This paper uses a paradox inherent in any solution to the Hard Problem of Consciousness to argue for God’s existence. The paper assumes we are “thought machines”, reading the state of a relevant physical medium and then outputting corresponding thoughts. However, the existence of such a thought machine is impossible, since it needs an infinite number of point-representing sensors to map the physical world to conscious thought. This paper shows that these sensors cannot exist, and thus thought cannot come solely (...) from our physical world. The only possible explanation is something outside, argued to be God. (shrink)

The paper identifies the phenomenal rise of increasingly invasive forms of elective cosmetic surgery targeted primarily at women and explores its significance in the context of contemporary biotechnology. A Foucauldian analysis of the significance of the normalization of technologized women's bodies is argued for. Three "Paradoxes of Choice" affecting women who "elect" cosmetic surgery are examined. Finally, two utopian feminist political responses are discussed: a Response of Refusal and a Response of Appropriation.

Many philosophers and psychologists have attempted to elucidate the nature of mental representation by appealing to notions like isomorphism or abstract structural resemblance. The ‘structural representations’ that these theorists champion are said to count as representations by virtue of functioning as internal models of distal systems. In his 2007 book, Representation Reconsidered, William Ramsey endorses the structural conception of mental representation, but uses it to develop a novel argument against representationalism, the widespread view that cognition essentially involves the manipulation of (...) mental representations. Ramsey argues that although theories within the ‘classical’ tradition of cognitive science once posited structural representations, these theories are being superseded by newer theories, within the tradition of connectionism and cognitive neuroscience, which rarely if ever appeal to structural representations. Instead, these theories seem to be explaining cognition by invoking so-called ‘receptor representations’, which, Ramsey claims, aren’t genuine representations at all—despite being called representations, these mechanisms function more as triggers or causal relays than as genuine stand-ins for distal systems. I argue that when the notions of structural and receptor representation are properly explicated, there turns out to be no distinction between them. There only appears to be a distinction between receptor and structural representations because the latter are tacitly conflated with the ‘mental models’ ostensibly involved in offline cognitive processes such as episodic memory and mental imagery. While structural representations might count as genuine representations, they aren’t distinctively mental representations, for they can be found in all sorts of non-intentional systems such as plants. Thus to explain the kinds of offline cognitive capacities that have motivated talk of mental models, we must develop richer conceptions of mental representation than those provided by the notions of structural and receptor representation. (shrink)

This paper attempts to develop an ethico-aesthetic framework for enriching one's life and ethical outlook. Drawing primarily from Nietzsche, Foucault, and Heidegger, an argument is made that Heidegger's understanding of this issue was mistaken. The ontological crisis of modernity is not the overt influence of mathematics as a worldview over poetics and more traditionally aesthetic approaches. It is the rampant mis-and over-application of abstraction within one's view of the world while denying the material realities of life as we live it. (...) This runaway abstractive worldview leads to the misapplication of mathematics and other sciences which in turn facilitate the dehumanization of life and those within it. When we try to solve the real problems of our material human lives through overly abstractive means, then we arrive at inauthentic arguments that fuel popular disdain for philosophy as irrelevant and nothing more than the purview of the elite. The goal is a recalibration of the argument toward addressing the denial of materiality within Modernism. (shrink)

Most see having their individuality stifled as equivalent to the terrible forced conformity found within speculative fiction like George Orwell's 1984. However, the oppression of others by those in power has often been justified through ideologies of individualism. If we look to animistic traditions, could we bridge the gap between these extremes? What effect would such a reevaluation of identity have on the modern understanding of selfhood? The term ' in-dividual' suggests an irreducible unit of identity carried underneath all of (...) our titles and experiences—the real self. By linking Marilyn Strathern's elaboration of dividualism and Nurit Bird-David's relational epistemology , a clear contrast forms between the animistic sense of self and that of the West. This system of selfhood more readily encourages a life lived in Henri Bergson's sense of duration and sets up a state of dialogical discourse , as seen in Mikhail Bakhtin's work. These concepts challenge the traditional praise for individuality and exposes how individualism can be used as a tool of marginalization as seen in Michel Foucault's critique of authorship. I argue that pursuing a sense of self rooted in these concepts instead of individualism mitigates this marginalization via a more socially aware cultural environment that the traditional Western sense of self fails to create. (shrink)

