A survey of primitive groups that live today as they did thousands of years ago, their customs and culture unchanged.

This article explores Hannah Arendt's insights into the forms of social control operating especially in democracies, together with the possibility of resistance to such control. Since the way in which one defines freedom informs one's understanding of the techniques that suppress, regulate, and modify behaviour, the article begins by sketching Arendt's notion of freedom, and compares this to its liberal counterpart. That discussion leads to Arendt's conception of power, whose corollary is freedom, and whose suppression amounts to control. The institutional (...) and ideological infrastructure that accompanies the encroachment of ?the social? ? which Arendt links to the hegemony of liberalism ? is conceived as rendering the individual both powerless and apathetic. The article concludes with suggestions regarding resistance to modern forms of control, viewing Arendt's ontology as a source of tenable strategies for the deepening of democracy. (shrink)

Why is postmodernist discourse so biased against the Enlightenment? Indeed, postmodern theory challenges the validity of the rational basis of modern historical scholarship and the Enlightenment itself. Rather than avoiding this conflict, the contributors to this vibrant collection return to the philosophical roots of the Enlightenment, and do not hesitate to look at them through a postmodernist lens, engaging issues like anti-Semitism, Utopianism, colonial legal codes, and ideas of authorship. Dismissing the notion that the two camps are ideologically opposed and (...) thus incompatible, these essays demonstrate an exciting new scholarship that confidently mixes the empiricism of Enlightenment thought with a strong postmodernist skepticism, painting a subtler and richer historical canvas. (shrink)

The founders and 19th-Century leaders of the American democratic experiment sought to base their institution on a rationalist and individualist model of political reality. As characterized by D. M. Levitan, they distrusted representative government and powerful executives, subscribing to a laissez-faire philosophy: he governs best who governs least. Levitan goes on to accentuate the intimate relationship of the political system to its philosophical foundation. While he notes that Liberal ideas were well adapted to the needs of the plutocracy, he does (...) not play down the importance of Liberalism to the particular form taken by political institutions in democracy. A paradigm of this Liberal doctrine is John Stuart Mill's famous Principle: “the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will is to prevent harm to others.” This Principle, if not the source, can certainly qualify as a rationalization for a great part of what passes for “policy” in a democracy. (shrink)

Idealist philosophers have traditionally tried to defend their views by appealing to the claim that nonmental reality is inconceivable. A standard response to this inconceivability claim is to try to show that it is only plausible if one blurs the fundamental distinction between consciousness and its object. I try to rehabilitate the idealistic argument by presenting an alternative formulation of the idealist’s basic inconceivability claim. Rather than suggesting that all objects are inconceivable apart from consciousness, I suggest that it is (...) impossible to conceive of any such object as genuinely existent. This thesis is lent credence by the fact that only in reflective self-consciousness is existence a phenomenological datum. Not only is it the case that we are not ever aware of an object as existing, we do not have a clear understanding of what it would be like to have such an awareness. If this is true, then we have reason to believe that while consciousness exists, the objects of consciousness cannot exist. (shrink)

Thomas Talbott has recently argued in this journal that the three propositions 1) God wills universal salvation 2) God has the power to produce universal salvation and 3) some persons are not saved are inconsistent. I contend that this claim is only true if God has no overriding purposes that would place restrictions on the means God uses to achieve God’s ends. One possible example of such an overriding purpose would be God’s aim to produce the most good. I end (...) by suggesting that while God’s purpose of universal salvation does render the achievement of this end probable, it is by no means necessary. (shrink)

N. M. L. Nathan's argument that IDP utilitarianism, if universally adopted, is inconsistent, does not succeed. The argument requires that if an IDP utilitarian has only self-regarding desires, then none of these desires can be informed. This rests on a partial misuse of the expression satisfaction of desire. For an individual attempting to realize his self-regarding desires, the satisfaction of the satisfaction of a desire is unmeaning. The naming of an object of the desire is an intrinsic part of the (...) phrase satisfaction of desire. Further, contrary to Nathan's claim, this suggestion does not trivialize IDP utilitarianism. (shrink)

Mammalian brains contain a variety of self-centered socio-emotional systems. An understanding of how they interact with more recent cognitive structures may be essential for understanding empathy. Preston & de Waal have neglected this vast territory of proximal brain issues in their analysis.

