People v. Strauss-Kahn is an ideal lens through which to examine the operation of a criminal justice system that privileges the presumption of guilt, or, to use the words of the US Supreme Court in the 2012 decisions Lafler v. Cooper and Missouri v. Frye, has become “a system of pleas, not a system of trials.” It is both an excellent example of a transparent and objective invocation of the criminal sanction, and a sharp counterpoint to the vast majority of (...) cases where law enforcement conclusions are privileged and rarely second-guessed. As analyses of wrongful convictions have sadly but inevitably demonstrated, the screening methods of police and prosecutors are fallible. Moreover, the prevalence of “tunnel vision” once the decision to charge has been made means that few cases experience the kind of post-indictment investigation and reevaluation seen in the prosecution of Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Stage by stage, the Strauss-Kahn case illustrates how to counterbalance the presumption of guilt and give expression to the presumption of innocence in the pretrial period through vigilantly-invoked and enforced due process protections. Drawing from this examination, the paper will then explore how to approach this model process in the more standard cases, which typically see a fraction of the judicial, law enforcement, and defense resources afforded Dominique Strauss-Kahn. The Strauss-Kahn prosecution offers several insights, three of which will be sketched at the paper’s conclusion: a requirement that prosecutorial decision-making be subject to a reasonable doubt standard; vigilant and early enforcement of the prosecutor’s obligation to disclose information that is favorable to the accused; and finally, a requirement that a prosecutor explain in writing any decision to dismiss the felony charges in indicted felony cases, so that the factual, legal and policy bases of these decisions (numbering almost one quarter of New York’s superior court felony cases annually) can be analyzed and publicized. (shrink)

It is argued, on the basis of ideas derived from Wittgenstein's Tractatus and Husserl's Logical Investigations, that the formal comprehends more than the logical. More specifically: that there exist certain formal-ontological constants (part, whole, overlapping, etc.) which do not fall within the province of logic. A two-dimensional directly depicting language is developed for the representation of the constants of formal ontology, and means are provided for the extension of this language to enable the representation of certain materially necessary relations. The (...) paper concludes with a discussion of the relationship between formal logic, formal ontology, and mathematics. (shrink)

During the 1970s, monetarism and the new classical macroeconomics ushered in an era of neoliberal economic policymaking. Keynesian economics was pushed aside. It was almost forgotten that when Keynesian thinking had dominated economic policymaking in the middle decades of the twentieth century, it had coincided with postwar economic reconstruction in both Europe and Japan, and the unprecedented prosperity and stable growth of the 1950s and 1960s. The global financial crisis of 2007-2009 and the recession that followed changed all that. Influential (...) voices in both academic economics and amongst policy-makers and commentators began to remind us how useful Keynesian ways of thinking could be, especially in coming to terms with our current economic predicaments. When politicians across the globe were confronted with economic crisis, they introduced pragmatic and workable measures that bore all the hallmarks of Keynesianism. This book is about the fall and rise of Keynesian economics.Eatwell and Milgate range widely across the landscape that defines their subject matter. They consider how powerful Keynesian ideas can be when applied to past and present economic problems. They show how helpful these ideas are in explaining why we came to find ourselves in the disorder we are in. They examine where and how the analytical and methodological foundations of conventional macroeconomic wisdom went wrong. They set out a blueprint for an alternative that provides a clearer, more consistent, and more applicable approach to understanding how markets work. They also highlight the interpretive shortcomings that have come to characterize Keynes scholarship itself. They do all of this within the context of a provocative reconsideration of some of the most pressing economic problems that confront financial markets and the global economy today. They conclude that Keynesian ideas are not just for crises, but for constructive economic policy making at all times. (shrink)

This book focuses on experimentation that is carried out on human beings, including medical research, drug research and research undertaken in the social sciences. It discusses the ethics of such experimentation and asks the question: who defends the interests of these human subjects and ensures that they are not harmed? The author finds that ethical research depends on the adequacy of review by committee. Indeed most countries now rely on research ethics committees for the protection of the interests of the (...) human participants in research. Dr McNeill analyses how successful these committees are in balancing the interests of science with the interests of human subjects. (shrink)

The view from inside : gendered embodiment and the medical representation of sex / Shelley Wall -- The politics of medico-legal recognition : the terms of gendered subjectivity in the UK Gender Recognition Act / Sarah Burgess -- Journeys of choice? : abortion, travel, and women's autonomy / Christabelle Sethna and Marion Doull -- The code of ethics in medicine : intertextuality and meaning in Plato's Sophist and Hippocrates' oath / Twyla Gibson -- Sleeping ethics : gene, episteme, and the (...) body politic / Deborah Lynn Steinberg -- The last temptation of Marion Woodman : the anorexic remainder in bone : dying into life / David L. Clark. (shrink)

Levinas and other contemporary thinkers have claimed that the philosophy of "the other" provides a devastating critique of systematic rationality as such and of Hegel as a paradigm case thereof.The critique links an ethical moment and socio-political issues to a thorough-going critique of Hegelian metaphysics and the dialectical method. I articulate the meaning of alterity as a critique of Hegel through Levinas and Marx, and then discuss possible Hegelian responses to this criticism. I conclude that this critique of Hegel pertains (...) to the character of his final synthesis rather than to questions of difference and identity, and challenge the interpretation of Hegelian closure as the realization of eschatology. (shrink)

A symposium on Bence Nanay, Aesthetics as Philosophy of Art and Murray Smith, Film, Art, and the Third Culture. Commentaries on the two books by two critics, followed by responses by the two book authors.

