The authoress questions the historiographic dogma that, tracing back to F.W. Maitland, gave the pure «Englishry» of English law for granted, thus building its history on its exceptionality with respect to European tradition, from which it would not have been contaminated at all. The Anglo-Saxon historiographical analysis of the most important English constitutional document aims at answering to the provocative question: how English is Magna Carta? What role did jus commune play in its drafting? What is its relationship with contemporary (...) Roman Canon law? Through the examination of its cultural roots, the essay shows not only the substantial influence of Roman Canon law on Magna Carta, but also, more generally, the affinities and the common elements that characterize in principle the relationship between English juridical tradition and the continental one. (shrink)

This collection demonstrates the strong influence that humanism and freethought had in developing the history and ideals of black intellectualism. Most people are quick to note the profound influence that religion has played in African-American history: consoling the downtrodden slave or inspiring the abolitionists, the underground railroad, and the civil rights movement. But few are aware of the role humanism played in shaping the black experience: developing the thought and motivating the actions of powerful African-American intellectuals. Section One of this (...) book offers biographical sketches of such prominent black humanists as Frederick Douglass, Cheikh Anta Diop, W.E.B. DuBois, Hubert H. Harrison, and Richard Wright. Section Two features essays by black humanists: Douglass, DuBois, Charles W. Faulkner, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Ishmael Jaffree, Claude McKay, Melvin B. Tolson, and Bruce Wright. Section Three offers the views of contemporary black African humanists: Freda Amakye Ansah, Emmanuel Kofi Mensah, Nkeonye Otakpor, Franz Vanderpuye, and Kwasi Wiredu. Section Four contains interviews conducted by Allen on the subjects of black humanist activism, the Afroasiatic roots of classical civilization, and the Harlem Renaissance with: Martin G. Bernal, Charles Faulkner, Leonard Harris, Norman Hill, and Alaine Locke. (shrink)

In this paper, it is argued that metaphysics, conceived as an inquiry into the ultimate nature of mind-independent reality, is a rationally indispensable intellectual discipline, with the a priori science of formal ontology at its heart. It is maintained that formal ontology, properly understood, is not a mere exercise in conceptual analysis, because its primary objective is a normative one, being nothing less than the attempt to grasp adequately the essences of things, both actual and possible, with a view to (...) understanding as far as we can the fundamental structure of reality as a whole. Accordingly, it is urged, the deliverances of formal ontology have a modal and epistemic status akin to those of other a priori sciences, such as mathematics and logic, rather than constituting rivals to the claims of the empirical sciences, such as physics. (shrink)

Philosophers constantly discuss Responsibility. Yet in every discussion of which I am aware, a rather obvious point is ignored. The obvious point is that responsibility is ascribed to collectives, as well as to individual persons. Blaming attitudes are held towards collectives as well as towards individuals. Responsibility is often ascribed to nations, towns, clubs, groups, teams, and married couples. ‘Germany was responsible for the Second World War’; ‘The club as a whole is to blame for being relegated’. Such statements are (...) not rare. (shrink)

A book review of a "Psychology in Progress" collection of these early 1980s articles from a variety of cognitive science disciplines that were pushing back against behaviourism, exploring the nature and function of consciousness, &/or advancing (or rediscovering) content-driven or representational models. Book Chapters: Editor's introduction: "Human brain anatomy" Harry J. Jerison, "On the Evolution of mind" Keith Oatley, "Representations of the physical and social world" John O'Keefe, "Is consciousness the gateway to the hippocampal cognitive map? A speculative essay on (...) the neural basis of mind" David A. Oakley, "Cognition and imagery in animals" David A. Oakley, "Animal awareness, consciousness and self-image" Freda Newcome, "Neuropsychology of consciousness: a review of human clinical evidence" Joseph E. LeDoux, "Brain, mind and language" David A. Oakley and Lesley C. Eames, "The plurality of consciousness". (shrink)