This paper challenges the notion that the only way to progress to a post-capitalist society is through the wholesale destruction of the capitalist economic system. Instead, I argue that Craft —an existential state and praxis informed by the creation and maintenance of objects of utility—is uniquely situated to effectively reclaim these systems due to its its focus on materiality over abstraction and its unique position as a socially aware form of praxis. This argument focuses not on competition, but on hyper-abstraction (...) as the key driver of capitalist exploitation and its most glaring ethical flaw. Karl Marx's work on commodity fetishism is key to understanding this misguided form of abstraction which displaces commodities so far from their functional form that they feed into what Martin Heidegger termed gestell , or enframing. Postmodern attempts to destabilize capitalist influence in the fine arts, like the de-objectification of the 1960s described by Ursula Meyer, often fell victim to the same fetishistic mindset and simply increased the hold of capitalism within the arts. The enframing worldview that Heidegger warns us about is fed by hyper-abstraction, and while he directly offers up art as the remedy to this situation via poiēsis , key moments in his writings on the related notion of geschick support this new notion of Craft , rather than the fine arts, as a more capable system for the rehabilitation of modern society. (shrink)

In the study of education, as in many more travelled regions of Classical scholarship, democratic Athens is something of a special case. The cautions formulation is appropriate: in the case of education, surprisingly few studies have sought to establish quite how special Athens was, and those which have, have often raised more questions than they answered. The subject itself is partly to blame. The history of education invites comparison with the present day, while those planning the future of education rarely (...) fail to invoke the past. The place of Classical Athens in European culture has ensured a place for Athenian education in almost every debate from the relation between education and democracy to the value of education versus training, and as the original champion of causes as varied as mass education, co-education, and the national curriculum. Desirable as it is to be in demand, such treatment is not calculated to produce the most circumspect account of the subject. The study of education is further hampered by the fact that our knowledge of Athenian culture is so vibrant and diverse in some ways and so partial in others. Plato and Aristophanes present a vivid fictional picture of education in the late fifth century. If we add a few passages from Xenophon and Aristotle, a large number of vases depicting men, women, and children reading, playing the lyre, and doing athletics, and one or two archaeological finds of an educational appearance, it is tempting to take the result as a clear portrait of a society at school. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider Augustine’s attempted solution of the problem of divine foreknowledge and free will. I focus on two distinct notions of God’s relationship to time as they relate to this problem. In Confessions XI, Augustine develops an understanding of time and foreknowledge that cIearly offers a possible solution to the foreknowledge/free will problem. I then turn to On Free Will 3 .1-4, where Augustine conspicuously declines to use a solution similar to the one in the Confessions, rather (...) developing a response that demands a very different conception of foreknowledge. I subsequently argue that in On Free Will, Augustine’s argument requires that God’s foreknowledge, when considered in light of events involving human freedom, must be in a real sense dependent on the results of free choice. (shrink)

How should we determine the distribution of psychological traits—such as Theory of Mind, episodic memory, and metacognition—throughout the Animal kingdom? Researchers have long worried about the distorting effects of anthropomorphic bias on this comparative project. A purported corrective against this bias was offered as a cornerstone of comparative psychology by C. Lloyd Morgan in his famous “Canon”. Also dangerous, however, is a distinct bias that loads the deck against animal mentality: our tendency to tie the competence criteria for cognitive (...) capacities to an exaggerated sense of typical human performance. I dub this error “anthropofabulation”, since it combines anthropocentrism with confabulation about our own prowess. Anthropofabulation has long distorted the debate about animal minds, but it is a bias that has been little discussed and against which the Canon provides no protection. Luckily, there is a venerable corrective against anthropofabulation: a principle offered long ago by David Hume, which I call “Hume’s Dictum”. In this paper, I argue that Hume’s Dictum deserves a privileged place next to Morgan’s Canon in the methodology of comparative psychology, illustrating my point through a discussion of the debate over Theory of Mind in nonhuman animals. (shrink)

