Soccer, or football, attracts vast numbers of passionate fans from all over the world; yet clinical psychology is yet to study it in depth. In this book, David Huw Burston, a consultant football psychology and performance coach, uses a phenomenological research method inspired by Amedeo Giorgi to consider what we can learn from the spirit of the game, and how this can be used positively in the consulting room and on the field of play. By examining detailed qualitative (...) research with professional soccer players of both sexes, Burston identifies and considers nine particular themes, including the family, god, heroes and dreams, and discusses how what we can learn from the game of football and team culture can be applied to Jungian analysis today. This book bridges the gap between clinical psychology and sport, outlining potential shortfalls in current youth development in sport, as well as discussing how traditional Jungian archetypes can be identified in everyday settings. It will be of key interest to researchers from both the fields of analytical psychology and sports studies. (shrink)

William James said that sometimes detailed philosophical argument is irrelevant. Once a current of thought is really under way, trying to oppose it with argument is like planting a stick in a river to try to alter its course: “round your obstacle flows the water and ‘gets there just the same’”. He thought pragmatism was such a river. There is a contemporary river that sometimes calls itself pragmatism, although other titles are probably better. At any rate it is the denial (...) of differences, the celebration of the seamless web of language, the soothing away of distinctions, whether of primary versus secondary, fact versus value, description versus expression, or of any other significant kind. What is left is a smooth, undifferentiated view of language, sometimes a nuanced kind of anthropomorphism or “internal” realism, sometimes the view that no view is possible: minimalism, deflationism, quietism. Wittgenstein is often admired as a high priest of the movement. Planting a stick in this water is probably futile, but having done it before I shall do it again, and—who knows?—enough sticks may make a dam, and the waters of error may subside. (Blackburn, 1998a, 157). (shrink)

William James said that sometimes detailed philosophical argument is irrelevant. Once a current of thought is really under way, trying to oppose it with argument is like planting a stick in a river to try to alter its course: “round your obstacle flows the water and ‘gets there just the same’”. He thought pragmatism was such a river. There is a contemporary river that sometimes calls itself pragmatism, although other titles are probably better. At any rate it is the denial (...) of differences, the celebration of the seamless web of language, the soothing away of distinctions, whether of primary versus secondary, fact versus value, description versus expression, or of any other significant kind. What is left is a smooth, undifferentiated view of language, sometimes a nuanced kind of anthropomorphism or “internal” realism, sometimes the view that no view is possible: minimalism, deflationism, quietism. Wittgenstein is often admired as a high priest of the movement. Planting a stick in this water is probably futile, but having done it before I shall do it again, and—who knows?—enough sticks may make a dam, and the waters of error may subside. (Blackburn, 1998a, 157). (shrink)

To appear in David Chalmers, Ryan Wasserman and David Manley, eds., Metametaphysics (OUP, 2009).

In “A Subjectivist’s Guide to Objective Chance,” David Lewis says that he is “led to wonder whether anyone but a subjectivist is in a position to understand objective chance.” The present essay aims to motivate this same Lewisean attitude, and a similar degree of modest subjectivism, with respect to objective causation. The essay begins with Newcomb problems, which turn on an apparent tension between two principles of choice: roughly, a principle sensitive to the causal features of the relevant situation, (...) and a principle sensitive only to evidential factors. Two-boxers give priority to causal beliefs, and one-boxers to evidential beliefs. The essay notes that a similar issue can arise when the modality in question is chance, rather than causation. In this case, the conflict is between decision rules based on credences guided solely by chances, and rules based on credences guided by other sorts of probabilistic evidence. Far from excluding cases of the latter kind, Lewis’s Principal Principle explicitly allows for them, in the form of the caveat that credences should follow beliefs about chances only in the absence of “inadmissible evidence.” The essay then exhibits a tension in Lewis’s views on these two matters, by presenting a class of decision problems—some of them themselves Newcomb problems—in which Lewis’s view of the relevance of inadmissible evidence seems in tension with his causal decision theory. It offers a diagnosis for this dilemma and proposes a remedy, based on an extension of a proposal due to Ned Hall and others from the case of chance to that of causation. The remedy suggests a new view of the relation between causal decision theory and evidential decision theory, namely, that they stand to each other much as chance stands to credence, being objective and subjective faces of the same practical coin. This has much the same metaphysical benefits as Lewis’s own view of chance and also throws interesting new light on Newcomb problems, providing an irenic resolution of the apparent disagreement between causal and evidential decision rules. (shrink)

