In this essay Gregory Bynum seeks to show that Immanuel Kant's thought, which was conceived in an eighteenth-century context of new, and newly widespread, pressures for nationally institutionalized human rights–based regimes (the American and French revolutions being the most prominent examples), can help us think in new and appreciative ways about how to approach human rights education more effectively in our own time. Kant's discussion of moral experience features prominently in Bynum's analysis, which emphasizes the following: Kant's conception of (...) a Categorical Imperative to treat humanity as an end in itself; his conscious avoidance of, and his discussion of the necessity of avoiding, the limitations of empiricist and rationalist extremes of thought; and his discussion of moral experience in interrelated individual, community, and global aspects. Bynum demonstrates the usefulness of Kant's approach by using it as a lens through which to appreciatively examine a Japanese-born university professor's account of her ultimately successful effort to teach American students about U.S.-instigated human rights violations abroad. (shrink)

Two humanist, critical approaches—those of Dorothy Dinnerstein and Immanuel Kant—are summarized, compared, and employed to critique gender bias in science education. The value of Dinnerstein’s approach lies in her way of seeing conventional “masculinity” and conventional “femininity” as developing in relation to each other from early childhood. Because of women’s dominance of early childcare and adults’ enduring, sexist resentment of that dominance, women become inhumanely associated with the non-adult qualities of immaturity, dependence, and childish vulnerability and punish-ability; and male human (...) beings—to whom woman-resenting convention assigns the impossible task of absolutely triumphing over “the feminine,” childhood experience, and all human vulnerability—become inhumanely held to unachievable standards of super-hero invulnerability and god-like mental and practical infallibility. The value of Kant’s approach lies in his insistence that our sense of what is right and necessary for social progress must arise in a practically engaged and experientially full manner, rather than (1) from concepts (such as rigid ideological prescriptions) conceived as being detached from sense experience and as arising from an otherworldly, divine or quasi-divine realm of moral infallibility (such concepts being conventionally associated with “masculine” authority and leadership), or (2) from a sense of being trapped in what—in a given historical, cultural, or experiential moment—may appear as an absolute and unchangeable reality of embodied human experience (an anti-critical, anti-intellectual, and anti-progressive sense of things often associated with disempowered “feminine” experience). I demonstrate that critique integrating these approaches is useful in a science education setting. (shrink)

Court D. Lewis, author of Repentance and the Right to Forgiveness, presents a rights-based theory of ethics grounded in eirenéism, a needs-based theory of rights (inspired by Nicholas Wolterstorff) that seeks peaceful flourishing for all moral agents. This approach creates a moral relationship between victims and wrongdoers such that wrongdoers owe victims compensatory obligations. However, one further result is that wrongdoers may be owed forgiveness by victims. This leads to the “repugnant implication” that victims may be wrongdoers who do (...) not forgive. Author Lewis addresses the “repugnant implication” by showing that victims are obligated to work toward forgiveness, if not forgiveness itself. Critic Gregory L. Bock argues that victims are not the only ones who can forgive, that the personal dimensions of forgiveness are overlooked, and that the force of the “repugnancy implication” may be questioned. Instead of rights-based eirenéism, Bock supports a virtue ethics framework. Instead of rights-based eirenéism, Bock encourages virtue ethics. Critic David Boersema raises questions about the binding nature of relationships, the dependency of flourishing upon forgiveness, and the nature of needs or rights. Boersema also questions the wisdom of a rights-based approach to forgiveness. Critic Jennifer Kling asks whether a rights-based approach is necessary to ground obligations to meet the needs of others: why not an ethics of care? If a rights-based approach is taken, perhaps a wrongdoer is obligated to not make forgiveness a life good. By disengaging this obligation, we avoid constraining a victim’s work toward forgiveness, especially when the wrongdoing is oppressive. Author Lewis responds to these objections. (shrink)

Righteous Indignation explores the philosophy of Christian anger—for example what anger is, what it means for God to be angry, and when anger is morally appropriate. The contributors examine several dimensions of the topic, including divine wrath, imprecatory psalms, and the proper place of anger in the life of Christians today.

This book provides a variety of diverse perspectives related to the ethics of anger, some more analytical in nature, others focused on practical issues, some in defense of anger, and others arguing against its necessity. This book is an essential resource for scholars who want to reflect critically on the place of anger in contemporary life.

