This chapter contains sections titled: The Ghost in the Machine Objection The Private Language Argument Ockham's Razor and Identity Argument from Neural Dependence Arguments from Personal Identity Argument from Evolution.

Dualism argues that the mind is more than just the brain. It holds that there exists two very different realms, one mental and the other physical. Both are fundamental and one cannot be reduced to the other - there are minds and there is a physical world. This book examines and defends the most famous dualist account of the mind, the cartesian, which attributes the immaterial contents of the mind to an immaterial self. John Foster's new book exposes (...) the inadequacies of the dominant materialist and reductionist accounts of the mind. In doing so he is in radical conflict with the current philosophical establishment. Ambitious and controversial, _The Immaterial Self_ is the most powerful and effective defence of Cartesian dualism since Descartes' own. (shrink)

Cities have consistently served as fertile grounds for the emergence and growth of radical ideas, political transformations, and social movements, with urban landscapes nurturing visionary concepts, idealism, and revolutionary ideologies. This research delves into the captivating world of radical cities, exploring the power of image and visual narratives to communicate and comprehend urban activism within diverse contexts. By analyzing various case studies and student works, we aim to create, study, and reimagine vivid portrayals of urban activism, radical (...) urbanism, and future socio-spatial developments. The focus lies on developing innovative visual modalities and collaborative critical pedagogical approaches that engage with the complexities of radical cities across North America, Latin America, Asia, Europe, and beyond. In this study, we explore the potential of image and visual narratives to decode and understand pivotal societal transitions in radical cities. By employing imaginative and critical pedagogy, we aspire to foster a more profound comprehension of urban activism and its impact on shaping the cities of the future. (shrink)

Echoing other articles in this special issue, this article re-evaluates a collection of feminist works that fell out of fashion as a consequence of academic feminism embracing poststructuralist and postmodernist trends. In line with fellow contributors, the article critically reflects upon the unsympathetic reading of feminisms considered to be essentialising and universalistic, in order to re-evaluate, in my case, ecofeminism. As an introduction, I reflect on my own perhaps unfair rejection of ecofeminism as a doctoral researcher and early career (...) academic who, in critiquing 1990s international environmental governance, sought to problematise the essentialist premise on which it appeared to be based. The article thereafter challenges this well-rehearsed critique by carefully revisiting a sample of ecofeminist work produced between the late 1970s and the early 1990s. In an effort to avoid wholesale abandonment of the wealth of feminist theory often labelled as second wave, or the rendering of feminisms of the past as redundant as feminist theory changes over time, this article re-reads the work of ecofeminists, such as Starhawk, Susan Griffin and Vandana Shiva, to demonstrate their contemporary relevance. In so doing, the article argues that a contemporary re-reading of ecofeminism offers insights allowing for a radical rethinking of contemporary environmental governance. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, see the following excerpt: -/- Though his work has until now gone untranslated and been largely ignored in English scholarship, the historian of philosophy François Châtelet played a major role in the development of French thought that is on par with that of his more well-known contemporaries. Born in 1925, Châtelet was founding member of the University of Vincennes, Paris VIII’s experimental department of philosophy alongside Michel Foucault in the aftermath of the 1968 (...) student protests. In 1983, he would establish the Collège Internationale de Philosophie in Paris along with other prominent philosophers, an institution that in Alessandra Campana’s words, is at “the forefront of militant and engaged critical thinking,” in which it has sought to “relocate philosophy at the intersection of science, politics, psychoanalysis, art and literature, jurisprudence, and economy.” Châtelet’s association with radical educational institutions and the interdisciplinarity of research undertaken at the latter both point to what can be understood to be the essence of his philosophical project: that the history of philosophy is also a politics of philosophy. La Grèce Classique, La Raison, L’État, which was first published in 1978 and appears here in translation for the first time under the title Classical Greece, Reason, and the State, is exemplary in this regard, providing a powerful critique of the history of philosophy and its purported Greek origins. As Deleuze argues, Châtelet reveals that “Athens was not the advent of an eternal reason, but the singular event of a provisional rationalisation. In this view, the essence of classical philosophy cannot be extended to the contemporary era—neither in its original form, or in a revised form that has been modified and updated across the passage of time. Therefore, by politicising philosophy and its history, Châtelet’s work also shows philosophy to be indicative of a particular cultural moment, rather than as an the state, philosophy, and the tyranny of the logos · isolated discipline cut off from the influences of material life. He establishes a form of ‘rational empiricism’ for conducting a history of political philosophy that rejects universality for potentiality. Said otherwise, his work is indicative of what might be called the poststructuralist critique of historical narrative surrounding the canon of western thought, a critique that Michael Hardt rightfully argues “has problematised the foundations of philosophical and political thought.” However, Châtelet has made important contributions to the poststructuralist approach to theorising the western tradition that remain novel and insightful to a contemporary audience, rather than simply being one of many to problematise philosophy’s purported foundations. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 25.2 (2001) 364-367 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Hamlet in Purgatory Hamlet in Purgatory, by Stephen Greenblatt; xii & 322 pp. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001, $29.95. Hamlet in Purgatory is both more and less than literary criticism of Shakespeare's most haunting and most critically belabored play. Greenblatt has captured an evolving culture of belief which informs the play and goes far beyond source studies (...) or the history of ideas. He assays to show how the Medieval doctrine of Purgatory and the rejection of it by Protestant Reformers shaped the structure of Hamlet and the world of Hamlet's spiritual agony.Central to the argument is the notion that the rejection of Purgatory, and ritual practices associated with the doctrine, threatened to disrupt community and sever the relations between the living and the dead. Thus, the senior Hamlet's plea to "Remember me" takes precedence over his injunction to revenge; traditional preoccupations of Hamlet criticism become secondary to the concern for spiritual community which Reformation doctrine threatened. The exegesis is scholarly and the prose is engaging, yet the book suffers from the new historicist tendency to become absorbed more with context than with criticism and to assume too readily the relevance of the context to the criticism. Put another way, Greenblatt, like other new historicists, is not always rigorous in his inferences.Greenblatt warns that his book "requires a certain hermeneutical patience, a willingness to suspend direct literary analysis, in order to examine more thoroughly what has been treated as mere background for the canonical work of art" (p. 5). Although the book culminates in a description of the migration of discarded religious ritual into the theater, and a thoughtful commentary on Hamlet, Greenblatt cautions that "... for the book to work properly, the reader should understand literary analysis, and specifically the analysis of Hamlet, to be suspended in another sense as well, that is, distributed in tiny, almost invisible particles throughout my account" (p. 5). Amen. The caveats are essential for anyone who might expect an "interpretation" of Hamlet. Rather, Greenblatt has evoked the conflict of enduring beliefs and Reformist critiques which animated Shakespeare's imagination and Hamlet's suffering.Hermeneutical patience certainly is demanded of the reader, because more than half of the book presents commentaries on the doctrine of Purgatory from the late Middle Ages to the early seventeenth century. Greenblatt begins with Simon Fish's 1529 "Supplication for the Beggars," (p. 15) an anti-purgatorial (and anti-clerical) tract addressed to Henry VIII. Fish argued that the doctrine of Purgatory is at the heart of ecclesiastical corruption and is a danger to the state, because the fear that the doctrine can generate enables the clergy to extort enormous wealth in the form of "suffrages," donations for trentals, anniversary Masses, and other perpetual penitential memorials on behalf of the dead. Fish's argument is double: its theological burden is that Purgatory is a non-scriptural superstition; its rhetoric is that it is an abuse of the [End Page 364] poor and a danger to the economic solvency of the kingdom. Fish invokes both doctrinal error and political danger; this is thus an excellent tract to begin the elucidation of the complexity of Reformist objections to Purgatory in sixteenth-century England. Greenblatt adds that other Reformers saw Purgatory as a poetic creation, a fable, and therefore a vain imagining. John Donne's "Devotions upon Emergent Occasions" is cited to show that post-Catholic divines believed that purgation must be completed in this life.According to Greenblatt, an unintended consequence for the laity of the rejection of Purgatory is the creation of a radical divide between the living and the dead. If we pray for the dead, they are not as absent from us as if they had passed on to the timeless worlds of Heaven or Hell. Even if Purgatory is expensive or fabulous, its loss destroys a community with the dead that involved a reciprocal and continuing relationship, whereby the living can aid the dead towards Heaven and saved souls can eventually become intercessors in Heaven for the living... (shrink)

