Includes essays on parapsychology and life after death by J. B. Rhine, David Hume, George Price, Plato, Rene Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke, among others.

This paper contributes to the promotion of multidisciplinary research on ethical consumerism by providing experimental evidence on consumer's willingness to reward sellers by paying higher wages to their workers. We analyze repeated interactions occurring between workers, sellers, and consumers within the framework of an experimental market. By successfully performing a task, workers allow sellers to offer a good through a market. Sellers set the price of goods and decide the wages of workers. Consumers enter the market sequentially and decide (...) whether to accept one of the offers or to leave the market. Our data show that, especially in the first periods of the experiment, some sellers opt to pay high wages to their workers. However, this behavior is not rewarded by consumers, whose purchasing choices are almost exclusively driven by self‐interest. In our interpretation, the connection between workers and sellers that connotes our experimental design, with workers who allow sellers to enter the market, may induce consumers to believe that eventual sacrifices for paying high wages to workers must be entirely on sellers. Our result suggests that the more salient is made the importance of some stakeholders in allowing the firm's activity, the fewer consumers' may be willing to sacrifice their monetary payoff to improve these stakeholders' condition. (shrink)

In this long-awaited book, Antony Duff offers a new perspective on the structures of criminal law and criminal liability. His starting point is a distinction between responsibility (understood as answerability) and liability, and a conception of responsibility as relational and practice-based. This focus on responsibility, as a matter of being answerable to those who have the standing to call one to account, throws new light on a range of questions in criminal law theory: on the question of criminalisation, which (...) can now be cast as the question of what we should have to answer for, and to whom, under the threat of criminal conviction and punishment; on questions about the criminal trial, as a process through which defendants are called to answer, and about the conditions (bars to trial) given which a trial would be illegitimate; on questions about the structure of offences, the distinction between offences and defences, and the phenomena of strict liability and strict responsibility; and on questions about the structures of criminal defences. The net result is not a theory of criminal law; but it is an account of the structure of criminal law as an institution through which a liberal polity defines a realm of public wrongdoing, and calls those who perpetrate (or are accused of perpetrating) such wrongs to account. (shrink)

Book Review Jörg Tremmel et al. : Youth Quotas and other Efficient Forms of Youth Participation in Ageing Societies. Cham: Springer. 188 pages. ISBN: 978-3-319-13430-7. Price: £90.00.

In order to understand what we are talking about when we talk about joint attention, I will scrutinize how the mainstream view that builds on representational and intentionalist theories of mind is constituted. My aim is to show that much of the theory of joint attention is quite narrowly constructed and comes with tacit disciplinary biases that exclude much of what is existentially important in our practices of sharing our perceptions and guiding others to attend to the world in novel (...) ways. By using the frameworks of classical phenomenology and enactivist theories of mind, I aim to show how we, in our interactions, share our perceptions even with beings that are distinctly different from us. And, that this _difference_ in our personal worldview, our cognitive capacities, and our sensory modalities should be seen as a constitutive aspect of our practices of shared attention. I will articulate attention as a revelatory practice that aids us in discovering a shared world through the plurality, rather than similarity, of our perceptual actions. Attention is, in this sense, not solely driven by subjective intentions; it is also formed and co-constituted by my being addressed by the other. (shrink)

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

The question "What can justify criminal punishment ?" becomes especially insistent at times, like our own, of penal crisis, when serious doubts are raised not only about the justice or efficacy of particular modes of punishment, but about the very legitimacy of the whole penal system. Recent theorizing about punishment offers a variety of answers to that question-answers that try to make plausible sense of the idea that punishment is justified as being deserved for past crimes; answers that try to (...) identify some beneficial consequences in terms of which punishment might be justified; as well as abolitionist answers telling us that we should seek to abolish, rather than to justify, criminal punishment. This book begins with a critical survey of recent trends in penal theory, but goes on to develop an original account (based on Duff's earlier Trials and Punishments) of criminal punishment as a mode of moral communication, aimed at inducing repentance, reform, and reconciliation through reparation-an account that undercuts the traditional controversies between consequentialist and retributivist penal theories, and that shows how abolitionist concerns can properly be met by a system of communicative punishments. In developing this account, Duff articulates the "liberal communitarian" conception of political society (and of the role of the criminal law) on which it depends; he discusses the meaning and role of different modes of punishment, showing how they can constitute appropriate modes of moral communication between political community and its citizens; and he identifies the essential preconditions for the justice of punishment as thus conceived-preconditions whose non-satisfaction makes our own system of criminal punishment morally problematic. Punishment, Communication, and Community offers no easy answers, but provides a rich and ambitious ideal of what criminal punishment could be-an ideal of what criminal punishment cold be-and ideal that challenges existing penal theories as well as our existing penal theories as well as our existing penal practices. (shrink)

