In response to its current crisis, scholars call for the revitalisation of democracy through democratic innovations. While they make ample use of life metaphors describing democracy as a living organism, no comprehensive understanding of ‘life’ has been established within democratic theory. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement articulates the urgency of refocusing on life and its meaning through radical democratic practice. This article employs a grounded theory approach, enriched with participatory methods, to develop a radical democratic concept of life in (...) conversation with BLM. It conceptualises life as the existence of a perspective that constantly transforms through its fundamental interconnectedness. Building on this concept, the article outlines four principles of a living democracy that go beyond the revitalisation discourse. A living democracy (1) safeguards the existence of all humans and nonhumans, (2) nurtures a diversity of perspectives, (3) fosters social and planetary connectivity, and (4) enables self- and collective transformation. (shrink)

The objective of the study was to investigate the relationship between childhood IQ of parents and characteristics of their adult offspring. It was a prospective family cohort study linked to a mental ability survey of the parents and set in Renfrew and Paisley in Scotland. Participants were 1921-born men and women who took part in the Scottish Mental Survey in 1932 and the Renfrew/Paisley study in the 1970s, and whose offspring took part in the Midspan Family study in 1996. There (...) were 286 offspring from 179 families. Parental IQ was related to some, but not all characteristics of offspring. Greater parental IQ was associated with taller offspring. Parental IQ was inversely related to number of cigarettes smoked by offspring. Higher parental IQ was associated with better education, offspring social class and offspring deprivation category. There were no significant relationships between parental IQ and offspring systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, cholesterol, glucose, lung function, weight, body mass index, waist hip ratio, housing, alcohol consumption, marital status, car use and exercise. Structural equation modelling showed parental IQ associated with offspring education directly and mediated via parental social class. Offspring education was associated with offspring smoking and social class. The smoking finding may have implications for targeting of health education. (shrink)

The subjective effects and therapeutic potential of the shamanic practice of journeying is well known. However, previous research has neglected to provide a comprehensive assessment of the subjective effects of shamanic-like journeying techniques on non-shamans. Shamanic-like techniques are those that demonstrate some similarity to shamanic practices and yet deviate from what may genuinely be considered shamanism. Furthermore, the personality traits that influence individual susceptibility to shamanic-like techniques are unclear. The aim of the present study was, thus, to investigate experimentally the (...) effect of shamanic-like techniques and a personality trait referred to as "ego boundaries" on subjective experience including mood disturbance. Forty-three non-shamans were administered a composite questionnaire consisting of demographic items and a measure of ego boundaries (i.e., the Short Boundary Questionnaire; BQ-Sh). Participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: listening to monotonous drumming for 15 minutes coupled with one of two sets of journeying instructions; or sitting quietly with eyes closed for 15 minutes. Participants' subjective experience and mood disturbance were retrospectively assessed using the Phenomenology of Consciousness Inventory (PCI) and the Profile of Mood States-Short Form, respectively. The results indicated that there was a statistically significant difference between conditions with regard to the PCI major dimensions of visual imagery, attention and rationality, and minor dimensions of imagery amount and absorption. However, the shamanic-like conditions were not associated with a major reorganization of the pattern of subjective experience compared to the sitting quietly condition, suggesting that what is typically referred to as an altered state of consciousness effect was not evident. One shamanic-like condition and the BQ-Sh subscales need for order, childlikeness, and sensitivity were statistically significant predictors of total mood disturbance. Implications of the findings for the anthropology of consciousness are also considered. (shrink)

The verb “to conjure” is a complex one, for it includes in its standard definition a great range of possible actions or operations, not all of them equivalent, or even compatible. In its most common usage, “to conjure” means to perform an act of magic or to invoke a supernatural force, by casting a spell, say, or performing a particular ritual or rite. But “to conjure” is also to influence, to beg, to command or constrain, to charm, to bewitch, to (...) move or convey, to imagine, to visualize, to call to mind, or to remember. —Rachael DeLue 2012, para 1.When we create with our Brown hands, feminine energy, and full spirits, we conjure. To exist, survive, and thrive in these bodies is a continuous act of conjuring. Our walks conjure. Our smiles conjure. Our tears conjure. Our laughs conjure. Our words conjure. Our artworks are conjurings. We, a Black/Filipina-American woman, a Dominican-American, and a Black-American woman, are guided by our solidarity with one another and all other Black and Brown female identifying persons whose raced and gendered subjectivities exist both inside and outside of colonization, white supremacy, and patriarchy. We bring to life our colored imaginations and curiosities, and share them with the world. We are united by our need for safety, autonomy as beings, dissolution of trauma, and desire to ask, “What would happen if I…?” Imaginative, curious Women of Color founded the underground railroad, guided captured Africans and Tainos to the mountains, ignited the Civil Rights Movement, organized laborers and immigrants, birthed the #BlackLivesMatter Movement, conceived the #MeToo Movement, and so much more. Like our kindred counterparts, we have an unrelenting urge to examine, question, wonder, desire, speak to, lead, be curious, and “conjure.” As practicing artists and art educators, our critical arts-based practices are grounded in intersectional feminisms like Womanism, Black Feminist Theory, and Chicana Feminist Theory, which allow us to do these very things. (shrink)

In this essay, I describe some of the methodological dimensions of my ongoing research into how parents choose schools. I particularly focus on how philosophical frameworks and analytical strategies have shaped the empirical portion of my research. My goal, in this essay, is to trace and explore the ways in which philosophy of education—as a methodological orientation—may enable researchers to be attentive to the normative dimensions of human experience. In addition, I will argue that philosophically informed empirical research offers new (...) possibilities for making normative arguments that are closely connected to the non-ideal, complex ground of actual experience. (shrink)

Peer review is a widely accepted instrument for raising the quality of science. Peer review limits the enormous unstructured influx of information and the sheer amount of dubious data, which in its absence would plunge science into chaos. In particular, peer review offers the benefit of eliminating papers that suffer from poor craftsmanship or methodological shortcomings, especially in the experimental sciences. However, we believe that peer review is not always appropriate for the evaluation of controversial hypothetical science. We argue that (...) the process of peer review can be prone to bias towards ideas that affirm the prior convictions of reviewers and against innovation and radical new ideas. Innovative hypotheses are thus highly vulnerable to being “filtered out” or made to accord with conventional wisdom by the peer review process. Consequently, having introduced peer review, the Elsevier journal Medical Hypotheses may be unable to continue its tradition as a radical journal allowing discussion of improbable or unconventional ideas. Hence we conclude by asking the publisher to consider re-introducing the system of editorial review to Medical Hypotheses. (shrink)

In the latter half of the twentieth century, philosophers of science have argued (implicitly and explicitly) that epistemically rational individuals might compose epistemically irrational groups and that, conversely, epistemically rational groups might be composed of epistemically irrational individuals. We call the conjunction of these two claims the Independence Thesis, as they together imply that methodological prescriptions for scientific communities and those for individual scientists might be logically independent of one another. We develop a formal model of scientific inquiry, define four (...) criteria for individual and group epistemic rationality, and then prove that the four definitions diverge, in the sense that individuals will be judged rational when groups are not and vice versa. We conclude by explaining implications of the inconsistency thesis for (i) descriptive history and sociology of science and (ii) normative prescriptions for scientific communities. (shrink)