Cet article est un nouvel examen des objections soulevées par Leibniz dans la controverse avec Clarke contre la théorie absolutiste de l'espace et du temps. Or la plupart de ces objections sont fondées sur le principe de raison suffisante; mais Leibniz utilise aussi le principe de l'identité des indiscernables, qu'il prétend déduire du principe de raison suffisante . Ce qui m'intéresse c'est que Leibniz présente parfois deux versions de la même objection: l'une reposant uniquement sur le principe de raison suffisante, (...) l'autre uniquement sur le principe de l'identité des indiscernables. Se pose alors la question suivante: Leibniz aurait-il pu soulever toutes les objections qu'il voulait contre la théorie absolutiste, en utilisant seulement le principe de l'identité des indiscernables? Il me semble qu'il aurait certainement pu le faire. Et de plus, je crois que si Leibniz avait suivi cette voie, son raisonnement contre la théorie absolutiste aurait été beaucoup plus convaincant. Ainsi donc, je me propose de mener l'attaque de Leibniz contre la théorie absolutiste, en isolant, reformulant, et exposant systématiquement sept arguments dont il se servait ou dont il aurait pu se servir, qui sont tous fondés sur le principe de l'identité des indiscernables. (shrink)

John Locke was one of the towering philosophers of the Enlightenment and arguably the greatest English philosopher. Many assumptions we now take for granted, about liberty, knowledge and government, come from Locke and his most influential works, _An Essay Concerning Human Understanding_ and _Two Treatises of Government_. In this superb introduction to Locke's thought, E.J. Lowe covers all the major aspects of his philosophy. Whilst sensitive to the seventeenth-century background to Locke's thought, he concentrates on introducing and assessing Locke in (...) a contemporary philosophical setting, explaining why he is so important today. Beginning with a helpful overview of Locke's life and times, he explains how Locke challenged the idea that the human mind and knowledge of the external world rested on innate principles, laying the philosophical foundations of empiricism later taken up by Berkeley and Hume. Subsequent chapters introduce and critically assess topics fundamental to understanding Locke: his theories of substance and identity, language and meaning, philosophy of action and free will, and political freedom and toleration. In doing so, he explains some of the more complex yet pivotal aspects of Locke's thought, such as his theory that language rests on ideas and how Locke's theory of personal identity paved the way for modern empirical psychology. A final chapter assesses Locke's legacy, and the book includes a helpful chronology of Locke's life and glossary of unfamiliar terms. (shrink)

I argue that to be compelled to do routine work is to be gravely harmed. Indeed, that pink - collar work is a more serious harm to women than rape. My purpose is to urge politically active feminists and feminist organizations to arrange their priorities accordingly and devote most of their resources to working for the elimination of sex segregation in employment.

Selected articles of Ēṭukūru Balarāmamūrti on Marxist philosophy; includes contributed on his life and work.

The behavior of individuals currently living will generally have long-term consequences that affect the well-being of those who will come to live in the future. Intergenerational interdependencies of this nature raise difficult moral issues because only the current generation is in a position to decide on actions that will determine the nature of the world in which future generations will live. Although most are willing to attach some weight to the interests of future generations, many would argue that it is (...) not necessary to treat these interests as equivalent to those of the current generation. A common approach in this context is to use a system of discounting to evaluate future benefits and harms. This paper assesses the logic of discounting drawing on the writings of economists and philosophers. Much of the economic literature concerns the choice of an appropriate social discount rate. The social discount rate can be taken to reflect beliefs about the rights of future generations, a subject that has been extensively debated in the phioosophic literature. The writings of both economists and philosophers concerned with the weight to attach to the interests of future generations are reviewed and evaluated in this paper and the implications for environmental policy are discussed. (shrink)

Objects which philosophers have traditionally categorized as abstract are standardly referred to by complex noun phrases of certain canonical forms, such as ‘the set of Fs’, ‘the number of Fs’, ‘the proposition that P’, and ‘the property of being F’. It is no accident that such noun phrases are well-suited to appear in ‘Fregean’ identity-criteria, or ‘abstraction’ principles, for which Frege’s criterion of identity for cardinal numbers provides the paradigm. Notoriously, such principlesare apt to create paradoxes, and the most intuitively (...) plausible ‘Fregean’ identity-criterion for properties is afflicted by this problem. In this case, it may be possible to overcome the difficulty by modifying the criterion in a way which requires an independent account of the existence-conditions of properties, but it appears that such a strategy demands acceptance of the doctrine of immanent realism—the view that a property exists only if it is exemplified by some object. (shrink)