[Abstract and PDF at the Pittsburgh PhilSci Archive] A slightly shorter version of this paper is to appear in a volume edited by Jonathan Barrett, Adrian Kent, David Wallace and Simon Saunders, containing papers presented at the Everett@50 conference in Oxford in July 2007, and the Many Worlds@50 meeting at the Perimeter Institute in September 2007. The paper is based on my talk at the latter meeting (audio, video and slides of which are accessible here).

Scientific naturalism is a metaphysical doctrine, a view about what there is, or what we ought to believe that there is. It maintains that natural science should be our guide in matters metaphysical: the ontology we should accept is the ontology that turns out to be required by science. Quine is often regarded as the doyen of scientific naturalists, though the supporting cast includes such giants as David Lewis and J. J. C. Smart.

It is often objected that the Everett interpretation of QM cannot make sense of quantum probabilities, in one or both of two ways: either it can’t make sense of probability at all, or it can’t explain why probability should be governed by the Born rule. David Deutsch has attempted to meet these objections. He argues not only that rational decision under uncertainty makes sense in the Everett interpretation, but also that under reasonable assumptions, the credences of a rational agent (...) in an Everett world should be constrained by the Born rule. David Wallace has developed and defended Deutsch’s proposal, and greatly clarified its conceptual basis. In particular, he has stressed its reliance on the distinguishing symmetry of the Everett view, viz., that all possible outcomes of a quantum measurement are treated as equally real. The argument thus tries to make a virtue of what has usually been seen as the main obstacle to making sense of probability in the Everett world. In this note I outline some objections to the Deutsch-Wallace argument, and to related proposals by Hilary Greaves about the epistemology of Everettian QM. (In the latter case, my arguments include an appeal to an Everettian analogue of the Sleeping Beauty problem.) The common thread to these objections is that the symmetry in question remains a very significant obstacle to making sense of probability in the Everett interpretation. (shrink)

The so-called Canberra Plan is a grandchild of the Ramsey-Carnap treatment of theoretical terms. In its original form, the Ramsey-Carnap approach provided a method for analysing the meaning of scientific terms, such as “electron”, “gene” and “quark”—terms whose meanings could plausibly be delineated by their roles within scientific theories. But in the hands of David Lewis (1970, 1972), the original approach begat a more ambitious descendant, generalised and extended in two distinct ways: first, Lewis applied the technique to analyse (...) the meaning of terms introduced not just by explicit scientific theories, but also by implicit folk theories such as folk psychology; second, he supplemented the theory to provide an account of the way in which the referents of the analysed terms might be identified on the basis of empirical investigation. (shrink)

Making a Difference: Essays on the Philosophy of Causation Edited by BeebeeHelen, HitchcockChristopher and PriceHuwOxford University Press, 2017. xii + 336 pp.

