Cet article résume plusieurs projets concernant l'usage par des étudiants de ressources informatiques universitaires. Dans chaque cas, nous observons une discordance entre les attentes affichées par les décideurs des politiques éducatives et celles des architectes de la technologie. L'ensemble des cas discutés suggère que bien plus de recherches est nécessaire pour comprendre les cultures établies de l'apprentissage si les nouvelles technologies doivent y être introduites de façon productive dans un milieu réactif.This paper summarises a number of projects all concerned with (...) university students' use of institutional ICT facilities. In each case I note a discrepancy between the stated expectations of educational policy makers and technology architects. Together the cases discussed suggest that much more research is needed to understand established cultures of learning if new technologies are to be interfaced productively with a resilient status quo. (shrink)

In The Origin of Species (1859) Darwin challenged many of the most deeply-held beliefs of the Western world. Arguing for a material, not divine, origin of species, he showed that new species are achieved by "natural selection." The Origin communicates the enthusiasm of original thinking in an open, descriptive style, and Darwin's emphasis on the value of diversity speaks more strongly now than ever. As well as a stimulating introduction and detailed notes, this edition offers a register of the many (...) writers referred to by Darwin in the text. (shrink)

Familiarity with Charles Darwin's treatise on evolution is essential to every well-educated individual. One of the most important books ever published--and a continuing source of controversy, a century and a half later--this classic of science is reproduced in a facsimile of the critically acclaimed first edition.

Desiring Whiteness provides a compelling new interpretation of how we understand race. Race is often seen to be a social construction. Nevertheless, we continue to deploy race thinking in our everyday life as a way of telling people apart visually. How do subjects become raced? Is it common sense to read bodies as racially marked? Employing Lacan's theories of the subject and sexual difference, Seshadri-Crooks explores how the discourse of race parallels that of sexual difference in making racial identity a (...) fundamental component of our thinking. Through close readings of literary and film texts, Seshardi-Crooks also investigates whether race is a system of difference equally determined by Whiteness. She argues that it is in relation to Whiteness that systems of racial classification are organized, endowing it with a power to shape human difference. (shrink)

Should engineering ethics be taught? Despite the obvious truism that we all want our students to be moral engineers who practice virtuous professional behavior, I argue, in this article that the question itself obscures several ambiguities that prompt preliminary resolution. Upon clarification of these ambiguities, and an attempt to delineate key issues that make the question a philosophically interesting one, I conclude that engineering ethics not only should not, but cannot, be taught if we understand “teaching engineering ethics” to mean (...) training engineers to be moral individuals (as some advocates seem to have proposed). However, I also conclude that there is a justification to teaching engineering ethics, insofar as we are able to clearly identify the most desirable and efficacious pedagogical approach to the subject area, which I propose to be a case study-based format that utilizes the principle of human cognitive pattern recognition. (shrink)

David Charles presents a major new study of Aristotle's views on meaning, essence, necessity, and related topics. These interconnected views are central to Aristotle's metaphysics, philosophy of language, and philosophy of science, and are also highly relevant to current philosophical debates. Charles aims to reach a clear understanding of Aristotle's claims and arguments, to assess their truth, and to evaluate their importance to ancient and modern philosophy.

The essays collected in this volume all explore the problem of the relation between moral philosophy and modernity. Charles Larmore addresses this problem by attempting to define the way distinctive forms of modern experience should orientate our moral thinking. Charles Larmore wonders whether the dominant forms of modern philosophy have not become blind to important dimensions of the moral life. The book argues against recent attempts to return to the virtue-centered perspective of ancient Greek ethics. As well as (...) exploring the differences between ancient and modern ethics, the author examines such topics as the roles of reason and history in our moral understanding, the inadequacy of philsophical naturalism, and the foundations of modern liberalism. There are also extended discussions of a number of leading contemporary philosophers: Rawls, Habermas, Williams and Rorty. (shrink)

This book proposes a new paradigm for the interpretation of Plato's early and middle dialogues. Rejecting the usual assumption of a distinct 'Socratic' period in the development of Plato's thought, this view regards the earlier works as deliberate preparation for the exposition of Plato's mature philosophy. Differences between the dialogues do not represent different stages in Plato's own thinking but rather different aspects and moments in the presentation of a new and unfamiliar view of reality. Once the fictional character of (...) the Socratic genre is recognised, there is no reason to regard Plato's early dialogues as representing the philosophy of the historical Socrates. The result is a unified interpretation of all of the dialogues down to the Republic and the Phaedrus. (shrink)

