How did Casanova learn the theory of sex? Why did male pornographers write in the characters of women? What happens when philosophers take sexuality seriously and the sex-writers present their outrageous fantasies as an educational, philosophical quest? Schooling Sex is the first full history of early modern libertine literature and its reception, from Aretino and Tullia d'Aragona in 16th century Italy to Pepys, Rochester, and Behn in late 17th century England. James Turner explores the idea of sexual education, from (...) the simple instructional dialogue to the advanced experiments of the philosophical libertine, analysing the hard-core curiculum that defined sexuality centuries before the Marquis de Sade. He shows how close, nuanced readings of neglected but compelling texts - like the searingly explicit Alcibiade fanciullo, L'escole des filles, and Aloisia Sigea - link them to larger issues of gender politics, aesthetics, literary criticism, sexual history, medical science, mind-body philosophy, and the educational revolution. (shrink)

This book aims to pinpoint the connection feelings have with behaviour - a connection that, while clear, has never been fully explained. Following William James, Laird argues that feelings are not the cause of behavior but rather its consequences; the same goes for behaviour and motives and behaviour and attitudes. He presents research into feelings across the spectrum, from anger to joy to fear to romantic love, that support this against-the-grain view. Laird discusses the problem of common sense, self-perception (...) theory, the association between feelings and higher cognitive processes, and also the literature on facial expression, posture, and gaze. (shrink)

James D. Wallace treats moral considerations as beliefs about the right and wrong ways of doing things - beliefs whose source and authority are the same as any ...

"Cornell Paperback." Includes index. Bibliography: p. 163-165.

Through an ambitious and critical revision of Michel Foucault's investigation of ethics, James Faubion develops an original program of empirical inquiry into the ethical domain. From an anthropological perspective, Faubion argues that Foucault's specification of the analytical parameters of this domain is the most productive point of departure in conceptualizing its distinctive features. He further argues that Foucault's framework is in need of substantial revision to be of genuinely anthropological scope. In making this revision, Faubion illustrates his program with (...) two extended case studies: one of a Portuguese marquis and the other of a dual subject made up of the author and a millenarian prophetess. The result is a conceptual apparatus that is able to accommodate ethical pluralism and yield an account of the limits of ethical variation, providing a novel resolution of the problem of relativism that has haunted anthropological inquiry into ethics since its inception. (shrink)

James D Marshall; Wittgenstein on Rules: implications for authority and discipline in education, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 19, Issue 1, 30 May.

McCawley supplements his earlier book—which covers such topics as presuppositional logic, the logic of mass terms and nonstandard quantifiers, and fuzzy ...

While supporting the cosmopolitan pursuit of a world that respects all rights and interests, James D. Ingram believes political theorists have, in their approach to this project, compromised its egalitarian and emancipatory principles. Focusing on recent debates without losing sight of cosmopolitanism's ancient and Enlightenment roots, Ingram confronts the philosophical difficulties of defending universal ideals and the implications for ethics and political theory. In morality as in politics, theorists have generally focused first on discovering universal values and second on (...) their implementation. Ingram argues that only by prioritizing the development and articulation of universal values through political action in the fight for freedom and equality can theorists do justice to these efforts and cosmopolitanism's universal vocation. Only by proceeding from the local to the global, from the bottom up rather than from the top down, on the basis of political practice rather than moral ideals, can we salvage moral and political universalism. In this book, Ingram provides the clearest, most systematic account yet of this schematic reversal and its radical possibilities. (shrink)

James D Marshall; Wittgenstein on Rules: implications for authority and discipline in education, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 19, Issue 1, 30 May.

The orthodox characterization of spontaneous symmetry breaking in statistical mechanics appeals to novel properties of systems with infinite degrees of freedom, namely, the existence of multiple equilibrium states. This raises the same puzzles about the status of the thermodynamic limit fueling recent debates about phase transitions. I argue that there are prospects of explaining the success of the standard approach to SSB in terms of the properties of large finite systems. Consequently, despite initial appearances, the need to account for SSB (...) phenomena does not offer decisive support to claims about the explanatory and representational indispensability of the thermodynamic limit. (shrink)

The centrally recognized theoretical achievement that enabled the Higgs boson discovery in 2012 was the hypothesis of its existence, made by Peter Higgs in 1964. Nevertheless, there is a significant body of comparably important theoretical work prior to and after the Higgs boson hypothesis. In this article we present an additional perspective of how crucial theory work was to the genesis of the Higgs boson hypothesis, especially emphasizing its roots in Landau's theory of phase transitions and subsequent theoretical work on (...) superconductivity. A detailed description is then given of the opposition to the Higgs boson hypothesis by many researchers, giving evidence to its speculative nature. And finally, it is discussed the importance of theory work in the decades after the hypothesis in order to make possible the experimental discovery of the Higgs boson. (shrink)