Jürgen Habermas’ discourse theory of morality should be understood, in metaethical terms, as a constructivist theory. All constructivist theories face a Euthyphro-like dilemma arising from how they classify the constraints on their metaethical construction procedures: are they moral or non-moral? Many varieties of Kantian constructivism, such as Christine Korsgaard’s, classify the constraints as moral, albeit constitutive of human reason and agency in general. However, this constitutivist strategy is vulnerable to David Enoch’s ‘shmagency’ objection. The discourse theory of morality, by (...) classifying the constraints on the metaethical construction procedure and ) as non-moral, can avoid this problem. (shrink)

The so-called Canberra Plan is a grandchild of the Ramsey-Carnap treatment of theoretical terms. In its original form, the Ramsey-Carnap approach provided a method for analysing the meaning of scientific terms, such as “electron”, “gene” and “quark”—terms whose meanings could plausibly be delineated by their roles within scientific theories. But in the hands of David Lewis (1970, 1972), the original approach begat a more ambitious descendant, generalised and extended in two distinct ways: first, Lewis applied the technique to analyse (...) the meaning of terms introduced not just by explicit scientific theories, but also by implicit folk theories such as folk psychology; second, he supplemented the theory to provide an account of the way in which the referents of the analysed terms might be identified on the basis of empirical investigation. (shrink)

Criticisms of Rorty’s view of truth are so frequent and from such sagacious sources that it is reasonable to suspect that there must be some truth in them. But what? In this paper I consider perhaps the strongest form of such criticism, Huw Price’s claim that without a distinct norm of truth Rorty is unable to make sense of how someone, justified by her own lights (say, local communal standards), could improve her commitments by reference to another better informed community. (...) My aim in the present paper is twofold: In the first place, I shall argue that Price’s criticism is off-target missing the perfectionist character of the justificatory norms that are criterial for truth on Rorty’s account. Secondly, I argue that Rorty’s actual blindspot concerns the way in which truth figures in internal reflection upon a system of beliefs, e.g., 1st-person reflection upon one’s own beliefs. But this blindspot should not blind us to the lasting insight in Rorty’s resistance to Price’s attempt to instrumentalize truth as if it were an isolable tool of our linguistic practices. (shrink)

