At the intersection of metaphysics and social theory, this book presents and examines Adorno's unusual concept of possibility and aims to answer how we are to articulate the possibility of a redeemed life without lapsing into a vague and naïve utopianism.

This article documents experiences of Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra’s virtual, synchronous improvisation sessions during COVID-19 pandemic via interviews with 29 participants. Sessions included an international, gender balanced, and cross generational group of over 70 musicians all of whom were living under conditions of social distancing. All sessions were recorded using Zoom software. After 3 months of twice weekly improvisation sessions, 29 interviews with participants were undertaken, recorded, transcribed, and analyzed. Key themes include how the sessions provided opportunities for artistic development, enhanced (...) mood, reduced feelings of isolation, and sustained and developed community. Particular attention is placed upon how improvisation as a universal, real time, social, and collaborative process facilitates interaction, allowing the technological affordances of software (latencies, sound quality, and gallery/speaker view) and hardware (laptop, tablet, instruments, microphones, headphones, and objects in room) to become emergent properties of artistic collaborations. The extent to which this process affects new perceptual and conceptual breakthroughs for practitioners is discussed as is the crucial and innovative relationship between audio and visual elements. Analysis of edited films of the sessions highlight artistic and theoretical and conceptual issues discussed. Emphasis is given to how the domestic environment merges with technologies to createThe Theatre of Home. (shrink)

This article seeks an improved understanding of nurse autonomy by looking at nursing through the lens of what recent feminist scholars have called ‘relational’ autonomy. A relational understanding of autonomy means a shift away from older views focused on individuals achieving independence, towards a view that seeks meaningful self-direction within a context of interdependency. The main claim made here is that nurse autonomy is, indeed, relational. The article begins with an explanation of the notion of relational autonomy. It then explains (...) both the collective and the individual application of the term ‘professional autonomy’. Finally, it argues that both senses of professional autonomy are best understood as relational, and suggests some implications of this conclusion. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that physicalism faces its most serious challenge when it comes to making room for the phenomenal character of psychological experience, its so-called what-it-is-like aspect. The challenge has surfaced repeatedly over the past two decades in a variety of forms. In a particularly striking one, Frank Jackson considers a situation in which Mary, a brilliant scientist who knows all the physical facts there are to know about psychological experience, has spent the whole of her life in a (...) black and white room. He asks, What will happen when Mary is released from her black and white room or is given a colour television monitor? Will she learn anything or not? It seems just obvious that she will learn something about the world and our visual experience of it. But then it is inescapable that her previous knowledge was incomplete. But she had all the physical information. (Jackson 1986: 130). (shrink)

In this paper, I explore briefly the "secular priesthood" metaphor often applied to bioethicists. I next ask: if, despite our discomfort with the metaphor, we were to embrace the best aspects of the priesthood(s) ? which I identify as the missionaries' willingness to work among sinners and lepers, at their own peril ? would we be able to live up to that standard of bravery? I then draw a parallel with the fears of contagion currently be voiced (by Carl Elliott (...) and others), with regard to bioethicists working in or near corporate settings. I argue that such fears may themselves have a number of deleterious effects, and I suggest several possible positive steps in response to that fear. (shrink)

The role of Jewish activism in the transformative changes that have occurred in the West in recent decades continues to be controversial. Here I respond to several issues putatively related to Jewish influence, particularly the “default hypothesis” that Jewish IQ and urban residency explain Jewish influence and the role of the Jewish community in enacting the 1965 immigration law in the United States; other issues include Jewish ethnocentrism and intermarriage and whether diaspora Jews are hypocritical in their attitudes on immigration (...) to Israel versus the United States. The post-World War II era saw the emergence of a new, substantially Jewish elite in America that exerted influence on a wide range of issues that formed a virtual consensus among Jewish activists and the organized Jewish community, including immigration, civil rights, and the secularization of American culture. Jewish activism in the pro-immigration movement involved: intellectual movements denying the importance of race in human affairs; establishing, staffing, and funding anti-restrictionist organizations; recruiting prominent non-Jews to anti-restrictionist organizations; rejecting the ethnic status quo as a goal because of fear of a relatively homogeneous white majority; leadership in Congress and the executive branch. (shrink)

There is no indication of time dilation of clocks or of length contraction of rods in Marzke and Wheeler's clock or in Desloge's metrosphere.