In a recent article, C. H. Kahn addresses an ‘old scholarly myth’, namely the idea that Book I of the Republic began life as an earlier, independent dialogue and was subsequently adapted to serve as a prelude to the much longer work that we know. The case for this hypothesis rests both on stylometric considerations and on the many ‘Socratic’ features that Book I, unlike the rest of the Republic, shares with Plato's earlier works. Having disposed of the positive arguments (...) in favour of the ‘myth’, Kahn turns to the contrary—and in his view overwhelming—evidence that Book I was composed from the start as an integral part of the longer Republic. He catalogues 12 passages in Book I, accounting for roughly half its length, whose full significance will, he argues, only emerge if they are seen as instances of prolepsis, deliberate anticipations of what is to come in later books. (shrink)

In the opening sections of his Brahma-sutra-bhasya , Ramanuja makes a very forceful assault on Sankara's Advaita theory. This assault anticipates in a striking way modern western attacks on metaphysical religious positions, attacks which stem from Hume and are associated today with names like A. J. Ayer and Antony Flew. In this paper I wish to argue that certain aspects of Sankara's position, as enunciated in his Brahma-sutra-bhasya , suggest that Ramanunja's assault, and therefore by implication a modern western attack (...) on Sankara also, depends for its success on a misinterpretation of Sankara's views. I wish then to suggest a possible alternative interpretation of Sankara's Advaita in terms viable for today, drawing, though indirectly, on such writers as R. B. Braithwaite and R. M. Hare. An incidental implication of this paper is that these two philosophers of religion would meet less opposition from the religious if they were Hindu rather than Christian! A more important implication is that light could be thrown on the present religious controversy in the west by a study of Indian philosophy of religion, if only we were more disposed to treat it as a living tradition which might teach us something, rather than as an antique. (shrink)

Assuming that one believes that individuals and states can morally defend values, beliefs, and institutions with force , one logically wants just combatants to possess the physical, mental, and spiritual capacities that will enable them to win the war. On the other hand, being a just combatant in a just war does not morally entitle that combatant to do anything to win that war. The moral requirement for just combatants to fight justly is codified in international law of war and (...) in state-specific legal documents such as the United States Uniform Code of Military Justice. While it is almost unequivocally clear to soldiers and civilians who soldiers cannot harm in the performance of their duties, and why these people are exempt from harm, it is less clear what the state itself can morally do to its own soldiers to enhance their chances of victory: can the state do anything to soldiers to give them an advantage on the field of battle?For United States soldiers and their counterparts in most Western liberal democracies, the answer is obviously no. Deeply embedded social and cultural norms in Western democracies mandate that the state set and enforce rigid lines which drill sergeants and earnest commanders cannot cross, even in the name of combat readiness, grounding these norms in notion of basic rights appealed to in the U.S. Constitution. In this essay, I argue against some types of drug-induced internal biotechnical enhancement of soldiers on the grounds that, in the present state of technology, it is not reasonable to suppose that the military can perform such enhancement operations on soldiers without causing irrevocable psychological damage that would certainly and unjustifiably alienate the soldiers from the very society they serve. (shrink)

I may venture to offer another belated suggestion on the text of Clement.

The excellent article in the January number of the Classical Quarterly upon a mistaken interpretation of Philebus 31 c contains the somewhat incorrect statement that this interpretation is the general one: and the article itself is anticipated by a short note in a paper which I published in the Transactions of the Oxford Philological Society for 1881–2. I have nothing to complain of, for it may partly serve me right. Besides, my paper, though duly registered in the Revue de Philologie, (...) is omitted from the index of that periodical; the aforesaid Transactions are out of print, and by some mischance my correction of the wrong rendering did not appear in the last edition of Jowett's Plato, though Jowett intended it should. (shrink)

It is a mixed pleasure to see F. Matthias Alexander acknowledged in the fall 2007 issue of Education and Culture ("Dewey, women, and weirdoes: Or, the potential rewards for scholars who dialog across difference," 23[2], 27-62). As a professional descendant of Alexander who has been teaching the Alexander Technique (AT) for 30 years, I am glad to see Cunningham et al. including him in the list of positive influences in John Dewey's life. However, I believe Cunningham's contribution to this article, (...) "Shared explorations of body-mind: The reciprocal influences of Dewey and F. M. Alexander," falls short in its acknowledgement of Alexander and in one important aspect is incorrect. In this response, I hope to set the .. (shrink)

‘The similes of the Sun, Line, and Cave in the Republic remain a reproach to Platonic scholarship because there is no agreement about them, though they are meant to illustrate.’ So wrote A.S. Ferguson in 1934, and so he could write to-day. Four decades have produced at least twenty more substantial contributions to the debate, but no agreement. I shall not attempt to arbitrate between existing interpretations, nor shall I offer an account of the ‘simile of light’ as a whole. (...) I shall confine my attention to a single point: the significance of the shadows in the cave, and of the objects which cast them. The suggestion I shall make seems an obvious one, but I have not found it in the literature. I hope to show at least that it deserves serious consideration. (shrink)

Humanity does not gradually progress from combat to combat until it arrives at universal reciprocity, where the rule of law finally replaces warfare; humanity installs each of its violences in a system of rules and thus proceeds from domination to domination. (Foucault, 1984, 85)In this essay, I take a note from Michel Foucault regarding the notion of biopolitics. For Foucault, biopolitics has both repressive and constitutive properties. Foucault's claim is that with the rise of modern government, the state became exceedingly (...) concerned about the body politic, the bodies that make up the polis, including the health of those bodies. However, Giorgio Agamben claims that Foucault and all western political philosophy misses the relationship between power and Sovereignty, with disastrous results and totalizing tendencies. I explore the case of Terri Schiavo claiming that the social conservatives have attempted to politicize bare life in its legal maneuverings, but I also show how the social liberals open an uncontrollable space between life and death. Both the left and the right miss the aporia at the heart of western political philosophy, and bioethics is complicit in the totalizing effects of contemporary medicine. (shrink)

Over the last several years, C. B. Macpherson has attempted to present a far-reaching critique of the theories underlying and justifying capitalist social systems. Beginning with a critique of the classical theories of capitalism, he has extended it to the later formulations offered by j. S. Mill and T. H. Green, along with the most recent formulation offered by john Rawls. The guiding thread throughout his writing has been the critique of the model of persons which underpin the various formulations (...) of capitalist theory. What I would like to do in this paper is to present what I think to be a stronger defense of Macpherson's argument than Macpherson has himself given, since I think it can be shown that at certain crucial points his argument is necessarily flawed for the point which he is trying to make. (shrink)

