How does mutual intelligibility impact the political sphere? This paper uses Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations as a means of examining this connection. I argue that Wittgenstein’s paradigm of a dialectical world suggests that his analysis of mutual intelligibility in understanding experiences is necessary in a pluralistic democracy. I conclude that via his theory of social reality politics is a dynamic dialectical process of communicating experiences.

This volume pays tribute to the remarkable scholarship of Hans Dieter Betz, which has combined amazing range with consistency of vision. Defying the traditional boundaries of the academy, Hans Dieter Betz, Shailer Mathews Professor emeritus at the University of Chicago Divinity School, has made significant contributions in the fields of New Testament, classics, church history, theology, and history of religions. This Festschrift brings together the work of major scholars of ancient religion and philosophy who are part of Betz's international circle (...) of conversation. The volume also contains a complete bibliography of Hans Dieter Betz's publications from 1959 to 2000. (shrink)

Models as Mediators discusses the ways in which models function in modern science, particularly in the fields of physics and economics. Models play a variety of roles in the sciences: they are used in the development, exploration and application of theories and in measurement methods. They also provide instruments for using scientific concepts and principles to intervene in the world. The editors provide a framework which covers the construction and function of scientific models, and explore the ways in which they (...) enable us to learn about both theories and the world. The contributors to the volume offer their own individual theoretical perspectives to cover a wide range of examples of modelling, from physics, economics and chemistry. These papers provide ideal case-study material for understanding both the concepts and typical elements of modelling, using analytical approaches from the philosophy and history of science. (shrink)

Contradicting the long-held belief that Aristotle was the first to discuss individuation systematically, Mary Margaret McCabe argues that Plato was concerned with what makes something a something and that he solved the problem in a ...

ABSTRACT At the centre of Plato’s Euthydemus lie a series of arguments in which Socrates’ interlocutors, the sophists Euthydemus and Dionysodorus propose a radical account of truth (‘chopped logos’) according to which there is no such thing as falsehood, and no such thing as disagreement (here ‘counter-saying’). This account of truth is not directly refutable; but in response Socrates offers a revised account of ‘saying’ focussed on the different aspects of the verb (perfect and imperfect) to give a rich account (...) of saying, of truth and of knowledge. I argue that Socrates’ response has much to offer, notably in its amplification of the process of saying and cognition, and the development of virtue. (shrink)

Morrison and Morgan argue for a view of models as 'mediating instruments' whose role in scientific theorising goes beyond applying theory. Models are partially independent of both theories and the world. This autonomy allows for a unified account of their role as instruments that allow for exploration of both theories and the world.

How does Plato view his philosophical antecedents? Plato and his Predecessors considers how Plato represents his philosophical predecessors in a late quartet of dialogues: the Theaetetus, the Sophist, the Politicus and the Philebus. Why is it that the sophist Protagoras, or the monist Parmenides, or the advocate of flux, Heraclitus, are so important in these dialogues? And why are they represented as such shadowy figures, barely present at their own refutations? The explanation, the author argues, is a complex one involving (...) both the reflective relation between Plato's dramatic technique and his philosophical purposes, and the very nature of his late philosophical views. For in these encounters with his predecessors we see Plato develop a new account of the principles of reason, against those who would deny them, and forge a fresh view of the best life - the life of the philosopher. (shrink)

The right of adults with sound mind to consent to treatment or risk their own health for the benefit of the community in a clinical trial is unequivocally recognised by the law. But what about those vulnerable by virtue of their age, nature or position in society? Experts from the fields of medicine, philosophy, theology and law, explore the ethical and legal principles which seek to reconcile the individual's right to autonomy with the need to protect vulnerable groups. Discussions refer (...) both to specific groups and specific issues. (shrink)

M. M. McCabe presents a selection of her essays which explore the Platonic method of conversation: how it may inform our understanding both of Plato and of his predecessors and successors, and how its centrality accounts for the connections between argument, knowledge, and virtue in the texts McCabe examines.

Workplace bullying is a significant issue confronting the nursing profession. Bullying in nursing is frequently described in terms of ‘oppressed group’ behaviour or ‘horizontal violence’. It is proposed that the use of ‘oppressed group’ behaviour theory has fostered only a partial understanding of the phenomenon in nursing. It is suggested that the continued use of ‘oppressed group’ behaviour as the major means for understanding bullying in nursing places a flawed emphasis on bullying as a phenomenon that exists only among nurses, (...) rather than considering it within the broader organisational context. The work of Foucault and the ‘circuits of power’ model proposed by Clegg are used to provide an alternative understanding of the operation of power within organisations and therefore another way to conceive bullying in the nursing workforce. (shrink)

Volume 3, Issue 2, June 2019, Page 214-238.

