Velvet revolutions, continued-. The strange toppling of Slobadan Milošević ; "The country summoned me" ; Orange Revolution in Ukraine ; The revolution that wasn't ; 1968 and 1989 ; 1989! ; Velvet Revolution in past and future -- Europe and other headaches. Ghosts in the machine ; Are there moral foundations of European power? ; The twins' new Poland ; Exchange of empires ; Why Britain is in Europe ; Europe's new story ; National anthems ; "O chink, where is (...) thy wall?" ; The perfect EU member -- Islam, terror and freedom. La Alhambra ; Islam in Europe ; The invisible front line ; Against taboos ; Respect? ; Secularism or atheism? ; No if and no buts -- USA! USA!. Mr. President ; 9/11 ; Anti-Europeanism in America ; In defence of the fence ; Zorba the Bush ; Warsaw, Missouri ; Dancing with history ; Liberalism -- Beyond the West. Beauty and the beast in Burma ; Soldiers of the hidden Imam ; East meets West ; The brotherhood against Pharaoh ; Cities of no God ; Beyond race -- Writers and facts. The brown grass of memory ; The Stasi on our minds ; Orwell in our time ; Orwell's list ; Is "British intellectual" an oxymoron? ; "Ich bin ein Berliner" ; The literature of fact -- Envoi. Elephant, feet of clay ; Decivilization ; The mice in the organ. (shrink)

In the opinion of many Western observers (e.g. Timothy Garton Ash) as well as Polish authors (e.g., Zdzisław Kransnodębski), the political thought of Solidarność was a mixture of ideas taken from different ideological traditions (right and left). What, in the aforementioned authors opinion, was a reason for pride was an object of criticism by Leszek Nowak, the eminent Polish philosopher, engaged in the movement. One of his most important charges against the political thought of this movement was its (...) intellectual provincialism and its inability to propose something new and fresh. The purpose of this paper is to present Nowak's reflection on the political thought of Solidarność in years 1980-1981. I show that he presses three general kinds of objections. According to Nowak, the political thought of the movement had formal-internal deficiencies (it provided no clear theoretical vision), cognitive deficiencies (it was incapable of offering an adequate diagnosis of the situation) and policy deficiencies (it was incapable of indicating the appropriate course of action). (shrink)

The book contains twelve essays by Stephen Holmes, Frances M. Kamm, Mária Ludassy, Steven Lukes, Gyorgy Markus, András Sajó, Gáspár Miklós Tamás, Andrew Arato, Timothy Garton Ash, Béla Greskovits, Will Kymlicka, and Aleksander Smolar. The studies explore a wide scope of subjects that belong to disciplines ranging from moral philosophy, through theory of human rights, democratic transition, constitutionalism, to political economy. The common denominator of the studies collected is their reference to the scholarly output of János Kis, in (...) honor of his sixtieth birthday. János Kis is a distinguished political philosopher who, after many years spent as a dissident under the Communist regime, emerged as an important political figure in Hungary's transition to democracy. Currently he is University Professor of Philosophy at Central European University, Budapest. (shrink)

This book, based on the prestigious Oxford Amnesty Lecture series, focuses on human rights abuses, and the ways in which they are interpreted. The collection includes contributions by Tzvetan Todorov, Michael Ignatieff, Peter Singer, Gitta Sereny, Susan Sontag, and Eva Hoffman, with commentaries on their essays by Niall Fergusson, Timothy Garton Ash, John Broome, Hermione Lee and others.

This book, based on the prestigious Oxford Amnesty Lecture series, focuses on human rights abuses, and the ways in which they are interpreted. The collection includes contributions by Tzvetan Todorov, Michael Ignatieff, Peter Singer, Gitta Sereny, Susan Sontag, and Eva Hoffman, with commentaries on their essays by Niall Fergusson, Timothy Garton Ash, John Broome, Hermione Lee and others.

