Jean Baudrillard _Fatal Strategies_ Translated by Philip Beitchman and W. G. J. Niesluchowski Edited by Jim Fleming London: Pluto Press, 1999 ISBN 0-7453-1453-8 191 pp.

Knowledge Lost is brilliant, breathtaking, pathbreaking, and exhilarating. Most works of early modern intellectual history have studied “first-rate theorists”, the most successful or influential in...

The publication of the Phenomena of power: Authority, domination, and violence into English allows for the English-speaking world to engage the work of Heinrich Popitz. Popitz provides a thorough and organized description of how power operates in social relations that should be valuable to any scholar of the human sciences. This essay is supportive of Popitz’s project, but seeks a critical engagement by extending the analysis on violence and technical power. I argue that reading Popitz alongside the decolonial thinker, Franz (...) Fanon and the media ecologist, Marshall McLuhan can provide important correctives. In particular, Fanon’s analysis that the colonial use of rhetorical power to dehumanize the oppressed and McLuhan’s comment on the importance of the control of medium are missing in an otherwise very thorough philosophical anthropology on the phenomena of power. (shrink)

Modal realists face a puzzle. For modal realism to be justified, modal realists need to be able to give a successful reduction of modality. A simple argument, however, appears to show that the reduction they propose fails. In order to defend the claim that modal realism is justified, modal realists therefore need to either show that this argument fails, or show that modal realists can give another reduction of modality that is successful. I argue that modal realists cannot do either (...) of these things and that, as a result, modal realism is unjustified and should be rejected. (shrink)

This book covers all aspects of the disorder, from an historical survey of research to date, through the nature and anatomical bases of neglect, and on to review contemporary theories on the subject.

The standard way of representing an epistemic state in formal philosophy is in terms of a set of sentences, corresponding to the agent’s beliefs, and an ordering of those sentences, reflecting how well entrenched they are in the agent’s epistemic state. We argue that this wide-spread representational view – a view that we identify as a “Quinean dogma” – is incapable of making certain crucial distinctions. We propose, as a remedy, that any adequate representation of epistemic states must also include (...) the agent’s research agenda, i.e., the list of question that are open or closed at any given point in time. If the argument of the paper is sound, a person’s questions and practical interests, on the one hand, and her beliefs and theoretical values, on the other, are more tightly interwoven than has previously been assumed to be the case in formal epistemology. (shrink)

We give a direct mathematical proof of the Mathias-Silver theorem that every analytic set is Ramsey.

(1997). Michel Foucault: Problematising the individual and constituting ‘the’ self. Educational Philosophy and Theory: Vol. 29, No. 1, pp. 32-49. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-5812.1997.tb00526.x.

I draw on the literature on skeptical theism to develop an argument against Christian theism based on the widespread existence of suffering that appears to its sufferer to be gratuitous and is combined with the sense that God has abandoned one or never existed in the first place. While the core idea of the argument is hardly novel, key elements of the argument are importantly different from other influential arguments against Christian theism. After explaining that argument, I make the case (...) that the argument is untouched by traditional skeptical theism. I then consider positive skeptical theism, arguing that while DePoe’s view might provide a response to my argument, it entangles the theist in worries about divine deception. Because traditional skeptical theism and DePoe’s positive skeptical theism constitute the most promising extant strategies for answering my argument, the argument constitutes a serious challenge for the Christian theist. My overall aim, then, is to draw on various strands of the skeptical theism literature to present a challenge for all Christian theists, not just those in the skeptical theist camp, while at the same time revealing some important limitations of skeptical theism. (shrink)

While there is considerable interest in the topic of business ethics, much of the research moves towards measuring components with a view to predicting ethical behaviour. To date there has not been a satisfactory definition of business ethics, nor has there been any real attempt to understand the components of a situation that may influence an individual's assessment of that situation as ethical or otherwise. Using Jones's (1991) construct of moral intensity as a basis for investigation, this paper presents some (...) exploratory analysis on the context within which ethical decisions are assessed. The findings reveal that individuals differ in their assessments of the same situation and often use a number of complex reasons to explain whether a situation poses an ethical problem for them. These findings are discussed within a framework of measurement issues and future directions for research. (shrink)

