We attempt to discern what Badioursquo;s philosophical system provides for thinking of education in a form which separates it from its contemporary representation in the state. These notes oppose to this state form Badiou#39;s declaration that #39;the only education is an education by truthsrsquo;. We pursue this in three sections. First, we will address the significance and function of the term lsquo;conditionsrsquo;. Secondly we will address Badioursquo;s essay lsquo;Art and Philosophyrsquo; from Handbook of Inaesthetics, the only essay in fact where (...) Badiou addresses education in a specific manner and in which Badiou discusses the link between art and philosophy in terms of the lsquo;pedagogical themersquo;: A theme, he says, that has been brought to collapse. Thirdly we will attempt to discern what might make up whatnbsp; Badiou refers to as the lsquo;fourth modalityrsquo; of the link between philosophy and its conditions through a somewhat speculative discussion of the dual lsquo;militantrsquo; praxis known in Badioursquo;s work as lsquo;subtractionrsquo; and lsquo;forcingrsquo;. (shrink)

With over 10 000 bases of DNA being sequenced around the world per minute, it is vital that ethical discussion continues to keep pace with genetic research. This contribution by four top theorists in bioethics carefully considers the implications of the many ways genetic information will influence human health and reproduction, by considering “the most basic moral principles that would guide public policy and individual choice concerning the use of genetic interventions in a just and humane society” (4–5). Proceeding with (...) the themes of rights, justice, and harm, problems addressed by the authors include: the significance of the moral difference between treating genetic disease and altering personality characteristics; whether the utilisation of prenatal interventions to avoid disability discriminates against the disabled, and who should have control …. (shrink)

The dictionary shows philosophers at their best (and their worst), at their most perverse and their most elegant. Organised by philosopher, and indexed by thought, concept and phrase, it enables readers to discover who said what, and what was said by whom. Over 300 philosophers are represented, from Aristotle to Zeno, including Einstein, Aquinas, Sartre and De Beauvoir, and the quotations range from short cryptic phrases to longer statements. This Dictionary of Philosophical Quotations d will not change your life. It (...) will change your mind. (shrink)

Father Lonergan, Professor at the Gregorian University in Rome, writes from the conviction that by thoroughly understanding what it is to understand, one will understand the structure of all that is and can be understood. Focussing on insight, the very essence of understanding, Father Lonergan examines illustrations of insight in mathematics, science, common sense, etc., in order to bring the reader to an insight into insight. The sometimes annoyingly prolix discussion is intended to enable the reader to grasp within his (...) own self-consciousness the structure or invariant pattern of all understanding. The advance from lower to higher standpoints of understanding is traced, and a plurality of patterns appropriate to diverse domains, each standpoint of insight exhibiting a structure of understanding correlative to an intelligibility immanent in its subject matter, is acknowledged. Yet Father Lonergan pursues insight until at last he claims to discover the unifying, universal, invariant pattern and hence the ultimate metaphysical intelligibility. This structure or pattern proves to be essentially scholastic in conception, in particular Thomistic; yet the scholasticism Father Lonergan advances contains important revisions in matters of method and content. A carefully argued book, Insight is a remarkable combination of orthodoxy and originality.--A. J. R. (shrink)

. I find it impossible to imagine that this book will not remain indefinitely the very best book of its sort."—Review of Metaphysics "The confrontation or conjunction of Ayer and Russell is a notable event and has produced a remarkable ...

Is a whole something more than the sum of its parts? Are there things composed of the same parts? If you divide an object into parts, and divide those parts into smaller parts, will this process ever come to an end? Can something lose parts or gain new ones without ceasing to be the thing it is? Does any multitude of things (including disparate things such as you, this book, and the tail of a cat) compose a whole of some (...) sort? Questions such as these have occupied us for at least as long as philosophy has existed. They define the field that has come to be known as mereology-the study of all relations of part to whole and of part to part within a whole-and have deep and far-reaching ramifications in metaphysics as well as in logic, the foundations of mathematics, the philosophy of language, the philosophy of science, and beyond. In Mereology, A. J. Cotnoir and Achille C. Varzi have compiled decades of advanced research into a comprehensive, up-to-date, and formally rigorous picture. The early chapters cover the more classical aspects of mereology; the rest of the book deals with variants and extensions. Whether you are an established professional philosopher, an interested student, or a newcomer, inside you will find all the tools you need to join this ever-evolving field of inquiry and theorize about all things mereological. (shrink)

This book outlines the realist and pluralist philosophy of John Anderson, Australia's most original thinker, whose articles and teaching at Sydney University have deeply influenced Australian intellectual life. Several main themes run though his work, but Anderson never gave an overall account of his views. This is remedied here: in exhibiting the range of Anderson's thought, from logic, epistemology and theory of mind, to language and social theory, Baker's work sketches realism as a systematic philosophical position and shows something of (...) the history of ideas in Australia. This book will be of particular interest to historians of modern philosophy and those studying realism. (shrink)