Many philosophical naturalists eschew analysis in favor of discovering metaphysical truths from the a posteriori, contending that analysis does not lead to philosophical insight. A countercurrent to this approach seeks to reconcile a certain account of conceptual analysis with philosophical naturalism; prominent and influential proponents of this methodology include the late David Lewis, Frank Jackson, Michael Smith, Philip Pettit, and David Armstrong. Naturalistic analysis is a tool for locating in the scientifically given world objects and properties we quantify (...) over in everyday discourse. This collection gathers work from a range of prominent philosophers who are working within this tradition, offering important new work as well as critical evaluations of the methodology. Its centerpiece is an important posthumous paper by David Lewis, "Ramseyan Humility," published here for the first time. The contributors first address issues of philosophy of mind, semantics, and the new methodology's a priori character, then turn to matters of metaphysics, and finally consider problems regarding normativity. Conceptual Analysis and Philosophical Naturalism is one of the first efforts to apply this approach to such a wide range of philosophical issues. _Contributors: _David Braddon-Mitchell, Mark Colyvan, Frank Jackson, Justine Kingsbury, Fred Kroon, David Lewis, Dustin Locke, Kelby Mason, Jonathan McKeown-Green, Peter Menzies, Robert Nola, Daniel Nolan, Philip Pettit, Huw Price, Denis Robinson, Steve Stich, Daniel Stoljar The hardcover edition does not include a dust jacket. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:September 27, 2008 (1:09 pm) G:\WPData\TYPE2801\russell 28,1 048RED.wpd Reviews 81 CAUSATION: A PREMATURELY DEPOSED MONARCH? Chad Trainer 1006 Davids Run Phoenixville, pa 19460, usa stratof{[email protected] Huw Price and Richard Corry, eds. Causation, Physics, and the Constitution of Reality: Russell’s Republic Revisited. Oxford: Clarendon P.; New York: Oxford U. P., 2007. Pp. x, 403. isbn: 978-0-19-927819-0. £58 (hb); £19.99 (pb.). us$35 (pb). In 1911 the Aristotelian Society elected Bertrand Russell (...) its president, and in November of 1912 Russell’s presidential address to the Society was “On the Notion of Cause”, which, in addition to being published in the Society’s Proceedings, was later included in Russell’s book Mysticism and Logic. Russell’s address to the Aristotelian Society occurred during an interesting, brief era in the history of physics. This was a stage after the science of gravitational astronomy had beneWted from the use of diTerential equations but before the British physics community was aware of the German physicists’ advances. Less than three years after Russell delivered “On the Notion of Cause”, Einstein revolutionized the Weld of gravitational astronomy; and the quantum physicists were to eventually unearth phenomena that proved to be especially recalcitrant to comprehensive mathematical analysis. At the time of “On the Notion of Cause”, though, physics was understood as providing a thorough account of all the phenomena within its domain. In this address, Russell speaks of how Certain diTerential equations can be found, which hold at every instant for every particle of the system, and which, given the conWguration and velocities at one instant, or the conWgurations at two instants, render the conWguration at any other earlier or later instant theoretically calculable. … This statement holds throughout physics, and not only in the special case of gravitation. But there is nothing that could be properly called “cause” and nothing that could be properly called “eVect” in such a system.… [T]here is merely a formula. (ML, p. 194, Papers 6: 202; my emphasis) Russell further remarked: All philosophers, of every school, imagine that causation is one of the fundamental axioms or postulates of science, yet, oddly enough, in advanced sciences such as gravitational astronomy, the word ‘cause’ never occurs…. To me it seems that … the reason September 27, 2008 (1:09 pm) G:\WPData\TYPE2801\russell 28,1 048RED.wpd 82 Reviews why physics has ceased to look for causes is that, in fact, there are no such things. The law of causality, … like much that passes muster among philosophers, is a relic of a bygone age, surviving, like the monarchy, only because it is erroneously supposed to do no harm. (ML, p. 180; Papers 6: 193). What Russell has in mind here when saying “in advanced sciences such as gravitational astronomy, the word ‘cause’ never occurs” is that it is rash to infer from the observation of particular uniformities that there necessarily is a legitimate apriori category of causality (ML, p. 205; Papers 6: 209). Rather, “the law of causality, as usually stated by philosophers, is false, and is not employed in science” (ML, p. 207; Papersz 6: 210). Huw Price and Richard Corry’s Causation, Physics, and the Constitution of Reality: Russell’s Republic Revisitedz features thirteen chapters from diTerent contributors (except for Huw Price who authors one and co-authors another) who address diTerent aspects of this matter. Price and Corry explain: One key theme of the volume turns on the possibility that in presenting philosophy with a stark choice between Wnding causation in physics and rejecting it altogether, Russell missed an important range of intermediate views. In particular, he missed what, by a natural extension of his own constitutional analogy, we may call the republican option. In the political case, rejecting the view that political authority is vested in our rulers by God leaves us with two choices: we may reject the notion of political authority altogether ; or we may regard it, with republicans, as invested in our rulers by us. Arguably, the republican option exists in metaphysics, too. Causal republicanism is thus the view that although the notion of causation is useful, perhaps indispensable, in our dealings with... (shrink)

In a letter to Wlodek Rabinowicz, David Lewis introduced a decision scenario that he described as “much more problematic for decision theory than the Newcomb Problems”. This scenario, which involves an agent with foreknowledge of the outcome of some chance process, has received little subsequent attention. However, in one of the small number of discussions of such cases, Huw Price's Causation, Chance and the Rational Significance of Supernatural Evidence it has been argued that cases of this sort pose serious (...) problems for causal decision theory. In this paper, I will argue that these problems can be overcome: scenarios of this sort do not pose fatal problems for this theory as there are versions of CDT that reason appropriately in these cases. However, I will also argue that such cases push us toward a particular version of CDT developed by Wlodek Rabinowicz. (shrink)

This is an expanded and revised discussion of the argument briefly put forward in my 'A New Problem for the A-Theory of Time', where it is claimed that it is impossible to experience real temporal passage and that no such phenomenon exists. In the first half of the paper the premises of the argument are discussed in more detail than before. In the second half responses are given to several possible objections, none of which were addressed in the earlier paper. (...) There is also some discussion of some related epistemic arguments against the passage of time given by Huw Price and David Braddon-Mitchell along with objections raised against them recently by Tim Maudlin and Peter Forrest respectively. (shrink)

Since the early 1980s, James Bernat’s scholarship has accompanied and shaped most scientific and policy developments on death determination. In 1981, he, Charles Culver, and Bernard Gert provided a...