Nanotechnology research is beginning to see widespread coverage in the media and popular science literatures, but discussions of hopes and fears about nanotechnology have already become polarised into utopian and dystopian visions. More moderate discussions focus on the near-term applications of nanotechnologies, and on potential benefits and harms. However, in exploring the social and ethical implications of nanotechnology, important lessons should be learned from experiences in other fields. In particular, studies of the ethical, legal, and social issues of genetics research (...) have successfully mapped out many of the issues that arise when new technologies are deployed. It is our contention that, for the most part, the ethical and social issues arising in nanomedicine are not altogether new, and thus do not require novel ethical principles or frameworks, nor a massive investment in ‘NELSI’ research. Instead, what is needed is support for the development of a culture of ethics amongst scientists and clinicians, basic scientific and medical knowledge for bioethicists, and a social competency for citizens to participate actively in debates about the implications of new technologies in general. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question of normativity in Hegel by examining the role of ‘undialectical’ resistance to dialectical development. Beginning with a general overview of dialectical normativity and what it might mean to be ‘undialectical,’ the focus then shifts to a privileged example in Hegel’s writings: Sophocles’ Antigone. The central claim of the paper is the following: The very contradictions that fuel dialectical normativity can also trap individuals within an obsolete actuality, without immediate hope of escape. Indeed, the irreducible dependence (...) of dialectical thinking upon the actions and decisions of individual consciousness expose it to the threat of continual stasis or regression. This ineliminable possibility of failure is what is here called the ‘undialectical’ moment of the dialectic, which Hegel understands rather as a negative condition of possibility of freedom and rationality. (shrink)

Background: When adolescent boys experience close, secure relationships with their parents and peers, the implications are potentially far reaching, including lower levels of mental health problems in adolescence and young adulthood. Here we use rare prospective intergenerational data to extend our understanding of the impact of adolescent attachments on subsequent postpartum mental health problems in early fatherhood.Methods: At age 17–18 years, we used an abbreviated Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment to assess trust, communication, and alienation reported by 270 male (...) participants in their relationships with mothers, fathers, and peers. More than a decade later, we assessed the adult males, now fathers, at 12 months postpartum for symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress. Logistic regression was used to examine the extent to which attachment dimensions predicted paternal postpartum mental health, adjusting for potential confounding, and with assessment for interactions between parent and peer attachments.Results: Trust in mothers and peers, and good communication with fathers during adolescence, were associated with 5 to 7 percentage point reductions in postpartum mental health symptoms in early fatherhood. Weak evidence of parent-peer interactions suggested secure attachments with either parent or peer may compensate for an insecure attachment with the other.Conclusions: Our results suggest that fostering trust and communication in relationships that adolescent boys have with parents and peers may have substantial effects on rates of paternal postpartum mental health problems. The protective benefits may be preventative in intergenerational cycles of risk for mental health problems. (shrink)

Book Information Perception and Reason. By Bill Brewer. Clarendon Press. Oxford. 1999. Pp. xviii + 281.

This paper argues that efforts to understand historically remote patterns of thought are driven away from their original meaning if the investigation focuses on reconstruction of concepts. It is simply not appropriate to be looking for an archaic concept of soul, name or dream, for example, when considering the earliest documents which attest to their writers’ beliefs about certain types of phenomena. Instead, we propose to employ the notion of cognitive complex in order to investigate some important philosophical themes in (...) Ancient Egyptian, Ancient Iranian, and Ancient Near Eastern documents. Our principal theoretical claim is that archaic thought does not work with concepts but with complexes whose salient features are an over-abundance of properties, an over-production of connections, and weakness in abstraction. The basic level of complex formation may be the most inclusive level at which it is possible to form a mental image. Specific studies are focused on ancient texts which exhibit archaic patterns of thought. In Egyptian texts, “manifestation” seems to convey something which all categories of beings are capable of becoming, being and having, assuming and leaving; the “name” was considered to be an essential component of the individual’s survival; symbolic representations, such as images and words, are causally connected to the ‘objects’ the image or word signifies. In ANE records the human etemmu was plainly the corpse or skeleton of the dead person; on the other hand it was also the shadowy, volatile image of what he was during life. In ANE records the baffling idea of the divine me referred to an entire cultural area, an acquisition of civilized life; but at the same time it is also the result of an invention, a divine decision. The complexes involved in these archaic ideas about soul, name and dream are ideas fused with their ‘objects’; they have unstable traits and prototypical instances; and are thought at the most abstract level which have concrete images. (shrink)

In this essay, the general ideas of Peirce’s theories of logic are brought together in an attempt to show how the various aspects of logic were arranged to develop an objective representation of the universal forms of reasoning.

