Modern science’s ability to produce, store, and analyze big datasets is changing the way that scientific research is practiced. Philosophers have only begun to comprehend the changed nature of scientific reasoning in this age of “big data.” We analyze data-focused practices in biology and climate modeling, identifying distinct species of data-centric science: phenomena-laden in biology and phenomena-agnostic in climate modeling, each better suited for its own domain of application, though each entail trade-offs. We argue that data-centric practices in science are (...) not monolithic because the opportunities and challenges presented by big data vary across scientific domains. (shrink)

Food Problems and Economic Problems in America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia : Struggles and Resignation What are the various dynamics of crisis, revolt, and resignation currently operating on the American and African continents, in the Middle East and in Asia. What effects do they have on the policies adopted to “get out of the crisis”? These are the issues which Greg Albo, Kako Nubukpo, Rhina Roux, Marie Noëlle Abiyaghi and Son Youg Woo address in this article. They (...) examine the consequences of neo-liberal capitalism and the succession of crises in food, oil, finance, and in the economy, before going on to explain how they emerge in their regional contexts where they take on their specific guises. (shrink)

More people desperately require an organ than become donors themselves. When discussing organ donation, people mainly consider the question whether they want to donate, whereas empirically they are more likely to be on the receiving end. So it is rational for each of us to join the organ donor register and to agree to donate our relative’s organs, if we are ever in that situation.

Nathaniel J.P. Barron offers the first book length account in English of Ernst Bloch's contribution to a Marxist philosophy of language. It is ambitious both in situating Bloch's ideas in the broader Marxist engagement with language as it currently exists, and in using Bloch's utopian categories to challenge that engagement. In particular, Barron reads Voloshinov's insights into language through Bloch's categories, and argues that Bloch advances on Voloshinov by offering an understanding of the social materiality of language which (...) is more useful for challenging fascist forms of utterance. (shrink)

Karl Popper defines an ad hoc hypothesis as one that is introduced to immunize a theory from some (or all) refutation but which cannot be tested independently. He has also attempted to explicate ad hocness in terms of certain other allegedly undesirable properties of hypotheses or of the explanations they would provide, but his account is confused and mistaken. The first such property is circularity, which is undesirable; the second such property is reduction in empirical content, which need not be. (...) In the former case, I argue that non-circularity is in any event preferable to non-ad hocness as a necessary condition for a satisfactory explanation or an explanans, as the case may be, and I try to sort out various persistent errors surrounding this comparison. In the latter case, I suggest that Popper is barking up the wrong tree, that important scientific progress sometimes does consist in just such reductions in empirical content as he proscribes. This provides a further reason for not taking ad hoc hypotheses as Popper conceives them to pose the danger for science he believes they do. (shrink)

Technological progress may eventually produce sophisticated robots with human-like traits that result in humans forming meaningful relationships with them. Such relationships would likely lead to a demand for human–artificial intelligence matrimony. U.S. Supreme Court decisions that expanded the definition of marriage to include interracial and same-sex couples, as well as those that have not extended marriage to polygamous relationships, provide guidance regarding the criteria that human–AI would have to meet to successfully assert a right to marry. Ultimately, robots will have (...) to possess certain characteristics of personhood to marry, including the capacity to contract and to engage in an intimate relationship. Alternatively, if AIs can simulate these abilities sufficiently, we may believe that they have these capacities. Even if AIs genuinely possess the capabilities necessary to enter into a marriage, it is social acceptance of intelligent non-humans as life partners that will likely influence legal development is this realm rather than personhood criteria. However, AIs are likely to face bias due to their “artificial” rather than biological nature. Yet, Peter Singer’s influential argument regarding speciesism in the context of animal rights implies that AIs with specific human-like qualities cannot be justifiably denied certain rights. (shrink)

The influence of surrealism and Philippe Soupault on William Carlos Williams' poetry.

