Parallels in anatomy between humans and domesticated mammals suggest that for the last 300,000 years, Homo sapiens has experienced more intense selection against the propensity for reactive aggression than any other species of Homo. Selection against reactive aggression, a process that can also be called self-domestication, would help explain various physiological, behavioral and cognitive features of humans, including the unique system of egalitarian male hierarchy in mobile hunter-gatherers. Here I review nine leading proposals that could potentially explain why self-domestication occurred (...) in H. sapiens, whether by selecting in favor of cooperation and tolerance or by selecting against aggressiveness. To account for the domestication syndrome, proposals must explain what led to a decline in fitness of highly aggressive males, and why the explanatory factor applies only to H. sapiens rather than to other species of Homo. The proposed explanations invoke genetic group selection; group-structured culture selection (also known as cultural group selection); social selection by female mate choice; social selection by male partner choice; increased self-control; cooperative breeding; high population density; use of lethal weapons; and language-based conspiracy. Most proposals face difficulties in accounting for the origins and/or maintenance of self-domestication. I conclude that the evolution of language-based conspiracy, which is a form of collective intentionality, was the key factor initiating and maintaining self-domestication in H. sapiens, because it is the most convincing mechanism for explaining the selective pressure against individually powerful fighters. Sophisticated language enabled males of low fighting prowess to coordinate in executing physically aggressive and domineering alpha males. This system is known today as a leveling mechanism in small-scale societies. Group-structured culture selection possibly accelerated the process. (shrink)

This book is based on the William James Lectures delivered at Harvard University in 1982. It offers a new approach to the philosophical understanding of a person, taking as fundamental the process of living as a person, and emphasising the continuity and development across time of an individual life.

A perspective in the philosophy of mathematics is developed from a consideration of the strengths and limitations of both logicism and platonism, with an early focus on Frege’s work. Importantly, although many set-theoretic structures may be developed each of which offers limited isomorphism with the system of natural numbers, no one of them may be identified with it. Furthermore, the timeless, ever present nature of mathematical concepts and results itself offers direct access, in the face of a platonist account which (...) generates a supposed problem of access. Crucially too, pure mathematics has its own distinctive method of confirming or validating results - mathematical proof - which supplies a higher level of confidence and objectivity than that available elsewhere. The dichotomy of invention and discovery is too jejune a framework for analysing creative mathematical activity. The Gödelian platonist perspective is evaluated and queried through scrutiny of the part played by mathematical resources and constraints in relation to human activity. It appears that there can be non-causal mathematical explanations and mathematical constraint on purely natural processes. Valuable implications of Quine’s naturalism are explored, but one must be cautious of his thesis of confirmational holism. The distinction between algebraic and non-algebraic mathematical theories usefully contributes to our understanding of the internally differentiated nature of the subject. (shrink)

In _Freedom and the End of Reason_, Richard L. Velkley offers an influential interpretation of the central issue of Kant’s philosophy and an evaluation of its position within modern philosophy’s larger history. He persuasively argues that the whole of Kantianism—not merely the Second Critique—focuses on a “critique of practical reason” and is a response to a problem that Kant saw as intrinsic to reason itself: the teleological problem of its goodness. Reconstructing the influence of Rousseau on Kant’s thought, Velkley (...) demonstrates that the relationship between speculative philosophy and practical philosophy in Kant is far more intimate than generally has been perceived. By stressing a Rousseau-inspired notion of reason as a provider of practical ends, he is able to offer an unusually complete account of Kant’s idea of moral culture. (shrink)

Anthony Everett () argues that those who embrace the reality of fictional entities run into trouble when it comes to specifying criteria of character identity. More specifically, he argues that realists must reject natural principles governing the identity and distinctness of fictional characters due to the existence of fictions which leave it indeterminate whether certain characters are identical and the existence of fictions which say inconsistent things about the identities of their characters. Everett's critique has deservedly drawn much attention and (...) a number of defensive moves have been made by, or on the behalf of, fictional realists. My goal in this paper is to move this debate on a further step. I have three goals: to clarify the importance of Everett's discussion of identity criteria within the context of fictional realism, to reassess Everett's objections to realism in light of the resultant literature, and to develop a novel strategy for responding to Everett's concerns. On the approach to be developed, the problems emerge due to an indeterminacy inherent in the concept of a fictional character itself. (shrink)

