In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant defends the mathematically deterministic world of physics by arguing that its essential features arise necessarily from innate forms of intuition and rules of understanding through combinatory acts of imagination. Knowing is active: it constructs the unity of nature by combining appearances in certain mandatory ways. What is mandated is that sensible awareness provide objects that conform to the structure of ostensive judgment: “This (S) is P.” -/- Sensibility alone provides no such objects, so (...) the imagination compensates by combining passing point-data into “pure” referents for the subject-position, predicate-position, and copula. The result is a cognitive encounter with a generic physical object whose characteristics—magnitude, substance, property, quality, and causality—are abstracted as the Kantian categories. Each characteristic is a product of “sensible synthesis” that has been “determined” by a “function of unity” in judgment. -/- Understanding the possibility of such determination by judgment is the chief difficulty for any rehabilitative reconstruction of Kant’s theory. I will show that Kant conceives of figurative synthesis as an act of line-drawing, and of the functions of unity as rules for attending to this act. The subject-position refers to substance, identified as the objective time-continuum; the predicate-position, to quality, identified as the continuum of property values (constituting the second-order type named by the predicate concept). The upshot is that both positions refer to continuous magnitudes, related so that one (time-value) is the condition of the other (property-value). -/- Kant’s theory of physically constructive grammar is thus equivalent to the analytic-geometric formalism at work in the practice of mathematical physics, which schematizes time and state as lines related by an algebraic formula. Kant theorizes the subject–predicate relation in ostensive judgment as an algebraic time–state function. When aimed towards sensibility, “S is P” functions as the algebraic relation “t → ƒ(t).”. (shrink)

This is a major, wide-ranging history of analytic philosophy since 1900, told by one of the tradition's leading contemporary figures.

The treatment in what follows of the politics of hegemony is not per se one of Gramsci, or Laclau or of Stuart Hall's earlier work. At stake is something that encompasses a more general regime of power that will be developed throughout the length of this: what might be called 'extensive politics'. What I will try to show is that such extensive power or such an extensive politics is being progressively displaced by a politics of intensity. I will trace the (...) shift from hegemony or extensive politics to such an intensive politics in terms of: 1) a transition to an ontological regime of power, from a regime that in important respects is 'epistemological', 2) a shift in power from the hegemonic mode of 'power over' to an intensive notion of power from within and power as generative force, 3) a shift from power and politics in terms of normativity to a regime of power much more based in what can be understood as a 'facticity'. This points to a general transition from norm to fact in politics. From hegemonic norm to what we will see are intensive facts. The fourth section will look at this shift through a change from an extensive regime of representation to an intensive regime of communications. (shrink)

Since the Middle Ages, Aristotle has been hailed as the father of economics. But recently classicists have maintained that he did no economics at all. This book clears up the anomaly. The author argues that Aristotle had a theory of money and commerce, but that it is ethical rather than economic. According to Aristotle ethics and economics are fundamentally opposed and can never be reconciled.

In exploring this tradition of philosophical reflection on the nature of goodness, the twelve essays in this book (all but two published here for the first time) present some of the best recent historical scholarship in...

I investigate the normative status of an unexamined category of emotions: ‘lyrical’ emotions about the transience of things. Lyrical emotions are often accused of sentimentality—a charge that expresses the idea that they are unfitting responses to their objects. However, when we test the merits of that charge using the standard model of emotion evaluation, a surprising problem emerges: it turns out that we cannot make normative distinctions between episodes of such feelings. Instead, it seems that lyrical emotions are always fitting. (...) Although this claim is counterintuitive, the price of denying it is to hold that such emotions are never fitting—an equally strange result. If this is correct, then the commonplace discourse of sentimentality surrounding lyrical emotions lacks normative moorings. (shrink)

BackgroundDelirium is highly prevalent in the general hospital patient population, characterized by acute onset, fluctuating levels of consciousness, and global impairment of cognitive functioning. Mental capacity, its assessment and subsequent consent are therefore prominent within this cohort, yet under-explored.AimThis study of patients with delirium sought to determine the processes by which consent to medical treatment was attempted, how capacity was assessed, and any subsequent actions thereafter.MethodA retrospective documentation review of patients identified as having a delirium for the twelve months February (...) 2013 to January 2014 was undertaken. Inclusion and exclusion criteria were used; demographic and descriptive data collected. A total of n=1153 patients were identified with n=310 meeting inclusion criteria.ResultA random sample of one hundred patients were subsequently reviewed. One third of patients had documentation relating to consent, while four patients had documentation relating to capacity. Median delirium duration was three days, with treatment refusal occurring in twenty-two patients and “duty of care” being used as an apparent beneficent related treatment framework in twelve patients.ConclusionsWhile impaired decision-making was indicated, the review was unable to indicate what patient characteristics flag the need for capacity assessment. Documentation relating to consent processes appeared deficient for this cohort. (shrink)

In this essay, I suggest that a slightly modified version of Freedman’s formulation of the clinical equipoise requirement is justified. I begin this essay with a brief discussion of the equipoise r...

