Ontological dualism is energetically resisted by a range of Christian scholars including philosophers such as Baker and Corcoran who defend accounts of human persons based on material constitution. Whilst Baker’s view fails to account for diachronic identity, Corcoran’s account of life after death makes use of Zimmerman’s problematic “Falling Elevator Model.” It is argued that Zimmerman’s recent reassessment of the model overestimates its value for materialists. In fact, the model generates either a fatal encounter with the nature of (...) identity, or absurdity. A lack of alternatives is illustrated by anticriterialist proposals. Thus it seems materialism and resurrection belief remain incompatible. (shrink)

Some Christian materialists have argued for the possibility of resurrection given that persons are constituted by bodies, and constitution is not identity. Baker's constitutionist view claims superiority over animalist alternatives but offers only circular accounts of both personal identity over time and personhood. Corcoran's alternative approaches these questions differently but makes use of Zimmerman's ‘Falling Elevator Model’ of resurrection, which is rendered incoherent by its reliance on contingent identity. A recent constitutionist revision of this model succeeds only in exchanging (...) incoherence for absurdity. Despite difficulties for such resurrection accounts, the idea of constitution as a sui generis relation remains attractive among philosophers and Christian materialists in particular. However, Wasserman's deflationary view combines with problems such as extensionality, indiscernibility and the explosion of reality to provide reason to worry that constitution might be just identity after all. If so, then the metaphysics of constitution cannot provide a convenient route between animalism and immaterialism when explaining the possibility of resurrection. (shrink)

This paper develops and defends a new account of B-theoretic endurantism and a new account of the metaphysics of the quantum state, and highlights the parallels between the considerations that motivate them. These new accounts are both fragmentalist, in the sense that they follow Fine (2005) in invoking a symmetric coordination relation between facts, such that facts that are pairwise incompatible (like Hugh's being happy and Hugh's being sad) can both obtain provided that they are not related by this relation. (...) However, while Fine allows that fragments can be logically incoherent— P can obtain in one fragment while not-P obtains in another—the fragmentalist accounts defended here are motivated even if we insist on logical coherence between fragments. (shrink)

When cognitive scientists apply computational theory to the problem of phenomenal consciousness, as many of them have been doing recently, there are two fundamentally distinct approaches available. Either consciousness is to be explained in terms of the nature of the representational vehicles the brain deploys; or it is to be explained in terms of the computational processes defined over these vehicles. We call versions of these two approaches _vehicle_ and _process_ theories of consciousness, respectively. However, while there may be space (...) for vehicle theories of consciousness in cognitive science, they are relatively rare. This is because of the influence exerted, on the one hand, by a large body of research which purports to show that the explicit representation of information in the brain and conscious experience are _dissociable_, and on the other, by the _classical_ computational theory of mind – the theory that takes human cognition to be a species of symbol manipulation. But two recent developments in cognitive science combine to suggest that a reappraisal of this situation is in order. First, a number of theorists have recently been highly critical of the experimental methodologies employed in the dissociation studies – so critical, in fact, it’s no longer reasonable to assume that the dissociability of conscious experience and explicit representation has been adequately demonstrated. Second, classicism, as a theory of human cognition, is no longer as dominant in cognitive science as it once was. It now has a lively competitor in the form of _connectionism; _and connectionism, unlike classicism, does have the computational resources to support a robust vehicle theory of consciousness. In this paper we develop and defend this connectionist vehicle theory of consciousness. It takes the form of the following simple empirical hypothesis: _phenomenal experience consists in the explicit_ _representation of information in neurally realized PDP networks_.. (shrink)

Part I. Ireland and beyond. SacrumProfanum : mapping cultural damage through music ; Second glance at Ted Hughes's Crow : transcendence interrupted ; Joycean aesthetics and mythic imagination in the music of Frank Corcoran ; 'In exile anyway' : Jonathan Creasy interviews Benjamin Dwyer ; ...eleven reflections on Beckett, music and silence ; 'Insight - deeper' : Benjamin Dwyer interviews Kevin Volans ; Umbilical : the story of Oedipus, the story of Jocasta -- Part II. Beyond Ireland. 'O (...) master of secret configurations' : reflections on the Adorno-Berg correspondence ; Laughing at the chaos : György Ligeti (1923-2006) ; Teleology or transcendence? : perspectives on Ligeti's collusion with automatism ; '...a gentle kind of political' : Benjamin Dwyer interviews George Crumb and David Starobin ; Leonard Bernstein : reflections on a centenary ; 'Dios los cría' : Barry Guy and Maya Homburger ; Barry Guy's Time passing ; 'We are using who we are' : Benjamin Dwyer interviews Mats Gustafsson ; Toward a transcendental philosophy of improvisation. (shrink)

We are defined by our faces. They give identity but, equally importantly, reveal our moods and emotions through facial expression. So what happens when the face cannot move? This book is about people who live with Mbius Syndrome, which has as its main feature an absence of movement of the muscles of facial expression from birth.

