To understand political power it's necessary to comprehend why individuals and entire nations make the choices they do. Two influential approaches to understanding the intentions behind human behavior are known as realism and liberalism. Neoliberalism developed in response to the charge that liberalism represented an overly utopian view of the world. To explain whether cooperation or conflict should be expected between two parties, international relations scholars often try to calculate costs and benefits of either strategy. Among the most famous of (...) their scenarios is the “Prisoner's Dilemma”. In the case of Ender's Game, the humans and buggers face a dilemma about whether or not to cooperate with one another or defect, which means fighting a war for survival. The dilemma for Ender and the I.F. is complicated by the fact that there seems to be no possibility of communication between humans and buggers. (shrink)

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I defend indirect perceptual realism against two recent and related charges to it offered by A. D. Smith and P. Snowdon, both stemming from demonstrative reference involving indirect perception. The needed aspects of the theory of demonstratives are not terribly new, but their connection to these objections has not been discussed. The groundwork for my solution emerges from considering normal cases of indirect perception (e.g., seeing something depicted on a television) and examining the role this indirectness plays in demonstrative assertions. (...) I argue that indirectness routinely if not typically plays a justificatory role in such judgements, and not a semantic one, and that the same can be said of such judgements when considered within the indirect realist framework. The denial of this, on my analysis, is essential to the criticisms of Snowdon and Smith. The discussion is extended to include scenarios involving the sorts of misconceptions Smith employs. (shrink)

This is a unique, groundbreaking study in the history of philosophy, combining leading men and women philosophers across 2600 years of Western philosophy, covering key foundational topics, including epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics. Introductory essays, primary source readings, and commentaries comprise each chapter to offer a rich and accessible introduction to and evaluation of these vital philosophical contributions. A helpful appendix canvasses an extraordinary number of women philosophers throughout history for further discovery and study.

ABSTRACT During a visit to Europe in the autumn of 1882, Henry Augustus Rowland, Professor of Physics at Johns Hopkins University, displayed diffraction gratings produced on a ruling engine he had designed and built, which were bigger and much higher quality than any previously made. Some were of a novel type, ruled on concave surfaces, which he used in a simple but equally novel spectroscope that he had devised, to reveal spectral lines in great detail, and by means of (...) photography to record spectral data much more rapidly than previously possible. Over about twenty years Rowland built three ruling engines, published photographic maps of the solar spectrum, compiled a catalogue of the wavelengths of lines in the solar spectrum correlated with laboratory-produced spectra of almost all the chemical elements, and produced and sold the diffraction gratings used by spectroscopists everywhere. For decades after his death Rowland’s ruling engines remained practically the only source of good-quality diffraction gratings. This paper describes and analyses this work of Rowland and of the other men, Theodore Schneider, John Brashear, and Lewis Jewell, who played major roles in it. (shrink)

The ‘mathematical imaginary’ at work in psychology is central to the contingent history of the discipline, but is also responsible for considerable confusion and ambiguity around the ontological assumptions of psychological theories and models. Rather than reject the mathematical altogether, this article argues for an alternative form of mathematical description in psychology through the use of topology. Drawing on DeLanda’s topological account of the virtual, the relationship between psychology and ontology is progressively questioned in relation to memory. Henri Bergson’s conception (...) of duration and the pure past is juxtaposed with the topological psychology of Kurt Lewin and its notion of life space as a manifold with n-dimensions. Using a diagrammatic strategy developed by Mullarkey, an actualist account of the virtual is used to hold these distinct bodies of work together. Psychological events may be given a ‘thick description’ through the identification of topological relations and invariants. The interplay between the actual entities that are afforded in experience can be seen to be virtualized as planes of irreality. A topological approach to psychology offers the opportunity of replacing the taxonomy of essences common to the discipline with a dynamic account of invariance through homeomorphism. (shrink)

John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism continues to serve as a rich source of moral and theoretical insight. This collection of articles by top scholars offers fresh interpretations of Mill's ideas about happiness, moral obligation, justice, and rights. Applying contemporary philosophical insights, the articles challenge the conventional readings of Mill, and, in the process, contribute to a deeper understanding of utilitarian theory as well as the complexity of moral life.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 36.4 (2003) iv [Access article in PDF] Editors' Remarks I am pleased to announce that Gerard Hauser will assume the editorship of Philosophy and Rhetoric. Professor Hauser has been closely associated with the journal for decades, and I can think of no one better suited to realizing its distinctive mission. I wish to express my heartfelt gratitude to the many authors and reviewers who have contributed (...) to the achievement of this journal. Henry, be assured, would have been pleased. Stephen H. Browne * * *Assuming the editorship of Philosophy and Rhetoric is a joyous return to a prior calling. My association with the journal as its book review editor, as Donald Verene's associate editor, and as Henry Johnstone's co-editor marked active engagement in the first quarter-century of its contribution to the ancient dialogue reflected in its name. I am honored to have been asked to succeed Stephen Browne, who has provided a decade of leadership in sustaining the journal's high standards. As editor, my intention is to continue Philosophy and Rhetoric's tradition of advancing deep scholarship and new thought in the areas reflected in its statement of purpose. Gerard A. Hauser... (shrink)