François Jullien intervenes into the ontology debates to understand Chinese thought as an anti-ontology, but instead in terms of ‘life’, that is as a sort of vitalism. Chinese anti-ontology features the juxtaposition of the wu (there-is-not) with the you (there-is). This, I argue, maps onto theology’s counterposition of otherworldly and this-worldly. Here Daoism features an ascetic and unstratified wu in contraposition to Confucianism’s you of moderation and stratification. We contrast ontology’s causation with ‘efficacy’ in Jullien’s Chinese thought. We read Zhuangzi’s (...) ‘Equalization of Things’, where the inequalities of the you are equalized in the wu, as a sort of vitalist object energetics. We turn to Chinese ethics, and its driving virtue of yi. We understand the yi not as ‘righteousness’, which is a theological attribute of Christ, but instead as closer to political ‘right’, in China embedded in immanentist forms of life. Western Cartesian ontology is often contrasted with Chinese thought that works through a certain ‘analogism’. We read this, with Walter Benjamin’s Chinese ‘mimetic’ faculty, in terms of a vitalist energetics, a forcefield of the Ten Thousand Things. (shrink)

_An original interpretation of Merleau-Ponty on subjectivity, drawing from and challenging both the continental and analytic traditions._.

I argue that a well-known argument concerning moral luck supports something like the Principle of Alternate Possibilities (PAP), despite the attacks on PAP by Harry Frankfurt and John Martin Fischer.

This article presents a case study of life and work at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich which reveals tensions between the lived reality of the observatory as a social space, and the attempts to create order, maintain discipline and project an image of authority in order to ensure the observatory's long-term stability. Domestic, social and scientific activities all intermingled within the observatory walls in ways which were occasionally disorderly. But life at Greenwich was carefully managed to stave off such disorder (...) and to maintain an appearance of respectability which was essential to the observatory's reputation and output. The article focuses on three areas of management: the observatory's outer boundaries, demonstrating how Greenwich navigated both human and environmental intrusions from the wider world; the house, examining how Greenwich's domestic spaces provided stability, while also complicating observatory life via the management of domestic servants; and the scientific spaces, with an emphasis on the work and play of the observatory's boy computers. Together, these three parts demonstrate that the stability of the observatory was insecure, despite being perpetuated via powerful physical and social boundaries. It had to be continually maintained, and was regularly challenged by Greenwich's occupants and neighbours. (shrink)

Aristotle's treatment of trade in the Politics book one is usually regarded as especially hostile, and this is put down to snobbery and political prejudice on his part. The Greeks often regarded trade as a degrading thing for a free man to engage in, and it would be surprising if Aristotle's view of trade were entirely unconnected with this Greek sensibility. But there should be something more definite than a loose general affinity if a charge of prejudice is to be (...) taken seriously. A balance of hostile judgements over argued cases to back them up would be some sort of evidence for prejudice, and prima facie evidence against would be anything like a theory from which the hostile judgements followed as conclusions. Theories can be concocted to give the required conclusions, of course, and then we must try to decide how serious the theory is. It comes to this: is there so little in the reasons Aristotle gives for his condemnation of trade that they may be convincingly explained away and belittled as no more than expressions of attitudes? (shrink)

In this article I argue that we should understand Nietzsche’s doctrine of eternal recurrence as the ideal of life affirmation opposed to philosophical pessimism, the view that life is not worth living. I first articulate Nietzsche’s psychological account of pessimism as a vengeful focus on the past and an aversion to time understood as transience. I then consider the question of why a person with the opposite psychological orientation – a creative relation to the future and an endorsement of time (...) – would will the eternal recurrence of all things. My answer appeals to Nietzsche’s notions of will to power and the redemption of the past from its senselessness. The interpretation of eternal recurrence that emerges from this approach takes Nietzsche’s vision of a great, world-redeeming individual to be integral to his doctrine of eternal recurrence. This is just one way in which it differs from common interpretations of eternal recurrence as a cosmological theory or thought experiment. (shrink)

In this paper, we examine the intersection of existentialism and management, in particular to illustrate how existential thought offers three key insights to the pragmatic world of work and applied act of management: (1) Existentialism places a primacy upon the individual and the existential self that is continually being formed within the workplace. (2) Existentialism allows for a coherent examination of individual and organisational-level decision making and ethics as an integral part of the philosophy. (3) Existentialism is inherently ‘applied’ and (...) focused on ‘process’ in that it allows for an understanding of the meaning of work. (shrink)

