This is the first scholarly study of Atlas Shrugged, covering in detail the historical, literary, and philosophical aspects of Ayn Rand's magnum opus. Topics explored in depth include the history behind the novel's creation, publication, and reception; its nature as a romantic novel; and its presentation of a radical new philosophy.

Introduction -- Aristotle and Locke in the American founding -- Equality, liberty, wisdom, morality, and consent in the idea of political freedom -- Humanizing certitudes and impoverishing doubts : a critique of The closing of the American mind by Allan Bloom -- "The Reichstag is still burning : the failure of higher education and the decline of the West" : a valedictory lecture -- The end of history means the end of freedom -- The American founding as the best (...) regime : the bonding of civil and religious liberty -- The decline and fall of the American idea : reflections on the failure of American conservatism -- Thomas Aquinas meets Thomas Jefferson -- Dred Scott revisited -- Legend of Sleepy Hollow. (shrink)

This study demonstrates that Dewey did not reject Hegelianism during the 1890s, as scholars maintain, but developed a humanistic/historicist reading that was indebted to an American Hegelian tradition. Scholars have misunderstood the "permanent Hegelian deposit" in Dewey's thought because they have not fully appreciated this American Hegelian tradition and have assumed that his Hegelianism was based primarily on British neo-Hegelianism. ;The study examines the American reception of Hegel in the nineteenth-century by intellectuals as diverse as James Marsh and Frederic Henry (...) Hedge and how it flowered in late nineteenth-century St. Louis. The St. Louis Hegelians read Hegel as a particularly practical and politically liberal philosopher whose social philosophy promoted both social diversity and unity. Led by W. T. Harris, they studied Hegel in German and published their own scholarship, as well as translations of German scholarship, in their Journal of Speculative Philosophy. Their efforts to make "Hegel talk English" and to base the St. Louis public schools on Hegel's philosophy of education won them national, and even, international attention. The St. Louis Hegelians sought to adapt Hegel's thought to their American context by assuaging elitist elements within it; Dewey's intellectual development was profoundly shaped by their appropriation of his philosophy. ;Dewey drew upon Hegel's argument that humans form societies because of their differences, not in spite of them. Hegel's rejection of the self-sufficient, atomistic individual entailed that the individual is dependent upon others for the satisfaction of material needs. Moreover, like Hegel, Dewey rejected the hedonistic basis of the British political tradition by arguing that humans seek recognition from their equals as well as satisfaction of material needs. Dewey believed Hegel's emphasis upon equality and diversity provided a model of society in which there was fertile ground for the individual to conceive and articulate cultural criticism. The study ends by comparing recent Hegel scholarship to Dewey's, demonstrating that American Hegelianism has returned, in important ways, to a Deweyan reading of Hegel. (shrink)

Ananda Metteyya (Charles Henry Allan Bennett 1872–1923), according to some representations of Buddhism's transmission to the West, was a respectable member of an elite group of converts to Buddhism at the beginning of the twentieth century, who, in effect, stole recognition from a non-elite group. Whilst not contesting this basic premise, I first suggest in this paper that Ananda Metteyya was neither elite nor always, at least in the eyes of the Buddhist Society of Great Britain and Ireland, ‘respectable’. (...) In fact, he came to pose a threat to the identity that the Society sought to create for itself. I then turn to three contexts within which Ananda Metteyya placed himself: international networks for the spread of Buddhism; anti-missionary networks within Sri Lanka and Burma; antiimperialist networks. His main vehicle within the first was the Buddhasāsana Samāgama, the international Buddhist organisation he founded in 1902 and the journal that accompanied it, which was sent to between 500 and 600 libraries throughout the world. Also significant was Ananda Metteyya's call for five men from four countries to come to Burma to be trained for higher ordination. Ananda Metteyya's anti-missionary agenda was realized through the promotion of Buddhist education in Burma and through a ruthless written critique of Christianity and Christian proselytisation. An anti-imperialist agenda was implicit within this and is extended in his writing. This paper argues, therefore, that Ananda Metteyya was a central figure in the global networking of a substantial number of those interested in Buddhism in the early years of the twentieth century. He was also an early Engaged Buddhist, a critic of the West and a robust promoter of the East. (shrink)