Conwy Lloyd Morgan (1852–1936) is widely regarded as the father of modern comparative psychology. Yet, Morgan initially had significant doubts about whether a genuine science of comparative psychology was even possible, only later becoming more optimistic about our ability to make reliable inferences about the mental capacities of non-human animals. There has been a fair amount of disagreement amongst scholars of Morgan’s work about the nature, timing, and causes of this shift in Morgan’s thinking. We argue (...) that Morgan underwent two quite different shifts of attitude towards the proper practice of comparative psychology. The first was a qualified acceptance of the Romanesian approach to comparative psychology that he had initially criticized. The second was a shift away from Romanes’ reliance on systematizing anecdotal evidence of animal intelligence towards an experimental approach, focused on studying the development of behaviour. We emphasize the role of Morgan’s evolving epistemological views in bringing about the first shift – in particular, his philosophy of science. We emphasize the role of an intriguing but overlooked figure in the history of comparative psychology in explaining the second shift, T. Mann Jones, whose correspondence with Morgan provided an important catalyst for Morgan’s experimental turn, particularly the special focus on development. We also shed light on the intended function of Morgan’s Canon, the methodological principle for which Morgan is now mostly known. The Canon can only be properly understood by seeing it in the context of Morgan’s own unique experimental vision for comparative psychology. (shrink)

The Anatomy of Economic Inequality in Wales (2011) provides quantitative evidence for the pervasive nature of class-based inequalities in education, demonstrating that an individual in social housing is approximately 10 times less likely to be a graduate compared to those in other types of accommodation. This article moves beyond the baseline figures and argues that for marginalised, mature mothers re-entering education, the emotional cost is often one that they are unable to pay, and that practitioners and policy makers need to (...) be aware of, and responsive to their situation so that retention and completion rates can be improved. The article presents case studies from two research projects, which aimed to explore and represent the educational experiences of working-class mature students in urban south Wales. The article focuses on the accounts of women who completed Access courses and gained places in post-1992 universities, focusing on their initial aspirations and later disappointments. The article examines the ways in which classed, gendered and relational positionings conflicted with their education trajectory and often contributed to their withdrawal from academia. (shrink)

Contemporary social science research is often concerned to engage with and promote particular forms of postmodern and innovative data production, such as photo-elicitation, autoethnography or free association interviews. This fascination with the latest and greatest techniques has been accompanied by an ever more fragmented range of research methods training for students where the week-by-week shift between approaches engenders a disjointed view of becoming the researcher. This individualisation of techniques has set up rival camps and critiques where the common ground of (...) being embedded in traditional ethnography is often forgotten. For researchers, who began their academic careers in the ethnographic tradition, there is an appreciation of the holistic base of enquiry from which a family of methods can be effectively employed. However, more recently qualitative researchers have been distracted by ‘the technique’; a distraction that can blind them to the occupation of ethnography. Concurrently, there have been shifts in the social and economic expectations placed on qualitative inquiry that have acted to close down spaces of ethnographic teaching and practice. In response, this article focuses on the importance of the ‘waiting field’; an opportunity to explore the times where real lives carry on before they make room for the intrusion of the data production of ‘the technique’ and remind us that much qualitative research is, in fact, an ethnographic undertaking: one that encompasses the researcher within and beyond the field. (shrink)