This book is an examination of how the law understands human identity and the whole notion of 'human being'. On these two notions the law, usually unconsciously, builds the superstructure of 'human rights'. It explores how the law understands the concept of a human being, and hence a person who is entitled to human rights. This involves a discussion of the legal treatment of those of so-called "marginal personhood" (e.g. high functioning non-human animals; humans of limited intellectual capacity, and fetuses). (...) It also considers how we understand our identity as people, and hence how we fall into different legal categories: such as gender, religion and so on. The law makes a number of huge assumptions about some fundamental issues of human identity and authenticity - for instance that we can talk meaningfully about the entity that we call 'our self'. Until now it has rarely, if ever, identified those assumptions, let alone interrogated them. This failure has led to the law being philosophically dubious and sometimes demonstrably unfit for purpose. Its failure is increasingly hard to cover up. What should happen legally, for instance, when a disease such as dementia eliminates or radically transforms all the characteristics that most people regard as foundational to the 'self'? This book seeks to plug these gaps in the literature. (shrink)

This book is about the respective roles of intuition and reasoning in ethics. It responds to a number of well-known philosophers and psychologists, and proposes a new perspective – radical in its moderation. It examines in depth the work of the philosopher Joshua Greene and the psychologist Jonathan Haidt. With the so-called empirical turn in ethics, much work has been done to try to isolate the role of reason and intuition in forming our moral judgements, with Haidt and Greene (...) leading the research programmes and attracting much of the professional and public attention, and many others following. The current view – shared by both camps – is that intuition is largely the driver of our moral judgements – a view summed up in Haidt’s slogan ‘intuition first, strategic reasoning second’. Haidt believes we have to live with this and accept it. Greene does not: he contends that our intuitions, while suitable for the environments in which we evolved, are worthless in the modern, global, technological age, and to avoid ethical disaster we must learn to adopt reason as the arbiter of moral truth. This book steers a middle course between these two positions and is therefore of great interest to philosophers and psychologists alike. (shrink)

The article argues in favour of a pragmatist enactive interpretation of the emergence of the symbolic and contentful mind from a basic form of social communicative interaction in which basic cognitive capacities are involved. Through a critical overview of Radical Enactivists (RECers)’ view about language, the article focuses on Mead’s pragmatist behavioural theory of meaning that refers to the gestural conversation as the origin of the evolution of linguistic conversation. The article develops as follows. After exposing the main (...) elements of REC’s theory of cognition and language that involve the construction of a theory of natural signs (teleosemiotics) and basic directionality (Ur-intentionality), some critical points of Hutto and Myin’s proposal will be highlighted. To foster a continuist perspective of language, the behavioural theory of meaning and language that Mead develops from the notion of gesture will be analysed. His theory is akin to REC and could augment the bare bones of REC’s sketched perspective, helping to include Ur-intentionality in a broader non-dualistic phylogenetic and ontogenetic theory of symbolic language from gestural communication, thus helping to overcome the distinction between a content-less intentionality and a content-involving intentionality, i.e., a semantic propositional intentionality. Furthermore, a recent revival of Mead’s theory testifies to its up-to-date relevance to explain the innate social dimension of human and non-human animals, and the human communicative capacity through the conditioning of bio-social canons and structures. (shrink)

Purpose: Josef Mitterer's essays are considered to be important philosophical advancements of radical constructivism. The main purposes of this paper are, on the one hand, to structure the RC landscape and, on the other hand, to investigate the relations of Mitterer's work to radical constructivism in particular and to philosophy in general. Findings: In this short essay focusing on Mitterer's Das Jenseits der Philosophie, I would like to stress two major points. First, Mitterer's book should be considered as (...) one of several contemporary variants of a radical critique of the semantic turn in the philosophy of science that has taken place since the mid-thirties with the works of Rudolf Carnap, Carl G. Hempel, Hilary Putnam, Alfred Tarski and others. Second, it is by no means clear how to determine the relevance of the new semantic critique for the present and future cognitive status of radical constructivism. The degree of relevance depends crucially on the use of the term "radical constructivism." If radical constructivism, as I will argue, is seen as an umbrella term for a group of empirical research programs, then, by sheer necessity, the relevance can be marginal only. If, however, radical constructivism is viewed as a special form of philosophy of language and/or as a new epistemology, then the importance of Josef Mitterer's approach must be judged within the context of available functional alternatives. Implications: An immediate consequence of this article lies in a renewed emphasis on advancing an empirical research agenda for radical constructivism and in an effective downsizing of radical constructivism as a philosophical perspective. (shrink)

Problem: Mitterer's critique of the central argumentations of radical constructivists has been mostly neglected until today. The paper presents and evaluates his criticism and, in the second part, outlines a format of constructivism that tries to draw appropriate consequences. Solution: In his critique Mitterer explains why the radical constructivism represented above all by Maturana, Varela, von Glasersfeld or Roth still remains in a dualistic format. In his view Neurobiology is used in their writings as the indisputable basis (...) for deriving far-reaching epistemological consequences. Therefore constructivism evades self-application. To overcome this serious critique a different approach to constructivist thinking is sketched that operates without using any biological or psychological theories, tries to avoid dualism, and elaborates Mitterer's basic argument that the description of an object and the object under description are the same. Benefits: The paper shows what constructivism can learn from a serious critique and how it can be rewritten in a non-dualistic way. (shrink)

The problem of Cartesian dualism is viewed as falling under a more general problem: the problem of human unity. This problem is both ancient and modern: whether a human being is a substantial unity of soul and body or merely a contingent one. I compare Aristotle's and Descartes's response to this problem. My thesis is that an important factor in generating Cartesian dualism is the rejection implicit in Descartes's metaphysical codification of the new mathematical science of nature, namely, the (...) rejection of Aristotle's radical teleological concept of nature. It is argued that the modern intractable problem of the relation of mind to body turns historically and metaphysically on the Cartesian substitution of the mathematically refined concept of body--three-dimensional extension--for the once-influential Aristotelian teleological concept of corporeal substance. (shrink)