In Fixing Language, Herman Cappelen defends the project of conceptual engineering from a family of objections that he calls “the Strawsonian challenges.” Those objections are all versions of this: “If I ask you a question about the F’s, and you give me an answer that’s not about the F’s but rather about the G’s, then you haven’t answered my question. You have changed the subject.” I argue that Cappelen’s response succeeds in reply to one understanding of the Strawsonian challenge—on which (...) it is motivated by ordinary judgments of samesaying and continuity of topic—but that it fails as a response to another version—on which a parallel objection is motivated by philosophical considerations and is stated in a theoretical register. (shrink)

This work presents a historically informed, systematic exposition of the Christology of the first seven Ecumenical Councils of undivided Christendom, from the First Council of Nicaea in 325 AD to the Second Council of Nicaea in 787 AD. Assuming the truth of Conciliar Christology for the sake of argument, Timothy Pawl considers whether there are good philosophical arguments that show a contradiction or incoherence in that doctrine. He presents the definitions of important terms in the debate and a helpful (...) metaphysics for understanding the incarnation. -/- In Defense of Conciliar Christology discusses three types of philosophical objections to Conciliar Christology. Firstly, it highlights the fundamental philosophical problem facing Christology: how can one thing be both God and man, when anything deserving to be called "God" must have certain attributes, and yet it seems that nothing that can aptly be called "man" can have those same attributes? It then considers the argument that if the Second Person of the Holy Trinity were immutable or atemporal, as Conciliar Christology requires, then that Person could not become anything, and thus could not become man. Finally, Pawl addresses the objection that if there is a single Christ then there is a single nature or will in Christ. However, if that conditional is true, then Conciliar Christology is false, since it affirms the antecedent of the conditional to be true, but denies the truth of the consequent. Pawl defends Conciliar Christology against these charges, arguing that all three philosophical objections fail to show Conciliar Christology inconsistent or incoherent. (shrink)

Isn't probability 1 certainty? If the probability is objective, so is the certainty: whatever has chance 1 of occurring is certain to occur. Equivalently, whatever has chance 0 of occurring is certain not to occur. If the probability is subjective, so is the certainty: if you give credence 1 to an event, you are certain that it will occur. Equivalently, if you give credence 0 to an event, you are certain that it will not occur. And so on for other (...) kinds of probability, such as evidential probability. The formal analogue of this picture is the regularity constraint: a probability distribution over sets of possibilities is regular just in case it assigns probability 0 only to the null set, and therefore probability 1 only to the set of all possibilities. (shrink)

Considerable effort has been devoted over the last fifteen years by faculty and administrators in numerous colleges and universities, and by organizations such as the Aspen Institute and Teagle Foundation, to enhancing business education through broad infusion of the perspectives and content of the liberal arts. The emphasis has been on integration of the social sciences and especially the humanities. The author—a natural scientist—recounts a seminal experience that motivated him to work more intensively on this initiative with his colleagues across (...) academic divisions at his home institution and beyond. He also argues for more engagement by natural science faculty in this process and examines the transdisciplinary re-visioning required to transform business teaching, learning, and practice into a new paradigm consistent with ecological reality. (shrink)

Dummett's account of the semantic paradoxes in terms of his theory of indefinitely extensible concepts is compared with Bürge's account in terms of indexicality. Dummett's appeal to intuitionistic logic does not block the paradoxes but Bürge's attempt to avoid the Strengthened Liar is unconvincing. It is argued that in order to avoid the Strengthened Liar and other semantic paradoxes involving nonindexical expressions (constants), one must postulate that when we reflect on the paradoxes there are slight shifts in the meaning (not (...) just reference) we ascribe to metalinguistic expressions (in particular 'say', and derivatively 'true' and 'false'). Consideration of metaphor and gradual linguistic change suggests that such semantic shifts are consistent with language-learning and communication. On this account there is no threat to classical logic, bivalence or the fundamental principles governing 'true' and 'false'. (shrink)

In this chapter, we begin with a discussion of motivation itself, and use that discussion to sketch four possible theories of distinctively moral motivation: caricature versions of familiar instrumentalist, cognitivist, sentimentalist, and personalist theories about morally worthy motivation. To test these theories, we turn to a wealth of scientific, particularly neuroscientific, evidence. Our conclusions are that (1) although the scientific evidence does not at present mandate a unique philosophical conclusion, it does present formidable obstacles to a number of popular philosophical (...) approaches, and (2) theories of morally worthy motivation that best fit the current scientific picture are ones that owe much more to Hume or Aristotle than to Kant. (shrink)

Defines the cutting-edge of scholarship on ancient Greek history employing methods from social science.

Rational thinkers respect their evidence. Properly understood, that is a platitude. But how can one respect one's evidence unless one knows what it is? So must not rational thinkers know what their evidence is?

