This reissue, first published in 1980, is based on the experiences of the International Extension College in developing distance teaching. The volume begins by reviewing the world problems of educational quality and quantity, and then examines the ways in which print, broadcasts and group study have been used to train teachers, to improve classroom education, to teach by correspondence out of school, and to support rural development. It then considers how that experience can be used, perhaps by creating a network (...) of radio colleges, to supplement and extend existing schools and colleges. Finally, the book includes a descriptive and annotated bibliography of over 100 distance teaching projects in 65 third world countries. (shrink)

To many, the idea of autonomous weapons systems (AWS) killing human beings is grotesque. Yet critics have had difficulty explaining why it should make a significant moral difference if a human combatant is killed by an AWS as opposed to being killed by a human combatant. The purpose of this paper is to explore the roots of various deontological concerns with AWS and to consider whether these concerns are distinct from any concerns that also apply to long-distance, human-guided weaponry. We (...) suggest that at least one major driver of the intuitive moral aversion to lethal AWS is that their use disrespects their human targets by violating the martial contract between human combatants. On our understanding of this doctrine, service personnel cede a right not to be directly targeted with lethal violence to other human agents alone. Artificial agents, of which AWS are one example, cannot understand the value of human life. A human combatant cannot transfer his privileges of targeting enemy combatants to a robot. Therefore, the human duty-holder who deploys AWS breaches the martial contract between human combatants and disrespects the targeted combatants. We consider whether this novel deontological objection to AWS forms the foundation of several other popular yet imperfect deontological objections to AWS. (shrink)

This essay attempts to provide a historical account of Michael Oakeshott’s famous distinction between civil and enterprise association. As such, it demonstrates that Oakeshott’s political skepticism and his concomitant view of civil association can in part be explained by his reliance on Augustinian theology. In a similar vein, Oakeshott’s linkage of enterprise association with the rationalism of Bacon must be considered in terms of Oakeshott’s understanding of Pelagianism and Gnosticism. Unsurprisingly, it will be demonstrated that despite Oakeshott’s disagreements with (...) the political philosopher Eric Voegelin, he was very impressed by Voegelin’s work on the Gnostic origins of modernity. Consequently, a major claim of this essay is that Oakeshott’s speculative understanding of modern political thought constitutes a theological genealogy of political modernity in all but name. (shrink)

This book includes sections on brightness and light, eye movements and perception, and perception of orientation and self-motion.

Michael Devitt has been developing an influential two-pronged attack on the a priori for over thirteen years. This attack does not attempt to undermine the coherence or significance of the distinction between the a priori and the a posteriori, but rather to answer the question: 'What Can We Know A Priori?' with: 'Nothing'. In this paper I explain why I am dissatisfied with key extant responses to Devitt's attack, and then take my own steps towards resisting the attack as (...) it appears in two recent incarnations. Devitt aims firstly to undermine the motivation for believing in any a priori knowledge, and secondly to provide reasons directly against believing in any. I argue that he misidentifies the motivations available to the a priorist, and that his reasons against believing in the a priori do not take account of all the options. I also argue that his attempt to combine the two prongs of the attack into an abductive argument for his anti-a priorist position does not succeed. (shrink)