This paper takes a philosophical look at how the views of Gilbert Ryle and Kwasi Wiredu can be used to resolving the mind-body problem located in Rene Descartes’ philosophy. The common sense account of the mind-body theory was first systematically carried out by Descartes. To him, mind and body do not only exist, they also interact. Through his notion of clear and distinct ideas, Descartes infers the existence of the mind as a thinking substance. Unlike the mind, whose character is (...) thought, the body for Descartes is an extended thing. He insists that the point of interaction is the pineal grand, which God has worked out from the point of creation. Today, the view that body and mind interact has generated some controversies. Ryle argues that Descartes has made a category mistake by interpreting mind as a distinct substance. For Wiredu, in Akan thought system, mind does not go to constitute a person. Thus Ryle and Wiredu tend toward materialism when they argue that the source of consciousness is the brain, rather than the mind. This paper explores the claims of these philosophers: Descartes, Ryle and Wiredu. I stress that Ryle and Wiredu’s views do not resolve the Cartesian problem. The paper concludes that unless the problem of the source of consciousness is tackled, the mind-body problem cannot be adequately resolved. (shrink)

Environmental activism is crucial in increasing awareness of environmental degradation and preventing actions that harm the environment. A radical environmentalist movement has emerged within the community of activists. They advocate using illegal measures to attain their goals. This paper discusses these radical environmentalist groups’ motivations, their actions and their consequences. Activities that many consider unacceptable, such as art vandalism and road blockades, may result in adverse outcomes and diminish public support for environmental endeavors. We propose an (...) alternative solidarity approach whereby activists focus their efforts on disseminating information to the general public on climate change and other environmental issues, advocating for the adoption of eco-surplus culture, and fostering cooperation among governments, businesses, and individuals to develop effective solutions. (shrink)

Context: Although Josef Mitterer’s non-dualism has received increasing attention in recent years, it is still underrated by philosophers. It is an ambitious and unusual treatment of epistemological problems concerning truth and reality. Problem: Is non-dualism tenable? Is conceptual relativism tenable? Method: On the basis of a pragmatic semantics, Mitterer’s arguments against conceptual relativism are shown to be unjustified. Results: Non-dualism lacks a clear conception of semantics. Given the similarities to Robert Brandom’s account of truth, as well as Mitterer’s preoccupation with (...) Wittgenstein, pragmatic semantics suggests itself for filling this gap. But then conceptual relativism seems to be the more attractive position. Implications: This paper is a critical survey of non-dualism and a defense of conceptual relativism, but it might also be a worthwhile reading for those interested in semantic issues such as the difference between Ludwig Wittgenstein’s and Robert Brandom’s approaches to “meaning as use.” Constructivist content: Non-dualism is sometimes regarded as an alternative to realistic and constructivist positions in epistemology. This paper, however, defends conceptual relativism, which is a kind of realism that can also be seen as a kind of (non-radical) constructivism. (shrink)

In 1997 the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain published a report entitledFrom Compliance to Concordance: Achieving Shared Goals in Medicine Taking. This article applies this new model—of doctors and patients working together towards a shared goal—to the prescribing of hormonal forms of contraception. It begins by critically evaluating the current dominant model of contraceptive prescribing. It claims that this model tends to stereotype all women, but particularly young, poor and black women, as unreliable and ill-informed contraceptors who need (...) to be advised and even controlled by much more knowledgeable and socially responsible family planning experts. The article then suggests how a much more egalitarian model of contraceptive prescribing might be put into practice, whilst acknowledging the existence of many serious obstacles to such a radical shift within family planning services. In conclusion, the article suggests that until contraceptive prescribers begin to take women’s experiences of, and concerns about, hormonal contraceptives seriously they will fail to develop a potentially much more effective and liberating model of family planning. (shrink)

The Imperial Web and the War on Terrorism: U.S. Military Bases and Empire. The attacks of September 11,2001 and the subsequent global War onTerrorism directed by the United States have made it clear that the world is now dominated by an American Empire, which extends far beyond the British Empire of old. The extent of U.S. imperial ambitions is perhaps best understoood in terms of the history of its military bases, which are now located in around 60 countries. These (...) bases are not to be understood as a purely military phenomenon but as part of a larger system of economic, political and military power rooted in the hegemonic position of U.S. capitalism in the world economy as a whole. [Article adapted from the March 2002 issue of Monthly Review, vol. 53, no. 10]. (shrink)

There are two main and several subsidiary difficulties with this paper.1The first main problem is that the authors, in calling for a revolution in the way that withdrawal of treatment cases are dealt with, fail to recognise that their desired revolutionary utopia is the ordinary workaday world of the law courts.The English law in relation to the administration of treatment to children, and the withdrawal of treatment from them, is straightforward: the only lawful treatment is that (...) which is in the child's best interests. The Children Act 1989 ) puts it slightly differently, but synonymously: the welfare of the child is the paramount consideration. Yes, the views of those holding parental responsibility are sought, but those views do not determine where the child's best interests lie. This is often misunderstood. One hears people talk about a parental veto on proposed treatment or a withdrawal of treatment. There is no such veto. There is a de facto presumption that a parent's views on what is in their child's best interests will coincide with what those best interests are, but that presumption is rebuttable, and is very commonly rebutted, for instance, as the authors note, in many Jehovah's Witness cases. …. (shrink)

In this essay I present a statement of Quine's indeterminacy thesis in its general form. It is shown that the thesis is not about difficulties peculiar to so-called "radical translation." It is a general thesis about meaning and reference with important consequences for any theory of our theories and beliefs. It is claimed that the thesis is inconsistent with Quine's realism, his doctrine of the relativity of reference, and that the argument for the thesis has the (...) consequence that the concept of stimulus meaning is empty. The sense in which linguistic science, as a branch of behavioral science, is "part of physics" is discussed. An alternative to Quine's view of the nature and content of linguistic science is proposed. It is shown to be consistent with Quine's assumptions concerning the legitimate scope of behavioral science and not to involve the notions of analyticity, synonymy and "prevalent attitudes toward meaning, idea and proposition" ([9], p. 304) rejected by Quine. (shrink)

The primary focus of this work is Isocrates as a teacher, his works, and his pedagogy including both his educational practice and the philosophy that underlies it. In addition I examine the epistemological basis of Isocrates's teaching and the connection between the Isocratean conception of the nature of knowledge and the development of character. Many modern scholars consider Isocrates's educational philosophy to be relativistic and his moral position identical to contemporary sophists. This work suggests that both of these (...) positions are incorrect. Isocrates establishes Logos as a transcendental locus and discourse, either between people or within one's own mind, as the means for the discovery of knowledge and the development of arete. Isocrates is called by some the "father of humanistic culture," and his paideia represents an expression of historical Greek cultural practice. Isocrates was an important and influential figure in the development of Greek and by extension Western education. Today, however, his reputation is as an orator whose highly refined style is his major achievement. Isocrates's work has not received the attention that his influence merits, and his educational philosophy should help inform modern practice. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The view that science is typically a cumulative, progressive process, as suggested by some historians of science and some scientific realists, is undermined both by history and by evolutionary considerations about the nature of science. The attempts to use evolutionary biology to portray scientific development as continuous are based on unfortunate analogies to the evolu tion of life. A proper application of evolutionary biology, in combination with neuroscience, defeats the case for the realism in question and leads to (...) the realization that science is not only open to radical transformation, as history indicates, but that it should be so. Non-evolutionary approaches for the historical continuity of science, such as Lakatos', do not fare much better. As I will argue, science is a radical form of knowledge. (shrink)

