The recent revival of civic republicanism has been grounded on a conception of liberty as non-domination. While this avenue of thought holds considerable promise, such a conception of liberty can only be as sound as the underlying concept of domination, and although the term appears frequently in the pages of contemporary political theory, unlike other basic concepts, domination has received remarkably little in the way of serious conceptual analysis. Indeed, one might be tempted to conclude that domination is not a (...) substantive concept at all, but rather mere empty rhetoric. This essay represents an experiment of sorts to see if the concept of domination can indeed withstand sustained philosophical examination; to the extent that it is successful, it can be viewed as a friendly addition or amendment to the work of contemporary republican political theorists. (shrink)

The recent revival of civic republicanism has been grounded on a conception of liberty as non-domination. While this avenue of thought holds considerable promise, such a conception of liberty can only be as sound as the underlying concept of domination, and although the term appears frequently in the pages of contemporary political theory, unlike other basic concepts, domination has received remarkably little in the way of serious conceptual analysis. Indeed, one might be tempted to conclude that domination is not a (...) substantive concept at all, but rather mere empty rhetoric. This essay represents an experiment of sorts to see if the concept of domination can indeed withstand sustained philosophical examination; to the extent that it is successful, it can be viewed as a friendly addition or amendment to the work of contemporary republican political theorists. (shrink)

In all societies, past and present, one can find social relationships marked by political domination. Properly understood, domination is a great evil, the suffering of which ought to be minimized so far as possible. This being so, it stands to reason that political and social theorists would have attempted a general analysis of the concept of domination. Surprisingly, however, this is not the case. General accounts of political domination are few and far between; even among those that can be found, (...) most are brief, ad hoc, restricted to one or another aspect or form of domination, hopelessly vague, or some combination of these. None discusses the relative advantages or disadvantages of two or more competing conceptions. This study aims to redress this lacuna. It argues first, that domination should be understood as a condition suffered by persons or groups to the extent that they are dependent on a social relationship in which some other person or group wields arbitrary power over them. This is called the arbitrary power conception of domination. It argues second, that we should regard it as wrong to perpetrate or permit the unnecessary suffering of domination, and that as a matter of justice the political and social institutions of any society should be organized so as to minimize domination to the extent that this is possible. This is called justice as minimizing domination, a conception of political or social justice. This study employs a variety of methodological techniques---including conceptual analysis, formal modeling and game theory, social theory, and moral philosophy. Existing accounts of dependency, power, social convention, political liberty, and so on are clarified, expanded, or revised along the way. For these reasons, this study should appeal to a broad audience with diverse methodological and substantive interests. (shrink)

This essay examines Maduabuchi Dukor’s perspective on the African conception of man, personal identity and“life-here-after”. This is with a view to showing that although, Dukor’s views represent what obtain among some ethnic nationalities in Africa, this nevertheless does not provide a basis for generalising across the whole of Africa, as there are countless number of ethnic groups in Africa to which Dukor’s general claims may not be applicable. Given the varieties of metaphysical conceptions of man and destiny in Africa which (...) we are yet to fully explore, and given also the inherent contradictions in some of these conceptions, which calls into questioning, the veracity of claims made therein, it will amount to a major logical error to make sweeping generalisations that would be representative of the whole of Africa. Such generalisations would remain a non-holistic, but partial representation of the African conception of man and human destiny. (shrink)

This paper examines the prospects for global order in an environment of globalization. It analyzes the current practice in which globalization crystallizes in the universalization of Western cultural values, and identifies in this practice, a major source of all the conflicts currently plaguing the contemporary world. It argues that acts of terrorism and other similar acts are reactions to the perceived injustices of the present globalization phenomenon. This paper studies these crises because of their cultural underpinnings.Drawing on the postmodernist philosophy, (...) which not only rejects a single over-arching scheme by which all societies could be judged and advocates a thoroughgoing cultural pluralism in which alternative cultures are free to plot their own future courses, the essay believes that acts of terrorism, like similar other reactions to the present conception of global reality, can be mitigated if efforts are directed at understanding, appreciating, and respecting the traditions and cultural values of distinct societies, rather than submerging them under one dominant culture. (shrink)