My purpose in this dissertation is to show that a wide-ranging investigation of Michael Polanyi's epistemology and ontology taken together with his social-political writings reveals the possibility of explicating an ethical language which can be seen, in Polanyi's terms, to be tacit within these works. The work naturally divides into two parts: the first deals with Polanyi's epistemology and ontology; the second deals with the social and political writings. ;The first part consists in two major arguments: the epistemological and (...) the ontological arguments. The epistemological argument consists in lifting out the fundamental dynamic of the knowing act in order to show that this dynamic might apply as well to the knowlede of values, if, as is pointed out, Polanyi includes many other objects of knowledge than those of science in his epistemology. The key point here is that value knowledge, like all forms of knowledge for Polanyi, must be seen as personal knowledge, i.e. value knowledge is rooted in a commitment to believe that some aspect of reality is touched in it, though the standard of correctness is neither a subjective standard nor a claim to complete objectivity but rather an obedience to a commitment to which we expect all persons, including ourselves, to submit. Value knowledge is personal knowledge. ;The second major argument of the first part is the ontological argument. I lift out the ontological structure of the knowing person to demonstrate that a right knowledge of values implies a commitment to the right action involved in attaining such knowledge. This intimate link between knowing and being is essentially the link between values and right actions. ;The first part of the dissertation establishes the possibility of a Polanyian ethic. After taking detailed exception to Harry Prosch's analysis of the possibility of a Polanyian ethic based upon his notion of symbols, an analysis which claimed that ethics must be grounded in a Polanyian understanding of symbols, I push forward the notion of personal ethical knowledge. . . . UMI. (shrink)

Some have argued that specifically moral demands or norms are justified by the constraints of rationality. On this view, any agent who comes to doubt, challenge, or reject the authority of moral demands does so on penalty of irrationality. According to this view, the agent who asks the question Why be moral? can be given a rational justification for the demands that morality makes on her, regardless of her individual reasons and motives. ;I consider amoralism as a test case. Could (...) a proposed justification of morality answer to the amoralist? I develop two characterizations of amoralism: the principled objector and the amoralist from indifference. I argue that normal moral agents may adopt or succumb to either type of amoralism without forfeiting their claim to rationality, and further, that such amoralists are not best understood as demanding a justification of morality. ;Some philosophers have objected that the notion of amoralism is conceptually mistaken or incoherent. I address three forms of this argument. First, I argue that the inverted-commas argument attributed to R. M. Hare fails to show that purported amoralists cannot really make or understand value judgments. Second, I argue that Michael Smith's internalist argument against amoralism is unconvincing. Third, I consider Christine Korsgaard's argument in The Sources of Normativity that the very nature of rational action entails moral obligation. ;I conclude by discussing the way in which a justification of moral demands can only be made internal to a particular moral outlook or way of life. To attempt to respond to amoralists who are radically dissatisfied with, or dissociated from, a moral perspective with a wholesale rational justification of morality is to misunderstand the nature of their disaffection as well as to misunderstand the project of moral philosophy. However, acknowledging the limited role of justification in moral theory and argument does not entail that moral philosophy's primary enterprise is merely the explanation of moral phenomena. Moral normativity is a function of our capacity for reflection. Thus, the work of moral philosophy lies in making reflective recommendations for which norms to adopt, how to obligate oneself and others, and how to live. (shrink)

Populism sets people against elites. Most discussions of populism focus on the dangers that come with assuming too homogenous a vision of a ‘pure’ people against a ‘corrupt’ elite. However, an obvious question to ask is what elites do, or might do, to court populists ire. In this paper, I draw on Michael Saward’s work on representation to construct an account of populism that focuses on the ways in which elites can conceivably corrupt (and have conceivably corrupted) the institutions (...) responsible for generating the representative claims that are central to democratic life. Specifically, I will sketch an account of the way elites have operated, within the American context, to corrupt the representative functions performed by political parties, those centrally important institutions tasked with producing representative claims within contemporary capitalist, liberal, representative democracies. If we are to properly evaluate populism, whether as an ideology, movement or set of tactics, it is necessary to take seriously and evaluate the stories populists tell of how elites have corrupted democracy. To simply assume they are wrong and dismiss populist critiques of democratic failures as wrong is to replace critical analysis with elite apologism. (shrink)