Dating from her years as a philosophy student at the Sorbonne, this is the 1926-27 diary of the teenager who would become the famous French philosopher, author, and feminist, Simone de Beauvoir. Written years before her first meeting with Jean-Paul Sartre, these diaries reveal previously unknown details about her life and offer critical insights into her early philosophy and literary works. Presented here for the first time in translation and fully annotated, the diary is completed by essays from Barbara Klaw (...) and Margaret A. Simons that address its philosophical, historical, and literary significance. The volume represents an invaluable resource for tracing the development of Beauvoir’s independent thinking and influence on the world. (shrink)

The Cratylus begins with a paradox; it ends with a paradox; and it has a paradox in between. But this disturbing characteristic of the dialogue has been overshadowed, not to say ignored, in the literature. For commentators have seen it as their task to discover exactly what theory of language Plato himself, despite his declared perplexity, intends to adopt as he rejects the alternatives of Hermogenes and Cratylus. A common view, then, has been to suppose that the πορίαι of the (...) dialogue are mere camouflage for the hidden dogma, whatever that may be. A favoured candidate, of course, has been the theory of transcendent forms, in some preliminary version. As a consequence, the dialogue has often been seen as a precursor to the great metaphysical works of Plato's middle period such as the Phaedo or the Republic. Not so, I shall argue. My case is that this dialogue centres upon a series of paradoxes which are both powerful and unsettling. Their final effect is to attack the theory of forms, not to defend it. They are, I suggest, genuine proposals of philosophical difficulty, rather than mere artifice to disguise an idealist truth. As such, they belong, and may clearly be seen to belong, with works of the critical period which subject the theory of forms to scrutiny. Thus the πορίαι of the Cratylus have their counterparts in the Parmenides, the Theaetetus and the Sophist. I propose, then, that the dialogue was written during the late, critical period of Plato's philosophical activity. (shrink)

The notion of fairness is frequently invoked in the context of food and agriculture, whether in terms of a fair marketplace, fair treatment of workers, or fair prices for consumers. In 2009, the Kellogg Foundation named fairness as one of four key characteristics of a “good” food system. The concept of fairness, however, is difficult to define and measure. The purpose of this study is to explore the notion of fairness, particularly as it is understood within alternative food dialogues. Specifically, (...) we wanted to answer the question of how alternative food entrepreneurs who are working to actualize fairness within local food networks understand this abstract notion. Using a multiple case study approach, the research for this project draws on semi-structured interviews that were conducted with key stakeholders in four alternative food businesses throughout the Midwest. (shrink)

Mary Margaret McCabe; V*—Persistent Fallacies, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 94, Issue 1, 1 June 1994, Pages 73–94, https://doi.org/10.1093/ar.

The complex way Meno's paradox is presented in the Meno forces reflection on both the external conditions on inquiry—its objects—and its internal conditions—the state of mind of the person who inquires. The theory of recollection does not fully account for the internal conditions—as Plato makes clear in the critique of Meno's puzzle to be found in the Euthydemus. I conclude that in the Euthydemus Plato is inviting us to reject the externalist account of knowledge urged on Socrates by the sophists (...) in favour of a more richly internalist epistemology. (shrink)

This article examines the participation of women in the 1985 labor strike at Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel. The author views the strike as a deeply gendered act of protest where the issues, strategies, tactics, and resources used by women workers differ from those used by men, and simultaneously, as the occupational site that provided workers an opportunity to affirm, to modify, and to contest their understandings of gender. Paradoxically, women both challenge and conform to normative gender scripts for protest. They resisted the (...) efforts of men to impose a gender division of labor and sought to mobilize the community in support of the strike. (shrink)

A limiting factor in ethics education in medical training has been difficulty in assessing competence in ethics. This study was conducted to test the concept that content analysis of pediatric residents’ personal reflections about ethics experiences can identify changes in ethical sensitivity and reasoning over time. Analysis of written narratives focused on two of our ethics curriculum’s goals: 1) To raise sensitivity to ethical issues in everyday clinical practice and 2) to enhance critical reflection on personal and professional values as (...) they affect patient care. Content analysis of written reflections was guided by a tool developed to identify and assess the level of ethical reasoning in eight domains determined to be important aspects of ethical competence. Based on the assessment of narratives written at two times (12 to 16 months/apart) during their training, residents showed significant progress in two specific domains: use of professional values, and use of personal values. Residents did not show decline in ethical reasoning in any domain. This study demonstrates that content analysis of personal narratives may provide a useful method for assessment of developing ethical sensitivity and reasoning. (shrink)