This wide-ranging anthology of philosophical writings on the concept of God presents a systematic overview of the chief conceptions of deity as well as skeptical and atheistic critiques of theological ideas. The selections cover key philosophic developments in this subject area from ancient times to modern in both the East and West. Editors Hartshorne and Reese-two of the most highly respected scholars in the philosophy of religion-have not only selected many arresting passages from the world's great thinkers but have also (...) analyzed and evaluated the underlying ideas, showing how they fit into major, overarching systems of thought. Part One, "Classical Views," includes passages from ancient Egyptian, Indian, Chinese, and Judeo-Christian scriptures as well as philosophical writings from ancient Greece, the medieval church, and the Enlightenment. Part Two, "Modern Views," considers the ideas of more recent influential thinkers from diverse cultures and philosophical schools: Schelling, Peirce, Whitehead, Schweitzer, Buber, Radhakrishnan, and Watts, among others, are represented and discussed. Part Three, "Skeptical or Atheistic Views: Ancient and Modern," examines various kinds of skepticism and includes selections from Carneades, Buddha, Hume, Schopenhauer, Feuerbach, Nietzsche, Dennes, and Freud. Throughout their presentation the editors analyze and contrast theistic, atheistic, pantheistic, and panentheistic systems of thought. Philosophers Speak of God is a richly varied selection of high-quality writing on a perennial subject that will provide the serious student a thorough foundation in the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

The present edition provides a detailed and accessible discussion ofhis theories and adds an account of the immediate responses to the book on publication.

The propensity interpretation of fitness (PIF) is commonly taken to be subject to a set of simple counterexamples. We argue that three of the most important of these are not counterexamples to the PIF itself, but only to the traditional mathematical model of this propensity: fitness as expected number of offspring. They fail to demonstrate that a new mathematical model of the PIF could not succeed where this older model fails. We then propose a new formalization of the PIF that (...) avoids these (and other) counterexamples. By producing a counterexample-free model of the PIF, we call into question one of the primary motivations for adopting the statisticalist interpretation of fitness. In addition, this new model has the benefit of being more closely allied with contemporary mathematical biology than the traditional model of the PIF. (shrink)

Medical tourists, persons that travel across international borders with the intention to access non-emergency medical care, may not be adequately informed of safety and ethical concerns related to the practice of medical tourism. Researchers indicate that the sources of information frequently used by medical tourists during their decision-making process may be biased and/or lack comprehensive information regarding individual safety and treatment outcomes, as well as potential impacts of the medical tourism industry on third parties. This paper explores the feedback from (...) former Canadian medical tourists regarding the use of an information sheet to address this knowledge gap and raise awareness of the safety and ethical concerns related to medical tourism. (shrink)

Nearly everyone has wronged another. Who among us has not longed to be forgiven? Who has not struggled to forgive? Charles Griswold has written the first comprehensive philosophical book on forgiveness in both its interpersonal and political contexts, as well as its relation to reconciliation. Having examined the place of forgiveness in ancient philosophy and in modern thought, he discusses what forgiveness is, what conditions the parties to it must meet, its relation to revenge and hatred, when it is (...) permissible and whether it is obligatory, and why it is a virtue. Griswold argues that forgiveness is inappropriate in politics, and analyzes the nature and limits of political apology with reference to historical examples. The book concludes with an examination of the relation between memory, narrative, and truth. (shrink)

In Part 1, I contend (using Coriolanus as my mouthpiece) that Keeley and Clarke have failed to show that there is anything intellectually suspect about conspiracy theories per se. Conspiracy theorists need not commit the ‘fundamental attribution error’ there is no reason to suppose that all or most conspiracy theories constitute the cores of degenerating research programs, nor does situationism - a dubious doctrine in itself - lend any support to a systematic skepticism about conspiracy theories. In Part 2. I (...) argue (in propria persona) that the idea that there is something suspect about conspiracy theories is one of the most dangerous and idiotic superstitions to disgrace our political culture. (shrink)