Remembering forgetting : Maladies de la Mémoire in nineteenth-century France -- Dying of the past : medical studies of nostalgia in nineteenth-century France -- Hysterical remembering -- Trauma, representation, and historical consciousness -- Trauma : a dystopia of the spirit -- Falling into history : Freud's case of 'Frau Emmy von N.' -- Why Freud haunts us -- Why Warburg now? -- Classic postmodernism : Keith Jenkins -- Ebb tide : Frank Ankersmit -- The art of losing oneself : Anne (...) Carson and decreation -- Inquiry as hope : Richard Rorty -- Photographic ambivalence -- Why photography matters to the theory of history -- Ordinary film : Péter Forgács's The Maelstrom -- Graves of the insane, decorated -- On a certain blindness in teaching -- Beyond critical thinking -- Good and risky : on the promise of a liberal education. (shrink)

Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa has presented a series of examples that are meant to spell trouble for Presuppositional Epistemic Contextualism. In this short article I aim to establish two things. First, I argue that even if Ichikawa’s examples were viable counterexamples to PEC, they would not threaten the key ideas underlying the account in my 2009 article ‘Knowledge and Presuppositions’. The philosophically interesting work that is done in that article remains unaffected by Ichikawa’s alleged counterexamples. In the second part of the (...) paper, I argue that the examples are not in fact successful counterexamples to PEC. The data emerging from Ichikawa’s examples can be accounted for within the framework of PEC. (shrink)

Michael S. Brady offers a new account of the role of emotions in our lives. He argues that emotional experiences do not give us information in the same way that perceptual experiences do. Instead, they serve our epistemic needs by capturing our attention and facilitating a reappraisal of the evaluative information that emotions themselves provide.

In this book Michael McKenna advances a new theory of moral responsibility, one that builds upon the work of P.F. Strawson.

The book is an argument about the moral foundations of foreign policy. It argues that the traditional idea of liberal equality can be interpreted so as to give moral guidance to policy leaders in understanding what they ought to seek internationally.

This Oxford Handbook will be the definitive study of political ideologies for years to come. The diversity of ideology studies is represented by a mixture of the range of theories that illuminate the field, combined with an appreciation of the changing complexity of concrete ideologies and the emergence of new ones.

The oil crisis, risk and evidence‐based practice Evidence‐based practice has risen to prominence over the last 20 years. Different professions have taken it up in different ways and for different purposes. It has been seen as holding both threats and advantages to professionalising endeavours and professional identity. It has engendered controversy but some criticisms of it have been unconvincing. It is possible to account for its rise as a response to tightening financial constraints on state spending in the west, as (...) a sign of a culture increasingly concerned with risk, distrust of professionals and experts, as well as a way for professionals themselves to maintain control over their activity in the face of growing managerialism. This paper reviews the literature of some of the movement's proponents as well as criticism from various professional groups. It concludes that more useful than either arguing for or against it, is to understand the policy background and sociological reasons for its emergence and spread. (shrink)

The laboratory animal environment: room for concern.

Naturphilosophie und Metaphysik scheinen zwei unterschiedliche, ja, sich ausschließende philosophische Ansätze zu sein. Bestimmt man aber Naturphilosophie als Metaphysik der Natur im Sinne des Projekts, im Ausgang von den naturwissenschaftlichen Erkenntnissen zu einer kohärenten und vollständigen Sicht der Welt zu gelangen, ergibt sich eine neue und überraschende Konstellation. Die Bezugnahme auf die Naturwissenschaften verleiht der Metaphysik einerseits die Berechtigung dazu, revisionär zu sein, das heißt, Erkenntnisansprüche, die aus dem alltäglichen Weltverständnis stammen, zu revidieren. Andererseits ist eine solche Metaphysik ebenso hypothetisch (...) wie die Wissenschaften selbst. Michael Esfeld zeigt zunächst, wie man in diesem Rahmen einen wissenschaftlichen Realismus vertreten kann, und begründet dann so umstrittene Thesen wie die eines vierdimensionalen Blockuniversums mit Ereignissen und Prozessen statt Substanzen oder die eines naturphilosophischen Holismus und Strukturenrealismus statt eines Atomismus und rehabilitiert die Idee notwendiger Verbindungen in der Natur. (shrink)

This is an excerpt from a report on the workshop on multisensory integration at the University of Toronto, on May 9th and 10th, 2014, written by Kevin Connolly, Aaron Henry, Zoe Jenkin, and Andrew MacGregor, and available at: http://networksensoryresearch.utoronto.ca/Events_%26_Discussion.html This excerpt explores the question: What can multisensory processing tell us about multisensory awareness?

