Side A. Hill, Clint. A conversation with a former Secret Service agent. Cousy, B. Athletics & the killer instinct, pt. 1.-Side B. Cousy, B. Athletics & the killer instinct, pt. 2. Copeland, A. Music in America.

An interview with Timothy Williamson on Modality and other matters. Williams is asked three main questions: the first about the difference between philosophical and non-philosophical knowledge, the second concerns the epistemology of modality, and the third is on the emerging metaphysical picture.

1. Marx's monstrous ecostential imagination -- 2. Stranger: consuming the nature of monstrosity -- 3. Creature: the nature of domination on the margins -- 4. Thing: hauntology as a study of inheritance -- 5. Other: disconnection and a critique of the natural self -- 6. Enchantment and the madness of science -- Final thoughts.

Timothy Williamson gives an original and provocative treatment of deep metaphysical questions about existence, contingency, and change, using the latest resources of quantified modal logic. Contrary to the widespread assumption that logic and metaphysics are disjoint, he argues that modal logic provides a structural core for metaphysics.

The second volume in the _Blackwell Brown Lectures in Philosophy_, this volume offers an original and provocative take on the nature and methodology of philosophy. Based on public lectures at Brown University, given by the pre-eminent philosopher, Timothy Williamson Rejects the ideology of the 'linguistic turn', the most distinctive trend of 20th century philosophy Explains the method of philosophy as a development from non-philosophical ways of thinking Suggests new ways of understanding what contemporary and past philosophers are doing.

This article attacks “open systems” arguments that because constant conjunctions are not generally observed in the real world of open systems we should be highly skeptical that universal laws exist. This work differs from other critiques of open system arguments against laws of nature by not focusing on laws themselves, but rather on the inference from open systems. We argue that open system arguments fail for two related reasons; 1) because they cannot account for the “systems” central to their argument (...) (nor the implied systems labeled “exogenous factors” in relation to the system of interest) and 2) they are nomocentric, fixated on laws while ignoring initial and antecedent conditions that are able to account for systems and exogenous factors within a fundamentalist framework. (shrink)

Fresh translations of Meister Eckhart's sermons are made available in this volume: three for the first time in English and sixteen others for the first time since C. de B. Evans translated them in 1924 and 1931, long before the critical editions of the manuscripts were published in 2003. Other important sermons are included in the translations as well. They are meant to improve upon previous translations through sensitivity to Eckhart's metaphorical repertoire and his subtle word choice and phrasing. The (...) monograph portion of the volume describes Eckhart's metaphors and how they work together to form a cohesive whole. All of his homiletic choices are argued to be in service of the greater goal: catalyzing transformative change in his audience by insisting on his paradoxes and jarring people out of their customary way of relating to God and themselves. (shrink)

With attention to family relationships, A Genealogy of Social Violence sheds light on the processes by which the traditional nuclear family, through the mimetic behaviour of children, embeds violence into human desires and hence society as whole.Challenging the thought of Girard and of Rawls in order to offer a new understanding of justice, this book suggests that in order to achieve a more peaceful society, what is required is not the self-defeating narrative of equality, developed in order to manage the (...) violence engendered by our social institutions, but a reconceptualisation of the nuclear family structure.A striking critique of modern society, which draws on religion, mythology, literature, history, philosophy and political theory, A Genealogy of Social Violence will be of interest to social and political theorists, as well as philosophers working in the area of contemporary social and European thought. (shrink)

Interdisciplinary in scope and bringing together work from around the world, The Individual and Utopia enquires after the nature of the utopian as citizen, demonstrating the inherent value of making the individual central to utopian theorizing and highlighting the methodologies necessary for examining the utopian individual. The various approaches employed reveal what it is to be an individual yoked by the idea of citizenship and challenge the ways that we have traditionally been taught to think of the individual as citizen. (...) As such, it will appeal to scholars with interests in social theory, philosophy, literature, cultural studies, architecture and feminist thought, whose work intersects with political thought, utopian theorizing, or the study of humanity or human nature. (shrink)

