The following statement is a report of the Committee on Philosophy in Education of the American Philosophical Association and was approved by the Association's Board of Officers in December, 1958. The Committee was composed of the following: C. W. Hendel, Chairman, H. G. Alexander, R. M. Chisholm, Max Fisch, Lucius Garvin, Douglas Morgan, A. E. Murphy, Charner Perry and R. G. Turnbull. Primary responsibility for the preparation of this report belonged to a subcommittee composed of Douglas N. Morgan, Chairman, (...) and Charner Perry. (shrink)

As a presumed bastion of the Enlightenment values that support a critical intelligentsia, the university is often regarded as both the bedrock and beneficiary of liberal democracy. By contrast, authoritarian regimes are said to discourage higher education out of fear that the growth of a critical intelligentsia could imperil their survival. The case of China, past and present, challenges this conventional wisdom. Imperial China, the most enduring authoritarian political system in world history, thrived in large part precisely because of its (...) sponsorship of a form of higher education closely tied to state interests. Although twentieth-century revolutions brought fundamental change to Chinese politics and pedagogy, the contemporary party-state also actively promotes higher education, cultivating a mutually advantageous state-scholar nexus and thereby reducing the likelihood of intellectual-led opposition. As in the imperial past, authoritarian rule in China today is buttressed by a pattern of educated acquiescence, with academia acceding to political compliance in exchange for the many benefits conferred upon it by the state. The role of educated acquiescence in enabling Chinese authoritarianism highlights the contributions of a cooperative academy to authoritarian durability and raises questions with prevailing assumptions that associate the flourishing of higher education with liberal democracy. (shrink)

Words stand for things of various kinds and for various kinds of things. Because words do this, the sentences made up of words mean what they do, and are capable of expressing our thoughts, our beliefs and conjectures, desires and wishes. This simple idea seems right to me, but it flies in the face of formidable authority. In a famous passage in “Reality without Reference,” Donald Davidson criticizes what he calls the “building-block theory:”.

The topic of this essay is “the slingshot,” a short argument that purports to show that sentences1 designate (stand for, refer to) truth values. Versions of this argument have been used by Frege 2, Church 3, Quine4 and Davidson5; thus it is historically important, even if it immediately strikes one as fishy. The argument turns on two principles, which I call substitution and redistribution. In “Semantic Innocence and Uncompromising Situations,”6 Jon Barwise and I rejected both principles, as part of our (...) attempt.. (shrink)

[In Meaning in Mind, edited by Barry Loewer and Georges Rey. Oxford: Basil Black- well, 1991, 165.

The debate among American evangelicals over scriptural inerrancy has received less attention in recent literature than it did during its height in the 1970s and 1980s. Nonetheless the issue itself remains unresolved; indeed, many consider it beyond hope of resolution. Recent work by certain philosophers, however, suggests that there is a way out-not by resolving the debate but by dissolving it. In particular, a model developed by Nancey Murphy for understanding the history of the split between Protestant liberals and conservatives (...) can be appropriated for understanding the history of the inerrancy debate. Examining the history of this debate through the postmodern lens of Murphy's model reveals that certain shortcomings of modern philosophy fed into the debate, forcing theologians to overstate the significance of certain claims. As the debate progressed, there was a steadily increasing concern that Scripture be considered accurate in all matters, including the precise recording of detailed historical events and matters of science. For some conservatives this eventually became a test of orthodoxy; that theologians such as Martin Luther and John Calvin did not share this view reveals the force of modernity's influence. Looking beyond the current evangelical view of Scripture, a postmodern world provides room for an even stronger commitment to the Bible's authority, though one that does challenge certain evangelical assumptions. (shrink)

Kohelet is known in world literature as the source of two messages. On the one hand, it is a handbook of world-weariness and pessimism: "All is vanity." On the other, it asserts that all things have their right time, "a time to live, and a time to die." But these two messages are contradictory, for if all is vain, then there is no need to reflect on the proper time for planting and dancing and laughing.

In 1980 grey-headed flying-foxes, a species now listed as "vulnerable to extinction," made camp at the Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne (RBGM). In May 2000 the RBGM started to kill bats. The killing was halted when Humane Society International (HSI) filed for the bats’ protection under federal and state conservation laws. Over the next 13 months, conservationists, garden officials and scientists, politicians, animal activists, and others all played a part in a chain of events that demonstrates the tangled web of scientific (...) involvement in politics and how different views within the scientific community may lead to conflicting positions on conservation strategies. (shrink)

In this essay I intend to highlight a wide range of ethical views on killing and war in the world's major religious traditions. I've found that one can learn a lot about a tradition by paying attention to how it answers the question, Is it ever right to kill? What we find when we survey world religions are teachings that are at least paradoxical, and in some cases downright contradictory. Every major religious tradition regards life and especially human life as (...) sacred in some sense, and affirms mercy and compassion as basic human obligations. But influential religious authorities have also taught that it's sometimes right to kill other human beings. Some have gone so far as to rationalize wars of annihilation against heretics and infidels. (shrink)

The ability to keep someone alive by replacing one or more of their major organs is an astounding achievement of 20th-century medicine. Unfortunately, the current supply of transplant organs is much lower than the need or demand for them, which means that thousands of people die every year in the U.S. alone for lack of a replacement organ.