Certification for biofuels has been developed to ensure that biofuel production methods adhere to social and environmental sustainability standards. As such, requiring biofuel production to be certified has become part of EU policy through the 2009 renewable energy directive, that aims to promote energy security, reduce emissions and promote rural development. According to the EU RED, in 2020 10 % of our transport energy should come from renewable sources, most of which are expected to be biofuels. In this paper I (...) examine what biofuel certificates are, what they can achieve and what their limitations are. Methodologically, I will evaluate them using the standards of instrumental, practical and communicative rationality. With regard to instrumental rationality, I conclude that the EU RED makes an important but unjustified assumption in demanding certified biofuels for its target: that if biofuel production is sustainable, then biofuel use is too. I also argue that, where the EU assumes that biofuel certification is a sufficient means to achieve the EU RED’s goals, it is at best an insufficient means and at worst not a means at all towards achieving these goals. With regard to practical rationality, I argue that more attention needs to be paid to trade-offs between different goals in the EU RED, particularly with regard to providing investor security and not capping transport energy consumption. With regard to communicative rationality, I argue that the policy-making process of the EU RED has been seriously flawed, and that certification development processes also can improve significantly. (shrink)

I want to discuss a view of punishment which stresses its ‘expressive’ character and seeks in that its justification. While I shall label this view ‘expressionism’, I should warn that most theorists who express an ‘expressionist’ view do not present it as an exhaustive account, but rather claim to be highlighting an aspect that tends to be neglected within the rationalist framework common to retributivism and utilitarianism. Among contemporary writings I shall focus on Joel Feinberg's article, ‘The Expressive Function of (...) Punishment’ in The Monist 49, No. 4 . While I accept that ‘expression’ usefully sums up much of what underlies punitive practices, I shall urge that the term conceals a variety of more or less amalgamated ingredients which need to be disentangled for critical inspection. I shall argue that under those aspects, punishment's justification continues to be elusive. I do not imagine that these arguments will deter my more punitive colleagues from continuing to seek such justification, but I hope they will search elsewhere. Feinberg writes: Punishment is a conventional device for the expression of attitudes of resentment and indignation, and of judgments of disapproval and reprobation, either on the part of the punishing authority himself or of those ‘in whose name’ the punishment is inflicted. Punishment, in short, has a symbolic significance largely missing from other kinds of penalties. (shrink)

One of the most famous inscriptions to have survived from ancient Rome is the acta of the Ludi Saeculares of 17 b.c., and one of the most evocative of all epigraphic sentences occupies a line to itself : Carmen composuit Q. Horatius Flaccus. This reference to the author of the Carmen Saeculare, says Fraenkel, ‘was the result of a carefully considered decision of the highest authorities’. The degree of careful consideration is initially evident from the prominent positioning of the poet's (...) name directly above those of Augustus and Agrippa in the following line. It will also be noticed that the sentence concludes with a clausula which is one of Cicero's favourites. A further refinement emerges, however, if the poet's name is spelled out in full, something precluded by the naming conventions of the inscription:Cārmēn cōmpŏsŭīt ´ Quīntŭs Hŏrātĭūs | Flaccus.The inscribed sentence incorporates an Asclepiad line, the ‘signature’ metre of Odes 1–3, which are framed by Horace's only two poems in stichic Asclepiads. In identifying the author of the Carmen Saeculare, the sentence also acknowledges the collection of poems which won him the commission. (shrink)

People disagree about whether “moral facts” are objective facts like mathematical truths (moral realism) or simply products of the human mind (moral antirealism). What is the impact of different meta-ethical views on actual behavior? In Experiment 1, a street canvasser, soliciting donations for a charitable organization dedicated to helping impoverished children, primed passersby with realism or antirealism. Participants primed with realism were twice as likely to be donors, compared to control participants and participants primed with antirealism. In Experiment 2, online (...) participants primed with realism as opposed to antirealism reported being willing to donate more money to a charity of their choice. Considering the existence of non-negotiable moral facts may have raised the stakes and motivated participants to behave better. These results therefore reveal the impact of meta-ethics on everyday decision-making: priming a belief in moral realism improved moral behavior. (shrink)

A major new interpretation of the Declaration of Independence and of the philosophical background of Thomas Jefferson at the time of its composition. Garry Wills attempts to reconstruct the intellectual atmosphere in the 18th century, and by attending to Jefferson’s draft of the Declaration in comparison with the revised draft adopted by Congress, he seeks to show that Jefferson was deeply influenced in his thought and phrasing not by John Locke, as the standing interpretation of Carl Becker holds, but (...) by the Scottish philosopher of moral sense, Francis Hutcheson. Wills’s book, then, is not only a byproduct of the recent Bicentennial, but also a contribution to the growing literature on the Scottish Enlightenment and on the role of Scottish philosophy in American intellectual history. (shrink)

I am very much honoured to have been asked to make the closing speech at this Conference. Since this is the first time for over fifty years that a philosophical congress of this scope has been held in England, I hope that you will think it suitable for me to devote my lecture to the revival of the empiricist tradition in British philosophy during this century. I shall begin by examining the contribution of the Cambridge philosopher G. E. Moore. Though (...) he first owed his fame to his book Principia Ethica regarded as a work of genius by the Cambridge Apostles and their associates in Bloomsbury, who did not venture to question Moore's mistaken view of ‘good’ as an unanalysable non-natural quality, his reputation now chiefly rests on his subsequent defence of common sense. (shrink)