A kind of intellectual project characteristic of Ernest Sosa is to resolve an apparently flat-out dispute by showing that it is not after all a zero-sum game. His irenic goal is to do justice to both sides and give each of them most of what it wants. In his subtle paper ‘Abilities, Concepts, and Externalism’ he applies this strategy to the dispute between internalism and externalism in the philosophy of mind. It is a pleasure to engage in discussion with a (...) philosopher of Sosa’s fair-mindedness and analytical skills. (shrink)

This book aims to give a coherent interpretation of the whole dialogue, paying particular attention to these etymologies.The book discusses the rival theories ...

The core of Tony Brueckner’s critique in ‘Knowledge, Evidence, and Skepticism according to Williamson’ is his claim in section 5 that my account of perceptual knowledge has an unacceptable consequence. My reply will concentrate on that claim and largely ignore the rest of Brueckner’s interesting discussion, for it is easy to check that the claim is essential to Brueckner’s argument against my analysis of skepticism and evidence. The alleged consequence at issue concerns a case in which Brueckner knows by seeing (...) that his cup is red. According to Brueckner, I am committed to the implausible view that ‘[his] belief of the proposition that [his] cup is red is justified in virtue of [his] belief of the proposition that [his] cup is red!’ Why does he take my account of.. (shrink)

Despite their recent development, geo-ontologies represent a complicated conundrum for the different experts involved in their design. Computer scientists use ontologies for describing the meaning of data and their semantics in order to make information resources built for humans understandable also for artificial agents. Geographers pursue conceptualizations that describe the domain of interest in a way that should be accessible, informative, and complete for their final recipients. In this context, philosophers are not required to sketch the historical background of ontology. (...) Rather, they should offer conceptual solutions for carving nature at the joints and choosing how best to categorize and classify the different entities belonging to the geographical domain in question. Accordingly, the aim of this paper is to combine assumptions and requirements coming from these different areas of research in order to show what different categories might potentially complete the current domain of geo-ontologies. (shrink)

Russian translation of Williamson T. Imagination, Stipulation and Vagueness // Philosophical Issues, 8, 1997. Translated by Alisa Veruk, Nina Zubkova with kind permission of the author.

The question 'What is the criterion of identity for directions?' might be construed as asking either 'When do lines have the same direction?' or 'When are directions identical?'. Frege's answer 'When they are parallel' fits the former question, not the latter, for it specifies a relation other than identity between lines, not directions. Jonathan Lowe thinks the latter question more fundamental, and claims that Frege's criterion can be reformulated to answer it: 'When some line with one is parallel to some (...) line with the other'. At p. 147 of Identity and Discrimination I make three points against this view: Lowe's construal does not permit a principled rejection of an intuitively unacceptable answer to the original question, On pain of circularity, Lowe's answer uses conceptual resources beyond those of Frege's, and thus is not a mere reformulation, Lowe's question seems to make the hopeless demand for something more basic than 'x = y Lowe's reply 'One-level versus two-level identity criteria' does not address or . I shall follow him in discussing only. (shrink)

Intended both as an introduction to the thought of the Italian philosopher Roberto Esposito and as a mapping of current biopolitical practice, this essay traces the contributions and the limits of recent Italian contributions to the discussion of biopolitics. The essay offers a summary of Esposito's insight into the relation of community and immunity and compares his thinking to other philosophers who take immunity as their object of study . Campbell goes on to read Esposito's privileging of bios in the (...) light of Giorgio Agamben's emphasis on zōē, while making reference as well to Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt's understanding of biopower. He concludes by arguing that the stakes of Esposito's analysis for an affirmative biopolitics concern fundamentally the nature of community and its opening to all life forms as bios. (shrink)

This paper concerns Tarski’s use of the term “model” in his 1936 paper “On the Concept of Logical Consequence.” Against several of Tarski’s recent defenders, I argue that Tarski employed a non-standard conception of models in that paper. Against Tarski’s detractors, I argue that this non-standard conception is more philosophically plausible than it may appear. Finally, I make a few comments concerning the traditionally puzzling case of Tarski’s ω-rule example.

On method, discursive logics, and epistemology -- Questions of medieval discursive practice -- From the middle ages to the (w)hole of Utopia -- Kepler, his Dream, and the analysis and pattern of thought -- Campanella and Bacon: concerning structures of mind -- The masculine birth of time -- Cyrano and the experimental discourse -- The myth of sun and moon -- The difficulty of writing -- Crusoe rights his story -- Gulliver's critique of Euclid -- Emergence, consolidation, and dominance of (...) a discourse. (shrink)

This book chapter is not currently available in ORA. Citation: Williamson, T. Can cognition be factorised into internal and external components? In: Stainton, R. Contemporary debates in cognitive science. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 291-306.