This dissertation addresses the problem of how to evaluate and compare the theories that inform diverse approaches to psychotherapy. It is argued that the field needs a superordinate epistemology to provide legitimacy for its theories and for the clinical work that these theories guide. Such a superordinate epistemology would occupy a higher level of analysis than the theories it is used to evaluate. ;Using a constructivist framework, it is argued that much of the epistemological confusion currently characterizing clinical psychology can (...) be traced to a traditional failure to distinguish among levels of analysis when evaluating clinical psychology theories. It is demonstrated that evaluations of such theories often conflate theory and epistemology. ;The received view of a natural science epistemology and hermeneutics provide the usual terms in which epistemology is debated. These are found inadequate to fill the necessary role of superordinate epistemology. The received view is criticized, in part, for "bracketing" the domain of meaning, and hermeneutics is criticized, in part, for "bracketing" the domain of extra-linguistic reality. For these reasons, it is shown that neither of these approaches can be considered to be superordinate to clinical theories. ;Next, some preliminary theoretical groundwork for the development of a constructivist superordinate epistemology for clinical psychology is offered. The domain of clinical psychology is defined as the conjunction of the domains of meaning and reality. A constructivist reformulation of the role of empirical research and observational knowledge is outlined. A reconceptualization of clinical theories as narratives and "expert languages" is suggested as well. ;It is argued that theoretical propositions first should be evaluated according to whether they conform to observational knowledge about the unintentional constraints on human intentionality. Then theories should be evaluated according to the coherence of their accounts of the transactions between the domains of meaning and reality. The hermeneutic circle is suggested as a methodology for choosing among different interpretations in a given therapeutic encounter. ;Finally, some directions for future work are suggested. (shrink)

This paper argues that while Heidegger showed the importance of architecture in altering people's modes of being to avoid global ecological destruction, the work of Christopher Alexander offered a far more practical orientation to deal with this problem.

This paper will annoy modern logicians who follow Bertrand Russell in taking pleasure in denigrating Aristotle for [allegedly] being ignorant of relational propositions. To be sure this paper does not clear Aristotle of the charge. On the contrary, it shows that such ignorance, which seems unforgivable in the current century, still dominated the thinking of one of the greatest modern logicians as late as 1831. Today it is difficult to accept the proposition that Aristotle was blind to the fact that, (...) for example, incommensurability is a relation and not a property: that the proposition “In every square, the diagonals are incommensurable with the sides” is relational and not categorical. This paper asks the reader to do something more difficult: to accept the proposition that as late as 1831 De Morgan was blind to the same fact. This paper shows conclusively that in 1831, De Morgan was still in the grips of the allegedly Aristotelian paradigm. (shrink)

‘Greek Ethics’, an undergraduate class taught by the British moral philosopher N. J. H. Dent, introduced this reviewer to the ethical philosophy of ancient Greece. The class had a modest purview—a sequence of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle—but it proved no less effective, in retrospect, than more synoptic classes for having taken this apparently limited and (for its students and academic level) appropriate focus. This excellent Companion will now serve any such class extremely well, allowing students a broader exposure than that (...) traditional sequence, without sacrificing the class’s circumscribed focus. The eighteen chapters encompass some of what went before, and surprisingly much of what came after, those three central philosophers—including, for instance, a discussion of Plotinus and his successors, as well as a discussion of Horace. The book will therefore be useful in many different types of class on ethical philosophy in the ancient world. This Companion will be useful not only to students, but also to at least three further groups: specialists in ancient Greek philosophy (since some contributors advance significant new positions, e.g. R. Kamtekar on Plato’s ethical psychology and D. Charles on Aristotle’s ‘ergon argument’ as already implicitly invoking ‘to kalon’); scholars working in academic subjects adjacent to ancient Greek philosophy; and contemporary moral philosophers. (shrink)

“Marlowe wrote Edward The Second in 1590. He found a suitable tragic theme in the Holinshed’s account of Edward II’s reign though it was not a promising dramatic material from the chronological point of view as the events were disjointed and uninspiring disastrous. Improper coordinates of the sources has left its mark on Marlowe’s play, nevertheless, this is his most finished and satisfactory of plays…Edward The Second can surely be regarded as Marlowe’s finest technical achievement.” (Edited, Dr. S. Sen…)[http://philpapers.org/profile/112741].

Aristotle, De Anima: Translation, Introduction, and Commentary. By Shields Christopher.

Professor Christopher Stead was Ely Professor of Divinity from 1971 until his retirement in 1980 and one of the great contributors to the Oxford Patristic Conferences for many years. In this paper I reflect on his work in Patristics, and I attempt to understand how his interests diverged from the other major contributors in the same period, and how they were formed by his philosophical milieu and the spirit of the age. As a case study to illustrate and diagnose (...) his approach, I shall focus on a debate between Stead and Rowan Williams about the significance of the word idios in Arius's theology (in the course of which I also make some suggestions of my own about the issue). (shrink)

Book Review of Christopher Alexander, 'The Nature of Order: An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe, Book Two, The Process of Creating Life'.