Nowadays references to the afterlife-angels strumming harps, demons brandishing pitchforks, God enthroned on heavenly clouds-are more often encountered in New Yorker cartoons than in serious Christian theological reflection. Speculation about death and its sequel seems to embarrass many theologians; however, as Greg Garrett shows in Entertaining Judgment, popular culture in the U.S. has found rich ground for creative expression in the search for answers to the question: What lies in store for us after we die? The lyrics of Madonna, (...) Los Lonely Boys, and Sean Combs; the plotlines of TV's Lost, South Park, and The Walking Dead; the implied theology in films such as The Dark Knight, Ghost, and Field of Dreams; the heavenly half-light of Thomas Kinkade's popular paintings; the ghosts, shades, and after-life way-stations in Harry Potter; and the characters, situations, and locations in the Hunger Games saga all speak to our hopes and fears about what comes next. In a rich survey of literature and popular media, Garrett compares cultural accounts of death and the afterlife with those found in scripture. Denizens of the imagined afterlife, whether in heaven, hell, on earth, or in purgatory, speak to what awaits us, at once shaping and reflecting our deeply held-if often somewhat nebulous-beliefs. They show us what rewards and punishments we might expect, offer us divine assistance, and even diabolically attack us. Ultimately, we are drawn to these stories of heaven, hell, and purgatory--and to stories about death and the undead--not only because they entertain us, but because they help us to create meaning and to learn about ourselves, our world, and, perhaps, the next world. Garrett's deft analysis sheds new light on what popular culture can tell us about the startlingly sharp divide between what modern people profess to believe and what they truly hope and expect to find after death--and how they use those stories to help them understand this life. (shrink)

In this book, leading Christian political thinkers and practitioners critique the Rawlsian concepts of “justice as fairness” and “public reason” from the perspective of Christian political theory and practice. It provides a new level of analysis from Christian perspectives, including implications for such hot topics as the culture war.

