We explore the relationship between ethnomethodology (EM), ethnography and the needs of managers and designers in industry, considering both ethnomethodological and industrial criteria of adequacy and explicating their relationship through the concept of “audience.” We examine a range of studies in this light, with a view to their possible candidacy as hybrid studies and identify three types of application of EM studies of work: market research, design, and business improvement. Application in the first of these fields we dub “anthropological,” in (...) that it consists in studying and reporting back on the ways of exotic people (customers). This is the application most commonly found in studies of computer supported co-operative work (CSCW). A second CSCW application, “technomethodology,” involves the introduction of EM concepts into the design process. A further application, dubbed “holding-up-a-mirror,” involves reporting back to members of a setting upon their own activities. We argue that technomethodology and holding-up-a-mirror both offer the possibility of creating hybrid disciplines. We consider the objection that improvement and design involve the introduction of value judgements that threaten the practice of EM indifference, arguing that action research can serve as a guarantee of unique adequacy (UA) by testing the researcher’s understanding as analysis in action in the setting. Furthermore, the standard of reporting required by the UA criterion contributes to the effectiveness of proposed solutions. (shrink)

As a broad, sprawling field, American psychology has become increasingly molecular, making it inordinately difficult to discern or fomulate an overarching conception that would counter the centrifugal forces that make psychology a conglomeration of interests for which there is no organizing center. To illustrate the lack of such a conception and its adverse consequences, the major works of two people who had such a conception but who have had no influence on psychology are discussed. One of them is John (...) Dollard, who in the mid-thirties wrote Criteria for the Life History, which was nothing less than an indictment of the lack of such as overarching conception. The other is Alexis de Tocqueville who wrote Democracy in America. How was this young Frenchmen, who spent nine months in this country before the middle of the nineteenth century, able to write a book that explained so well the American character? What "psychology" permitted him to understand so much, to describe so clearly the individual in the larger picture? Dollard spelled out his conception, De Tocqueville did not. An attempt is made to fomulate De Tocqueville's overarching conception. (shrink)

Depuis 2006, le Québec débat âprement des règles gouvernant la laïcité de ses institutions et se trouve confronté à deux modèles apparemment irréconciliables : le républicanisme « jacobin » et le libéralisme individualiste, issus respectivement de la France et du Canada. En s’inspirant de la pensée du philosophe politique John Rawls, les auteurs proposent ici d’explorer une voie médiane mieux adap­tée à l’expérience québécoise. Dans ses travaux tardifs, Rawls met en avant une forme de libéralisme républicain affranchi de l’indi­vidualisme (...) normatif de Kant et de Mill et récuse le paternalisme qui vise à imposer aux citoyens une certaine éthique de vie. Tout en étant neutre à l’égard des conceptions individualiste et com­munautarienne de la personne, il cherche à équilibrer les droits collectifs des peuples avec les droits individuels des personnes. -/- C’est donc une conception strictement institutionnelle de la laïcité que présentent les auteurs, qui redéfinissent au passage l’interculturalisme, la liberté rationnelle et le consentement, ainsi que l’expérience religieuse, qui devient hybride, à la fois subjective et objective. En se servant de Rawls, ils expliquent clairement pourquoi l’expression de la religion fait partie de la liberté reli­gieuse, mais aussi pourquoi il faut faire la distinction entre les objets qui relèvent des libertés fondamentales et ceux qui sont sujets à des accommodements. Ils tracent ainsi une authentique troisième voie, qui pourrait bien faire sortir de l’impasse le débat québécois sur la laïcité. (shrink)