This essay is an investigation of the relationship between homosexual interpretations of Jesus Christ and artistic explorations of the meaning of Christ to the LGBTQ community. I begin with an analysis of the public backlash to Enrique Chagoya’s 2010 lithograph The Misadventures of the Romantic Cannibals which features a depiction of Christ in a homoerotic situation. My analysis focuses both on Chagoya’s place in the historical canon of artists that create religious art that challenges heteronormative interpretations of Jesus and also (...) the resulting destruction of Chagoya’s work. My analysis examines the cultural importance of homosexual interpretations of Christ in the on-going debates about homosexuality as well as the biblical justifications for such interpretations. More, I argue that the public backlash to art that challenges traditionally held beliefs about Christ creates a cultural force for further marginalizing the LGBTQ community. I argue that traditional power structures, especially in contemporary America, rely upon the aesthetic marginalization of those individuals deemed to be engaged in subversive lifestyles in order to maintain their dominance in cultural discourse. Ironically, I argue, the attempts to subdue such artwork generates the necessary conditions for public discourse that will ultimately undermine the traditional cultural beliefs that undergird the protests against artists like Chagoya. (shrink)

In this article I attempt to redefine the role of a music teacher as being more than a director. To begin, I quote Michael Mark, who writes about how the legendary band director William Revelli was remembered in the small town of Hobart, Indiana, where he started the first band program in that town: [E]ach student was at least as motivated by a fear that the band might lose. The band had established a reputation—Hobart was expected to win, and winning (...) became a tradition which had to be upheld at each subsequent contest. . . . After 1930, any other rating would have been considered a failure—a personal failure for every band member, a failure to maintain the tradition of the Hobart band.1 Revelli .. (shrink)

Joshua Christie, Carl Brusse, Pierrick Bourrat, Peter Takacs, and Paul Griffiths argue that selected-effects (SE) functions generally fail to causally explain traits because they omit some explanatorily essential information. Heterogeneous environments, bet-hedging strategies, and frequency-dependence all produce selection dynamics that are explanatorily important but that are left out when we focus exclusively on the conditions under which a given trait was adaptive. Thus, they argue, the SE theory gives inadequate explanations since it only picks out a limited set of explanatorily (...) relevant factors. Some other authors in this volume have responded by trying to clarify the explanatory goals of SE functions in order to show that their omission of these phenomena is unproblematic. I take a different approach, arguing that in some important cases—including, perhaps, the case of signalling—environmental heterogeneity and coevolution can be explanatorily relevant because they are some of the functional effects of traits. I agree with the authors that these dynamics are important for explaining adaptations; however, I suggest that they need not be left out by SE explanations, because they can be among the effects for which traits are selected. Niche construction theory offers a useful framework for understanding these dynamics in this way. (shrink)

Although philosophers have long agreed that Anselm’s PROSLOGION contains what is often called the ontological argument (but not by Anselm himself), they do not agree about just what that argument is. In this paper, I do two things: (1) I set out a careful, precise statement of the argument in the PROSLOGION, taking due account of the historical, personal, philosophical, and theological contexts of Anselm’s thought. (2) Having disembarrassed the argument of some common misunderstandings and placed it in its proper (...) setting, I argue that it is more complicated and much stronger than all but a very few philosophers have realized. (shrink)

The Starz series Black Sails, while serving as a prequel to Treasure Island and thus providing intriguing backstories for such characters as James Flint, Billy Bones, and (of course) Long John Silver, portrays a realistic account of early eighteenth century pirate life in the Caribbean. In doing so, the show conveys intriguing insights into and applications of social contract theory reasoning, and both explicitly and implicitly asks questions about how those applications, especially as they pertain to the nature of government, (...) democracy, equality, tolerance, and justice, help us understand our own society more fully. (shrink)

To treat The Walking Dead as if it were only a zombie apocalypse story is to miss the deep and fundamental questions about society that the story raises. By looking past the immediacy of the zombie threat that drives the main narrative of the story – survival – it is possible to tease out important questions about community, social organization, leadership, utopian and dystopian world building, and, most importantly, morality. By focusing on the communities that come together in The Walking (...) Dead, this chapter examines how societal questions of utopian and dystopian world building frame important questions about how society functions, how it ought to function, and what it will take to get us beyond the problems plaguing contemporary society. (shrink)

The functions of technical artifacts are closely associated with design. Increasingly, however, we depend on technologies that are not designed: algorithms produced using machine learning (ML). Machine learning uses automated optimization processes to produce algorithms that are often opaque even to developers. I argue that these opaque ML models cannot be ascribed functions on the leading design-based account, the ICE theory of Houkes and Vermaas (Technical functions: On the use and design of artefacts, Springer, 2010). Specifically, I argue that the (...) form of rational justification that the ICE theory provides for the uses of artifacts in typical cases cannot be provided for opaque algorithms, since developers lack the necessary “support beliefs” about how the algorithm works. This does not mean that opaque ML models have no proper functions at all; rather, it lends support to non-intentional theories of technical functions, modeled after function theories in the sciences. However, these theories are meant to perform different work than the ICE theory. As a result, the kind of justification they provide for artifact use is weaker than that provided by the ICE theory and fails to justify many ongoing uses of algorithms. The paper therefore has two upshots. First, opaque ML models lack intentional technical functions. Second, while they may have functions on alternative theories, in many cases these functional ascriptions still leave the use of algorithms unjustified. Rather than extensions of our agency, opaque algorithms are a kind of found object with unknown properties that may or may not be suited to the purposes to which we put them. (shrink)