In this paper, we contest Peter Kivy’s claim that there is a clear opposition between ‘absolute music’ and programme music and between musical form and musical expressiveness. We argue, on the contrary, that much music falls somewhere between absolute and programme music as Kivy conceives the categories, and that such music is often primarily organized not on purely formal principles but by means of the overall ‘expressive trajectory’ or ‘poetic idea’ of the piece. Kivy is dismissive of all ‘narrativist’ interpretations (...) of what he considers absolute music, arguing that they add an ‘extraneous’ story to music that neither has nor needs one. We argue on the contrary that the history of the ‘heroic’ plot type in the tradition from Beethoven to Shostakovich demonstrates that composers in the Russian Romantic tradition conceived of their music as unified by ‘poetic ideas’, which were handed down and elaborated by one composer after another. (shrink)

The longstanding interest in business ethics has been given renewed emphasis by high profile scandals in the world of business and finance. At the same time, many economists--dissatisfied with the discipline's emphasis on self-interest and individualism and by the asocial nature of much economic theory--have sought to englarge the scope of economics by looking at ethical questions. In Ethics and Economic Affairs a group of interdisciplinary scholars provide contributions on international interest in this aspect of socio-economics and economic-psychology. The book (...) is divided into four parts. The first looks at Business Ethics and Management. Part Two enlivens the debate with empirical data. The third part examines the implications for economic theory and asks if the integration of ethics in the economy is possible or if they are fundamentally different systems. Part Four introduces perspectives from other disciplines, sets economics within its wider context and looks to the future. The editors have brought together a group of contributors from nine different countries and a broad range of disciplines, including: Norman E. Bowie, Monroe Burk, Amitai Etzioni, Richard H. Guerette, Ralph E. Miner, Lynne M. Rosansky, N. Craig Smith, Roberts Stallaerts, Philip Stone and John Tomer. (shrink)

Del Giudice provides an extension of the life history theory of attachment that incorporates emerging data suggestive of sex differences in avoidant male and preoccupied female attachment patterns emerging in middle childhood. This commentary considers the place of disorganized attachment within this theory and why male children may be more prone to disorganized attachment by drawing on Trivers's parental investment theory.

This chapter talks about Ayn Rand's distinctive view of the philosophical roots and meaning of the events of her time ‐ especially the events of the 1960s and 1970s when she was most active as a commentator on current events. It begins with a section on Rand's political writings and activism in the 1930s and (especially) 1940s, which is followed by Rand's essays that provide a broad philosophical and historical context for the issues facing the world. While the third section (...) deals with antitrust and censorship which according to Rand were as the most pressing issues, the fourth discusses the Kennedy administration. The fifth section analyzes the brokering deals between pressure groups by the Johnson and Nixon administrations. Then, Rand's writings focus on the unprincipled nature of American foreign policy, especially during the “Cold War”. Her writings also cover the civil rights, feminist, New Left and Libertarianism movements. (shrink)

A promising recent development in molecular biology involves viewing the genome as a miniecosystem, where genetic elements are compared to organisms and the surrounding cellular and genomic structures are regarded as the local environment. Here we critically evaluate the prospects of Ecological Neutral Theory, a popular model in ecology, as it applies at the genomic level. This assessment requires an overview of the controversy surrounding neutral models in community ecology. In particular, we discuss the limitations of using ENT both as (...) an explanation of community dynamics and as a null hypothesis. We then analyze a case study in which ENT has been applied to genomic data. Our central finding is that genetic elements do not conform to the requirements of ENT once its assumptions and limitations are made explicit. We further compare this genome-level application of ENT to two other, more familiar approaches in genomics that rely on neutral mechanisms: Kimura’s Molecular Neutral Theory and Lynch’s Mutational Hazard Model. Interestingly, this comparison reveals that there are two distinct concepts of neutrality associated with these models which we dub ‘fitness-neutrality’ and ‘competitive neutrality’. This distinction helps to clarify the various roles for neutral models in genomics, for example, in explaining the evolution of genome size. (shrink)

The central project of the Critique of Pure Reason is to answer two sets of questions: What can we know and how can we know it? and What can't we know and why can't we know it? The essays in this collection are intended to help students read the Critique of Pure Reason with a greater understanding of its central themes and arguments, and with some awareness of important lines of criticism of those themes and arguments.