In medicine and the social sciences, researchers often measure only a handful of variables simultaneously. The underlying assumption behind this methodology is that combining the results of dozens of smaller studies can, in principle, yield as much information as one large study, in which dozens of variables are measured simultaneously. Mayo-Wilson :864–874, 2011, Br J Philos Sci 65:213–249, 2013. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjps/axs030) shows that assumption is false when causal theories are inferred from observational data. This paper extends Mayo-Wilson’s results to (...) cases in which experimental data is available. I prove several new theorems that show that, as the number of variables under investigation grows, experiments do not improve, in the worst-case, one’s ability to identify the true causal model if one can measure only a few variables at a time. However, stronger statistical assumptions significantly aid causal discovery in piecemeal inquiry, even if such assumptions are unhelpful when all variables can be measured simultaneously. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Mimetic Desire and the Nigerian Novel:The Case of Chike Momah's Titi: Biafran Maid in GenevaTerri Ochiagha (bio)René Girard's mimetic theory was first informed by Western canonical novels. Girard's paradigm, with its psychological, anthropological, and historical backing, provides explanations for universal phenomena like rivalry, violence, scapegoat mechanisms, and the religious processes of sin and redemption. While it is not reflected in his choice of literary subjects, Girard has endeavored to (...) assert the universality of mimetic desire and its implications in "Other," non-Western cultures. However, little or no attention has been paid to novels that do not circulate primarily within Western canonical circles. To start redressing this gap in the literature, I use Girard's mimetic theory to study a Nigerian novel, Chike Momah's Titi: Biafran Maid in Geneva and show how the paradigm is suited to a novel so distant in space, time, and culture from the famous works that first inspired it. Apart from identifying the nature and phases of mimetic desire that appear in the novel, I propose other possible triangulations of desire, separating out the mimetic from the nonmimetic, and address the possible implications of the homosexual nature of the novel's interracial triangular desire. [End Page 205]A First Encounter with the NovelSince I assume that neither the author nor the novel under discussion are well known to the readers of this article, I will briefly discuss the author and trace the outline of the plot, in order to allow for an uninterrupted flow in my explication of the dialectics of mimetic desire.The situation of Chike Momah in Nigerian letters is singular. He belongs to the Ibadan golden generation of authors, heralded by Chinua Achebe's first novel, Things Fall Apart (1958), and his contemporaries at University College, Ibadan, including the Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, plus Chukwuemeka Ike, Elechi Amadi, Christopher Okigbo, Flora Nwapa, and J. P. Clark, among others. Despite his talent, Momah did not join the literary movement that his fellow alumni inaugurated. Almost 40 years later and two years prior to his retirement from his United Nations position in 1990, he began his literary career, which has yielded five novels and several essays. Being a firsthand witness to the birth of Nigerian written literature, he was sought after by biographers and conference organizers. However, his oeuvre has not garnered sufficient attention. This could be the result of a number of factors: first, the distribution of most of his novels has been limited; second, his writings began to emerge at a time when the literary reputations of his contemporaries had long since arrived at their zenith; and third, novels that primarily seek to entertain, as most of his do, are often disregarded in the realm of postcolonial criticism.Titi: Biafran Maid in Geneva (1999) is Momah's second novel. It is the sole Nigerian Civil War novel to portray the horrors of the conflict from the viewpoint of a Biafran family living in Geneva, the Okekes. Its excellent exploration of war trauma frames an entertaining story line. This involves Titi, the Okekes' maid, and her multiple love affairs. Mimetic desire sets in during the course of her relationship with Eddy Mafa and the love triangle that ensnares them with Suzanne, Eddy's European lover. This tangled web provides the perfect substrate on which to test Girard's theory of mimetic desire.Suzanne, Titi, and Eddy: The Genesis of Mimetic DesireAccording to Girard, mimetic desire occurs when we crave for an object, place, status, or person simply because someone else desires it. The resulting rivalry can bring us into conflict with the models we imitate. According to this theory, [End Page 206] the romantic concept of spontaneous desire is illusory since it is learned from the Other. One therefore learns the value of desired objects from desiring subjects. Mimetic desire is schematized by a triangle. However, as we will see, not all love triangles are triangulations of mimetic desire.In Titi: Biafran Maid in Geneva, the eponymous protagonist meets Eddy at the Okekes' house. They begin a relationship, which does not show many signs of prospering beyond its physicality. Apart from the fact that both... (shrink)

J C Walker; Dusting Off Educational Studies: a methodology for implementing certain proposals of John Wilson’s, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 18, I.

I would like to record my thanks to Paul Thompson for useful conver sations over the years, and also to several generations of students who have helped me develop my ideas on biological theory and on Darwin. My wife has, as usual, been more than helpful; in particular she typed a good portion of the manuscript while I was on leave a few years ago, more now than I like to remember. My parents were both looking forward to holding a (...) final copy of this book. I only regret that my mother did not live long enough to see its completion. I must also thank the publishers and their staff. They have been re markably patient about meeting deadlines - promises were repeatedly made and then, owing to family situations, had to be broken - and for this I am considerably in their debt. I would further like to thank the following authors and publishers for permission to use their work: R. C. Lewontin, The Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change, Figure 1, p. 14; © 1964 Columbia University Press; reprinted here by kind permission of the author and publisher. F. Wilson, 'Goudge's Contribution to the Philosophy of Science', in L. W. Sumner, J. G. Slater, and F. Wilson (eds.), Pragmatism and Purpose: Essays in Honour of T. A. Goudge; © 1964 University of Toronto Press; reproduced here in part by kind permission of all the editors and the publisher. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Matter and Spirit in the Age of Animal MagnetismEric G. WilsonDuring the Romantic period, writers on both sides of the Atlantic explored the sleepwalker as a merger of holiness and horror. Emerging when scientific thinkers for the first time were connecting spirit to electricity and magnetism, the somnambulist became to certain Romantics a disclosure of the difficulty of harmonizing unseen and seen, agency and necessity. This problem prominently arose (...) in Anton Mesmer's late eighteenth-century experiments in animal magnetism, in which the sleepwalker proved a paradox: an opaque revelation of transparent currents and an unconscious vehicle of sophisticated thought. Romantics such as Coleridge embraced the somnambulist as an embodiment of these troubles involved in relating motion and meaning. Coleridge and those who responded to him saw in the hypnotized human this sobering possibility: the invisible requires the visible to make itself manifest while the visible needs the invisible to become significant. 1 This is sublime and sinister: to elevate a material form to spiritual power is transcendence; to sink the boundless into a body is grotesque.Here I explore the philosophical implications of animal magnetism, the place of the sleepwalker in the history of ideas, and the role of the hypnotized human in Romantic writers, especially Coleridge. I also meditate on relationships between matter and spirit, machine and human, word and thing. Along the way, I place the history of ideas and the works of Romantic writers in mutually illuminating dialogues. The literary texts shed fresh light on philosophical problems while the ideas reveal hidden literary elements.The somnambulistic trance had been around long before Mesmer's magnetic sleeps. For centuries, shamans had used auto-hypnosis to sound [End Page 329] their souls and other-hypnosis to cure their tribe-members' ailments. However, somnambulism could not become a scientific phenomenon until Europeans in laboratories began to study electricity and magnetism. In the early modern period, Paracelsus argued that a vital fluid courses through the cosmos. The human being draws this flow like a magnet attracts force. When the body pulls to itself evil effluvia, it falls ill. To return patients to health, Paracelsus placed magnets on painful areas. He hoped to extract the unwanted current and return it to the cosmic swirl. 2 In "magnetizing" spirit, Paracelsus opened a door for empirical inquiry into the invisible world. In 1600, William Gilbert claimed that magnets correspond to the earth: both are animated by universal attraction and repulsion. 3 By the end of the seventeenth-century, Newton proposed that things are impelled by a force that draws and repels. Newton's theory of gravity inspired natural philosophers of the next centuries to search for a principle of which the magnet and the spark are manifestations. 4During the second half of the eighteenth century and the early part of the nineteenth, natural philosophers explored electricity and magnetism with unprecedented precision. In 1752, Benjamin Franklin revealed the mystery of lightning and perhaps the spark of life. 5 Inspired by Franklin, F. C. Oetinger, J. L. Fricker, and Prokop Divisch developed a theology of electricity, based on the belief that God is the electrical current. 6 Later in the century, Luigi Galvani and Alessandro Volta debated over whether the galvanic flow might be the origin and principle of life itself. 7 A few years before Franklin harvested lightning, John Michell argued that the magnetic force is not constrained to lodestones but is possibly pervasive. Some years later, Franz Aepinus suggested that magnetism and electricity manifest a deep energy. Soon after, C. A. de Coulomb discovered the mathematical law by which electrical and magnetic forces operate (Whittaker, pp. 50–59).These findings led to the breakthroughs of the nineteenth century. 8 In 1807, Humphry Davy hypothesized that chemical elements interact through electromagnetic affinity or repulsion. 9 In 1820, H. C. Oersted demonstrated the correspondence between electricity and magnetism. The same year, A. M. Ampere formulated the laws by which electrical and magnetic currents interact (Whittaker, pp. 81–86). Michael Faraday in 1831 revealed electromagnetic induction and thus inaugurated a second Copernican revolution: he showed that matter is not solid and discrete but a field of electromagnetic energy. 10 The dreams of [End... (shrink)