Neoliberal ideology and exclusionary policies based on racialized identities characterize the current contexts in North America and Western Europe. Nursing knowledge cannot be abstracted from social, political and historical contexts; the task of examining the influence of race and racial ideologies on disciplinary knowledge and inquiry therefore remains an important task. Contemporary analyses of the role and responsibility of the discipline in addressing race‐based health and social inequities as a focus of nursing inquiry remain underdeveloped. In this article, we examine (...) nursing's engagement with ideas about race and racism and explore the ways in which nursing knowledge and inquiry have been influenced by race‐based ideological discourses. Drawing on Henry and Tator's framework ofdemocratic racism, we consider how strategic discursive responses—the discourses of individualism, multiculturalism, colour‐blindness, political correctness and denial—have been deployed within nursing knowledge and inquiry to reinforce the belief in an essentially fair and just society while avoiding the need to acknowledge the persistence of racist discourses and ideologies. Greater theoretical, conceptual and methodological clarity regarding race, racialization and related concepts in nursing inquiry is needed to address health and social inequities. (shrink)

Hunter Brown shows that Henry James's views of religious experience do not in fact lapse into subjectivismor fideism that critics have accused him of but occasions hardships and self-sacrifice which James describes.

Henri Bergson is one of the few philosophers who both explicitly and extensively discusses the phenomenon of habit. In view of his engagement with habit, does Bergson develop a philosophically robust account of the phenomenon? Most commentary on his account of habit refers to his early work, Matter and Memory. In this paper, I begin by arguing that Bergson's treatment of habit in Matter and Memory is problematic because it does not adequately differentiate between habit and material nature. Despite its (...) neglect in secondary literature, Bergson also discusses habit in the first part of his final book, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion. With respect to this book, I subsequently show how Bergson deploys Ravaisson's distinction between instinct and habit to reconceptualize habit as the second of our two natures, our social nature. Lastly, I reconstruct Bergson's late contribution to the philosophy of habit: rather than a tendency that is hard to resist, habit is a resistance to which we tend to submit. By shedding light on the effort that we expend to adhere to them, Bergson's resistance account of habit advances an original and productive perspective on our social habits. (shrink)

… [T]o trace the problematic of writing in the Norris canon is foremost to confirm Fried’s claims about its pervasiveness. Indeed, he now intimates that the problematic pervades the fiction of “other important writers of the 1890s and early 1900s,” work by Jack London, Harold Frederic, and Henry James . On the one hand, this pervasiveness muddies an already ambivalent use of the term impressionism ;10 on the other hand, it augments Fried’s sense that the thematization of writing attained (...) particular moment in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. To my eye, nonetheless, the moment dissolves once its historical isolationism confronts “literary history.” 10. Fried explicitly addresses this ambivalence, explaining that “I am unpersuaded by the many attempts that have been made to define that concept either in relation to French impressionist painting or in terms of a fidelity to or evocation of the ‘impressions’ of one or more characters , but I see no comparably useful designation for the global tendency that Crane, Norris, and Conrad all instantiate” . The term, as I see it however, serves precisely to exclude the global tendency as it is instantiated elsewhere. And yet, to the degree that “impressionism” can now designate a confrontation between the sight of writing and the impressionist emphasis on sight as traditionally understood, Fried, despite all disclaimers, revivifies that tradition . Bill Brown, assistant professor of English at the University of Chicago, is presently completing a book on the “economy of play” in the work of Stephen Crane. (shrink)

Nursing work centers around attending to a person's health during many of life's most vulnerable moments, from birth to death. Given the high‐stakes nature of this work, it is essential for nurses to critically reflect on their individual and collective impact, which can range from healing to harmful. The purpose of this paper is to use a philosophical inquiry approach and a critical lens to explore the potential influence of critical pedagogy (how we learn what we learn) on nursing praxis (...) (why we do what we do) with the aim of disrupting stigma and discrimination within the profession. This paper draws on the works of Paulo Freire, Henry Giroux, and bell hooks to alert readers to particular windows of opportunity where an intentional adoption of critical pedagogy in nursing praxis may help the profession think differently about two important and related topics: relational violence and peer‐led knowledge mobilization. As a practice‐based and theoretically grounded profession, nurses often strive to bridge the theoretical with the practical and the individual with the systemic. Thus, developing a robust and philosophically rooted disciplinary body of knowledge is particularly important to help us defensibly grapple with the notions of truth and ethics that shape our work's very essence and impact. (shrink)