This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps, and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may (...) freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Dans ce livre, Ossip Lourié présente la philosophie russe contemporaine. Il explore les différentes écoles de pensée, les philosophes les plus influents et les débats actuels dans la philosophie russe. Ce livre permet de mieux comprendre la contribution de la Russie à la philosophie mondiale. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United (...) States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Life Is Short--Art Is Shorter is not just the first anthology to gather both mini-essays and short-short stories; readers, writers, and teachers will get will get an anthology; a course's worth of writing exercises; a rally for compression, concision, and velocity in an increasingly digital, post-religious age; and a meditation on the brevity of human existence. 1. We are mortal beings. 2. There is no god. 3. We live in a digital culture. 4. Art is related to the body and (...) to the culture. 5. Art should reflect these things. 6. Brevity rules. The book's 40 contributors include Donald Barthelme, Kate Chopin, Lydia Davis, Annie Dillard, Jonathan Safran Foer, Barry Hannah, Amy Hempel, Jamaica Kincaid, Wayne Koestenbaum, Anne Lamott, Daphne Merkin, Rick Moody, Dinty W. Moore, George Orwell, Jayne Anne Phillips, George Saunders, Lauren Slater, James Tate, and Paul Theroux. (shrink)

This volume offers a carefully argued, compelling theory of bioethics while eliciting practical implications for a wide array of issues including medical assistance-in-dying, the right to health care, abortion, animal research, and the definition of death. The authors' dual-value theory features mid-level principles, a distinctive model of moral status, a subjective account of well-being, and a cosmopolitan view of global justice. In addition to ethical theory, the book investigates the nature of harm and autonomous action, personal identity theory, and the (...) 'non-identity problem' associated with many procreative decisions. Readers new to particular topics will benefit from helpful introductions, specialists will appreciate in-depth theoretical explorations and a novel take on various practical issues, and all readers will benefit from the book's original synoptic vision of bioethics. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core. (shrink)

In this new textbook two Catholic ethicists with extensive teaching experience present a moral theology based on vision. David Matzko McCarthy and James M. Donohue draw widely from the Western philosophical tradition while integrating biblical and theological themes in order to explore such fundamental questions as What is good? The fourteen chapters in Moral Vision are short and thematic. Substantive study questions engage with primary texts and encourage students to apply theory to everyday life and common human experiences. The (...) book is accessibly written and flexible enough to fit into any undergraduate or seminary course on ethics. (shrink)

The book includes contributions by Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, George F. R. Ellis, Christopher D. Frith, Mark Hallett, David Hodgson, Owen D. Jones, Alicia Juarrero, J. A. Scott Kelso, Christof Koch, Hans Küng, Hakwan C. Lau, Dean Mobbs,...

Whether children have rights is a debate that in recent years has spilled over into all areas of public life. It has never been more topical than now as the assumed rights of parents over their children is challenged on an almost daily basis. David Archard offers the first serious and sustained philosophical examination of children and their rights. Archard reviews arguments for and against according children rights. He concludes that every child has at least the right to the (...) best possible upbringing. Denying that parents have any significant rights over their children, he is able to challenge current thinking about the proper roles of state and family in rearing children. Crucially, he considers the problem of how to define and understand `child abuse'. (shrink)

First published in 1989, Towards a Theory of Schooling explores and debates the relationship between school and society. It examines the form and function of one of humankind’s most important social institutions, following the cutting edge of pedagogic innovation from mainland Europe through the British Isles to the USA. In the process, the book throws important light upon the origins and evolution of the school based notions of class, curriculum, classroom, recitation and class teaching.