This is a book that challenges the current orthodoxy, both in the philosophy of mind and in the cognitive sciences, that thinking (construed broadly to include perceiving, imagining, remembering, etc.) is a mental process in the head. Such a view has been largely taken for granted since the demise of behaviorism in the 1960s, and it underpins both the representational and computational theories of mind, including their connectionist and dynamicist variants. While the orthodoxy has been rejected in recent years by (...) a motley collection of e-theorists—externalists, embodiers, embedders, and extended minders—Melser’s view is quite distinct from such views. For Melser, rather than thinking being a process that begins in the head but extends beyond it (as most e-theorists hold), it is a personal-level activity, something that a person does through her actions. Since Melser views such activities as being disjoint from natural processes, thinking is not a natural process at all, the sort of thing that we might study scientifically. Thus, thinking is a personal action that calls for a different kind of study, one that draws on empathy, interpretation, and hermeneutics. That is the view defended at the core of the book (chh.1-7), and if it makes it sound like a very old-fashioned book, that’s because it is. Melser’s antecedents are philosophers such as Gilbert Ryle, J.L. Austin, and Stuart Hampshire, both in style and in content. Apart from Melser’s heavy reliance on selective parts of developmental psychology, there is minimal discussion of substantive work in contemporary cognitive science. That is what might be expected from an author whose view is that whatever it is cognitive scientists are doing, it is not (much to their surprise, no doubt) the investigation of thinking. As I will try to show in a moment, however, the central argument of the book could have been strengthened by more direct engagement with such empirical work. (shrink)

Note: this is the first published presentation and defense of the 'proper subset strategy' for making sense of non-reductive physicalism or the associated notion of realization; this is sometimes, inaccurately, called "Shoemaker's subset strategy"; if people could either call it the 'subset strategy' or better yet, add my name to the mix I would appreciate it. Horgan claims that physicalism requires "superdupervenience" -- supervenience plus robust ontological explanation of the supervenient in terms of the base properties. I argue that Horgan's (...) account fails to rule out physically unacceptable emergence. I rather suggest that this and other unacceptable possibilities may be ruled out by requiring that each individual causal power in the set associated with a given supervenient property be numerically identical with a causal power in the set associated with its base property. I go on to show that a wide variety of physicalist accounts, both reductive and non-reductive, are implicitly or explicitly designed to meet this condition, and so are more similar than they seem. In particular, non-reductive physicalism accounts typically appeal to a relation plausibly ensuring that the powers of a higher-level property are a proper subset of those of its physical base property. (shrink)

According to David Lewis’s Modal Realism, other possible worlds really exist as concrete, spatiotemporal systems, and every way that a world could be is a way that some world is. To establish this plenitude of concrete possible worlds, Lewis presents his ‘principle of recombination,’ which is meant to guarantee that there exists a possible world, or part of a possible world, for every possibility. Jessica Wilson has recently argued that Lewis’s principle of recombination fails to generate enough worlds to (...) account for the plenitude of possibilities. Namely, Wilson argues that the principle of recombination cannot account for the possibility of spatially overlapping but distinct fundamental entities, as well as certain macroscopic entities. In this paper, I will defend Lewis’s principle of recombination against these charges, arguing that Wilson’s objections overlook features of Lewisian metaphysics that can solve the problems at hand. (shrink)

The dual role of olfaction in both smelling and tasting, i.e. flavour perception, makes it an important test case for philosophical theories of sensory individuation. Indeed, the psychologist Paul Rozin claimed that olfaction is a “dual sense”, leading some scientists and philosophers to propose that we have not one, but two senses of smell: orthonasal and retronasal olfaction. In this paper I consider how best to understand Rozin’s claim, and upon what grounds one might judge there to be one or (...) two distinct olfactory modalities. I conclude that while Rozin may be right that humans have dual occurrences of an olfactory ‘sense’, the concept of a sense-modality, and hence the ‘sense’ of smell, is ambiguous between two different notions: a physiological sensory channel and an experiential modality, along the lines suggested by J. J. Gibson. Furthermore, recognising that these are complementary rather than competing conceptions of a sense-modality enables the formulation of a powerful ‘dual-concept’ framework for posing and addressing questions concerning the complex architecture of human multisensory experience. (shrink)