Christopher Johnson has put forward in this journal the view that ad hominem reasoning may be more generally reasonable than is allowed by writers such as myself, basing his view on virtue epistemology. I review his account, as well as the standard account, of ad hominem reasoning, and show how the standard account would handle the cases he sketches in defense of his own view. I then give four criticisms of his view generally: the problems of virtue conflict, vagueness, (...) conflation of speech acts, and self-defeating counsel. I then discuss four reasons why the standard account is superior: it better fits legal reality, the account of other fallacies, psychological science, and political reality. (shrink)

Christopher Bennett has argued that state support of conjugal relationships can be founded on the unique contribution such relationships make to the autonomy of their participants by providing them with various forms of recognition and support unavailable elsewhere. I argue that, in part because a long history of interaction between two people who need each other’s validation tends to produce less meaningful responses over time, long-term conjugal relationships are unlikely to provide autonomy-enhancing support to their participants. To the extent (...) that intimate relationships can provide a unique form of reciprocal support, Bennett fails to show that couples have an advantage over multiple-partner arrangements in doing so. (shrink)

This is a review of Christopher Insole's book, Kant and the Creation of Freedom.

Are *you* the same thing as your body? Did *you* begin at conception? Do you have a rational and free "nature" or "essence"? Some answer 'yes' to all and argue that this means that abortion is wrong. This argument is discussed here.

Attempts to ‘naturalize’ phenomenology challenge both traditional phenomenology and traditional approaches to cognitive science. They challenge Edmund Husserl’s rejection of naturalism and his attempt to establish phenomenology as a foundational transcendental discipline, and they challenge efforts to explain cognition through mainstream science. While appearing to be a retreat from the bold claims made for phenomenology, it is really its triumph. Naturalized phenomenology is spearheading a successful challenge to the heritage of Cartesian dualism. This converges with the reaction against Cartesian thought (...) within science itself. Descartes divided the universe between res cogitans, thinking substances, and res extensa, the mechanical world. The latter won with Newton and we have, in most of objective science since, literally lost our mind, hence our humanity. Despite Darwin, biologists remain children of Newton, and dream of a grand theory that is epistemologically complete and would allow lawful entailment of the evolution of the biosphere. This dream is no longer tenable. We now have to recognize that science and scientists are within and part of the world we are striving to comprehend, as proponents of endophysics have argued, and that physics, biology and mathematics have to be reconceived accordingly. Interpreting quantum mechanics from this perspective is shown to both illuminate conscious experience and reveal new paths for its further development. In biology we must now justify the use of the word “function”. As we shall see, we cannot prestate the ever new biological functions that arise and constitute the very phase space of evolution. Hence, we cannot mathematize the detailed becoming of the biosphere, nor write differential equations for functional variables we do not know ahead of time, nor integrate those equations, so no laws “entail” evolution. The dream of a grand theory fails. In place of entailing laws, a post-entailing law explanatory framework is proposed in which Actuals arise in evolution that constitute new boundary conditions that are enabling constraints that create new, typically unprestatable, Adjacent Possible opportunities for further evolution, in which new Actuals arise, in a persistent becoming. Evolution flows into a typically unprestatable succession of Adjacent Possibles. Given the concept of function, the concept of functional closure of an organism making a living in its world, becomes central. Implications for patterns in evolution include historical reconstruction, and statistical laws such as the distribution of extinction events, or species per genus, and the use of formal cause, not efficient cause, laws. (shrink)

The main goal of this paper is to investigate the relation between the meaning of a sentence and its truth conditions. We report on a comprehension experiment on counterfactual conditionals, based on a context in which a light is controlled by two switches. Our main finding is that the truth-conditionally equivalent clauses (i) "switch A or switch B is down" and (ii) "switch A and switch B are not both up" make different semantic contributions when embedded in a conditional antecedent. (...) Assuming compositionality, this means that (i) and (ii) differ in meaning, which implies that the meaning of a sentential clause cannot be identified with its truth conditions. We show that our data have a clear explanation in inquisitive semantics: in a conditional antecedent, (i) introduces two distinct assumptions, while (ii) introduces only one. Independently of the complications stemming from disjunctive antecedents, our results also challenge analyses of counterfactuals in terms of minimal change from the actual state of affairs: we show that such analyses cannot account for our findings, regardless of what changes are considered minimal. (shrink)

The review argues that Plato makes a valid distinction between inferior hypothetical and superior unhypothetical methods. Given the distinction, the book confuses the hypothetical for unhypothetical dialectic.