In this article, I address the question: what kind of normative principles should regulate the governance processes through which migration across international borders is managed? I begin by contrasting two distinct categories of normative controversy relating to this question. The first is a familiar set of moral controversies about justice within border governance, concerning what I call the ethics of exclusion. The second is a more theoretically neglected set of normative controversies about how institutional capacity for well functioning border governance (...) can best be achieved, concerning what I call the constitution of control of international borders. I argue that progress can be made in resolving controversies of the latter kind by applying a new normative theory of political legitimacy, distinct from the moral theories of justice routinely applied to ethics of exclusion controversies. On the ‘collective agency’ model of political legitimacy that I propose here, principles of political legitimacy have the regulatory role of combating complex collective action problems that may otherwise impede an institution’s collectively valuable functions. Through applying this theory, I sketch some provisional prescriptions for the design of international border governance institutions that may follow from the demand for strengthening their political legitimacy. (shrink)

This textbook for the undergraduate vector calculus course presents a unified treatment of vector and geometric calculus. It is a sequel to my Linear and Geometric Algebra. That text is a prerequisite for this one. -/- Linear algebra and vector calculus have provided the basic vocabulary of mathematics in dimensions greater than one for the past one hundred years. Just as geometric algebra generalizes linear algebra in powerful ways, geometric calculus generalizes vector calculus in powerful ways.

Jan Zwicky suggests that Lyric Philosophy may be read as a “letter to a revered parent—with whom I have quarrelled, but by whom I still wish to be understood.” Though the “parent” thinker to whom she refers is Freud, Zwicky’s conversation with Simone Weil in Wisdom & Metaphor addresses Weil as a “foremother” in the act of making “herself clear to herself.” This paper examines Weil’s role in Wisdom & Metaphor and considers Weil as an influence in Zwicky’s poetry, reading (...) “relinquishing” in Zwicky’s poetry and “decreation” in Weil’s philosophy as metaphors that resonate and debate with each other. (shrink)

This article presents a narratological reading of the Gospel of Mark with special attention given to the role, function and rhetorical impact of point of view. It is argued that through the use of ‘witnesses’ ranging from the omniscient narrator, to the character God, to the Old Testament Scriptures, the author of Mark presents a point of view that his implied reader would find difficult to counter. In addition to this, the article demonstrates that the motifs of allegiance, misunderstanding and (...) opposition in the Second Gospel are almost entirely confined to the adoption or rejection of the point of view being advocated for by the author of Mark. In the end, it is shown that only in the death of Jesus on the cross and the subsequent ‘centurion’s confession’ are the motifs resolved and is the point of view of Mark accepted by a human character. (shrink)

The extent to which a HEC becomes involved with policy formation depends in large measure on the credibility the committee has within the institution. Although on the basis of training, insight, or experience the HEC is in an ideal position to formulate policy, premature involvement in this area can jeopardize the effectiveness of the HEC in other areas which are equally if not more important. To the extent that the HEC does engage in policy formation it must do so with (...) considerable political as well as ethical acumen. (shrink)

As the title suggests, this is a volume of eighteen recent essays on Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz. The idea for this compilation arose out of Jonathan Bennett’s 1995 National Endowment for the Humanities Seminar on Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz. The authors, many of whom were involved in that seminar, worked together to create this kind of loose dialogue. While each essay stands by itself, several of the works in the volume show evidence of the influence of the other authors. As (...) the editors note, “Each author commented on at least two other chapters before the final works were submitted”, and it shows. Furthermore, the volume is consistently edited, with a coherent style, and includes provocative and scholarly essays. (shrink)

What is introspective know ledge of one’s own intentional states like? This paper aims to make plausible the view that certain cases of self-knowledge, namely the cogito-type ones, are enough like perception to count as cases of quasi-observation. To this end it considers the highly influential arguments developed by Sydney Shoemaker in his recent Royce Lectures. These present the most formidable challenge to the view that certain cases of self-knowledge are quasi-observational and so deserve detailed examination. Shoemaker’s arguments are directed (...) against two models of ordinary perception, the “object perception model” and the “broad perceptual model”. I argue that the core theses that Shoemaker associated with them are either dubious in their own right or applicable to certain cases of self-knowledge. Overall the aim is to show that there is such a variety of patterns in each case that simple analogies or disanalogies are unhelpful. (shrink)