Alfred Schütz is often credited with providing sociology with a firm ground derived from phenomenology of science and justifying it as a science operating within natural attitude. Although his project of social science draws extensively on Edmund Husserl’s theory of attitudes, it would be incorrect to assume that Schütz shares with the founder of phenomenology his conception of science. This paper compares Husserl’s and Schütz’s views on the structure and meaning of science and traces the roots of their radical divergence. (...) Whereas Husserl increasingly emphasises the importance of phenomenological reduction for the genuine human science, Schütz eventually rejects reduction and restricts the social science to a specific system of relevancies within the reality of the lifeworld. This paper presents the argument that Schütz’s conception eliminates the possibility of a phenomenological justification of social science, as it implies that there are no rationally justifiable grounds to pursue science. In this way, Schütz’s views substantially differ from the phenomenological theory of science and become open to the phenomenological critique of naivety. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume's Playful Metaphysics Greg Moses Let us revive the happy times, when Atticus and Cassius the Epicureans, Cicerothe Academic, andBrutus the Stoic, could, all of them, live in unreserved friendship together, and were unsensible to all those distinctions, except so far as they furnished agreeable matter to discourse and conversation.1 This paper argues, firstly, that contrary to appearances, the mature Hume allows for engagementin a certain style ofmetaphysical (...) reasoning in a rather strong sense of'metaphysics'. The proviso is that this be done in a carefully defined playful 'Pyrrhonian' spirit (sees. 1-5). It argues, secondly, that engagementinmetaphysics in such aHumean playful spirit might be available to us and of some value for us nowadays (sees. 6-7). The strategy ofthe argument in sections 1-5 is that the character Philo in Hume'sDialogues ConcerningNaturalReligion engages injust that kind ofmetaphysics that Hume rules out in the Treatise and the Enquiries, but that he does so in such a playful fashion as to be able to get away with it. (1) The word 'metaphysics' is used in the Hume text interpretation part of this paper (sees. 1-5) to refer to enquiry concerning 'ultimate principles/causes'. These ultimate causes are more than just very general constant conjunctions the reality of which is supposed, given habit, on the basis of experience. They are characterized in Hume by the fact that: 1) there is a relations of ideas connection between the 'essence' or 'nature' of whatever it is we are talking about, the soul/mind/human nature, or external bodies, such that 2) could we know the 'nature' or 'essence' we could come to know the principle without consulting experience, and, consequently, 3) they are such that if and when we came to know them we could give a reason for them, beyond our experience of their reality, namely by showing them to follow from the 'essence' or 'nature' ofthe object in question.2 The search for these ultimate springs and causes motivates our researches. "This is our aim in all our studies and reflections" (T 266), tofind the ultimate and operatingprinciple, which resides in the object. We are not satisfied, we would not willingly stop until acquainted with them, or until we are convinced that such a goal is beyond us human Volume XVII Number 2 63 GREG MOSES beings and despair has the same effect on us as enjoyment. Science, in fact, only "staves off our ignorance a little longer" (E 31). The most general and most refined principles we discover are as inexplicable to us as the phenomena themselves are to the vulgar; we have no idea even of what it is we are looking for when we search for them.3 There is thus a kind of natural desire for insight into causes, which natural and moral science does notfully satisfy,4 a sort ofnatural desire for the vision of, if possible, ultimate causes. (2) The attitude ofthe Treatiseand theEnquiries withrespect tothe search for ultimate principles is to stay away from it—as every first year philosophy student knows. This is Hume's position even antecedent to science and enquiry, taken over from the example of the natural philosophers whose empirical method he is adopting. Note that we are using the word 'metaphysics' here as a temporary convenience in a non-Humean sense: for Hume, 'metaphysics' = the more difficult parts of learning, profound reasonings of any kind (cf. E 11). Hume himself engages in such profound reasonings, for a variety of reasons (under five headings in E, sec. 1), including the idea that we "must cultivate true metaphysics with some care, in order to destroy the false and adulterate" (E 12). One of Hume's purposes in book 1 of the Treatise and in the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding is to turn us away from "specious and agreeable" (T 272) hypotheses and towards those subjects where alone we can expect assurance and conviction (T 272-73), in order to Uve at ease ever after, having rejected, after deliberate enquiry, the most uncertain and disagreeable part of learning (E 12-13). This is accomplished by his investigation of belief inmattersoffactbeyond testimonyofsenses ormemory;thatis, relying on causal reasoning and... (shrink)

Legal reasoning requires identification through search of authoritative legal texts (such as statutes, constitutions, or prior judicial opinions) that apply to a given legal question. In this paper, using a network representation of US Supreme Court opinions that integrates citation connectivity and topical similarity, we model the activity of law search as an organizing principle in the evolution of the corpus of legal texts. The network model and (parametrized) probabilistic search behavior generates a Pagerank-style ranking of the texts that in (...) turn gives rise to a natural geometry of the opinion corpus. This enables us to then measure the ways in which new judicial opinions affect the topography of the network and its future evolution. While we deploy it here on the US Supreme Court opinion corpus, there are obvious extensions to large evolving bodies of legal text (or text corpora in general). The model is a proxy for the way in which new opinions influence the search behavior of litigants and judges and thus affect the law. This type of “legal search effect” is a new legal consequence of research practice that has not been previously identified in jurisprudential thought and has never before been subject to empirical analysis. We quantitatively estimate the extent of this effect and find significant relationships between search-related network structures and propensity of future citation. This finding indicates that “search influence” is a pathway through which judicial opinions can affect future legal development. (shrink)

The article propounds a justification of public health interventionism grounded on personal health as an intermediate human end in the ethical domain, on an interpretation of Aristotle. This goes beyond the position taken by some liberals that health should be understood as a prudential good alone. A second, but independent, argument is advanced in the domain of the political, namely, that population health can be justified as a political value in its own right as a primary social good, following an (...) interpretation of John Rawls’s evolved understanding of such goods in his later works. The article sets the scene for these positions by highlighting how liberal theories focusing on freedom as non-interference, or making the harm principle the basis of legitimate public health interventions, undercut the capacity of the state to actively promote population health. The article points to theoretical resources on legitimacy and liberty—the ‘salient coordinator account’ of authority and freedom as non-domination—that may help avoid this risk. The role of reflective equilibrium incorporating incompletely theorized mid-level principles is emphasized to ensure that interventions are soundly justified. The application of these principles would ensure that interventions do not exceed the proper moral/political boundaries limiting the role of government. (shrink)