The formerly established medically-based idea of disability, with its charity-based approach to treatment and services, is being replaced by a human rights-based approach in which people with impairments are no longer considered medical problems, totally dependent on the beneficence of non-impaired people in society, but have fundamental rights to support, inclusion, and participation. This interdisciplinary book examines the diverse concerns that people with impairments face in the context of human rights, provides insights into new developments on important issues relating human (...) rights to disability, and features new approaches and solutions to vital problems in the current debate. (shrink)

This is the first of two papers responding to ‘recent’ commentary on various aspects of hyperplane dependence by several authors. In this paper I focus on the issues of the relations of HD to state reduction and unitary evolution. The authors who’s comments I address here are Maudlin and Myrvold. In the second paper of this set I focus on HD dynamical variables and localizable properties and measurements and address comments of de Koning, Halvorson, Clifton and Wallace. Each paper ends (...) with some reflections on the implications of HD for the ontology of Minkowski space-time. To set the stage for my responses, I begin this paper with some general position statements designed to correct what seem to be widespread and erroneous construals of some of my views. Two central points are argued for in this first paper. First, dynamical evolution occurs not only within foliations of Minkowski space-time. Rather the transition from the physical state of affairs on any one hyperplane to any other, whether the hyperplanes intersect or are parallel, is always an instance of dynamical evolution between them, generated by some active combination of boost-like transformations and/or time-like translations and/or state reductions and ‘reconstructions’. This point gives rise to a generalized conception of a history of dynamical evolution, allowing for the use of parameterized families of hyperplanes that multiply cover some portions of space-time. Nevertheless, and this is the second central point, for any two generalized histories, H and H’, the quantum states for a system on all the hyperplanes of H from the asymptotic past up to some hyperplane, h, determine the quantum states for the system on all the hyperplanes of H’ from the asymptotic past up to any hyperplane, h’, such that h’ lies to the past of all those state reduction regions that lie to the future of all hyperplanes of H that are ‘earlier’ than h. Consideration of these results should defuse concerns that have been voiced about the coherence and consistency of HD. A position closely related to the second point has already been argued for by Myrvold. (shrink)

Provides comprehensive and accessible analysis of the field of mass education, assessing traditional issues and dispelling myths about the classroom.

European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

At a time when religion and science are thought to be at loggerheads, art is widely hailed as religion's natural spiritual ally. Philosophy, Art, and Religion investigates the extent to which this is true. It charts the way in which modern conceptions of 'Art' often marginalize the sacred arts, construing choral and instrumental music, painting and iconography, poetry, drama, and architecture as 'applied' arts that necessarily fall short of the ideal of 'art for art's sake'. Drawing on both history of (...) art and philosophical aesthetics, Graham sets out the historical context in which the arts came to free themselves from religious patronage, in order to conceptualize the cultural context in which religious art currently finds itself. The book then relocates religious art within the aesthetics of everyday life. Subsequent chapters systematically explore each of the sacred arts, using a wide range of illustrative examples to uncover the ways in which artworks can illuminate religious faith, and religious content can lend artworks a deeper dimension. (shrink)

Using a sample of 652 college students, we examined several implications of the hypothesis that the shape of the human penis evolved to enable males to substitute their semen for those of their rivals. The incidence of double mating by females appears sufficient to make semen displacement adaptive (e.g., one in four females acknowledge infidelity, one in eight admit having sex with two or more males in a 24-hour period, and one in 12 report involvement in one or more sexual (...) threesomes with two males). We also document several changes in post-ejaculatory behavior (e.g., reduced thrusting, penis withdrawal, loss of an erection) which may have evolved to minimize displacement of the male’s own semen. Consistent with predictions derived from a theoretical model (Gallup and Burch 2006), we discovered that most females report waiting at least 48 hours following an instance of infidelity before resuming sex with their in-pair partners. (shrink)