Most states are multination states, and most peoples are stateless peoples. Just as collectives can behave as sovereign states only if they are recognized by the international community, liberal multination states must recognize stateless peoples in order to determine their political status within that state. There is, however, no agreement on the kind of principles that should be considered, especially under classical liberalism, which gives individuals preeminence over groups. Liberal theories that attempt to accommodate collective rights are often based on (...) a comprehensive version of liberalism that subscribes to moral individualism. Within such a framework, they develop a watered-down concept of collective rights. In A Liberal Theory of Collective Rights Michel Seymour explores the theoretical resources of John Rawls’s political liberalism and shows that this particular approach can accommodate genuine collective rights. By Rawls’s account, Seymour explains, peoples are moral agents and sources of valid moral claims and are therefore entitled to collective rights. These kinds of rights translate, in the constitution of the multination state, to a true political recognition for stateless peoples. Ultimately, A Liberal Theory of Collective Rights answers three important questions: Who is the subject of collective rights? What is the object of collective rights? And can they be institutionalized in real politics? (shrink)

The theme of the third annual Spring workshop of the HUPO-PSI was proteomics and beyond and its underlying goal was to reach beyond the boundaries of the proteomics community to interact with groups working on the similar issues of developing interchange standards and minimal reporting requirements. Significant developments in many of the HUPO-PSI XML interchange formats, minimal reporting requirements and accompanying controlled vocabularies were reported, with many of these now feeding into the broader efforts of the Functional Genomics Experiment data (...) model and Functional Genomics Ontology ontologies. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ Je veux m'attarder à trois aspects importants du Droit des gens de John Rawls. Je veux tout d'abord montrer que cette oeuvre contribue à réfuter l’interprétation erronée selon laquelle Rawls souscrirait à une conception individualiste du libéralisme. Je veux en deuxième lieu souligner l’importance d'intégrer un droit des peuples au sein de la philosophie politique libérale. Le principe de l’égalité entre les peuples peut être interprété comme ayant un corollaire, à savoir, le principe du développement égal des peuples, (...) et ce dernier principe est susceptible de nombreuses applications progressistes au niveau de la justice internationale. En troisième lieu, je veux suggérer que même si des amendements importants étaient apportés à la version initiale du Droit des gens, au point d'inclure, à l’encontre de l’opinion exprimée par Rawls, le principe de différence et d'en reconnaître l’universalité, on ne serait quand même pas en présence d'un libéralisme de type individualiste. ABSTRACT I would like to consider three important aspects of Rawls' Law of Peoples. I want to show, first, that the work serves to refute the mistaken interpretation according to which Rawls would subscribe to an individualistic interpretation of liberalism. Second, I also want to underline the importance of incorporating a law of peoples within a liberal political philosophy. The principle of equality between peoples can be interpreted as having a corollary, the principle of an equal development between peoples, and this last principle paves the way to many progressist applications at the level of international justice. Third, I want to suggest that even if amendments were made to the initial version of The Law of Peoples in such a way that, pace Rawls, it would now contain among its principles the difference principle and would recognize its universal status, the resulting approach would still not be a liberal individualism. (shrink)

L'auteur analyse les concepts centraux de la théorie de la justice de John Rawls. Il restitue la teneur de critiques importantes, dont certaines ne sont pas aisées à saisir, qui ont pu être adressées de divers horizons (Sandel, Habermas, Sen, Seymour, Hoffmann, notamment) à la théorie rawlsienne de la justice. Que veut dire "appliquer" Rawls? Comment? Dans quelle mesure est-ce réaliste ou simplement pertinent? Cette étude nous en offre une réponse éclairante. S'y voit honorée de deux manières la (...) thématique de l'application : d'une part, en prenant la mesure des difficultés de faire advenir une réalité politique très instable et passablement déstructurée à une situation décente ; d'autre part, en exerçant consciencieusement l'aptitude à une philosophie politique appliquée, une philosophie qui n'en reste pas aux principes, mais s'efforce de les "schématiser" en direction de contextes d'application plus ou moins favorables ou réfractaires. Se pose sans doute la question des limites d'une applicabilité de la théorie rawlsienne à la situation de la sous-région de l'Afrique des Grands Lacs, ainsi que celle des "stratégies" envisageables pour une sortie de crise chronique, voire, en vue d'une transition démocratique. Cet ouvrage mérite l'attention de tous ceux qui s'intéressent à la problématique de l'avenir politique de l'Afrique et de la République démocratique du Congo en particulier. (shrink)