The central questions raised by Allan Bloom's The Closing of theAmerican Mind are often overlooked. Among the most important ofBloom's themes is the impact of nihilism upon education. Bloom condemnsnihilism. Interestingly, we find among his critics two alternativejudgments. Richard Schacht, citing Nietzsche, asserts that nihilism,while fruitless in and of itself, is a necessary prerequisite tosomething higher. Harry Neumann, affirming the accuracy of nihilism,declares that both Bloom and Nietzsche reject nihilism out of ignoranceborn of weakness. All three philosophers understand that (...) the purpose ofeducation emerges from one's position on nihilism. If nihilism is true,then it is senseless and cowardly to teach one's students that there aregrounds for moral judgments. On the other hand, if one believes thatthere is an objective higher and lower in moral matters, then one cannotat the same time consistently endorse nihilism or the atheism upon whichit rests. There is reason to believe that a consistent nihilism isimpossible and hence that the concept is bankrupt. But then something istrue, and there are grounds for moral judgment. Education must respondaccordingly. But even Bloom with his emphasis on the Great Books fallsshort of what is required. An education which aims to defeat nihilismmust, at the very least, hold out the promise that through thecultivation of reason one may indeed arrive at the truth. (shrink)

This paper revisits the debate between Harry Collins and Allan Franklin, concerning the experimenters’ regress. Focusing my attention on a case study from recent psychology (regarding experimental evidence for the existence of a Mozart Effect), I argue that Franklin is right to highlight the role of epistemological strategies in scientific practice, but that his account does not sufficiently appreciate Collins’s point about the importance of tacit knowledge in experimental practice. In turn, Collins rightly highlights the epistemic uncertainty (and skepticism) (...) surrounding much experimental research. However, I will argue that his analysis of tacit knowledge fails to elucidate the reasons why scientists often are (and should be) skeptical of other researchers’ experimental results. I will present an analysis of tacit knowledge in experimental research that not only answers to this desideratum, but also shows how such skepticism can in fact be a vital enabling factor for the dynamic processes of experimental knowledge generation. (shrink)

Aping apes: Edgar Allan Poe's "The murders in the Rue Morgue" and Richard Wright's Native son -- Slavery's bestiary: Joel Chandler Harris's Uncle Remus tales -- Autoimmunity and ante-racism: Philip Roth's The human stain -- Ashamed of shame: J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace.

"This book re-examines the old debate about the relationship between rationality and literacy. Does writing 'restructure consciousness'? Do preliterate societies have a different 'mind-set' from literate societies? Is reason 'built in' to the way we think? How is literacy related to numeracy? Is the 'logical form' that Western philosophers recognize anything more than an extrapolation from the structure of the written sentence? Is logic, as developed formally in Western education, intrinsically beyond the reach of the preliterate mind? What light, if (...) any, do the findings of contemporary neuroscience throw on such issues? Roy Harris challenges the received mainstream opinion that reason is an intrinsic property of the human mind, and argues that the whole Western conception of rational thought, from Classical Greece down to modern symbolic logic, is a by-product of the way literacy developed in European cultures." --publisher's website. (shrink)