El presente artículo recuerda momentos cruciales de una historia del sujeto que va de Jacques Lacan a Alain Badiou. Tras la división y la subversión lacaniana del sujeto, se revisan reacciones que intentan revertirla en varios autores. Estas reacciones se contrastan con la idea badiouana de la escisión del sujeto entre el esplacio y el fuera-de-lugar. La absolutización estructuralista del esplacio estructural se ilustra con la acción de la estructura de Jacques-Alain Miller, se aproxima al argumento de las estructuras que (...) descienden a la calle con el que Lacan defendió la posición estructuralista contra Lucien Goldmann y se explica por la forclusión del sujeto en el estructuralismo, en el sistema capitalista y en la ciencia en general. Con respecto al campo científico, se muestra cómo fue definido primero por la forclusión y luego por la suturación del sujeto en Miller, simultáneamente por la forclusión y la suturación en Lacan, y sólo por la forclusión en Badiou, quien empezará negando y terminará aceptando la existencia de un sujeto de la ciencia, pero diferente del de Lacan y Miller. (shrink)

It is often assumed that any attempt to undermine the so-called correspondence theory of truth is motivated by the conviction that truth is an idea which should be more or less forgotten in our postmodernist period. However, this is not always the case. One can believe that truth is one of our indispensable concepts but at the same time argue that the correspondence theory of truth is not a proper and illuminating theory of that concept. This position is reasonable, since (...) - as it has been shown (e.g. by Huw Price and Michael Dummett) - without the notion of truth one would not be able to provide a coherent and satisfactory account of our discursive practice and linguistic meaning. Moreover, as it has been recently argued by David Lewis, the correspondence theory is not a stable account of that concept, and it faces the following dilemma: either (putting aside some minor and irrelevant differences) it turns into a minimalist or redundancy theory of some sort, or it becomes a (mostly) metaphysical theory about various kinds of things which make our statements true. Defenders of the correspondence theory have made some efforts to meet the challenge posed by Lewis, but those efforts do not seem successful. Hence we should perhaps not longer consider the correspondence theory as a major and clearly specifiable contender in the debate about truth, and thus significantly reshape it. (shrink)

La cultura contemporánea y el contexto marcado por conflictos en el que residimos actualmente exigen el perdón. Especialmente, porque representa el camino a través del cual el ser humano lucha contra el mal. Sin embargo, el perdón se ha erosionado debido a los malentendidos asociados con su aplicación en la psicología y la vida pública. En este sentido, este artículo busca proporcionar una definición del perdón desde su carácter interpersonal. En otras palabras, en este trabajo afirmamos que es en los (...) encuentros cara a cara donde las personas enfrentan el mal, manifiestan su condición de personas y también la esfera de gratuidad a la que responde su realidad más íntima. Así, comenzaremos con la definición común del perdón y examinaremos cada uno de sus elementos constituyentes para presentar una configuración lo más completa posible de su realidad. Esta configuración servirá como un arquetipo para distinguir el perdón de la aceptación de sí, la liberación de sí y la reconciliación. Estas distinciones proponen la idea de que el perdón surge genuinamente de las relaciones interpersonales, allí donde un individuo pide el don de la liberación del mal cometido y otro lo concede libremente. (shrink)