This book is a collection of secondary essays on America's most important philosophic thinkers—statesmen, judges, writers, educators, and activists—from the colonial period to the present. Each essay is a comprehensive introduction to the thought of a noted American on the fundamental meaning of the American regime.

Considerable variation exists not only in the kinds of transposable elements (TEs) occurring within the genomes of different species, but also in their abundance and distribution. Noting a similarity to the assortment of organisms among ecosystems, some researchers have called for an ecological approach to the study of transposon dynamics. However, there are several ways to adopt such an approach, and it is sometimes unclear what an ecological perspective will add to the existing co-evolutionary framework for explaining transposon-host interactions. This (...) review aims to clarify the conceptual foundations of transposon ecology in order to evaluate its explanatory prospects. We begin by identifying three unanswered questions regarding the abundance and distribution of TEs that potentially call for an ecological explanation. We then offer an operational distinction between evolutionary and ecological approaches to these questions. By determining the amount of variance in transposon abundance and distribution that is explained by ecological and evolutionary factors, respectively, it is possible empirically to assess the prospects for each of these explanatory frameworks. To illustrate how this methodology applies to a concrete example, we analyzed whole-genome data for one set of distantly related mammals and another more closely related group of arthropods. Our expectation was that ecological factors are most informative for explaining differences among individual TE lineages, rather than TE families, and for explaining their distribution among closely related as opposed to distantly related host genomes. We found that, in these data sets, ecological factors do in fact explain most of the variation in TE abundance and distribution among TE lineages across less distantly related host organisms. Evolutionary factors were not significant at these levels. However, the explanatory roles of evolution and ecology become inverted at the level of TE families or among more distantly related genomes. Not only does this example demonstrate the utility of our distinction between ecological and evolutionary perspectives, it further suggests an appropriate explanatory domain for the burgeoning discipline of transposon ecology. The fact that ecological processes appear to be impacting TE lineages over relatively short time scales further raises the possibility that transposons might serve as useful model systems for testing more general hypotheses in ecology. (shrink)

In _C. S. Lewis’s Christian Apologetics: Pro and Con_, ten articulate defenders and critics of Lewis’s apologetics square off and debate the merits of Lewis’s central arguments for Christian belief.

Pancreatitis is a complex, progressively destructive inflammatory disorder. Alcohol was long thought to be the primary causative agent, but genetic contributions have been of interest since the discovery that rare PRSS1, CFTR and SPINK1 variants were associated with pancreatitis risk. We now report two associations at genome-wide significance identified and replicated at PRSS1-PRSS2 and X-linked CLDN2 through a two-stage genome-wide study. The PRSS1 variant likely affects disease susceptibility by altering expression of the primary trypsinogen gene. The CLDN2 risk allele is (...) associated with atypical localization of claudin-2 in pancreatic acinar cells. The homozygous CLDN2 genotype confers the greatest risk, and its alleles interact with alcohol consumption to amplify risk. These results could partially explain the high frequency of alcohol-related pancreatitis in men. © 2012 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to explore the close link between technology and death in the philosophical writings of Lewis Mumford. Mumford famously argued that throughout the history of western civilization we find intertwined two competing forms of technics; the democratic biotechnic form and the authoritarian monotechnic form. The former technics were said to be strongly compatible with an organic form of life while the latter were said to be allied to a mechanical power complex. What is perhaps (...) less well known is the extent to which Mumford characterizes the authoritarian technical form as being a technics of death. This article will argue that the connection between death and technics is a key theme in Mumford’s philosophy of technology. In addition to elaborating this theme and detailing how it informs Mumford’s other positions on the nature of technology, this article will also argue that Mumford’s theory of a technics of death bears witness, both implicitly and explicitly, to the influence of Sigmund Freud’s theory of the death instinct. Freud’s account of the death instinct will be outlined briefly and its influence on Mumford’s writings will be explained. Death, in Mumford’s technological writings, has a generally negative function and serves to warn humanity of the perilous course that its technological civilization is set upon. However it also has a positive function in that it encourages man to transcend its biological existence in acts of creativity and purpose. Death, in this positive sense, serves the purpose of life whereas, in the negative sense, it hinders it. The role of death, in both aspects, will be explored and related to Mumford’s overall perspective on technics and life. It is argued that Mumford’s philosophy of technology cannot be fully understood without an awareness of his views on death and its role in the life of technological society. (shrink)

The editors of the JRE solicited short essays on the COVID‐19 pandemic from a group of scholars of religious ethics that reflected on how the field might help them make sense of the complex religious, cultural, ethical, and political implications of the pandemic, and on how the pandemic might shape the future of religious ethics.