In 1956, the mathematician John McCarthy coined the term "Artificial Intelligence" for a new discipline that was emerging from some of the more imaginative and playful explorations of the new mind-tool, the computer. A few years later he developed a radically new sort of programming language, Lisp, which became the lingua franca of AI. Unlike the sturdier, stodgier computer languages created by and for business and industry, Lisp was remarkably open-ended and freewheeling. Instead of concentrating on numbers, it was (...) designed to take any symbols or symbol strings (lists) as its objects, and since its own machinery consisted of just such lists (and lists of lists . . . ), Lisp creations easily inhabited the very world they acted upon, and hence could reflect upon themselves and their own reflections indefinitely, revising and reinventing themselves, breaking down the artificial barrier between program and data. Seymour Papert was one of the most playful of the AI pioneers, and more than any of the others, his own reflections turned to the nature of that very playfulness and its role in learning and discovery. In 1980, he published Mindstorms, in which he presented his utopian vision of computers in the classroom, centering on Logo, a dialect of Lisp that he and others had developed specifically for very young children. The key design element was Turtle graphics, an inspired interface which made the children's interactions with Logo not just visible, but instantly comprehensible--feelable, you might say. The tales he told of those early encounters were compelling. They became an important ingredient in the barrage of persuasions that led teachers and schools all over America, and indeed all over the world, to invest huge sums in "computerizing the classroom." Thousands of teachers tried their hand at Logo in the classroom, with mixed results. (shrink)

Sidney Hook is considered by many to be America's most influential philosopher today. An earlier defender of Marxism, he became its most persistent critic, especially of its totalitarian and revolutionary manifestations. A student of John Dewey's pragmatism, Sidney Hook has written extensively about most of the live moral, social and political issues of the day. He has known and debated many of the leading thinkers of the twentieth century, such as Max Eastman, Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein, Jacques Maritain, Mortimer (...) Adler, Robert Hutchins, Paul Tillich, Noam Chomsky, and John Kenneth Galbraith. Throughout his career, which spans a half a century, Sidney Hook has been a stalwart defender of the social democratic philosophy of freedom. At a time when secular humanism has been under heavy criticism from the New Right, he stands out as the leading philosophical representative of the position. Virtually all of the essays in this volume were written especially for it. The list of contributors includes Irving Kristol, Antony Flew, Nathan Glazer, Lewis Feuer, Daniel Bell, Richard Rorty, Ernest Nagel, Edward Shils, Seymour Martin Lipset, Ernest van den Haag, and others, all of whom testified that their thinking has been profoundly influenced by Sidney Hook's wisdom and insight. These original essays are wide-ranging in scope, but all are focused on Hook's philosophy or on subjects in which he has shown an abiding interest: socialism, democracy, equality, quotas, higher education, academic freedom, humanism, liberal education, natural and human rights, and pragmatism. The book also contains a complete up-to-date bibliography of the writings of Sidney Hook. (shrink)

No mathematical background is necessary to appreciate this classic of probability theory, which remains unsurpassed in its clarity, readability, and sheer charm. Its author, British logician John Venn (1834-1923), popularized the famous Venn Diagrams that are commonly used in teaching elementary mathematics.

Presents John Locke's seventeenth-century classic work on political and social theory; and includes a history of the text, as well as notes and a bibliography.

_A new theory of how and why we cooperate, drawing from economics, political theory, and philosophy to challenge the conventional wisdom of game theory_ Game theory explains competitive behavior by working from the premise that people are self-interested. People don’t just compete, however; they also cooperate. John Roemer argues that attempts by orthodox game theorists to account for cooperation leave much to be desired. Unlike competing players, cooperating players take those actions that they would like others to take—which Roemer (...) calls “Kantian optimization.” Through rigorous reasoning and modeling, Roemer demonstrates a simpler theory of cooperative behavior than the standard model provides. (shrink)