Contemporary philosopher Alvin Plantinga is best known for tackling the problem of evil and rationality of belief in God from a Calvinist perspective. Welty provides a Reformed intro and analysis.

This article takes a speculative and design fiction approach to the critical analysis of the role of smart and autonomous vehicles (AVs) in the context of smart cities. The article explores arguments that these cars of the future will have decisive impacts on mobility, sustainability and road safety. The article examines the main parameters of smart city and smart car developments and then focuses on the visions of increasing AI-driven autonomy. The article demonstrates how these debates are linked to speculative (...) design as full autonomy does not currently exist but takes a speculative position as to what the critical issues are that face smart/autonomous city visions (enhanced surveillance and data mining) and considers the potentially hazardous ethical dilemmas that AVs may encounter once fully rolled out onto city roads. From a design fiction perspective, the article envisions the viability of AV prioritizing public rather than private transport as a means by which the ‘techno-utopic’ visions of smart city/AV integration can be realized and make positive impacts to enhance urban living in rendering future cities as more sustainable, efficiently mobile and safer urban spaces. (shrink)

The rapid recent expansion of copyright law worldwide has sparked efforts to defend the ‘public domain’ of non-propertized information, often on the ground that an expansive public domain is a condition of a ‘free culture’. Yet questions remain about why the public domain is worth defending, what exactly a free culture is, and what role (if any) authors’ rights might play in relation to it. From the standard liberal perspective shared by many critics of copyright expansionism, the protection of individual (...) expression by means of marketable property rights in authors’ works serves as an engine of progress towards a fully competitive ‘marketplace of ideas’ – though only if balanced by an extensive public domain from which users may draw in the exercise of their own expressivity. This article shows that a significantly different, and arguably richer, conception of what a free culture is and how authors’ rights underpin it emerges from a direct engagement with the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. For Kant, progress towards a fully emancipated (i.e. a ‘mature’ or ‘enlightened’) culture can only be achieved through the critical intellectual activity that public communication demands: individual expressive freedom is only a condition, not constitutive, of this ‘freedom to make public use of one’s reason in all matters’. The main thesis defended in this article is that when Kant’s writings on publicity (critical public debate) are read in relation to his writings on the legal organization of publishing, a necessary connection emerges between authors’ rights – as distinct from copyrights – and what Jürgen Habermas and others have named the public sphere. I conclude that it is the public sphere, and not the public domain as such, that should serve as the key reference point in any evaluation of copyright law’s role in relation to the possibility of a free culture. (shrink)

In barely the space of one generation, Athens was transformed from a conventional city-state into something completely new--a region-state on a scale previously unthinkable. This book sets out to answer a seemingly simple question: How and when did the Athenian state attain the anomalous size that gave it such influence in Greek politics and culture in the classical period? Many scholars argue that Athens's incorporation of Attica was a gradual development, largely completed some two hundred years before the classical era. (...) Anderson, however, suggests that it is not until the late sixth century that we see the first systematic attempts by the Athenian polis to integrate all of Attica. Anderson first takes issue with the prevailing view of Cleisthenes' landmark political reforms of 508-7 b.c., arguing that they were animated by a more comprehensive vision of regional political community in Attica. The Athenians' strengthened the state by establishing institutional mechanisms that would allow inhabitants of the Attic periphery to participate as never before in the life of the center. The creation of a suitable physical setting for the new order was accompanied by religious, military, and symbolic innovations. Regional participation in Athenian affairs was stimulated by encouraging the Attic populace to imagine themselves, for the first time ever, as members of a single, like-minded, self-governing political community. Greg Anderson is Assistant Professor of Classics and History, University of Illinois at Chicago. (shrink)