The purpose of this article is to establish that Lewis Mumford’s historical and philosophical writings were heavily influenced by the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud. It is argued that Freudian ideas and concepts played a foundational role in the construction of Mumford’s views on the nature and function of mind, culture and history, which in turn founded his views on the relationship between technology and society. Indeed, it is argued that a full understanding of Mumford’s technological writings cannot be (...) achieved until one has grasped their psychoanalytic influence. To this end, this article will reconstruct the psychological views of Lewis Mumford and indicate how they draw upon and modify Freudian theory. It will then be shown how Mumford’s theory of the psyche interacts with Mumford’s own concept of the idolum. This interaction, I will argue, considerably underpins Mumford’s holistic views on the relationship between society and the individual and between the internal and external world and will require us to reconsider our understanding of Mumford’s philosophy of technology, particularly with regard to his descriptions of monotechnics and biotechnics, the authoritarian and democratic technological forms. It will be argued that for Mumford the division intechnics corresponds to a division in the human psyche, and indeed arises from it. Not only will an appreciation of Mumford’s Freudian influence alter our understanding of Mumford’s technological writings in general, but also in particular it can enable us better to comprehend the reasoning behind Mumford’s recommended method of resistance to the modern power complex of the megamachine. Such a revised understanding of Mumford’s philosophy also undercuts any attempts to characterize his position as being a technological determinist one. Rather, his philosophy of technology is better understood as a form of technological voluntarism. (shrink)

Groups of people are commonly said to be collectively responsible for what has happened. Sometimes the groups claimed to be responsible are vast in size, as when collective responsibility is ascribed to the class of all Americans or the class of all white males. In this book the concept of collective responsibility is analyzed. It is examined not only in the light of what philosophical proponents have said about it, but a genuine attempt is made to make sense of what (...) ordinary people say about responsibility when it is ascribed to groups of people. Accordingly, it is distinguished from related concepts such as shared responsibility and moral taint. Parallels are examined between the actions of an individual and the actions of a group or collective, parallels which seem to make ascriptions of collective responsibility more plausible. Some philosophers oppose collective responsibility and argue for an individualist type of position; in this regard the positions of Lewis and Sverdlik are critically examined. The final chapter contains the author's own position, a position which affirms that collective responsibility is possible but which also preserves some of the central intuitions of the individualist. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Christ in the Life and Teaching of Gregory of Nazianzus by Andrew Hofer, O.P.Lewis AyresChrist in the Life and Teaching of Gregory of Nazianzus. By Andrew Hofer, O.P. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp. xi + 270. $105.00 (cloth). ISBN 978-0-19-968194-5.Fr. Andrew Hofer has written a cleverly conceived treatise on Gregory Nazianzen, one whose main focus is Gregory’s vision of his own life (...) (and the life of Christians more generally) as both imitatio Christi and participatio Christi. Hofer grounds his account of this imitatio and participatio in Gregory’s core dogmatic account of the person of Christ. The book thus offers us a study, focusing on one central author, of the ways in which a Nicene Christology could shape and stimulate (as well as be shaped and stimulated by) an account of the Christian life.The first chapter is an extended meditation on the nature of the “word” in Gregory. Here, Hofer begins by exploring how Gregory situates himself in the ancient battle—or at least the ancient literary topos of such a battle—between philosophy and rhetoric. Not surprisingly, Hofer emphasizes that Gregory sees himself as a philosopher, but one for whom the Christian life offers the true form of a philosophical life. The discussion then turns toward ways in which Gregory sees the Scriptures as providing a basis for discussing and modeling virtually all aspects of the Christian life. Hofer offers a little discussion of the manner in which Gregory adapts ancient rhetorical traditions of, for example, the paradeigma (see 44), but these debts are acknowledged mostly en passant.The second chapter takes us to the heart of the book and does an excellent job of setting up the author’s theme. Considering Gregory’s poetic auto-biographical [End Page 314] writing, Hofer argues that Gregory not only “blends Christ into the troubles, fears, and joys of his own life” but that he also “makes present the baptismal mysteries of one’s life immersed in Christ’s life” (56). In chapter 5, this extra dimension will receive a foundation in an account of the ways in which Gregory sees Christians drawn into the very events of Christ’s life (156-60, commenting particularly on Gregory’s Or. 40). There, Hofer emphasizes that Christ’s life is itself “a mimesis of ours” (160), creating realities that may be models for ours, models into which we are then drawn. But, in chapter 2 itself, Hofer’s main concern is to show the sheer variety of ways in which Gregory interweaves the scriptural account of Christ’s life and ministry with his own. This complex set of reference styles is termed Gregory’s “autobiographical Christology.”Chapter 3 pursues this agenda by turning to the ways in which Gregory uses the terminology of “mixture” to describe Christ—and to describe Christ’s relationship to Christians. It is this chapter that Stanley Hauerwas, were he endorsing the book, would say is “worth the price of the book alone.” Two things are particularly noteworthy. The first is the helpful discussion of the philosophical traditions that lie behind the terms Gregory uses. Hofer wishes us to take seriously traditions of thought on this theme that run between Aristotle and Alexander of Aphrodisias, rather than to place most weight on the Stoic tradition. Hofer advocates for his thesis in a sensitive fashion, emphasizing the difficulty in distinguishing distinct traditions in late antiquity. Second, there is much to be learned from the manner in which Hofer stretches discussion of Christ himself as “mixture” so that it provides insight into Gregory’s account of the Christian’s relationship with Christ.Chapter 4 follows a similar pattern, showing that a discussion of Christ’s person in Gregory’s writings (in this case, the famous sequence epp. 101, 102, and 202) has repercussions for wider themes. This chapter is less successful, in large part because of the sheer scale of the exercise attempted by Hofer. The largest section of the chapter (123-47) offers an extended discussion of Gregory’s ep. 101. This famous letter gives an extended critique of Christological error. Hofer begins by situating... (shrink)