In his review of my book, Terry Godlove raises some robust objections to the exegesis of Kant that I present in my recent book, Kant and the Creation of Freedom: a Theological Problem (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). I respond to these criticisms in this article. Properly to locate Godlove’s exegetical objections, I dedicate the first section to setting out the arc of the argument I trace. I then set out and treat in turn Godlove’s main objections to (...) my exegesis: that it depends upon an interpretation of transcendental idealism which makes the doctrine ‘flatly inconsistent and probably just silly’; that I neglect the most plausible account interpretation of Kant’s various statements about transcendental idealism; and that I ‘pick and choose’ supporting texts too narrowly, leading to an unbalanced presentation, which is too convenient to my thesis. I conclude with some general methodological reflections—stimulated by Godlove, but not aimed at him—about how historical philosophical texts are often treated. I express some anxieties about the principle of charity that underlies much current exegesis, and ‘rational reconstruction’ of historical texts, and I propose a case for what might be called ‘creative decomposition’ (not of the text, but of the self). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A DIFFERENT METHOD; A DIFFERENT CASE: THE THEOLOGICAL PROGRAM OF JULIAN HARTT AND AUSTIN FARRER WILLIAM M. WILSON University of Virginia, OharlottesvUZe, Virginia, WRITERS COVERING the work of Julian Hartt or Austin Farrer-the :llew that there ar~generally find that the hest introduction is a straightforward acknowledgement that what is to come is unique. Basil Mitchell, for instance, has said that no matter how one catalogues contemporary theologians, a (...) footnote will be needed, reading " and then of course there is Austin Farrer." 1 Likewise, David Kelsey has said that Hartt's work "is not identi:firuble as a variant on any of the options on the present scene." 2 Those already aicquainted with Hartt and Farrer will no dorurbt agree with the sense o[ these assessments; but if they have heen carefol students they will demand, nev,ertheless, a slight qualification : Hartt,and Farrer.are unique as a party of two. Farrer is a " variant " on Hartt; Hartt belongs down in the footnote aibout Farrer. But from the claim that these two are unique it does not follow that their wo:vk is something akin to those bold " new theologies " fashioned from the innocent's quest for a faith untouched hy either the hands of tradition or the perplexities of our time. Farrer's: anchorage in tradition is obvious throughout his writing and clearly stated in the preiface to his first 1 ' Austin Marsden Farrer,' A Oelebmtion of Fa,ith, ed. Leslie Houlden (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1970), pp.13-14. 2" Christian Sense Making: Hartt's 'Theological Method and Imagination,"' The J owrna,Z of ReUgion Vol. 58 (4), October 1978, p. 428. 599 600 WILLIAM M. WILSON work. There he said that he was " possessed hy the Thomistic vision" and w:as incapable of "thinking it wrong."3 As to novelty, he had this to say:. •. it is indeed absurd to propose new grounds for belief in the existence of God. The belief has stood for more than ~.ooo years if we are to speak of the essentials of transcendental theism. If belief has been reasona9le it has had a reason, and our only business must be to draw this out and restate it.4 It is.fair to say, to 1be sure, that Farrer "drew out" and "restated " that reason in a. way unlike that of any other contemporary Thomist. There are some who would deny him even the label.5 And it is in this sense that Mitchell's statement about him must remain: If " transcendental," " Neo-," and " traditional " Thomist are three current categories, Farrer is a footnote to them. Hartt, unlike Farrer, has ne,ver labeled himself, hut none of his readers can miss his hostility to any pretense to novelty, even to those which have become our standard fare. The good ship theology (has taken) on a radioactive cargo, its company attracted by the dynamic and dazzle of it all. Relevance~ Historicism, several varieties of analysis, Secularism-what a promising manifest! 6 The " spirit of the age " is not to illuminate the gospel, according to Hartt, rather it is the gospel which illuminates the spirit of the age.7 s Finite and Infinite: A Philosophical Essay, Ibid., p. 1. 11 But see note 5 above. JULIAN HARTT AND AUSTIN FARRER 603 I. The Uniqueness of Hartt and Farrer In a recent encydopedia entry, David Kelsey arranges a useful chart of contemporary theology according to the answers given to " the array o:f decisions theologians must make in the course of doing theology." 12 According to Kelsey, theologians must decide the subject matter o:f theology, the importance o:f cultural context, the 1wudience, the significance of the theologian 's vantage point, the goals o:f theology and the best means o:f accomplishing them. For our purposes o:f identifying Hartt and Farrer, however, we need concentrate only on the first and the last-the question o:f subject matter and the question o:f the hest means £or attaining theological ends. The latter (being the last question the theologian must face) best :identifies the overall mind o:f the theologian at work. Thus, against the standard answers given here, I shall try... (shrink)

In the June issue of the Classical Review Professor Cook Wilson announces his conversion to the view that in ‘a well-defined group’ of passages in the Nicomachean Ethics λόγος means Reason. While I cannot hope to re-convert Professor Cook Wilson, I feel that it is worth while to try to express the reasons for which it seems difficult to follow him.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Religious Pluralism and Christian TruthJoseph S. O’Leary has been named recipient of the 1998 Frederick J. Streng Book Award for his 1996 volume, Religious Pluralism and Christian Truth. Dr. O’Leary was born in Cork, Ireland, in 1949. He studied literature, theology, and philosophy in Maynooth, Rome, and Paris. After teaching briefly in the United States (University of Notre Dame and Duquesne University), he moved to Japan in 1983. He (...) has worked in association with the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture and currently teaches English literature at Sophia University (with special emphasis on Joyce and the modernist period) and a course on Japanese values at International Christian University.He has been working on a trilogy in fundamental theology that has taken on an increasingly interreligious character. The first volume is Questioning Back: The Overcoming of Metaphysics in Christian Tradition (Minneapolis: Winston/Seabury, 1985), reviewed in Buddhist-Christian Studies in 1987; a French version is in preparation. The second volume appeared first as La verite chretienne a l’age du pluralisme religieux (Paris: Cerf, 1994) and then as Religious Pluralism and Christian Truth (Edinburgh University Press, 1996). Joseph O’Leary is also coeditor of Heidegger et la question de Dieu (Paris: Grasset, 1980) and Buddhist Spirituality (vols. 8 and 9 of World Spirituality, New York: Crossroad, 1993 and 1999).Terry Muck: Why did you write this book?Joseph O’Leary: My earlier book, Questioning Back: The Overcoming of Metaphysics in Christian Tradition, advocated deconstruction of the Greek and Hebrew elements in Christian theology—the need for a radical retrieval of the tradition in the spirit of Heidegger’s “step back” from metaphysical systems to the original phenomena. In Religious Pluralism and Christian Truth, I broadened the horizon to see all religion as historical, cultural constructs growing and changing through mutual interaction. Living in Japan brought me a liberating sense of historical and cultural relativity and with it the sense that the Christian tradition should be thought of as an essentially incomplete project, always reaching out to other traditions in search of a fuller vision.But that discovery did not mean giving up on the Christian tradition.No. Rather than sitting back and enjoying the pluralism, I found myself more and more concerned with the question of truth. Followers of Jacques Derrida assured me that “truth” has been exposed as a historical myth. Struggling with Derrida I found rather a recontextualization of the value of truth. Moreover, the “situated truth” (always relative to a given context in culture and praxis) of historically formulated dogmatic propositions turned out to be quite defensible despite Derrida’s demolition [End Page 239] of notions of truth as totality (Hegel) or truth as presence (Heidegger). Christianity has nothing to fear from opening itself up to its historical relativity. Buddhism has long accepted the provisionality of all religious expressions. I focused especially on the notion of skillful means and on the theory of the two truths (conventional and ultimate) in Madhyamaka Buddhism.What does this “opening up” do to traditional Christian doctrines?The notion of God is not only compatible with such a relativized view of the status of religious language, but demands it. The biblical discourse about God consists in a constant deconstruction of old images of God by new ones. As for the role of Jesus Christ, Incarnation is an ongoing event in that the historical significance of Jesus is still unfolding. The uniqueness of Jesus resides not in some ontological amalgamation of divinity and humanity but in the specifics of his historical role. God’s Word is spoken in other ways elsewhere, indeed is spoken in all things, and its specifically “fleshly” (human and historical) and “eschatological” manifestation in the unfolding of the Jesus story should not be divorced from these wider contexts.How have these ideas been received?The most flattering response has come from the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies in granting me the Frederick J. Streng Book Award. Streng’s book, Emptiness, which I read in Pittsburgh in 1982, opened my eyes to the world of Madhyamaka thought.Any criticisms?Predictably, the book has come under fire from two opposing camps. The Revue Thomiste reviewer claimed that I could... (shrink)

Aristotle and the sea battle, by G. E. M. Anscombe.--Aristotle's different possibilities, by K. J. J. Hintikka.--On Aristotle's square of opposition, by M. Thompson.--Categories in Aristotle and in Kant, by J. C. Wilson.--Aristotle's Categories, chapters I-V: translation and notes, by J. L. Ackrill--Aristotle's theory of categories, by J. M. E. Moravcsik.--Essence and accident, by I. M. Copi.--Tithenai ta phainomena, by G. E. L. Owen.--Matter and predication in Aristotle, by J. Owens.--Problems in Metaphysics Z, chapter 13, by M. J. Woods.--The (...) meaning of agathon in the Ethics of Aristotle, by H. A. Prichard.--Agathon and eudaimonia in the Ethics of Aristotle, by J. L. Austin.--The final good in Aristotle's Ethics, by W. F. R. Hardie.--Aristotle on pleasure, by J. O. Urmson.--Bibliography (p. 335-41). (shrink)