An artificial general intelligence (AGI) might have an instrumental drive to modify its utility function to improve its ability to cooperate, bargain, promise, threaten, and resist and engage in blackmail. Such an AGI would necessarily have a utility function that was at least partially observable and that was influenced by how other agents chose to interact with it. This instrumental drive would conflict with the strong orthogonality thesis since the modifications would be influenced by the AGI’s intelligence. AGIs in highly (...) competitive environments might converge to having nearly the same utility function, one optimized to favorably influencing other agents through game theory. Nothing in our analysis weakens arguments concerning the risks of AGI. (shrink)

Despite their popularity, dual process accounts of human reasoning and decision-making have come under intense scrutiny in recent years. Cognitive scientists and philosophers alike have come to question the theoretical foundations of the ‘standard view’ of dual process theory and have challenged the validity and relevance of evidence in support of it. Moreover, attempts to modify and refine dual process theory in light of these challenges have generated additional concerns about its applicability and refutability as a scientific theory. With these (...) concerns in mind, this paper provides a critical review of dual process theory in economics, focusing on its role as a psychological framework for decision modeling in behavioral economics and neuroeconomics. I argue that the influx of criticisms against dual process theory challenge the descriptive accuracy of dualistic decision models in economics. In fact, the case can be made that the popularity of dual process theory in economics has less to do with the empirical success of dualistic decision models, and more to do with the convenience that the dual process narrative provides economists looking to explain-away decision anomalies. This leaves behavioral economists and neuroeconomists with something of a dilemma: either they stick to their purported ambitions to give a realistic description of human decision-making and give up the narrative, or they revise and restate their scientific ambitions. (shrink)

In this book James D. G. Dunn explores the nature of the religious experiences that were at the forefront of emerging Christianity.

William James’s theory of emotion has been controversial since its inception, and a basic analysis of Cannon’s critique is provided. Research on the impact of facial expressions, expressive behaviors, and visceral responses on emotional feelings are each reviewed. A good deal of evidence supports James’s theory that these types of bodily feedback, along with perceptions of situational cues, are each important parts of emotional feelings. Extensions to James’s theory are also reviewed, including evidence of individual differences in (...) the effect of bodily responses on emotional experience. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:TOWARD A GENERAL THEORY OF FICTION by James D. Parsons When nelson Goodman writes, "All fiction is literal, literary falsehood," he seems to be disregarding at least one noteworthy tradition.1 The tradition I have in mind includes works by Jeremy Bendiam, Hans Vaihinger, Tobias Dantzig, Wallace Stevens, and a host ofother writers in many fields who have been laboring for more man two centuries to clear the ground (...) for a general theory of fiction. Such a general dieory would, if its exponents are right about its relevemce, be situated at the very heart of die law, literature, religion, science, mathematics — in fact, of humem life itself. Fiction dien would be no neirrow litereiry falsehood, but a kind of pressure, eis Wedlace Stevens said, which die imagination exerts "against die pressure of reality," and which "helps us to live our lives,"2 or, in Hans Vaihingens metaphor, "a scaffolding afterwards to be demolished" 3 — that is, elfter it heis served its constructive purpose. A fiction is a vitally useful creation of die mind corresponding to nothing in the real world. Most people eire aware of some of these fictions, from the perfect geometric figures of Euclid to the black box of contemporary axiomatics. There are many odiers. The notion diat all human beings are equal before die law is a fiction that can serve opposing purposes: it can work as an instrument for securing greater justice in the courts and in society, or it can function as ceimouflage, helping to perpetuate em unjust legal system and em oppressive social order — emd probably in any actual situation it serves both purposes at once. In die science of mechanics the idea of a pure vacuum, in which moving objects meet with no resistance, was for some centuries a useful fiction diat made possible the exact mathematiced analysis of motion in memy forms — another useful fiction. The notion of normality in psychology — mat diere is a universal standard of reference for human behavior — is stdl utilized by clinical and laboratory workers in the field, in spite of the metssive sociological emd ethnographic criticisms that have been leveled against it. In science generally, the idea that 92 James D. Parsons93 diere is a community of experts who by dieir combined influence decide what the trudi is in every field is a fiction diat seems to have come to the end of its usefulness, diough some philosophers have written about it as if it were a reality and not a fiction at edl. The fictions I have cited so far are none of them literary, nor être diey fedse in the ordinetry meaning of the word. They are simply not true; they describe nothing mat exists, except in die mind, emd cem be considered false only if one forgets what they eire emd tries, illegitimately, to apply tests of trudi to them in a direct way. Among the fictions mat might be called literary are the fictions derived from mydis. Now, a myth is a story told in answer to a question or a series of questions that has never been asked, eidier about the real world or (most likely) about the perennial performance of a ritual. The mydi is designed to forestall the questioning, because the questions that might be raised would be too embarrassing or because questions about some aspects of reality ceuinot be formulated without distorting our relation to them. These are the aspects of reedity that can be viewed only out of die corner of the eye, that disappear when we focus our gaze upon diem, and mat can be identified only indirectly.4 The more explicitly fictional devices, too, of poetry, drama, and the novel develop out of the attempt to achieve some sort of cognizeuice of the seune aspects of reality that are related in mydis. I do not meetn to imply that literature, of which mydi is a part, is concerned only with such disconcerting or evanescent aspects of reality. Literature, like all the great realms of culture, is concerned with the whole of reality. It has to be, omerwise its more passionate, its more ediereed concerns would have no lodging place, no environment in which to maintain... (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the performance stories in the Zhuangzi, and the Butcher Ding story, emphasize an activity meditation practice that places the performer in a mindfulness flow zone, leading to graceful, efficacious, selfless, spontaneous, and free action. These stories are metaphors showing the reader how to attain a meditative state of focused awareness while acting freely in a flow experience. From my perspective, these metaphors are not about developing practical or technical skills per se. My argument challenges (...) a strict instrumental reading. Although instrumental reasoning can easily lead one to focus on the pragmatic outcomes depicted in these stories (See Eno, “Cook Ding’s Dao;” Callahan, “Cook Ding’s Life;” and Robins, “Beyond Skill”), the proposed pragmatic outcomes are merely a kind of collateral result of effortless, free actions, in the flow experience. The metaphors of Butcher Ding, the Lüliang rapids swimmer, the Wheelwright Bian, the Woodcarver Qing, the cicada catcher, the naked artist and so on are used to show the reader a way to engage in free and graceful action in the flow experience. Zhuangzi is not concerned about developing labour skills. He criticizes such skills; seen below when the Butcher claims to have “… left skill behind …” (進乎技矣) (Graham, Chuang-tzu, 63), and chapter five notes that “… skill is a peddler” (工為商) (Watson, Complete, 75). (shrink)