Suppose that Paul, while looking at a tree, sees that that thing over there is a red bird. Paul is having what we may call a ‘singular’ perceptual experience. How should we characterise the representational content of his perceptual experience? I will sketch an original answer to this question, building on the internalist accounts propounded by Searle (1983. Intentionality. Cambridge University Press. Ch. 2) and Recanati (2007. Perspectival Thought. Oxford University Press. Ch. 17). Pace Searle, the content of Paul's experience (...) is not a (general) proposition. Pace Recanati, whose account draws on Lewis’s (1979. “Attitudes De Dicto and De Se.” Philosophical Review 88 (4): 513–543) internalist view of de se attitudes, it is not a property of the perceiving subject. Instead, I submit, it is a property of the perceived object. The content is the property of being a red bird, which determines a set of centred worlds whose centre (an object taken at a time) is a red bird; the object (here, the bird) is part of the relevant situation of evaluation for the experience; and the experience is veridical only if the actual world centred on the object belongs to the set of centred worlds determined by that property. I will argue that this view retains the benefits of Searle's and Recanati's accounts while improving on them. (shrink)

Dancing with the Sacred by Karl Peters provides a coherent and at times moving portrait of the religious naturalist position. I highlight three broad issues that are raised by the kind of religious naturalism that Peters develops: (1) the meaning of the term natural, (2) the nature of God in Peters's naturalistic framework, and (3) the question of eschatology. In each area, I believe that Peters's work raises many questions that need to be addressed and also provides openings for (...) further dialogue. (shrink)

Karl Jaspers was one of the greatest European philosophers and humanists of the twentieth century. He demonstrated a broad range of philosophical thinking that makes his work relevant for the twenty-first century. Coming to philosophy from medicine and psychiatry, Jaspers's views encompass a vast and creative range of empirical, philosophical, social, historical, and poltical ideas. Hannah Arendt described Jaspers as one of the greatest interpreters of Kant in the German tradition. In the 1950s, Jaspers spoke of his "philosophy of (...) reason" and his debt to Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Weber, and others. His philosophy, however, has often been misunderstood by Anglophone readers and interpreters, both with respect to his so-called existentialism, as well as to the originality, creativity, depth, and scope of this thinking and method. The contributors to this fascinating volume offer fresh expositions and interpretations of Jaspers's philosophy. All are prominent experts in Jaspers research from three continents (Europe, North America, and Asia). Six major parts reveal the significant contribution of Jaspers's thought to the philosophy of psychiatry and science, philosophy of history, metaphysics, philosophy of education, philosophy of humanity, philosophy of politics, philosophy of religion, and intercultural philosophy. Key concepts of Jaspers's philosophy are highlighted and interpreted from a fresh and timely perspective: "boundary situations," existential communication, existential truth, transcendence, philosophical faith, the axial age in world history, new politics and the role of a moral and political conversion, the idea of the university, and Jaspers's fascination with and interpretation of Asian thought. The accessible essays will help readers overcome the intimidation often felt when faced with the work of a major German philosopher. The editors introduce and summarize Jaspers's published works, while offering an overview of his basic themes and concerns. New readers and researchers alike will find this collection instrumental in understanding recent developments in the interpretation of Jaspers. (shrink)

