In this unique volume, some of today's most eminent political philosophers examine the thought of John Rawls, focusing in particular on his most recent work. These original essays explore diverse issues, including the problem of pluralism, the relationship between constitutive commitment and liberal institutions, just treatment of dissident minorities, the constitutional implications of liberalism, international relations, and the structure of international law. The first comprehensive study of Rawls's recent work, The Idea of Political Liberalism will be indispensable for (...) political philosophers and theorists interested in contemporary political thought. (shrink)

What do we owe to people in other countries around the globe? What do others owe to us? What does morality require of nation states in their policies toward other nation states and toward people other than co-nationals? (On the latter, see Buchanan 2004 and Rawls 1999). These questions define the subject matter of global justice theory.

Richard Levins (1930-2016) was an outstanding ecologist, population geneticist, biomathematician, philosopher of science, complexity theorist, and Marxist. Key to all aspects of his work was a dialectical logic of process and change. His work provides a framework for the understanding of crises in environment and society and their analytic relationship with capitalism and imperialism, as well as the tools for the critique of biological determinist justifications for the existing structures of power. This anthology pays tribute to Levins by carrying forward (...) his work in the development of the understanding of the dialectics of nature and society. -/- The contributions are organized into four sections--Dialectics in Wholistic Research; Political Ecology and Health; Complex Systems; and Reminiscences and Tributes. The authors are as almost as hard to label as Levins; the fields they draw from range from biomathematics to NGO activism; environmental policy to island and aquatic ecology; eco-justice podcasting to biogeochemistry; reflective practice to science-in-society, agroecology to public health. (shrink)

Categorical names such as “The English Novel,” “The Modern American Novel,” and “American Literature” often turn up in catalogs as titles of college courses, and we know from them pretty much what to expect. They also have standing in critical discourse, along with allied terms unlikely to serve as course titles: “good writing,” “great literature,” “serious fiction,” “literature” itself. The awareness has grown in recent years that such concepts pose problems, even though we use them with easy enough comprehension when (...) we talk or write to others who share our cultural matrix.Lately, critics like Raymond Williams have been reminding us that the categories change over time and that at any given moment categories embody complex social relations and a continuing historical process. That process deeply invests all terms with value: since not everyone’s values are the same, the negotiating of such concepts is, among other things, a struggle for dominance—whether between adults and the young, professors and their students, one class and another, or men and women. We don’t usually notice the power or the conflict, except when some previously weak or silent group seeks a share of the power: for example, when, in the 1960s, American blacks and their supporters insisted that black literature be included in school and college curricula, or when they openly challenged the candidacy of William Styron’s Confessions of Nat Turner for inclusion in some eventual canon.1 But the gradual firming up of concepts like, say, postwar American fiction is always a contest for cultural hegemony, even if in our society if is often muted—carried on behind the scenes or in the seemingly neutral marketplace. 1. See John Henrik Clarke, ed., William Styron’s Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond . Richard Ohmann is professor of English at Wesleyan University. He is the author of English in America and is presently working on studies in mass culture. (shrink)