In 1975, Colwyn Trevarthen first presented his groundbreaking explorations into the early origins of human intersubjectivity. His influential model dictates that, during intimate and playful spontaneous face-to-face protoconversations, the emotions of both the 2–3-month-old infant and mother are nonverbally communicated, perceived, mutually regulated, and intersubjectively shared. This primordial basic interpersonal interaction is expressed in synchronized rhythmic-turn-taking transactions that promote the intercoordination and awareness of positive brain states in both. In this work, I offer an interpersonal neurobiological model of Trevarthen’s intersubjective (...) protoconversations as rapid, reciprocal, bidirectional visual-facial, auditory-prosodic, and tactile-gestural right brain-to-right brain implicit nonverbal communications between the psychobiologically attuned mother and the developing infant. These co-constructed positive emotional interactions facilitate the experience-dependent maturation of the infant’s right brain, which is in an early critical period of growth. I then address the central role of interpersonal synchrony in intersubjectivity, expressed in a mutual alignment or coupling between the minds and bodies of the mother and infant in face-to-face protoconversations, as well as how these right brain-to-right brain emotional transmissions generate bioenergetic positively charged interbrain synchrony within the dyad. Following this, I offer recent brain laterality research on the essential functions of the right temporoparietal junction, a central node of the social brain, in face-to-face nonverbal communications. In the next section, I describe the ongoing development of the protoconversation over the 1st year and beyond, and the co-creation of a fundamental energy-dependent, growth-promoting social emotional matrix that facilitates the emergence of the highly adaptive human functions of mutual play and mutual love. In the final section, I discuss the clinical applications of this interpersonal neurobiological model of intersubjectivity, which has a long history in the psychotherapy literature. Toward that end, I offer very recent paradigm-shifting hyperscanning research that simultaneously measures both the patient and therapist during a psychotherapeutic interaction. Using the Trevarthen’s two-person intersubjective model, this research demonstrates changes in both brains of the therapeutic dyad and the critical role of nonverbal communications in an emotionally-focused psychotherapy session. These studies specifically document interbrain synchronization between the right temporoparietal junction of the patient and the right temporoparietal junction of the clinician, a right brain-to-right brain nonverbal communication system in the co-constructed therapeutic alliance. Lastly, I discuss the relationship between the affect communicating functions of the intersubjective motivational system and the affect regulating functions of the attachment motivational system. (shrink)

Professional engineering societies which are based in the United States, such as the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME, now ASME International) are recognizing that their codes of ethics must apply to engineers working throughout the world. An examination of the ethical code of the ASME International shows that its provisions pose many problems of application, especially in societies outside the United States. In applying the codes effectively in the international environment, two principal issues must be addressed. First, some Culture (...) Transcending Guidelines must be identified and justified. Nine such guidelines are identified. Second, some methods for applying the codes to particular situations must be identified. Three such methods are specification, balancing, and finding a creative middle way. (shrink)

The task of combatting and defeating Covid-19 calls for drastic measures as well as cool heads. It also requires that we keep our nerve and our moral integrity. In the fight for survival, as individuals and as societies, we must not lose our grip on the values and the compassion that make individual and collective survival worth fighting for, or indeed worth having.1.

My point of departure in this essay is Smith’s definition of government. “Civil government,” he writes, “so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.” First I unpack Smith’s definition of government as the protection of the rich against the poor. I argue that, on Smith’s view, this is always part of (...) what government is for. I then turn to the question of what, according to Smith, our governors can do to protect the wealth of the rich from the resentment of the poor. I consider, and reject, the idea that Smith might conceive of education as a means of alleviating the resentment of the poor at their poverty. I then describe how, in his lectures on jurisprudence, Smith refines and develops Hume’s taxonomy of the opinions upon which all government rests. The sense of allegiance to government, according to Smith, is shaped by instinctive deference to natural forms of authority as well as by rational, Whiggish considerations of utility. I argue that it is the principle of authority that provides the feelings of loyalty upon which government chiefly rests. It follows, I suggest, that to the extent that Smith looked to government to protect the property of the rich against the poor, and thereby to maintain the peace and stability of society at large, he cannot have sought to lessen the hold on ordinary people of natural sentiments of deference. In addition, I consider the implications of Smith’s theory of government for the question of his general attitude toward poverty. I argue against the view that Smith has recognizably “liberal,” progressive views of how the poor should be treated. Instead, I locate Smith in the political culture of the Whiggism of his day. (shrink)

I defend the view that linguistic meaning is a relation borne by an expression to a type of speech act, and that this relation holds in virtue of our overlapping communicative dispositions, and not in virtue of linguistic conventions. I argue that this theory gives the right account of the semantics–pragmatics interface and the best-available semantics for non-declarative clauses, and show that it allows for the construction of a rigorous compositional semantic theory with greater explanatory power than both truth-conditional and (...) dynamic semantics. (shrink)

Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) have gained a degree of prominence across recent moral enhancement literature as a possible intervention for dealing with antisocial and aggressive impulses. This is due to serotonin's purported capacity to modulate persons’ averseness to harm. The aim of this article is to argue that the use of SSRIs is not something worth getting particularly excited about as a practicable intervention for moral enhancement purposes, and that the generally uncritical enthusiasm over serotonin's potential as a moral (...) enhancer is a consequence of the paucity of viable options for envisaging practicable moral enhancement interventions. While there are many conceptual issues raised by the idea of moral enhancement generally, and by the idea of serotonin as a morally affective agent, the aim here is to look at practical concerns. It is argued that SSRIs do not, nor cannot in the reasonably foreseeable future, be made to work as a reliably safe or reliably effective means for moral enhancement, even within the very limited remit of treating “reactive” aggression. SSRIs might be effective as a limited and partial mental health intervention (even this is questionable), but not as a generally effective moral enhancement technology. (shrink)

NICE must not say people are not worth treatingThe National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence has proposed that drugs for the treatment of dementia be banned to National Health Service patients on the grounds that their cost is too high and “outside the range of cost effectiveness that might be considered appropriate for the NHS”i.1This is despite NICE’s admission that these drugs are effective in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease and despite NICE having approved even more expensive treatments. The (...) effect is that thousands of Alzheimer’s patients will be denied the only treatment available. It is difficult to think of this as anything but wickedness or folly or more likely both. At the same time, and with no apparent sense of irony, NICE has launched a public consultation document3 on its guidelines on social value judgments. As we shall see these guidelines are ethically illiterate as well as socially divisive.Assuming permanently scarce resources it is clearly crucial that such healthcare resources as are available are not wasted. This point is often made in terms of cost effectiveness and it is argued, not implausibly, that to talk of cost effectiveness implies that we are able to measure just how cost effective each treatment is. To do so of course we need a standard of measurement. NICE has adopted the ubiquitous, but justly infamous QALY, the Quality Adjusted Life Year.The QALY combines life expectancy after treatment with measures of the expected quality of that life. There are two ways in which QALYS can be used. They might be used to determine which of rival therapies to give to a particular patient or which procedure to use to treat a particular condition, in short which of two different treatments is the more …. (shrink)

The article explores an aspect of spiritual intelligence characterized as a lifelong search for meaning. Slow knowing involves wrestling with perplexity. Periods of such tarrying gradually facilitate an unfolding of meaning. More than just the content of one's knowledge, it is the relationship, the how or manner of one's relationship with meaning that grounds the spiritual generativity of the seeking. Slow knowing is presented as an existential orientation, a lifelong process akin to ongoing conversion. Part 1 distinguishes such slow knowing (...) from other senses of slow in current discourse (Kahneman's fast/slow thinking framework, and meditative concepts of slow mind). Part 2 explores slow knowing through the lenses of lectio divina and the use of metaphor in religious language. Slow knowing is characterized as having both individual and social dimensions. The article concludes with the concern that the conditions needed for slow knowing—and thus for spiritual intelligence—are undermined by the hasty pace of contemporary life. (shrink)

In the UK, as elsewhere in the world, the global financial crisis has focused attention on the cost of public services and the need to reduce expenditure, not least in respect of higher education. This, however, raises a set of prior questions: What kind of society do we want? What is important to democratic society? What kind of higher education is desirable? The article takes Alasdair MacIntyre's critique of what he calls liberal capitalist society as a starting point for considering (...) questions concerning the kind of higher education that would be valuable and relevant to a healthy democratic society. His thesis is outlined and the implications of this for the university set out. The article examines MacIntyre's notion of community, which he elaborates in relation to medieval religious worldviews, and argues that whilst his conceptualisation is more intellectually and educationally coherent than some others, it is ultimately too restrictive. The article argues instead for a recognition, within education, of what is uncommon. This may open greater possibilities for keeping alive the serious questions that we must constantly attend to, beyond and within our communities, secular or religious. (shrink)