The year 2019 witnessed the 20th Jubileum of the Växjö conference series on quantum foundations and probability in physics. This has been the longest running series of conferences on the subject in history. Many old and new friendships were forged at Linnaeus University and the beautiful surrounding lakes of Småland, where once yearly everyone gathers to renew the debate and report their latest progress. 2019 also represents the Porcelain Anniversary—18 years—of the point of view on quantum theory known as QBism. (...) In this regard, the 2001 meeting in the series was pivotal in more ways than one. Not only did it instigate Fuchs’s break [1] from the earlier (Jaynes style) “objective Bayesianism” and neo-Copenhagen thinking of Caves et al. [2], but it was the first meeting at an international scale to indicate that the quantum information revolution might have something genuine to contribute to quantum foundational thought. That meeting set the pace far beyond Växjö by the participation of a number of luminaries of quantum information: The late Asher Peres, Daniel Greenberger, David Mermin, Herbert Bernstein, Carlton Caves, Rüdiger Schack, Richard Jozsa, Benjamin Schumacher, and John Smolin. One could almost hear a battle cry echo from the woods, “Quantum foundations from quantum information or die!” The foundations debate had turned so stale by the time, it would surely die without an influx of new thinking. (shrink)

Jared Diamond and other leading scholars have argued that the domestication of animals for food, labor, and tools of war has advanced the development of human society. But by comparing practices of animal exploitation for food and resources in different societies over time, David A. Nibert reaches a strikingly different conclusion. He finds in the domestication of animals, which he renames "domesecration," a perversion of human ethics, the development of large-scale acts of violence, disastrous patterns of destruction, and growth-curbing (...) epidemics of infectious disease. Nibert centers his study on nomadic pastoralism and the development of commercial ranching, a practice that has been largely controlled by elite groups and expanded with the rise of capitalism. Beginning with the pastoral societies of the Eurasian steppe and continuing through to the exportation of Western, meat-centered eating habits throughout today's world, Nibert connects the domesecration of animals to violence, invasion, extermination, displacement, enslavement, repression, pandemic chronic disease, and hunger. In his view, conquest and subjugation were the results of the need to appropriate land and water to maintain large groups of animals, and the gross amassing of military power has its roots in the economic benefits of the exploitation, exchange, and sale of animals. Deadly zoonotic diseases, Nibert shows, have accompanied violent developments throughout history, laying waste to whole cities, societies, and civilizations. His most powerful insight situates the domesecration of animals as a precondition for the oppression of human populations, particularly indigenous peoples, an injustice impossible to rectify while the material interests of the elite are inextricably linked to the exploitation of animals. Nibert links domesecration to some of the most critical issues facing the world today, including the depletion of fresh water, topsoil, and oil reserves; global warming; and world hunger, and he reviews the U.S. government's military response to the inevitable crises of an overheated, hungry, resource-depleted world. Most animal-advocacy campaigns reinforce current oppressive practices, Nibert argues. Instead, he suggests reforms that challenge the legitimacy of both domesecration and capitalism. (shrink)

Debates about the ethical and social implications of research that aims to extend human longevity by intervening in the ageing process have paid little attention to the attitudes of members of the general public. In the absence of empirical evidence, conflicting assumptions have been made about likely public attitudes towards life-extension. In light of recent calls for greater public involvement in such discussions, this target article presents findings from focus groups and individual interviews which investigated whether members of the general (...) public identify ethical issues surrounding life-extension, and if so, what these ethical issues are? In this study, while some participants were concerned primarily with the likely personal consequences of life-extension, for others the question of whether or not to pursue interventions to extend longevity, and how they should be implemented, clearly raised important ethical issues, many of which have been prominent in debates among bioethicists. (shrink)

Taken in general terms, “hermeneutics” refers to the study of understanding and interpretation, and, traditionally, this study focuses on considerations of the art, method, and foundations of research in the arts and humanities. The study of hermeneutics has been developed and applied in a number of areas of scholarly inquiry, such as biblical exegesis, literary studies, legal studies, and the medical humanities. In the context of post-war Continental European thought, however, hermeneutics is brought into a novel philosophical context and, with (...) this, comes to designate a philosophical movement – or, at least, a number of related philosophers and themes – concerned with the scope and limits of phenomenology, the character of human existence, the relation of the natural sciences and humanities, as well as a range of interrelated matters in the philosophy of history, the philosophy of language, the philosophy of art and aesthetics, practical philosophy, as well as in epistemology and the theory of meaning. (shrink)

