This chapter is perhaps best treated as a ‘site’ rather than a treatise. It employs disrupted writing strategies, based in turn on ‘walking’ practices and the authors’ background in performance, as tools for playful debate, collaboration, intervention, and spatial meaning-making. The chapter, like our walking, is intended to be porous; for others to read into it and connect from it and for the specificities and temporalities of sites to fracture, erode, and distress it. It draws on the outcomes of previous (...) works including site-specific performance works such as Mis-Guided Tours or published Mis-Guides, ‘drifts’, mythogeographic mapping, public art or installations, explorations of the Wienfluss, excavations of subterranean library stacks, and a recently installed network of plaques across an English seaside resort. (shrink)

American Sociology has changed radically since 1945. This volume traces these changes to the present, with special emphasis on the feminization of sociology and the decline of the science ideal as well as the challenges sociology faces in the new environment for universities.

A prolific essayist, novelist, translator, philosopher, and a critic of rare elegance, Pascal Quignard returns anew to the major questions of existence in _The Silent Crossing_, a haunting homage to life and liberty, to society and solitude, and to the binding and unbinding that constitute the weft of our lives. Drawing on materials from across many cultures, Quignard makes an effort to establish shared human values as the breeding ground for a modern Enlightenment. Considering atheism as a spiritual liberation, suicide (...) as a free act, and the rejection of society as a free choice, the author explores philosophical themes that have run through human civilizations—most often as heresies—from our earliest days. In his search for freedom, Quignard questions the binding dependency of religion, querying how, in a world where all forms of society presuppose that someone is looking over our shoulders, we can be free. These reflections, he implies, are the essential spiritual exercise for our times. Few voices in contemporary French literature are more distinct than that of Quignard. By reading this fragmentary, episodic assemblage of intimate experiences and borrowed tales, we open up a space of liberty, creating for the reader space for meditation and, perhaps, liberation. _“_Pascal Quignard is undoubtedly the most iconoclastic of contemporary French authors.”—Catherine Argand, _Lire_ “Quignard has redefined historical fiction as both hoax and enigma.”—_Burning Deck_ on _Wooden Tablets: Apronenia Avitia_. (shrink)

In order to defend the regress argument for foundationalism against Post’s objection that relevant forms of inferential justification are not transitive, Lydia McGrew and Timothy McGrew define a relation E of positive evidence, which, they contend, has the following features: It is a necessary condition for any inferential justification; it is transitive and irreflexive; and it enables both a strengthened regress argument proof against Post’s objection and an argument that nothing can ever appear in its own justificational ancestry. In reply, (...) we construct in their own terms both a counterexample to the would-be transitivity of E, and a related objection to their never-in-its-own-ancestry argument. We also rebut their rejection of certain counterexamples to the would-be transitivity of some forms of inferential justification. By doing so, and by questioning their transitivity claim for E, we aim to further the project of undermining the circularity arguments advanced by a zoo of skeptics, relativists, antirealists and internalists against realism and externalism. (shrink)

The problem of the nature of values and the relation between values and rationality is one of the defining issues of twentieth-century thought and Max Weber was one of the defining figures in the debate. In this book, Turner and Factor consider the development of the dispute over Max Weber's contribution to this discourse, by showing how Weber's views have been used, revised and adapted in new contexts. The story of the dispute is itself fascinating, for it cuts across (...) the major political and intellectual currents of the twentieth century, from positivism, pragmatism and value-free social science, through the philosophy of Jaspers and Heidegger, to Critical Theory and the revival of Natural Right and Natural Law. As Weber's ideas were imported to Britain and America, they found new formulations and new adherents and critics and became absorbed into different traditions and new issues. This book was first published in 1984. (shrink)

Bioethicists disagree over methods, theories, decision-making guides, case analyses and public policies. Thirty years ago, the thinking of many scholars coalesced around a principlist approach to bioethics. That mid-level mode of moral reasoning is now one of many approaches to moral deliberation. Significant variation in contemporary approaches to the study of ethical issues related to medicine, biotechnology and health care raises the question of whether bioethics exists as widely shared method, theory, normative framework or mode of moral reasoning.

Lawrence Kohlberg's writings on moral education remain the greatest influ-- ence on moral education today in the United States. His student, Carol Gilligan, is one of the most influential writers on feminist ethics and on the idea that there are gender differences in morals. In a remarkable passage, Kohlberg described Emile Durkheim's conception as 'the most philosophi-- cally and scientifically comprehensive, clear and workable approach to moral education extant'. He went on to say that the workability of the system has (...) been demonstrated in Soviet Russia, and describes what he calls the 'logical but to us rather horrifying innovations' suggested by Durkheim's ideas. (shrink)

The Consequence Argument has long been a staple in the defense of libertarianism, the view that free will is incompatible with causal determinism and that humans have free will. It is generally held that libertarianism is consistent with a certain naturalistic view of the world—that is, that libertarian free will can be accommodated without the postulation of entities or events which neither are identical to nor supervene on something physical. In this paper, I argue that libertarians who support their view (...) with the Consequence Argument are forced to reject this naturalistic worldview, since the Consequence Argument has a sister argument, which I call the Supervenience Argument, that cannot be rejected without threatening either the Consequence Argument or the naturalistic worldview in question. (shrink)