Our self-conception derives mostly from our own experience. We believe ourselves to be conscious, rational, social, ethical, language-using, political agents who possess free will. Yet we know we exist in a universe that consists of mindless, meaningless, unfree, nonrational, brute physical particles. How can we resolve the conflict between these two visions? In _Freedom and Neurobiology_, the philosopher John Searle discusses the possibility of free will within the context of contemporary neurobiology. He begins by explaining the relationship between human (...) reality and the more fundamental reality as described by physics and chemistry. Then he proposes a neurobiological resolution to the problem by demonstrating how various conceptions of free will have different consequences for the neurobiology of consciousness. In the second half of the book, Searle applies his theory of social reality to the problem of political power, explaining the role of language in the formation of our political reality. The institutional structures that organize, empower, and regulate our lives-money, property, marriage, government-consist in the assignment and collective acceptance of certain statuses to objects and people. Whether it is the president of the United States, a twenty-dollar bill, or private property, these entities perform functions as determined by their status in our institutional reality. Searle focuses on the political powers that exist within these systems of status functions and the way in which language constitutes them. Searle argues that consciousness and rationality are crucial to our existence and that they are the result of the biological evolution of our species. He addresses the problem of free will within the context of a neurobiological conception of consciousness and rationality, and he addresses the problem of political power within the context of this analysis. A clear and concise contribution to the free-will debate and the study of cognition, _Freedom and Neurobiology_ is essential reading for students and scholars of the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

The religious autobiography of John Henry Newman (1801-1890), in which he discusses his conversion to Roman Catholicism.

When and why are coercion, indoctrination, manipulation, deception, and bullshit morally wrongful modes of influence in the context of educating children? Answering this question requires identifying what valid claims different parties have against one another regarding how children are influenced. Most prominently among these, it requires discerning what claims children have regarding whether and how they and their peers are influenced, and against whom they have these claims. The claims they have are grounded in the weighty interests they each equally (...) have in their wellbeing, prospective autonomy and being regarded with equal concern and respect. Plausibly children have valid claims regarding the content and means of influence they themselves are subjected to. For instance, considerations of concern and respect for children confer duties on others enable them to know important information and develop important skills. Children also plausibly have valid claims to be free from certain means of influence including indoctrination. This is because indoctrinatory practices threaten to diminish both their capacity to reason soundly, thereby constituting a wrongful harm, and their opportunities to form judgements and choices in response to relevant evidence and reasons, thereby constituting a wrong of disrespect. (shrink)

I review recent empirical findings on knowledge attributions in lottery cases and report a new experiment that advances our understanding of the topic. The main novel finding is that people deny knowledge in lottery cases because of an underlying qualitative difference in how they process probabilistic information. “Outside” information is generic and pertains to a base rate within a population. “Inside” information is specific and pertains to a particular item’s propensity. When an agent receives information that 99% of all lottery (...) tickets lose (outside information), people judge that she does not know that her ticket will lose. By contrast, when an agent receives information that her specific ticket is 99% likely to lose (inside information), people judge that she knows that her ticket will lose. Despite this difference in knowledge judgments, people rate the likelihood of her ticket losing the exact same in both cases (i.e. 99%). The results shed light on other factors affecting knowledge judgments in lottery cases, including formulaic expression and participants’ own estimation of whether it is true that the ticket will lose. The results also undermine previous hypotheses offered for knowledge denial in lottery cases, including the hypotheses that people deny knowledge because they either deny justification or acknowledge a chance for error. (shrink)

Objectivity is a key concept both in how we talk about science in everyday life and in the philosophy of science. This Element explores various ways in which recent philosophers of science have thought about the nature, value and achievability of objectivity. The first section explains the general trend in recent philosophy of science away from a notion of objectivity as a 'view from nowhere' to a focus on the relationship between objectivity and trust. Section 2 discusses the relationship between (...) objectivity and recent arguments attacking the viability or desirability of 'value free' science. Section 3 outlines Longino's influential 'social' account of objectivity, suggesting some worries about drawing too strong a link between epistemic and ethical virtues. Section 4 turns to the value of objectivity, exploring concerns that notions of objectivity are politically problematic, and cautiously advocating in response a view of objectivity in terms of invariance. (shrink)

'John Toland's Letters to Serena' is one of the most important texts of the early Enlightenment. Synthesizing an array of European thought, the Letters was not only significant for Toland's own 'freethinking' cause, but also provided crucial foundations for the 'vitalist' materialism characterising later Enlightenment thought.