The chapter will argue that the way current enthusiasm for moral enhancement is articulated in the extant literature is itself morally problematic. The moral evaluation of the discourse will proceed through three stages. First, we shall look at the chequered history of various societies’ attempts to cast evil, character, and generally undesirable behaviour, as biological problems. As will be argued, this is the larger context in which moral enhancement discourse should be understood, and abuses in the recent past and present (...) should therefore be highlighted. Second, it will be argued that, given moral functioning's profoundly contextual and responsive qualities, any notion of a fine-grained, powerfully efficacious moral enhancement is both unrealistic and, actually, incoherent. Since enthusiasts’ hopes are unrealistic and incoherent, such enhancement would not even be capable of providing the transformative ends that supposedly justify the sometimes extreme prescriptions set forward. Finally, the chapter concludes with the claim that moral enhancement enthusiasm actually serves to trivialise the evils of this world, and not only to trivialise the hard-won efforts required to diminish and overcome such evils, but to misdirect attention away from the real hard work that needs to be done in facing such evils. (shrink)

People have a powerful interest in geneticprivacy and its associated claim to ignorance,and some equally powerful desires to beshielded from disturbing information are oftenvoiced. We argue, however, that there is nosuch thing as a right to remain in ignorance,where a right is understood as an entitlementthat trumps competing claims. This doesnot of course mean that information must alwaysbe forced upon unwilling recipients, only thatthere is no prima facie entitlement to beprotected from true or honest information aboutoneself. Any claims to be (...) shielded frominformation about the self must compete onequal terms with claims based in the rights andinterests of others. In balancing the weightand importance of rival considerations aboutgiving or withholding information, if rightsclaims have any place, rights are more likelyto be defensible on the side of honestcommunication of information rather than indefence of ignorance. The right to free speechand the right to decline to acceptresponsibility to take decisions for othersimposed by those others seem to us moreplausible candidates for fully fledged rightsin this field than any purported right toignorance. Finally, and most importantly, ifthe right to autonomy is invoked, a properunderstanding of the distinction between claimsto liberty and claims to autonomy show that theprinciple of autonomy, as it is understood incontemporary social ethics and English law,supports the giving rather than the withholdingof information in most circumstances. (shrink)

Urquhart and Méndez and Salto claim to establish completeness theorems for the system C and two of its negation extensions. In this note, we do the following three things: (1) provide a counterexample to all of these alleged completeness theorems, (2) attempt to diagnose the mistakes in the reported completeness proofs, and (3) provide complete axiomatizations of the desired systems.

This Article explores the connections between disability and health justice in service of further tethering the two theories and practices. The author contends that disability should shift from marker of health inequity alone to critical demographic in the analytical and practical application of health justice. This theoretical move creates a more robust understanding of the harms of health injustice, its complexities, and, remedially, reveals underexplored legal and policy pathways to promote health justice.

Can we trust our intuitive judgments of right and wrong? Are moral judgements objective? What reason do we have to do what is right and avoid doing what is wrong? In Conversations on Ethics, Alex Voorhoeve elicits answers to these questions from eleven outstanding philosophers and social scientists: -/- Ken Binmore; Philippa Foot; Harry Frankfurt; Allan Gibbard; Daniel Kahneman; Frances Kamm; Alasdair MacIntyre; T. M. Scanlon; Peter Singer; David Velleman; Bernard Williams. -/- The exchanges are direct, open, and sharp, (...) and give a clear account of these thinkers' core ideas about ethics. They also provide unique insights into their intellectual development - how they became interested in ethics, and how they conceived the ideas for which they became famous. Conversations on Ethics will engage anyone interested in moral philosophy. (shrink)

This paper rebuts suggestions made by Littlejohns et al that NICE is not ageist by analysing the concept of ageism. It recognises the constraints that finite resources impose on decision making bodies such as NICE and then makes a number of positive suggestions as to how NICE might more effectively and more justly intervene in the allocation of scarce resources for health.

The principle that people's lives and fundamental interests are of equal value and that they must therefore be given equal weight has immense intellectual appeal and intuitive force. It is often enough to discredit a theory or proposal simply to show that it violates this principle. When measures are said to be discriminatory or unfair it is this principle which is in play. Recent philosophers of widely differing schools and outlooks give versions of this principle a central role in their (...) theories. (shrink)