Plotinus was much exercised by Plato's doctrines of the soul. In this treatise, at chapter 1 line 27, he talks of "the divine Plato, who has said in many places in his works many noble things about the soul and its arrival here, so that we can hope for some clarity from him. So what does the philosopher say? It is clear that he does not always speak with sufficient consistency for us to make out his intentions with any ease." (...) The issue in this treatise is one that has puzzled students of Plato from ancient to modern times—and is indeed a popular topic for undergraduate essays even today: Why should the philosopher, who has ascended through a long and painful process of dialectic to "assimilation to the divine," ever descend back into the body? Plotinus himself is said by Porphyry to have attained such a state of other-worldly transcendence on at least four occasions during his lifetime, so this was a very real and personal issue for him. In this treatise we see him grappling with it. (shrink)

We examine the criticisms and subsequent changes that arise in the course of peer review. Fifty-two scholars who had recently published in Administrative Science Quarterly were surveyed regarding their peer review experience and how their article changed from initial journal submission to eventual publication. Papers that challenged theoretical perspectives faced distinctively high levels of criticism and change, particularly with attention to methodology, while those that offered a new perspective or that extended or combined established perspectives were less criticized and changed. (...) The number of challenge-oriented publications was small as well, suggesting that either few such submissions survive the review process or few are submitted in the first place. Overall, peer review appears open to expansion of the variety of theoretical argument but does little to aid in the winnowing out of established perspectives. (shrink)

Japan is a country largely lacking supplies of many essential natural resources including petroleum, coal, and iron ore. As her industrial base and economy expanded during the 1920s and 1930s, Japan's dependence on imports of these resources became increasingly evident. The onset of the Depression in the 1930s further threatened Japan's lifeline, and, in an effort to become economically independent and self-sufficient in natural resources , Japan's militaristic government pursued a policy of territorial expansion. Beginning in 1937, Japan's military forces (...) swept out of Manchuria into China and then into Southeast Asia in search of strategic materials such as petroleum, coal, copper, zinc, and rubber. To achieve independence in petroleum, the Japanese developed a dual approach: they would acquire natural petroleum sources in Southeast Asia and at the same time establish a synthetic fuel industry for the conversion of coal to oil. Actually, the Japanese had begun research on synthetic fuel in the 1920s, only a few years after other countries, such as Germany and Britain, that lacked sources of natural petroleum. They did excellent laboratory research on the coal hydrogenation and Fischer-Tropsch conversion processes, but in their haste to construct large synthetic fuel plants they bypassed the intermediated pilot-plant stage and failed to make a successful transition from small- to large-scale production. Unable to synthesize liquid fuels from coal, they instead derived significant quantities from the technologically simpler coal carbonization and shale oil distillation processes. In the last year of World War II, the Japanese attempted to revive their synthetic fuel industry and entered into an agreement with IG Farben for technical assistance. Germany's defeat ended this final effort. The Japanese synthetic fuel industry presents a good case study of technological failure. It shows that high-quality basic scientific research does not necessarily translate into large-scale technological success. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that knowledge is characteristically safe true belief. We argue that an adequate approach to epistemic luck must not be indexed to methods of belief formation, but rather to explanations for belief. This shift is problematic for several prominent approaches to the theory of knowledge, including virtue reliabilism and proper functionalism (as normally conceived). The view that knowledge is characteristically safe true belief is better able to accommodate the shift in question.

When we think of getting older, we know we will slowly lose more and more of our memory—and with it, our sense of where we belong and how we connect to others. We might relax a little if we considered the improvements in computer data storage, which may lead us into a future when the limits of our memory become less constricting. In this book, John Scanlan explores the nature of memory and how we have come to live both with (...) and within it, as well as what might come from memory becoming a process as simple as retrieving and reading data. Probing the ways philosophers look at memory, Scanlan reveals that some argue that being human means having the ability to remember, to see oneself as a being in time, with a past and future. At the same time, he shows, our memories can undo our present sense of time and place by presenting us with our past lives. And in a digital age, we are immersed in a vast archive of data that not only colors our everyday experiences, but also supplies us with information on anything we might otherwise have forgotten—breaking down the distinction between the memories of the individual and the collective. Drawing on history, philosophy, and technology, _Memory_ offers an engaging investigation of how we comprehend recollection and how memory, as a phenomenon, continually remakes everyday life. (shrink)

Plotinus can be regarded as the greatest Greek philosopher of late Antiquity, and as the father of Neoplatonism. His Enneads are now recognised as seminal works in the development of Western thought. This book is the only detailed scholarly commentary available on this part of Plotinus' work, and should be invaluable to all scholars interested in ancient philosophy and early Christian theology. All Greek in the commentary is translated.

Stoicism is now widely recognised as one of the most important philosophical schools of ancient Greece and Rome. But how did it influence Western thought after Greek and Roman antiquity? The question is a difficult one to answer because the most important Stoic texts have been lost since the end of the classical period, though not before early Christian thinkers had borrowed their ideas and applied them to discussions ranging from dialectic to moral theology. Later philosophers became familiar with Stoic (...) teachings only indirectly, often without knowing that an idea came from the Stoics. The contributors recruited for this volume, first published in 2004, include some of the leading international scholars of Stoicism as well as experts in later periods of philosophy. They trace the impact of Stoicism and Stoic ideas from late antiquity through the medieval and modern periods. (shrink)