John J. Stuhr, a leading voice in American philosophy, sets forth a view of pragmatism as a personal work of art or fashion. Stuhr develops his pragmatism by putting pluralism forward, setting aside absolutism and nihilism, opening new perspectives on democracy, and focusing on love. He creates a space for a philosophy that is liable to failure and that is experimental, pluralist, relativist, radically empirical, radically democratic, and absurd. Full color illustrations enhance this lyrical commitment to a new version (...) of pragmatism. (shrink)

In this 2nd edition, John Gray adds an extensive postscript which defends the interpretation of Mill set out in the first edition, but develops radical criticisms of the substance of Millian and other liberalism.

Book Three of George Santayana's letters covers a period of intense intellectual activity in Santayana's life, and the correspondence reflects the establishment of his mature philosophy. Santayana becomes more permanently established in Italy, but continues to travel in France, Spain, and England. The year 1927 marks the beginning of his long friendship with Daniel Cory, who became his literary secretary and eventually his literary executor. Also, with the death of Santayana's half-brother Robert, George Sturgis, Robert's son, becomes an important part (...) of Santayana's life and letters as his financial manager. Santayana continues to write to his sister Susana, as well as to numerous friends and fellow philosophers, including Bernard Berenson, Robert Seymour Bridges, Curt John Ducasse, John Erskine, Horace Meyer Kaller, Lewis Mumford, George Herbert Palmer, John Francis Stanley Russell, Herbert Wallace Schneider, Charles Augustus Strong, Paul Weiss, and Harry Austryn Wolfson. Other correspondents include Wendell T. Bush, Alys Gregory, Marianne Moore, John Middleton Murray, and Frederick J. E. Woodbridge. (shrink)

This presentation includes a complete bibliography of John Corcoran’s publications devoted at least in part to Aristotle’s logic. Sections I–IV list 20 articles, 43 abstracts, 3 books, and 10 reviews. It starts with two watershed articles published in 1972: the Philosophy & Phenomenological Research article that antedates Corcoran’s Aristotle’s studies and the Journal of Symbolic Logic article first reporting his original results; it ends with works published in 2015. A few of the items are annotated with endnotes connecting them (...) with other work. In addition, Section V “Discussions” is a nearly complete secondary bibliography of works describing, interpreting, extending, improving, supporting, and criticizing Corcoran’s work: 8 items published in the 1970s, 22 in the 1980s, 39 in the 1990s, 56 in the 2000s, and 65 in the current decade. The secondary bibliography is annotated with endnotes: some simply quoting from the cited item, but several answering criticisms and identifying errors. As is evident from the Acknowledgements sections, all of Corcoran’s publications benefited from correspondence with other scholars, most notably Timothy Smiley, Michael Scanlan, and Kevin Tracy. All of Corcoran’s Greek translations were done in consultation with two or more classicists. Corcoran never published a sentence without discussing it with his colleagues and students. REQUEST: Please send errors, omissions, and suggestions. I am especially interested in citations made in non-English publications. (shrink)

Alasdair MacIntyre asks, if all individuals are in fact potential authorities of natural law and agree on its fundamentals, how can we explain manifest moral disagreement? Contemporary Thomistic natural law theorists have not attempted to address this particular issue to a significant degree. MacIntyre, taking this large-scale rejection seriously, focuses on the communal factors that allow individuals to recognize their need for and commitment to Thomistic natural law. By doing so, he attempts to give reasons for why we should expect (...) natural law to be widely denied in contemporary society. In this paper, I argue that MacIntyre’s approach to natural law is capable of accounting for the seemingly paradoxical claim that these per se nota first principles of natural law might suffer apparent widespread rejection. Moreover, I will argue that MacIntyre’s account is also capable of explaining why we should actually expect such rejection to occur. (shrink)