In (1991), Meinwald initiated a major change of direction in the study of Plato’s Parmenides and the Third Man Argument. On her conception of the Parmenides , Plato’s language systematically distinguishes two types or kinds of predication, namely, predications of the kind ‘x is F pros ta alla’ and ‘x is F pros heauto’. Intuitively speaking, the former is the common, everyday variety of predication, which holds when x is any object (perceptible object or Form) and F is a property (...) which x exemplifies or instantiates in the traditional sense. The latter is a special mode of predication which holds when x is a Form and F is a property which is, in some sense, part of the nature of that Form. Meinwald (1991, p. 75, footnote 18) traces the discovery of this distinction in Plato’s work to Frede (1967), who marks the distinction between pros allo and kath’ hauto predications by placing subscripts on the copula ‘is’. (shrink)

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz presents the idea of monads, as non-communicative, self-actuating system of beings that are windowless, closed, eternal, deterministic and individualistic. For him, the whole universe and its constituents are monads and that includes humans. In fact, any ‘body’, such as the ‘body’ of an animal or man has, according to Leibniz, one dominant monad which controls the others within it. This dominant monad, he often refers to as the soul. If Leibniz’s conception of monads is accepted, it merely (...) establishes human subjectivity, idiosyncrasies, biases, prejudices and individual points of view as the norm. How then do we ensure inter-subjectivity and the kind of social interaction requisite for the achievement of social order, since Leibniz’s system forecloses the possibility of interaction and communication among monads? In this essay, we argue that just as Leibniz’s monads synchronize only through the Supreme Monad (Monas Monadum), humans as social monads should also interact through a matrix of ideals like truth, honesty, sincerity, integrity, altruism, impartiality, compassion and trust. Since social order is actualised only within the context of linked social structures, relations and values, these utopian ideals would form the fulcrum through which humans relate and the very foundation that would anchor a viable social order. Our aim here is to establish a relationship between Leibniz’s metaphysics and the physical domains of life by showing that metaphysical constructs can impinge on human social relations and wellbeing. The study employed the qualitative method of research through critical analysis of texts, library and archival materials. (shrink)

In an attempt to address the theoretical gap between linguistics and philosophy, a group of semanticists, calling itself the Generic Group, has worked to develop a common view of genericity. Their research has resulted in this book, which consists of a substantive introduction and eleven original articles on important aspects of the interpretation of generic expressions. The introduction provides a clear overview of the issues and synthesizes the major analytical approaches to them. Taken together, the papers that follow reflect the (...) current state of the art in the semantics of generics, and afford insight into various generic phenomena. (shrink)

This volume recasts the influential work of Barbara H. Partee in light of new studies surrounding the semantics of quantification and reference in natural language. The papers examine cutting-edge issues in formal semantics and pragmatics. With topics ranging from the fundamental issues of compositionality and information structure to the analysis of tense and aspect, Reference and Quantification is both an excellent discussion of Partee's work and a thorough overview of developments in current semantics research.

International health research in malaria-endemic settings may include screening for sickle cell disease, given the relationship between this important genetic condition and resistance to malaria, generating questions about whether and how findings should be disclosed. The literature on disclosing genetic findings in the context of research highlights the role of community consultation in understanding and balancing ethically important issues from participants’ perspectives, including social forms of benefit and harm, and the influence of access to care. To inform research practice locally, (...) and contribute to policy more widely, this study aimed to explore the views of local residents in Kilifi County in coastal Kenya on how researchers should manage study-generated information on sickle cell disease and carrier status. (shrink)

The Novum Organum, (or Novum Organum Scientiarum - "New Instrument of Science"), is a philosophical work by Francis Bacon, originally published in 1620. The title is a reference to Aristotle's work Organon, which was his treatise on logic and syllogism. In Novum Organum, Bacon details a new system of logic he believes to be superior to the old ways of syllogism. This is now known as the Baconian method.

Recent EEG studies on the early postmortem interval that suggest the persistence of electrophysiological coherence and connectivity in the brain of animals and humans reinforce the need for further investigation of the relationship between the brain’s activity and the dying process. Neuroscience is now in a position to empirically evaluate the extended process of dying and, more specifically, to investigate the possibility of brain activity following the cessation of cardiac and respiratory function. Under the direction of the Center for Healthy (...) Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, research was conducted in India on a postmortem meditative state cultivated by some Tibetan Buddhist practitioners in which decomposition is putatively delayed. For all healthy baseline and postmortem subjects presented here, we collected resting state electroencephalographic data, mismatch negativity, and auditory brainstem response. In this study, we present HB data to demonstrate the feasibility of a sparse electrode EEG configuration to capture well-defined ERP waveforms from living subjects under very challenging field conditions. While living subjects displayed well-defined MMN and ABR responses, no recognizable EEG waveforms were discernable in any of the tukdam cases. (shrink)

(2013). The “Difficult Patient” Conundrum in Sickle Cell Disease in Kenya: Complex Sociopolitical Problems Need Wide Multidimensional Solutions. The American Journal of Bioethics: Vol. 13, No. 4, pp. 20-22. doi: 10.1080/15265161.2013.767960.