Axel Honneth has been instrumental in advancing the work of the Frankfurt School of critical theorists, rebuilding their effort to combine radical social and political analysis with rigorous philosophical inquiry. These eleven essays published over the past five years reclaim the relevant themes of the Frankfurt School, which counted Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin, Jürgen Habermas, Franz Neumann, and Albrecht Wellmer as members. They also engage with Kant, Freud, Alexander Mitscherlich, and Michael Walzer, whose work on morality, history, (...) democracy, and individuality intersects with the Frankfurt School's core concerns. Collected here for the first time in English, Honneth's essays pursue the unifying themes and theses that support the methodologies and thematics of critical social theory, and they address the possibilities of continuing this tradition through radically changed theoretical and social conditions. According to Honneth, there is a unity that underlies critical theory's multiple approaches: the way in which reason is both distorted and furthered in contemporary capitalist society. And while much is dead in the social and psychological doctrines of critical social theory, its central inquiries remain vitally relevant. Is social progress still possible after the horrors of the twentieth century? Does capitalism deform reason and, if so, in what respects? Can we justify the relationship between law and violence in secular terms, or is it inextricably bound to divine justice? How can we be free when we're subject to socialization in a highly complex and in many respects unfree society? For Honneth, suffering and moral struggle are departure points for a new "reconstructive" form of social criticism, one that is based solidly in the empirically grounded, interdisciplinary approach of the Frankfurt School. (shrink)

Heidegger's Moral Ontology offers the first comprehensive account of the ethical issues that underwrite Heidegger's efforts to develop a novel account of human existence. Drawing from a wide array of source materials from the period leading up to the publication of Being and Time, and in conversation with ancient, modern, and contemporary contributions to moral philosophy, James D. Reid brings Heidegger's early philosophy into fruitful dialogue with the history of ethics, and sheds fresh light on such familiar topics as (...) Heidegger's critique of Husserl, his engagement with Aristotle, his account of mortality, the role played by Kant in the genesis of Being and Time, and Heidegger's early reflections on philosophical language and concepts. This lively book will appeal to all who are interested in Heidegger's early phenomenology and in his thought more generally, as well as to those interested in the nature, scope, and foundations of ethical life. (shrink)

