As John Henry Newman reflected on 'The Idea of a University' more than a century and a half ago, Bradley C. S. Watson brings together some of the nation's most eminent thinkers on higher education to reflect on the nature and purposes of the American university today. Their mordant reflections paint a picture of the American university in crisis. This book is essential reading for thoughtful citizens, scholars, and educational policymakers.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"The Fittest Man in the Kingdom":Thomas Reid and the Glasgow Chair of Moral PhilosophyPaul Wood (bio)Paul Wood Paul Wood is at the Department of History, University of Victoria, PO Box 3045, MS 7381, Victoria BC V8W 3P4 Canada. email: [email protected] August 1996Revised January 1997Notes. An earlier version of this paper was delivered at a plenary session of the 23rd International Hume Conference held at the University (...) of Nottingham. For comments and/or references, the author wishes to thank Roger Emerson, Carol Gibson-Wood, Knud Haakonssen, Ian Simpson Ross, Stephen Snobelen, M. A. Stewart, and the anonymous Hume Studies referees. For permission to cite and quote from manuscripts, he is grateful to the Keeper of the Manuscripts of Scotland as well as to the Librarians of Aberdeen University Library, Edinburgh University Library, Glasgow University Archives and Business Records Centre, Glasgow University Library (Department of Special Collections), the Mitchell Library Glasgow, and Dr. Williams' Library.1. Although little information survives regarding Law's teaching, we do know that he discussed Pufendorf in his classes; see Christine Mary King [Shepherd], "Philosophy and Science in the Arts Curriculum of the Scottish Universities in the Seventeenth Century," (Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Edinburgh, 1974), 177. Carmichael's edition of Pufendorf first appeared in Glasgow in 1718, and a second edition was published in Edinburgh in 1724 while Hume was still a student there.2. The surviving correspondence between the two men from this period is to be found in The Letters of David Hume, ed. J.Y.T. Greig, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932), I 32-35; 36-40; 45-48 (hereafter abbreviated as HL).3. The first detailed discussion of the 1745 election appeared in the introduction to David Hume, A Letter from a Gentleman to His Friend in Edinburgh, edited by Ernest C. Mossner and John V. Price (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1967). This account has recently been challenged in Roger L. Emerson, "The 'Affair' at Edinburgh and the 'Project' at Glasgow: The Politics of Hume's Attempts to become a Professor," in Hume and Hume's Connexions, edited by M. A. Stewart and John P. Wright (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994), 1-22; and M. A. Stewart, The Kirk and the Infidel (Lancaster: Lancaster University Publications Office, 1995). For historically sensitive contextual analysis of Hume's philosophical relations with Hutcheson, see inter alia James Moore, "Hume and Hutcheson," in Stewart and Wright, 23-57, and M. A. Stewart, Warmth in the Cause of Virtue (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming).4. In January 1752, "Mr. Smith read an Account of some of Mr. David Hume's Essays on Commerce" to the Society, and Hume was elected a member in 1753; see Notices and Documents Illustrative of the Literary History of Glasgow, During the Greater Part of Last Century, edited by W. J. Duncan (Glasgow: T. D. Morison, 1886), 132-133. Hume's failed candidacy is discussed in Emerson, "The 'Affair' at Edinburgh," 14-16, and Ian Simpson Ross, The Life of Adam Smith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 112-113. Smith's Glasgow colleague from 1751 to 1755, William Cullen, was also sympathetic to Hume's philosophy, as was John Millar, who was elected Professor of Law in 1761. On Cullen and Hume see J.R.R. Christie, "Ether and the Science of Chemistry: 1740-1790," in Conceptions of Ether: Studies in the History of Ether Theories 1740-1900, edited by G. N. Cantor and M.J.S. Hodge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 90-96.5. David Hume to William Strahan, 26 October 1775, HL II 301.6. See, for example, The Works of Thomas Reid, D.D., edited by Sir William Hamilton, 4th ed. (Edinburgh: Maclachlan and Stewart, 1854), 30n; James McCosh, The Scottish Philosophy, Biographical, Expository, Critical, from Hutcheson to Hamilton (London: Macmillan, 1875), 36; James Veitch, "Philosophy in the Scottish Universities," Mind 2 (1877): 207-234 (209).7. John Rae, Life of Adam Smith (London and New York: Macmillan, 1895); William Robert Scott, Francis Hutcheson: His Life, Teaching and Position in the History of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1900); idem., Adam Smith as Student and Professor (Glasgow: Jackson... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:TOWARD A GENERAL THEORY OF FICTION by James D. Parsons When nelson Goodman writes, "All fiction is literal, literary falsehood," he seems to be disregarding at least one noteworthy tradition.1 The tradition I have in mind includes works by Jeremy Bendiam, Hans Vaihinger, Tobias Dantzig, Wallace Stevens, and a host ofother writers in many fields who have been laboring for more man two centuries to clear the ground (...) for a general theory of fiction. Such a general dieory would, if its exponents are right about its relevemce, be situated at the very heart of die law, literature, religion, science, mathematics — in fact, of humem life itself. Fiction dien would be no neirrow litereiry falsehood, but a kind of pressure, eis Wedlace Stevens said, which die imagination exerts "against die pressure of reality," and which "helps us to live our lives,"2 or, in Hans Vaihingens metaphor, "a scaffolding afterwards to be demolished" 3 — that is, elfter it heis served its constructive purpose. A fiction is a vitally useful creation of die mind corresponding to nothing in the real world. Most people eire aware of some of these fictions, from the perfect geometric figures of Euclid to the black box of contemporary axiomatics. There are many odiers. The notion diat all human beings are equal before die law is a fiction that can serve opposing purposes: it can work as an instrument for securing greater justice in the courts and in society, or it can function as ceimouflage, helping to perpetuate em unjust legal system and em oppressive social order — emd probably in any actual situation it serves both purposes at once. In die science of mechanics the idea of a pure vacuum, in which moving objects meet with no resistance, was for some centuries a useful fiction diat made possible the exact mathematiced analysis of motion in memy forms — another useful fiction. The notion of normality in psychology — mat diere is a universal standard of reference for human behavior — is stdl utilized by clinical and laboratory workers in the field, in spite of the metssive sociological emd ethnographic criticisms that have been leveled against it. In science generally, the idea that 92 James D. Parsons93 diere is a community of experts who by dieir combined influence decide what the trudi is in every field is a fiction diat seems to have come to the end of its usefulness, diough some philosophers have written about it as if it were a reality and not a fiction at edl. The fictions I have cited so far are none of them literary, nor être diey fedse in the ordinetry meaning of the word. They are simply not true; they describe nothing mat exists, except in die mind, emd cem be considered false only if one forgets what they eire emd tries, illegitimately, to apply tests of trudi to them in a direct way. Among the fictions mat might be called literary are the fictions derived from mydis. Now, a myth is a story told in answer to a question or a series of questions that has never been asked, eidier about the real world or (most likely) about the perennial performance of a ritual. The mydi is designed to forestall the questioning, because the questions that might be raised would be too embarrassing or because questions about some aspects of reality ceuinot be formulated without distorting our relation to them. These are the aspects of reedity that can be viewed only out of die corner of the eye, that disappear when we focus our gaze upon diem, and mat can be identified only indirectly.4 The more explicitly fictional devices, too, of poetry, drama, and the novel develop out of the attempt to achieve some sort of cognizeuice of the seune aspects of reality that are related in mydis. I do not meetn to imply that literature, of which mydi is a part, is concerned only with such disconcerting or evanescent aspects of reality. Literature, like all the great realms of culture, is concerned with the whole of reality. It has to be, omerwise its more passionate, its more ediereed concerns would have no lodging place, no environment in which to maintain... (shrink)