According to the conceptualist view in the philosophy of perception, we must possess concepts for all the objects, properties and relations which feature in our perceptual experiences. In this paper, I investigate the possibility of developing an argument against the conceptualist view by appealing to the notion of attention. In Part One, I begin by setting out an apparently promising version of such an argument, a version which appeals to a link between attention and perceptual demonstrative concept possession. In Part (...) Two, however, I show how the conceptualist can challenge what appears to be the key premise of the argument, and I go on to describe, in Part Three, an important further difficulty which we face if we attempt to overcome this challenge in a particular way. My conclusion will be that the conceptualist's challenge to the argument is convincing and hence that the argument remains inconclusive. (shrink)

First words on silence -- The secret of literary silence -- Law, "life/living," language -- Between Derrida and Agamben -- The wild child : politics and ethics of the name -- The wild child and scientific names -- HumAnimal acts : potentiality or movement as rest.

Materialist metaphysicians want to side with physics, but not to take sides within physics.If we took literally the claim of a materialist that his position is simply belief in the claim that all is matter, as currently conceived, we would be faced with an insoluble mystery. For how would such a materialist know how to retrench when his favorite scientific hypotheses fail? How did the 18th century materialist know that gravity, or forces in general, were material? How did they know (...) in the 19th century that the electromagnetic field was material, and persisted in this conviction after the aether had been sent packing?The doctrine of physicalism casts a long shadow in contemporary philosophy, configuring all kinds of philosophical issues and projects. Unsurprisingly, its proponents argue that physicalism has all the obvious features necessary for a scientific hypothesis to be in what we will call ‘good standing,’ i.e. being worthy of serious scientific investigation. In fact, many claim much more, arguing that physicalism is a well-confirmed hypothesis and possibly amongst the best of our theories. But, as our second opening passage makes clear, a persistent worry has been that physicalism, or ‘materialism’ as van Fraassen terms it, is an edifice built on sand. For many philosophers question whether the ‘physical’ can be specified at all, or at least in a manner that will produce a physicalism that would be in good standing. (shrink)

This paper describes how to ethically conduct research with Black populations at the intersection of COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement. We highlight the issues of historical mistrust in the USA and how this may impact Black populations’ participation in COVID-19 vaccination trials. We provide recommendations for researchers to ethically engage Black populations in research considering the current context. Our recommendations include understanding the impact of ongoing trauma, acknowledging historical context, ensuring diverse research teams and engaging in open and (...) honest conversations with Black populations to better address their needs. The core of our recommendation is recognising the impact of trauma in our research and health care practices. (shrink)

Materialist metaphysicians want to side with physics, but not to take sides within physics.If we took literally the claim of a materialist that his position is simply belief in the claim that all is matter, as currently conceived, we would be faced with an insoluble mystery. For how would such a materialist know how to retrench when his favorite scientific hypotheses fail? How did the 18th century materialist know that gravity, or forces in general, were material? How did they know (...) in the 19th century that the electromagnetic field was material, and persisted in this conviction after the aether had been sent packing?The doctrine of physicalism casts a long shadow in contemporary philosophy, configuring all kinds of philosophical issues and projects. Unsurprisingly, its proponents argue that physicalism has all the obvious features necessary for a scientific hypothesis to be in what we will call ‘good standing,’ i.e. being worthy of serious scientific investigation. In fact, many claim much more, arguing that physicalism is a well-confirmed hypothesis and possibly amongst the best of our theories. But, as our second opening passage makes clear, a persistent worry has been that physicalism, or ‘materialism’ as van Fraassen terms it, is an edifice built on sand. For many philosophers question whether the ‘physical’ can be specified at all, or at least in a manner that will produce a physicalism that would be in good standing. (shrink)

In The Autonomy of Morality Charles Larmore challenges two ideas that have shaped the modern mind. The world, he argues, is not a realm of value-neutral fact, nor does human freedom consist in imposing principles of our own devising on an alien reality. Rather, reason consists in being responsive to reasons for thought and action that arise from the world itself. Larmore shows that the moral good has an authority that speaks for itself. Only in this light does the (...) true basis of a liberal political order come into view, as well as the role of unexpected goods in the makeup of a life lived well. (shrink)

The place of religion in society has changed profoundly in the last few centuries, particularly in the West. In what will be a defining book for our time, Taylor takes up the question of what these changes mean, and what, precisely, happens when a society becomes one in which faith is only one human possibility among others.