In The Varieties of Reference, Gareth Evans describes the acquisition of beliefs about one’s beliefs in the following way: ‘I get myself in a position to answer the question whether I believe that p by putting into operation whatever procedure I have for answering the question whether p.’ In this paper I argue that Evans’s remark can be used to explain first person authority if it is supplemented with the following consideration: Holding on to the content of a belief and (...) ‘prefixing’ it with ‘I believe that’ is as easy as it is to hold on to the contents of one’s thoughts when making an inference. We do not, usually, have the problem, in going, for example, from ‘p’ and ‘q’ to ‘p and q’, that one of our thought contents gets corrupted. Self-ascription of belief by way of Evans’s procedure is based on the same capacity to retain and re-deploy thought contents and therefore should enjoy a similar degree of authority. However, is Evans’s description exhaustive of all authoritative self-ascription of belief? Christopher Peacocke has suggested that in addition to Evans’s procedure there are two more relevant ways of self-ascribing belief. I argue that both methods can be subsumed under Evans’s procedure. (shrink)

The de Morgan laws characterize how negation, conjunction, and disjunction interact with each other. They are fundamental in any semantics that bases itself on the propositional calculus/Boolean algebra. This paper is primarily concerned with the second law. In English, its validity is easy to demonstrate using linguistic examples. Consider the following: (3) Why is it so cold in here? We didn’t close the door or the window. The second sentence is ambiguous. It may mean that I suppose we did (...) not close the door or did not close the window, but I am not sure which. This `I am not sure which’ reading is irrelevant to us because it has disjunction scoping over negation. But the sentence may equally well mean (and indeed this is the preferred reading) that we didn’t close the door and did not close the window. This `neither’ reading bears out de Morgan law (2). (shrink)

This paper argues that the affirmative philosophy of Gilles Deleuze opens for a generous ethic. Such ethic passes on new or different possibilities of life. The paper briefly outlines the basic ideas in Deleuze thinking that can be understood as generous. Then it suggests how paying attention is a prerequisite for practicing a generous ethics, that is, mainly being aware of what, how and why something happens. Finally, it exemplifies how—referring to Christopher Nolan’s film Inception—we may practice a generous (...) ethic. (shrink)

Corcoran’s 27 entries in the 1999 second edition of Robert Audi’s Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy [Cambridge: Cambridge UP]. -/- ancestral, axiomatic method, borderline case, categoricity, Church (Alonzo), conditional, convention T, converse (outer and inner), corresponding conditional, degenerate case, domain, De Morgan, ellipsis, laws of thought, limiting case, logical form, logical subject, material adequacy, mathematical analysis, omega, proof by recursion, recursive function theory, scheme, scope, Tarski (Alfred), tautology, universe of discourse. -/- The entire work is available online free at more (...) than one website. Paste the whole URL. http://archive.org/stream/RobertiAudi_The.Cambridge.Dictionary.of.Philosophy/Robert.Audi_The.Cambrid ge.Dictionary.of.Philosophy -/- The 2015 third edition will be available soon. Before you think of buying it read some reviews on Amazon and read reviews of its competition: For example, my review of the 2008 Oxford Companion to Philosophy, History and Philosophy of Logic,29:3,291-292. URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01445340701300429 -/- Some of the entries have already been found to be flawed. For example, Tarski’s expression ‘materially adequate’ was misinterpreted in at least one article and it was misused in another where ‘materially correct’ should have been used. The discussion provides an opportunity to bring more flaws to light. -/- Acknowledgements: Each of these entries was presented at meetings of The Buffalo Logic Dictionary Project sponsored by The Buffalo Logic Colloquium. The members of the colloquium read drafts before the meetings and were generous with corrections, objections, and suggestions. Usually one 90-minute meeting was devoted to one entry although in some cases, for example, “axiomatic method”, took more than one meeting. Moreover, about half of the entries are rewrites of similarly named entries in the 1995 first edition. Besides the help received from people in Buffalo, help from elsewhere was received by email. We gratefully acknowledge the following: José Miguel Sagüillo, John Zeis, Stewart Shapiro, Davis Plache, Joseph Ernst, Richard Hull, Concha Martinez, Laura Arcila, James Gasser, Barry Smith, Randall Dipert, Stanley Ziewacz, Gerald Rising, Leonard Jacuzzo, George Boger, William Demopolous, David Hitchcock, John Dawson, Daniel Halpern, William Lawvere, John Kearns, Ky Herreid, Nicolas Goodman, William Parry, Charles Lambros, Harvey Friedman, George Weaver, Hughes Leblanc, James Munz, Herbert Bohnert, Robert Tragesser, David Levin, Sriram Nambiar, and others. -/- . (shrink)