The perturbative approach to quantum field theory has long been viewed with suspicion by philosophers of science. This article offers a diagnosis of its conceptual problems. Drawing on Norton’s discussion of the notion of approximation I argue that perturbative QFT ought to be understood as producing approximations without specifying an underlying QFT model. This analysis leads to a reassessment of common worries about perturbative QFT. What ends up being the key issue with the approach on this picture is not mathematical (...) rigour, or the threat of inconsistency, but the need for a physical explanation of its empirical success. 1Three Worries about Perturbative Quantum Field Theory2The Perturbative Formalism 2.1Expanding the S-matrix2.2Perturbative renormalization3Approximations and Models4Perturbative Quantum Field Theory Produces Approximations5The Real Problem. (shrink)

Sensitivity to the square of the cutoff scale of quantum corrections of the Higgs boson mass self-energy has led many authors to conclude that the Higgs theory suffers from a naturalness or fine-tuning problem. However, speculative new physics ideas to solve this problem have not manifested themselves yet at high-energy colliders, such as the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. For this reason, the role of naturalness as a guide to theory model-building is being severely questioned. Most attacks suggest that one (...) should not resort to arguments involving gravity, which is a much less understood quantum field theory. Another line of attack is against the assumption that there exists a multitude of additional heavy states specifically charged under the Standard Model gauge symmetries. Nevertheless, if we give ground on both of these assaults on naturalness, what remains is a naturalness concern over the prospect of numerous additional spin-zero scalar states in nature. The proliferation of heavy scalars generically destabilizes the Higgs boson mass, raising it to the highest and most remote scalar mass values in nature, thus straining the legitimacy of the Standard Model. The copious use of extra scalars in theory model building, from explaining flavor physics to providing an inflationary potential and more, and the generic expectation of extra scalar bosons in nature argues for the proliferation instability problem being the central concern for naturalness of the Standard Model. Some approaches to solving this problem are presented. (shrink)

Physicists use different theories to describe the world on different scales. In particular, they use the standard model of particle physics at very high energies, but move to various effective field theories, such as quantum electrodynamics, when modelling lower energy scattering processes. One way to explain this methodological fact is pragmatic in spirit. According to this view, physicists move to an effective field theory at lower energies in order to extract predictions and qualitative understanding which would be difficult or impossible (...) to extract directly from a more fundamental theory. By contrast, another way of accounting for the methodological data is metaphysical in spirit. On this view, the reason that physicists use different theories at different scales is that the world actually exhibits different nomic structure on different scales. These two positions have recently been thrown into sharp relief in a debate between Woodward (2016) and Batterman (2021), with Woodward taking the pragmatist line and Batterman the metaphysical line. One difficulty with the metaphysical answer is that its content is unclear: in what sense exactly could an effective field theory provide a better representation of the nomic structure of the world in its domain of applicability than our world’s fundamental theory? This talk attempts to provide an answer to this question by developing a simple metaphysical model. I start by assuming a set of possible worlds which are nomically possible according to some fundamental theory (I suggest that one is free to adopt either a Humean or Non-Humean view of these fundamental nomic necessities). I then introduce an equivalence relation between possible worlds: two worlds are scale-E equivalent if they assign the same values to physical quantities below energy scale E (up to some finite level of precision P). The key question now is whether this relation induces equivalence classes on the set of nomically possible worlds. I argue that in the case of current quantum field theories this does indeed occur, as evidenced by the possibility of “integrating out” high energy degrees of freedom in the renormalisation group framework. The formation of equivalence classes in the fundamental theory's possibility space indicates that some of its high energy features do not make a difference to its low energy dynamical behaviour. This suggests the following reading of the claim that an effective field theory provides a better representation of the nomic structure of the world in its domain of applicability: the solutions of the effective field theory stand in one-to-one correspondence with equivalence classes induced by the scale-E equivalence relation, whereas the fundamental theory overcounts the physical possibilities which are relevant at scale E. In this sense, the effective field theory provides a more natural representation of low energy physics than the fundamental theory. I conclude by explaining how this metaphysical model offers a reduction compatible understanding of multiple realisability, once again pointing to renormalisation group results in quantum field theory to support this. (shrink)

Written for students, Mind, Matter, and Nature presumes no prior philosophical training on the part of the reader. The book nevertheless holds the arguments discussed to rigorous standards and is conversant with recent literature, thus making it useful as well to more advanced students and professionals interested in a resource on Thomistic hylomorphism in the philosophy of mind.

Challenging the paradigm in ethics -- The spirit of the enterprise -- Social artifacts and ethical criticism -- General and particular in practical knowledge -- Virtues of benevolence and justice.