Plato's Socrates denies that he knows. Yet he frequently claims that he does have certainty and knowledge. How can he avoid contradiction between his general stance about knowledge and his particular claims to have it? Socrates' disavowal of knowledge is central to his defence in the Apology. For here he rebuts the accusation that he teaches – and thus corrupts – the young by telling the jury that he cannot teach just because he knows nothing. Hence his disavowal of knowledge (...) is important to Socrates. Why does he make this claim? And how then can he justify engaging in any philosophical activity at all? (shrink)

Plato gives us two model philosophical figures, apparently in contrast with each other—one is the otherworldly philosopher who sees truth and reality outside the cave and has the knowledge to rule authoritatively within it; the other is the demotic figure of Socrates, who insists that he does not know but only asks questions. I consider Plato’s contrasting idioms of seeing and asking or talking, and argue that the rich account of perception that is represented in the Republic requires both idioms, (...) and both models, to explain the development of epistemic virtue. Furthermore, the conditions he places on the giving and taking of reasons show how Plato takes intellectual virtue to be inseparable from moral virtue. That integrated picture of virtue may—however disposed we may be towards the role of virtue in either ethics or epistemology—have something to say to us about how philosophy might best be carried on. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Mary Margaret Mackenzie THE TEARS OF CHRYSES: RETALIATION IN THE ILIAD1 ATHEORY of punishment is a systematic justification of the practice of punishment. Before the emergence of true penology in classical Greece—in Plato's Laws for example—penal transactions are associated only with pre-philosophic rationalizations. But such rationalizations must, nevertheless, be regarded as the antecedents of a formalized theory of punishment. In order to understand the classical approach to (...) punishment, therefore, we should look to the early literature for evidence, descriptive or evaluative, of the penological antecedents. To begin at the beginning, this article will consider the Iliad. Yet this procedure begs questions. First of all, a critic might deny the propriety of the use of literary evidence in a study of a philosophical problem. The objection is twofold—both against the treatment of literature as philosophy and against the assumption of continuity in the transition from non-philosophical to explicitly philosophical sources. To this the answer lies partly in the nature of Greek culture. Until the sophistic age there existed no moral philosophy as such—and yet the Greeks were capable of considering and solving moral problems, such as the questions surrounding the practice of punishment. Thus while we should distinguish between this unphilosophical approach and the systematic analyses of the philosopher, the problems with which they deal remain the same. Second, Homer depicts a fictional society: it is a common contention that we therefore have no grounds for attributing consistency or historical reality to any of the institutions described in the poems. Thus the proposition is that, not content with inventing a story to tell, Homer imagined all the trappings of the fiction as well—the conventions and the sentiments bear no relation to conventions or values of his own or any other time. The same argument might be applied to other literary works which make no claim to historicity. But its plausibility depends upon an inflated notion of fiction in which nothing of the 4 Philosophy and Literature story approaches the familiar experiences of its hearers. It is, of course, more reasonable to suppose that fiction generally derives its impact from familiarity, and that Homer's popularity was founded in his appeal to the audience's imagination in the context of their own lives. Thus while the story itself is fiction, it is associated with fact in its detail—the commonplaces of social life and human reaction among which the heroes move. Our task is to look to the commonplaces, for here will be found the social practices and the assumptions which Homer's audience would take for granted. Finally, we may generally suppose that the context of a particular source is determined chiefly by its antecedents. If, however, we are to treat the Homeric poems as the earliest Greek literary sources available to us, there is a major difficulty in this establishment of context: the absence of antecedent. The discussion of Homeric society has been severely hampered by the lack of contemporary referents and by the consequent temptation to import our own values as yardsticks for the measuring of the idiosyncracies of Homeric thought. To a large extent this is a useful enterprise; it is possible, for instance, to point out the differences between Homeric military structure and our own, or between the kingship system and the political structures of later Greek societies. On the other hand, as soon as the discussion turns to values, the issue becomes complicated; to compare two values, in our own society and in the Homeric poems, tends to presuppose some common ground where there need be none, to assume that the way we might translate a word reflects significantly upon its original use. This third difficulty gives rise to an eristic dilemma, common in the history of ideas: how do we know that a transaction is a punishment unless we already know that it is a punishment? Or if we are uncertain whether punishment occurs (and if we have no common language to help in the identification), where should we look for it? Further, having established the area in which punishment should occur, what criteria are to be employed to determine whether in fact it does? The first... (shrink)

Crime pays, says Polus at Gorgias 473. Socrates, on the other hand, maintains two propositions in the face of universal opinion.