Karl Jaspers was one of the greatest European philosophers and humanists of the twentieth century. He demonstrated a broad range of philosophical thinking that makes his work relevant for the twenty-first century. Coming to philosophy from medicine and psychiatry, Jaspers's views encompass a vast and creative range of empirical, philosophical, social, historical, and poltical ideas. Hannah Arendt described Jaspers as one of the greatest interpreters of Kant in the German tradition. In the 1950s, Jaspers spoke of his "philosophy of (...) reason" and his debt to Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Weber, and others. His philosophy, however, has often been misunderstood by Anglophone readers and interpreters, both with respect to his so-called existentialism, as well as to the originality, creativity, depth, and scope of this thinking and method. The contributors to this fascinating volume offer fresh expositions and interpretations of Jaspers's philosophy. All are prominent experts in Jaspers research from three continents. Six major parts reveal the significant contribution of Jaspers's thought to the philosophy of psychiatry and science, philosophy of history, metaphysics, philosophy of education, philosophy of humanity, philosophy of politics, philosophy of religion, and intercultural philosophy. Key concepts of Jaspers's philosophy are highlighted and interpreted from a fresh and timely perspective: "boundary situations," existential communication, existential truth, transcendence, philosophical faith, the axial age in world history, new politics and the role of a moral and political conversion, the idea of the university, and Jaspers's fascination with and interpretation of Asian thought. The accessible essays will help readers overcome the intimidation often felt when faced with the work of a major German philosopher. The editors introduce and summarize Jaspers's published works, while offering an overview of his basic themes and concerns. New readers and researchers alike will find this collection instrumental in understanding recent developments in the interpretation of Jaspers. (shrink)