L'amour a inspiré les chants les plus déchirants, les meilleurs romans et les pires, des comédies irrésistibles, des tragédies bouleversantes. Il est possible d'y ajouter quelques considérations philosophiques. Des préliminaires, seulement. Non à l'amour (le philosophe n'a là-dessus aucune expertise), mais à son concept (c'est son domaine, dit-on). L'amour n'est ni l'amitié, ni le désir, ni la passion. C'est la fusion improbable de ces tendances opposées. Car les composantes de l'amour ne jouent pas collectif, tel est le drame, et la (...) grandeur, de l'amour. C'est parce qu'il est de nature hétérogène, donc instable, qu'il est le moteur tout-puissant de tant d'histoires, grandioses ou banales, dans les littératures universelles et dans nos vies ordinaires. (shrink)

The Earlier Letters of John Stuart Mill, published in two volumes in 1963, were well received by critics and scholars alike. The publication of these four volumes of later letters completes this edition of Mill's personal correspondence. These volumes contain over 1,800 letters, most never before published, and some sixty earlier letters that have come to light since the publication of the first two volumes of correspondence. The letters have been assembled from widely dispersed collections in the libraries of fifty-eight (...) institutions and of some thirty private collections in Britain and in other countries of the Commonwealth, Europe, and North America. In addition, many personal letters of which no originals sirvived have been located in contemporary periodicals or biographies of Mill's correspondence. (shrink)

Aurel Kolnai was born in Budapest, in 1900 and died in London, in 1973. He was, according to Karl Popper and the late Bernard Williams, one of the most original, provocative, and sensitive philosophers of the twentieth century. Kolnai's moral philosophy is best described in his own words as intrinsicalist, non-naturalist, non-reductionist", which took its original impetus from Scheler's value ethics, and was developed by using a natural phenomenologist method. The unique combination of linguistic analysis and phenomenology yields highly original (...) ideas on classical fields of moral theory, such as responsibility and free will, the meaning of right and wrong, the universalisability of ethical norms, the role of moral emotions, internalism vs externalism, to mention a few. The volume presents a selection of essays by Kolnai, including his main political theoretical work, "What is Politics About", available in English here for the first time. The second half of the book Kolnai's work is analyzed in a series of essays by eminent scholars. (shrink)

Title: Medicine, Morals, and the LawPublisher: Gower Pub CoISBN: 0566005336Author: Sheila McLean and Gerry MaherTitle: Reproductive EthicsPublisher: Prentice HallISBN: 0137739044Author: Michael BaylesTitle: Ethics of Withdrawal of Life-Support SystemsPublisher: Praeger PaperbackISBN: 0275927105Author: Douglas N. Walton.

Comparative Political Theory and Cross-Cultural Philosophy explores new forms of philosophizing in the age of globalization by challenging the conventional border between the East and the West, as well as the traditional boundaries among different academic disciplines. This rich investigation demonstrates the importance of cross-cultural thinking in our reading of philosophical texts and explores how cross-cultural thinking transforms our understanding of the traditional philosophical paradigm.

Over the past few decades, we have improved our understanding of the health impacts of climate change.1 Although many public health researchers have contributed to this knowledge, relatively few are aware of how their work may relate to the social cost of carbon. The social cost of carbon is a core economic concept in climate policy and one that can—and should—benefit directly from research produced by the public health community. The concept’s importance was recently highlighted by this past year’s Nobel (...) Prize in Economic Sciences, which was awarded to William Nordhaus in part for his pioneering work developing models to estimate the social cost of carbon. Below we describe this concept, explain how it is calculated, and provide some brief guidance on how health research can improve its estimation. (shrink)

Murray N. Rothbard (1926–1995) was dean of the Austrian School. He was an economist, economic historian, and libertarian political philosopher. See Murray N. Rothbard's article archives. This article is excerpted from An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, vol. 1, Economic Thought Before Adam Smith (1995).