Strict pacifists say that killing is always wrong. Jewish and Christian pacifists often appeal to the claim in Genesis that all people are made in the image of God, suggesting that killing them represents a kind of sacrilege as well as a violation of human dignity. Christian pacifists also refer to sayings of Jesus in the Gospels to love one's enemies and not retaliate against force with force. Hindu and Buddhist pacifists would cite their basic obligation of ahimsa, avoiding harm (...) to any sentient creature. And nonreligious pacifists often say that violence only begets more violence. (See my "Ethics and War in Comparative Religious Perspective."). (shrink)

The international political economy for higher education is marked by an increasing globalisation and regionalisation of activities. In this context an emphasis on the roles of universities as engines of economic growth and sub-national economic and social development can be seen. However, the de-contextualised nature of dominant neo-liberal global pressures gives rise to particular sets of issues for universities and a “missing middle” between contexts of knowledge production and application. This article explores these issues in comparative context, drawing on empirical (...) work undertaken on regional science policies in Europe and considering the implications for African universities as they seek to fulfil a diverse range of scientific and civic roles. It is structured in three sections. First, it examines the global pressures that are leading to a rethinking and rescaling of science. Second, it analyses changing discourses around excellence, relevance and context and in so doing identifies a convergence in models of national science policy. Finally, it examines the implications for the global university order, including issues of stratification and diversification and a resulting tension that emerges between the expectations of higher education and their capacities to deliver. It is this missing middle that needs consideration if expectations and capacity are to be more realistically matched for greater benefit. (shrink)

As a leading measure of journal quality, acceptance rates of journals can influence faculty recruitment, salary, tenure and promotion decisions; subscription decisions; and authors’ intention to submit manuscripts. Recent literature from both the Communication and Hospitality Management disciplines suggests that there are wide differences in the formulas used by editors to calculate acceptance rates. Because differing methods of acceptance rate calculation potentially impact significant decisions, a universally accepted and applied standard could be developed. A normative standard, grounded in a specific (...) core ethical principle, is generally preferable to a nonfoundational approach. Two primary approaches to the study of ethics have prevailed through time, teleological ethics with a focus on consequences as represented by Mill’s Utilitarian ideals and deontological ethics with a focus on duty as represented by Kant’s Categorical Imperative. This analysis applies these two ethical frameworks, utility and duty, to the journal editors’ dilemma of finding a common, normative method to calculate acceptance rates. (shrink)

P-zombies are creatures that are physically (functionally, behaviorally) like you and I and yet lack phenomenal consciousness. If such creatures are possible, it’s (typically) taken to show property dualism is true: phenomenal consciousness isn’t reducible to—nor does it supervene on—physical states. If inverted qualia are possible, it’s possible that you and I have identical physical states and yet you see tomatoes as green and I see tomatoes as red. If this is the case, then (again) property dualism is (typically) taken (...) to be true. In this article, I’ll show that p-zombies and inverted qualia—if they are actually possible—prove more than previously thought: if one thinks p-zombies or inverted qualia are possible, then she should endorse one of the four following theses: (i) substance dualism, (ii) we have even more reason to reject p-zombies and inverted qualia since they entail an even more radical conclusion than previously thought (i.e. substance dualism), (iii) eliminativism about selves, or (iv) friends of p-zombies and inverted qualia have homework: they need to show a relevant, plausible disanalogy between arguments for p-zombies and inverted qualia as traditionally stated and my parallel arguments that entail substance dualism. My purpose here isn’t to defend any of these particular options. Instead, my purpose is to highlight that these are the four options available to take. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that a) Cartesian wonder is properly interpreted through Irigaray’s theory of phallic economy and that b) when Cartesian wonder is explicitly reinterpreted through Irigaray’s ethics of sexual difference, it must be considered in the mode of écriture. To support these two contentions, this paper unfolds in five parts. I begin by giving an account of Cartesian wonder and an account of Irigaray’s theory of phallic economy and the ethics of sexual difference. After showing how Cartesian (...) wonder is best read as part of the phallic economy, I turn to develop Cartesian wonder and Irigarayan wonder differently, in the mode of écriture [writing]. In order to do so, I first establish that Cartesian wonder, by virtue of its status as a precondition of rational discourse, is aroused through written things, and then I explore how Irigarayan wonder might best be considered between written entities, between two books as bodies. I thus read Descartes out from Irigaray, then back into and through Irigaray. (shrink)