This original and lively book explores Greek ideas about health and disease and their influence on Greek thought. Fundamental issues such as causation and responsibility, purification and pollution, mind-body relations and gender differences, authority and the expert and who can challenge them, reality and appearances, good government, happiness, and good and evil themselves are deeply implicated. Using the evidence not just from Greek medical theory and practice but also from epic, lyric, tragedy, historiography, philosophy, and religion, G. E. R. Lloyd (...) offers the first comprehensive account of the influence of Greek thought about health and disease on the Greek imagination. (shrink)

This paper assesses several prominent recent attacks on the view that epistemic justification is conceptually prior to knowledge. I argue that this view—call it the Received View (RV)—emerges from these attacks unscathed. I start with Timothy Williamson’s two strongest arguments for the claim that all evidence is knowledge (E>K), which impugns RV when combined with the claim that justification depends on evidence. One of Williamson’s arguments assumes a false epistemic closure principle; the other misses some alternative (to E>K) explanations of (...) a putative fact about the evidence a particular subject has. Next, I neutralize each of Jonathan Sutton’s three recent arguments to the conclusion that any justified belief constitutes knowledge. Finally, I consider a recent analysis of justification due to Alexander Bird, according to which justified belief is possible knowledge. I argue that Bird’s analysis delivers neither a sufficient nor (more importantly) a necessary condition for justification. [Word count: 149]. (shrink)

This paper locates its genesis in a small town called Vitebsk in Belorussia which experienced a flowering of creativity and artistic energy that led to significant modernist experimentation in the years 1917–1921. Marc Chagall, returning from the October Revolution took up the position of art commissioner and developed an academy of art that became the laboratory for Russian modernism. Chagall’s Academy, Bakhtin’s Circle, and Malevich’s experiments, artistic group UNOVIS—all in fierce dialogue with one another—made the town of Vitebsk into an (...) artistic crucible in the early twentieth century. We argue that this creative collective transformed creative energies of Russian drama, music, theatre, art, and philosophy in a distinctive contribution to modernism, structuralism and formalism that contributed richly to the social understanding of creativity itself that is so evident across Mikhail Bakhtin’s subsequent body of work, and elsewhere across the world. This paper argues that a consideration of such interplay has much potential for twenty-first century educational philosophy. (shrink)

I venture to call the attention of classical scholars to two legends about Roman Emperors gleaned amid the arid waste of theological nonsense which passed for literature among the Copts, in the hope that they may have better luck than I have had in tracing them to some classical source. The first is taken from MS. Par. Copte 131, fol. 40, a single leaf of what seems to be a geographical and historical encyclopaedia.1 The writer who is treating in a (...) very discursive way of Ethiopia, states that Nero or Domitian—a strange pair to run in double harness—caused an island in the Red Sea to be watered with oil. The description of that island is mixed up with a mention of the original divisions of the Indians—a term which as usual in early days embraces both Indians and Ethiopians,—and their subsequent changes; and as that too may be of interest to students of ancient geography, I will translate the passage in full. (shrink)

The emergence of Latin monks, and then the spread of the monastic orders of the Catholic Church in Rus-Ukraine occurred in the conditions of political-religious transformations of the nineteenth century. Acceptance of baptism from Byzantium did not mean separation from Rome. The Eastern and Western churches were still in unity at that time. The Pope remained the formal head of all Christianity. In 988, as the Nikon Chronicle attests, the ambassadors from Rome and the relics of the saints were brought (...) to the Prince of Kiev during his march to Korsun. It was about the relics of St. Clement, the Pope, found by Cyril and Methodius in the same Korsun on his return from a missionary journey to Khazaria. Two years earlier, according to a chronicle, Vladimir had received ambassadors from Rome who had invited him to adopt Christianity in Latin. There are reports that Vladimir also sent ambassadors to Rome. (shrink)