This paper proposes a reevaluation of assessment methods in philosophy higher education, advocating for a shift away from traditional written assessments towards oral evaluation. Drawing attention to the rising ethical concerns surrounding large language models (LLMs), we argue that a renewed focus on oral skills within philosophical pedagogy is both imperative and underexplored. This paper offers a case for redirecting attention to the neglected realm of oral evaluation, asserting that it holds significant promise for fostering students with some of our (...) traditional academic values that we want to maintain. We identify implications of this shift in emphasis which situates our discipline to contribute positively to solving some of the most pressing socio-political issues. Additionally, our proposal aims to demonstrate how philosophy can solidify its relevancy to the twenty-first century student and academy more broadly. (shrink)

Four people with radically different views meet on a train and talk about what they believe. Each starts off convinced that he or she is right; then doubts creep in. Timothy Williamson uses a fictional conversation to explore the philosophical debate over whether one point of view can be right and the other wrong. He invites the reader to decide.

Kant stated that there are three mental faculties: cognition, feeling, and desire. The faculty of feeling has received the least scholarly attention, despite its importance in Kant's broader thought, and this volume of new essays is the first to present multiple perspectives on a number of important questions about it. Why does Kant come to believe that feeling must be described as a separate faculty? What is the relationship between feeling and cognition, on the one hand, and desire, on the (...) other? What is the nature of feeling? What do the most discussed Kantian feelings, such as respect and sublimity, tell us about the nature of feeling for Kant? And what about other important feelings that have been overlooked or mischaracterized by commentators, such as enthusiasm and hope? This collaborative and authoritative volume will appeal to Kant scholars, historians of philosophy, and those working on topics in ethics, aesthetics, and emotions. (shrink)

If we are physical things with parts, then accounts of what we are and accounts of when composition occurs have important implications for one another. Defenders of restricted composition tend to endorse a sparse ontology in taking an eliminativist stance toward composite objects that are not organisms, while claiming that we are organisms. However, these arguments do not entail that we are organisms, for they rely on the premise that we are organisms. Thus, sparsist reasoning need not be paired with (...) animalism, but could instead be paired with other accounts according to which we are composites. The embodied mind account—a version of the brain view—is one such account. Replacing the premise that we are organisms with the premise that we are embodied minds, in arguments that otherwise parallel those supporting animalist sparsism, yields an account according to which composite objects include thinkers, but perhaps nothing else. Since animalism has implausible implications about scenarios which are handled better by the embodied mind account, this approach is preferable to animalist sparsism. Furthermore, the role of mental features in sparsism makes embodied mind sparsism the more reasonable conclusion. Meanwhile, adopting sparsism allows the embodied mind account to dodge objections that may not be as easily avoided by it or other versions of the brain view if not paired with sparsism. These include objections about brains that are not persons, inorganic part replacement, and another form of part replacement that might seem to allow one to get a new brain. (shrink)

The purpose of the paper is to discuss how the possibility of understanding difference relates to political decision making. We will see , using Althusser, it is possible to establish and maintain difference without those differences becoming incommensurable; that it is possible to understand the differences of others. We‟ll then see that this ability is of little use when it comes time to act, for example, making a decision; that many differences are excluded from the process of decision making in (...) the public sphere. In Section II. this outcome is compared with the liberal democratic principle of toleration and found to be in conflict with it. However, we will then discover that although such decisions are „intolerant‟ and exclude, this does not seem to illigitimise, or make them intolerable, since the principle of tolerance is, as will be demonstrated, a vacuous principle. Following this, in Section III., we investigate how decisions could be legitimate and find it is merely "a moment of sheer power" and "willing" that legitimised them. We will compare this outcome with current traditional values, deciding we may still maintain them. In conclusion it is claimed that future democracies should be more pragmatic and deliberative. (shrink)

This paper presents a novel theory of artifact functions, drawing from persistence-based accounts of social functions, according to which the function of an artifact consists in those of its effects that contribute to the persistence of its kind. First, the paper argues that artifact functions have an underacknowledged “interventionist task”: functional ascriptions have implications for the ways that users have reason to use technologies, and how they have reason to intervene when technologies have undesired effects. Then, it argues that the (...) ways that users have reason to use technologies and intervene are informed by the present persistence conditions of artifact kinds. It is therefore useful to incorporate these persistence conditions into the artifacts’ functions. By focusing on the social and political embedding of artifacts, the theory also allows for fruitful connections between the theory of artifacts, the political philosophy of technology, and the literature on functions in the philosophy of social science. (shrink)