Originally published in 1982, the aim of this book is a controversial one - to refute, by the most rigorous philosophical methods, physical realism and to develop and defend in its place a version of phenomenalism. Physical realism here refers to the thesis that the physical world is an ingredient of ultimate reality, where ultimate reality is the totality of those entities and facts which are not logically sustained by anything else. Thus, in arguing against physical realism, the author (...) sets out to establish that ultimate reality is wholly non-physical. The crucial elements in this argument are the topic-neutrality of physical description and the relationship between physical geometry and natural law. The version of phenomenalism advanced by John Foster develops out of this refutation of physical realism. Its central claim is that the physical world is the logical creation of the natural constraints on human sense-experience. This phenomenalist perspective assumes that there is some form of time in which human experience occurs but which is logically prior to the physical world, and Foster explores in detail the nature of this pre-physical time and its relation to time as a framework for physical events. This book was a major contribution to contemporary philosophical thinking at the time. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Nietzsche and the Promise of Philosophy by Wayne KleinDeborah Carter MullenWayne Klein. Nietzsche and the Promise of Philosophy. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997. Pp. xviii + 256. Paper, $19.95.Wayne Klein states in his Introduction to Nietzsche and the Promise of Philosophy that “Nietzsche’s texts are anomalous…because they explicitly and inexorably force us to question our assumptions about meaning, understanding and writing in a way (...) that few other philosophical texts have” (5). From its beginning, Klein’s book challenges the reader to think beyond the dualism of the literal and figurative meaning of words. For Klein, this task is central to understanding both the content and style of Nietzsche’s writings; or rather, it is essential to the recognition that ‘content’ and ‘style’ cannot be thought separately, especially when reading a poet-philosopher such as Nietzsche who meditates extensively on the intrinsic connection of the two. In his following chapters, Klein provides the reader with an innovative way of reading Nietzsche’s corpus, a strategy of interpretation which is acutely aware that Nietzsche’s philosophy is inseparable from Nietzsche’s rhetoric (6).Chapter One questions both Heidegger’s and Kaufmann’s interpretations of Nietzsche, which, according to Klein, “share a common conviction that Nietzsche’s thought can only be understood properly if it is abstracted from its context and read against the backdrop of his philosophy as a whole” (42). Klein also criticizes Nehamas’ reading of Nietzsche which endeavors to discover “thematic connections and continuities among Nietzsche’s writings, without attempting to take the texts on their own terms as texts” (50). Ultimately, Klein views all three readers as offering an interpretation of Nietzsche in which “the ‘what’ of Nietzsche’s writings is thoroughly divorced from the ‘how’ ” (42).Klein’s strongest evidence for his position of Nietzsche as philosopher-rhetorician is presented in Chapters Two and Three. In Chapter Two, Klein argues against the view [End Page 639] of Maudemarie Clark that (l) Nietzsche’s later writings affirm a “common-sense” or empirical view of truth, and therefore, (2) Nietzsche’s earlier rhetorical descriptions of truth ought to be rejected by the reader who desires to understand Nietzsche’s mature thought (58–59). Through a detailed reading of Nietzsche’s 1872–73 Course on Rhetoric and the 1873 “On Truth and Lies in an Extra-Moral Sense,” Klein presents a convincing case that Nietzsche’s analysis in his early writings of truth as metaphor, metonymy, and synecdoche does not “deny that words can be true, but that with respect to their multifarious origins they are not principally concerned with truth as correspondence or identity” (70). Instead—with Heidegger’s concept of aletheia as the horizon—Klein suggests that Nietzsche’s early writings “insist on a radical undecidability between literal and figurative discourse” which leads Nietzsche to embrace “a conception of shining truth,” i.e., the veiled “shining forth of appearance” (78, 83). This notion of truth as shine or shining forth allows Klein to link Nietzsche’s earliest writings to later works such as Beyond Good and Evil and Twilight of the Idols in their portrayals of truth. Further-more, once this connection is established, Klein can challenge Clark’s reading that Nietzsche’s mature view of truth implicitly acknowledges an empirical dualism of “the true” and “the false.”After establishing that the division between style and content is an ontological dichotomy which Nietzsche’s work rejects, Klein can utilize this fundamental ambiguity between Nietzsche the philosopher and Nietzsche the rhetorician to reconsider specific concepts put forward in Nietzsche’s other writings. Chapter Three interprets The Birth of Tragedy in this vein; however, the most provocative re-reading of Nietzsche occurs in Chapter Four, where Klein brings into question Nietzsche’s “naturalism,” his reliance in his later criticisms of metaphysics and morality upon a seemingly “essentialistic understanding” of central concepts such as the will to power, life, physiology, and sickness and health (141). By returning to Nietzsche’s early writings in his analysis of the later works, Klein concludes that “the pseudo-normative concepts of life, nature, and the will to power” can be read as “contingent interpretations of existence... (shrink)

summaryThis paper argues that an epistemological duality between mind/brain and an external world is an uncritically held working assumption in recent computational models of cognition. In fact, epistemological dualism largely drives computational models of mentality and representation: An assumption regarding an external world of perceptual objects and distal stimuli requires the sort of mind/brain capable of representing and inferring true accounts of such objects. Hence we have two distinct ontologies, one denoting external world objects, the other cognitive events and (...) neural transformations. A basic question is then raised and explored: If the elements of these two different ontologies are so radically different, how can the one access the other?The last part of the paper sketches an alternative to ED and the associated two ontologies account. Instead of external world objects being construed as independent givens, initiating perceptual processes, they are rather interpreted as ‘computational constructs’. It is argued at length that this account is far more consistent with recent computational models of mind/brain than the two ontologies model associated with ED. It is further claimed that an ontology of cognitive and neural states, as well as an external world ontology, have no other epistemic status that as contingent working hypotheses. As such, both ontologies are in principle amenable to revision as evidence, explanatory models, and scientific practices mutually readjust and redefine one another over time. (shrink)

For the past thirty years, Hal Foster has pushed the boundaries of cultural criticism, establishing a vantage point from which the seemingly disparate agendas of artists, patrons, and critics have a telling coherence. In The Anti-Aesthetic, preeminent critics such as Jean Baudrillard, Rosalind Krauss, Fredric Jameson, and Edward Said consider the full range of postmodern cultural production, from the writing of John Cage, to Cindy Sherman's film stills, to Barbara Kruger's collages. With a redesigned cover and a new afterword (...) class='Hi'>that situates the book in relation to contemporary criticism, The Anti-Aesthetic provides a strong introduction for newcomers and a point of reference for those already engaged in discussions of postmodern art, culture, and criticism. Includes a new afterword by Hal Foster and 12 black and white photographs. (shrink)