For most people a sense of self includes an embodied component: when describing our selves we describe those aspects of our physical bodies which can be easily codified: height, hair colour, sex, eye colour. Even when we consider ourselves we tend not to consider our intellectual cognitive characteristics but our describable anatomy. Wittgenstein's dictum, ‘the human body is the best picture of the human soul’, is relevant here but I would like to go further: the body-part we feel most embodied (...) in is our face, even though it is difficult to describe and so forms little part of how we describe ourselves to others. (shrink)

The knowability paradox derives from a proof by Frederic Fitch in 1963. The proof purportedly shows that if all truths are knowable, it follows that all truths are known. Antirealists, wed as they are to the idea that truth is epistemic, feel threatened by the proof. For what better way to express the epistemic character of truth than to insist that all truths are knowable? Yet, if that insistence logically compels similar assent to some omniscience claim, antirealism is in jeopardy. (...) Response to the paradox has drifted toward a common theme, a theme I will argue is a non-starter in resolving the paradox. Seeing this point will also make clear the philosophical inadequacy of simply viewing the paradox as a refutation of a wide range of antirealisms. (shrink)

Exchange is one thing, economic competition another. Exchange is possible without competition; and economic competition (of sorts) is possible without exchange. Put exchange and competition together and, roughly, you get the free market. There are many philosophical discussions of the free market; a sizeable number about free exchange; but - - aside from in the context of consequentialist defences of the market - - who this century has had much to say about economic competition?

"--Daniel Callahan, cofounder of the Hastings Center "Doctors and people who have no choice but to trust doctors--which means all of us--need to read this book.

Theodore Sider has recently produced an argument which he takes to show that three-dimensionalism is incompatible with the possibility of time travel. I wish to argue that there is indeed a problem for the three-dimensionalist who wishes to countenance time travel, but that Sider has misdiagnosed it. I show why his putative challenge fails, and furthermore that if it were to succeed this would be as problematic for a wide class of four-dimensionalist positions, including Sider’s own, as it would be (...) for three-dimensionalism. Finally, I present the problem that the possibility of time travel genuinely poses for the three-dimensionalist. (shrink)

Introduction : ethical economics? -- The sovereign consumer -- Two myths about economic growth -- The politics of pay -- Happiness -- Pricing life and nature -- New worlds of money : public services and beyond -- Conclusion.

What was the impact of Lavoisier's new elementary chemical analysis on the conception and practice of chemistry in the vegetable kingdom at the end of the eighteenth century? I examine how this elementary analysis relates both to more traditional plant analysis and to philosophical and mathematical concepts of analysis current in the Enlightenment. Thus I explore the relationship between algebra, Condillac's philosophy and Lavoisier's chemical system, as well as comparing Lavoisier's analytical approach to those of his predecessors, such as Baumé (...) and Bucquet. With reference to the aims of vegetable analysis, I show how the dominance of elementary analysis devalued a tradition that sought to isolate immediate principles , marginalizing the chemical practices of many doctors and pharmacists in the context of the new chemistry in France. (shrink)

We argue that differences in the institutional setting of Europe and the US is the critical factor in understanding policymaking in Europe and the United States, and particularly the influence of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). To test this relationship between institutional differences, corporate social responsibility (CSR), and NGO activism, we investigate 12 cases involving US and European companies in each of three industries. We conclude that different institutional structures and political legacies in the US and Europe are important factors in explaining (...) the influence of NGOs on business and in the policymaking process, regardless of the timeliness of corporate strategy or NGO influence. (shrink)

"Text, it is Jean-Luc Godard’s “ennemi royal, principal." Text, it is on the side of death, “les images c’est la vie et les textes, c’est la mort”. Twenty years later and the war is not over: “Une image est paisible. Une image de la Vierge avec son petit enfant sur son âne n'amène pas la guerre, c'est son interprétation par un texte qui amènera la guerre et qui fera que les soldats de Luther iront déchirer les toiles de Raphaël.” Godard’s (...) story is not just of the history of cinema, it is one in which text has won out to the extent that TV and the computer too make of the image something subservient to text. “Since Gutenberg” the text has triumphed in this way. “There was a long struggle, marriage or liaison between painting and text. Then the text carried the day. Film is the last art in the pictorial tradition... Take away the text and you’ll see what’s left. In TV nothing is left.” It is obvious from these lines of demarcation, lines which divide the art of the image from what would declare war on its most sacred icons and defeat its technologies, a conflict in which there is just the one aggressor, a division which makes of the relation between image and text nothing less than a matter of life and death, that for Godard text is indeed the enemy...". (shrink)

Ariella Azoulay’s concept of ‘the civil contract of photography’ innovatively responds to the long tradition of social contract theory inaugurated by Thomas Hobbes. I argue that a comparative analysis between Hobbes and Azoulay (through a Schmittian lens) exposes both Azoulay’s debt to ‘the monster of Malmesbury’, while simultaneously exposing to view the profound limits this debt imposes on Azoulay’s ethical project to wrest the concept of citizenship free from the ideology of the nation state.