The stock market crash of 1987 had a profound effect on corporate Australia and the Australian community in general. The fall-out revealed that some of our most respected business figures had not been as ethical, or even as lawful, as we would have hoped. This impropriety produced in Australia an awakening to business ethics. Whilst many companies endeavoured to introduce ethical practices into their corporations, they perceived ethics as a way of minimising damage to the corporation and in some cases (...) as a means of competitive advantage. What was lost was the reason that one should embark on business ethics; and that is to make the society and corporate Australia a more ethical place in which to exist.This paper proposes a model based on 2 factors: commitment and partnerships, as a means of enabling corporate Australia to refocus attention on the main purpose of being inherently ethical in all that we do. This ethical model requires a commitment to partnerships with all stakeholders both internal and external in an attempt to enhance the level of ethical business practices that are contemplated and pursued within corporate Australia. Whilst the research agenda and the information collected is Australian-based, it is hoped that the ideas contained within this paper will have a wider appeal to corporations in similar cultural settings. (shrink)

This paper continues the work of Priest and Sylvan in Simplified Semantics for Basic Relevant Logics, a paper on the simplified semantics of relevant logics, such as B⁺ and B. We show that the simplified semantics can also be used for a large number of extensions of the positive base logic B⁺, and then add the dualising '*' operator to model negation. This semantics is then used to give conservative extension results for Boolean negation.

Objectives: To explore opinions and attitudes regarding the current information-giving practices in research involving adults with intellectual disabilities.Design: Qualitative focus group study with a purposive sample.Setting: An intellectual disabilities service within the NHSParticipants: A sample of 26 individuals including adults with mild intellectual disability, carers, clinicians, care managers and the charitable sector.Results: Three main themes were identified: process, format, and content. There was agreement that there is a need for improvement in the process and quality of information giving. With regard (...) to the content of information, there was little discrepancy between the study findings and existing guidance.Conclusions: Information should be presented in different formats and prepared with input from appropriate professions. Additionally the roles of peers, carers and other professionals in the process of information giving should be considered. (shrink)

In many ways, the values SAMCRO holds dear reflect those of the “warrior” ethic typified by the heroes of Homer's epics. Such values include positive qualities, and less desirable qualities, such as ruthlessness, brutality, and a drive for vengeance. Greek philosophers, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle promoted alternatives to these warrior values, some of which may provide a way out of the troublesome life of mayhem that J.T. and Jax seek to leave behind. The desire for freedom is strong in humans. (...) Aristotle believes that friendship is one of the most important things in life. The first kind of friendship is based on enjoying pleasurable things together‐riding Harleys, drinking beers, or whatever a person likes to do with others. But we need to recognize our duties beyond the circle of our friends, family, or motorcycle club and have duties even to people who mean nothing to us personally. (shrink)

Drawing on contexts of critical theory offered by Simone de Beauvoir, Herbert Marcuse, and Angela Davis, this article argues that Alain Locke’s theory of valuation should be of interest to theorists who apprehend struggle as a process of desire. Locke’s value theory with its classification of “form-feelings” may be used to develop appreciation for value’s genealogical dependence on desire. This has consequences for theorizing the challenges faced by liberation from oppressive structures. A case study is provided from popular film.

