Arif Ahmed has recently argued that causal decision theory is dynamically inconsistent and that we should therefore prefer evidential decision theory. However, the principal formulation of the evidential theory, Richard Jeffrey’s Logic of Decision, has a mixed record of its own when it comes to evaluating plans consistently across time. This note probes that neglected record, establishing the dynamic consistency of evidential decision theory within a restricted class of problems but then illustrating how evidentialists can fall into sequential incoherence outside (...) of this class. Uncovering the evidentialist’s own dynamic inconsistencies reveals, contra Ahmed, that sequential choice considerations do not significantly favor the evidentialist’s theory over the causalist’s. (shrink)

It is now integral to much of cultural, political and social analysis. This is the first comprehensive survey in one volume of the interdisciplinary field of cosmopolitan studies.

This book will appeal to second- and third-year undergraduates, and graduates and academics in sociology and social theory, politics, cultural studies and other ...

The history of the concept of “religion” in Western tradition has intrigued scholars for years. This important collection of eighteen essays brings further light to the ongoing debate. Three of the invited participants, W.C. Smith, M. Despland and E. Feil, has each previously written impressive books treating this subject; the last two acknowledged the impact and continuing influence of Smith’s work, The Meaning and End of Religion. An introduction and a recapitulation of Smith’s contribution as a scholar set the stage (...) for a retrospective look at the published literature. Contributors then examine the transformation of words (the classical religio to the modern religion), particularities of religion in nineteenth-century France, Troeltsch’s concept of religion, the study of religion from an Asian point of view and the categorization of “World Religions.” The concluding essays elaborate contemporary anthropological, cross-disciplinary, semiological, deconstructive and psychoanalytical methodological approaches to the concept and study of “religion.” Exploring critically different aspects of the concept and study of religion, these provocative essays typically reflect the methodological pluralism currently existing in the field of Religious Studies. Of interest to scholars and students alike, this collection also contains a complete bibliography of W.C. Smith’s publications. (shrink)

This innovative publication maps out the broad and interdisciplinary field of contemporary European social theory. It covers sociological theory, the wider theoretical traditions in the social sciences including cultural and political theory, anthropological theory, social philosophy and social thought in the broadest sense of the term. The volume surveys the classical heritage, the major national traditions; the fate of social theory in a post-national and post-disciplinary era; identifies what is distinctive about European social theory. It is divided into five parts: (...) disciplinary traditions, national traditions, major schools, key themes, and the reception of European social theory in American and Asia. It is an indispensable book for students, teachers and researchers in sociology, cultural studies, politics, philosophy and human geography. (shrink)

ABSTRACTFor Dōgen, the Buddhist doctrine of “no self” ultimately presents the self as contextualized. The self is for him not an independent entity, but is intricately related to its environment, determined through the many beings around it. In a quite different philosophical setting, Spinoza developed similar ideas. While Dōgen challenged the specifics of a tradition that explicitly argues against the idea of an absolute self, Spinoza faced a more radical challenge: questioning an absolute, unchanging, and free self that the Western (...) tradition has mostly taken for granted. After an analysis of the ideas of the two thinkers, the essay presents some important implications for contemporary times. Our domination of the earth and one another is arguably rooted in the individualism Dōgen and Spinoza seek to overcome. The insight that we are contextualized is a first step toward re-determining ourselves as placed within a larger whole. (shrink)

The main purpose of this second article devoted to T. Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century (the first was published in the previous issue of Actuel Marx) is to introduce our alternative reading of history. The tendencies manifest during the last decades of the 20th century and the early 21st century are not, it is argued, the replication of the tendencies which prevailed prior to World War I. The starting-point for our analysis is the beginning of the 20th century, a (...) moment characterized by the dynamics of a “managerial capitalism” built around the “tripolar” class pattern of capitalists, managers, and popular classes. The main quantitative manifestation of these trends was the steady rise in the share accounted for by wages (compared to capital income) in the income of upper classes (notably the top 1 percent). In place of Piketty’s impact of shocks, we focus on the chain of successive configurations of class domination and alliances, in a succession of “social orders” marking the historical advance of managerial capitalism : the first financial hegemony, in the years leading up to the Great Depression ; the postwar social-democratic compromise ; and its successor, neoliberalism, involving a new alliance to the right, between the managerial and popular classes. (shrink)

Cosmopolitanism has been understood as a postnational identity. This conflates the distinction between nation and nationalism. Most accounts of cosmopolitanism emphasise its legal form or its cultural dimension or its political. This paper argues for a civic dimension to cosmopolitanism, conceived of in terms of discourses of self, other and world. This is tied to a notion of nations without nationalism.

It is sometimes said that there has been a ‘paradigm shift’ in the field of assessment over the last two or three decades: a new preoccupation with what learners can do, what they know or what they have achieved. It is suggested in this article that this change has precipitated a need to distinguish two conceptually and logically distinct methodological approaches to assessment that have hitherto gone unacknowledged. The upshot, it is argued, is that there appears to be a fundamental (...) confusion at the heart of current policy, a confusion occasioned by the demand to know what learners know and compounded by a failure to recognise what this properly entails for assessment methodology. (shrink)

(2003). Rethinking Kuhn's legacy without paradigms: some remarks on Steve Fuller's Thomas Kuhn: A Philosophical History for Our Times. Social Epistemology: Vol. 17, No. 2-3, pp. 153-156. doi: 10.1080/0269172032000144108.