The contention that abortion harms women constitutes a new strategy employed by the pro-life movement to supplement arguments about fetal rights. David C. Reardon is a prominent promoter of this strategy. Post-abortion syndrome purports to establish that abortion psychologically harms women and, indeed, can harm persons associated with women who have abortions. Thus, harms that abortion is alleged to produce are multiplied. Claims of repression are employed to complicate efforts to disprove the existence of psychological harm and causal antecedents of (...) trauma are only selectively investigated. We argue that there is no such thing as post-abortion syndrome and that the psychological harms Reardon and others claim abortion inflicts on women can usually be ascribed to different causes. We question the evidence accumulated by Reardon and his analysis of data accumulated by others. Most importantly, we question whether the conclusions Reardon has drawn follow from the evidence he cites. (shrink)

Each month brings new scientific findings that demonstrate the ways in which human activities, from resource extraction to carbon emissions, are doing unprecedented, perhaps irreparable damage to our world. As we hear these climate change reports and their predictions for the future of Earth, many of us feel a sickening sense of _déjà vu_, as though we have already seen the sad outcome to this story. Drawing from recent scholarship that analyzes climate change as a form of “slow violence” that (...) humans are inflicting on the environment, _Climate Trauma_ theorizes that such violence is accompanied by its own psychological condition, what its author terms “Pretraumatic Stress Disorder.” Examining a variety of films that imagine a dystopian future, renowned media scholar E. Ann Kaplan considers how the increasing ubiquity of these works has exacerbated our sense of impending dread. But she also explores ways these films might help us productively engage with our anxieties, giving us a seemingly prophetic glimpse of the terrifying future selves we might still work to avoid becoming. Examining dystopian classics like _Soylent Green _alongside more recent examples like _The Book of Eli_, _Climate Trauma_ also stretches the limits of the genre to include features such as _Blindness_, _The Happening_, _Take Shelter_, and a number of documentaries on climate change. These eclectic texts allow Kaplan to outline the typical blind-spots of the genre, which rarely depicts climate catastrophe from the vantage point of women or minorities. Lucidly synthesizing cutting-edge research in media studies, psychoanalytic theory, and environmental science, _Climate Trauma _provides us with the tools we need to extract something useful from our nightmares of a catastrophic future. (shrink)

Context: Phenomenology and the enactive approach pose a unique challenge to dream research: during sleep one seems to be relatively disconnected from both world and body. Movement and perception, prerequisites for sensorimotor subjectivity, are restricted; the dreamer’s experience is turned inwards. In cognitive neurosciences, on the other hand, the generally accepted approach holds that dream formation is a direct result of neural activations in the absence of perception, and dreaming is often equated with “delusions.” Problem: Can enactivism and phenomenology account (...) for the variety of dream experiences? What kinds of experiential and empirical approaches are required in order to probe into dreaming subjectivity? Investigating qualities of perception, sensation, and embodiment in dreams, as well as the relationship between the dream-world and waking-world requires a step away from a delusional or altered-state framework of dream formation and a step toward an enactive integrative approach. Method: In this article, we will focus on the “depth” of dream experiences, i.e., what is possible in the dream state. Our article is divided into two parts: a theoretical framework for approaching dreaming from an enactive cognition standpoint; and discussion of the role and strategies for experimentation on dreaming. Based on phenomenology and theories of enactivism, we will argue for the primacy of subjectivity and imagination in the formation of lived experience. Results: We propose that neurophenomenology of dreaming is a nascent discipline that requires rethinking the relative role of third-, first- and second-person methodologies, and that a paradigm shift is required in order to investigate dreaming as a phenomenon on a continuum of conscious phenomena as opposed to a break from or an alteration of consciousness. Implications: Dream science, as part of the larger enterprise of consciousness and subjectivity studies, can be included in the enactive framework. This implies that dream experiences are neither passively lived nor functionally disconnected from dreamers’ world and body. We propose the basis and some concrete strategies for an empirical enactive neurophenomenology of dreaming. We conclude that investigating dream experiences can illuminate qualities of subjective perception and relation to the world, and thus challenge the traditional subject-object juxtaposition. Constructivist content: This article argues for an interdisciplinary enactive cognitive science approach to dream studies. (shrink)