This anthology is a significant contribution to the debate over the relevance of Martin Heidegger's Nazi ties to the interpretation and evaluation of his philosophical work. Included are a selection of basic documents by Heidegger, essays and letters by Heidegger's colleagues that offer contemporary context and testimony, and interpretive evaluations by Heidegger's heirs and critics in France and Germany.In his new introduction, "Note on a Missing Text," Richard Wolin uses the absence from this edition of an interview with Jacques (...) Derrida as a springboard for examining questions about the nature of authorship and personal responsibility that are at the heart of the book.Richard Wolin is Professor of Modern European Intellectual History and Humanities at Rice University. He is the author of Walter Benjamin, The Politics of Being: The Political Thought of Martin Heidegger, and The Terms of Cultural Criticism: The Frankfurt School, Existentialism and Poststructuralism. (shrink)

Historical interest in the ideologies behind the ‘first’ British empire have tended, for very understandable reasons, to look towards the colonies of the eastern seaboard of North America and the Caribbean. By contrast, this study of the imperial vision held by the English philosopher and politician Francis Bacon (1561–1626) emphasises a different geography of empire. In an investigation of what Bacon took to be the implications of the union of the kingdoms of England and Scotland in the person of King (...) James VI & I, and in the pacification of Ireland following the conclusion of the Nine Years’ War in 1603 and the Flight of Earls in 1607, it argues that Bacon’s own imperial ambitions were ultimately directed towards the annexation of the Low Countries and the founding of a new British imperium in western Europe. (shrink)

This paper defines what is and what is not science. These novel science definitions demonstrate that illustrations, like mathematics, can be scaler, real, not real, valid, and invalid. These definitions identify non-inertial reference frame logic inconsistencies, emphasizing the continued search for relative movement definitions. This search leads to Aristotle’s primary circular and secondary rectilinear movement concepts defining the at-rest reference frame, motion, and relative movement. These three novel movement definitions are confirmed using Ptolemy’s dropped ball observation, Michelson-Morley’s null result, a (...) dropped ball on a rotating platform Coriolis effect, and light’s Doppler shift. The novel relative movement definitions demonstrate Ptolemy’s dropped ball and Michel-son-Morley’s reflected light represent motion in an at-rest reference frame. The novel relative movement definition reveals the Coriolis effect and light’s Doppler shift describe the same physical process. Two future experiments are suggested to confirm the novel movement definitions. Developing the novel relative movement concepts will require applying mathematics to circular movement velocity concepts, such as rotational inertia and angular velocity. (shrink)

While there may be no one single characteristic that differentiates humans as a species, it is the combination of differences from other species that makes us unique. The new edition of Being Human examines the psychology of being human through exploring different psychological traditions alongside philosophy and evolutionary theory, covering themes such as culture, cognition, language, morality, and society. Our nature - or 'essence' - is something that has preoccupied human beings throughout our history, beginning with philosophy and religion, and (...) continuing through the biological, social, and psychological sciences. Being Human begins by describing some of the major philosophical accounts of human nature, from Ancient Greek philosophers, such as Plato and Aristotle, to major British and Continental philosophers, such as Locke and Nietzsche. The book considers religious accounts of human nature, with their focus on the nature of good and evil, and scientific accounts of genetics and the brain, which underpin the distinctively human cognitive ability of language. Attention then turns to the ideas of the behaviourists, such as Skinner, Freud, and other psychodynamic psychologists, and humanistic-phenomenological psychologists, such as Maslow. Finally, human culture is discussed as the ultimate defining characteristic of human beings: culture represents our 'natural habitat' and what defines us as a species. This updated second edition includes increased coverage of social psychology and has a broader scope, in order to identify the defining characteristics of human beings. With reference to current psychological research and philosophical material, this is fascinating reading for students of psychology, philosophy, and the social sciences. (shrink)

An exploration into consciousness, the universe, and the nature of reality. Draws on transdimensional physics and biology, reincarnation and past-life memories, animal consciousness, multiple identities, thoughtforms, soul pictures, and paranormal phenomena like crop circles and poltergeists. Explores the riddle of personal identity and how it differs from consciousness. Reveals that consciousness is more than encompassing all that exists---it also speaks to what has yet to manifest.