Max Weber, German economist, historian, sociologist, methodologist, and political thinker, is of philosophical significance for his attempted reconciliation of historical relativism with the possibility of a causal social science; his notion of a verstehende sociology; his formulation, use and epistemic account of the concept of ‘ideal types’; his views on the rational irreconcilability of ultimate value choices, and particularly his formulation of the implications for ethical political action of the conflict between ethics of conviction and ethics of responsibility; and his (...) sociological account of the causes and uniqueness of the western rationalization of life. These topics are closely related: Weber argued that the explanatory interests of the historian and social scientist vary historically and that the objects of their interest were constituted in terms of cultural points of view, and that consequently their categories are ultimately rooted in evaluations, and hence subjective. But he also argued that social science cannot dispense with causality, and that once the categories were chosen, judgments of causality were objective. The explanatory interests of the sociologist, as he defined sociology, were in understanding intentional action causally, but in terms of categories that were culturally significant, such as ‘rational action’. Much of his influence flowed from his formulation of the cultural situation of the day, especially the idea that the fate of the time was to recognize that evaluations were inescapably subjective and that the world had no inherent ‘meaning’. The existential implications of this novel situation for politics and learning were strikingly formulated by him: science could not tell us how to live; politics was as a choice between warring Gods. Weber’s scholarly work and his politics served as a model for Karl Jaspers, and a subject of criticism and analysis for other philosophers, such as Karl Löwith, Max Scheler, and the Frankfurt School. (shrink)

Open any standard bioethics textbook, and therein can be found a host of subjects ranging from the abortion rights controversy to the morality of xenographic tissue transplantation. Just as there is a wide scope to the subject matter of bioethics, its practitioners come from a multitude of disciplines, including law, medicine, nursing, theology, philosophy, sociology, and anthropology. And yet, despite a rich variety of investigators and methods, bioethicists overlook numerous subjects that deserve to be addressed. In particular, they neglect issues (...) of public health, preventive medicine, and social medicine. Although topics such as physician-assisted suicide, prenatal genetic testing, and the ethics of new reproductive technologies constitute the contemporary canon of bioethics and deserve sustained analysis, these subjects are not so significant that they should eclipse other issues. For example, gun control policies, the regulation of food additives. immunization programs, prenatal care, leave programs enabling employees to care for dying relatives, the provision of nutrition and medical care to the homeless, and the use of emergency rooms by the most impoverished citizens are all topics neglected by bioethicists. (shrink)

Since 9/11, the possibilities for pluralism and tolerance have been severely tested by a discourse of terrorism and security. The development of an intelligent and cosmopolitan understanding between religious communities in Europe and America has been compromised by a range of legal and political responses to terrorism. While the debate about the berqa has clearly indicated the problems relating to Muslim cultural differences, we argue that legal pluralism and in particular the question of Shari’a tribunals may prove to be a (...) more decisive test of Western multiculturalism. This article examines the many criticisms raised against religious arbitration in domestic affairs and considers the presence of the Shari’a at various levels of society, claiming that the evolution of Sharia-mindedness is compatible both with a faith-based life and with liberal ideals. However, the problem with religious courts lies elsewhere, namely with the fragmentation of social life and the erosion of citizenship. The article concludes by examining the prospects and problems of Turkish entry into the European Union with special reference to the domestic policies of the Justice and Development Party. (shrink)

Louis Mink wrote a classic study of R. G. Collingwood that led to his most important contribution to the philosophy of history, his account of narrative. Central to this account was the non-detachability thesis, that facts became historical facts through incorporation into narratives, and the thesis that narratives were not comparable to the facts or to one another. His book on Collingwood was critical of Collingwood's idea that there were facts in history that we get through self-knowledge but which are (...) nevertheless objective, his account of re-enactment, and his notion of absolute presuppositions. It is illuminating to compare Collingwood to Weber with respect to these puzzling arguments, for the same issues arise there in different form. Recent work in social neuroscience on mirroring allows a different approach to these puzzles: mirror system “knowledge“ of others and simulation fit, respectively, with Weber's idea of direct observational understanding and Collingwood's re-enactment account. This account allows for the detaching of historical facts about thoughts and action from narrative. (shrink)

L. J. Henderson was a central figure in Harvard discussions of the nature of science in the interwar period and served as a bridge between the sciences and the social sciences. Two key ideas were promoted by Henderson: systems and conceptual schemes, both of which spread quickly at Harvard and then beyond. In this article the focus will be on conceptual schemes, a term which had a distinctive origin in Henderson that accounts for some of the ambiguities in its adaptations. (...) Henderson spoke as a scientist speaking to philosophers rather than doing philosophy and sharply distinguished his aims from those that followed from Immanuel Kant. Henderson’s model was the scheme of ancient Greek medicine, which had persisted for millennia and was replaced by modern medicine. This was differentiated from earlier neo-Kantian and later Kuhnian variations. Henderson’s account was distinctive in placing the origins of conceptual schemes in intuitions about patterns formed in practice by people operating on concrete phenomena. The resulting schemes, he thought, had to be accepted on faith by students, but were, as he put it, walking sticks to enable communication and understanding rather than exclusive dogmas. Henderson was an enthusiast for Vilfredo Pareto, who was vilified at Harvard during the war by Carl J. Friedrich, which led not to the disuse of his ideas but to the erasure of their origins. (shrink)