_The Algebra of Revolution_ is the first book to study Marxist method as it has been developed by the main representatives of the classical Marxist tradition, namely Marx and Engels, Luxembourg, Lenin, Lukacs, Gramsci and Trotsky. This book provides the only single volume study of major Marxist thinkers' views on the crucial question of the dialectic, connecting them with pressing contemporary, political and theoretical questions. John Rees's _The Algebra of Revolution_ is vital reading for anyone interested in gaining a (...) new and fresh perspective on Marxist thought and on the notion of the dialectic. (shrink)

In this paper I contribute to the ongoing debate on hell in three ways: (1) I distinguish between three questions that play a key role in any discussion of the doctrine of hell; (2) I argue positively for the need of a doctrine of hell for Christian theism; (3) after evaluating several theological positions, I argue that the doctrine of hell should be construed as intrinsically bound up with the Christian conviction that God is love and wants to live with (...) human beings in a relationship of mutual love and fellowship. From this perspective on hell I provide some fresh criticisms on the positions of John Hick, Thomas Talbott, and Charles Seymour. (shrink)

In this awaited follow up to his book _Faithful Reason_, the well-known philosopher and Catholic thinker John Haldane brings his unrivalled insight to bear on questions of the existence of God and the nature and destiny of the human soul. His arguments weave elements drawn from philosophy of mind, epistemology and aesthetics, together with recurrent features of human experience to create a structure that simultaneously frames and supports ideas such as that the cosmos is a creation, human beings transcend (...) their material composition, and that human fulfilment lies beyond death. As in many of his other writings this volume blends themes from Aquinas with insights drawn from analytical philosophy and further establishes John Haldane as the leading 'analytical thomist'. (shrink)

According to reliabilist virtue epistemology, or virtue reliabilism, knowledge is true belief that is produced by intellectual excellence (or virtue), where intellectual excellence is understood in terms of reliable, truth-directed cognitive dispositions. This essay explains why virtue reliabilism is a form of epistemological externalism, is a moderately naturalized epistemology, and is distinct from virtue responsibilism. We explain virtue reliabilism’s answers to various forms of skepticism, its solution to the Gettier Problem, and its explanation of the value of knowledge. We also (...) describe several varieties of contemporary virtue reliabilism. Finally, we offer replies to two recently prominent objections to virtue reliabilism: that it is committed to an untenable epistemological individualism, and that there are empirical reasons to doubt whether people generally have the kinds of intellectual abilities that virtue reliabilism requires for knowledge. (shrink)

I review recent work from armchair and cross-cultural epistemology on whether humans possess a knowledge concept as part of a universal “folk epistemology.” The work from armchair epistemology fails because it mischaracterizes ordinary knowledge judgments. The work from cross-cultural epistemology provides some defeasible evidence for a universal folk epistemology. I argue that recent findings from comparative psychology establish that humans possess a species-typical knowledge concept. More specifically, recent work shows that knowledge attributions are a central part of primate social cognition, (...) used to predict others’ behavior and guide decision-making. The core primate knowledge concept is that of truth detection (across different sensory modalities) and retention (through memory) and may also include rudimentary forms of indirect truth discovery through inference. In virtue of their evolutionary heritage, humans inherited the primate social-cognitive system and thus share this core knowledge concept. (shrink)

In Echoes, John Sallis mobilizes the figure of echo, used by Heidegger to characterize originary thinking, as the motif around which to organize a radical reading of Heidegger's most important texts.

John Rist surveys the history of ethics from Plato to the present and offers a vigorous defence of an ethical theory based on a revised version of Platonic realism. In a wide-ranging discussion he examines well-known alternatives to Platonism, in particular Epicurus, Hobbes, Hume and Kant as well as contemporary 'practical reasoners', and argues that most post-Enlightenment theories of morality depend on an abandoned Christian metaphysic and are unintelligible without such grounding. He also argues that contemporary choice-based theories, whether (...) they take a strictly ethical or more obviously political form, are ultimately arbitrary in nature. His lively and accessible 2001 study is informed by a powerful sense of philosophical history, and will be of interest to both students and scholars of ethics. (shrink)