Nicholas Vriend asked whether F.A. Hayek was an “ace,” and answered affirmatively. By “ace,” Vriend meant someone who worked with agent-based modeling. To be sure, Hayek could not have worked with agent-based models because that platform did not exist when Hayek was developing his ideas about the distribution and use of knowledge in society. All the same, Vriend explained convincingly that Hayek could have made good use of the agent-based platform had it been available in the 1930s. To similar effect, (...) we argue in this paper that James Buchanan could have made good use of agent-based modeling to carry forward his ideas about the value of taking an emergent approach to the explanation of economic processes. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Princess and the Philosopher: Letters of Elisabeth of the Palatine to Rene DescartesRichard A. WatsonAndrea Nye. The Princess and the Philosopher: Letters of Elisabeth of the Palatine to Rene Descartes. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999. Pp. xiii + 187. Cloth, $57.95. Paper, $18.95.Princess Elisabeth was an acute, persistent critic of Descartes's philosophy. Because he liked her and she was a princess, Descartes did not dismiss her (...) criticisms as he did those of Gassendi and Hobbes. How can an immaterial mind interact with a material body? How can God determine all our actions and yet give us free will? Elisabeth was dissatisfied with Descartes's answer that an all-powerful God can do anything even if we cannot understand how.Andrea Nye analyzes the correspondence between Elisabeth and Descartes to support the thesis that Elisabeth developed and defended a worldly philosophy of life in opposition to the unworldly rules Descartes offered for living a tranquil and happy life. Descartes said she should focus on the separation of the mind from the body to avoid disturbing the intellect with sensory matters. Think positively about such nice things as birds and flowers and not of bad things that happen to one. Descartes told Elisabeth that "there are no events so dreadful, nor so absolutely bad in the judgments of people, that a person of spirit cannot look on them with a bias that makes them appear favorable" (48). If we do our best to find out the right course of action and act accordingly, then even if the results are bad, we have no reason for remorse or recrimination, but can be happy that we have done the best we can. Descartes even says that a person who follows his rules can view everything that happens to him, even the worst, as though these events were taking place in a theatre, for in the end they do not impinge upon the ultimate happiness of one's immortal soul.Elisabeth, earnestly. sardonically, and sometimes with annoyance responds that this is perhaps possible for a single man of independent means with few civil and personal relationships, but for someone engaged in family affairs, royal politics, and social interaction with other human beings, Descartes's philosophy of life is both impossible and wrong. One never knows what is best; even if one did know, it is difficult to carry it out; and finally, if the results are bad, then one is after all responsible. One would be inhuman to deny fault, monstrous to deny moral responsibility. Above all, Elisabeth says, one should not view one's own life as theatre. One must be responsible for oneself and others.Nye casts this as a difference between Descartes's abstract and Elisabeth's particularist approaches to life, but also as a contrast between those who can live a disengaged life and those who cannot. Some of the amusement in Nye's perceptive discussions comes from her showing how Descartes's passions often run away with him, and how Elisabeth gently turns his own rules back onto him. [End Page 277]Nye's analyses of the correspondence are excellent, but she makes some mistakes about the lives of Descartes and Elisabeth. Nye explains Descartes's coolness by his having suffered from a "motherless infancy" (129), even speaking of "the mother's milk denied him as a child" and calling him an "orphan" (156), which he was not. His mother died thirteen months after his birth, but he had a wet nurse. Descartes may never have tasted his own mother's milk, but he was never deprived of nursing. Children were often sent to live with wet nurses for as long as four years, although Descartes is traditionally said to have been raised by his grandmother. In any event, such psychoanalyzing is off the mark.Nye also says that Descartes was asked by Queen Christina to write a ballet. She cites the wrong ballet and attributes a verse from the right ballet incorrectly, but beyond that, there is no evidence either that Descartes wrote verses for a ballet or that Christina asked him to.Then Nye speaks of Descartes's daughter Francine... (shrink)

It is nearly universally presumed that redistribution can be carried out effectively only at the national or even global level, because local redistribution will be negated through personal mobility: recipients will move to high-paying jurisdictions while taxpayers will move away from those jurisdictions. To avoid this situation requires redistribution to be concentrated at national and not at local levels. In contrast to this standard line of argument, we explore how redistribution might be carried out more effectively at local levels than (...) at the national level. To explain this reversal from standard analytical implications, we integrate three concepts that are not present in the standard analysis. These concepts are the Samaritan’s dilemma, co-production, and polycentricity. It is interaction among these three concepts that reverses the implications of the standard analysis of redistribution. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

An attempt to make clear to the average reader some of the truths of Law & Jurisprudence.

This volume collects twenty original essays on the philosophy of film. It uniquely brings together scholars working across a range of philosophical traditions and academic disciplines to broaden and advance debates on film and philosophy. The book includes contributions from a number of prominent philosophers of film including Noël Carroll, Chris Falzon, Deborah Knight, Paisley Livingston, Robert Sinnerbrink, Malcolm Turvey, and Thomas Wartenberg. While the topics explored by the contributors are diverse, there are a number of thematic threads that connect (...) them. Overall, the book seeks to bridge analytic and continental approaches to philosophy of film in fruitful ways. Moving to the individual essays, the first two sections offer novel takes on the philosophical value and the nature of film. The next section focuses on the film-as-philosophy debate. Section IV covers cinematic experience, while Section V includes interpretations of individual films that touch on questions of artificial intelligence, race and film, and cinema's biopolitical potential. Finally, the last section proposes new avenues for future research on the moving image beyond film. This book will appeal to a broad range of scholars working in film studies, theory, and philosophy. (shrink)

1. We sometimes angrily confront, pointedly ostracize, castigate, or denounce those whom we think have committed moral offences. Conduct of this kind may be called blaming behaviour. When genuine,...