The transcendental aesthetic -- Arithmetic and the categories -- Remarks on pure natural science -- Two studies in the reception of Kant's philosophy of arithmetic: postscript to part I -- Some remarks on Frege's conception of extension -- Postscript to essay 5 -- Frege's correspondence: postscript to essay 6 -- Brentano on judgment and truth -- Husserl and the linguistic turn.

Iris Murdoch and moral philosophy -- Understanding the other: a Gadamerian view on conceptual schemes -- Language not mysterious? -- Celan and the recovery of language -- Nationalism and modernity -- Conditions of an unforced consensus on human rights -- Democratic exclusion (and its remedies?) -- Religious mobilizations -- Themes from a secular age -- The immanent counter-enlightenment -- Notes on the sources of violence: perennial and modern -- The future of the religious past -- Disenchantment-re-enchantment -- What does secularism (...) mean? -- Die blosse Vernunft ("reason alone") -- Perils of moralism -- What was the Axial revolution? (shrink)

Despite his position as one of the first philosophers to write in the “post- Darwinian” world, the critique of Darwin by Friedrich Nietzsche is often ignored for a host of unsatisfactory reasons. I argue that Nietzsche’s critique of Darwin is important to the study of both Nietzsche’s and Darwin’s impact on philosophy. Further, I show that the central claims of Nietzsche’s critique have been broadly misunderstood. I then present a new reading of Nietzsche’s core criticism of Darwin. An important part (...) of Nietzsche’s response can best be understood as an aesthetic critique of Darwin, reacting to what he saw as Darwin having drained life of an essential component of objective aesthetic value. For Nietzsche, Darwin’s theory is false because it is too intellectual, because it searches for rules, regulations, and uniformity in a realm where none of these are to be found – and, moreover, where they should not be found. Such a reading goes furthest toward making Nietzsche’s criticism substantive and relevant. Finally, I attempt to relate this novel explanation of Nietzsche’s critique to topics in contemporary philosophy of biology, particularly work on the evolutionary explanation of culture. (shrink)

This paper reports on a two-year, field-based study set in a charter management organization, a not-for-profit educational organization that operates 18 public schools exclusively in the Black and Latinx communities of South and East Los Angeles. At CMO-LAX, the nine-member Data Team pursues the organization's avowed mission of making public schools data-driven, primarily through the aggregation, analysis, and visualization of digital data derived from quotidian educational activities. This paper draws on the theory of racialized organizations to characterize aspects of data-driven (...) management of public education as practiced by CMO-LAX. I explore two examples of how CMO-LAX shapes data to support racial projects: the reconstruction of the figure of chronic truants and the incorporation of this figure in a calculative regime of student accomplishment. Organizational uses of data support a strategy I call productive myopia, a way of pursuing racial projects via seemingly independent, objective quantifications. This strategy allows the organization to claim to mitigate racial projects and, simultaneously, to accommodate them. This paper concludes by arguing for approaches to research and practice that center racial projects, particularly when data-intensive tools and platforms are incorporated into the provision of public goods and services such as education. (shrink)

Charles Beitz rejects two highly influential conceptions of international theory as empirically inaccurate and theoretically misleading. In one, international relations is a Hobbesian state of nature in which moral judgments are entirely inappropriate, and in the other, states are analogous to persons in domestic society in having rights of autonomy that insulate them from external moral assessment and political interference. Beitz postulates that a theory of international politics should include a revised principle of state autonomy based on the justice (...) of a state's domestic institutions, and a principle of international distributive justice to establish a fair division of resources and wealth among persons situated in diverse national societies. (shrink)

Subsequent chapters discuss Vives's ideas on the soul, especially his analysis of the emotions, his contribution to rhetoric and dialectic and a posthumous defense of the Christian religion in dialogue form."--BOOK JACKET.

This volume presents a series of essays published by Charles Kahn over a period of forty years, in which he seeks to explicate the ancient Greek concept of ...