There is no denying that the bathroom is a political space. But that is what makes it a space of possibility. As a social-material fixture we use every day, the bathroom has the potential to illuminate, and ultimately to challenge, some of our deepest values and deepest needs. Appreciating the weave of experiences and institutions that have, across time, made the modern bathroom what it is opens up important questions about what it might be. Leaning into the legacy of refusal, (...) we can demand a radical break with logics that have so long masked insidious social hierarchies with calls to order and purity. (shrink)

The founder of modern linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure inaugurated semiology, structuralism, and deconstruction and made possible the work of Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Lacan, thus enabling the development of French feminism, gender studies, New Historicism, and postcolonialism. Based on Saussure's lectures, _Course in General Linguistics_ traces the rise and fall of the historical linguistics in which Saussure was trained, the synchronic or structural linguistics with which he replaced it, and the new look of diachronic linguistics that (...) followed this change. Most important, Saussure presents the principles of a new linguistic science that includes the invention of semiology, or the theory of the "signifier," the "signified," and the "sign" that they combine to produce. This is the first critical edition of _Course in General Linguistics_ to appear in English and restores Wade Baskin's original translation of 1959, in which the terms "signifier" and "signified" are introduced into English in this precise way. Baskin renders Saussure clearly and accessibly, allowing readers to experience his shift of the theory of reference from mimesis to performance and his expansion of poetics to include all media, including the life sciences and environmentalism. An introduction situates Saussure within the history of ideas and describes the history of scholarship that made _Course in General Linguistics_ legendary. New endnotes enlarge Saussure's contexts to include literary criticism, cultural studies, and philosophy. (shrink)

This pioneering book explores in depth the role of neurotransmitters in conscious awareness. The central aim is to identify common neural denominators of conscious awareness, informed by the neurochemistry of natural, drug induced and pathological states of consciousness. Chemicals such as acetylcholine and dopamine, which bridge the synaptic gap between neurones, are the 'neurotransmitters in mind' that form the substance of the volume, which is essential reading for all who believe that unravelling mechanisms of consciousness must include these vital systems (...) of the brain.Up-to-date information is provided on: Psychological domains of attention, motivation, memory, sleep and dreaming that define normal states of consciousness. Effects of chemicals that alter or abolish consciousness, including hallucinogens and anaesthetics. Disorders of the brain such as dementia, schizophrenia and depression considered from the novel perspective of the way these affect consciousness, and how this might relate to disturbances in neurotransmission.(Series B). (shrink)

Perry argues that certain sorts of indexicals are 'essential', in the sense that they cannot be eliminated in favor of descriptions. This paper also introduces the influential idea that certain sorts of indexicals play a special role in thought, and have a special connection to action.

Much of the discussion surrounding the ethics of abortion has centered around the notion of personhood. This is because many philosophers hold that the morality of abortion is contingent on whether the fetus is a person - though, of course, some famous philosophers have rejected this thesis (e.g. Judith Thomson and Don Marquis). In this article, I construct a novel argument for the immorality of abortion based on the notion of impairment. This argument does not assume that the fetus is (...) a person - indeed, I concede (for the sake of argument) that the fetus is not a person - and hence the morality of abortion is not contingent on whether the fetus is a person. I finish by answering a plethora of objections to my argument, concluding that none of them are successful. (shrink)

This article motivates and develops a reductive account of the structure of certain physical quantities in terms of their mereology. That is, I argue that quantitative relations like "longer than" or "3.6-times the volume of" can be analyzed in terms of necessary constraints those quantities put on the mereological structure of their instances. The resulting account, I argue, is able to capture the intuition that these quantitative relations are intrinsic to the physical systems they’re called upon to describe and explain.

When you use the word “I” it designates you; when I use the same word, it designates me. If you use “you” talking to me, it designates me; when I use it talking to you, it designates you. “I” and “you” are indexicals. The designation of an indexical shifts from speaker to speaker, time to time, place to place. Different utterances of the same indexical designate different things, because what is designated depends not only on the meaning associated with the (...) expression, but also on facts about the utterance. An utterance of “I” designates the person who utters it; an utterance of “you” designates the person to whom it is addressed, an utterance of “here” designates the place at which the utterance is made, and so forth. Because indexicals shift their designation in this way, sentences containing indexicals can be used to say different things on different occasions. Suppose you say to me, “You are wrong and I am right about reference,” and I reply with the same sentence. We have used the same sentence, with the same meaning, but said quite different and incompatible things. (shrink)

A trailblazing exploration of the political stakes of curiosity. Perry Zurn explores the political philosophy of curiosity—the heartbeat of political resistance and a critical factor in social justice. Drawing on philosophy and political theory as well as feminist theory, race theory, disability studies, and trans studies, he tracks curiosity in the structures of political marginalization and resistance.