Does the pursuit of ideals of global justice mean we must relinquish exclusive territorial rights and, in particular, exclusive resource rights? Cosmopolitans have assumed that it does. In this rich and thoughtful book, Cara Nine runs against the tide of much thinking on global justice and pursues the provocative suggestion that if we take territorial rights to be fundamental elements in a theory of global justice, then there will be circumstances where resource inequality can be justified. Nine does not so (...) much deny the claims of global justice, as assert the centrality of territory in any theory of a globally just world. (shrink)

This article introduces a new formulation of the interest theory of rights. The focus is on ‘Bentham’s test’, which was devised by Matthew Kramer to limit the expansiveness of the interest theory. According to the test, a party holds a right correlative to a duty only if that party stands to undergo a development that is typically detrimental if the duty is breached. The article shows how the entire interest theory can be reformulated in terms of the test. The article (...) then focuses on a further strength of the interest theory, brought to the fore by the new formulation. In any Western legal system, the tortious maltreatment of a child or a mentally disabled individual results in a compensatory duty. The interest theory can account for such duties in a simple and elegant way. The will theory, on the other hand, struggles to explain such compensatory duties unless it abandons some of its main tenets. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Bridge From Analysis to Action:Psychodynamic Analyses of Religion and Michael S. Hogue's American ImmanenceAJ Turner (bio)I. IntroductionThe purpose of this essay is to work constructively with Michael S. Hogue's groundbreaking American Immanence: Democracy for an Uncertain World to demonstrate how psychodynamic analyses of religion are essential theoretical allies in the fight for resilient democracy. The "revolution in mind"1 that psychodynamic approaches contribute, especially in their analyses of religion, (...) both complements and complicates socio-political theory as a whole. In the improvisational spirit of "yes-and," the goal here is not to identify and decry the failures and shortcomings of Hogue's theopolitical vision but rather to inspire the recovery of a sibling discourse—a kind of "rebirth of a forgotten alternative"2—that also draws deeply from the American immanental tradition in order to add psychodynamic depth to Hogue's timely and important analysis. Psychodynamic theories of religion shed light on how symbolic identifications, including and especially ultimate concerns, structure personal and collective experience. By engaging religion and theology sympathetically, constructively, and creatively, theorists such as Rollo May, Gordon Allport, Karen Horney, Erich Fromm, and Ernest Becker departed from the skepticism, reductionism, and dismissal that characterized psychoanalytic analyses of religion in the wake of Freud.3 Each of these figures, and especially Becker whose work will be a focus in this essay, are noteworthy interlocutors for extending Hogue's theopolitical theorizing of resilient democracy, particularly in how they drew unique inspiration from the American immanental tradition [End Page 44] in their social analyses. In this respect, they provide a more robust theorization of the psychosocial conditions of the associational ethos needed to connect Hogue's conception of resilient democracy with forms of agonistic organization and democratic activism. Briefly stated, psychodynamic approaches are a helpful bridge for connecting these proposals to strategies of organization, their impediments, and collective action.In this way, both psychodynamic analyses of religion and Hogue's theopolitical innovation insist that no revolutionary political change is possible, and certainly not of the kind or scale needed to counter our wickedly entangled global crises, without a deep engagement with theological imaginaries. They differ, however, in their theoretical aims. Whereas Hogue compellingly argues for the political upshot of a theology deriving from the American immanental tradition, psychodynamic analysts of religion focus on the function of ultimate concerns in individual and collective life. In other words, American Immanence rests on a methodology of analyzing the philosophical and theological assumptions that have contributed to our climate crises and then presenting clear and compelling articulation of an alternative paradigm meant to open up new ways of being. In contrast psychodynamic analyses leverage conceptual clarity of psychic reality for the fundamentally therapeutic aim of transformation. At their best, both approaches share what could be called an etiological orientation to ontological questions in order to provide liberative alternatives through rational understanding and clarification, but the terrain, and thus the problems they hope to mitigate in their analyses are focused differently. Extending the visual metaphor, they are different lenses highlighting different areas of the same landscape. Furthermore, it must be said that neither are sufficient in themselves, but the psychodynamic theorists of religion to be highlighted in this essay share deeply with Hogue's heading in American Immanence.II. A Problematic AssumptionIn emphasizing and attempting to explain4 the role of non-rational processes in the both individual and social processes of perception and organization of experience, psychodynamic theories confound a widely held and problematic assumption that the triumph of rational analysis is the hallmark for building the society to which we should aspire. Political theory in general, [End Page 45] especially as it has taken its cues from a rationalist legacy about the inherently liberating force of Reason, has been weighted toward an assumption that its task of exposing the mystifications of power would suffice in inspiring more "rational" and therefore necessarily equitable social organization. This speaks to the longstanding socio-political interest in "consciousness raising" tactics, which are often meant to dispel "false consciousness." It even comes across in the emphases of Deweyan pragmatists on education. Psychologists of all stripes point out that this approach... (shrink)

Taking Australia as a case study that is relevant to all countries where public integrity is an issue, this collection reviews a variety of existing efforts to understand, 'map' and evaluate the effectiveness of integrity policies and institutions, not just in the government sector but across all the major institutions of modern society. It will be of interest to those in governance, politics, law and public policy.