James D Marshall; Wittgenstein on Rules: implications for authority and discipline in education, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 19, Issue 1, 30 May.

The perturbative approach to quantum field theory has long been viewed with suspicion by philosophers of science. This article offers a diagnosis of its conceptual problems. Drawing on Norton’s discussion of the notion of approximation I argue that perturbative QFT ought to be understood as producing approximations without specifying an underlying QFT model. This analysis leads to a reassessment of common worries about perturbative QFT. What ends up being the key issue with the approach on this picture is not mathematical (...) rigour, or the threat of inconsistency, but the need for a physical explanation of its empirical success. 1Three Worries about Perturbative Quantum Field Theory2The Perturbative Formalism 2.1Expanding the S-matrix2.2Perturbative renormalization3Approximations and Models4Perturbative Quantum Field Theory Produces Approximations5The Real Problem. (shrink)

James D. Wallace treats moral considerations as beliefs about the right and wrong ways of doing things - beliefs whose source and authority are the same as any ...

How do we establish the relevance of a moral consideration when doing so is problematic? How are conflicts among relevant considerations properly resolved? James D. Wallace maintains that a successful ethical theory should be able to answer these important questions. Nevertheless, he argues, the leading contemporary moral theories do not satisfactorily address them. In this book, Wallace criticizes the standard philosophical accounts of how we should resolve problems of moral relevance and moral conflict. He proceeds by looking at such (...) accounts as utilitarianism, Kantian moral theory, and intuitionism, and by providing an extended evaluation of Henry Sidgwick's moral epistemology. According to Wallace, these approaches pose difficulties because they all assume that there exist fixed, unchanging standards, rules, or methods that give us explicit directions for the solution of such problems. He then goes on to develop his own, "contextualist," approach, which combines elements of both Aristotelian and pragmatic views. To solve new problems, he asserts, we must adapt what we have learned from past problems to novel circumstances, sometimes appreciably changing our ways of dealing with certain kinds of issues. In adapting our ways of dealing with these issues to unprecedented problems, and in dealing with the conflicts that arise from unprecedented juxtapositions of considerations, we alter and even reform morality. (shrink)

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

Some scholars have argued that CEOs may have excessive influence on their foundation's trustees to give away a portion of company profits to charitable causes in order to gain access to elite circles or support the CEO's personal causes. This may result in charitable contributions that ultimately serve the personal interests of the CEOs without regard to corporate interests or social needs. We examine the extent that CEOs appear to direct charitable giving to be compatible with their own personal interests, (...) and if CEO participation on the foundation board affects the relationship between CEO personal interests and charitable giving. Using a sample of 160 corporate foundations, our results showed that CEOs' interests, as measured by membership in different non-profit organizations, was associated with foundation charitable giving. This association decreased, but was not eliminated, when CEOs were absent from the foundation board. Implications of these findings for researchers and managers are discussed in regards to both agency theory and stewardship theory. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

Essays and commentaries on theoretical physics, history of science, philosophy of science, language and science, teaching, and learning techniques.

The purpose of this paper is to communicate some developments in what we call the new logic. In a nutshell the new logic is a model of the behaviour of a logical agent. By these lights, logical theory has two principal tasks. The first is an account of what a logical agent is. The second is a description of how this behaviour is to be modelled. Before getting on with these tasks we offer a disclaimer and a warning. The disclaimer (...) is that although the new logic is significantly different from it, we have no inclination to see the new logic as a rival of mathematical logic. We do not advocate the displacement of, e.g. model theory, but rather its supplementation or adaptation. The warning is that, whereas mathematical logic must eschew psychologism, the new logic cannot do without it. The fuller story of the new logic must eschew psychologism, the new logic cannot do without it. The fuller story of the new logic is part of our book, The Reach of Abduction, scheduled to appear in 2001 or early 2002. (shrink)

Despite their popularity, dual process accounts of human reasoning and decision-making have come under intense scrutiny in recent years. Cognitive scientists and philosophers alike have come to question the theoretical foundations of the ‘standard view’ of dual process theory and have challenged the validity and relevance of evidence in support of it. Moreover, attempts to modify and refine dual process theory in light of these challenges have generated additional concerns about its applicability and refutability as a scientific theory. With these (...) concerns in mind, this paper provides a critical review of dual process theory in economics, focusing on its role as a psychological framework for decision modeling in behavioral economics and neuroeconomics. I argue that the influx of criticisms against dual process theory challenge the descriptive accuracy of dualistic decision models in economics. In fact, the case can be made that the popularity of dual process theory in economics has less to do with the empirical success of dualistic decision models, and more to do with the convenience that the dual process narrative provides economists looking to explain-away decision anomalies. This leaves behavioral economists and neuroeconomists with something of a dilemma: either they stick to their purported ambitions to give a realistic description of human decision-making and give up the narrative, or they revise and restate their scientific ambitions. (shrink)