In a series of influential articles, Rae Langton has argued that Austinian speech-act theory can illuminate the way in which pornography contributes to the subordination of women. I will argue that Langton’s application of Austin is incorrect. In earlier work, I have argued against Langton’s view on the grounds that being subordinated is not the sort of condition that can be brought about through an illocutionary act. In this paper, however, I will set aside that objection and focus instead on (...) Langton’s claims about the type of illocutionary act pornography might be. I will argue, first, that Langton cannot say what she wants to say about the content of pornography and still have it that pornography is a verdictive or exercitive speech act, in Austin’s sense. Verdictive and exercitive speech acts do not, and cannot describe the states of affairs they bring about. Second, I will argue that pornography does not in any case satisfy the conditions necessary for a speech act to be verdictive or exercitive. Specifically, there do not exist accepted background conventions that would give the pornographer authority to render verdicts or to take executive action. This objection to Langton’s view has been made before; I’ll show that her response to the objection betrays a confusion of authority with power. (shrink)

The present article commences analyzing the origins and influences of the religious discourse on the configuration of the modern constitutional discourse and the contributions of the jus-positivism in the consolidation of this sacred-civil language. The second issue is the definition of the U.S. Constitution as a mixed and not as a democratic constitution, with regard to the influences of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero and Polybius to the Drafters of the first modern constitutional text; stability and equilibrium took preference over democracy in (...) a wide sense. I also analyze how the Drafter’s decision has conditioned the modern constitutional system up to the present. (shrink)

In ”Embodiment and Epistemology,” Louise Antony considers a kind of ”Cartesian epistemology” according to which, so far as knowing goes, knowers could be completely disembodied, that is, pure Cartesian egos. Antony examines a number of recent challenges to Cartesian epistemology, particularly challenges from feminist epistemology. She contends that we might have good reason to think that theorizing about knowledge can be influenced by features of our embodiment, even if we lack reason to suppose that knowing itself varies relative (...) to such features. She also argues that a masculinist bias can result in mishandling of cognitive differences in cases where they actually exist and she examines a number of the ways in which the maleness of philosophy has, according to feminists, distorted epistemology. Even if a Cartesian approach offers one indispensable part of a comprehensive epistemology, according to Antony, we still need an epistemology that answers questions raised by our everyday, embodied lives. (shrink)

Given Locke’s views on primary and secondary qualities, it seems he is committed to there being real underlying properties in objects, the arrangement and disposition of which underlies and produces the observed properties of that object. It might be natural to think that these primary qualities provide a general system for classifying objects into classes: that we could delineate the real kinds of objects in nature by looking at what their real primary qualities were. A list of the particular qualities (...) of some object would define that object perfectly precisely; by looking at which properties were shared or divergent between this object and others, we group the object with others in the same kind. These real kinds in nature can play several important theoretical roles. They can support real scientific understanding, including inductive inferences (iof things are of the same real kind, then observed properties of one support the inference to unobserved properties of the other); they can form the basis for our judgements about the powers and capacities of particular objects, based on the what other things of that type can do; and these real kinds can provide the meanings for general terms: the thought being that the meanings of class names are empty without real classes to which they correspond. (shrink)

Con el fin de desentrañar el papel que las más actuales corrientes filosóficas desempeñan en la educación, los autores de este libro parten de un crítico análisis de los acontecimientos de mayo del 68.Se intuyen dos vías de intervención de la filosofía sobre el pensamiento y la práctica educativa: por un lado, la tendencia anti constructivista a los discursos posmodernos, sistémicos y tecnológicos ; por otro, la persistencia del humanismo asentado ahora en el intento de prolongar la modernidad" y en (...) nuevas perspectivas tales como el pacifismo y el ecologismo. (shrink)

A complete history of Islamic political thought from early Islam to the present Now in its 2nd edition, this textbook describes and interprets all schools of Islamic political thought, their origins, inter-connections and meaning. It examines the Qur'an, the early Caliphate, classical Islamic philosophy and the political culture of the Ottoman and other empires. It covers major thinkers such as Averroes and Ibn Taymiyya as well as a number of lesser authors, and Ibn Khaldun is presented as one of the (...) most original political theorists ever. It draws on a wide range of sources including writings on religion, law, philosophy and statecraft expressed in treatises, handbooks and political rhetoric. The new edition analyses the connections between religion and politics, covering the most recent developments in Islamic political thought and the most recent historical scholarship. It ends with a critical survey of reformism and Islamism from the late-19th century up to the present day. (shrink)