I do not approach the question of free will as a scientist, like Colin Blakemore, or a lawyer, like David Hodgson, or philosopher, like Daniel Dennett, but as a priest -- someone who feels responsible for my own actions and who is called upon to counsel and absolve such as come to me with their shame and their guilt. Should I say that their sense of responsibility is illusory? Or should I encourage them to accept responsibility, and then to deal (...) with it in the various ways -- religious, psychological and practical -- that are open to them? (shrink)

First published in 1912, and originally intended as a textbook for students in secondary school, this book gives an overview of the human and physical geography of the occupied areas of the earth's surface. The text is richly illustrated with diagrams, tables, and contemporary photographs of places of interest. Although in general Dicks manages to rise above the colonial viewpoint prevalent at the time, certain aspects of the text are reflective of racial attitudes during this period of the twentieth century. (...) This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the history of education. (shrink)

This essay contains material which will hopefully be of interest not only to philosophers, but also to those social scientists whose research concerns the analysis of communication, verbal or non-verbal. Although most of the topics taken up here are central to issues in the philosophy of language, they are, in my opinion, indistinguishable from topics in descriptive social psychology. The essay aims to provide a conceptual framework within which various key aspects of communication can be described, and it presents a (...) formal language, using techniques from modern modal logic, in which such descriptions can themselves be formulated. It is my hope that this framework, or parts of it, might also turn out to be of value in future empirical work. There are, therefore, essentially two sides to this essay: the development of a framework of concepts, and the construction of a formal language rich enough to express the elements of which that framework is composed. The first of these two takes its point of departure in the statement quoted from Lewis (1972) on the page preceding this introduction. The distinction drawn there by Lewis is accepted as a working hypothesis, and in one sense this essay may be seen as an attempt to explore some of the consequences of that hypothesis. (shrink)

This work, a reworked doctoral thesis written for Roland Bainton at the Yale Divinity School, begins with an announcement of a specific scholarly purpose: "To clarify the relationship between the clergy and the magistracy which grew out of Zwingli's reforming work at Zurich... the main focus of the study is upon the early stages of Zwingli's career at Zurich.... The ensuing study accepts the assumption that Zwingli believed in a Christian society ruled by two God-ordained officers, the magistrate and the (...) pastor, and asks 'What place did Zwingli assign to the magistrate and the clergy in order to realize the rule of God?'" Using as his model the German habilitations schrift, the author exhausts every possible aspect of Zwingli's theological and political thought. All of Zwinglian scholarship is summarized here, and problems in Zwingli's thought are dealt with emphasizing its development and its contradictions. Basically Walton argues that most of the scholarship about Zwingli is wrong because it assumes that Zwingli advocated domination of the government by the clergy. Zwingli was a defender of a theory of government which envisaged a co-operation between the spiritual and secular authority in a Christian society in order to realize the will of God. Walton finds that Zwingli's success in reforming Zurich was based upon the fact that his formulation of a Church-State detente conformed to pre-existing conditions in that city. Zurich was dominated by a corporate form of government which had already permitted the magistracy to take on a semi-sacral character. Zwingli, Walton argues, fit his theory of government to the conditions as they existed at Zurich. This is a book for Zwingli aficionados. It is an example of extremely well-done Continental scholarship: precise, insightful, and dry. No doubt the work has already become a definitive work on Zwingli's notion of theocracy.--W. A. J. (shrink)

Was die Frage nach der Funktion der Sprache im Erkenntnisprozeß betrifft, haben wir zuerst die verschiedenen Theorien dargestellt. Nach einer Reihe alleinstehender Personen wie Derbolav, Bühler, Jost, Glinz behandeln wir die Strömungen der symbolischen Logik und der linguistic analysis. Die symbolische Logik will das Denken in einer logischen Modellsprache analysieren. Die linguistic Analysis betrachtet die gewöhnliche Umgangssprache als Trägerin des Denkens und will, daß alle Philosophen und Wissenschaftler sich in dieser gewöhnlichen Umgangssprache ausdrücken, die bei guter Analyse für jeden intelligenten (...) Menschen verständlich ist. Die Strömungen der Phänomenologie und des Existentialismus äußern die Erfahrung, daß der Mensch seine Existenz ganz in einer sprechenden Welt erfährt und daß sich seine Existenz in der Sprache vollzieht : die Sprache ist das Haus seines Daseins. Keine Sache kann in unserem Bewußtsein zur Existenz gelangen, wenn wir sie nicht zu Wort bringen können. Die Ethnolinguisten und Psycholinguisten sind zu dem Ergebnis gekommen, daß die Formen, in denen ein Mensch jeweils denkt, von den unerbittlichen und unentrinnbaren Strukturen der Wörter mit ihren Bedeutungen und den Strukturen der Wortkombinationen kontrolliert werden. Diese Strukturen sind die Strukturen der jeweiligen Muttersprache. Das Denken eines Menschen vollzieht sich in seiner Sprache. Die Strukturen der Sprache liefern die Modelle für das Denken, für die Analyse der Eindrücke. Unser ganzes Denken bewegt sich in einer denkerisch-sprachigen Welt. Jedes Denken muß sich in Sprachstrukturen kanalisieren lassen. Die Sprache ist das formgebende Organ des Denkens. Die Denkanalyse vollzieht sich in Sprache. In einem bestimmten Augenblick der Entwicklung des Kindes begegnen sich Sprache und Denken ; dann wird das Denken „sprachig” und das Sprechen „denkerisch”. Von nun an werden die meisten Reize der physischen Welt durch ein sprachiges zweites Reizsystem gefiltert ; die Reize werden „in Sprache übersetzt”. Dieser Sprachfilter ist auch in der Analyse nach der dynamischen Erfassung der Reize vorhanden. Diese Daten aus den Theorien der Linguistic Analysis, der Phänomenologie, des Existentialismus, der Ethnolinguistik und Psycholinguistik kann man in direkte Verbindung bringen mit der neoklassischien Theorie, die über ein Erfassen von Erkenntnis-Daten in einer Intuition spricht, die implizit die Möglichkeit zu einem Explizitieren und Analysieren enthält. Somit kommen wir zu folgendem Schema : Reize, sprachiger Empfangsapparat ↓ Erfassung der Reize, Konzeption, Sicht ↓ Denk-Sprachanalyse ↓ Die phonische Äußerung der Denk-Sprachanalyse. Zum Schluß geben wir noch ein Beispiel für eine Kons ta tierungs-Sicht, Ihre Denk-Sprachanalyse und die phonische Äußerung ihrer Denk-Sparchanalyse. (shrink)