The planet seems to be heading into an ecological catastrophe, in which the earth will become uninhabitable for many species, including human beings. At the same time we humans are beset by appalling injustices. The Rio Declaration which addressed both these sets of problems contains conceptual contradictions about ‘development and ‘nature’. This paper addresses the issue of whether it is logically possible to work for both global justice and ecological sustainability. The article proposes a way of responding to the spirit (...) of the Rio Declaration without reinstating its contradictions; considers a posthuman perspective on the issue; and proposes a phenomenological approach to ethics and justice which would include both the human and more-than-human parts of the world. In section the implications for education are drawn out, in terms of ‘learning to mind’. Finally, links are drawn to the Journal theme of translation. (shrink)

I develop an account of private property that preserves public participation and access. A focus on the initial state of common ownership, labour, and the proviso reveals that standard Lockean defences of property ignore important common interests. In consequence, property rights over environmentally significant goods must be less strong than full liberal rights, and I show how these will be designed.

Considerable information about the process of premRNA splicing has accmulated, but the mechanism by which highly accurate splicing is achieved is unresolved. Fifteen years ago we proposed that accuracy in splicing might depend on small RNA molecules (splicer RNAs) which hybridise across adjacent exon termini, or intron termini. Gene expression, including alternative splicing, could be controlled by the transcription of specific splicer RNA genes. We re‐assess our model here, in the light of subsequent developments.

From this post-reflective point of view, the book argues for an intimate relationship between cognition, sensorimotor embodiment, and the integrative character ...

This set contains Murray's renowned _English Grammar_, and his textbooks. The unique study of Murray's life and work, by Colin Eaton West is here updated with new notes by David A. Reibel.

In his new introduction to this current edition of this classic in the field originally published in 1982 (Humanities Press), Hoppe (economics, U. of Nevada, Las Vegas--as was the late author) extols Rothbard's marriage of the "value-free" science of economics with the normative enterprise of ethics and their offspring: libertarianism. Discussion areas are: natural law, a theory of liberty, the state vs. liberty, modern alternative theories of liberty, and toward a theory of strategy for liberty. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, (...) Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

Murray Smith presents an original approach to understanding film. He brings the arts, humanities, and sciences together to illuminate artistic creation and aesthetic experience. His 'third culture' approach roots itself in an appreciation of scientific innovation and how this has shaped the moving media.

What is the relationship between detailed critical analysis and the background assumptions made by a given theory of film spectatorship? In this article, I approach this question by looking at Vittorio Gallese and Michele Guerra's The Empathic Screen in the light of the method of triangulation—the coordination and integration of phenomenological, psychological, and neuroscientific evidence, as set out in my Film, Art, and the Third Culture. In particular, I examine Gallese and Guerra's arguments concerning the role of camera movement in (...) prompting immersive, embodied simulation, as well as critiques of these arguments from David Bordwell and Malcolm Turvey. I focus on the special, irreducible role of critical analysis in these arguments. Detailed analysis of film form and style plays an essential role, I argue, in demonstrating the plausibility (or otherwise) of the thesis advanced by Gallese and Guerra. Such analysis is where the rubber of theoretical assumptions meets the road of the material work. (shrink)

This work represents Murray Bookchin's riposte to the antihumanism, mysticism and antirationalism which are influencing many people's attitudes to environmental problems. Bookchin offers a critique of, among others, social Darwinists, deep ecologists, new agers, technophobes, Foucault, Derrida and Baudrillard.

A challenging new work of cultural and political theory rethinks the concept of hegemony.

" With this succinct formulation, Murray Bookchin launches his most ambitious work, The Ecology of Freedom.

Within philosophy of action, there are three broad views about what, in addition to beliefs, answer the question of “what to do?” and so determine an agent’s motivation: desires, judgments about values/reasons, or states of the will, such as intentions. We argue that recent work in decision theory vindicates the volitionalist. “What to do?” isn’t settled by “what do I value” or “what reasons are there?” Rational motivation further requires determining how to trade off the possibility of a good outcome (...) against the possibility of a bad one—i.e., determining how much of a risk to take. The risk attitudes that embody this tradeoff seem best understood as intentions: as self-governing policies to weight desires or reasons in certain ways. That we need to settle our risk attitudes before making most decisions corroborates Bratman’s claim that self-governing policies are required for resolving impasses of evaluative and normative underdetermination. Moreover, far from being rare or confined to tie-breakings, cases that are underdetermined but for one’s risk attitudes are typical of everyday decision-making. The will is required for most rational action. (shrink)

Many languages grammatically mark evidentiality, i.e., the source of information. In assertions, evidentials indicate the source of information of the speaker while in questions they indicate the expected source of information of the addressee. This dissertation examines the semantics and pragmatics of evidentiality and illocutionary mood, set within formal theories of meaning and discourse. The empirical focus is the evidential system of Cheyenne (Algonquian: Montana), which is analyzed based on several years of fieldwork by the author.