As if anticipating the thesis that we live at the end of history, Martin Luther King, Jr., argued that we live in perpetual struggle against evil and injustice. In his last monograph, King outlined six challenges facing black Americans seeking justice. These six challenges may be generalized into a nonviolent theory of social struggle applicable to various contexts. King's six challenges are reviewed: somebodyness, group identity, existing freedoms, powerful action programs, continuing organization, and a revolution of values. In this framework, (...) we see how King understood civil rights activism in a complex context of liberation, not confined to "protest.". (shrink)

This paper examines the impact religious affiliation and faith commitment exerts on the political life of one inner-London borough. It gives a historical sketch of the interaction of faith and politics in the period from about 1975-2006 and attempts some explanation of the patterns of voting in local elections and political involvement by members of the many faith communities which are found in the borough. The key to this is seen in the changing urban ecology of the area and the (...) communal interests of particular ethno-religious groups who have striven and, to a measure, succeeded in gaining representation in local politics over this period. Drawing on many years participation observation, an analysis of the religious and community affiliations of elected members, and a series of interviews with Councillors and faith leaders, it reflects political issues and conflicts involving faith communities. Evidence will be presented which suggests that while many Christians involved in politics are primarily motivated individually by beliefs and values which centre on service to the whole community, politicians from other faith communities are more likely to be cast in a role as communal representatives and advocates of particular sections of the community. (shrink)

Something has been going wrong on many college campuses in the last few years. Speakers are shouted down. Students and professors say they are walking on eggshells and are afraid to speak honestly. Rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide are rising--on campus as well as nationally. How did this happen? First Amendment expert Greg Lukianoff and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt show how the new problems on campus have their origins in three terrible ideas that have become increasingly woven into (...) American childhood and education: What doesn't kill you makes you weaker; always trust your feelings; and life is a battle between good people and evil people. These three Great Untruths contradict basic psychological principles about well-being and ancient wisdom from many cultures. Embracing these untruths--and the resulting culture of safetyism--interferes with young people's social, emotional, and intellectual development. It makes it harder for them to become autonomous adults who are able to navigate the bumpy road of life. Lukianoff and Haidt investigate the many social trends that have intersected to promote the spread of these untruths. They explore changes in childhood such as the rise of fearful parenting, the decline of unsupervised, child-directed play, and the new world of social media that has engulfed teenagers in the last decade. They examine changes on campus, including the corporatization of universities and the emergence of new ideas about identity and justice. They situate the conflicts on campus within the context of America's rapidly rising political polarization and dysfunction. This is a book for anyone who is confused by what is happening on college campuses today, or has children, or is concerned about the growing inability of Americans to live, work, and cooperate across party lines. (shrink)

IN examining Herodotos' account of the Samian tyranny, historians have long been disturbed by two considerations. First, it seems strange that the period of settled tyranny should have begun no earlier than the rise of Polykrates and his two brothers c. 533 B.C., even though Samos was among the most advanced cities in Ionia. Yet it seems equally impossible to revise this accession date in an upward direction, at least by any significant margin. Furthermore, there had been at work in (...) Samos from c. 600 or earlier many of the factors which elsewhere in Ionia did in fact lead to a comparatively stable period of tyranny at that date, for instance at Miletos and Ephesos. Secondly, though Herodotos knows of no tyrant before Polykrates, it has been observed that the policies ascribed to him as characteristic were very largely the continuation of policies initiated a generation or more previously. (shrink)

In this short paper, I compare and contrast the kind of symmetric treatment of negation favoured in different ways by Huw Price (in “Why ‘Not’?”) and by me (in “Multiple Conclusions”) with Robert Brandom’s analysis of scorekeeping in terms of commitment, entitlement and incompatibility. Both kinds of account are what Brandom calls a normative pragmatics. They are both semantic anti-realist accounts of meaning in the significance of vocabulary is explained in terms of our rule-governed (normative) practice (pragmatics). These accounts differ (...) from intuitionist semantic anti-realism by providing a way to distinguish the inferential significance of “A” and “A is warranted.” Although proof plays a central role, in neither accont is verification the primary bearer of meaning. Our accounts make these distinctions in terms of a subtle analysis of our practices. On the one hand according to Price and me, we assert as well as deny; on the other, Brandom distingushes downstream commitments from upstream entitlements and the notion of incompatibility definable in terms of these. In this paper I will examine a number connections between these different approaches, and end with a discussion of the kind of account of proof that might emerge from these considerations. (shrink)