SUMMARYIn recent years students of politics have begun to recognise Reinhart Koselleck's practice of Begriffsgeschichte, the study of conceptual history, as a useful approach for investigating key concepts in political ideologies and the history of ideas. But his theory of historical time—the temporal dimension to his semantic project and his broader theorising of the historical discipline—is often overlooked and underused as a heuristic device. By placing the thinking of Michael Oakeshott alongside Koselleck's theory of historical time, this article brings his (...) thinking on temporality to the forefront, fashioning a conversation between the two thinkers about the place for history and the formal criteria necessary for ordering the past properly. In doing so, it juxtaposes Koselleck's reflections on historicity and his theory of historical time with Oakeshott's philosophical enquiry on the historical mode of understanding. It identifies important convergences and divergences between the two thinkers' theories, focusing in particular on questions regarding the potential for representing the past as multilayered and plural historical times. The article then suggests that their respective thoughts on the theory of history are in part a reaction to the modern politicisation of historical time and comprise a shared critique of radical political change. (shrink)

Among psychologists and vision scientists,binocular rivalry has enjoyed sustainedinterest for decades dating back to the 19thcentury. In recent years, however, rivalry''saudience has expanded to includeneuroscientists who envision rivalry as a tool for exploring the neural concomitants ofconscious visual awareness and perceptualorganization. For rivalry''s potential to berealized, workers using this tool need toknow details of this fascinating phenomenon,and providing those details is the purpose ofthis article. After placing rivalry in ahistorical context, I summarize major findingsconcerning the spatial characteristics and thetemporal dynamics (...) of rivalry, discuss two majortheoretical accounts of rivalry ( eye vs stimulus rivalry) and speculate on possibleneural concomitants of binocular rivalry. (shrink)

The book is an argument about the moral foundations of foreign policy. It argues that the traditional idea of liberal equality can be interpreted so as to give moral guidance to policy leaders in understanding what they ought to seek internationally.

This chapter contains sections titled: Characteristics and Development of Critical Theory The Educational Relevance of Critical Theory Distinctive Insights and Contributions Differing Receptions of Critical Theory Critical Theory and the Student Movement An “Other” Critical Pedagogy?

This historical compendium investigates scientific methods conceived between the Renaissance and the nineteenth century. Beginning with attacks on Scholasticism and the rist of the New Science, the authors explain the roles of both major andminor figures in describing scientific methods. Although the chapters are interrelated and contain explicit comparisons, each chapter is a complete study in itself. The authors' emphasis on writing for the non-specialist and their liberal use of primary sources make this an outstanding textbook.

The Internet has recently enjoyed its thirtieth birthday. In 1969, a computer at the University of California sent a message down a wire to another in a research centre at Stanford. The message was just two letters, *LO’.1 Since then the development of the Internet—of the physical infrastructure of computers and the material or broadcast links between them, along with the digital protocols that enable it to function—has been largely an academic achievement. Up until six years ago, the world’s richest (...) entrepreneur, Bill Gates himself, was still unconvinced of its immense importance and economic potential.2 For the World Wide Web (WWW), the most popular and elaborate application on the Net, is itself only about six years old. It is its stunning exponential growth that makes it seem to some of us as if it has been with us forever. (shrink)

1. Among the most striking features of the political arrangements on this planet is its division into sovereign states.1 To be sure, in recent times, globalization has woven together the fates of communities and individuals in distant parts of the world in complex ways. It is partly for this reason that now hardly anyone champions a notion of sovereignty that would entirely discount a state’s liability the effects that its actions would have on foreign nationals. Still, state sovereignty persists as (...) a political fact. The number of states has increased enormously due to upheavals of the 20th century, and there is nothing in principle morally wrong with the existence of states - or so we will assume.2 What must be explored, then, are the limits of normatively plausible sovereignty. How bad does a government have to be for outsiders to be allowed to interfere? What responsibilities does a country incur because of its contribution to global warming? What obligations arise through trading? In this paper, we explore another pertinent question: to what extent is a country allowed to influence who lives on its territory by regulating immigration? The angle from which we approach this question continues to be neglected even now that questions of global justice are receiving much attention. Immigration amounts to a change in political relationships as immigrants alter their standing within one community and acquire a status elsewhere. Yet it also amounts to an alteration in physical relationship, since they acquire a relationship to a territory, making a life for themselves with the resources offered by a part of the earth.3 We base our exploration of.. (shrink)

I argue that in Plato's _Sophist, the account of true and false statement which emerges within the discussion of not being and falsehood neither entails nor outwardly suggests any of the traditional characterizations of a correspondence "theory" of truth. On the contrary, what emerges is a minimalistic "conception" of truth which requires neither positing the existence of facts nor formulating an explanatory definition of truth. I make comparisons with Aristotle's discussion of truth in the _Categories and _De Interpretatione, and I (...) offer reasons why one should not expect to find the emergence of a "theory" of truth in the _Sophist. (shrink)