We argue that stereotypes associated with concepts like he-said–she-said, conspiracy theory, sexual harassment, and those expressed by paradigmatic slurs provide “normative inference tickets”: conceptual permissions to automatic, largely unreflective normative conclusions. These “mental shortcuts” are underwritten by associated stereotypes. Because stereotypes admit of exceptions, normative inference tickets are highly flexible and productive, but also liable to create serious epistemic and moral harms. Epistemically, many are unreliable, yielding false beliefs which resist counterexample; morally, many perpetuate bigotry and oppression. Still, some (...) normative inference tickets, like some activated by sexual harassment, constitute genuine moral and hermeneutical advances. For example, our framework helps explain Miranda Fricker’s notion of “hermeneutical lacunae”: what early victims of “sexual harassment” — as well as their harassers — lacked before the term was coined was a communal normative inference ticket — one that could take us, collectively, from “this is happening” to “this is wrong.”. (shrink)

Autonomy is a vital principle in medical law and ethics. It occupies a prominent place in all medico-legal and ethical debate. But there is a dangerous presumption that it should have the only vote, or at least the casting vote. This book is an assault on that presumption, and an audit of autonomy's extraordinary status. This book surveys the main issues in medical law, noting in relation to each issue the power wielded by autonomy, asking whether that (...) power can be justified, and suggesting how other principles can and should contribute to the law. It concludes that autonomy's status cannot be intellectually or ethically justified, and that positive discrimination in favour of the other balancing principles is urgently needed in order to avoid some sinister results. 'This book is a sustained attack on the hegemony of the idea of autonomy in medical ethics and law. Charles Foster is no respecter of authority, whether of university professors or of law Lords. He grabs his readers by their lapels and shakes sense into them through a combination of no-nonsense rhetoric and subtle argument that is difficult to resist.' Tony Hope, Professor of Medical Ethics, Oxford University 'This book is unlikely to be in pristine state by the time you have finished reading it. Whether that is because you have thrown it in the air in celebration or thrown it across the room in frustration will depend on your perspective. But this book cannot leave you cold. It is a powerful polemic on the dominance of autonomy in medical law, which demands a reaction. Charles Foster sets out a powerful case that academic medical lawyers have elevated autonomy to a status it does not deserve in either ethical or legal terms. In a highly engaging, accessible account, he challenges many of the views which have become orthodox within the academic community. This will be a book which demands and will attract considerable debate.' Jonathan Herring, Exeter College, Oxford University 'This is a learned, lively and thought-provoking discussion of problems central to the courts' approach to ethical issues in medical law. What principles are involved? More significantly, which really underlie and inform the process of seeking justice in difficult cases? Charles Foster persuasively argues, and demonstrates, that respect for autonomy is but one of a number of ethical principles which interact and may conflict. He also addresses the sensitive issue of the extent to which thoughts and factors which go to influence legal decisions may not appear in the judgments.' Adrian Whitfield QC. 'Introducing the Jake La Motta of medical ethics. Foster is an academic street-fighter who has bloodied his hands in the court room. He provides a stinging, relentless, ground attack on the Goliath of medical ethics: the central place of autonomy in liberal medical ethics. This is now the first port of call for those who feel that medical ethics has become autonomized.' Julian Savulescu, Uehiro Chair in Practical Ethics, University of Oxford. "This important book offers a robust challenge to anyone, whether lawyer or 'ethicist', who sees respect for autonomy as the only game in town. It argues eloquently and effectively that, on the one hand, despite the reverence paid to it by judges, in practice the law, even in the context of consent, weaves together a number of moral threads of which autonomy is merely one, in the pursuit of a good decision. It argues on the other hand, that were the day-to-day practice of law to be guided primarily by respect for autonomy, this would be wrong. Foster concludes that whilst, 'any society that does not have laws robustly protecting autonomy is an unsafe and unhappy one', so too would be a society in which too much emphasis was placed on respect for autonomy at the expense of other important moral principles. This is essential reading for anyone interested in the role of autonomy and indeed of medical ethics, in the law." Michael Parker, Professor of Bioethics, University of Oxford. (shrink)

Memory represents a key psychological process. It allows us to recall things from the past which may have taken place hours, days, months, or even many years ago. Our memories are intrinsically personal, subjective, and internal, yet without the primary capacity of memory, other important activities such as speech, perception, concept formation, and reasoning would be impossible. The range of different aspects of memory is huge, from our vocabulary and knowledge about language and the world to our personal histories, skills (...) such as walking and talking, and the more simple memory capacities found in lower animals. Amongst the diversity of memory processes, the principal focus in this volume is the long-term representation of complex associative human memory. This refers to the permanently stored representation of individual items and events. The books in the Oxford Debates in Psychology series aim to provide students and researchers with a stimulating, self-contained, and balanced summary of the various theoretical and empirical positions that shape the most controversial and contested areas of research. Memory: Systems, Process, or Function? presents a a debate about the cognitive architecture of the human long-term memory system. The individual chapter authors represent some of the leading researchers and theorists in the field. Each chapter concentates upon the central theoretical question of how long-term memory can best be conceptualized. In particular, is long-term memory best regarded as comprising multiple independent systems, as a processing framework which can be tapped via different levels of processing, or as a complex fnction which can be used in a flexible and task-appropriate manner? The authors of each chapter present their own answers to this and related research questions. The book concludes with an integrated synopsis and appraisal of the different facets of this fascinating debate. (shrink)

This dissertation consists of four essays, all having in common the theme of nondelimited unity. The first essay, "Mystical Unity," characterizes the introvertive and extrovertive mystical unitive experiences and gives a phenomenological description of how extrovertive unity can develop from introvertive unity. The second essay, "Mystical Nonduality," defends the non-dualist interpretation of the mystical experience of introvertive unity against the criticisms of L. Stafford Betty . The third essay, "Unity as a Metaphysical Paradigm," offers an extensive characterization of nondelimited unity (...) as a metaphysical paradigm and then gives a series of arguments for the paradigm. The final essay, "The Metaphysics of Corporate Social Responsibility," takes the paradigm developed in the third essay and applies it to the problem of corporate social responsibility. (shrink)

Panexperientialists hold that experience is a fundamental feature of our universe, and that their view avoids radical emergence by providing an intelligible ground for our human experiences. This paper argues that they face a radical emergence problem of their own, and that they can avoid radical emergence only by adopting a strategy that can also be used by dualists (whose view they reject). It also argues that panexperientialists must either hold (...) class='Hi'>that all experiential properties they regard as simple must have been actually instantiated since the earliest days of our universe, or accept radical emergence, or avoid radical emergence by a strategy that can also be adopted by dualists. (shrink)