Drawing on William F. Ogburn's cultural lag thesis, an inherent conflict is proposed between the rapid speed of modern technological advances and the slower speed by which ethical guidelines for utilization of new technologies are developed. Ogburn's cultural lag thesis proposes that material culture advances more rapidly than non-material culture. Technology is viewed as part of material culture and ethical guidelines for technology utilization are viewed as an adaptive aspect of non-material culture. Cultural lag is seen as a critical ethical (...) issue because failure to develop broad social consensus on appropriate applications of modern technology may lead to breakdowns in social solidarity and the rise of social conflict. Reasons for cultural lag between technology and ethics include the social structural and market conditions under which each are developed. The thesis is illustrated by reviews of technological trends involving computer-telecommunications electronics and bio- genetic engineering, and the implications of these and other technologies for privacy rights, electronic commerce, control of essential resources and social definitions of life are discussed. (shrink)

For Merleau-Ponty,consciousness in skillful coping is a matter of prereflective ‘I can’ and not explicit ‘I think that.’ The body unifies many domain-specific capacities. There exists a direct link between the perceived possibilities for action in the situation (‘affordances’) and the organism’s capacities. From Merleau-Ponty’s descriptions it is clear that in a flow of skillful actions, the leading ‘I can’ may change from moment to moment without explicit deliberation. How these transitions occur, however, is less clear. Given that Merleau-Ponty suggested (...) that a better understanding of the self-organization of brain and behavior is important, I will re-read his descriptions of skillful coping in the light of recent ideas on neurodynamics. Affective processes play a crucial role in evaluating the motivational significance of objects and contribute to the individual’s prereflective responsiveness to relevant affordances. (shrink)

This paper examines a struggle over the future use of Nordic forests, which took place from 2009 to 2012 within a major research program, Future Forests—Sustainable Strategies under Uncertainty and Risk, organized and funded by Mistra, The Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research. We explore the role of strategic environmental research in societal constructions of long-term challenges and future risks. Specifically, we draw attention to the role played by environmental research in the creation of future images that become dominant for (...) how societies structure action for the long term. We also show that this process is on several accounts problematic. Research labeled “strategic” or “relevant” is intended to manage long-term risks and challenges in a sustainable way, by taking into account the “open” and “plural” nature of the future. The case of Future Forests suggests, rather, that by contributing to the emergence of dominant future images, environmental research is entangled with a process of gradual consensus creation around what may be highly selective or biased narratives of the long term, which may conceal or postpone key forms of future conflict. (shrink)

Subjective measures of well-being—measures based on answers to questions such as ‘Taking things all together, how would you say things are these days—would you say you're very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy these days?’—are often presented as superior to more traditional economic welfare measures, e.g., for public policy purposes. This paper aims to spell out and assess what I will call the argument from directness: the notion that subjective measures of well-being better represent well-being than economic measures do (...) because subjective measures (and subjective measures alone) are direct measures of well-being. My main thesis is that the argument begs the question against proponents of economic measures: it is based on a premise that they reject and that is no less in need of justification than the conclusion of the argument, namely, the proposition that well-being is constituted by subjectively experienced mental states. If subjective measures can be defended as valid measures of well-being at all, I will maintain, it is because they are (imperfect) indirect measures of well-being. (shrink)

Recent debate on the nature of probabilities in evolutionary biology has focused largely on the propensity interpretation of fitness (PIF), which defines fitness in terms of a conception of probability known as “propensity”. However, proponents of this conception of fitness have misconceived the role of probability in the constitution of fitness. First, discussions of probability and fitness have almost always focused on organism effect probability, the probability that an organism and its environment cause effects. I argue that much of the (...) probability relevant to fitness must be organism circumstance probability, the probability that an organism encounters particular, detailed circumstances within an environment, circumstances which are not the organism’s effects. Second, I argue in favor of the view that organism effect propensities either don’t exist or are not part of the basis of fitness, because they usually have values close to 0 or 1. More generally, I try to show that it is possible to develop a clearer conception of the role of probability in biological processes than earlier discussions have allowed. (shrink)