I argue that descartes' doubting of the external world does not rest on doubting the truth of clear and distinct ideas. in fact, he denies that we clearly and distinctly perceive the "existence" of material things. thus, their existence is not established through the validation of such ideas and we can understand why descartes' argument for their existence takes the form it does. i suggest that dreams lead him to conclude that the existence of material things is not clearly perceived (...) and to doubt their existence. (shrink)

Claude Lefort's rethinking of ‘the political’ has been highly fruitful for political theory, yet its politics remain unclear. It has inspired transformative, radical-democratic projects, but has also served as a basis for more liberal conceptions. This article explores the sources and implications of this ambiguity by setting Lefort's work against the backdrop of the anti-totalitarian moment in French political thought and the trajectories of two of his students, Miguel Abensour and Marcel Gauchet. It emerges that although Lefort's democratic theory cannot (...) be reduced to a defensive liberalism, neither is it as expansive as some might hope. (shrink)

Some scholars have argued that CEOs may have excessive influence on their foundation's trustees to give away a portion of company profits to charitable causes in order to gain access to elite circles or support the CEO's personal causes. This may result in charitable contributions that ultimately serve the personal interests of the CEOs without regard to corporate interests or social needs. We examine the extent that CEOs appear to direct charitable giving to be compatible with their own personal interests, (...) and if CEO participation on the foundation board affects the relationship between CEO personal interests and charitable giving. Using a sample of 160 corporate foundations, our results showed that CEOs' interests, as measured by membership in different non-profit organizations, was associated with foundation charitable giving. This association decreased, but was not eliminated, when CEOs were absent from the foundation board. Implications of these findings for researchers and managers are discussed in regards to both agency theory and stewardship theory. (shrink)

Assuming Martin's Axiom, we compute the value of the cofinality of the symmetric group on the natural numbers. We also show that Martin's Axiom does not decide the value of the covering number of a related Mycielski ideal.

Geography and Ethics examines the place of geography in ethics and of ethics in geography by drawing together specially commissioned contributors from distinguished scholars from around the world.

In this paper I wish to comment upon the use of polemical argument in philosophy of education and education. Like Foucault, I believe that a whole morality is at stake because polemical argument obfuscates the search for truth at the expense of truth and the other’s veracity, integrity and dignity. The use of polemics is illustrated by two arguments. The first general argument is taken from an attack upon Albert Camus by the British writer Colin Wilson. The second more particular (...) example is taken from attacks in New Zealand by the State Department of Education upon the educational ideas of the novelist and educator Sylvia Ashton-Warner. Finally I discuss how polemics might be countered in education. (shrink)

James D Marshall; John Wilson on the Necessity of Punishment, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 18, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 97–104, https://doi.org.

The Book Provides A Genealogy Of `Dialectical Materialism` By Tracing The Development Of Marxist Ideas From Their Origins In German Philosophical Thought To The Ideology Of The Socio-Democratic Groups In Russia In The 1890S, From Which Lenin And The Revolutionary Generation Emerged. It Reconstructs Marx`S Original Conceptions And Examines The Modifications That Were Made To Them By Himself And By His Russian Followers, Which Eventually Gave Rise To The Doctrine Of `Dialectical Materialism`, Expounded By Plekhanov. Condition Good.

James D. Reid - The Early Heidegger and Medieval Philosophy: Phenomenology for the Godforsaken - Journal of the History of Philosophy 45:4 Journal of the History of Philosophy 45.4 673-674 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Reviewed by James D. Reid Metropolitan State College of Denver S. J. McGrath. The Early Heidegger and Medieval Philosophy: Phenomenology for the Godforsaken. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2006. Pp. xx + 268. Cloth, $69.95. Taking its clues from the (...) scholarly work of Kisiel, van Buren, and others on the religious origins of early Heidegger's phenomenology, blending philosophical interpretation and biographical insight, and drawing fruitfully from a wide range of historical and philosophical sources, McGrath's The Early Heidegger and Medieval Philosophy offers a wide-ranging account of Heidegger's.. (shrink)

In this paper, we study the relationship between the cofinalityc(Sym(ω)) of the infinite symmetric group and the minimal cardinality $$\underset{\raise0.3em\hbox{$\smash{\scriptscriptstyle\thicksim}$}}{b} $$ of an unbounded familyF of ω ω.

In recent educational reforms in New Zealand, a central assumption has been the existence of a free and autonomous chooser acting as a consumer of education. The present paper examines and critiques this notion of autonomy, as developed within liberal theory. Both Foucault and Lyotard provide materials for this critique of such a self, a self independent of the laws and principles of a community.