Preface/Introduction: The question under discussion is metaphysical and truly elemental. It emerges in two aspects — how did we come to be conscious of our own existence, and, as a deeper corollary, do existence and awareness necessitate each other? I am bold enough to explore these questions and I invite you to come along; I make no claim to have discovered absolute answers. However, I do believe I have created here a compelling interpretation. You’ll have to judge for yourself. -/- (...) What follows is the presentation of three essays I have worked on over the past several years seeing publication for the first time. “Hollows of Experience” was written first as an invited chapter for a collection on the ontology of consciousness. However, when cuts became necessary, my chapter got the knife. Its length has prohibited it from publication in any print journal. “Myth and Mind” was written next as a journal article, but as my involvement with it grew so did its length, so it has also idled on my websty awaiting its call. “From Panexperientialism to Conscious Experience” was written most recently, but it is the only one to have been available to the public elsewhere than my own website. Under the name, “The Continuum of Experience”, it was Target Article #95 on the recently closed Karl Jaspers Forum (for discussion purposes only). -/- I have put them in a different sequence here, for reasons of logical sense. Up first, “Panexperientialism” deals with an idea difficult for many to accept, namely that conscious experience is a particular mode of symbolically reflected experience that is largely unique to our species. However, I aver that experienced sensation in itself (as found, for example, in autonomic sensory response systems) goes “all the way down” into nature, and thus the title, panexperientialism. -/- Understanding this idea is helpful to dealing with the focus on language in Part I of “Hollows”, next, since here speech and general symbolic interaction in general are found to be the catalysts for the creation of our consciously experienced world (our “lived reality”). In Part II, however, I explore how experienced sensations must be coeval with existence, and, with even greater temerity, how all this sensational existence might have arisen within some literally inconceivable background of awareness-in-itself that yet has a dynamism that occasionally breaks into existence as experiential events and entities. (The latter may sound wacky, but physicists and cosmologists are themselves attempting to come to terms with that which seethes with vast potential energy in what they refer to as the quantum vacuum.) -/- “Myth and Mind” was put third since it deals with a major lacuna in “Hollows” — that presumed prehistoric period when members of our species made the painful crossing of the symbolic threshold into the beginnings of cultural consciousness. Speech plays a central role here, too, but I look more at narrative structures from the dawn of self-awareness when ritual and myth became vital to human survival. Why would fantastic stories and bizarre rituals be necessary? I speculate that growing foresight led to the unavoidable realization of certain mortality, from which, in turn, emerged the secondary realization that we were now alive. In contrast to our yet-to-come death, we have life here and now, and by ritually identifying with a symbolically expanded mythic, i.e., sacred, reality, we may continue to live on after bodily death, just as our ancestors and loved ones must also do. Language and mythmaking are necessary to avoid mortal despair and they remain at the core of human consciousness. -/- As Ernst Cassirer (1944) has noted, language and myth are “twin creatures”, both metaphoric webs over a reality we can never wholly comprehend. We live in the symbolic and construct our works of imagination and wars of conquest to make life meaningful, to feel immortal, and to sense that we ourselves participate in a reality greater than ourselves. No doubt we do, but this does not mean our culturally constructed self-identities survive the death of our bodies, and it does not imply that our symbolic concepts can ever indicate the ultimate truth. We simply must symbolize an extended reality that was sacred to our ancestors: “Is it not our way, as illusory as it may be, to force continuance on our world and our life in the face of their inevitable ending? Are we not compelled to extend those imaginary horizons as far as we can despite the terror and the sometime joy their extension incites? Is their closure not a form of death?” (Crapanzano, p. 210) -/- Of course, this leaves me in the uncomfortable position of being forced to admit that this venture of mine must inevitably be another attempt at meaningful mythmaking. But what else could it be? This is certainly not a scientific proof though it is indeed an academically rigorous exploration. (Just try to count the citations!) I hope the reader will judge my thesis on the basis of its coherence, the sense of meaning it evokes, my intellectual responsibility, and, finally, the engagement it inspires. If you have read my expositions and found yourself immersed in the timeless questions I here call forth, I would call these writings successful (even if you violently disagree with my answers). -/- I am very grateful to Huping Hu for granting me this special issue of JCER in which to present my ideas in some detail. He has patiently dealt with my exuberant approach and allowed the many changes I kept coming up with right until the final publication date. I also wish to thank the many potential commentators who politely replied to my invitation, and, even more, I thank those who made time to write actual commentaries. -/- References -/- Cassirer, E. (1944). An Essay on Man: An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human Culture. New Haven/London: Yale UP. -/- Crapanzano, V. (2004). Imaginative Horizons: An Essay in Literary-Philosophical Anthropology. Chicago: U of Chicago Press. -/- Gregory M. Nixon University of Northern British Columbia Prince George, British Columbia, Canada Email: [email protected] Websty: http://members.shaw.ca/doknyx. (shrink)

Lewis' argument against the Limit Assumption and Pollock's Generalized Consequence Principle together suggest that "minimal-change" theories of counterfactuals are wrong. The "small-change" theories presented by Nute do not say enough. While these theories rely on closeness between possible worlds, I base an alternative on the ceteris paribus concept. My theory solves a problem that the above cannot, and is more relevant to the philosophy of science. Ceteris paribus conditions should normally include the causes, but exclude the effects, of the (...) negated antecedent. An example from community ecology, the debate over null models in island-biogeographical studies of competition, supports these arguments. (shrink)

Today, Karl Kautsky is mainly remembered for his polemics against the young Bolshevik regime or as the ‘renegade’ in Lenin’sThe Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, which pillories him for his wavering stance in opposing World War I and his outright hostility to the Russian Revolution of October 1917. Kautsky’s authority as a Marxist theoretician was seriously called into question ever since Lenin’s polemic. During the Cold War in particular, a consensus emerged which suggested that Kautsky’s views of democracy, (...) organisation and revolutionary change had little or nothing to do with the political practice of Russian Bolshevism and the Russian Revolution of 1917. Recently, however, several studies have challenged this consensus. They highlight the profound impact which Kautsky had on the development of Russian Bolshevism and make the case that – prior to his renegacy in 1914 – thinkers such as Lenin and Trotsky viewed Kautsky as the legitimate intellectual heir of Marx and Engels. This article introduces an autobiographical essay written by Kautsky in 1924 and calls for closer engagement with his œuvre as a whole. (shrink)