This paper looks at the relationship between spacetime functionalism and Harvey Brown’s dynamical relativity. One popular way of reading and extending Brown’s programme in the literature rests on viewing his position as a version of relationism. But a kind of spacetime functionalism extends the project in a different way, by focussing on the account Brown gives of the role of spacetime in relativistic theories. It is then possible to see this as giving a functional account of the concept of spacetime (...) which may be applied to theories that go beyond relativity. This paper explores the way in which both the relationist project and the functionalist project relate to Brown’s work, despite being incompatible. Ultimately, these should not be seen as two conflicting readings of Brown, but two different directions in which to take his project. (shrink)

I argue that the best spacetime setting for Newtonian gravitation (NG) is the curved spacetime setting associated with geometrized Newtonian gravitation (GNG). Appreciation of the ‘Newtonian equivalence principle’ leads us to conclude that the gravitational field in NG itself is a gauge quantity, and that the freely falling frames are naturally identified with inertial frames. In this context, the spacetime structure of NG is represented not by the flat neo-Newtonian connection usually made explicit in formulations, but by the sum of (...) the flat connection and the gravitational field. 1 Introduction2 Newtonian Gravity: The Orthodox Approach3 Newtonian Gravity: Additional Symmetries4 Cosmological Considerations5 A Newtonian Equivalence Principle: Inertial Frames in Newtonian Gravitation6 Theory Equivalence?7 Conclusion. (shrink)

I argue that the need to understand spacetime structure as emergent in quantum gravity is less radical and surprising it might appear. A clear understanding of the link between general relativity's geometrical structures and empirical geometry reveals that this empirical geometry is exactly the kind of thing that could be an effective and emergent matter. Furthermore, any theory with torsion will involve an effective geometry, even though these theories look, at first glance, like theories with straightforward spacetime geometry. As it's (...) highly likely that there will be a role for torsion in quantum gravity, it's also highly likely that any theory of quantum gravity will require us to get to grips with emergent spacetime structure. (shrink)

Self-knowledge is the focus of considerable attention from philosophers: Knowing Our Own Minds gives a much-needed overview of current work on the subject, bringing together new essays by leading figures. Knowledge of one's own sensations, desires, intentions, thoughts, beliefs, and other attitudes is characteristically different from other kinds of knowledge: it has greater immediacy, authority, and salience. The contributors examine philosophical questions raised by the distinctive character of self-knowledge, relating it to knowledge of other minds, to rationality and agency, externalist (...) theories of psychological content, and knowledge of language. Together these original, stimulating, and closely interlinked essays demonstrate the special relevance of self-knowledge to a broad range of issues in epistemology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of language. (shrink)

Several modern accounts of explanation acknowledge the importance of abstraction and idealization for our explanatory practice. However, once we allow a role for abstraction, questions remain. I ask whether the relation between explanations at different theoretical levels should be thought of wholly in terms of abstraction, and argue that changes of the quantities in terms of which we describe a system can lead to novel explanations that are not merely abstractions of some more detailed picture. I use the example of (...) phase transitions as described by statistical mechanics and thermodynamics to illustrate this, and to demonstrate some details of the relationship between abstraction, idealization, and novel explanation. (shrink)

Miranda Fricker’s influential concept of epistemic injustice has recently seen application to many areas of interest, with an increasing body of healthcare research using the concept of epistemic injustice in order to develop both general frameworks and accounts of specific medical conditions and patient groups. This paper illuminates tensions that arise between taking steps to protect against committing epistemic injustice in healthcare, and taking steps to understand the complexity of one’s predicament and treat it accordingly. Work on epistemic injustice is (...) therefore at risk of obfuscating legitimate and potentially fruitful inquiry. This paper uses Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalomyelitis as a case study, but I suggest that the key problems identified could apply to other cases within healthcare, such as those classed as Medically Unexplained Illnesses, Functional Neurological Disorders and Psychiatric Disorders. Future work on epistemic injustice in healthcare must recognise and attend to this tension to protect against unsatisfactory attempts to correct epistemic injustice. (shrink)

In Simone de Beauvoir's Philosophy of Lived Experience, Eleanore Holveck presents Simone de Beauvoir's theory of literature and metaphysics, including its relationship to the philosophers Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Immanuel Kant, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Jean-Paul Sartre, with references to the literary tradition of Goethe, Maurice Barr_s, Arthur Rimbaud, AndrZ Breton, and Paul Nizan. The book provides a detailed philosophical analysis of Beauvoir's early short stories and several major novels, including The Mandarins and L'invitZe.