This book stems from an examination of how Western philosophy has accounted for the foundations of law. In this tradition, the character of the “sovereign” or “lawgiver” has provided the solution to this problem. But how does the sovereign acquire the right to found law? As soon as we ask this question we are immediately confronted with a convoluted combination of jurisprudence and theology. The author begins by tracing a lengthy and deeply nuanced exchange between Derrida and Nancy on the (...) question of community and fraternity and then moves on to engage with a diverse set of texts from the Marquis de Sade, Saint Augustine, Kant, Hegel, and Kafka. These texts—which range from the canonical to the apocryphal—all struggle in their own manner with the question of the foundations of law. Each offers a path to the law. If a reader accepts any path as it is and follows without question, the law is set and determined and the possibility of dialogue is closed. The aim of this book is to approach the foundations of law from a series of different angles so that we can begin to see that those foundations are always in question and open to the possibility of dialogue. (shrink)

David Wiggins; IV*—Moral Cognitivism, Moral Relativism and Motivating Moral Beliefs, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 91, Issue 1, 1 June 1991, P.

The revival of Aristotelian virtue ethics can be seen as a response to the modern problem of disenchantment, that is, the perceived loss of meaning in modernity. However, in Virtue and Meaning, David McPherson contends that the dominant approach still embraces an overly disenchanted view. In a wide-ranging discussion, McPherson argues for a more fully re-enchanted perspective that gives better recognition to the meanings by which we live and after which we seek, and to the fact that human beings (...) are the meaning-seeking animal. In doing so, he defends distinctive accounts of the relationship between virtue and happiness, other-regarding demands, and the significance of linking neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics with a view of the meaning of life and a spiritual life where contemplation has a central role. This book will be valuable for philosophers and other readers who are interested in virtue ethics and the perennial question of the meaning of life. (shrink)

David Wiggins; II*—Deliberation and Practical Reason, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 76, Issue 1, 1 June 1976, Pages 29–52, https://doi.org/10.

David Sobel defends subjectivism about well-being and reasons for action: the idea that normativity flows from what an agent cares about, that something is valuable because it is valued. In these essays Sobel explores the tensions between subjective views of reasons and morality, and concludes that they do not undermine subjectivism.

In this new introduction to a classic philosophical text, David Stern examines Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. He gives particular attention to both the arguments of the Investigations and the way in which the work is written, and especially to the role of dialogue in the book. While he concentrates on helping the reader to arrive at his or her own interpretation of the primary text, he also provides guidance to the unusually wide range of existing interpretations, and to the reasons (...) why the Investigations have inspired such a diversity of readings. Following closely the text of the Investigations and meant to be read alongside it, this survey is accessible to readers with no previous background in philosophy. It is well-suited to university-level courses on Wittgenstein, but can also be read with profit by students in other disciplines. (shrink)

David Wiggins; XV*—Weakness of Will Commensurability, and the Objects of Deliberation and Desire, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 79, Issue 1, 1.

David Wiggins; IV*—Moral Cognitivism, Moral Relativism and Motivating Moral Beliefs, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 91, Issue 1, 1 June 1991, P.

[David Papineau] This paper disputes the common assumption that the normativity of conceptual judgement poses a problem for naturalism. My overall strategy is to argue that norms of judgement derive from moral or personal values, particularly when such values are attached to the end of truth. While there are philosophical problems associated with both moral and personal values, they are not special to the realm of judgement, nor peculiar to naturalist philosophies. This approach to the normativity of judgement is (...) made possible by naturalist views of truth, that is, views which do not presuppose normativity in explaining truth. /// [Julia Tanney] This paper attempts to describe why it is not possible to account for normative phenomena in non-normative terms. It argues that Papineau's attempt to locate norms of judgement 'outside' content, grounded in an individual's desires or reasons, mislocates the normativity that is thought to resist appropriation within a 'world that conceives nature as the realm of law'. It agrees, however, that a theory of content that locates norms 'inside' content will not be forthcoming-at least if this is to require fashioning the norms that in some sense govern judgment or thought into individually necessary conditions for contentful states. (shrink)