This entry concerns dualism in the philosophy of mind. The term ‘dualism’ has a variety of uses in the history of thought. In general, the idea is that, for some particular domain, there are two fundamental kinds or categories of things or principles. In theology, for example a ‘dualist’ is someone who believes that Good and Evil — or God and the Devil — are independent and more or less equal forces in the world. Dualism contrasts with monism, (...) which is the theory that there is only one fundamental kind, category of thing or principle; and, rather less commonly, with pluralism, which is the view that there are many kinds or categories. In the philosophy of mind, dualism is the theory that the mental and the physical — or mind and body or mind and brain — are, in some sense, radically different kinds of thing. Because common sense tells us that there are physical bodies, and because there is intellectual pressure towards producing a unified view of the world, one could say that materialist monism is the ‘default option’. Discussion about dualism, therefore, tends to start from the assumption of the reality of the physical world, and then to consider arguments for why the mind cannot be treated as simply part of that world. (shrink)

The COVID-19 outbreak has seen people in many countries asked to radically modify their way of life in compliance with sweeping safety measures. During the current crisis, technology is turning out to be key, in that it allows practitioners to deliver psychological services to people who would otherwise be unreachable. However, professionals cannot solely rely on their traditional modes of practice, in that different methods are required to bring to light the needs of those affected by the emergency. (...) People are being overwhelmed by a cascade of unusual and unexpected events that are putting a strain on their everyday routines and usual meaning-making systems; ongoing challenges to their employment and financial status will likely divert personal resources away from psychological well-being. We therefore argue that psychologists should also consider the needs of the general population. Among those who may require help – aside from the main targets of psychological intervention, such as healthcare personnel and COVID-19 patients and their relatives – specific attention should be paid to those who are not at the center of the crisis. We suggest that this large segment of potential users may benefit from a non-medical approach focused on the promotion of meaning-making processes. Indeed, the disruptive nature of the current situation hinders sense-making and threatens to undermine psychological balance and well-being, at an individual as well as at a societal level. The present article proposes a methodological perspective based on the reconstruction of meaning-making processes (sense of coherence, predictability, metaphors, narratives). Specifically, psychological interventions should promote personal and collective resources with a view to: “normalizing” current distressful experiences (i.e., acknowledging that such reactions are normal in light of the present situation); widening the observational field, taking relational contexts into account, and promoting an understanding of distressful experiences as coping strategies; fostering meaning-making/reconstruction processes through the use of appropriate metaphors and narratives; promoting a sense of coherence. We present two clinical vignettes to illustrate how these principles might be applied in practice. In conclusion, the exceptional psychological challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic require practitioners to adopt a broad and flexible perspective on clinical intervention. (shrink)

Among bioethicists and members of the public, genetics is often regarded as unique in its ethical challenges. As medical researchers and clinicians increasingly combine genetic information with a range of non-genetic information in the study and clinical management of patients with common diseases, the unique ethical challenges attributed to genetics must be re-examined. A process of genetic routinisation that will have implications for research and clinical ethics, as well as for public conceptions of genetic information, is constituted by the (...) emergence of new forms of genetic medicine, in which genetic information is interpreted in a multifactorial frame of reference. Although the integration of genetics in medical research and treatment may be a helpful corrective to the mistaken assumptions of genetic essentialism or determinism, the routinisation of genetics may have unintended consequences for the protection of genetic information, perceptions of non-genetic information and the loss of genetic research as a laboratory for exploring issues in research and clinical ethics. Consequently, new ethical challenges are presented by the increasing routinisation of genetic information in both biomedical and public spheres. (shrink)

Generic language (e.g., “tigers have stripes”) leads children to assume that the referenced category (e.g., tigers) is inductively informative and provides a causal explanation for the behavior of individual members. In two preregistered studies with 4- to 7-year-old children (N = 497), we considered the mechanisms underlying these effects by testing how correcting generics might affect the development of these beliefs about novel social and animal kinds (Study 1) and about gender (Study 2). Correcting generics by narrowing their scope (...) to a single individual limited beliefs that the referenced categories could explain what their members would be like while broadening the scope to a superordinate category (Study 2) uniquely limited endorsement of gender norms. Across both studies, correcting generics did not alter beliefs about feature heritability and had mixed effects on inductive inferences, suggesting that additional mechanisms (e.g., causal reasoning about shared features) contribute to the development of full-blown essentialist beliefs. These results help illuminate the mechanisms by which generics lead children to view categories as having rich inductive and causal potential; in particular, they suggest that children interpret generics as signals that speakers in their community view the referenced categories as meaningful kinds that support generalization. The findings also point the way to concrete suggestions for how adults can effectively correct problematic generics (e.g., gender stereotypes) that children may hear in daily life. (shrink)

I argue that in recent years, the therapeutic ethos and the ideal of authenticity have become aligned with distinctively neo-liberal notions of personal responsibility and self-reliance. This situation has radically exacerbated the threat to political community that Charles Taylor saw in the ‘ethics of authenticity’. I begin by tracing the history of the therapeutic ethos and its early (Rieff, Lasch, MacIntyre) and late (Furedi) critics. I then discuss Charles Taylor’s argument that the culture of self-fulfillment generated by (...) the therapeutic ethos harbors an important moral ideal, namely, the ethic of authenticity. Pace Taylor, I argue that authenticity has now become thoroughly instrumentalized in the service of the guiding political rationality of neo-liberalism. I make this case through a discussion of its uptake in managerial techniques and practices and also in popular culture. (shrink)

I want to examine a possible solution to the problem of induction-one which, as far as I know, has not been discussed elsewhere. The solution makes crucial use of the notion of objective natural necessity. For the purposes of this discussion, I shall assume that this notion is coherent. I am aware that this assumption is controversial, but I do not have space to examine the issue here.

ABSTRACT: Romantic love and its predecessor eros have both been characterized as forms of egoistic love. Part of this claim is concerned specifically with the relation between love and knowledge. Real love, it is claimed, is prior to knowledge and is not motivated by it. Romantic love and eros according to this view are egoistic in that they are motivated by a desire for knowledge. Agapic love characterized by bestowal represents a true form of love unmotivated by selfish desires. (...) I argue that such an emphasis on bestowal at the expense of knowledge or appraisal of the beloved is problematic. The knowledge dimension of romantic love, rather than contributing to selfishness, can be a means of freeing us from egoism when we understand identity in its relational or social form.RÉSUMÉ: L'amour romantique et son prédécesseur, Éros, sont tous deux considérés comme des lormes d'amour égoïste. Une partie de cette prétention concerne spécifiquement le lien entre l'amour et la connaissance : l'amour véritable précède la connaissance et n'est pas motivé par elle. Selon ce point de vue, l'amour romantique et Éros sont égoïstes parce qu'ils sont motivés par le désir de connaître. L'amour agapique d'autre part se caractérise par le don; il représente une forme d'amour véritable que ne motive aucun désir égoïste. Cet accent mis sur le don au détriment de la connaissance ou de l'appreciation de l'être aimé se révèle pourtantproblématique. La connaissance, qui caractérise l'amour romantique, représente un moyen de nous libérer de l'égoïsme au lieu de l'alimenter, lorsque nous acquérons une compréhension de l'identité sous sa lorme relationnelle et sociale. (shrink)