This paper is a reaction to ‘Styles of Thought on the Continental Drift Debate’ by Pablo Pellegrini, published in this journal. The author argues that rationalist accounts of the continental drift debate fail because they overlook important issues. In this discussion we distinguish various forms of rationalism. Then we present a sophisticated rationalist account of the continental drift debate and argue that it is satisfactory because it explains all the central developments in that debate. Finally, we point to a problematic (...) tension in Pellegrini’s paper and unravel an underlying ambiguity. (shrink)

Whether or not intrinsic value is additively measurable is often thought to depend on the truth or falsity of G. E. Moore's principle of organic unities. I argue that the truth of this principle is, contrary to received opinion, compatible with additive measurement. However, there are other very plausible evaluative claims that are more difficult to combine with the additivity of intrinsic value. A plausible theory of the good should allow that there are certain kinds of states of affairs whose (...) intrinsic value cannot be outweighed by any number of states of certain other, less valuable, kinds. Such``non-trade-off'' cannot reasonably be explained in terms of organic unities, and it can be reconciled with the additivity thesis only if we are prepared to give up some traditional claims about the nature of intrinsic value. (shrink)

This paper examines the relationship between individuals' gender and their ethical decision models. The study seeks to identify asymmetries in men's and women's approaches to ethical decision making and differences in their perceptions of how same-sex and other-sex managers would likely act in business and nonbusiness situations that present an ethical dilemma. Results indicate that the models employed by men and women differ in both business and nonbusiness settings, that both sexes report changing models when leaving business settings, and that (...) women were better predictors of both sex's likely ethical models. (shrink)

Leibniz holds that nothing in nature strictly corresponds to any geometric curve or surface. Yet on Leibniz’s view, physicists are usually able to ignore any such lack of correspondence and to investigate nature using geometric representations. The primary goal of this essay is to elucidate Leibniz’s explanation of how physicists are able to investigate nature geometrically, focussing on two of his claims: (i) there can be things in nature which approximate geometric objects to within any given margin of error; (ii) (...) the truths of geometry state laws by which the phenomena of nature are governed. A corollary of Leibniz’s explanation is that physical bodies do have boundaries with which geometric surfaces can be compared to very high levels of precision. I argue that the existence of these physical boundaries is mind-independent to such an extent as to pose a significant challenge to idealist interpretations of Leibniz. (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 26 The dilemma of presentism is sometimes represented as a choice between the increased relevance and utility of a historiographic practice that can articulate its relation to the present and the increased objectivity or openness to the otherness of the past of a historiographic practice that articulates the past “on its own terms.” The present article argues that, at least with reference to intellectual history, we should understand that ideas appear most fully when they are run (...) through a multitude of contexts and not rooted exclusively in circumstances contemporaneous to _either_ the original emergence of an idea _or_ the writer and first reader of the historical account. The following thesis is advanced: ideas appear only over time, and the contextualization, decontextualization, and recontextualization of ideas in different places and times are all essential to such intellectual historical “appearance.” The article then articulates its position more precisely by means of Robert Brandom’s inferentialism. And, finally, this line of inquiry is exemplified and interrogated by means of a concrete historiographic case—namely, a political theoretical investigation of the intellectual legacy of the Weimar Republic. (shrink)

This collection of new essays focuses on metaethical views from outside the mainstream European tradition. The guiding motivation is that important discussions about the ultimate nature of morality can be found far beyond ancient Greece and modern Europe. The volume’s aim is to show how rich the possibilities are for comparative metaethics, and how much these comparisons can add to contemporary discussions of the foundations of morality. Representing five continents, the thinkers discussed range from ancient Egyptian, ancient Chinese, and the (...) Mexica (Aztec) cultures to more recent thinkers like Augusto Salazar Bondy, Bimal Krishna Matilal, Nishida Kitarō, and Susan Sontag. The philosophical topics discussed include religious language, moral discovery, moral disagreement, essences’ relation to evaluative facts, metaphysical harmony, naturalism, moral perception, and the nature of moral realism. This volume will be of interest to anyone interested in metaethics or comparative philosophy. (shrink)