This book is an encounter between Deleuze the philosopher, Proust the novelist, and Beckett the writer creating interdisciplinary and inter-aesthetic bridges between them, covering textual, visual, sonic and performative phenomena, including provocative speculation about how Proust might have responded to Deleuze and Beckett.

Suppose a diner says, 'Can you pass the salt?' Although her utterance is literally a question (about the physical abilities of the addressee), most would take it as a request (that the addressee pass the salt). In such a case, the request is performed indirectly by way of directly asking a question. Accordingly this utterance is known as an indirect speech act. On the standard account of such speech acts, a single utterance constitutes two distinct speech acts. On this account (...) then, 'Can you pass the salt?' is both a question and a request. In a provocative essay, Rod Bertolet argues that there are no indirect speech acts. According to Bertolet, 'Can you pass the salt?' is only a question. It is a question that merely functions as a request (without also being one). In this paper we respond to Bertolet's skeptical argument. Appealing to Searle's theory of speech acts and to certain features of linguistic communication, we argue that, despite Bertolet's challenge, there is good reason to countenance indirect speech acts. (shrink)

This work examines how the conceptualization of knowledge as both problem and solution reconfigured intelligence and law enforcement after 9/11. The idea was that more information should be collected, and better analyzed. If the intelligence that resulted was shared, then terrorists could be identified, their acts predicted, and ultimately prevented. Law enforcement entered into this scenario in the United States, and internationally. "Policing terrorism" refers to the engagement of state and local law enforcement in intelligence, as well as approaching terrorism (...) as a legal crime, in addition to or as opposed to an act of war. Two venues are explored: fusion centers in the United States and the international organization of police, Interpol. The configuration can be thought of schematically as operating through the set of law, discipline and security. Intelligence is predominantly a security approach. It modulates that within its purview, wielding the techniques and technologies that are here discussed.The dissertation is divided into two sections: Intelligence and Policing Terrorism. In the first, intelligence is taken up as a term, and its changes in referent and concept are examined. The Preface and Chapter One present a general introduction to the contemporary situation and intelligence, via Sherman Kent, as knowledge, organization and activities. Chapter Two traces the development of intelligence in the United States as a craft and profession. Chapter Three discusses some of the issues involving the intersection of intelligence and policy, and how those manifested in the aftermath of 9/11 and the lead up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The second section examines the turn to policing terrorism, beginning, in Chapter Four, with how Interpol has dealt with bioterrorism, and an examination of the shifting conceptualization of biological threats in international law. Moving from threats to their consequences, Chapter Five takes up the concept of an event in order to analyze the common comparison of Pearl Harbor and 9/11. Chapters Six and Seven turn to fieldwork done in the United States, with an examination of the suspicious activity reporting system and law enforcement's inclusion in the Information Sharing Environment, focusing on fusion centers and data mining. (shrink)

Este trabalho procura documentar as espécies e os usos de plantas vendidas por ervatários numa feira semanal do bairro da Tijuca na cidade do Rio de Janeiro. Foi realizado entre os meses de agosto/98 e agosto/99, e participaram da pesquisa quatro vendedores, com média de 15 anos de experiência no mercado, fornecendo as plantas e informações sobre seus nomes vulgares, usos e o preparo dos remédios. A feira foi visitada regularmente e os espécimes encontrados foram coletados, fotografados, herborizados e identificados (...) através da consulta de livros, chaves e especialistas, e comparação com exemplares de herbário. A coleta resultou em 151 espécies distribuídas em 59 famílias, a melhor representada sendo Asteraceae (21), Lamiaceae (13), Solanaceae (9), Leguminosae (6), e as restantes representadas por até 5 espécies. As plantas foram classificadas em 4 categorias segundo a procedência: comprada de terceiros (16%), cultivada nos jardins particulares dos vendedores (23%), ruderal (21%), e coletada da Mata Atlântica (40%). Foram documentadas 60 utilidades medicinais e rituais, e 15 formas de preparar as ervas, o número de indicações sendo 30% para uso externo e 70% para uso interno, e a forma mais comum, o chá. Além dos dados obtidos na feira, uma descrição botânica e um levantamento bibliográfico dos usos na medicina popular e em rituais afro-brasileiros são apresentados para cada espécie. Analisa-se o papel das plantas na saúde e na vida religiosa das pessoas do bairro, o conhecimento dos ervatários e a preocupante coleta das plantas da Mata Atlântica. (shrink)