Emergentism provides a remarkably appropriate fit with an evolutionary account of the history of life on earth. Emergentism presents us with a compelling picture of the co‐evolution of mind and brain. Among the emergentist options, emergent dualism is the one that best satisfies the requirements of both good philosophy and sound theology. The common versions of creationism are generally modeled on the dualism of Rene Descartes, according to which body and mind are two radically different kinds of substances. The (...) body is physical through andthrough; it has all the natural, physical properties we are familiar with through the physicalsciences, but in itself it has no trace of mental properties such as thought or even sensation. The mind is the “thinking thing”; its essential characteristic is consciousness and conscious thought, with everything that goes along with that. (shrink)

Over the last quarter of a century, English medical law has taken an increasingly firm stand against medical paternalism. This is exemplified by cases such as Bolitho v City and Hackney Health Authority, Chester v Afshar, and Montgomery v Lanarkshire Health Board. In relation to decision-making on behalf of incapacitous adults, the actuating principle of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 is respect for patient autonomy. The only lawful acts in relation to an incapacitous person are acts which are in the (...) best interests of that person. The 2005 Act requires a holistic assessment of best interests. Best interests are wider than ‘medical best interests’. The 2018 judgment of the Supreme Court in An NHS Trust v Y from patients in prolonged disorders of consciousness ) risks reviving medical paternalism. The judgment, in its uncritical endorsement of guidelines from various medical organisations, may lend inappropriate authority to medical judgments of best interests and silence or render impotent non-medical contributions to the debate about best interests—so frustrating the 2005 Act. To minimise these dangers, a system of meditation should be instituted whenever it is proposed to withdraw life-sustaining CANH from patients with PDOC, and there needs to be a guarantee of access to the courts for families, carers and others who wish to challenge medical conclusions about withdrawal. This would entail proper public funding for such challenges. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:AQUINAS ON THE IMMATERIALITY OF THE INTELLECT DAVID RUEL FOSTER Seton Hall University South Orange, New Jersey I. A Controversial Question? HE QUESTION of the immateriailiity of the intelloot s,an important part of the wider question about the nau11e of the soul. The axgiumen'ts for the immaiteriality of rthe intellect a11e particularly important to Thomas's thought because they undergil1d his argument for the incorruptibility of the soul; the incorruptibiility (...) of the soul, in turn, leads towards the dootrine of the immortaility of the soruJ, a tenet of faith which Thoma.s wants to explain and deifend.1 This article will present Thomas's two most prominent arguments for the immateriality of the intieliteot and critique the first iin light of rthe seoond.2 Whether,the principle of int~Uectual ilife must, by the very 1.Arguments for the immateriality of the intellect do not necessarily appear in articles on the incorruptibility of the soul but are always presupposed by them in Thomas. For example, in Summa theologiae I, q. 75, a. 6, "Whether the human soul is incorruptible?" (" Utrum anima humana sit corruptibilis "), Thomas supports the crucial premise in his argument by referring to the,arguments for the immateriality of the intellect in articles 2 and 5 (" Utrum anima humana sit aliquid subsistens? "; "Utrum anima sit composita ex materia et forma?" Summa theologiae I, q. 75, aa. 2 and 5). 2 Five important instances of the arguments are as follows: In Sententias II, d. 19, q. 1, a. l; Summa contra gentiles II, chapters 49-50; Summa theologiae I, q. 75, aa. 2 and 5; Quaestiones Dis-putatae De anima a. 14; Oompendium theologiae, De fide, chapters 79 and 84. This chronological ordering is based on Weisheipl's catalogue in Friar Thomas D'A.quino, pp. 355-406; and Eschmann's, A Catalogue of St. Thomas's Work, in Gilson's, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, pp. 381-439. The dating of the Compendium theologiae is the most problematic. 415 416 DAVID RUEL FOSTER natUJ.1e of its.act, be immaterial is a particularly controrverted question today. Many corutempo~ary thinkers helie¥e that human understanding can be ex:pfained in strictly physical terms. ':Chis was not the case in Thomas's day, and it is important to takie notre of this. Thomas W1as noit foroed by any opponent to sharpen his arguments for the imma.teriality of the inteHect. The major Islamic philosophers, ailithough they disagreed among themselves about aspects of the inbe1iJiect's nature (e.g., the plaice and ro[e of the agent intellect)' md agree thait the intellectual soul was immaterial. Plato and Aristotle, according.to Thomas, agreed on this f.undamental point. In fact, although there were post-Socratic materialists,3 Thoma;s usuru1Jy goes ha;ek to the Pre-Socratics in order rto give an example of someone who taJUght that the inte!IJiectual :act. depends entirely on physicrul principles. Perhaps it is better to s1ay that, because the doctrine of runiversal hylomorphism was so widely accepted in his time, Thomas was not challenged regarding the incorporeality of the intellect. Many of Thoma:s's contemporaries, foililowing the tewching of Awoobroin, held that the intellectuaJ. souil was composed of spiritua.l matter.and the appropriate form,4 hut this was not in opposition to Thomas's arguments for the immateriality of the intellect. II. The Two Most Prominent Arguments A. Type I The first argument (hereaf·ter caUed Type 1) proceeds from the intellect's potential to know all corporeal things. It is justifiably described as Thomas's preferred argument,5 for s For example, the Epicureans. 4 J. Weisheipl, "Albertus Magnus and Universal Hylomorphism: Avicebron," in Albert the priam rationem formalem, which is :to grasp the essence of the obj,oot. Then Thom!lis draws his conclusion " therefore,... the inte!llecrbuaJ soul itse[f is an absolute form." The conclusion that the irntellect's mode of being is immaterial, a " form without matter," follows from the premises: majorr premise, the objeclt is,in the knower in an ahso1uite way, i.e., without matter; minor premise, the object is received in the knower.ruooording to rthe mode of he... (shrink)

The regularities in nature, simply by being regularities, call for explanation. There are only two ways in which we could, with any plausibility, try to explain them. One way would be to suppose that they are imposed on the world by God. The other would be to suppose that they reflect the presence of laws of nature, conceived of as forms of natural necessity. But the only way of making sense of the notion of a law of nature, (...) thus conceived, is by construing a law as the causing of the associated regularity, and the only remotely plausible account of such causing would be in terms of the agency of God. So, by whichever route, we are led to the conclusion that the regularities are brought about by God. So the presence of the regularities in nature provides us with a strong case for accepting the existence of God. (shrink)

A quarter of a century ago, the first systematic behavioral experiments were performed to clarify the nature of color constancy—the effect whereby the perceived color of a surface remains constant despite changes in the spectrum of the illumination. At about the same time, new models of color constancy appeared, along with physiological data on cortical mechanisms and photographic colorimetric measurements of natural scenes. Since then, as this review shows, there have been many advances. The theoretical requirements for constancy have been (...) better delineated and the range of experimental techniques has been greatly expanded; novel invariant properties of images and a variety of neural mechanisms have been identified; and increasing recognition has been given to the relevance of natural surfaces and scenes as laboratory stimuli. Even so, there remain many theoretical and experimental challenges, not least to develop an account of color constancy that goes beyond deterministic and relatively simple laboratory stimuli and instead deals with the intrinsically variable nature of surfaces and illuminations present in the natural world. (shrink)