This article explores the strategies available for defending Aquinas’s view of existence in the context of contemporary analytic philosophy. The rival view of existence prevalent among contemporary analytic philosophers is subject to serious objections. At the same time, the main contemporary analytic objections to Aquinas’s view can be adequately answered. The widespread use of “exist(s)” to ascribe existence to individuals and objects provides good reason to think that such use makes sense, and analogies like those of Aquinas can help to (...) illustrate the commonsense meaning of “exist(s)” to those who doubt it. The truth of Aquinas’s view of existence as a real property of individuals or objects can be defended at least in principle by appealing to its descriptive and explanatory usefulness. In addition to Aquinas’s own uses of it, there are a number of areas in contemporary analytic metaphysics where his view of existence could likely be of use, such as contemporary essentialism, substance-attribute ontology, and the revival of ontological pluralism. (shrink)

The dispute between simulation theorists and theory theorists follows a basic pattern in philosophical discussions of cognitive science. This chapter brings some of the topics of social theory into the discussion. The discussion of the problem of understanding in social theory has developed in two traditions: Verstehen, or empathy, the German tradition of Wilhelm Dilthey and Max Weber, and in taking the role of the other originating in the thought of G. H. Mead. Each regards understanding as both an activity (...) of theorists and of human beings themselves in the course of their dealings with one another. The topic of imitation became important in American psychology for reasons quite separate from its role in social theory. The psychological explanation holds that at least some emotions, and perhaps all real emotions, are universal and are explicable by features of human psychology, biology, and development that are themselves universal. (shrink)

Sex chromosomes are advantageous to mammals, allowing them to adopt a genetic rather than environmental sex determination system. However, sex chromosome evolution also carries a burden, because it results in an imbalance in gene dosage between females (XX) and males (XY). This imbalance is resolved by X dosage compensation, which comprises both X chromosome inactivation and X chromosome upregulation. X dosage compensation has been well characterized in the soma, but not in the germ line. Germ cells face a special challenge, (...) because genome wide reprogramming erases epigenetic marks responsible for maintaining the X dosage compensated state. Here we explain how evolution has influenced the gene content and germ line specialization of the mammalian sex chromosomes. We discuss new research uncovering unusual X dosage compensation states in germ cells, which we postulate influence sexual dimorphisms in germ line development and cause infertility in individuals with sex chromosome aneuploidy. (shrink)

Reimer ( Neuroethics 2008 ) believes that how we use language to characterize psychopathy may affect our judgments of moral responsibility. If we say a psychopath has a disorder we may reduce their responsibility for moral failure. If we say a psychopath is merely different, we may not reduce their responsibility. Vincent ( Neuroethics 2008 ) argues that if this were the case, a diagnosis of disorder would be both necessary and sufficient to reduce the responsibility of some agent for (...) moral failure. Vincent presents two examples to suggest that a disorder is neither necessary nor sufficient to exculpate an individual for moral failure: childhood and hypomania. Vincent suggests instead that our judgments of moral responsibility ought to be based on the individual’s capacity for moral agency. I will side with Vincent in this debate, but argue that the example she uses, hypomania, does not work. I will argue that a diagnosis of hypomania, part of Bipolar II Disorder, is sufficient to exculpate an individual for some moral failure. This is because there are responsibility-relevant capacities missing: the capacities for self-awareness and to control ones abilities. Without these capacities, the individual is not a responsible moral agent. Vincent will need to provide an alternative example to show that the presence of a disorder is not sufficient to exculpate an individual for moral failure. Whilst our use of language is important, that use reflects our judgments of the individual’s capacities for moral agency. Responsibilities are determined not only by capacities, but by the right kind of capacities, and this should be reflected in our moral judgments, and our use of language. (shrink)

The idea that the technologies one uses and the work experiences one has influence cognition is old, but somewhat vague, focused on how technology induced generalisable habits of mind. Technology creates a familiar world, which changes in large and small shocks, rather than in rational steps. This kind of change, at the tacit level, has characteristics of liminality. Cognitive science provides a vocabulary for discussing this problem that connects with several different strands of social theory, and points to various ways (...) of conceptualising the effects of digitalisation. If we focus on the tacitisation of skilled performance, we can see how the familiar is created and recreated, and identify processes by which this occurs, specifically pattern recognition in a liminal or liminoid state. In the past, and in the classic anthropology of the liminal, the familiar consisted of a world of common or shared objects, and the liminal states involved sacred ones. In the digital world, the choice of experience is voluntary, and the worlds are diverse, but the effects of object-induced involuntary pattern recognition are the same: they organise and reorganise cognition at a tacit, non-discursive, level. (shrink)