I defend an incompatibilist 'Principle of Avoidable Blame' according to which one is blameworthy for performing an act of a given type only if one could instead have behaved in a manner for which one would have been blameless. First, I demonstrate that this principle is resistant to Harry Frankfurt-type counterexample. Second, I present a positive argument for this principle that appeals to the relation of blame to the 'reactive attitude' of indignation. Finally, I argue against the possibility of blamelessly (...) stumbling into a 'moral blind alley' where one would be blameworthy for whatever one is capable of doing. (shrink)

In recent years, the debate on the problem of causal exclusion has seen an ‘interventionist turn’. Numerous non-reductive physicalists (e.g. Shapiro and Sober 2007) have argued that Woodward's (2003) interventionist theory of causation provides a means to empirically establish the existence of non-reducible mental-to-physical causation. By contrast, Baumgartner (2010) has presented an interventionist exclusion argument showing that interventionism is in fact incompatible with non-reductive physicalism. In response, a number of revised versions of interventionism have been suggested that are compatible with (...) non-reductive physicalism. The first part of this paper reconstructs the definitional details of these modified interventionist theories. The second part investigates whether the modification proposed in Woodward (2011) is not only compatible with, but moreover supports non-reductive physicalism. In particular, it is examined whether that newest variant of interventionism allows for empirically resolving the problem of causal exclusion as envisaged by Shapiro, Sober and others. (shrink)

From church-sponsored AIDS prevention campaigns in Africa to Muslim charity efforts in flood-stricken Pakistan to Hindu charities in India, religious groups have altered the character of the global humanitarian movement. Moreover, even secular groups now gesture toward religious inspiration in their work. Clearly, the broad, inexorable march toward secularism predicted by so many Westerners has halted, which is especially intriguing with regard to humanitarianism. Not only was it a highly secularized movement just forty years ago, but its principles were based (...) on those we associate with " modernity: cosmopolitan one-worldism and material (as opposed to spiritual) progress. How and why did this happen, and what does it mean for humanitarianism writ large? That is the question that the eminent scholars Michael Barnett and Janice Stein pose in Sacred Aid, and for answers they have gathered chapters from leading scholars that focus on the relationship between secularism and religion in contemporary humanitarianism throughout the developing world. Collectively, the chapters in this volume comprise an original and authoritative account of religion has reshaped the global humanitarian movement in recent times. (shrink)

Concepts and Cases in Nursing Ethics maps the ethical landscape of contemporary nursing. The book is the product of a collaboration between philosopher-ethicist Michael Yeo, nurse-ethicist Anne Moorhouse, and six representatives of various areas of professional nursing. It thus combines philosophical and ethical analysis with nursing knowledge and experience in a manner that is both understandable and relevant. The book is organized around six main concepts in nursing ethics: beneficence, autonomy, confidentiality, truth-telling, justice, and integrity. A chapter is devoted (...) to the elucidation of each of these concepts. In each chapter, historical background and conceptual analysis are supplemented by case studies that exemplify issues and show how the concept applies in nursing practice. In this new edition, the materials in each chapter have been updated to reflect recent developments in nursing and more generally in health care. In addition, a totally new chapter on ethical theory has been added. Complete with bibliographies and study questions for further analysis of cases, this book is ideally suited for textbook use. It will help both practitioners and students to deal better with the clinical problems and issues that are encountered in the field. However, it's simple prose and clear exposition of complex issues will make Concepts and Cases in Nursing Ethics attractive to anyone concerned about health care. (shrink)

