We consider the set of jumps below a Turing degree, given by JB={x':x≤a}, with a focus on the problem: Which recursively enumerable degrees a are uniquely determined by JB? Initially, this is motivated as a strategy to solve the rigidity problem for the partial order R of r.e. degrees. Namely, we show that if every high2 r.e. degree a is determined by JB, then R cannot have a nontrivial automorphism. We then defeat the strategy—at least in the form presented—by constructing (...) pairs a0, a1 of distinct r.e. degrees such that JB=JB within any possible jump class {x:x'=c}. We give some extensions of the construction and suggest ways to salvage the attack on rigidity. (shrink)

There is long-standing disagreement among systematists about how to divide biodiversity into species. Over twenty different species concepts are used to group organisms, according to criteria as diverse as morphological or molecular similarity, interbreeding and genealogical relationships. This, combined with the implications of evolutionary biology, raises the worry that either there is no single kind of species, or that species are not real. This book surveys the history of thinking about species from Aristotle to modern systematics in order to understand (...) the origin of the problem, and advocates a solution based on the idea of the division of conceptual labor, whereby species concepts function in different ways - theoretically and operationally. It also considers related topics such as individuality and the metaphysics of evolution, and how scientific terms get their meaning. This important addition to the current debate will be essential for philosophers and historians of science, and for biologists. (shrink)

The country's leading libertarian scholar sets forth the essential principles for a legal system that best balances individual liberty versus the common good.

With this book, Richard A. Epstein provides a spirited and systematic defense of classical liberalism against the critiques mounted against it over the past thirty years. One of the most distinguished and provocative legal scholars writing today, Epstein here explains his controversial ideas in what will quickly come to be considered one of his cornerstone works. He begins by laying out his own vision of the key principles of classical liberalism: respect for the autonomy of the individual, a strong (...) system of private property rights, the voluntary exchange of labor and possessions, and prohibitions against force or fraud. Nonetheless, he not only recognizes but insists that state coercion is crucial to safeguarding these principles of private ordering and supplying the social infrastructure on which they depend. Within this framework, Epstein then shows why limited government is much to be preferred over the modern interventionist welfare state. Many of the modern attacks on the classical liberal system seek to undermine the moral, conceptual, cognitive, and psychological foundations on which it rests. Epstein rises to this challenge by carefully rebutting each of these objections in turn. For instance, Epstein demonstrates how our inability to judge the preferences of others means we should respect their liberty of choice regarding their own lives. And he points out the flaws in behavioral economic arguments which, overlooking strong evolutionary pressures, claim that individual preferences are unstable and that people are unable to adopt rational means to achieve their own ends. Freedom, Epstein ultimately shows, depends upon a skepticism that rightly shuns making judgments about what is best for individuals, but that also avoids the relativistic trap that all judgments about our political institutions have equal worth. A brilliant defense of classical liberalism, Skepticism and Freedom will rightly be seen as an intellectual landmark. (shrink)

A monumental work on the flow of time, from the universe's creation to "Now," by the best-selling author of Physics for Future Presidents. "Now" is a simple concept--you're reading this sentence now. Yet a real definition of "now" has eluded even the great Einstein. We know that time stretches and is affected by gravity and velocity. Yet, as eminent physicist Richard A. Muller points out, it is only today that we have all the physics at hand--relativity, entropy, entanglement, antimatter, (...) and the Big Bang--to explain the flow of time. With these building blocks in place, Muller reaches a startling conclusion: our expanding universe is continuously creating not only new space but also new time. The front edge of this new time is what we call "now," and this moment is truly unique--it is the only moment in which we can exercise our free will. Muller's thought-provoking vision is a powerful counter to established theories in science and philosophy, and his arguments will spark major debate about the most fundamental assumptions of our universe. (shrink)

1. Pragmatism: Philosophical versus everyday. 2. Legal pragmatism. 3. John Dewey on Democracy and law. 4. Two concepts of democracy. 5. Democracy defended. 6. The concepts applied.