Few historical figures have been more important in modeling the ideal of impartial critical scholarship than Erasmus of Rotterdam (1469-1536). Yet his critical scholarship, though beholden to no one, was not dispassionate. James Tracy shows how Erasmus the scholar sought through his writings to promote the moral and religious renewal of Christian society. Tracy finds the genesis of the humanist's notion of a "Christian republic" of pious and learned individuals in his "Burgundian," or Low Countries, roots. Erasmus's vision of (...) reform, Tracy argues, sprung from a humanist tradition focusing on the importance of teaching (_doctrina_), a tradition from which Erasmus departed in his optimism about human nature and his deep suspicion of the powers that be. Amid the storms of Reformation controversy, he pruned back the "dissimulation" by which he had thought to convey different meanings to different readers, yet in the end he could not control the way his words were read. If Erasmus's scholarly ideal carries an enduring fascination, so too does his dilemma as a man of circumspection who would also be a reformer. (shrink)

In Victor Hugo’s novel, Notre-Dame de Paris, 1482, the priest says that, alas, ‘this will destroy that’, meaning that the book upon which his hand was placed would destroy the building opposite. He is looking out of a window at the immense Cathedral of Notre-Dame (Hugo, 1967, p. 197). If the cathedral is a library to be read by the religious, and if the church is the symbol of authority and the repository of medieval knowledge, then the priest means not (...) only that the book, printing and new literacy would undermine the church’s authority, but that human thought will undermine the church’s expression of its authority (Bolter, 1991). The priest continues: the principal idea of each generation would no longer write itself with the same material and in the same way, that the book of stone, so solid and durable, would give place to the book made of paper, yet made more solid and durable. (Hugo, 1967, p. 199; Bolter’s 1991 translation). (shrink)

An artificial general intelligence (AGI) might have an instrumental drive to modify its utility function to improve its ability to cooperate, bargain, promise, threaten, and resist and engage in blackmail. Such an AGI would necessarily have a utility function that was at least partially observable and that was influenced by how other agents chose to interact with it. This instrumental drive would conflict with the strong orthogonality thesis since the modifications would be influenced by the AGI’s intelligence. AGIs in highly (...) competitive environments might converge to having nearly the same utility function, one optimized to favorably influencing other agents through game theory. Nothing in our analysis weakens arguments concerning the risks of AGI. (shrink)

While supporting the cosmopolitan pursuit of a world that respects all rights and interests, James D. Ingram believes political theorists have, in their approach to this project, compromised its egalitarian and emancipatory principles. Focusing on recent debates without losing sight of cosmopolitanism's ancient and Enlightenment roots, Ingram confronts the philosophical difficulties of defending universal ideals and the implications for ethics and political theory. In morality as in politics, theorists have generally focused first on discovering universal values and second on (...) their implementation. Ingram argues that only by prioritizing the development and articulation of universal values through political action in the fight for freedom and equality can theorists do justice to these efforts and cosmopolitanism's universal vocation. Only by proceeding from the local to the global, from the bottom up rather than from the top down, on the basis of political practice rather than moral ideals, can we salvage moral and political universalism. In this book, Ingram provides the clearest, most systematic account yet of this schematic reversal and its radical possibilities. (shrink)

McCawley supplements his earlier book—which covers such topics as presuppositional logic, the logic of mass terms and nonstandard quantifiers, and fuzzy ...

Classical mutations at the mouse Brachyury (T) locus were discovered because they lead to shortened tails in heterozygous newborns. no tail (ntl) mutants in the zebrafish, as their name suggests, show a similar phenotype. In Drosophila, mutants in the brachyenteron (byn) gene disrupt hindgut formation. These genes all encode T-box proteins, a class of sequence-specific DNA binding proteins and transcription factors. Mutations in the C. elegans mab-9 gene cause massive defects in the male tail because of failed fate decisions in (...) two tail progenitor cells. In a recent paper, Woollard and Hodgkin1 have cloned the mab-9 gene and found that it too encodes a T-box protein, similar to Brachyury in vertebrates and brachyenteron in Drosophila. The authors suggest that their results support models for an evolutionarily ancient role for these genes in hindgut formation. We will discuss this proposal and try to decide whether the gene sequences, gene interactions and gene expression patterns allow any conclusions to be made about the rear end of the ancestral metazoan. BioEssays 22:781–785, 2000. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

James D Marshall; John Wilson on the Necessity of Punishment, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 18, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 97–104, https://doi.org.