Coady explores the challenges that morality poses to politics. He confronts the complex intellectual tradition known as realism, which seems to deny any relevance of morality to politics, especially international politics. He argues that, although realism has many serious faults, it has lessons to teach us: in particular, it cautions us against the dangers of moralism in thinking about politics and particularly foreign affairs. Morality must not be confused with moralism: Coady characterizes various forms of moralism and sketches their distorting (...) influence on a realistic political morality. He seeks to restore the concept of ideals to an important place in philosophical discussion, and to give it a particular pertinence in the discussion of politics. He deals with the fashionable idea of "dirty hands," according to which good politics will necessarily involve some degree of moral taint or corruption. Finally, he examines the controversial issue of the role of lying and deception in politics. Along the way Coady offers illuminating discussion of historical and current political controversies. This lucid book will provoke and stimulate anyone interested in the interface of morality and politics. (shrink)

Legal theorists are familiar with John Finnis's book Natural Law and Natural Rights, but usually overlook his interventions in US constitutional debates and his membership of a group of conservative Catholic thinkers, the 'new natural lawyers', led by theologian Germain Grisez. In fact, Finnis has repeatedly advocated conservative positions concerning lesbian and gay rights, contraception and abortion, and his substantive moral theory derives from Grisez. Bamforth and Richards provide a detailed explanation of the work of the new natural lawyers within (...) and outside the Catholic Church - the first truly comprehensive explanation available to legal theorists - and criticize Grisez's and Finnis's arguments concerning sexuality and gender. New natural law is, they argue, a theology rather than a secular theory, and one which is unappealing in a modern constitutional democracy. This book will be of interest to legal and political theorists, ethicists, theologians and scholars of religious history. (shrink)

A number of recent papers have described the successful derivation of egg and sperm precursor cells from mouse embryonic stem cells—so-called “artificial” gametes. Although many scientific questions remain, this research suggests numerous new possibilities for stem cell research and assisted reproductive technology, if a similar breakthrough is achieved with human embryonic stem cells. The novel opportunities raised by artificial gametes also prompt new ethical questions, such as whether same-sex couples should be able to access this technology to have children who (...) are genetically related to them both.THE CREATION OF “ARTIFICIAL” GAMETESOver the past two years, a number of papers have been published detailing the first successful attempts at differentiating mouse embryonic stem cells into egg1 and sperm2 precursor cells. Previously, researchers had used embryonic stem cells to generate tissues such as brain, liver, and pancreatic cells, but not germ cells of any kind. Production of gamete precursor cells was achieved initially through allowing stem cell lines to differentiate more or less randomly, but recent research has focused on identifying the precise ways in which differentiation into gametes can be precipitated and controlled. These breakthroughs make it seem likely that ongoing research on human stem cells will yield similar possibilities,3 raising questions over the practicalities of what might be achieved with such “artificial” gametes. In turn, the novel opportunities presented by artificial gametes raise a number of ethical concerns.The initial breakthrough, namely the obtaining of egg cells from mouse stem cells, was achieved by means of relatively simple science. Rather than coaxing stem cells to develop into eggs using complicated cocktails of growth factors, researchers adopted standard cell culture conditions, but grew the cells at higher density than usual.3–6 Growing the cells in this way led to the formation of ovary-like cell aggregates, which (when separated and stimulated with …. (shrink)

The experimental and highly regarded Gifford Lectures at Edinburgh University was endowed in the late nineteenth century. Over the years, participants have including many leading representatives of religion, science, and philosophy. This series has as its subject, The Development of Mind. First published in 1972, the series continues to attract widespread interest. In this volume, contributors argue about the mind from diverse analytical standpoints. The focus of the series remains the relationship between religion, science, and philosophy. This volume attempts to (...) achieve a comprehensive view of the subject of mind. The mental development of children in the light of modern psychology is discussed, and the distinction between "how" and "why" questions is put forward with clarity. The development of mind is further contrasted with the evolution of embryos in the young. The mind is considered as a capacity for intellectual activity, and as a multi-purpose program. Goal-directed behavior and language development are given importance, and issues of cosmic purpose, and the how and why of evolution, are never far from the surface of the argument. The lecturers know their opposition and their positions, and the cut-and-thrust of the discussion has much acumen and wit to it. Issues ranging from the impact of mind on theories of religion, causation, and rational will are examined in an informal, yet compelling, manner. (shrink)

K. J. Mckay includes Sappho i u in his interesting discussion of doors that open spontaneously at the advent of a god. He glides without mention over the fact that workmen are ordered to do the opening and that the workmen's task—an extensive one, justifying a use of the plural —is not simply to open the door but to increase the whole structure's height (). Later in his essay , while discussing Psalm 24, McKay remembers that the idea of gates (...) opening upward is found in Oriental literature, not in Greek. It is odd that, three pages earlier, he forgot to apply this information to Sappho. (shrink)

A good story bears retelling many times, and an appreciative audience will delight in debating its finer points; each participant is – of course – always convinced that only his memory, his understanding, of what the author said is the correct one.