Văn khắ c Chămpa tại Ba̓ o tàng ̃ Điêu khắ c Chăm–Đà Nă ̃ ng. The Inscriptions of Campā at the Museum of Cham Sculpture in Đà Năng. By Arlo Griffiths, Amandine Lepoutre, William A. Southworth, and Thành Phn. Published in collaboration between École française d’Extrême-Orient, Hanoi, and Center for Vietnamese and Southeast Asian Studies, University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University H̀ô Chí Minh City. H̀ô Chí Minh: VNUHCM Publishing House, 2012. Pp. 288, 67 pl., 38 (...) photos. VND 170.000. (shrink)

En philosophie comme en d'autres domaines, la puissance de l'Absolu semble bien à présent nous être refusée. Sa relève s'est vue opposer non seulement la violence de la révolte, mais la pluralité invincible des perspectives finies et la reconnaissance raisonnable de l'irréductible multiplicité du patrimoine spirituel de l'humanité. Tout se passe comme si nous avions pris conscience que l'intrigue première n'était pas celle de la pensée et de ses catégories essentielles, mais celle de la liberté et de ses attitudes existentielles. (...) Les questions ultimes ne disparaissent pas pour autant, mais elles échappent désormais aux prétentions magistrales d'une théorie unique. C'est seulement du dialogue, toujours à reprendre, des libertés en quête de raison que peut renaître, sans trop d'illusions, la visée d'un sens de l'existence qui ne peut que se diffracter en perspectives multiples. C'est dans cet esprit que Francis Guibal met en vis-à-vis Cornelius Castoriadis et André Stanguennec sur " histoire et libertés " ; Henri Bergson et Franz Rosenzweig sur " expérience et transcendance " ; Jacques Derrida et Jean-Luc Nancy sur " déconstruction et création " ; René Girard, Paul Ricoeur et Catherine Chalier sur " Le religieux en héritage(s) ". (shrink)

On déplore le manque d'éducation du cœur. Qu'attend-on pour en préciser la logique et la rhétorique? Notre éducation est trop informative, pas assez transformative. Trop centrée sur l'acquisition et l'échange des informations, pas assez sur les valeurs de tendresse et de fraternité. On n'admire les marques de la présence du Christ que par les yeux du cœur. Mais faut-il vraiment en appeler au tiers d'un véritable Ordre du cœur, comme ordre de vérité? Pourquoi un ordre de vérité? Il y a (...) trois ordres de choses : la chair, l'esprit, la volonté ; et trois ordres de discours : philosophique (qui s'adresse à l'intelligence), théologique (à l'intelligence éclairée par la foi), mystique (adressé au cœur).0Le réalisme biblique veut qu'il existe dans le réel une autre dimension entée sur les questions qui engagent l'homme dans l'existence et peuvent la transformer. Au lieu de s'installer sur le terrain métaphysique de l?Être, adoptons une théorie du being dont les éléments ne s'écarteront pas de leur mode d'interroger et de catégoriser. Une philosophie néo-critique de l'interrogation en prend acte. (shrink)

Francis Lareau Une tâche importante en philosophie est la lecture et l’analyse de textes pour en dégager les concepts. L’objectif de la présente étude est d’explorer la possibilité d’une assistance computationnelle pour effectuer cette tâche. Une méthode classique est le concordancier, mais celle-ci ne permet pas de distinguer les extraits où le concept n’est pas exprimé de manière canonique. Nous proposons une méthode permettant de reconnaître ces extraits, que nous appliquons à un corpus d’articles de la revue Philosophiques. Nous (...) déterminons d’abord les extraits où le concept est exprimé de manière explicite. Ensuite, nous déterminons les extraits les moins susceptibles d’exprimer le concept cible. Enfin, nous utilisons plusieurs classifieurs afin de distinguer les extraits où le concept est exprimé de manière implicite. Les résultats montrent une différence significative entre les classifieurs les plus performants, machines à vecteurs de support et réseaux de neurones, et certains modèles probabilistes classiques. (shrink)

We show that, for each finite group G, there exists an axiomatization of the class of abelian-by-G groups with a single sentence. In the proof, we use the definability of the subgroups M n in an abelian-by-finite group M, and the Auslander-Reiten sequences for modules over an Artin algebra.