In the history of Sanskrit literary theory Bhaṭṭanāyaka occupies an influential yet mysterious position. Abhinavagupta clearly owes a great debt to him, but since Bhaṭṭanāyaka’s works themselves have been lost, it has proven difficult to understand exactly what that debt is. The common understanding is that Bhaṭṭanāyaka was a Mīmāṃsaka and that he applied the principles of Vedic hermeneutics to literature. But this actually doesn’t fit well with much of what Abhinavagupta tells us about Bhaṭṭanāyaka, and upon closer inspection it (...) becomes clear that in fact Abhinavagupta presents him as someone who was thoroughly interested in ideas drawn from non-dual Vedānta. This article reexamines the depictions of Bhaṭṭanāyaka in Abhinavagupta’s works and shows that while the evidence for a Mīmāṃsā connection is quite thin, the evidence for a similar connection to Vedānta is quite strong. Taking this connection seriously helps us develop a much clearer picture of Bhaṭṭanāyaka’s ideas, and it also helps us understand various details of Abhinavagupta’s response to Bhaṭṭanāyaka that would otherwise remain obscure. (shrink)

William James’s theory of emotion has been controversial since its inception, and a basic analysis of Cannon’s critique is provided. Research on the impact of facial expressions, expressive behaviors, and visceral responses on emotional feelings are each reviewed. A good deal of evidence supports James’s theory that these types of bodily feedback, along with perceptions of situational cues, are each important parts of emotional feelings. Extensions to James’s theory are also reviewed, including evidence of individual differences in (...) the effect of bodily responses on emotional experience. (shrink)

Axel Honneth has been instrumental in advancing the work of the Frankfurt School of critical theorists, rebuilding their effort to combine radical social and political analysis with rigorous philosophical inquiry. These eleven essays published over the past five years reclaim the relevant themes of the Frankfurt School, which counted Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin, Jürgen Habermas, Franz Neumann, and Albrecht Wellmer as members. They also engage with Kant, Freud, Alexander Mitscherlich, and Michael Walzer, whose work on morality, history, (...) democracy, and individuality intersects with the Frankfurt School's core concerns. Collected here for the first time in English, Honneth's essays pursue the unifying themes and theses that support the methodologies and thematics of critical social theory, and they address the possibilities of continuing this tradition through radically changed theoretical and social conditions. According to Honneth, there is a unity that underlies critical theory's multiple approaches: the way in which reason is both distorted and furthered in contemporary capitalist society. And while much is dead in the social and psychological doctrines of critical social theory, its central inquiries remain vitally relevant. Is social progress still possible after the horrors of the twentieth century? Does capitalism deform reason and, if so, in what respects? Can we justify the relationship between law and violence in secular terms, or is it inextricably bound to divine justice? How can we be free when we're subject to socialization in a highly complex and in many respects unfree society? For Honneth, suffering and moral struggle are departure points for a new "reconstructive" form of social criticism, one that is based solidly in the empirically grounded, interdisciplinary approach of the Frankfurt School. (shrink)

In this book James D. G. Dunn explores the nature of the religious experiences that were at the forefront of emerging Christianity.

This article applies two explanations of sexual harassment—gender dominance and sex-role spillover—in multivariate analyses of perceptions of two forms of harassment of women in legal settings by male judges and attorneys. Regression analyses of data from statewide samples of Florida judges and attorneys support the age/spillover hypothesis: Older cohorts of men are markedly less likely than are other respondents to perceive male judges' and attorneys' gender-typing behavior. Some support is also found for the age/dominance hypothesis, which predicts that younger women (...) will be especially aware of more serious forms of sexual harassment by male judges and attorneys. Younger women judges, particularly those with a feminist orientation, show markedly greater awareness of sexual advances and other dominance behaviors by male judges. (shrink)

James D Marshall, Michael Peters, Miles Shepheard; Brent's Transcendental Arguments for the Forms of Knowledge, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 15, I.