One of the most striking features of speculative theology (kalaam) as it developed within the Ash'arite tradition of Islam is its denial of causal power to creatures. Much like Malebranche in the seventeenth century, the Ash'arites saw this denial as a natural extension of monotheism and were led as a result to embrace an occasionalist account of causality. According to their analysis, causal power is identical with creative power, and since God is the sole and sovereign creator, God is the (...) only causal agent. To assert anything else is to compromise monotheism. This position, of course, was in direct opposition to the prevailing accounts of causality within the philosophical tradition of Islam at the time. The philosophers (falaasifa) had by and large taken over accounts of causality from Aristotle and the Neoplatonists and adapted them in accordance with their own set of concerns. In such accounts, while God stands as the first cause, secondary causationis unambiguously affirmed, even if variously understood. Thus, as they offered a sophisticated account of causal action in direct opposition to the occasionalist thesis, thefalaasifa posed something of challenge to the theologians. (shrink)

The International Conference on Harmonization of Technical Requirements for Registration of Pharmaceuticals for Human Use (ICH) was formed over 20 years ago with a goal of harmonizing research regulations among the European Union, United States, and Japan. Harmonization was intended to speed approval of pharmaceuticals, avoid unnecessary repetition of studies, and ensure protection of research participants. This paper examines United States, European Union, and ICH pediatric research regulations in five domains: parental permission, assent/dissent, payment, risk/benefit and inclusion of disabled children/wards (...) of state. The purpose is to examine similarities and differences among the regulations to help investigators, policy makers and the public to understand what each regulatory framework can learn from the others. Additionally, the paper suggests philosophical differences in how these entities view pediatric research which may serve as barriers to harmonization in the future. (shrink)

Habermas's educational importance is usually misconstrued or underestimated, partly because the scope and implications of ideal speech conditions are generally misunderstood. These conditions are only relevant to discursive speech situations, but non-manipulative teaching need not be discursive. And not even discursive teaching is an appropriate occasion for ideal speech conditions. They properly apply to discourse institutions, at the ‘epistemic centre of modernity’. Thus, the concept of ideal speech conditions impinges on the relation of school to higher education and on curricular (...) change as an agency of modernisation, and illuminates the need for access to discourse institutions, if personal autonomy is an aim for school children, students or adults. Neo-Marxists, traditionalists and progressives all misunderstand the importance of discourse institutions. (shrink)

Creative accounting involves accountants in making accounting policy choices or manipulating transactions in such a way as to convey a preferred and deliberately chosen impression in the accounts. Although it is regarded as unethical by most observers, a defense of creative accounting can be based on the assumption that users of accounts can identify bias in accounting policy choices and make appropriate adjustments. In this paper we take the example of the Barcelona Football Club where the club management made three (...) key accounting policy choices that resulted in the presentation of a favourable position, and a supporters club presented an alternative report choosing three alternative accounting policies that presented an unfavourable position. We presented each of these financial reports to one of two groups of Spanish bank loan officers: we found that the more favourable set of accounts was significantly more likely to attract a positive response to a loan request. This result undermines the validity of defending creative accounting based on the argument that accounts users can identify manipulation. (shrink)

Postmodernism precludes philosophical justifications for democracy. This undermines the role of philosophy of education and leaves us with weaker reasons for educational democracy than we need. If the ‘postmodern challenge’ is as Wilfred Carr conceives it, Jürgen Habermas meets that challenge. His work rests on neither Enlightenment essentialism nor foundationalism. Habermas can accept and explain that consciousness is historically and socially situated in discourse, yet still argue to the possibility of emancipation. I defend his conception of rationality from charges of (...) essentialism. Rational thinking can critique its own specific forms, so superior forms of rationality remain universalisable by rational means. A historicising account of such critique avoids situationist relativism. These considerations justify educational democracy and preserve a role for philosophy of education. (shrink)

I examine Leibniz’s version of the Principle of Sufficient Reason with respect to free will, paying particular attention to Peter van Inwagen’s argument that this principle leads to determinism. Ultimately I conclude that Leibniz’s formulation is incompatible with free will. I then discuss a reformulation of the Principle of Sufficient Reason endorsed by Alexander Pruss that, I argue, manages to both retain the strength of Leibniz’s formulation and remain consistent with free will.

William Lane Craig offers two philosophical arguments for the conclusion that the universe began to exist. To be compelling, these arguments must not only be sound—we must also have reasons to believe that they are sound. I determine that these arguments do not provide such reasons to many individuals. The arguments ultimately rely on supposedly intuitively obvious absurdities. However, if one fails to see these ostensible absurdities—as many philosophers do—then for her, Craig’s arguments lack all epistemic force.