In the literature on scientific explanation, there is a classical distinction between explanations of facts and explanations of laws. This paper is about explanations of laws, more specifically mechanistic explanations of laws. We investigate whether providing unificatory information in mechanistic explanations of laws has a surplus value. Unificatory information is information about how the mechanism that explains the law which is our target relates to other mechanisms. We argue that providing unificatory information can lead to explanations with more explanatory power (...) and that it may lead to more strongly supported explanations. (shrink)

The severe shortage of organs for transplantation and the continual reluctance of the public to voluntarily donate has prompted consideration of alternative strategies for organ procurement. This paper explores the development of market approaches for procuring human organs for transplantation and considers the social and moral implications of organ donation as both a gift of life and a commodity exchange. The problematic and paradoxical articulation of individual autonomy in relation to property rights and marketing human body parts is addressed. We (...) argue that beliefs about proprietorship over human body parts and the capacity to provide consent for organ donation are culturally constructed. We contend that the political and economic framework of biomedicine, in western and non-western nations, influences access to transplantation technology and shapes the form and development of specific market approaches. Finally, we suggest that marketing approaches for organ procurement are and will be negotiated within cultural parameters constrained by several factors: beliefs about the physical body and personhood, religious traditions, economic conditions, and the availability of technological resources. (shrink)

Criticism may degenerate into quibbling or nitpicking. How can discussants keep quibblers under control? In the paper we investigate cases in which a battle about words replaces a discussion of the matters that are actually at issue as well as cases in which a battle about minor objections replaces a discussion of the major issues. We survey some lines of discussion dealing with these situations in profiles of dialogue.

If T is an isol let D(T) be the least set of isols which contains T and is closed under predecessors and the application of almost recursive combinatorial functions. We find an infinite regressive isol T such that the universal theory (with respect to recursive relations and almost recursive combinatorial functions) of D(T) is the same as that of the nonnegative integers.

People often remember what they attend to in the world. Such memory can be cast as a kind of mental catalog or index of attended objects. To investigate how such an index is acquired and used, protocol data were collected from a programmer who scrolled to off‐screen objects from time to time as she worked. These protocol data were modeled using Soar, which constrains how the index is constructed. In the model, an index entry is an episodic trace encoded during (...) attention. The trace associates the attention event with a time symbol denoting the event's occurrence. Later, the model can ask itself whether it saw that object by calling to mind an image of the attention event. If this image retrieves a time symbol, then the model infers that the object exists and can reason about bringing the object back into view. Episodic indexing is a theory of these encoding and retrieval processes. It posits that information about attention events is encoded automatically, but that retrieval requires effort and knowledge. Episodic indexing is congruent with a range of results on episodic and temporal codes and recognition and recall processes. It incorporates source monitoring (Johnson, Hashtroudi, & Lindsay, 1993) and is a simple and pervasive form of long‐term working memory (Ericsson & Kintsch, 1995). (shrink)

Some of the important conceptual debates between different approaches to class analysis can be interpreted as reflecting different ways of linking temporality to class structure. In particular, processual concepts of class can be viewed as linking class to the past whereas structural concepts link class to the future. This contrast in the temporality of class concepts in turn is grounded in distinct intuitions about why class is explanatory of social conflict and social change. Processural approaches to class see its explanatory (...) power as deriving from the way meanings and identities are linked to class via a history of experiences; structural approaches, in contrast, emphasize the linkage between class and perceived interests via the objective possibilities facing people in different class locations. This paper tries to integrate these two temporalities by exploring the ways in which trajectories of class experience intersect structures of objective possibility in shaping different dimensions of class consciousness. (shrink)

In this paper we present two case studies on inconsistencies in the social sciences. The first is devoted to sociologist George Caspar Homans and his exchange theory. We argue that his account of how he arrived at his theory is highly misleading, because it ignores the inconsistencies he had to cope with. In the second case study we analyse how John Maynard Keynes coped with the inconsistency between classical economic theory and real economic conditions in developing his path-breaking theory.

DURING THE PAST THIRTY YEARS, A GROWING CONVERSATION ABOUT THE "restorative" dimensions of justice in contrast to its "retributive" dimensions in addressing crime, wrongdoing, and cultural conflict has emerged around the world. In New Zealand, an initiative known as Family Group Conferencing has virtually replaced the conventional juvenile justice that preceded it. This initiative has inspired many people around the world to adapt that restorative approach in many different settings.