In this article, we instead approach the debates in the “Statistics Wars” from a largely unexplored angle: simulations of different methodologies’ performance in the short to medium run. We conducted a large number of simulations using a straightforward decision problem (...) based around tossing a coin with unknown bias and then placing bets. In this simulation, we programmed four players, inspired by Bayesian statistics, frequentist statistics, Jon Williamson’s version of Objective Bayesianism, and a player who simply extrapolates from observed frequencies to general frequencies. The last player functions as a benchmark: a statistical methodology should at least outperform a crude form of induction. We focused on the performance of these methodologies in guiding the players towards good decisions. Unlike an earlier simulation study of this type, we found no systematic difference in performance between the Bayesian and frequentist players, provided the Bayesian used a flat prior and the frequentist used a low confidence level. Unlike that study, we were able to use Big Data methods to mitigate problems of random error in the simulation results. The Williamsonian player, who is a novel element of our study, also had no systematic differences in their performance, provided that they use a low confidence level. These players performed similarly even in the very short run, when players were making different decisions. Our study indicates that all three methodologies should be taken seriously by philosophers and practitioners of statistics. However, the frequentist and Williamsonian performed poorly when their confidence levels were high, and the Bayesian was surprisingly harmed by biased priors, providing some unexpected lessons for these methodologies when facing this type of decision problem. (shrink)

A Neuroscientist Offers Evidence of Where the Brain Ends and Consciousness Begins.

Ever since the start of the Corona pandemic, different and often conflicting views have emerged about the virus and how to appropriately deal with it. Such epistemic, societal, and economic criticisms, including those about government imposed measures, have often been dismissed as dangerous forms of conspiratorial disinformation that should be (and have been) excluded from the realm of reasonable political discussion. However, since these critiques of emerging hegemonic knowledge and policies often involve significant and complex questioning of epistemic and political (...) claims, and since corresponding plausibilities change over time, such clear distinctions between correct knowledge and foolish, fraudulent, and/or dangerous, disinformation are not easy to draw. In fact, they can be considered political acts in these epistemic disputes over the pandemic. These conflicts, which we refer to as the “Corona Truth Wars,” are not just about knowledge, but have turned into societal conflicts and even outright identity wars that run through families, circles of friends, organizations, and entire societies. In this special issue, we illuminate these dynamics by bringing together a range of scholars who have been struck by the complexity of these controversies and their far-reaching social consequences. Far from understanding these controversies as simple dichotomies between truth and disinformation, or between disinterested science and manipulative politics, these scholars are interested in the various ways in which these dimensions are intertwined. Building on a long tradition of exploring (scientific) knowledge controversies, the six contributions to this special issue show how epistemic struggles over truth are not only fought in the realm of science, but increasingly manifest and interact in everyday politics, social media platforms, daily talk shows, and family dinners. The scholars brought together in this issue, with diverse disciplinary backgrounds and from different geographical regions (Denmark, France, Germany, the Czech Republic, and Israel), present their studies on the various epistemic and social conflicts that have emerged during the Corona pandemic of the last three years. (shrink)

When considering the persuasive characteristics and prospective influences of Darwin‐skeptic mass media, uncertainties remain about how to reciprocally promote evolutionary theory to skeptical audiences. This study aims to improve evolution advocacy by translating some of the most successful methods of science endorsement to Evolution Wars contexts. In particular, strategies used to address vaccine hesitancies and enhance immunization uptake policies are reinterpreted for those seeking to improve pro‐evolution communications to religious publics. What results are three recommendation categories described as General (...) Guiding Principles, Proximate Interventions, and Auxiliary Interventions. (shrink)

Introduction: Why so serious? -- The super body-politic: nationally assembling Joss Whedon's exceptional The avengers -- "He was deceived by a lie": tragedy and the dark plague of the politics of fear in George Lucas' Star wars -- Dystopian polyvalence: emancipating the mediated life from The matrix.

Introduction: Why so serious? -- The super body-politic: nationally assembling Joss Whedon's exceptional The avengers -- "He was deceived by a lie": tragedy and the dark plague of the politics of fear in George Lucas' Star wars -- Dystopian polyvalence: emancipating the mediated life from The matrix.

It is time to escape the constraints of the Systematics Wars narrative and pursue new questions that are better positioned to establish the relevance of the field in this time period to broader issues in the history of biology and history of science. To date, the underlying assumptions of the Systematics Wars narrative have led historians to prioritize theory over practice and the conflicts of a few leading theorists over the less-polarized interactions of systematists at large. We show (...) how shifting to a practice-oriented view of methodology, centered on the trajectory of mathematization in systematics, demonstrates problems with the common view that one camp straightforwardly “won” over the other. In particular, we critique David Hull’s historical account in Science as a Process by demonstrating exactly the sort of intermediate level of positive sharing between phenetic and cladistic theories that undermines their mutually exclusive individuality as conceptual systems over time. It is misleading, or at least inadequate, to treat them simply as holistically opposed theories that can only interact by competition to the death. Looking to the future, we suggest that the concept of workflow provides an important new perspective on the history of mathematization and computerization in biology after World War II. (shrink)