This essay describes two styles of natural theology that emerged in England out of a debate over the correct interpretation of divine evidences in nature during the seventeenth century. The first style was exemplified in the work of John Wilkins and Robert Boyle. It stressed the lawful operation of the universe under a providential order. The second, embodied in the writings of the Cambridge Platonists, was more open to evidence for the wondrousness of nature provided by the marvelous and by (...) spiritual phenomena. Initially appearing to be alternative and complementary arguments for orthodoxy, these two approaches to natural theology underwent different transformations during the ensuing decades. In the process, a natural theology predicated on the intellectual demonstration of divine power through the argument from design came to predominate over alternative strategies that placed greater emphasis on the wondrousness of nature. (shrink)

Chase Wrenn argues that there are no epistemic duties. When it appears that we have an epistemic duty to believe, disbelieve or suspend judgement about some proposition P, we are really under a moral obligation to adopt the attitude towards P that our evidence favours. The argument appeals to theoretical parsimony: our conceptual scheme will be simpler without epistemic duties and we should therefore drop them. I argue that Wrenn’s strategy is flawed. There may well be things that we ought (...) to do on epistemic grounds alone. (shrink)

Book I of HH would seem to announce the end of Nietzsche's concern with the philosophical pessimism that shapes BT and figures prominently in HL. In BT he endorses the pessimistic thesis that the best thing for a human being is to die soon, while he announces in HH that the even the words "optimism" and "pessimism" are outdated since they play a role in a theological discourse that is gradually dying out. This change is connected with another, namely Nietzsche's (...) growing intolerance of metaphysical speculation of any sort. In place of the wild metaphysics of BT, which postulates Apollinian and Dionysian drives as ultimate constituents of reality and associates the latter with a primal... (shrink)

Hume seems to claim that there does not exist a valid argument that has all non-ethical sentences as premises and an ethical sentence as its conclusion. Starting with Prior, a number of counterexamples to this claim have been proposed. Unfortunately, all of these proposals are controversial. Even the most plausible have a premise that seems like it might be an ethical sentence or a conclusion that seems like it might be non-ethical. Since it is difficult to tell whether any of (...) these counterexamples are genuine, we need a taxonomy that sorts out ethical sentences from non-ethical ones. We need to know the difference between an ‘Is’ and an ‘Ought’. In the first part of the paper, I establish the need for a taxonomy. I consider some of the most influential ‘Is’–‘Ought’ derivations. These include proposals by Prior and Searle. I argue that each proposal has a premise whose status as ethical or non-ethical is difficult to determine. In the second part of the paper, I consider taxonomies proposed by Karmo and Maitzen. I argue against both taxonomies. I end with the claim that we need a taxonomy of ethical sentences and that none of the current proposals are adequate. (shrink)

Assessing social risks has proven difficult for IRBs. We undertook a novel effort to empirically investigate social risks before an HIV prevention trial among drug users in Thailand and China. The assessment investigated whether law, policies and enforcement strategies would place research subjects at significantly elevated risk of arrest, incarceration, physical harm, breach of confidentiality, or loss of access to health care relative to drug users not participating in the research. The study validated the investigator's concern that drug users were (...) subject to serious social risks in the site localities, but also suggested that participation in research posed little or no marginal increase in risk and might even have a protective effect. Our experience shows that it is feasible to inform IRB deliberations with actual data on social risks, but also raises the question of whether and when such research is an appropriate use of scare research resources. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that speech act theory can be altered to accommodate art objects as evocative illocutionary speech acts that areaimed toward reaching understanding. To do this, I discuss the example of Zen Buddhism’s use of the koan, an aesthetic object that can be seen as evoking a given experience from its auditors for the purpose of reaching understanding on a point that the teacher wishes to make. I argue that such a reading of art as evocative can (...) be merged with hypothetical intentionalism insofar as it recognizes a certain orientation on the part of the auditor to approach art in a certain way. In the case of koans and other artworks, the approach is one of considering what claim an author may want to convey through the auditor’s experience of the artwork. (shrink)

This article proposes "equality" as a topic for interactionist research. By drawing on the perspectives of Herbert Blumer, Alfred Schutz, and Harold Garfinkel, an attempt is made to lay the theoretical groundwork for studying the interpretive and experiential aspects of equality. Blumer's fundamental premises of symbolic interactionism, Schutz's analysis of relevance and typification, and Garfinkel's treatment of reflexivity and indexicality are explicated and applied to the subject of equality. I then draw upon the moral theory of John Dewey to suggest (...) the positive role that interactionist theory and research might play in the resolution of problematic situations that are framed in terms of equality. Collectively, the complementary aspects of Blumer's, Schutz's, Garfinkel's, and Dewey's thought are used to justify and launch a program of research on a neglected yet important topic: the social construction of equality in everyday life. (shrink)

The current ethical structure for collaborative international health research stems largely from developed countries' standards of proper ethical practices. The result is that ethical committees in developing countries are required to adhere to standards that might impose practices that conflict with local culture and unintended interpretations of ethics, treatments, and research. This paper presents a case example of a joint international research project that successfully established inclusive ethical review processes as well as other groundwork and components necessary for the conduct (...) of human behavior research and research capacity building in the host country. (shrink)