Recent scholarship (by mainly Michael Friedman, but also by Thomas Uebel) on the philosophy of Rudolf Carnap covering the period from the publication of Carnap’s’ 1928 book Der Logische Aufbau der Welt through to the mid to late 1930’s has tended to view Carnap as espousing a form of conventionalism (epitomized by his adoption of the principle of tolerance) and not a form of empirical foundationalism. On this view, it follows that Carnap’s 1934 The Logical Syntax of Language is the (...) pinnacle of his work during this era, this book having developed in its most complete form the conventionalist approach to dissolving the pseudoproblems that often attend philosophical investigation. My task in this paper, in opposition to this trend, is to resuscitate the empiricist interpretation of Carnap’s work during this time period. The crux of my argument is that Carnap’s 1934 book, by eschewing for the most part the empiricism he espouses in the Aufbau and in his 1932 The Unity of Science, is led to a form of conventionalism that faces the serious hazard of collapsing into epistemological relativism. My speculation is that Carnap came to recognize this deficiency in his 1934 book, and in subsequent work (“Testability and Meaning”, published in 1936/37) felt the need to re-instate his empiricist agenda. This subsequent work provides a much improved empiricist epistemology from Carnap’s previous efforts and, ashistory informs us, sets the standard for future research in the theory of confirmation. (shrink)

L’étude de la Nouvelle-Néerlande permet de voir le rôle » joué par le genre dans la construction d’une société nouvelle. Les dynamiques migratoires mixtes qui caractérisent cette colonie donnent naissance à une société coloniale où la surreprésentation masculine est associée à un peuplement familial. Il en résulte une vulnérabilité exacerbée des femmes seules. Néanmoins, les transgressions sexuelles peuvent être lues comme autant de tentatives de se conformer à un ordre matrimonial. Le mariage apparaît non seulement comme une sécurité pour les (...) femmes, mais également, par les réseaux de confiance qu’il permet de construire, comme un rouage essentiel au bon fonctionnement d’une société articulée autour de circulations atlantiques. (shrink)

Land use changes threaten agricultural land. If agricultural land is going to be preserved, the social and economic causes of conversion must be understood. However, analyzing the causes of agricultural conversion is complex because trends need to be documented before analyzing the causes. One of the leading uses of agricultural land is for residential purposes. This paper projects residential development in a Hudson River Valley watershed within Dutchess County in New York State using an integrated modeling framework consisting (...) of an econometric model, a geographic information system (GIS), and Monte Carlo simulation. The econometric model is used to project residential development, providing parcel-specific probabilities of residential development. The GIS is employed to extract socio-economic and county-level tax parcel data to be used in conjunction with bio-geophysical attributes, such as slope, soil, and location, to calculate and project growth trends on a residential level for undeveloped land parcels. Monte Carlo simulation is used to distribute these projections into the GIS to display outcomes of scenario analyses to provide policy-makers a demonstration of how policies would likely affect the agricultural landscape of the watershed. (shrink)

Much of Edmonton’s municipal past lacked any overarching development plan. Once such absentee municipal planning gave way to more concrete forms of municipal planning in terms of shaping the urban environment, conflicting goals soon emerged. Between 1949 and the early 1980s a conflict in planning goals within both the Edmonton District Planning Commission and the City of Edmonton, at this time governed with a commission board became apparent. Often this conflict played out in Edmonton’s river valley with competing visions (...) of preservation and freeway construction. River valley neighborhoods were threatened with land acquisition policies that viewed the river valley as the sole domain of parkland. Concurrently, those neighborhoods and much of the river valley were also threatened by the Metropolitan Edmonton Transportation Study. Citizen engagement in an otherwise politically apathetic city led to its demise, although the threat of large-scale removal of river valley parks and homes throughout the city loomed for some time. The period between 1949 and 1983 represents a period in Edmonton’s history where environmental protection policy clashed with transportation policy that advocated for the wholesale destruction of the river valley and countless homes. It is this conflict that led to increased political awareness that directly contributed to the demise of the METS scheme and gave rise to renewed support for river valley protection while making rapid transit a possibility for Edmonton. (shrink)