Using a queer theory and disrupting heteronormativity framework, we applied a model lesson in the elementary methods course to understand preservice teachers’ experiences with LGBTQ individuals and families and their beliefs about utilizing children׳s literature portraying LGBTQ families in the elementary classroom. Participants reported a range of personal experiences with LGBTQ individuals and families and relatively positive responses to the family text set presented but wavered on LGBTQ themed books due to perceived conflict, religious beliefs, and ideas about what is (...) appropriate content for young learners. A discussion of the findings also includes preservice teachers’ intentions for future teaching related to LGBTQ topics. Implications for teacher education and social studies education are explored. (shrink)

Clark Glymour, Richard Scheines, Peter Spirtes and Kevin Kelly. Discovering Causal Structure: Artifical Intelligence, Philosophy of Science and Statistical Modeling.

Written by five scholars whose expertise extends across the disciplines of biblical, historical, systematic, and philosophical theology, this is a careful and ...

Let F be a fact in virtue of which an agent, S, is blameworthy for performing an act of A-ing. We advance a slightly qualified version of the following thesis: -/- (Reason) F is (at some time) a reason for S to feel guilty (to some extent) for A-ing. -/- Leaving implicit the qualification concerning extent, we claim as well: -/- (Desert) S's having this reason suffices for S’s deserving to feel guilty for A-ing. -/- We also advance a third (...) thesis connecting desert of feeling guilty with the fittingness of this response. -/- In light of our three theses, we address several claims that have been made regarding responsibility and desert. We take issue with the divorce of desert from responsibility. We find acceptable a claim regarding blameworthiness and reason to induce guilt, and we defend the idea that it is noninstrumentally good that one who is blameworthy be subject to a fitting feeling of guilt. We argue against a view on which desert of blame has a teleological dimension. (shrink)

American Philosophical Association Blog on omnisexuality and the culture of professional philosophy today. A generous reading on the need to bridge the Continental Analytic divides.

A little philosophy of sound, learning differences, racism, Spinoza, pen pal letters, love songs, and more during a global pandemic, massive social change and social justice movements, the rise of the legitimacy of the science of metaphysics, shamans, wolves, notes and interferences as I prepare to leave academia.

Series of interviews on time, temporality, and/or human consciousness for the American Philosophical Association Blog August 2020.

We argue that current discussions of criteria for actual causation are ill-posed in several respects. (1) The methodology of current discussions is by induction from intuitions about an infinitesimal fraction of the possible examples and counterexamples; (2) cases with larger numbers of causes generate novel puzzles; (3) "neuron" and causal Bayes net diagrams are, as deployed in discussions of actual causation, almost always ambiguous; (4) actual causation is (intuitively) relative to an initial system state since state changes are relevant, but (...) most current accounts ignore state changes through time; (5) more generally, there is no reason to think that philosophical judgements about these sorts of cases are normative; but (6) there is a dearth of relevant psychological research that bears on whether various philosophical accounts are descriptive. Our skepticism is not directed towards the possibility of a correct account of actual causation; rather, we argue that standard methods will not lead to such an account. A different approach is required. (shrink)

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forced many nations to shut-down schools and universities, catapulting teachers and students into a new, challenging situation of 100% distance learning. To explore how the shift to full distance learning represented a break with previous teaching, we asked Austrian students (n = 874, 65% female, 34% male) which digital media they used before and during the first Corona lockdown, as well as which tools they wanted to use in the future. Students additionally reported on their (...) attitudes and experiences with online learning. Results showed that students used certain tools, such as video, audio, e-assessments, and web conferencing systems, much more often during lockdown than they had before. Their use of classic digital media, such as e-mail, social communication tools, such as chat or online forums, and other interactive tools, such as wikis or educational games, hardly changed at all. Their attitudes toward multimedia learning were positively related to their media use. In their open responses (n = 137), students identified advantages of online learning (flexibility and self-directed learning), as well as disadvantages (limited social interaction) and challenges (motivation and self-discipline). As a group, they also expressed a clear preference for a balanced combination of online- and offline teaching in the future. However, individual students did prefer fully online or offline learning modes, depending on their personal circumstances and educational goals. We view this as a call to researchers and educators alike to explore ways in which the advantages of online and face-to-face learning can best be combined to meet the changed needs and expectations of organizations, students, and teachers in a future “after Corona.”. (shrink)

Post-structuralist discourses have usually been associated with forms of critique and deconstruction of social, cultural and philosophical phenomena. However, this article attempts to provide a generative approach to understanding educational leadership through Michel Foucault’s notions of power and subjectification, and Judith Butler’s notions of performativity and discursive agency through re-signification. We argue that leadership is not simply a list of traits, characteristics or behaviours to be implemented. Rather, we argue that leaders are performatively constituted through everyday practices and discourses. The (...) aim is to interrupt prevailing discourses that often re-inscribe certain forms of meaning and understanding in educational leadership. This disruption subsequently provides possibility for putting forward otherwise silenced ideas about what leadership is and how leadership ‘identity’ (subjectivity) is formed, thus expanding the methodological tools scholars can use to talk about leadership. (shrink)

A plea for a clinical year in the course of theological study -- Ethics and the medical profession -- Ethics and business -- Ethics and education -- Ethics and social work.