Oncogenic hyperplasia is the first and inevitable stage of formation of a (solid) tumor. This stage is also the core of many other proliferative diseases. The present work proposes the first minimal model that combines homeorhesis with oncogenic hyperplasia where the latter is regarded as a genotoxically activated homeorhetic dysfunction. This dysfunction is specified as the transitions of the fluid of cells from a fluid, homeorhetic state to a solid, hyperplastic-tumor state, and back. The key part of the model is (...) a nonlinear reaction-diffusion equation (RDE) where the biochemical-reaction rate is generalized to the one in the well-known Schlögl physical theory of the non-equilibrium phase transitions. A rigorous analysis of the stability and qualitative aspects of the model, where possible, are presented in detail. This is related to the spatially homogeneous case, i.e. when the above RDE is reduced to a nonlinear ordinary differential equation. The mentioned genotoxic activation is treated as a prevention of the quiescent G0-stage of the cell cycle implemented with the threshold mechanism that employs the critical concentration of the cellular fluid and the nonquiescent-cell-duplication time. The continuous tumor morphogeny is described by a time-space-dependent cellular-fluid concentration. There are no sharp boundaries (i.e. no concentration jumps exist) between the domains of the homeorhesis- and tumor-cell populations. No presumption on the shape of a tumor is used. To estimate a tumor in specific quantities, the model provides the time-dependent tumor locus, volume, and boundary that also points out the tumor shape and size. The above features are indispensable in the quantitative development of antiproliferative drugs or therapies and strategies to prevent oncogenic hyperplasia in cancer and other proliferative diseases. The work proposes an analytical-numerical method for solving the aforementioned RDE. A few topics for future research are suggested. (shrink)

A remarkable collection of photographs by an ex-Marine who worked as a lawyer in Lawrence County, Ohio, for around thirty-six years.

Across a wide range of legal contexts, E. Thomas Sullivan and Richard S. Frase identify three basic ways that government measures and private remedies have been ...

There are at least three different genealogical accounts of morality: the ontogenetic, the sociohistorical, and the evolutionary. One can thus construct, in principle, three distinct genealogical debunking arguments of morality, i.e., arguments that appeal to empirical data, or to an empirical hypothesis, about the origin of morality to undermine either its ontological foundation or the epistemic credentials of our moral beliefs. The genealogical account that has been, particularly since the early 2000s, the topic of a burgeoning line of inquiry in (...) the metaethical literature is the one that explains the origin of moral thinking by appealing to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution through natural selection. For this reason, when it comes to genealogical debunking arguments, it is various types of evolutionary debunking argument (EDA) that are the focus of the current debate between moral skeptics and moral realists. Evolutionary moral debunkers maintain that the capacity to make moral judgments is an evolved trait—a view accepted by most of their detractors. They maintain, in addition, that such a capacity is an adaptation—i.e., a trait selected for because it enhances reproduction and survival—and not merely either a by-product of an adaptation or an evolutionary accident—a view accepted by fewer of their detractors. Roughly put, the thrust of EDAs is that biological evolution is aimed, not at moral belief-forming processes that are reliable, but at moral belief-forming processes that are adaptive. In other words, the evolutionary function of those processes is not that of tracking the moral truth: their general success at matching or accurately representing allegedly objective or attitude-independent moral facts, properties, or truths explains neither their emergence nor their persistence. Humans are therefore disposed to make moral judgments regardless of the evidence to which they are exposed, regardless of whether there are or are not objective moral facts, properties, or truths. In the contemporary scene, the most important and influential EDAs are those advanced by Richard Joyce and Sharon Street. Although Joyce’s EDA is more elaborate than Street’s inasmuch as it is based on a detailed evolutionary account of morality, it is Street’s EDA that has received the most attention among those seeking to defend moral realism against EDAs. If an EDA can establish at most an epistemological conclusion, then it could be argued that Joyce’s argument (at least the version defended in his later works) is superior to Street’s given that the conclusion of the former is epistemological whereas that of the latter is ontological. Indeed, while Joyce’s EDA is taken to support epistemological moral skepticism, according to which our moral beliefs are epistemically unjustified, Street’s is taken to support moral anti-realism (moral constructivism in particular), according to which attitude-independent moral facts do not exist. (shrink)