(1998). Rethinking the university: The autonomy, contestation and reflexivity of knowledge. Social Epistemology: Vol. 12, Sites of Knowledge Production: The University, pp. 103-113. doi: 10.1080/02691729808578868.

The future has become a problem for the present. Almost every critical issue is now understood and experienced through the prism of the future since this is the primary focus for the playing out of crises. Senses of the Future offers a wide-ranging discussion of theories of the future. It covers the main ideas of the future in modern thought and explores how we should view the future today in light of a plurality of very different and conflicting visions. The (...) key contribution of this book is to bring together the different approaches with an account that is grounded in sociological and philosophical analysis as opposed to visions of the future that are inspired by extreme visions of catastrophe or approaches that see the future as only the continuation of the present. Given a revival of apocalyptical visions of the ‘end times’ and dystopian views of the future of human societies, there is urgent need for a new approach on how we should imagine the future. The author explores the future as a field of tensions that is revealed in narratives, utopian desires, hope, imaginaries, and social struggles concerning the potential possibilities of the present: the future does not just arrive; it has to be fought for. This book is an important contribution to a critical sociology of the future. It is both a work of reconstruction and critique grounded in a historical and philosophical hermeneutics of the future. Table of Contents Chapter One Introduction: Conflicting Visions of the Future Contested Visions of the Future Today Return to the Future Outline of the Chapters References Chapter Two When is the Future? The Problem of Time and the Human Condition Time in the Physical World: Lessons from Physics Has the Future already Begun? Time and History Time, Life, and the Human Condition: Biology, Evolution, and Culture Conclusion References Chapter Three Lessons from the Past: What Does the Past Tell Us about the Future? The Future in the Past Failed Societies and Civilizational Collapse Catastrophes and History Conclusion References Chapter Four Modernity and the Concept of the Future: Utopia, Progress, and Prophecy The Future as Expectation The Future as an Imaginary and the Emergence of Utopianism The Future as Possibility The Future as Experience Conclusion References Chapter Five Ideas of the Future in the Twentieth Century: Futurism, Modernism, Sociology, and Political Theory New Political Ideas of the Future after 1945 Responses to the Future: From Fear of the Future to Futurology Sociological Theory and the Future Conclusion: The New Sociology of the Future References Chapter Six Critical Theory and the Future: The Sources of Transcendence The Intellectual Origins of Critical Theory: A Brief Outline The Idea of the Future in the Critical Theory of the Early Frankfurt School Habermas and the Communication Paradigm The Responsibility Paradigm and Cosmopolitanism: Jonas and Apel Critical Cosmopolitanism and the Idea of the Future Conclusion: Cultural Models and the Future as Possibility References Chapter Seven Conclusion: In The Shadow of the Future Do We Need a Theory of the Future? Are we already in a New Historical Era? AI and a Posthuman Future Struggles for the Future References Index. (shrink)

Are OCypersonsOCO physical things, members of the species homo sapiens which exist solely in materialist form, continuous in structure with other living things? Or is the issue a more complex one: are there more dimensions to being a person than mere physical, biological existence? These are matters of interest and discussion in many fields of study in this age of individuality. In this wide-ranging essay, the author addresses various aspects of the issue, including the history of self and identity. The (...) ancient tradition of dualism is rejected in favour of a straightforward holistic and naturalistic account of selfhood; it is argued that the mind arises in an emergent sense from the body and personal identity is best expressed in terms of a self-reflective and meaningful narrative. The approach is principally from an analytic philosophy point of view but also takes onOCoboard psychological and sociological aspects of self and identity. (shrink)

The article re-addresses the question of the relation between Darwinism and the biological sciences, taking as its starting-point the precise chronology of the successive inquiries carried out by Darwin into the question of races, in connection with the various aspects of his theory of natural selection. It argues that the writings of Darwin do not share any uniform aim, nor do they come under a single epistemological category. Darwin adopts a number of divergent approaches, as he addresses a series of (...) issues : the debate between monogenesis and polygenesis ; the characterisation of human races, as practised since Kant ; the question of craniometrics, so important in physical anthropology in his day ; the classification of mental faculties ; the role of selection for reproductive purposes in the differences between the sexes ; the universality of the expression of emotions, and so on. What emerges from the inquiry is a more complex portrait than is customary in the controversies about the scientist’s « social Darwinism », real or imaginary. Darwin is neither the purveyor of a Hitlerian racism nor the protagonist of a natural antiracism directly stemming from this theory. (shrink)

It is a commonplace notion that the issue of human rights is a recent one, an inheritance of the Enlightenment. The teaching of the recent Popes, however, indicates that the issue of human rights is also an inheritance ofChristianity. The article demonstrates that, in fact, the essential structure of the notion of human rights was object of the attention of the earliest Christians, especially when the power of Rome accepted a wide variety of cults for the sake of its calm (...) scepticism, and at the same time opposed the Christian communities precisely because they were Christian. In this way, the concept of human rights found a first formulation regarding the protection of human beings and their dignity, not only in favor of Christians, but on the basis of universal norms founded in the unique Creator of all human beings. (shrink)