The article assesses Arthur Schopenhauer’s reinterpretation of religious myths, particularly those of Christianity, in terms of his philosophical system, and applies his ideas to the mythical cosmology of shamanistic and animistic religions. Schopenhauer, a 19th-century Romantic philosopher, although an atheist himself, took religious myths very seriously, translating them into the terms of his metaphysical system. His view was that Roman Catholicism, for him the true form of Christianity, shared the pessimism and the focus on suffering of Hinduism and Buddhism, rather (...) than the alleged optimism of Protestantism, Judaism and Islam, excepting the myth of the Fall. For Schopenhauer, this pessimism was evident in the central symbol of Christianity, the figure of the crucified Christ. Schopenhauer put forward his ethic of compassion (and asceticism), aligning him, despite his atheism, with the altruistic ethics of the major world religions. The article also explores the extent to which Schopenhauer’s philosophy as, arguably, a form of panpsychism can be applied to shamanistic and animistic religions. While Schopenhauer translated religious myths into his metaphysical terms – based ultimately on Kant’s distinction between phenomena (things as they appear) and noumena (things as they are) – his understanding of the noumenon as the universal will to life was itself an explanatory myth for an essentially unknowable reality. Therefore, the attempt of Schopenhauer’s philosophy to translate myth into metaphysics in turn contained a myth at its very core. Nonetheless, the article argues that Schopenhauer’s argument may satisfy those dissatisfied with materialism’s shortcomings yet not willing to subscribe to a supernatural order.Contribution: The article applies to shamanism and animism the neglected philosopher Schopenhauer’s method of interpreting religious myths in terms of his metaphysical system, relating this very briefly to current philosophical debates on panpsychism. (shrink)

One of the most distinguished cultural and intellectual historians of our time, Frank Turner taught a landmark Yale University lecture course on European intellectual history that drew scores of students over many years. His lectures—lucid, accessible, beautifully written, and delivered with a notable lack of jargon—distilled modern European history from the Enlightenment to the dawn of the twentieth century and conveyed the turbulence of a rapidly changing era in European history through its ideas and leading figures. Richard A. Lofthouse, (...) one of Turner’s former students, has now edited the lectures into a single volume that outlines the thoughts of a great historian on the forging of modern European ideas. Moreover, it offers a fine example of how intellectual history should be taught: rooted firmly in historical and biographical evidence. (shrink)

Employee engagement and spirituality have both been the focus of increasing interest by researchers and practitioners, and both are still early stage theories with ill-defined constructs and definitions. Emergent empirical work related to engagement and spirituality has supported the promise of improving both organizational performance and employee conditions. Responding to the call by theorists to examine engagement antecedents and specifically, the relationship between spirituality and employee engagement, a cross-sectional study was performed to examine self-reported individual spirituality as measured by the (...) DSES and employee engagement measured using the UWES-9 including the dimensions of vigor, dedication, and absorption. 124 usable surveys were collected from a snowballing convenience sample and after confirming demographic representativeness and identifying the individual’s organizational role as a potential influential variable, analyses of the relationships between individual spirituality, overall engagement, and three individual engagement dimensions were performed using multiple regression controlling for organizational role. Empirical support was found for relationships between individual spirituality and engagement, vigor, and dedication but not for the engagement dimension of absorption. The findings should encourage further future exploration of the relationship between spirituality and engagement and inquiry into why results differ across engagement’s dimensions; specifically, why the relationship was not supported for absorption. The empirical support for spirituality as a predictor of engagement informs practical decisions for addressing workplace spirituality and concerns with the potential to assist in countering the declining engagement trend. (shrink)

This elevating pull of an ethics that can account for the relation of self and other without reducing either term is the central theme of these essays.

This paper compares and contrasts relational quantum mechanics with a pragmatist view of quantum theory. I first explain important points of agreement. Then I point to two problems faced by RQM and sketch DP?s solutions to analogous problems. Since both RQM and DP have taken the Born rule to require relative facts I next say what these might be. My main objection to RQM as originally conceived is that its ontology of relative facts is incompatible with scientific objectivity and undercuts (...) the evidential base of quantum theory. In contrast DP?s relative facts have all the objectivity we need to accept quantum theory as scientific knowledge. But a very recent modification to RQM has successfully addressed my main objection,bringing the two views into even closer alignment. (shrink)

Written and set on the banks of the Neva, St Petersburg Dialogues is a startlingly relevant analysis of the human prospect in the twenty-first century. As the literary critic George Steiner has remarked, "the age of the Gulag and of Auschwitz, of famine and ubiquitous torture... nuclear threat, the ecological laying waste of our planet, the leap of endemic, possibly pandemic, illness out of the very matrix of libertarian progress" is exactly what Joseph de Maistre foretold. In the Dialogues Maistre (...) addressed a number of topics that are discussed briefly or not at all in his other works already available in English. These include an apologetic for traditional Christian beliefs about providence, reflections on the social role of the public executioner and the "divinity" of war, a critique of John Locke's sensationalist psychology, meditations on prayer and sacrifice, and a mini-course on "illuminism." The literary form is that of the "philosophical conversation" – one that allowed Maistre to be deliberately provocative and to indulge his taste for paradox, a "methodical extravagance" that he judged particularly appropriate for the eighteenth-century salon. Translator and editor Richard Lebrun provides a full scholarly edition of this classic work, complete with an introduction, chronology, critical bibliography, and generous explanatory notes. The Dialogues will be of interest to scholars of literary history as well as the history of ideas. (shrink)