Bevir?s view that theories are prior to theorists, just in so far as they are prior to any observations which one might make and, by extension, any facts which one might invoke in support of any particular interpretative conclusions, is problematic when applied to intellectual history, for although it is in one sense true that all facts are ineluctably constituted by some or other underlying theory, it is also true that, in a vast number of important situations, all human beings (...) share the same basic theory. The most important implication of this shared stock of concepts, observations and facts, is that we shall often be able to see numerous aspects of a long?dead author?s world in much the same way as he or she saw it. (shrink)

There are at least three core principles that define the chance role: ill the Principal Principle, l21 the Basic Chance Principle, and l31 the Humean Principle. These principles seem mutually incompatible. At least, no extant account of chance meets more than one of them. I ofier an account of chance which meets all three: L~-chance. So the good news is that L~-chance meets ill — l31. The bad news is that L~-chance turns out unlawful and unstable. But perhaps this is (...) not such bad news: L~-chance turns out to at least approximate plausible additional core principles concerning lawfulness and stability. And perhaps there is better news: one may treat 'chance' as vague, in a way that allows every core principle of chance to be met. (shrink)

A book for primary teachers and those training to teach in primary schools on how to develop positive socially-aware teaching that offers deep learning across different curriculum subjects.

Pickering & Garrod's (P&G's) claim that conversationalists do not explicitly keep track of their interlocuters' information states is important. Nonetheless, via alignment, they seem to create a virtually symmetrical view of the information states of speaker and addressee – a key component of their accounts of collaborative utterances and of self-monitoring. As I show, there is significant evidence for intrinsic contextual misalignment between conversationalists that can persist across turns.

'It is going to change the way in which we understand many modern debates about economics, politics, and society' Ha Joon Chang, author of 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism Over the past fifty years, the way we value what is 'good' and 'right' has changed dramatically. Behaviour that to our grandparents' generation might have seemed stupid, harmful or simply wicked now seems rational, natural, woven into the very logic of things. And, asserts Jonathan Aldred in this (...) revelatory new book, it's economics that's to blame.Licence to be Bad tells the story of how a group of economics theorists changed our world, and how a handful of key ideas, from free-riding to Nudge, seeped into our decision-making and, indeed, almost all aspects of our lives. Aldred reveals the extraordinary hold of economics on our morals and values. Economics has corrupted us. But if this hidden transformation is so recent, it can be reversed. Licence to be Bad shows us where to begin. (shrink)

Full-length studies of individual books of Nietzsche have been lacking until now both because of the immaturity of the field and because Nietzsche's style itself seems to contraindicate them. Close reading, however, reveals a great deal of literary and philosophical unity. This holds good even of Human, All-Too-Human, Nietzsche's longest and most unwieldy work. The book represents Nietzsche's break with Schopenhauer and Wagner, as well as the birth of Nietzsche as we know him in the later works. The book's embrace (...) of science as conducive to culture follows the early works' vilification of science as anathema to culture. This reassessment is possible because science is now seen as a method and a discipline rather than an insatiable drive for knowledge, and culture is now a broad set of symbols and activities rather than a narrowly focussed "unity of artistic style." Both changes were motivated by Nietzsche's rejection of Wagner. Part of the help science provides culture is its release from restrictive metaphysical beliefs. Nietzsche battles metaphysics, principally that of Schopenhauer, by means of scientific arguments meant both to provide alternative explanations of phenomena and to expose the origin of countervailing metaphysical beliefs. However, even when combined in a two-pronged attack, these arguments still fall short of their goal of refuting metaphysics. The scientific world-view may nonetheless aid the development of "free spirits," whose unalloyed devotion to knowledge makes them science's paragons. The free spirits are the prototypes for the later works' strong individuals, yet here they are viewed as crucial elements in the cultural development of general society. Nietzsche seeks both to create them and to encourage their devotion to the needs of culture. Part of his effort to do this is the deployment of a terse, elliptical style which will involve the reader more thoroughly than can be done by means of argument alone. Study of the book's structure reveals that its core, Parts 1, 5, and 9, outlines the relation between science, culture, and free spirits. (shrink)

This article argues against the case for regarding bodies and parts of bodies to be property. It claims that doing so assumes an individualistic conception of the body. It fails to acknowledge that our bodies are made up of non-human material; are unbounded; constantly changing and deeply interconnected with other bodies. It also argues that holding that our bodies are property does not recognise the fact that we have different attitudes towards different parts of our removed bodies and the contexts (...) of their removal. The appropriate legal reform should, therefore, be to produce a statute which can provide a balance between the competing personal, social and interpersonal interests in different body parts. (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 19 This article revisits Edmund Husserl’s philosophy of time in light of the modern standardisation of time. After assessing Husserl’s innovative analysis of the experience of time and raising key issues pertaining to his derivation of objective time from an originary ‘absolute flux of consciousness’, the article addresses potential relationships between this conception of time and the historically unique experience of time based in the rise of modern clock-time. Drawing on insights from the literature within the (...) sociology of time, the article concludes that Husserl’s conception of time both reproduces and rejects certain features of modern time relations. (shrink)