When Huck Finn embarks upon his hilarious education of the slave Jim in the moral vagaries of the monarchies of Europe, he takes himself to be propounding the merest common sense. He may have thought large‐scale villainy restricted to autocracies, but his creator was clearly not so naive. More to the present point, Huck ends his discourse on princely rule with remarks that show he was not merely cataloguing the fact of widespread royal vice, but willing to countenance it as (...) necessary. As he puts it, ‘kings is kings, and you got to make allowances. Take them all around, they're a mighty ornery lot’. (shrink)

This edited work collates novel contributions on contemporary topics that are related to human rights. The essays address analytic-descriptive questions, such as what legal personality actually means, and normative questions, such as who or what should be recognised as a legal person. As is well-known among jurists, the law has a special conception of personhood: corporations are persons, whereas slaves have traditionally been considered property rather than persons. This odd state of affairs has not garnered the interest of legal theorists (...) for a while and the theory of legal personhood has been a relatively peripheral topic in jurisprudence for at least 50 years. As readers will see, there have recently been many developments and debates that justify a theoretical investigation of this topic. Animal rights activists have been demanding that some animals be recognized as legal persons. The field of robotics has prompted questions about driverless cars: should they be granted a limited legal personality, so that the car itself would be responsible for damages? This book explores such concepts and touches on matters of bioethics, animal law and medical law. It includes matters of legal history and appeals to both legal scholars and philosophers, especially those with an interest in theories of law and the philosophy of law. (shrink)

In the sense in which astronomy or botany are sciences, philosophy is not a science. Philosophers have theories, but their theories do not enable them to make predictions; they can not be empirically confirmed or refuted in the way that scientific theories can. But, it will be objected, this is not true of all the sciences. Palaeontologists do not make predictions: in pure mathematics there is no appeal to experience. But even if they are not predictive the propositions which figure (...) in the historical sciences are at any rate empirically testable: and even if the propositions of pure mathematics are not confutable by observation, they are subject to recognized methods of proof. There are standard procedures for deciding whether they are true or false. But where in philosophy are such procedures to be found? If anywhere, in formal logic which has come very close to mathematics. Nowadays, indeed, it is hardly possible to draw a line between them. But by the very process of becoming a science, formal logic detaches itself from philosophy. Philosophers do indeed make use of formal logic. They employ deductive arguments; sometimes they are able to take advantage of the economy and precision of logical symbolism. But the premises on which they reason, the propositions which the use of logical symbolism helps them to state more clearly, are not themselves drawn from formal logic. The truths which can be established by formal logic alone are not philosophical. (shrink)

Stakeholder involvement in design is desirable from both a practical and an ethical point of view. It is difficult to do well, however, and some problems recur again and again, both of a practical nature, e.g. stakeholders acting strategically rather than openly, and of an ethical nature, e.g. power imbalances unduly affecting the outcome of the process. Hidden Design has been proposed as a method to deal with the practical problems of stakeholder involvement. It aims to do so by taking (...) the observation of stakeholder actions, rather than the outcomes of a deliberative process, as its input. Furthermore, it hides from stakeholders the fact that a design process is taking place so that they will not behave differently than they otherwise would. Both aspects of Hidden Design have raised ethical worries. In this paper I make an ethical analysis of what it means for a design process to leave participants uninformed or deceived rather than acquiring their informed consent beforehand, and to use observation of actions rather than deliberation as input for design, using Hidden Design as a case study. This analysis is based on two sets of normative guidelines: the ethical guidelines for psychological research involving deception or uninformed participants from two professional psychological organisations, and Habermasian norms for a fair and just process. It supports the conclusion that stakeholder involvement in design organised in this way can be ethically acceptable, though under a number of conditions and constraints. (shrink)

IF it is true that ‘all authentic philosophy is autobiographic‘. and that consequently one must understand the history of a man in order to understand his thought, it is obvious that no one, who has not shared the same national life, can fully enter into the living thoughts of a man like Newman, ‘an Englishman to the backbone’. That is why the remark was made in one of the debates at the Third International Newman Conference held in Luxembourg in 1964 (...) about the irreplaceable function of British scholarship in the study and evaluation of Newman. The process which Newman so admirably described of the development of an idea in the social sphere of either Church or State in his famous Essay is equally and perhaps more fundamentally true of the mind of the individual: we grow constantly towards maturer views—true or false—because of innumerable influences, impressions, tendencies ‘in the air’, ‘floating opinions’, principles surrounding us and the more powerful minds, if they express themselves strikingly, will influence the social scene, perhaps unconsciously or even unwillingly, from the mighty platform of public media of communication or via small circles of devoted friends, in a thousand ways which we have hardly begun to trace and of which many will remain totally hidden. The flux is so constant and so multifarious that we wonder how we can speak of historicity, but there it is: one fine day the entire world arose and found itself Arian. Newman lived very actively and intensely and for a long time in one of the very centres of the intellectual life of a great nation. ‘Universities are the natural centres of intellectual movements‘. Thus the remark made on the continent was the expression of the honest realisation of an essential handicap in foreign scholars. They asked for help in a matter they could not possibly supply themselves, and we are happy to be able to say that this help is generously supplied. It is precisely one of the aims of this article to consider some of the results. Though all this is undoubtedly true we are still facing the fact that: ‘in England Newman never seems quite to make it’. What forces bring this about? (shrink)