Building on research demonstrating relationships between well being and perceptions of aspects of life as sacred, this study describes the rationale for and development of a scale measuring perceiving sacredness in life. It then explores associations between perceptions of sacredness in life and these four domains: religious/spiritual, personal, social, and situational. Participants responded to a mailing to a national random sample within the United States, completing 16 scales pertaining to the religious/spiritual, personal, social, and situational domains. While many variables were (...) correlated with perceiving sacredness in life, there were three overall predictors: intrinsic religiosity, mysticism, and community service attitude. (shrink)

The general layout and functional economy of the argument and explanations are very satisfying—like walking through a well ordered garden; and the authority of Buchanan’s discussions of the gardening work and thoughts of the Master is ...

Editors provide a substantive introduction to the history and theories of perfectionism and neutrality, expertly contextualizing the essays and making the collection accessible.

How shall we distinguish religious delusion from sane religious belief? Making this determination is not usually found to be difficult in clinical practice – but what shall be our theoretical rationale? Attempts to answer this question often try to provide differentiating principles by which the religious “sheep” may be separated from the delusional “goats.” As we shall see, none of these attempts work. We may, however, ask whether the assumption underlying the search for a differentiating principle – that religious beliefs (...) and religious delusions can usefully be considered species of a common genus – is a good one. In this paper, we outline an alternative, “disjunctive,” understanding of religious belief and religious delusion. By reminding ourselves both of what is central to any delusion and of what distinguishes bona fide religious claims from their pretenders, we show how to resolve our reflective puzzlement about religious delusion without recourse to differentiating principles. (shrink)

Some recent accounts of blameworthiness present this property as response-dependent: an agent is blameworthy, they say, if and only if, and (if so) in virtue of the fact that, it is fitting to respond to her with a certain blaming emotion. Given the explanatory aim of these views, the selected emotion cannot be said simply to appraise its object as blameworthy. We argue that articulation of the appraisal in other terms suggested by proponents yields a failure of the coextension required (...) by the accounts. We then address the promise to explain why the conditions that render one blameworthy are as they are. According to proponents, these conditions render one blameworthy because they render fitting the selected emotion. But why do just these conditions do the latter? We find no good answer to this question from proponents of the accounts. While we do not contend that blameworthiness is response-independent, we are unconvinced that it is response-dependent. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 34.3 (2001) 183-206 [Access article in PDF] Design and the New Rhetoric: Productive Arts in the Philosophy of Culture 1 Richard Buchanan In a seminal article on the study of rhetoric in the Middle Ages, Richard McKeon proposed a strategy for inquiry that illuminated the development of the art in a period where traditional histories had found little of intellectual significance. 2 He argued that (...) instead of studying rhetoric as a simple verbal discipline with a more or less constant subject matter drawn from style or the interpretation of the works of poets and orators or the law, one could study the changing conceptions of subject matter and purpose by which rhetoricians thought to distinguish and oppose their doctrines. By studying the basic philosophic differences that are implicated in changing conceptions of rhetoric, one could discover intelligible patterns in the development of the art that otherwise may appear whimsical, haphazard, arbitrary, or merely verbal. What followed was the discovery of how the doctrines and devices of rhetoric in the Middle Ages spread with little recognition to subject matters far from those ordinarily ascribed to it. McKeon summarized the patterns in three lines of intellectual development. First was the tradition of rhetoricians themselves; second was the tradition of philosophers and theologians; and third was the tradition of logicians. The article concludes with a discussion of how these lines of development were extended in the Renaissance, with implications for the changing relationship of art and science that continues to unfold in the twentieth century around the development of technology.What would a study of rhetoric in our own period look like if rhetoric were explored by McKeon's strategy? Among rhetoricians the record of past meetings of organizations such as the Rhetoric Society of America provides evidence for how the lines of intellectual development revealed by McKeon are extended in contemporary culture. For example, we find continuing attention to the study of rhetoric as a simple verbal discipline [End Page 183] with a more or less constant, traditional subject matter of style and literature. The problems of writing and speaking remain with us, and the traditional resources of rhetoric continue to inform new investigations. In addition, we find growing interest in expanding rhetorical studies to incorporate the interpretation of new kinds of literature as well as other creative works in the cultural arts, philosophy, and the sciences and technology. These studies are often innovative, though they are also easily recognized as an extension of traditional rhetorical arts. As Thomas Conley has remarked, "the present in rhetorical studies is prelude to an encouraging future." 3Following McKeon's strategy, however, the study of rhetoric in our period would not stop with the work of formally recognized rhetoricians and scholars of rhetoric. McKeon argued that rhetoric is an unusually clear example of a general tendency among the arts and sciences for doctrines and devices to move across disciplinary boundaries and stimulate innovation in new circumstances. Rhetoric provides this example precisely because it is universal in scope and shared among all intellectual disciplines. Furthermore, only rhetoric is traditionally characterized from antiquity by many of its leading theorists and practitioners as an art of invention and discovery. Whatever their primary focus in subject matter and purpose, all disciplines are concerned at some point with invention and the eventual disposition of inventions in a medium of communication and application. Therefore, it is only proper that whatever our concern about the problems of writing and speaking well, rhetoricians should also direct their attention to innovations in other fields and disciplines, particularly sensitive to the movement of their own doctrines and devices and the consequent innovations that have occurred as a result. The focal question is one of the central issues that concerned McKeon in his study of rhetoric in the Middle Ages. How may we profitably consider the many innovations that have occurred in fields far removed from those traditionally associated with rhetoric, but with a degree of independence from the field in which they are usually celebrated?This is what McKeon himself pursued... (shrink)