_Identity and Discrimination_, originally published in 1990 and the first book by respected philosopher Timothy Williamson, is now reissued and updated with the inclusion of significant new material. Williamson here proposes an original and rigorous theory linking identity, a relation central to metaphysics, and indiscriminability, a relation central to epistemology.__ Updated and reissued edition of Williamson’s first publication, with the inclusion of significant new material Argues for an original cognitive account of the relation between identity and discrimination (...) that has been influential in the philosophy of perception Pioneers the use of epistemic logic to solve puzzles about indiscriminability Develops the application of techniques from mathematical logic to understand issues about identity over time and across possible worlds. (shrink)

The Film Theory in Practice series fills a gaping hole in the world of film theory. By marrying the explanation of a film theory with the interpretation of a film, the volumes provide discrete examples of how film theory can serve as the basis for textual analysis. Fredric Jameson and The Wolf of Wall Street offers a concise introduction to Jameson in jargon-free language and shows how his Marxist theories can be deployed to interpret Martin Scorsese's critically acclaimed 2013 film (...) The Wolf of Wall Street. Beginning with a detailed account of Jameson's extensive writings on Marxist theory and how they have been deployed in the analysis of film writings, Clint Burnham then illustrates how Jameson's theory can help to make sense of The Wolf of Wall Street, a film that shows in all its glory the excesses, lunacies, and inner workings of 1990s finance capitalism. As Jameson has influentially argued, films like The Wolf of Wall Street are both complicit in and critical of their historical subject: Scorsese's film is not about the richest stockbrokers, but the Long Island penny traders who made it big. As a narrative of American success, it is also a film about failure. Clint Burnham's reading of Jameson and The Wolf of Wall Street is a book about a contemporary film, and contemporary events, and contemporary theory. (shrink)

Improbable knowing is knowing something even though it is almost certain on one’s evidence at the time that one does not know that thing. Once probabilities on the agent’s evidence are introduced into epistemic logic in a very natural way, it is easy to construct models of improbable knowing, some of which have realistic interpretations, for instance concerning agents like us with limited powers of perceptual discrimination. Improbable knowing is an extreme case of failure of the KK principle, that is, (...) of a case of knowing something even though one does not know at the time that one knows that thing. A generalization of the argument yields cases of improbable rationality, in which it is rational for one to do something even though it is almost certain on one’s evidence at the time that it is not rational for one to do that thing. When the models are elaborated to represent appearances and beliefs as well as knowledge, they turn out to contain Gettier cases. Neglect of the possibility of improbable knowing may cause some sceptical claims and claims of the non-closure of knowledge under competent deduction to look more plausible than they deserve to. A formal appendix explores the closely related question of the conditions under which a reflection principle is violated. The principle says that the evidential probability of a proposition conditional on the evidential probability of that proposition’s being c is itself c. (shrink)

What does it mean to bring Marxism and psychoanalysis together at this conjuncture? Such a project has been a throughline, arguably, for Fredric Jameson’s work for the past four decades. In this review-article, I read his chapter on Lacan and Hamlet for how it helps us to understand, not only how Jameson’s ruminations on desire and neurosis highlight the social tendencies in Lacanian theory (for example, the notion that desire is the desire of the other), but also how that relationship (...) throws new light on both the Marxist project and psychoanalysis proper. (shrink)

Knowledge and its Limits presents a systematic new conception of knowledge as a kind of mental stage sensitive to the knower's environment. It makes a major contribution to the debate between externalist and internalist philosophies of mind, and breaks radically with the epistemological tradition of analyzing knowledge in terms of true belief. The theory casts new light on such philosophical problems as scepticism, evidence, probability and assertion, realism and anti-realism, and the limits of what can be known. The arguments are (...) illustrated by rigorous models based on epistemic logic and probability theory. The result is a new way of doing epistemology and a notable contribution to the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Transnational cooperation -- Principles of collective action and game theory -- Market failure and collective action -- Transnational public goods: taxonomy, institutions, and subsidiarity -- Sovereignty, leadership, and us hegemony -- Foreign aid and global health -- International trade -- Global finance -- Transnational crime: drugs and money laundering -- Political violence: civil wars and terrorism -- Rogue and failed states -- Environmental cooperation -- Conclusion.