In the modern world, provincialism in reflective thinking is dangerous, possibly tragic. If philosophy is to fulfill one of its main functions—that of guiding the leaders of mankind toward a better world—its perspective must become worldwide and comprehensive in fact as well as in theory. This, the motivating theme of the Second East-West Philosophers' Conference held at the University of Hawaii in the summer of 1949, is likewise the theme of this volume, the complete report of that Conference. The goal (...) of the eminent philosophers participating was the discovery of avenues of progress toward a synthesis of Oriental and Occidental thought. They attempted to reach tentative conclusions in the fields of methodology, metaphysics, and ethical theory. Conference activities consisted of meetings, lectures, discussions, undergraduate courses, and graduate seminars. As far as possible, the proceedings were limited to the study of East-West philosophy; extensive attention was not given to the strictly religious aspects of any philosophical tradition. Participants in the Conference were convinced that philosophy is now entering upon a new stage of development which will be characterized by trans-cultural cooperation and world perspective. This development can be of tremendous significance in world thought and eventually in the lives and actions of the people of the world. Twenty-three of the formal papers presented at the Conference comprise the substance of this book; a significant proposal for synthesis is stated or implied in almost every one. A comprehensive introduction by the editor, a summary of the results and conclusions of the Conference seminars, a who's who of contributors, and an exhaustive index round out the volume. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger is now widely recognized as one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. He transformed mainstream philosophy by defining its central task as asking the 'question of being'. His thought has contributed to the turn to hermeneutics and to postmodernism and poststructuralism. Moreover, the disclosure of his deep involvement in Nazism has provoked much debate about the relation of philosophy to politics. This edition brings to the fore other works, as well as alternative approaches to scholarship. The (...) essays cover topics such as Heidegger's conception of phenomenology, his relation to Kant and Husserl, his account of truth, and his stand on the realism/anti-realism debate. This edition includes a new preface by the editor, revised versions of several essays from the first edition, and an exhaustive bibliography, providing guidance for both newcomers to Heidegger's work and established scholars. (shrink)

We present a minimum message length (MML) framework for trajectory partitioning by point selection, and use it to automatically select the tolerance parameter ε for Douglas-Peucker partitioning, adapting to local trajectory complexity. By examining a range of ε for synthetic and real trajectories, it is easy to see that the best ε does vary by trajectory, and that the MML encoding makes sensible choices and is robust against Gaussian noise. We use it to explore the identification of micro-activities within a (...) longer trajectory. This MML metric is comparable to the TRACLUS metric – and shares the constraint of abstracting only by omission of points – but is a true lossless encoding. Such encoding has several theoretical advantages – particularly with very small segments (high frame rates) – but actual performance interacts strongly with the search algorithm. Both differ from unconstrained piecewise linear approximations, including other MML formulations. (shrink)

Recent scholarship has focused attention on the difficulties that evil, suffering, and tragic conflict present to religious belief and moral life. Thinkers have drawn upon many important historical figures, with one significant exception - Augustine. At the same time, there has been a renaissance of work on Augustine, but little discussion of either his work on evil or his influence on contemporary thought. This book fills these gaps. It explores the 'family biography' of the Augustinian tradition by looking at Augustine's (...) work and its development in the writings of Hannah Arendt and Reinhold Niebuhr. Mathewes argues that the Augustinian tradition offers us a powerful, though commonly misconstrued, proposal for understanding and responding to evil's challenges. The book casts new light on Augustine, Niebuhr, and Arendt, as well as on the problem of evil, the nature of tradition, and the role of theological and ethical discourse in contemporary thought. (shrink)

Currently, much of the western world is experiencing a shift in the places where care is provided, namely from institutional settings like hospitals to diverse community settings such as the home. However, little is known about how language and the physical and social aspects of place interact to influence how health‐care is delivered and experienced in the home environment. Drawing on ethnographic participant observations of homecare nursing visits and semi‐structured interviews with Canadian family caregivers, care recipients and nurses, the intersection (...) of language, place and health‐care was explored in this secondary analysis. Our findings reveal four themes: homecare nurses view themselves as ‘guests’; home environments facilitate the development of nurse–client relationships; nurses adapt healthcare language to each home environment; and storytelling and illness narratives largely prevail during medical interactions in the home. These findings demonstrate the spatiality of language and how the home environment informs decisions regarding language use. Furthermore, these findings exemplify how language and place mutually influence the experiences and delivery of home health‐care. We conclude by discussing the importance of considering the language–place–healthcare intersection in order to gain a better understanding of medical exchanges in places and the associated implications for optimizing best nursing practice. (shrink)