Despite the importance of linguistic disclosure for philosophical hermeneutics there has been a conspicuous lack of attention to the question of how linguistic disclosure actually works. I examine the mechanics of disclosure by drawing on Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics as well as Ricoeur’s concept of translation and his theory of metaphor. My claim is that the background horizon of the unsaid that differs between languages enables each to disclose different things. This situation underscores the importance of engaging in East-West comparative philosophy, (...) of philosophizing across what Ricoeur calls the radical “fold” (pli) in what can be thought and experienced. (shrink)

The last one hundred years has seen unimaginable technological progress transforming every aspect of human life. Yet we seem unable to shake a profound unease with the direction of modern technology and its ideological siblings, global capitalism and massive consumption. Philosophers such as Marcuse, Borgmann and especially Heidegger, have developed important analyses of technological society, however in this book David Lewin argues that their ideas have remained limited either by their secular context, or by the narrow conception of religion (...) that they do allow. This study guides the reader along the newly formed paths of the philosophy of technology, arguing that where those paths come to an abrupt end, a religious discourse is needed to articulate the ultimate concerns that drive technological action. It calls for a meditation on the central insight of many religious traditions that, in an ultimate sense, we 'know not what we do.' To acknowledge that we know not what we do is the first step towards a theology of technology that draws upon insights from the mystical theological tradition, as well as from recent developments in the continental philosophy of religion. (shrink)

37 arguments were selected by random sampling methods from calls to radio and television phone-in programs. I discuss whether my general theory of inference evaluation applies to them and how frequently they exemplify a recognized argument scheme. I also compare their dependence on context, their complexity and their quality to those features of a previously studied sample of 50 scholarly arguments.

Although information and communication technologies have created hope for a shared pluralistic world, democratic principles are far from being respected in the public digital environment, and require a detailed knowledge of the laws by which they are governed. Von Foerster's conjecture is one of the early theoretical results that could help to understand these laws. Although neglected for a long time, the advent of the overlying layer of recommendation and ranking systems which is progressively occupying the web has given empirical (...) evidences of this conjecture, which predicts the consequences of increasing inter-individual influences on social dynamics and the susceptibility of these latter to manipulation. With both von Foerster's conjecture and the Snowden revelations in the background, we analyse the impact of ICT on human societies and their governance, in view of the fact that they have a massive impact on the way in which people influence each other in their tastes and actions. (shrink)

_Humanesis_ critically examines central strains of posthumanism, searching out biases in the ways that human–technology coupling is explained. Specifically, it interrogates three approaches taken by posthumanist discourse: scientific, humanist, and organismic. David Cecchetto’s investigations reveal how each perspective continues to hold on to elements of the humanist tradition that it is ostensibly mobilized against. His study frontally desublimates the previously unseen presumptions that underlie each of the three thought lines and offers incisive appraisals of the work of three prominent (...) thinkers: Ollivier Dyens, Katherine Hayles, and Mark Hansen. To materially ground the problematic of posthumanism, _Humanesis_ interweaves its theoretical chapters with discussions of artworks. These highlight the topos of sound, demonstrating how aurality might produce new insights in a field that has been dominated by visualization. Cecchetto, a media artist, scrutinizes his own collaborative artistic practice in which he elucidates the variegated causal chains that compose human–technological coupling. _Humanesis_ advances the posthumanist conversation in several important ways. It proposes the term “technological posthumanism” to focus on the discourse as it relates to technology without neglecting its other disciplinary histories. It suggests that deconstruction remains relevant to the enterprise, especially with respect to the performative dimension of language. It analyzes artworks not yet considered in the light of posthumanism, with a particular emphasis on the role of aurality. And the form of the text introduces a reflexive component that exemplifies how the dialogue of posthumanism might progress without resorting to the types of unilateral narratives that the book critiques. (shrink)