Researchers routinely face the problem of inferring causal relationships from large amounts of data, sometimes involving hundreds of variables. Often, it is the causal relationships between "latent" (unmeasured) variables that are of primary interest. The problem is how causal relationships between unmeasured variables can be inferred from measured data. For example, naval manpower researchers have been asked to infer the causal relations among psychological traits such as job satisfaction and job challenge from a data base in which neither trait is (...) measured directly, but in which answers to interview questions are plausibly associated with each trait. By combining background knowledge with an algorithm that searches for causal structure among the unobserved variables, we have created a tool that can reliably extract useful causal information about latent variables from large data bases. In what follows we describe the class of causal models to which our.. (shrink)

Originally published between 1968 and 2009, this collection of 25 pieces includes six interviews translated into English for the first time and a new transcription of a Q&A session with Baudrillard following a lecture he gave in London in 1994. The guiding theme of the collection is Baudrillard's engagement with culture. The implications of the implosion of Western culture are dissected and documented in the rich range of material included here.

We show that if any number of variables are allowed to be simultaneously and independently randomized in any one experiment, log2(N ) + 1 experiments are sufficient and in the worst case necessary to determine the causal relations among N ≥ 2 variables when no latent variables, no sample selection bias and no feedback cycles are present. For all K, 0 < K <.

We argue that current discussions of criteria for actual causation are ill-posed in several respects. (1) The methodology of current discussions is by induction from intuitions about an infinitesimal fraction of the possible examples and counterexamples; (2) cases with larger numbers of causes generate novel puzzles; (3) “neuron” and causal Bayes net diagrams are, as deployed in discussions of actual causation, almost always ambiguous; (4) actual causation is (intuitively) relative to an initial system state since state changes are relevant, but (...) most current accounts ignore state changes through time; (5) more generally, there is no reason to think that philosophical judgements about these sorts of cases are normative; but (6) there is a dearth of relevant psychological research that bears on whether various philosophical accounts are descriptive. Our skepticism is not directed towards the possibility of a correct account of actual causation; rather, we argue that standard methods will not lead to such an account. A different approach is required. Once upon a time a hungry wanderer came into a village. He filled an iron cauldron with water, built a fire under it, and dropped a stone into the water. “I do like a tasty stone soup” he announced. Soon a villager added a cabbage to the pot, another added some salt and others added potatoes, onions, carrots, mushrooms, and so on, until there was a meal for all. (shrink)

This topically organized, interdisciplinary anthology provides competing perspective on the claim that western culture faces a moral crisis. Using clearly written, accessible essays by well-known authors in philosophy, the social sciences, and the humanities, the book introduces students to a variety of perspectives on the current cultural debate about values that percolates beneath the surface of most of our social and political controversies.

Pluralism in Theory and Practice not only brings McKeon to the attention of contemporary philosophers and students; it also puts his theories into practice. Some of the essays explicate aspects of McKeon's thought or situate him in the context of American intellectual and practical engagement. Others take the concerns he raised as starting points for inquiries into urgent contemporary problems, or, in some cases, for reexamining McKeon's work as fertile ground for shaping the direction of new investigation.