Christopher J. Finlay claims “that a principle of moral or legitimate authority is necessary in just war theory for evaluating properly the justifiability of violence by non-state entities when they claim to act on behalf of the victims of rights violations and political injustice.” In particular, he argues that states, unlike non-state actors, possess what he calls “Lesser Moral Authority.” This authority allegedly enables states to invoke “the War Convention,” which in turn entitles even individual soldiers on the aggressive (...) side to use military violence against soldiers defending the victim state. Non-state actors, in contrast, have to fulfill more stringent requirements. If they do not, then even their attacks on military personnel can properly be called "terrorist." In the following I will argue that Finlay’s attempt to show the importance of the legitimate authority criterion of just war theory and to demonstrate that non-state violence has to satisfy heavier burdens of justification than state violence fails for a number of reasons: his claim that defenders would wrong victims if they defended them against their will is mistaken, he overlooks the fact that non-state agents need not claim to fight on someone’s behalf, the full moral authority he mentions is redundant, the powers he ascribes to “Lesser Moral Authority” are, depending on interpretation, either morally irrelevant or nonexistent, and his claim that granting states “Lesser Moral Authority” is beneficial from a “moral pragmatic” point of view while granting the same authority to non-state actors is not, is unwarranted. (shrink)

My paper aims to account for the possibility of disagreements concerning what we know; for clearly, people disagree about what they know. More precisely, my goal is to explain how a contextualist theory of knowledge attributions can explain the existence of disagreement among speakers. My working hypothesis is that genuine epistemic disagreement is possible only under the assumption that the meaning of the word “knowledge” is governed by contexts that are objective, in the sense that that the content of the (...) word “knowledge” is fixed for all speakers sharing a common conversational goal. The paper is divided into two sections. In the first section, I explain why current versions of epistemic contextualism cannot account for epistemic disagreement. In the second section, following Christopher Gauker’s theory of linguistic communication, I offer my own contextualist solution to the problem of epistemic disagreement. (shrink)

Over the last two decades, Axel Honneth has written extensively on the notion of social pathology, presenting it as a distinctive critical resource of Frankfurt School Critical Theory, in which tradition he places himself, and as an alternative to the mainstream liberal approaches in political philosophy. In this paper, I review the developments of Honneth's writing on this notion and offer an immanent critique, with a particular focus on his recent major work "Freedom's Right". Tracing the use of, and problems (...) internal to, Honneth's concept of social pathology serves to demonstrate his increasing reformism. It also serves to catalogue some of the dead ends that Critical Theory should avoid in taking up the idea of social pathology. The implication is not that this idea should be dropped. Rather, the paper is undertaking the necessary step of clearing the ground for further progress to take place on the question of what role the idea of social pathology can and should play in Critical Theory. The paper is critical in nature (and relentlessly so), but ultimately serves a constructive purpose. (shrink)

Symposium on Christopher Bennet's The Apology Ritual. A Philosophical Theory of Punishment [Cambridge University Press, 2008].