A book for thinkers young and old, Befuddled is a journey back in time to explore the lives, legends and ideas of ancient philosophers. Theories on the origin of the universe, the nature of the mind, and much more are presented alongside bizarre stories of mad emperors and talking skulls. Featuring an array of iconic figures, including Socrates, Pythagoras and the Buddha, Befuddled superbly illustrates how lives devoted to confusion and wonder not only give rise to fascinating ideas about reality, (...) they also brim with wild moments and remarkable tales. Author David Birch invites you to add your own life to the collection. With questions and activities designed to start you on your own extraordinary explorations, Befuddled will help you discover your own powers of thought while you experience for yourself the freaky thrills of befuddlement. (shrink)

In this book, Professor David Starrett organizes within a single framework the major theoretical foundations of modern public sector economics. He presents a unified treatment of market failure that encompasses externalities, pure public goods, local public goods and natural monopolies. Professor Starrett then develops and assesses the efficacy of the various planning procedures - including representative voting, benefit cost analysis, incentive compatible design mechanisms and the free market. He devotes attention to both national and local issues, with the aim (...) of identifying those methods that are best suited to each arena separately. Special attention is paid to financial arrangements, techniques for eliciting necessary information that is not readily available, and identification of biases that will result from incorrect procedures. This study will be useful to graduate students and economists who are interested in public finance or welfare economics. (shrink)

According to limitarianism, it is morally impermissible to be too rich. We consider three main challenges to limitarianism: the redundancy objection, the inconclusiveness objection, and the commitment objection. As a distributive principle, we find that limitarianism fails to overcome the three objections—even taking recent theoretical innovations into account. Instead, we suggest that the core commitment of limitarianism can be drawn from the excess intuition. It entails that at some point, people's claims to retain wealth become qualitatively different: they become preposterous (...) from the point of view of interpersonal morality and justification. Extreme wealth, we argue, adds a distinctive expressive reason to worry about inequality and insufficiency, compounding these other distributive injustices. In retaining or wasting excess wealth while others have too little, the wealthy send a message of complete disregard for the interests of their co-citizens. They express that their disadvantaged compatriots have a diminished moral standing. (shrink)

It is the purpose of this special issue to acknowledge the shifting definitions and uses of the conceptual and empirical in the field of Science and Technology Studies, and to explore the constructive potential of this condition. In this introductory essay we point to four formulations in STS for the relation between the conceptual and the empirical which do not figure them as binaries or opposites: the empirical as a path to the conceptual, the conceptual as practical and empirical, the (...) empirical as an instantiation of the conceptual, and a conceptual minimalism. We then point to some inspirations in contemporary thought for engaging creatively with the conceptual and empirical, and conclude by summarizing the contributions to this issue. (shrink)

What does the abundance of data and proliferation of data-making methods mean for the ordinary person, the person on the street? And, what could they come to mean? In this paper, we present an overview of a year-long project to examine just such questions and complicate, in some ways, what it is to ask them. The project is a collective exercise in which we – a mixture of social scientists, designers and makers – and those living and working on one (...) street in Cambridge, Tenison Road, are working to think through how data might be materialised and come to matter. The project aims to better understand the specificities and contingencies that arise when data is produced and used in place. Mid-way through the project, we use this commentary to give some background to the work and detail one or two of the troubles we have encountered in putting locally relevant data to work. We also touch on a methodological standpoint we are working our way into and through, one that we hope complicates the separations between subject and object in data-making and opens up possibilities for a generative refiguring of the manifold relations. (shrink)

Alexander Bogdanov’s first work of philosophy, Basic Elements of the Historical View of Nature, was fundamentally influenced by Friedrich Engels. As a Marxist philosopher seeking to elaborate a comprehensive, systematic, and scientific worldview appropriate for worker–students, Bogdanov found inspiration in Engels’s Anti-Dühring, which provided him with his monist conception of being and his ‘historical view of nature’ and pointed him toward three critical elements of his work: the monism of motion, Spinoza’s naturalist and determinist system, and Charles Darwin’s conception of (...) natural selection. Bogdanov’s overall goal was to demonstrate that in nature, life, the psyche, and society there is no such thing as self-generated motion; all change occurs because of external action. For the individual and for society this means that existence determines consciousness, and societies evolve as a result of their struggle for existence, which is manifested first and foremost in labor. (shrink)