Excerpt from Nietzsche: Ein Akademisches Publikum Beurteilung zu erwarten, die ihre Maßstäbe klar darlegen wird, wenn auch deren Haltbarkeit der Natur der Sache nach an dieser Stelle nicht eingehend wird begründet werden können. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the (...) aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

Athletics, body imagery and spectacle : Greco-Roman practices, discourses and ideologies -- The politics of representation : English sport as an object and project of modernity -- "Staging" (capitalist/colonial) modernity : international exhibitions and Olympics -- German modernism, anti-modernism and the critical theory of sport -- A savage sorting of "winners" and "losers" : modernization, development, sport, and the challenge of slums.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

"Powerfully testifies to the persistence of intellectual engagement in an era of cynical exhaustion". -- Martin Jay.

Gödel has argued that we can cultivate the intuition or ‘perception’ of abstractconcepts in mathematics and logic. Gödel's ideas about the intuition of conceptsare not incidental to his later philosophical thinking but are related to many otherthemes in his work, and especially to his reflections on the incompleteness theorems.I describe how some of Gödel's claims about the intuition of abstract concepts are related to other themes in his philosophy of mathematics. In most of this paper, however,I focus on a central (...) question that has been raised in the literature on Gödel: what kind of account could be given of the intuition of abstract concepts? I sketch an answer to this question that uses some ideas of a philosopher to whom Gödel also turned in this connection: Edmund Husserl. The answer depends on how we understand the conscious directedness toward ‘objects’ and the meaning of the term ‘abstract’ in the context of a theory of the intentionality of cognition. (shrink)

Observers of metropolitan dysfunction have long advocated for a regional tier of government that could (among other things) equalize spending across local jurisdictions, pursue cooperative economic development policies, provide for fair share housing, rationalize land use, and coordinate transportation planning. For many good government reformers, right-scaling our fragmented metropolitan areas appears to be an obvious solution to interjurisdictional spillovers and competitive races-to-the-bottom. This article counsels caution. “Region hope”—the idea that the substantive problems of metropolitan governance can be solved regionally by (...) redrawing territorial boundaries to encompass ever-larger areas—is perennial. But territorial manipulation in aid of state centralization has significant drawbacks. The regional impulse exhibits some key features of failed social engineering efforts; seen through the lens of the state, these efforts privilege technocratic over democratic governance, bureaucratic over local knowledge, and mobile over immobile capital. That does not mean that regionalism should be resisted in all cases, but only that the costs of territorial manipulation should be weighed against its asserted benefits. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Moral realism entails that there are metaphysically necessary moral principles of the form ‘all actions of nonmoral kind Z are morally good’; being discoverable a priori, these must be logically necessary. This article seeks to justify this apparently puzzling consequence. A sentence expresses a logically necessary proposition iff its negation entails a contradiction. The method of reflective equilibrium assumes that the simplest account of the apparently correct use of sentences of some type in paradigm examples is probably logically necessary. An (...) account is simple insofar as it uses few predicates designating properties easily recognizable in many different kinds of paradigm examples. I illustrate how reflective equilibrium uses these criteria to discover logically necessary nonmoral propositions such as ‘if S remembers doing X, S believes that he did X’ and ‘if it is scarlet, it is red’. I then illustrate how exactly the same procedures can lead us from paradigm examples of apparently true sentences asserting that actions of some kind are good to discovering moral principles. I advance the contingent hypothesis that most contemporary humans, although they initially disagree about moral issues, have derived from different paradigm examples the same concept of moral goodness, which will ensure that the use of reflective equilibrium will lead to eventual agreement about moral issues. That strongly suggests that the moral principles eventually reached by reflective equilibrium are logically necessary ones. (shrink)