Educated people everywhere now acknowledge that ecological destruction is threatening the future of civilization. While philosophers have concerned themselves with environmental problems, they appear to offer little to deal with this crisis. Despite this, I will argue that philosophy, and ethics, are absolutely crucial to overcoming this crisis. Philosophy has to recover its grand ambitions to achieve a comprehensive understanding of nature and the place of humanity within it, and ethics needs to be centrally concerned with the virtues required to (...) create and then sustain economic, social and political formations that augment the life of ecological communities. Achieving these ends will involve reviving speculative philosophy and its quest to forge a synthesis of natural philosophy, history and art to enable humanity to redefine its place in the world, both collectively and as individuals, in very practical ways. Such a synthesis is required to oppose the corrosion of democracy and to revive the virtues of citizenship and the sense of responsibility citizenship entails, but more fundamentally and intimately related to such citizenship, to oppose managerialism and the proletarianization of the workforce and to revive workmanship and professionalism as the foundations of not only economic life, but social and political life. (shrink)

Sullivan surveys the philosophical problem-areas surrounding multiculturalism as an ideology of group-identity. While endorsing the claims of underrepresented minorities for recognition, the article sides with traditionalists in prioritizing the autonomy of the self-fashioning individual over ethnic or cultural affiliations. The multicultural challenge to Western logocentrism, its assertion of the implicit power structures embedded in truth claims, and the excesses of postmodern relativism are all subjected to measured criticism. Finally, the essay examines Habermas' role in postwar Germany's embrace of multiculturalism as (...) a national platform of reinvention, and as a means to negate the trauma of the monocultural chauvinism of the Nazi era. However, Sullivan argues, it has taken cosmopolitanism too far. While post-national strategies such as Habermas' Verfassungspatriotismus are well-intentioned, they are ultimately too sterile, universalist and abstract, to satisfy a deep human need for belonging, rooted in a common cultural heritage. -/- All rights reserved. For permission to reprint please contact Rowman & Littlefield. (shrink)

Principles help comparative psychologists select from among multiple hypotheses that account for the data. Anthropomorphic principles select hypotheses that have the most human–animal similarities while anthropectic principles select hypotheses that have the most human–animal differences. I argue that there is no way for the comparative psychologist on their own to justify their selection of one principle over the other. However, the comparative psychologist can justify their selection of one principle over the other in virtue of being members of comparative psychology (...) as a community. As it turns out, though, this justifies both competing principles: the community benefits most from competition between the two principles so comparative psychologists are justified in implementing the principles by which they can best contribute to the competition. Thus, I argue that common arguments to unify principle implementation in comparative psychology are defeated by the conservative arguments to preserve and foster competition. (shrink)

This paper compares several models of formalization. It articulates criteria of correct formalization and identifies their problems. All of the discussed criteria are so called “semantic” criteria, which refer to the interpretation of logical formulas. However, as will be shown, different versions of an implicitly applied or explicitly stated criterion of correctness depend on different understandings of “interpretation” in this context.

A collection of papers presented at the First International Summer Institute in Cognitive Science, University at Buffalo, July 1994, including the following papers: -/- ** Topological Foundations of Cognitive Science, Barry Smith -/- ** The Bounds of Axiomatisation, Graham White -/- ** Rethinking Boundaries, Wojciech Zelaniec -/- ** Sheaf Mereology and Space Cognition, Jean Petitot -/- ** A Mereotopological Definition of 'Point', Carola Eschenbach -/- ** Discreteness, Finiteness, and the Structure of Topological Spaces, Christopher Habel -/- ** Mass Reference (...) and the Geometry of Solids, Almerindo E. Ojeda -/- ** Defining a 'Doughnut' Made Difficult, N .M. Gotts -/- ** A Theory of Spatial Regions with Indeterminate Boundaries, A.G. Cohn and N.M. Gotts -/- ** Mereotopological Construction of Time from Events, Fabio Pianesi and Achille C. Varzi -/- ** Computational Mereology: A Study of Part-of Relations for Multi-media Indexing, Wlodek Zadrozny and Michelle Kim. (shrink)