Living-donor kidney transplantation is the “gold standard” treatment for many individuals with end-stage renal failure. Superior outcomes for the graft and the transplant recipient have prompted the implementation of new strategies promoting living-donor kidney transplantation, and the number of such transplants has increased considerably over recent years. Living donors are undoubtedly exposed to risk. In his editorial “underestimating the risk in living kidney donation”, Walter Glannon suggests that more data on long-term outcomes for living donors are needed to determine whether (...) this risk is permissible and the extent to which physicians and transplant surgeons should promote living-donor kidney transplantation.1 In this paper I argue that it is not clear that medical professionals have underestimated this risk, nor is it clear that more data on long-term outcomes are needed in order to determine whether it is permissible for individual autonomous agents to expose themselves to this or, indeed, any risk. The global shortage of organs available for transplantation ultimately means that every year thousands of individuals who value their life die needlessly. This is an unacceptable loss of human life. Saving life is one of the most wonderful things an individual can do for another. Promoting any strategy that will assist in saving life and preventing human suffering within acceptable moral limits is legitimate. (shrink)

An outgrowth of the Bicentennial. White examines the metaphysics, epistemology, and moral philosophy which influenced American revolutionary thought. Focusing on the doctrines of self-evident truth and natural law expressed in the Declaration of Independence, he elucidates them by erudite explications and critical analyses of such 17th and 18th century thinkers as John Locke, Francis Hutcheson, and Jean Jacques Burlamaqui. Traditional interpretations, best represented by Carl Becker’s The Declaration of Independence, have stressed the role of Locke. More recently, intellectual historians have (...) reassessed the Scottish influence on American thought, apparent in White’s own Science & Sentiment in America, chap. 3, and in Garry Wills’s Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. Wills claims for Hutcheson the place formerly reserved for Locke as the philosopher who most directly shaped Jefferson’s thought and style in the Declaration. Now White makes a case for the neglected 18th century Swiss legal philosopher, Jean Jacques Burlamaqui. (shrink)

The letters are constant in the tradition of 1. 19 and must be taken as genuine. It follows that we have to do either with ‘lead’ or with one of its compounds. At any rate nobody has found another word of like appearance that will fit the context.Since the first publication of P. Oxy. xxi.

Linda Zagzebski’s book on epistemic authority is an impressive and stimulating treatment of an important topic. 1 I admire the way she manages to combine imagination, originality and argumentative control. Her work has the further considerable merit of bringing analytic thinking and abstract theory to bear upon areas of concrete human concern, such as the attitudes one should have towards moral and religious authority. The book is stimulating in a way good philosophy should be -- provoking both disagreement and emulation. (...) I agree with much of what she says, and have been instructed by it, but it will be of more interest and relevance here if I concentrate upon areas of disagreement. Perhaps they are better seen as areas, at least some of them, where her emphases suggest a position that seems to me untenable, but that she may not really intend. In that event, I will be happy to have provoked a clarification or the dispelling of my misunderstanding. My focus will be upon problems in her account of communal authority and autonomy, especially with respect to religious and political authority. Here my worry is that she places too much trust in trust and not enough in what I call selective mistrust. (shrink)

Every action, touch, utterance, and look, every listening, taste, smell, and feel is a living question; but it is no ordinary propositional one-by-one question, rather it is a plenisentient sensing and probing non-propositional enquiry about how our world is, in its present continuous sense, and in relation to how we anticipate its becoming. I will take this assumption as my first premise and, by using the notion of enkinaesthesia, I will explore the ways in which an agent’s affectively-saturated co-engagement with (...) its world establishes patterns of co-articulation of meaning within the anticipatory affective dynamics and the experiential entanglement necessary for expedient action and adaptation. In advancing this thesis I will reject the minimalist notions of embodiment by amplifying and extending the claims made by the most radical of the embodied mind theories. Crucially, I will offer a new wave of embodiment theory which has at its core the radical extension of sensorimotor affect into the life and being of other agents where their experience is for us both direct and immediate. This I will present as an immanent intercorporeality. (shrink)