Thinkers have never been able to deny the centrality of negation and contradiction in everything human, despite all their efforts to banish both from the domains of truth, right, and beauty. Unless we properly understand the fundamental significance of negation and contradiction, we cannot free ourselves from bondage to opinion, arbitrary convention, and subjective taste. Of all philosophers, Hegel has most resolutely confronted the role of negation and contradiction in the most essential strivings of humanity, and it is high time (...) to put his comprehension to work. The essay does just this, showing how negation and contradiction operate in the different levels of logical determinacy and how their role in self-determination allows for truth, right, and beauty to be and to be conceived. (shrink)

The Intelligent Mind conceives the psychological reality of thought and language, explaining how intelligence develops from intuition to representation and then to linguistic interaction and thinking. Overcoming the prevailing dogmas regarding how discursive reason emerges, this book secures the psychological possibility of the philosophy of mind.

Wollheim onderzoekt beeldenverering in de moderne seculiere samenleving vanuit een rationalistisch, psychologisch standpunt.

In zijn Doktor Faustus lijkt Thomas Mann te willen zeggen dat culturele fijnzinnigheid weinig waarborgen biedt tegen zedelijk verval. Wolin onderschrijft deze stelling van Mann. Bij esthetische waardering oordelen we strikt volgens formele criteria - de innerlijke geslaagdheid van een esthetisch object - ongeacht de doelen, zelfs de morele doelen. Moderne democratie heeft het nodig dat de individuen een mondig ethisch oordeelsvermogen ontwikkelen. Een hoogontwikkeld cultureel leven biedt slechts een beperkte bijdrage aan het welslagen van moderne democratie. Bespreking van het (...) aristocratische liberalisme van Tocqueville en anderen. 'Een van de slachtoffers van de moderne kunst - en meer nog van de postmoderne kunst - is het idee geweest dat de kunst iets zou moeten zijn dat "adelt" of "verheft".' In de wereld van onze tijd, waarin het kwaad nog lang niet ten grave is gedragen, lijkt hoog-cultureel elitisme een onvoorstelbare luxe. Maar wat is de zin van de kunst als zij prozaïsch wil zijn? (shrink)

The binary distinction De Neys questions has been put forward many times since the beginnings of psychology, in slightly different forms and under different names. It has proved enormously useful and has received detailed empirical support and careful modeling. At heart the distinction is that between knowledge in long-term memory and control processes in short-term memory.

Nearly four decades after David Raynor attributed to David Hume an allegorical Scots militia pamphlet from the early 1760s popularly known as Sister Peg, there is still no scholarly consensus about whether the author was in fact Hume or his friend Adam Ferguson. Using new evidence that has emerged since the appearance of Raynor’s edition in 1982 – including information about Sister Peg’s publication history, Ferguson’s handwritten corrections and revisions in the Abbotsford copy of the work, a 1767 newspaper article (...) by James Boswell and a copy of a 1775 letter by Sir John Dalrymple that both named Ferguson as the author, two volumes of Ferguson’s correspondence published in 1995, and a recently discovered letter by Ferguson from 1809 – this article seeks to resolve this controversy by establishing that Sister Peg was written by Ferguson, as his fellow militia agitator Alexander Carlyle asserted in his memoirs. In the process, the article refutes Raynor’s arguments about Ferguson’s supposed incapacity for writing a satirical pamphlet like Sister Peg and clarifies the nature of Hume’s views and actions in regard to the Scots militia cause during the Seven Years’ War. The article also throws light on several related issues affecting Hume and Ferguson’s circle. (shrink)

A central challenge common to democratic processes is the inability of citizens to reach agreement on any given matter. Most frequently these disagreements are settled by vote, victory going to the majority. But majority rule is a fairly recent technique. Traditionally decisions were made by some form of non-opposition. This paper describes several versions of that decision-making technique and then shows how mediation methods, also known as “ADR”, can replicate these traditional ways of overcoming disagreement. The paper argues that these (...) techniques are frequently superior to electoral methods of reaching agreement. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.