For an educational zeitgeist so rooted, and understandably so, in measurable, scalable, and replicable results, it is difficult to entertain the idea of an unquantifiable goalpost. Although terms l...

When Michael Oakeshott died in 1990, there were only a handful of scholarly monographs about his thought. Twenty years later, in contrast, the burgeoning number of studies of his thought prompted o...

Pamala Wiepking and Femida Handy, The Palgrave Handbook of Global Philanthropy, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Bojana Radovanović.

Once upon a time, academic philosophy in the Global North was characterized by a dichotomy between ‘analytic philosophy’ and ‘Continental philosophy.’ This distinction often determined not just one...

Alex Broadbent’s Philosophy of Epidemiology is the latest volume in Palgrave Macmillan’s New Directions in the Philosophy of Science series. Other monographs in the series focus on mathematics, biology, astronomy, et al.—the usual topics of discourse when philosophers engage science. The present volume is a welcome addition not just to the series but also for the field of epidemiology. As Broadbent notes, “Although a few philosophers have studied epidemiology, there have been no philosophical studies of epidemiology” . There (...) is one now.As noted in the book’s foreword, the core theme of Philosophy of Epidemiology “has to do with the nature and role of explanation and prediction in epidemiological analyses” . These are practical matters which are familiar to epidemiologists, but being largely mechanical in nature, “this explains why philosophers of science have neglected epidemiology” .Broadbent is a young philosopher, trained at Cam .. (shrink)

1. There have been growing concerns from international scholars and relevant stakeholders over enhancing the quality of teaching and learning in higher education (HE) owing to its remarkable boom a...

Animal Studies Journal 2021 10: [Review] Felice Cimatti and Carlo Salzani, editors. Animality in Contemporary Italian Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. 341 pp.

Apresentando-se como eticista, o filósofo Michael Hauskeller, professor do departamento de Filosofia, Sociologia e Antropologia da Universidade de Exeter, no Reino Unido, tem se dedicado àquilo que poderíamos chamar de “filosofia do melhoramento humano”, ou seja, à análise das consequências éticas do Enhencement Project. Depois de publicar dois livros sobre o assunto, Hauskeller acaba de lançar, pela prestigiada casa britânica Palgrave Macmillan, o livro Mythologies of Transhumanism, no qual analisa os mitos fundantes do movimento transumanista, que pode ser (...) considerado ao mesmo tempo uma filosofia e uma ideologia, na medida em que milita a favor do controle sobre a nossa natureza a partir das utopias do progresso tecnológico ou, como ele bem define, por meio de um Weltanschauung, ou seja, uma visão particular do mundo orientada pela ideia de perfeição, segundo a qual “somos destinados, não como indivíduos, mas como espécie, a nos tornarmos melhores do que somos atualmente”. (shrink)

(2013). Andrew Gleeson, A Frightening Love: Recasting the Problem of Evil (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) Philosophical Papers: Vol. 42, No. 1, pp. 127-131. doi: 10.1080/05568641.2013.774726.

In our turbulent and fast-changing days, is there anyone who still cares about truth? If this were, fortunately, the case, what leeway would those tenacious people have at disposal in order to find...

Paul Taylor’s A Comparative Philosophy of Sport and Art offers an engagingly written overview of key issues in the debates concerning the relationships between, and relative merits of, sport and th...

Even though science strives to transcend national differences, scientists in the multi-national, multi-lingual, multi-ethnic Habsburg Empire could hardly avoid being caught up in a web of competing ethnic, national, and imperial interests. Where should their identities and loyalties lie and where should they seek support for their work? At the level of the empire as a whole? One of its component kingdoms or principalities? Other institutions? What audience should they write for, and in what language? Or, from the point of (...) view of their patrons, how could science be used to promote unity and develop culture and identity? This fine essay collection on The Nationalization of Scientific Knowledge in the Habsburg Empire, 1848–1918 explores a variety of solutions with which scientists and scientific institutions experimented.The editors’ introduction, by Mitchell Ash and Jan Surman, is most concerned with the historiography of nationalism, nation formation, center–periphery relations, and po .. (shrink)

This new book from Michael Hauskeller explores the currently marketed or projected sex/love products that exhibit some trait of so-called “posthumanistic” theory or design. These products are so designated because of their intention to fuse high technologies, including robotics and computing, with the human user. The author offers several arguments for why the theory behind these products leads to inconsistencies. The book uses a unique approach to philosophical argument by enmeshing the argument’s major points in a concomitant discussion of pieces (...) from world literature pertaining to posthumanism. The method is compelling, heightened by great world authorial insights that rarely find their way into philosophy and shores up some strong argumentative points. Yet some of the argument still needs more elucidating. (shrink)

Starting with Aristotle and moving on to Darwin, Marco Solinas outlines the basic steps from the birth, establishment and later rebirth of the traditional view of living beings, and its overturning by evolutionary revolution. The classic framework devised by Aristotle was still dominant in the 17th Century world of Galileo, Harvey and Ray, and remained hegemonic until the time of Lamarck and Cuvier in the 19th Century. Darwin's breakthrough thus takes on the dimensions of an abandonment of the traditional finalistic (...) theory. It was a transition exemplified in the morphological analysis of useless parts, such as the sightless eyes of moles, already discussed by Aristotle, which Darwin used as a crowbar to unhinge the systematic recourse to final causes. With many excerpts, a chronological sequence and an analytical approach, this book follows the course of the two conceptions that have shaped the destiny of life sciences in western culture. (shrink)

Within a single paragraph in his Treatise of Human Nature, David Hume prompted what has become one of the most central orthodoxies in ethical theory: the thesis that one cannot derive what ought to be from what there is. In the aftermath of Hume’s seminal discussion, the No-Ought-From-Is-thesis has obtained approval among moral theorists to the point that it has been assigned the status of an undisputed ‘law’. As common with commonplaces in philosophy, alas, both the exact content and argument (...) of ‘Hume’s Law’ have proven to be quite elusive. The present anthology aims to clarify and discuss several controversies surrounding the No-Ought-From-Is-thesis. (shrink)

Antonio Gramsci has long been an iconic figure for proponents of a more inclusive and democratic kind of Marxism. This aspect of Gramsci’s writings has attracted many readers and likewise encourage...