Context: Neurophenomenology is a relatively new field, with scope for novel and informative approaches to empirical questions about what structural parallels there are between neural activity and phenomenal experience. Problem: The overall aim is to present a method for examining possible correlations of neurodynamic and phenodynamic structures within the structurally-coupled work of Alexander Technique practitioners with their pupils. Method: This paper includes the development of an enkinaesthetic explanatory framework, an overview of the salient aspects of the Alexander Technique, and the (...) presentation of an elicitation interview technique as part of a neurophenomenological method. It will propose a way of testing the hypothesis that if, in the effective practice of Alexander Technique, there is a union between the nervous systems of teacher and pupil, it should be visible neurologically and affective phenomenologically, and thus it should be possible to investigate both its neural and phenomenal signatures. Results: The proposed means of testing the hypothesis is to use the elicitation interview technique alongside neural monitoring during the teaching of the Alexander Technique in four paired sets of subjects. Constructivist content: At the heart of this paper is the claim that all activity is co-activity. I make no assumption of an ontological primacy of mental or physical, or explanatory primacy of any methodology. Implications: This has important ramifications for somatic education and therapies, for establishing frameworks of co-engagement and care in health-care situations, and for understanding empathy. (shrink)

In this paper we consider the concept of a self-aware agent. In cognitive science agents are seen as embodied and interactively situated in worlds. We analyse the meanings attached to these terms in cognitive science and robotics, proposing a set of conditions for situatedness and embodiment, and examine the claim that internal representational schemas are largely unnecessary for intelligent behaviour in animats. We maintain that current situated and embodied animats cannot be ascribed even minimal self-awareness, and offer a six point (...) definition of embeddedness, constituting minimal conditions for the evolution of a sense of self. This leads to further analysis of the nature of embodiment and situatedness, and a consideration of whether virtual animats in virtual worlds could count as situated and embodied. We propose that self-aware agents must possess complex structures of self-directed goals; multi-modal sensory systems and a rich repertoire of interactions with their worlds. Finally, we argue that embedded agents will possess or evolve local co-ordinate systems, or points of view, relative to their current positions in space and time, and have a capacity to develop an egocentric space. None of these capabilities are possible without powerful internal representational capacities. (shrink)

Recently at least two papers1,2have appeared that look at cancer from an evolutionary perspective. That cancer has a negative effect on fitness needs no argument. However, cancer origination is not an isolated process, but the potential for it is linked in diverse ways to other genetically determined developmental events, complicating the way selection acts on it, and through it on the evolution of development. The two papers take a totally different line. Kavanagh argues that anti‐cancer selection has led to developmental (...) constraints. Leroi et al. argue that cancer is a side‐effect of recent evolutionary changes that usually will disappear over time through anti‐cancer selection. Here we place the papers in a wider perspective, and in so doing discuss various alternative developmental links cancer may have together with their evolutionary implications. BioEssays 25:1035–1039, 2003. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Father Lonergan, Professor at the Gregorian University in Rome, writes from the conviction that by thoroughly understanding what it is to understand, one will understand the structure of all that is and can be understood. Focussing on insight, the very essence of understanding, Father Lonergan examines illustrations of insight in mathematics, science, common sense, etc., in order to bring the reader to an insight into insight. The sometimes annoyingly prolix discussion is intended to enable the reader to grasp within his (...) own self-consciousness the structure or invariant pattern of all understanding. The advance from lower to higher standpoints of understanding is traced, and a plurality of patterns appropriate to diverse domains, each standpoint of insight exhibiting a structure of understanding correlative to an intelligibility immanent in its subject matter, is acknowledged. Yet Father Lonergan pursues insight until at last he claims to discover the unifying, universal, invariant pattern and hence the ultimate metaphysical intelligibility. This structure or pattern proves to be essentially scholastic in conception, in particular Thomistic; yet the scholasticism Father Lonergan advances contains important revisions in matters of method and content. A carefully argued book, Insight is a remarkable combination of orthodoxy and originality.--A. J. R. (shrink)

In this short paper I will introduce an idea which, I will argue, presents a fundamental additional challenge to the machine consciousness community. The idea takes the questions surrounding phenomenology, qualia and phenomenality one step further into the realm of intersubjectivity but with a twist, and the twist is this: that an agent’s intersubjective experience is deeply felt and necessarily co-affective; it is enkinaesthetic, and only through enkinaesthetic awareness can we establish the affective enfolding which enables first the perturbation, and (...) then the balance and counter-balance, the attunement and co-ordination of whole-body interaction through reciprocal adaptation. (shrink)

This little volume, by the Director of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at the University of California is a splendid work. Lynn White, who considers himself a Christian and a humanist, has written an important book linking together cultural changes in the modern world with those events in earlier periods which precipitated the changes. His major thesis is that the alienation of the humanist from technology is unfortunate, and that a rapprochement between the two is possible if one (...) reads history accurately. Technology developed, White argues, in the fertile cultural and intellectual soul of the Christian middle ages. It was the Christian view of reality that allowed man to take nature seriously and to permit him to think in terms of measuring and analyzing it. The Christian saw the world as a manifestation of the working of the mind of God, and his science was an attempt to decipher God's thought by exploring the nature of his handiwork. The technological innovations of the Middle Ages were possible because of the Christian's conviction that God had given man power and dominion over all creation: "The men who worshiped the Virgin also developed water wheels to perform all kinds of tasks that previously had been done by hand." To medieval man, the machine came from God. What White seems to be saying is that the Christian view of reality is one which produces a full-blown humanism, one in which man is free to develop his natural capacities, in a world which has been created by God for man to enjoy and in which man can best fulfill himself as a human. "Christianity, in absolute contrast to ancient paganism and Asia's religions, not only established a dualism of man and nature but insisted that it is God's will that man exploit nature for his proper ends."--W. A. J. (shrink)