The paper highlights the urgent and radical questions and problems which postmodernism poses for educational studies in general, and the philosophy of education in particular. First, it outlines and interrelates the legacies of modernism in social and cultural theory. Next, it describes the reactionary anti- modernism of the Right, and contrasts this with traditionalism. It is argued that the current political and economic context of education is largely anti-modernist, not traditionalist. The stirrings of radical doubts about modernism are described and (...) contrasted with the antimodernism of the Right. A salient theme to this point is the variety of conceptions of the relationship between knowledge and power. Mature postmodernism is characterised centrally in terms of a reconceptualisation of that relationship. The metamorphosis of the concept of the self in postmodernism is described and related to new problems about ethics and a newly emerging importance for the aesthetic. Finally, the paper argues that while the fundamental issues for philosophy of education are unchanged - problems about instrumentalism and various issues of autonomy - these are radically recast in postmodernism, and present new difficulties. (shrink)

This essay attempts to identify the ethical principles appropriate to a second-order political agent—an agent, that is, whose primary responsibility lies not in the implementation of state power, but in the response to and evaluation of that state power. The specific agent I examine is the human rights non-governmental organization, and the specific context is that of humanitarian military intervention. I argue that the specific role of the human rights NGO gives rise to ethical permissions not available to government agents. (...) In particular, such NGOs may have permissions to ignore the motivation of government agents, and support even substantially unjust interventions, where such interventions would have substantial benefit for the defense and preservation of basic human rights. a Footnotesa Previous versions of this paper were presented at Brown University, the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University, and the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University. I am grateful to all participants for their questions and comments. Thanks in particular go to the editors of this volume, whose help with this paper has been especially valuable. Responsibility for errors, of course, remains my own. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Descartes and the Last ScholasticsBlake D. DuttonRoger Ariew. Descartes and the Last Scholastics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999. Pp. xi + 230. Cloth, $42.50.The attempt to understand Descartes vis-à-vis the scholastic tradition dates back to the studies of Etienne Gilson early in this century. Though Descartes saw himself as a revolutionary who would overthrow the Aristotelianism entrenched in the universities, Gilson was able to demonstrate his reliance upon (...) a variety of scholastic sources for important terminology, distinctions, and arguments which permeate his writings. Unfortunately, this line of investigation was largely ignored among Anglo-American scholars who were generally hostile to Scholasticism and uninterested in contextualizing Descartes's thought. However, since the mid-eighties there has been a distinct shift in attitude as scholars have increasingly turned their attention to the place of Scholasticism within Descartes's intellectual environment. Among these, Roger Ariew has to be counted as one of the most sophisticated, and his new book, Descartes and the Late Scholastics, marks an important contribution to the growing literature on the topic.Ariew's book is actually a collection of essays published over the last decade, including two which he co-authored with Marjorie Grene. Many of these have been substantially expanded to include fresh material and reworked so as to give the whole a greater sense of continuity. After a marvelous opening chapter in which he lays out his overall account of Descartes's attitude towards Scholasticism, Ariew presents the remaining essays in two large groups: those dealing with the immediate context of Descartes's thought and those dealing with its reception through the early part of the eighteenth century.Among the more interesting results of the first group of studies is Ariew's claim that the scholastic climate in and around Paris during Descartes's lifetime was predominately Scotistic rather than Thomistic. He shows this by looking at positions taken by a number of Parisian schoolmen on important issues which typically divided Scotists and Thomists. Ariew goes on to argue that not only was the Parisian environment Scotistic, but that Descartes aligned himself with the Scotists on many key issues in both physics (e.g., that time is independent of motion) and metaphysics (e.g., that the principle of individuation is a form). This is certainly an intriguing claim since most studies of this type have viewed Descartes in relation to Aquinas and those Jesuit thinkers who were broadly Thomistic in outlook. In bringing to light this Scotistic background, Ariew has opened up an important new line of inquiry.Other topics included in this first section are the literary and philosophical background [End Page 275] to the "new way of ideas" of which Descartes is a founder, the place of Descartes's doctrine of matter and form in seventeenth century debates over hylomorphism, and the reaction of Scholastics to the observational results of the new astronomy. What emerges in these essays is not only a highly nuanced view of Descartes's relation to Scholasticism, but an important corrective to still prevalent views of the Scholastics as reactionary and blindly opposed to developments within the new science. This last point is made with particular force in the fifth essay entitled "Scholastics and the New Astronomy." There Ariew argues that the astronomical observations of Galileo et alia were not in themselves decisive for overthrowing the Aristotelian cosmology as it had been articulated in the seventeenth century. This is because scholastic astronomers were generally accepting of such findings (e.g., sunspots) and were able to accommodate them within their own systems by making relatively minor adjustments. Although these systems ultimately proved themselves inadequate, Ariew makes a strong case that the Aristotelianism of the seventeenth century was sufficiently fluid to accommodate most of what the astronomers offered up. Thus the necessity for a radical overhaul of basic philosophical and scientific assumptions was by no means as evident as standard histories of this period would have us believe.The second section of the book is dedicated to debates over Cartesianism and its fate in the generations immediately following Descartes's death. Here Ariew provides a wealth of detail about various condemnations of Cartesianism, a comparative study of... (shrink)