Causalists and Evidentialists can agree about the right course of action in an (apparent) Newcomb problem, if the causal facts are not as initially they seem. If declining $1,000 causes the Predictor to have placed $1m in the opaque box, CDT agrees with EDT that one-boxing is rational. This creates a difficulty for Causalists. We explain the problem with reference to Dummett's work on backward causation and Lewis's on chance and crystal balls. We show that the possibility that the causal (...) facts might be properly judged to be non-standard in Newcomb problems leads to a dilemma for Causalism. One horn embraces a subjectivist understanding of causation, in a sense analogous to Lewis's own subjectivist conception of objective chance. In this case the analogy with chance reveals a terminological choice point, such that either (i) CDT is completely reconciled with EDT, or (ii) EDT takes precedence in the cases in which the two theories give different recommendations. The other horn of the dilemma rejects subjectivism, but now the analogy with chance suggests that it is simply mysterious why causation so construed should constrain rational action. (shrink)

Does the unconscious exist? Cultural critic Antony Easthope answers with a witty, lucid, informed "yes" and draws out its implications for the way we live, how we enjoy art, and how we think about people in society and history. Drawing on the writings of Freud and Lacan, he argues that the study of the unconscious is a way of analyzing meanings across culture as an effect of desire. Easthope tests for unconscious significance in an amazing variety of examples, including (...) jokes, Tampax advertisements, Hamlet , Hitchcock's Psycho , the life and death of Princess Di, Terminator 2 , Bob Geldof's autobiography, and the film Titanic. (shrink)

In the first chapter of From Metaphysics to Ethics, Frank Jackson begins, as he puts it, ‘by explaining how serious metaphysics by its very nature raises the location problem.’ (1998, p. 1) He gives us two examples of location problems. The first concerns semantic properties, such as truth and reference: Some physical structures are true. For example, if I were to utter a token of the type ‘Grass is green’, the structure I would thereby bring into existence would be true (...) ... How are the semantic properties of the sentence related to the non-semantic properties of the sentence? Where, if anywhere, are the semantic properties of truth, content and reference to be found in the non-semantic, physical or naturalistic account of the sentence?’ (1998, p. 2) Jackson notes two possible answers to questions of this kind. The first denies that there are any such semantic properties. (shrink)

I discuss the relationship between the two forms of expressivism defended by Robert Brandom, on one hand, and philosophers in the Humean tradition, such as Simon Blackburn and Allan Gibbard, on the other. I identify three apparent points of difference between the two programs, but argue that all three are superficial. Both projects benefit from the insights of the other, and the combination is in a natural sense a global expressivism.

Rather than entailing that a particular outcome will occur, many scientific theories only entail that an outcome will occur with a certain probability. Because scientific evidence inevitably falls short of conclusive proof, when choosing between different theories it is standard to make reference to how probable the various options are in light of the evidence. A full understanding of probability in science needs to address both the role of probabilities in theories, or chances, as well as the role of probabilistic (...) judgment in theory choice. In this chapter, the author introduces and distinguishes the two sorts of probability from one another and attempt to offer a satisfactory characterization of how the different uses for probability in science are to be understood. A closing section turns to the question of how views about the chance of some outcome should guide our confidence in that outcome. (shrink)

Many areas of philosophy employ a distinction between factual and non-factual (descriptive/non-descriptive, cognitive/non-cognitive, etc) uses of language. This book examines the various ways in which this distinction is normally drawn, argues that all are unsatisfactory, and suggests that the search for a sharp distinction is misconceived. The book develops an alternative approach, based on a novel theory of the function and origins of the concept of truth. The central hypothesis is that the main role of the normative notion of truth (...) is to encourage speakers to argue, with long-run behavioural advantages. This offers a fresh perspective on many debates about realism in contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

In the first chapter of From Metaphysics to Ethics, Frank Jackson begins, as he puts it, ‘by explaining how serious metaphysics by its very nature raises the location problem.’ (1998, p. 1) He gives us two examples of location problems. The first concerns semantic properties, such as truth and reference: Some physical structures are true. For example, if I were to utter a token of the type ‘Grass is green’, the structure I would thereby bring into existence would be true (...) ... How are the semantic properties of the sentence related to the non-semantic properties of the sentence? Where, if anywhere, are the semantic properties of truth, content and reference to be found in the non-semantic, physical or naturalistic account of the sentence?’ (1998, p. 2) Jackson notes two possible answers to questions of this kind. The first denies that there are any such semantic properties. (shrink)