Choice Outstanding Academic Title, 1996. In hundreds of articles by experts from around the world, and in overviews and "road maps" prepared by the editor, The Handbook of Brain Theory and Neural Networkscharts the immense progress made in recent years in many specific areas related to two great questions: How does the brain work? and How can we build intelligent machines? While many books have appeared on limited aspects of one subfield or another of brain theory and neural networks, the (...) Handbookcovers the entire sweep of topics—from detailed models of single neurons, analyses of a wide variety of biological neural networks, and connectionist studies of psychology and language, to mathematical analyses of a variety of abstract neural networks, and technological applications of adaptive, artificial neural networks. The excitement, and the frustration, of these topics is that they span such a broad range of disciplines including mathematics, statistical physics and chemistry, neurology and neurobiology, and computer science and electrical engineering as well as cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence, and philosophy. Thus, much effort has gone into making the Handbookaccessible to readers with varied backgrounds while still providing a clear view of much of the recent, specialized research in specific topics. The heart of the book, part III, comprises of 267 original articles by leaders in the various fields, arranged alphabetically by title. Parts I and II, written by the editor, are designed to help readers orient themselves to this vast range of material. Part I, Background, introduces several basic neural models, explains how the present study of brain theory and neural networks integrates brain theory, artificial intelligence, and cognitive psychology, and provides a tutorial on the concepts essential for understanding neural networks as dynamic, adaptive systems. Part II, Road Maps, provides entry into the many articles of part III through an introductory "Meta-Map" and twenty-three road maps, each of which tours all the Part III articles on the chosen theme. (shrink)

According to the most popular versions of the flicker defense, Frankfurt-style cases fail to undermine the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP) because agents in these cases are (directly) morally responsible not for making the decisions they make but for making these decisions on their own, which is something they could have avoided doing. Frankfurt defenders have primarily focused on trying to show that the alternative possibility of refraining from making the relevant decisions on their own is not a robust alternative, (...) while generally granting that this alternative cannot easily be eliminated from successful cases of this sort. In a recent issue of this journal, Stockdale (2022) attempts to sidestep the debate concerning robustness and develops a novel kind of Frankfurt-style case in which agents are unable to avoid making the relevant decisions on their own. The fundamental problem with Stockdale’s argument is that it hinges on an implausible conception of acting on one’s own. I help clarify the pertinent sense of what it means to do a thing on one’s own in this context and show that these new cases are unable to overcome the targeted versions of the flicker defense of PAP. (shrink)

Contemporary psycholinguistic models place significant emphasis on the cognitive processes involved in the acquisition, recognition, and production of language but neglect many issues related to the representation of language-related information in the mental lexicon. In contrast, a central tenet of network science is that the structure of a network influences the processes that operate in that system, making process and representation inextricably connected. Here, we consider how the structure found across phonological networks of several languages from different language families may (...) influence language processing as we age and experience diseases that affect cognition during the typical and atypical acquisition of new words, during typical perception and production of speech in adults, and during language change over time. We conclude that the network science approach may not only provide insights into specific language processes but also provide a way to connect the work from these domains, which are becoming increasingly balkanized. (shrink)

Many Sides is the first full-length study of Protagorean antilogic, an argumentative practice with deep roots in rhetorical history and renewed relevance for contemporary culture. Founded on the philosophical relativism of Protagoras, antilogic is a dynamic rather than a formal approach to argument, focused principally on the dialogical interaction of opposing positions (anti-logoi) in controversy. In ancient Athens, antilogic was the cardinal feature of Sophistic rhetoric. In Rome, Cicero redefined Sophistic argument in a concrete set of dialogical procedures. In turn, (...) Quintilian inherited this dialogical tradition and made it the centrepiece of his own rhetorical practice and pedagogy. Many Sides explores the history, theory, and pedagogy of this neglected rhetorical tradition and, by appeal to recent rhetorical and philosophical theory, reconceives the enduring features of antilogical practice in a dialogical approach to argumentation especially suited to the pluralism of our own age and the diversity of modern classrooms. (shrink)