David Webster explores the notion of desire as found in the Buddhist Pali Canon. Beginning by addressing the idea of a 'paradox of desire', whereby we must desire to end desire, the varieties of desire that are articulated in the Pali texts are examined. A range of views of desire, as found in Western thought are presented as well as Hindu and Jain approaches. An exploration of the concept of ditthi (view or opinion) is also provided, exploring the way (...) in which 'holding views' can be seen as analogous to the process of desiring. Other subjects investigated include the mind-body relationship, the range of Pali terms for desire, and desire's positive spiritual value. A comparative exploration of the various approaches completes the work. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty's Developmental Ontology shows how the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, from its very beginnings, seeks to find sense or meaning within nature, and how this quest calls for and develops into a radically new ontology. -/- David Morris first gives an illuminating analysis of sense, showing how it requires understanding nature as engendering new norms. He then presents innovative studies of Merleau-Ponty's The Structure of Behavior and Phenomenology of Perception, revealing how these early works are oriented by the problem (...) of sense and already lead to difficulties about nature, temporality, and ontology that preoccupy Merleau-Ponty's later work. Morris shows how resolving these difficulties requires seeking sense through its appearance in nature, prior to experience—ultimately leading to radically new concepts of nature, time, and philosophy. -/- Merleau-Ponty's Developmental Ontology makes key issues in Merleau-Ponty's philosophy clear and accessible to a broad audience while also advancing original philosophical conclusions. (shrink)

After some general remarks about the interrelation between philosophical and statistical thinking, the discussion centres largely on significance tests. These are defined as the calculation of p-values rather than as formal procedures for ‘acceptance‘ and ‘rejection‘. A number of types of null hypothesis are described and a principle for evidential interpretation set out governing the implications of p- values in the specific circumstances of each application, as contrasted with a long-run interpretation. A number of more complicated situ- ations are discussed (...) in which modification of the simple p-value may be essential. (shrink)

David Wiggins; XV*—Weakness of Will Commensurability, and the Objects of Deliberation and Desire, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 79, Issue 1, 1.

This book completes the Clarendon Aristotle Series edition of the Politics. One might assume that, since David Keyt’s contribution is the last of the four on the Politics, when Aristotle scholars agreed to write these volumes, he was fourth in line and so got stuck with Politics V–VI. Surely, one might think, few would choose Politics V–VI over Politics I–II, with its fascinating discussions of the fundamental nature of the polis, the infamous chapters on slavery, and the critique of (...) the communism of Plato’s Republic; or over Politics VII–VIII, which contains Aristotle’s presentation of the best political system; or even over Politics III–IV, with its important classification and discussion of the different types of political systems. But in fact, Keyt had been thinking about writing a commentary on Politics V–VI for some time: “The idea of writing a commentary on Aristotle’s study of faction and constitutional change was formed in the late 1960s during the period of political unrest in the United States connected with the Vietnam War. In the summer of 1971 I discussed the possibility of doing this volume in the Clarendon Aristotle Series with John Ackrill”. We can be happy that Keyt and Ackrill returned, over two decades later, to the idea of such a commentary, because the result is an excellent addition to the Clarendon Aristotle Series. (shrink)

In this essay, Bruce Maxwell, David Waddington, Kevin McDonough, Andrée-Anne Cormier, and Marina Schwimmer compare two competing approaches to social integration policy, Multiculturalism and Interculturalism, from the perspective of the issue of the state funding and regulation of conservative religious schools. After identifying the key differences between Interculturalism and Multiculturalism, as well as their many similarities, the authors present an explanatory analysis of this intractable policy challenge. Conservative religious schooling, they argue, tests a conceptual tension inherent in Multiculturalism between (...) respect for group diversity and autonomy, on the one hand, and the ideal of intercultural citizenship, on the other. Taking as a case study Québec's education system and, in particular, recent curricular innovations aimed at helping young people acquire the capabilities of intercultural citizenship, the authors illustrate how Interculturalism signals a compelling way forward in the effort to overcome the political dilemma of conservative religious schooling. (shrink)