The events of 11th September 2001 have many meanings. Although seen as a turning point in a number of historical sequences, perhaps their longest-lasting significance will prove to be that they mark the symbolic end to the era of space.. The article explores the consequences of this in terms of global space, which now becomes a new frontierland, where refugees, in a caricature of the new power elite, have come to epitomize extraterritoriality, and where floating coalitions and confluent enmities are (...) both the promoters and beneficiaries of the new global disorder. (shrink)

Over fifteen years have passed since Cora Diamond and James Conant turned Wittgenstein scholarship upside down with the program of “resolute” reading, and ten years since this reading was crystallized in the major collection _The New Wittgenstein_. This approach remains at the center of the debate about Wittgenstein and his philosophy, and this book draws together the latest thinking of the world’s leading Tractatarian scholars and promising newcomers. Showcasing one piece alternately from each “camp”, _Beyond the Tractatus Wars_ pairs newly (...) commissioned pieces addressing differing views on how to understand early Wittgenstein, providing for the first time an arena in which the debate between “strong” resolutists, “mild” resolutists and “elucidatory” readers of the book can really take place. The collection includes famous “samizdat” essays by Warren Goldfarb and Roger White that are finally seeing the light of day. (shrink)

Social scientists often lament the fact that philosophically trained ethicists pay limited attention to the insights they generate. This paper presents an overview of tendencies in sociological and anthropological studies of morality, ethics and bioethics, and suggests that a lack in philosophical interest might be related to a tendency among social scientists to employ either a deficit model (social science perspectives accommodate the sense of context that philosophical ethics lacks), a replacement model (social scientists have finally found the “right way” (...) of doing ethics), or a dismissal model (ethics should be abandoned all together as a misconstrued veil of power). Increased awareness of differences in styles of reasoning and objects of research interest might help to overcome the hostility, and an anthropological project is presented as an invitation to a dialogue informed by awareness of such differences. (shrink)

The central topic for this book is the ethics of treating individuals as though they are members of groups. The book raises many interesting questions, including: Why do we feel so much more strongly about discrimination on certain grounds – e.g. of race and sex - than discrimination on other grounds? Are we right to think that discrimination based on these characteristics is especially invidious? What should we think about ‘rational discrimination’ – ‘discrimination’ which is based on sound statistics? To (...) take just one of dozens of examples from the book. Suppose a landlord turns away a prospective tenant, because this prospective tenant is of a particular ethnicity – arguing that statistics show that one in four of this group have been shown in the past to default on their rent. That seems clearly unfair to people of this ethnicity. But we are routinely being judged in this way – not just on the basis of our ethnicity, but assumptions are made about us and decisions taken about us based on our gender, religion, job, post-code, hobbies, blood-group, nationality, etc. Now suppose that another landlord turns away a convicted criminal, arguing that one in four of convicted criminals have been shown to be unreliable rent payers. Is our intuition the same as before? Should it be? This book is suitable for all students of philosophy, especially those with an interest in applied ethics. (shrink)

The term ‘culture wars’ has been used to describe deep, apparently intractable, disagreements between groups for many years. In contemporary discourse, it refers to disputes regarding significant moral matters carried out in the public square and for which there appears to be no way to achieve consensus or compromise. One set of battle lines is drawn between those who hold traditional Christian commitments and those who do not. Christian bioethics is nested in a set of moral and metaphysical understandings (...) that collide with those of the dominant secular culture. The result is a gulf between a moral life and an approach to bioethics framed in the face of a transcendent God and a final judgment versus a moral life and an approach to bioethics framed as if the world were without ultimate meaning and as if death were the end of personal existence. These approaches are separated by a moral and metaphysical gulf that sustains incompatible life worlds and incompatible understandings of bioethics. Attempts to bridge the gulf with secular reason are ineffective because there is no shared conception of reason or standard of evidence. Efforts to use the state to enforce a particular set of metaphysical and moral commitments, whether secular or religious, lead to public disputes with a war-like character. (shrink)

There are currently between twenty and thirty civil wars worldwide, while at a global level the Cold War has been succeeded by a "war on drugs" and a "war on terror" that continues to rage a decade after 9/11. Why is this, when we know how destructive war is in both human and economic terms? Why do the efforts of aid organizations and international diplomats founder so often? In this important book David Keen investigates why conflicts are so prevalent (...) and so intractable, even when one side has much greater military resources. Could it be that endemic disorder and a "state of emergency" are more useful than bringing conflict to a close? Keen asks who benefits from wars--whether economically, politically, or psychologically—and argues that in order to bring them successfully to an end we need to understand the complex vested interests on all sides. (shrink)

The enduring popularity of Star Wars has much to do with its mythic dimensions. However, there are problems with Joseph Campbell's work on myth and George Lucas's use of Campbell's ideas in Star Wars. Both Campbell and Lucas promote a simplistic view that encourages fans to avoid some darker, more unsettling ideas in Star Wars, which may obscure myth's true power. Campbell remains one of the most famous mythologists, but he was by no means the first. Campbell's (...) influence on Star Wars seems obvious, but the details are difficult to determine, partly because Lucas himself gives different accounts of it. Campbell's monomyth leads us to see similarities between tales and, in so doing, overlooks many significant differences. Tensions between mythos and logos date back to ancient Greek philosophers, if not earlier. The mythic structure of Star Wars has immense hidden power, and this power has a dark side. (shrink)