The central thesis of Foucault's Critical Ethics is that Foucault's account of power does not foreclose the possibility of ethics; on the contrary, it provides a framework within which ethics becomes possible. Tracing the evolution of Foucault's analysis of power from his early articulations of disciplinary power to his theorizations of biopower and governmentality, Richard A. Lynch shows how Foucault's ethical project emerged through two interwoven trajectories: analysis of classical practices of the care of the self, and engaged practice (...) in and reflection upon the limits of sexuality and the development of friendship in gay communities. These strands of experience and inquiry allowed Foucault to develop contrasting yet interwoven aspects of his ethics; they also underscored how ethic practice emerges within and from contexts of power relations. The gay community's response to AIDS and its parallels with the feminist ethics of care serve to illustrate the resources of a Foucauldian ethics—a fundamentally critical attitude, with substantive (but revisable) values and norms grounded in a practice of freedom. (shrink)

One of the main problems that modern thought poses is the problem of the scientific and philosophical deepening of what we call "history", "the actions of the world", "historical". In the plane of Christian thought, it finds, on the one hand, a special position, because Christianity is realized in history, and on the other it encounters certain additional difficulties that take on forms of dilemmas: history is faith; historical knowledge - Revelation ; history is Christianity. It requires a new approach (...) to history, Christianity, Christian thought. (shrink)

In defending freedom, most libertarians have appealed to a moral framework that puts an emphasis on the concept of moral rights. Rejecting that approach, Richard Fumerton offers a fresh, nuanced, and balanced "consequentialist" perspective on the importance of defending liberty.

The late Gregor Sebba was fond of describing his monumental _Bibliographia Cartesiana: A Critical Guide to the Descartes Literature, 1800–1960 _as a by-product of his research begun in 1949 for an article he had in mind titled _The Dream of Descartes._ The bibliography has been indispensable to Descartes scholars since its appearance in 1964. When Sebba died in 1985, his manuscript for _The Dream of Descartes _was still unfinished. Here, with materials provided by Aníbal A. Bueño, Richard H. Popkin, (...) and Helen Sebba, Richard A. Watson presents the completed work based on a 1973 draft, letters, outlines, and other manuscript material. The result is a fascinating analysis of Descartes’ dreams as seminal in the creative process of genius. (shrink)

Biological accounts of art typically start with evolutionary, psychological or neurobiological theories. These approaches might be able to explain many of the similarities we see in art behaviors within and across human populations, but they don't obviously explain the differences we also see. Nor do they give us guidance on how we should engage with art, or the conceptual basis for art. A more comprehensive framework, based also on the ecology of art and how art behaviors get expressed in engineered (...) niches, can help us better understand the full range of art behaviors, their normativity and conceptual basis. (shrink)

Edited by Richard Grusin of the Center for 21st Century Studies, this is the first book to name and characterize—and therefore consolidate—a wide array of current critical, theoretical, and philosophical approaches to the humanities and social sciences under the concept of the nonhuman turn. Each of these approaches is engaged in decentering the human in favor of a concern for the nonhuman, understood by contributors in a variety of ways—in terms of animals, affectivity, bodies, materiality, technologies, and organic and (...) geophysical systems. The nonhuman turn in twenty-first-century studies can be traced to multiple intellectual and theoretical developments from the last decades of the twentieth century: actor-network theory, affect theory, animal studies, assemblage theory, cognitive sciences, new materialism, new media theory, speculative realism, and systems theory. Such varied analytical and theoretical formations obviously diverge and disagree in many of their assumptions, objects, and methodologies. However, they all take up aspects of the nonhuman as critical to the future of twenty-first-century studies in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. Unlike the posthuman turn, the nonhuman turn does not make a claim about teleology or progress in which we begin with the human and see a transformation from the human to the posthuman. Rather, the nonhuman turn insists (paraphrasing Bruno Latour) that “we have never been human,” that the human has always coevolved, coexisted, or collaborated with the nonhuman—and that the human is identified precisely by this indistinction from the nonhuman. Contributors: Jane Bennett, Johns Hopkins U; Ian Bogost, Georgia Institute of Technology; Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Brown U; Mark B. N. Hansen, Duke U; Erin Manning, Concordia U, Montreal; Brian Massumi, U of Montreal; Timothy Morton, Rice U; Steven Shaviro, Wayne State U; Rebekah Sheldon, Indiana U. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article uses the central insights of Deleuze and Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus to analyze the labor movement in Chicago at the end of the nineteenth century, leading up to the Haymarket event and its aftermath. The article concludes by indicating some of the shortcomings of that approach.