We explore success drivers of reward-based crowdfunding for poverty alleviation in China. The results from our econometric modeling using data from 4375 reward-based crowdfunding campaigns suggest that poverty alleviation campaigns, as compared to ordinary ones, benefit from higher funded amounts, larger backer numbers, and greater success rates. The results also suggest that poverty alleviation campaigns perform better when the products sold originate from poorer (as compared to wealthier) regions and when price premiums are lower (as compared to higher). We corroborate (...) important findings from the field study with an experimental study, showing that the consumer’s feeling of warm glow accounts for the positive effects of poverty alleviation campaigns (as compared to ordinary) campaigns. We expand the applications of warm-glow theory into the context of reward-based crowdfunding campaigns for poverty alleviation and offer new insights into success drivers of such campaigns. (shrink)

The novel understanding of the physical world that characterized the Scientific Revolution depended on a fundamental shift in the way its protagonists understood and described space. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, spatial phenomena were described in relation to a presupposed central point; by its end, space had become a centerless void in which phenomena could only be described by reference to arbitrary orientations. David Marshall Miller examines both the historical and philosophical aspects of this far-reaching development, including (...) the rejection of the idea of heavenly spheres, the advent of rectilinear inertia, and the theoretical contributions of Copernicus, Gilbert, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, and Newton. His rich study shows clearly how the centered Aristotelian cosmos became the oriented Newtonian universe, and will be of great interest to students and scholars of the history and philosophy of science. (shrink)

For this volume David Wiggins has selected and revised eleven of his essays in an area of metaphysics where his work has been particularly influential, and he has added a substantial introduction and one new unpublished essay. Among the subjects treated are substance, identity, persistence, persons, sortals, and artefacts.

In his thoughtful defence of very modest moral enhancement, David DeGrazia1 makes the following assumption: ‘Behavioural improvement is highly desirable in the interest of making the world a better place and securing better lives for human beings and other sentient beings’. Later in the paper, he gives a list of some psychological characteristics that ‘all reasonable people can agree … represent moral defects’. I think I am a reasonable person, and I agree that most if not all items on (...) the lists do represent moral defects—I certainly would regard them as such in a close family member or friend. But if I were in the business of ‘making the world a better place and securing better lives for human beings and other sentient beings’, I would hesitate to prescribe moral enhancement for everyone with these acknowledged defects. A lot of good work, from removing tumours to negotiating treaties, may be best done by people with serious moral defects.For a simple consequentialist, a moral defect is just a trait that tends to make the world a worse place. Not being a consequentialist, I think that moral defects should be identified independently of their tendency to produce worse outcomes. For this reason, I think it's necessary to qualify DeGrazia's starting assumption—I think behavioural improvement may sometimes be undesirable if our goal is to make the world a better place. My reasons will be familiar to readers of Bernard Williams.As …. (shrink)

Is it possible for a liberal society to have an established church? After outlining the conditions for liberal establishment, I take from David Hume a secular argument in its favour that points to the moderating effect of establishment on religious discourse and practice. I examine the claim that state support for religion violates liberal equality, and argue that, with respect to state-provided public goods generally, what matters is that the whole package should be of roughly equal benefit to each (...) citizen; it is not required that every citizen should value each distinct good. I claim that religious establishment can have valuable effects for both believers and non-believers, and thereby count as a public good. I then examine the charge that establishment always conveys a message of disparagement to those outside the favoured church, making them into second-class citizens, as both Martha Nussbaum and Cécile Laborde have claimed. Understood as a claim about the experience of minority groups, however, it is unsupported by empirical evidence. Understood as an interpretative claim about the meaning of establishment, it fails to distinguish between privileging an institution and privileging the people attached to it. Finally, I point out that religious minorities may favour an established church as a shield against the pervasive secularism of most modern liberal societies. (shrink)