Army Officers face increased moral pressure in modern warfare, where character judgement and ethical judgement are vital. This article reports the results of a study of 242 junior British Army officers using the Army Intermediate Concept Measure, comprising a series of professionally oriented moral dilemmas developed for the UK context. Results are suggestive of appropriate application of Army values to the dilemmas and of ethical reasoning aligning with Army excellence. The sample does slightly less well, however, for justification than for (...) action reasoning, and there are differences following initial training for infantry and artillery officers versus other branches of service. Dilemmas involving anti-torture methods and not covering up soldiers' failings generated best results compared to those requiring balance between compassion and mission, and negotiating personal relationships with military needs. Gender differences favouring women were less than those observed for other professional groups using similar measures. This research further develops a much-needed measure of ethical reasoning among junior Army officers, with potential for use among other ranks. This approach is advocated for other professional groups. (shrink)

A science sutra -- Non-self (Anatman) -- Impermanence (Anitya) -- Connectedness (Pratitya-Samutpada) -- Engagement, part 1 (Dukkha) -- Engagement, part 2 (Karma) -- Meaning (existential Biobuddhism?).

This book provides an interpretation of the late nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche as holding a distinct and original metaethical position, which is to say a theory about our practice of ethics. Rowe uses this interpretation to provide some interesting and thought-provoking criticisms of themes in contemporary metaethics.

Affective empathy has been variously characterized. First, I argue that we have reasons to prefer a narrower account of affective empathy, which requires the cognitive mechanisms of perspective-taking. Second, I mount a challenge to the standard account of affective matching thought to be required for affective empathy. On one widely held view, affective empathy requires an actual affective match between the subject and the target of empathy. I reject this view. While empathy often involves an actual match, we also count (...) as empathizing with the target if we share the fitting state in their situation. This wider account better captures a number of plausible cases of empathy, and it also better explains why we care about affective empathy. (shrink)

This book, a sequel to the author's well-received Luther in Context, illuminates Calvin's thought by placing it in the context of the theological and exegetical traditions - ancient, medieval, and contemporary - that formed it and contributed to its particular texture. Steinmetz addresses a range of issues almost as wide as the Reformation itself, including the knowledge of God, the problem of iconoclasm, the doctrines of justification and predestination, and the role of the state and the civil magistrate. Along the (...) way, Steinmetz also clarifies the substance of Calvin's quarrels with Lutherans, Catholics, Anabaptists, and assorted radicals from Ochino to Sozzini. An accessible yet authoritative general introduction to Calvin's thought, Calvin in Context engages a much wider range of primary sources than the standard introductions. It provides a context for understanding Calvin not from secondary literature about the later middle ages and Renaissance, but from the writings of Calvin's own contemporaries and the rich sources from which they drew. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 11, November 2019, Page 67-68.

This article considers the extent to which Bayesian networks with imprecise probabilities, which are used in statistics and computer science for predictive purposes, can be used to represent causal structure. It is argued that the adequacy conditions for causal representation in the precise context—the Causal Markov Condition and Minimality—do not readily translate into the imprecise context. Crucial to this argument is the fact that the independence relation between random variables can be understood in several different ways when the joint probability (...) distribution over those variables is imprecise, none of which provides a compelling basis for the causal interpretation of imprecise Bayes nets. I conclude that there are serious limits to the use of imprecise Bayesian networks to represent causal structure. (shrink)

In God and Mystery in Words David Brown uses the way in which poetry and drama have in the past opened people to the possibility of religious experience as a launch pad for advocating less wooden approaches to Christian worship today. So far from encouraging imagination and exploration, hymns and sermons now more commonly merely consolidate belief. Again, contemporary liturgy in both its music and its ceremonial fails to take seriously either current dramatic theory or the sociology of ritual. (...) Yet this was not always so. Imagery and hymns mattered, liturgial msic encouraged a sense of drama, sermons required rhetoric. In a characteristically stimulatling and inspiringly expansive study, that ranges from ancient Greek drama to modern poetry, from the meaning of the Logos to the history of vestments, David Brown pleads for a much wider focus on the kind of factors that aid experience of God. (shrink)