By now widely read, Catherine Wilson’s book on Leibniz’s metaphysics needs no introduction to Leibniz scholars. This volume, like its companions in the ‘Studies in Intellectual History and the History of Philosophy’ series, succeeds in meeting high standards of historical and textual scholarship; of special note are Wilson’s remarkable grasp of the contribution that relatively minor figures made to Leibniz’s thought, and her familiarity with the European secondary literature. The book is, as a consequence, broader and historically richer (...) than other books on Leibniz in English. Contributing to this historical flavor is also a more strategic feature of Wilson’s project—namely its exploration of Leibniz’s metaphysics “[not] as a collection of theses and principles, but developmentally and thematically”. The distinction seems to imply that while one could view Leibniz’s metaphysics as a collection of principles and theses, exactly “which principles and theses?” threatens to get wrongly answered: the “governing assumption” of a developmental approach is that “what the words of a [long-dead philosopher] mean cannot be determined by an internal inspection of the texts”. Or anyway, not precisely determined, with a high confidence of Leibniz’s intentions, and for some projects this may well matter. Surely it may well matter for someone inclined—as Wilson is not—to see the largest part of Leibniz’s metaphysics as a relatively unified system of theses and principles: the governing assumption, which beckons us to read Leibniz against the backdrop of his ancient, medieval, and modern heritage, is consistent with exploring the internal coherence of the theses and principles making up his metaphysical system. If much of the older secondary literature was mistaken in doing almost to the exclusion of, Wilson’s book can scarcely be charged with the same mistake. Were I asked to complain about Wilson’s approach, I would only suggest that her eagerness and ability to do has sometimes obscured the extent to which an internal inspection of the texts is needed in fairly doing. (shrink)

There has been much recent interest in a distinctively metaphysical kind of determinative explanation: ground. This paper concerns various skeptical challenges to ground’s relevance to metaphysics, such as that it is an empty posit, that the work it is supposed to do is appropriated by other notions, and that it is inapt for specific issues it should serve. I argue against these challenges. My strategy is both critical and constructive. Critical because I argue that versions of these challenges raised by (...) Elizabeth Barnes, Kathrin Koslicki, Mari Mikkola, and Jessica Wilson are not persuasive. Constructive because we may nevertheless learn from them new work for ground. (shrink)

Recently, Terry Horgan and Matjaž Potrč have defended the thesis of ‘existence monism’, according to which the whole cosmos is the only concrete object. Their arguments appeal largely to considerations concerning vagueness. Crucially, they claim that ontological vagueness is impossible, and one key assumption in their defence of this claim is that vagueness always involves ‘sorites-susceptibility’. I aim to challenge both the claim and this assumption. As a consequence, I seek to undermine their defence of existence monism and support (...) a common-sense pluralist ontology of ‘ordinary objects’ as being fully consistent with a thoroughgoing metaphysical realism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:120 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Opera theologica quae latine edidit, 3 vols. (Roterodami, 1651-1660). His religious polemics with Amyrault and Grofius were famous. Paul Dibon, professor at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, is the most prominent contemporary historian of seventeenth-century Dutch philosophy and intellectual life; he is perfectly aware of the fact that genuine history can only be founded on solid erudition, and this inventory is a first-class contribution (...) to it. Only those who ignore the difficulties of this kind of research will underestimate the enormous effort it involves--an effort which is, much more than a pedantic and mechanical listing of data, a kind of venatio, requiring a continuous alertness, a surprising amount of imagination and intelligence, a painstaking precision, and an enormous background of knowledge. The letters are arranged in chronological order (with the exception of a few which are undated). Each entry lists the date, the names and locations of the sender and addressee, and the opening words of the letter. The status of the letter (original/ minute/copy/printed) is indicated, as is the library in which the letter is located (and the call number), and/or, if the letter was published, the printed source. Thirty-two libraries were explored. GIORGIO TONELLI State University o/ New York at Binghamton Introduction to Newton's Principia. By I. Bernard Cohen. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971. Pp. xxx+380. $30.00) Over the past dozen years or so Newtonian scholarship has burgeoned as never before, and a first and fundamental result has been the publication of more and more of the wealth of manuscript material and letters that Newton left as a legacy of potential insight and confusion to future scholars. To date, the most imposing of the undertakings in publication have been The Correspondence (1959- ), begun under the editorship of H. W. Turnbull and continued more recently under that of J. F. Scott, and the Mathematical Papers (1967- ), started and continuing under the editorship of D. T. Whiteside. Selected documents of importance have been published by I. Bernard Cohen, assisted by Robert E. Schofield, in Isaac Newton's Papers and Letters on Natural Philosophy... (1958), by A. R. Hall and Marie Boas Hall in Unpublished Scientific Papers o/ Isaac Newton (1962), and by J. W. Herivel in The Background of Newton's Principia (1965); additional documentary material has appeared in studies by Alexandre Koyr6, I. Bernard Cohen, Johannes A. Lohne, D. T. Whiteside, Richard S. Wesffall, J. E. McGuire and P. M. Rattansi, and still others--a full bibliography would run to considerable length. Nor, although the uncertainties in the interpretation of the documents are sometimes overwhelming, has this spate of publication merely served to replace one set of scholarly puzzles by another. The traditional, monolithic and impenetrable image of Newton "with his prism and silent face, / The marble index of a mind for ever / Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone..." has lost something of its hypnotic hold, and we begin to discern some of the steps, not to say jogs and leaps, in Newton's actual journey of thought and discovery. The volume here under review introduces another major enterprise in Newtonian scholarship, a "variorum" edition of the Principia. The edition itself, which has yet to appear, will consist primarily of a facsimile reproduction of the third edition (1726)-the last edition that Newton himself supervised----collated line by line with the variant readings in the two prior editions and in a manuscript of the first edition, and with the BOOK REVIEWS 121 corrections, improvements, and additions that Newton entered into copies of the first and second editions. This textual part of the edition was delivered to the press in 1966; additional parts are in various stages of preparation. There is to be a Commentary dealing with the prefaces, definitions, laws of motion, and the first three sections of Book I and most of Book III, along with English versions and modern analytical paraphrases of the sections dealt with, a glossary, and a number of short essays on such topics as the astronomical and physical data used by Newton, the mathematical background to the understanding of the Principia, and the analysis of... (shrink)