Gilbert Ryle in The Concept of Mind pronounced the “official doctrine” regarding the nature of the mind and the body as “hailing chiefly from Descartes.” That doctrine, anathematized by Ryle as “the dogma of the ghost in the machine,” is said to hold that every human being is composed of a body and a mind, that the body is physical whereas the mind is not, and that the mind may continue to exist when the body is (...) destroyed. Ryle’s famous attack on the official doctrine has undoubtedly stimulated Cartesian studies, both in those who wish to understand Descartes better in order to make the defense of the doctrine more effective and in those who wish to attack it, sometimes even with arguments which Ryle himself would have rejected. Occasionally, one reads a reference to “Platonic dualism,” not so much as a clearly defined alternative to Cartesian dualism but rather as an inchoate or loose version of Descartes’ doctrine. A recent exception is Richard Rorty who in the first chapter of his book Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature has insisted on the difference between the Platonic and the Cartesian positions, although it should perhaps be added that his hostility to the former is if anything greater than his hostility to the latter. Without suggesting that there are not obvious similarities in the Platonic and Cartesian versions of dualism, it will perhaps be useful to try to penetrate beneath the slogans in order to get a clearer picture of the arguments which impelled Plato to hold a position the strangeness which was evident even to his contemporaries. (shrink)

The law tends to think that there is no difficulty about identifying humans. When someone is born, her name is entered into a statutory register. She is ‘X’ in the eyes of the law. At some point, ‘X’ will die and her name will be recorded in another register. If anyone suggested that the second X was not the same as the first, the suggestion would be met with bewilderment. During X's lifetime, the civil law assumed that (...) the X who entered into a contract was the same person who breached it. The criminal law assumed that X, at the age of 80, was liable for criminal offences ‘she’ committed at the age of 18. This accords with the way we talk. ‘She's not herself today’, we say; or ‘When he killed his wife he wasn't in his right mind’. The intuition has high authority: ‘To thine own self... (shrink)

Property-based models of the ownership of body parts are common. They are inadequate. They fail to deal satisfactorily with many important problems, and even when they do work, they rely on ideas that have to be derived from deeper, usually unacknowledged principles. This article proposes that the parent principle is always human dignity, and that one will get more satisfactory answers if one interrogates the older, wiser parent instead of the younger, callow offspring. But human dignity has (...) a credibility problem. It is often seen as hopelessly amorphous or incurably theological. These accusations are often just. But a more thorough exegesis exculpates dignity and gives it its proper place at the fountainhead of bioethics. Dignity is objective human thriving. Thriving considerations can and should be applied to dead people as well as live ones. To use dignity properly, the unit of bioethical analysis needs to be the whole transaction rather than the doctor-patient relationship. The dignity interests of all the stakeholders are assessed in a sort of utilitarianism. Its use in relation to body part ownership is demonstrated. Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights endorses and mandates this approach. (shrink)

I argue that the reflections on language in Adorno and Heidegger have their common root in a modernist problematic that dissected experience into ordinary experience, and transfiguring experiences that are beyond the capacity for expression of our language. I argue that Adorno’s solution to this problem is the more resolutely “modernist” one, in that Adorno is more rigorous about preserving the distinction between what can be said, and what strives for expression in language. After outlining (...) the definitive statement of this problematic in Nietzsche’s early epistemological writings, I outline Heidegger’s solution and subsequently Adorno’s critique of Heidegger. Finally, I argue that situating Adorno within the modernist problem of language and expression is crucial for making sense of his philosophy as a form of critical theory. (shrink)

John Foster presents a clear and powerful discussion of a range of topics relating to our understanding of the universe: induction, laws of nature, and the existence of God. He begins by developing a solution to the problem of induction - a solution whose key idea is that the regularities in the workings of nature that have held in our experience hitherto are to be explained by appeal to the controlling influence of laws, as forms of natural necessity. (...) His second line of argument focuses on the issue of what we should take such necessitational laws to be, and whether we can even make sense of them at all. Having considered and rejected various alternatives, Foster puts forward his own proposal: the obtaining of a law consists in the causal imposing of a regularity on the universe as a regularity. With this causal account of laws in place, he is now equipped to offer an argument for theism. His claim is that natural regularities call for explanation, and that, whatever explanatory role we may initially assign to laws, the only plausible ultimate explanation is in terms of the agency of God. Finally, he argues that, once we accept the existence of God, we need to think of him as creating the universe by a method which imposes regularities on it in the relevant law-yielding way. In this new perspective, the original nomological-explanatory solution to the problem of induction becomes a theological-explanatory solution.The Divine Lawmaker is bold and original in its approach, and rich in argument. The issues on which it focuses are among the most important in the whole epistemological and metaphysical spectrum. (shrink)

This article explores some of the implications of understanding sin as failure of perception. The theological underpinning of the argument is the choice made in the Garden of Eden to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge rather than the fruit of the tree of life, or wisdom. This has led to distorted perception, in which all things are seen as having separate, independent existences rather than joined together by their common divine source and their deep interrelatedness in the (...) covenant made with God. The article discusses the fascination with the principle of respect for autonomy in the light of this theology. It also looks at perceptions of the HIV/AIDS crisis in Africa. It finishes with a definition of repentance that makes right perception possible. (shrink)

In this paper I look at the reasons for implementing VAR and the effect that it has had on the fans of soccer (football) in particular. I begin with a discussion of why VAR has been adopted in sports in general and in soccer specifically. I then discuss the notion of ‘flow sports’ and try to develop at taxonomy for classifying sports in terms of the relative importance of flow. Following this, I discuss the effect of VAR implementation on (...) flow sports in general before examining the effect of VAR on the fan experience in soccer, a game which I characterize as one of the purist examples of team flow sports. Finally, I discuss the effect of VAR on the fan experience of flow when watching sports. My main contention is that VAR, at least in its current forms, represents an erosion of the flow experience in matches which impoverishes the fan experience. In light of the perceived benefits of VAR for match officiating, I doubt that it will be going away anytime soon. The best that we can hope for is that it evolves so as to cause minimal disruption to the flow in flow sports. (shrink)

P-zombies are creatures that are physically (functionally, behaviourally) like you and I and yet lack phenomenal consciousness. If such creatures are possible, it’s (typically) taken to show property dualism is true: phenomenal consciousness isn’t reducible to – nor does it supervene on – physical states. If inverted qualia are possible, it’s possible that you and I have identical physical states and yet you see tomatoes as green and I see tomatoes as red. If this is the case, then (...) (again) property dualism is (typically) taken to be true. In this article, I???ll show that p-zombies and inverted qualia – if they are actually possible – prove more than previously thought: if one thinks p-zombies or inverted qualia are possible, then one should endorse one of the four following theses: (i) substance dualism, (ii) we have even more reason to reject p-zombies and inverted qualia since they entail an even more radical conclusion than previously thought (i.e. substance dualism), (iii) eliminativism about selves, or (iv) friends of p-zombies and inverted qualia have homework: they need to show a relevant, plausible disanalogy between arguments for p-zombies and inverted qualia as traditionally stated and my parallel arguments that entail substance dualism. My purpose here isn’t to defend any of these particular options. Instead, my purpose is to highlight that these are the four options available to take. (shrink)