Ennead VI.4-5, originally written as a single treatise, contains Plotinus' most general and sustained exposition of the relationship between the intelligible and the sensible realms, addressing and coalescing two central issues in Platonism: the nature of the soul-body relationship and the nature of participation. Its main question is, How can soul animate bodies without sharing their extension? The treatise seems to have had considerable impact: it is much reflected in Porphyry's important work, Sententiae, and the doctrine of reception according to (...) the capacity of the recipient, for which this treatise is the main source, resonated in medieval thinkers. (shrink)

Theoria — a Swedish journal for philosophy was founded in 1935, at a time when the conditions for the logical empiricists on the European continent were deteriorating as a result of the rise of fascism and Nazism. In a letter, dated August 11 1936, to the editor-in-chief of Theoria, Åke Petzäll, the Finnish philosopher Eino Kaila claimed that it was only a matter of time until the journal Erkenntnis would be closed down and suggested that Theoria could step in as (...) a replacement. (shrink)

The term ‘artificial intelligence’ has arguably come to function in political discourse as, what Laclau called, an ‘empty signifier’. This article traces the shifting political discourse on AI within three key institutions of global governance–OHCHR, WHO, and UNESCO–and, in so doing, highlights the role of ‘crisis’ moments in justifying a series of pivotal re-articulations. Most important has been the attachment of AI to the narrative around digital automation in human healthcare. Greatly enabled by the societal context of the pandemic, all (...) three institutions have moved from being critical of the unequal power relations in the economy of AI to, today, reframing themselves primarily as facilitators tasked with helping to ensure the application of AI technologies. The analysis identifies a shift in which human health and healthcare is framed as in a ‘crisis’ to which AI technology is presented as the remedy. The article argues the need to trace these discursive shifts as a means by which to understand, monitor, and where necessary also hold to account these changes in the governance of AI in society. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that there are significant ethical problems with nonmedical sex selection, and that prohibitive legislation is justified. The central argument put forward is that nonmedical sex selection is a sexist practice which promotes socially restrictive conceptions of sex, gender and family. Several steps are taken to justify this position: background information on technology and legislation is provided, the neoliberal position that is supportive of nonmedical sex selection is described, and preliminary reasons for rejecting (...) this approach are given. A detailed description of how a harm/benefit based analysis contributes to the argument against nonmedical sex selection, and how it successfully counters most criticism, is provided. The paper concludes by suggesting that virtue ethics further strengthens the moral argument against nonmedical sex selection. (shrink)

This book addresses one of the most controversial topics in restorative justice: its potential for resolving conflicts within families. It focuses on feminist and indigenous concerns in family violence that may warrant special caution in applying restorative justice. At the same time, it looks for ways of designing a place for restorative interventions that respond to these concerns.

In a 2018 referendum, the Irish electorate voted in favour of repealing Ireland's quasi-total legal ban on abortion. The referendum campaign saw important public discussions regarding gender roles in twenty-first century Ireland. While the constitutional ban on abortion was condemned by abortion rights advocates for marginalising women's agency, the legislation which replaced it has not escaped criticism either. Therefore, questions surrounding the conceptualisation of women's agency in the 2018 referendum are still relevant today. Adopting a multimodal critical discourse analysis approach, (...) this paper analyses signage from the weeks before the vote to examine the discursive construction of women's agency in the linguistic landscape of the referendum campaign. I argue that many mainstream campaign organisations – including those arguing for liberalisation of abortion laws – were complicit in the discursive diminishment of women's agency, suggesting that the campaign did not necessarily challenge prevailing ideologies of gender and agency. (shrink)

Summary This essay examines the first 30 years of the US Bureau of Mines' synthetic fuel programme during which time Arno C. Fieldner (1881–1966), the Bureau's chief chemist in Washington, DC, established the direction of its fuel research. Fieldner was a world-renowned authority on coal combustion, whose technological style of coal research emphasized the potential applications of the research. He was a keen observer of international developments in coal research and made their study an essential and important part of the (...) Bureau's synthetic liquid fuel programme. International developments, particularly Germany's coal-to-oil or synthetic liquid fuel industry, continued to interest the Bureau during the 1930s–1940s, and, after the Second World War, seven German synthetic fuel scientists came to the USA under Project Paperclip to assist in the construction and operation of the Bureau's coal hydrogenation (liquefaction) and Fischer-Tropsch demonstration plants in Louisiana, Missouri. The two plants were the centrepiece of the Bureau's $87·6 million post-war synthetic fuel programme. During their period of operation from 1949 to 1953 the plants successfully converted American coals to synthetic fuel, and although they were much more efficient than the older German plants, the economics of the conversion became a matter of considerable debate. The Bureau accomplished its objective, however. It had demonstrated the technological feasibility of converting domestic coals to petroleum-like liquids, but the newly elected congress, showing little interest in continuing the programme, ended its financial support and permanently shut down the Missouri operation in 1953. (shrink)

Strange inversions occur when things work in ways that turn received wisdom upside down. Hume offered a strangely inverted story about causation, and Darwin, about apparent design. Dennett suggests that a strange inversion also occurs when we project our own reactive complexes outward, painting our world with elusive properties like cuteness, sweetness, blueness, sexiness, funniness, and more. Such properties strike us as experiential causes, but they are really effects—a kind of shorthand for whole sets of reactive dispositions rooted (...) in the nuts and bolts of human information processing. Understanding the nature and origins of that strange inversion, Dennett believes, is thus key to understanding the nature and origins of human experience itself. This paper examines this claim, paying special attention to recent formulations that link that strange inversion to the emerging vision of the brain as a Bayesian estimator, constantly seeking to predict the unfolding sensory barrage. (shrink)