Arnauld's criticisms as "a model of confusion confounded.” In a review of Wilson's book, R. McRae refers to "the difficult and not too coherent subject of material falsity. '' J. Cottingham describes the Descartes-Arnauld debate on the material falsity of adventitious ideas as "an involved and rather inconclusive exchange " and claims that the example of the material falsity of such ideas espoused by Descartes in Meditation III is "needlessly complicated. " A. Kenny, in turn, notes that several things (...) are "confusing in Descartes' account of false ideas. " Later reference is made to the fact that "Descartes appears confused. [...] and that "Descartes, it seems, cannot give a consistent answer. '' As will become clear, I take issue with each of these assessments. When Descartes' position on material falsity is understood in the light of late Scholastic sources, especially Suarez, whence it draws its strength and inspiration, the alleged confusion and incoherency vanishes. .. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Denying the Body? Memory and the Dilemmas of History in DescartesTimothy J. ReissIn an essay first published in The New York Review of Books in January 1983, touching her apprenticeship as writer, the Barbadian /American novelist Paule Marshall described the long afternoon conversations with which her mother and friends used to relax in the family kitchen. She recalled how they saw things as composed of opposites; not torn, but (...) completed and made whole by them.Theirs was not a Manichean brand of dualism that sees matter, flesh, the body, as inherently evil, because they constantly addressed each other as “soully-gal”—soul: spirit; gal: the body, flesh, the visible self. And it was clear from their tone that they gave one as much weight and importance as the other. They had never heard of the mind/body split. 1This closing claim is surely less than self-evident. Whether or not the companions had heard of the mind/body split depends on the meaning given to the verb “hear.” Certainly it was embedded in their language, however much the phrase “soully-gal” might recombine its parts.Did the split come from Descartes and early European debates, linguistically colonizing all those who came within its sphere—Africans, Barbadians, Brooklynites? Did it come from a Christian heritage, with its haggling over bodily mortality and immortality of soul? Who knows? A first point is that it is still an everyday experience, deeply buried in language and so in the ideas, feelings, and meanings expressed in language. A second point is that the post-Cartesian debates—to simplify for a moment with an overly heavy [End Page 587] hand—were and are themselves but a variant within a much longer received wisdom. Nonetheless, such wisdom is now bound to that variant, which, willy-nilly, does give one set of parameters to a common experience—at least, to that of those of us who dwell under Western hegemonies. It gives them also, no doubt, to many who live within them at once less clearly and more contentiously.I would like to offer a further powerful instance here, simply to emphasize what and how much is at stake in the questions to be addressed. It occurs in a writing by the Guyanese novelist Wilson Harris, his Palace of the Peacock. First in a tetralogy, this novel recounts something like a journey away from a life of colonial and postcolonial violence and oppression towards a hoped-for rebirth in “fulfilment and understanding.” 2 Early on, the harsh protagonist, Donne, mocks the narrator, his mysterious “double” and “brother,” Dreamer, who has remarked their distance from “the folk.” “Is it a mystery of language and address?” asks Donne. Slightly bewildered, Dreamer struggles to suggest that the obstacle is less of language than of a deeper disjunction:“it’s an inapprehension of substance,” I blurted out, “an actual fear of the substance of life, fear of the substance of the folk, a cannibal blind fear in oneself. Put it how you like,” I cried, “it’s a fear of acknowledging the true substance of life. Yes, fear I tell you, the fear that breeds bitterness in our mouth, the haunting sense of fear that poisons us and hangs us and murders us. And somebody,” I declared, “must demonstrate the unity of being, and show...” I had grown violent and emphatic... “that fear is nothing but a dream and an appearance....” 3Recovery of unity might become a way to defeat political and historical violences. In the next novel in the sequence, one of two self-indulgently whining characters, accused of pining for a woman who has run away to seek education, explodes: “I don’t believe you can begin to see how some body like they born seeking for mind.” 4 For peoples of the colonized Americas, imbued with “the great civilization of the American Indian,” this urge, Harris then wrote in a critical essay, was simply the personal form of a social and political necessity to recover still-living elements of a culture for which “matter truly bore the imprint of genius,” refusing “the taboo of spirituality removed from sensuous direction.” 5 Recently, Harris has worried this... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:September 24, 2010 (10:17 pm) C:\Users\Milt\Desktop\backup copy of Ken's G\WPData\TYPE3001\russell 30,1 032 red corrected.wpd 1 Just what exactly “separated by degree” means is a bone of contention among those playing the game. But it seems to me that if you have actually met a person Xz, then you have knowledge by acquaintance of X, whereas if you meet someone who met Xz you are separated from Xz by one (...) degree. Thus, I never met the jazz great Sun Ra, but my friend Warren Allen Smith (former head of a recording studio) worked with him on several of his albums, so I am one degree of separation from Sun Ra. russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies n.s. 30 (summer 2010): 63–7 The Bertrand Russell Research Centre, McMaster U. issn 0036-01631 eu d’sprit “SIX DEGREES OF BERTRAND RUSSELL” Timothy J. Madigan Philosophy / St. John Fisher College Rochester, ny 14618, usa [email protected] One of the most quoted phrases in current popular culture is “six degrees of separation”. It expresses the idea that any human being is connected with any other human being by a chain of at most six acquaintances.1 While there is much debate as to whether this is literally true, it is an interesting thoughtexperiment, as well as the basis for many fun parlour games. One of these is entitled “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”, in which Wlm fans try to connect the aforementioned actor with any other movie star in as few links as possible. I have been thinking of launching a similar parlour game called “Six Degrees of Bertrand Russell”, in which any Wgure from the past 200 years or so could be connected with Bertie in as few steps as possible. Why Bertie rather than, say, Ludwig Wittgenstein (who after all had a stated interest in games)? For two reasons: Wrst, Russell lived to the ripe old age of 97, and thus had the time to interact with a wide variety of people; and secondly he was for most of that long life a celebrity, who rubbed elbows with all manner of individuals, many of whom were either celebrities themselves at the time or came to be celebrated later. As is often pointed out, Russell’s list of acquaintances stretched from Lenin (V.yI.) to Lennon (zJohn), from the Bloomsbury Group to the Doomsday Prophets, from William Gladstone to Harold Wilson. Russell’s grandfather, LordJohn Russell, had as a young man visited Napoleon on the island of Elba and shaken his hand. When I shake the hand of Honorary Russell Archivist Ken Blackwell, September 24, 2010 (10:17 pm) C:\Users\Milt\Desktop\backup copy of Ken's G\WPData\TYPE3001\russell 30,1 032 red corrected.wpd 64 timothy j. madigan 2 Other historical writings by Russell are discussed in Kenneth R. Stunkel, “Bertrand Russell’s Writings and ReXections on History”, Russellz 21 (2001): 129–53. who met Bertie, I often think that I am only three degrees of separation from shaking Napoleon’s hand as well. And as for Napoleonz—zwell, who knows where that hand had been? Given this strong connection to history, it is not surprising that Russell himself would write an essay entitled “How to Read and Understand History”.2 In his Autobiographyz and other works such as Portraits from Memory, Russell made it quite clear that his aristocratic and privileged background gave him access to many of the most important movers and shakers in twentieth-century politics, literature, and academia, areas in which he himself excelled. He was aware that, unlike many of his fellow philosophers, who were known only to a small coterie of fellow deep thinkers, he was an historic Wgure, one who could interact on a personal level with cabinet ministers, Nobel prize-winners in all Welds, press lords, movie stars, presidents and premiers. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, for instance, many concerned individuals tried to reach Kennedy and Khrushchev to give them advice, but Russell was one of the few outsiders whose letters actually got through, as he no doubt knew they would. For all of his concern with... (shrink)

This paper brings needed clarity to the influential view that species are cohesive entities held together by gene flow, and then develops an empirical argument against that view: Neglected data suggest gene flow is neither necessary nor sufficient for species cohesion. Implications are discussed. ‡I'm grateful to Rob Wilson, Alex Rueger and Lindley Darden for important comments on earlier drafts, and to Joseph Nagel, Heather Proctor, Ken Bond, members of the DC History and Philosophy of Biology reading group, and (...) audience members at the November 2006 meeting of the PSA, for helpful comments or discussion. Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada fellowship 752-2005-1208 supported research. †To contact the author, please write to: Philosophy Department, University of Wisconsin–Madison, 5185 Helen C. White Hall, 600 North Park Street, Madison, WI 53706; e-mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

A purely metaphysical formulation of physicalism is surprisingly elusive. One popular slogan is, 'There is nothing over and above the physical'. Problems with this arise on two fronts. First, it is difficult to explain what makes a property 'physical' without appealing to the methodology of physics or to particular ways in which properties are known. This obviously introduces epistemic features into the core of a metaphysical issue. Second, it is difficult to cash out 'over-and-aboveness' in a way that is rigorous, (...) metaphysically pure and extensionally apt for the purposes of the debate. In this paper I will touch on the first problem, but I wish to focus on the second. In particular, I will focus on the claim that supervenience theses cannot define physicalism because they allow classical emergentist dualism through the physicalist door [Horgan 1993; Kim 1998; Wilson 2005]. I will argue that when the relevant supervenience thesis is metaphysical, emergentism is excluded. Against recent arguments to the contrary, I maintain that this is the case even given necessitarianism about natural laws [Wilson 2005]. I will argue that a necessitarian with emergentist sympathies will be forced either into a type of quasi-panpsychism, where our basic physical properties contain the illicit seeds of mentality at their core, or she will be forced to admit that emergence laws are not necessary after all. Either way, the combination of necessitarianism and emergentism does not provide a counterexample to supervenience physicalism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Future of Environmental PhilosophyJ. Baird Callicott (bio)The old guy in The Graduate had just one word for Dustin Hoffman's character, Ben: "plastics." This old guy has three words for the future pursuit of environmental philosophers, young and old: global climate change (GCC).GCC is emerging as the central environmental concern of the 21st century. Back in the 20th century, E. O. Wilson's mantra was (I paraphrase) 'abrupt mass (...) anthropogenic species extinction is the crime for which posterity is least likely to forgive us.' In view of the multifaceted catastrophe graphically depicted in the recent acclaimed film, An Inconvenient Truth (AIT), Wilson's dictum seems quaint. Rather, a world whose very geography will be anthropogenically altered by risen sea levels, whose weather will be increasingly violent and erratic, whose seas will be stagnant and acidified by carbonic acid, etc., etc., is the crime for which posterity is least likely to forgive us—if there is any posterity to make a judgment.According to Al Gore in AIT anthropogenic GCC is a "moral" and "ethical" issue. But he doesn't elaborate. And at the end of the film he provides a lame list of things you and you and you and you—all of us individually AND voluntarily—can do to mitigate GCC, such as swap out halogen light bulbs for compact florescent ones and drive a hybrid car. Think "tragedy of the commons" for the efficacy of that approach to an adequate ethical response to the challenge of GCC.Gore's naivete apart, environmental ethics (EE) as we know it is singularly ill-prepared for dealing with GCC. The problem is one of scale, temporal as well as spatial. Spatially, EE concern was focused on the scale of biotic communities, ecosystems, and landscapes. And the relevant science was ecology. Temporally, the scale was also ecological: It might take Prince William Sound half a century, perhaps even a whole century, to fully recover from the Exxon Valdez spill. In temperate climates, after a clearcut a mature forest might spring up in a century and, through ecological succession, if left alone it will return to old growth in 300 years. Back in the 20th century that seemed like a long time, and we lamented that the ecological temporal scale and the economic temporal scale of [End Page 119] industries like the timber business and the oil business were out of phase, the former measured in decades the latter in quarters. But now, elderly environmental philosophers like me will personally witness little more than the initial environmental consequences of GCC—the occasional Katrina, the occasional hottest year on record, the disappearance of glaciers in Glacier National Park. We won't live to see (I hope) the cessation of the Gulf Stream or sea-levels rise more than a few centimeters. And the rectification of these consequences will be completed, if they ever are, only after thousands of years have elapsed.How then do we scale EE up to meet the moral challenge of GCC? Spatially we have a huge leap to make from the landscape scale to the biospheric scale. We have to become conversant with a new set of sciences; the relevant sciences are not ecology and conservation biology, but biogeochemistry and earth-systems science.Is a GCC EE even possible? Maybe ethics has temporal-scale limits? We used to marvel at the long view of the Iroquois who considered the consequences of present policies out seven generations. Wow! At 25 years per generation that is all of 250 years (adding on the 75-year life-span of the 7th generation). Can we have ethical concern for the 37th generation, a thousand years out? Or the 121st generation 3000 years out?J. Baird Callicott J. Baird Callicott is Regents Professor of Philosophy and Religion Studies in the Institute of Applied Sciences at the University of North Texas. From 1997–2000 he served the International Society for Environmental Ethics as president. He is author, editor, or co-editor of a score of books and more than a hundred journal articles and book chapters. Callicott's research proceeds on six major fronts: theoretical environmental ethics, land ethics, the philosophy of... (shrink)

Many commentators cite John Dewey's support for Woodrow Wilson's administration and U.S. entry into the First World War as evidence against the claim that he was a pacifist. However, what they ignore is his leadership of the Outlawry of War Movement and his subsequent renunciation of his earlier pro-war views. This paper examines the controversy, beginning with Dewey's debate with Randolph Bourne over American involvement in the war to "make the world safe for democracy" and ending with his activities (...) as a leader of the Outlawry of War Movement. The touchstone essays for the debate between Dewey and Bourne are Dewey's "What America Will Fight For" and Bourne's "Twilight of the Idols." For Dewey's involvement in the Outlawry of War Movement, the essays "If War Were Outlawed" and "What Outlawry of War is Not" are instructive for how we might salvage Dewey's pacifist vision as a resource for the contemporary Peace Movement. I conclude that Dewey's writings and actions do provide good reason to restore his credentials as a philosopher of peace. (shrink)

Health equity is increasingly identified as a principal goal to be achieved through public health policies and activities. However, what is to be measured in the assessment of health equity and how inequities in health ought to be redressed are among the pressing questions that must be answered if health equity is to serve as a meaningful and consistent ethical guide for measurement and intervention in public health. In this article I argue that the concept of health equity, in the (...) form it is predominantly found in public health, suffers from normative indeterminacy and is therefore unlikely to provide actionable normative guidance to public health policy-makers, practitioners and researchers. I argue that the concept of health equity, as it is commonly defined in public health, ultimately rests upon assumptions of a more fundamental, yet tacit, conception of justice to do its normative work. In this vein, I expand upon a critique of Margaret Whitehead’s oft-cited definition of health equity made by James Wilson to raise additional reasons not explored by Wilson, or others, as to why Whitehead’s definition remains inadequate in providing normative guidance to policy-makers, practitioners and researchers in public health. (shrink)

Aristotle and the sea battle, by G. E. M. Anscombe.--Aristotle's different possibilities, by K. J. J. Hintikka.--On Aristotle's square of opposition, by M. Thompson.--Categories in Aristotle and in Kant, by J. C. Wilson.--Aristotle's Categories, chapters I-V: translation and notes, by J. L. Ackrill.--Aristotle's theory of categories, by J. M. E. Moravcsik.--Essence and accident, by I. M. Copi.--Tithenai ta phainomena, by G. E. L. Owen.--Matter and predication in Aristotle, by J. Owens.--Problems in Metaphysics Z, chapter 13, by M. J. Woods.--The (...) meaning of agathon in the Ethics of Aristotle, by H. A. Prichard.--Agathon and eudaimonia in the Ethics of Aristotle, by J. L. Austin.--The final good in Aristotle's Ethics, by W. F. R. Hardie.--Aristotle on pleasure, by J. O. Urmson.--Bibliography (p. 335-341). (shrink)