When this book first appeared in 1982, it introduced readers to Robert Irwin, the Los Angeles artist "who one day got hooked on his own curiosity and decided to live it." Now expanded to include six additional chapters and twenty-four pages of color plates, _Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees _chronicles three decades of conversation between Lawrence Weschler and light and space master Irwin. It surveys many of Irwin's site-conditioned projects—in particular the Central Gardens at the (...) Getty Museum and the design that transformed an abandoned Hudson Valley factory into Dia's new Beacon campus—enhancing what many had already considered the best book ever on an artist. (shrink)

Several scholars have claimed that small-scale agriculture in which farmers sell goods to the local market has the potential to strengthen social ties and a sense of community, a phenomenon referred to as “civic agriculture.” Proponents see promise in the increase in the number of community supported agriculture programs, farmers markets, and other locally orientated distribution systems as well as the growing interest among consumers for buying locally produced goods. Yet others have suggested that these novel or reborn distribution mechanisms (...) are still primarily means of instrumental economic exchange and that optimistic characterizations of a renewed sense of community emerging from these practices are unfounded. This study provides an empirical assessment of the extent to which these community-based agriculture markets are associated with connection to community, volunteerism, and civic and political activities. In order to assess the relationship between civic agriculture and community engagement, we surveyed over 1,300 people in the Mid-Hudson region of New York State. The study design includes “civic agriculture participants” as the unit of analysis, defined as CSA farm members, shoppers at independent health food stores, and farmers market patrons. For comparison, a telephone survey of randomly selected residents of the region’s general population was also conducted. Unlike studies that focus solely on the perceptions of certain civic agriculture participants, by comparing the perceptions and behaviors of those engaged in a range of civic agriculture practices, we are able to identify the effects of different forms of participation. The results demonstrate higher levels of voluntarism and engagement in local politics among civic agriculture participants relative to the general population. In addition, we found variation among those engaged in different forms of civic agriculture, with those immersed in more socially embedded forms of exchange demonstrating greater community and political involvement. These findings lend empirical support to the civic agriculture thesis. (shrink)

The article introduces a previously unknown Arabic source detailing the preparations for a battle between local Muslim rulers, likely vassals of the Samanids (204–395/819–1005), against the ruler of Ghaznī and his allies, the Hindushahs, near Ghaznī in the mid-fourth/tenth century. By closely reading, translating, and analyzing this manuscript fragment, I aim to shed light on the political realities of the Indian frontier of the Islamic world before the establishment of the Ghaznavid state (366–583/977–1186). The fragment provides evidence of the clashes (...) among different actors, both Muslim and non-Muslim, in the region that makes up present-day eastern Afghanistan during the pre-Ghaznavid period, especially the fourth/tenth century. Moreover, it highlights the significance of the river valleys of Bāmiyān and Ghūrwand, along with the upper Hilmand’s course, as a frontier region where the Samanids and their vassals sought to expand the influence of Islam and Samanid suzerainty by pushing southward. (shrink)

An account is given of the work on glacial phenomena in the English Lake District from the time of Adam Sedgwick until the mid-twentieth century, with emphasis on the nineteenth century. In the early years, the following theories were envisaged: 'diluvialism'; the theory of 'waves of translation'; the theory of 'ice rafting'; the 'glacial-submergence' hypothesis ; and the 'land-ice' theory. While it was quite easy to recognize ice action and the former existence of glaciers, it was difficult to work out (...) a persuasive sequence of events that would account satisfactorily for the great variety and quantity of evidence available, considering land-forms, and the distribution of moraines, tills, gravels, and glacial erratics. When the first systematic geological survey was being undertaken in the Lake District both local amateurs and the surveyors favoured the glacial-submergence theory, but there were problems about explaining the distribution of glacial erratics, and controversy developed as to whether this distribution was best explained in terms of floating icebergs or landice. The problem was difficult in that there was uncertainty as to how many glaciations there had been, though the preferred number was two, following the early observations in Wales by Andrew Ramsay, in Lancashire by Edward Hull and others, and by some Continental geologists, of two different tills, and one intermediate water-deposited unit. These seemed to have equivalents in the Lake District. However, the Scottish surveyors, under the influence of their theorist colleague, James Croll, with his astronomical explanation of ice ages, favoured multiple glaciations. Croll himself sought to apply the land-ice theory to explain the distribution of glacial erratics in the regions round the Lake District. James Geikie read widely in the Continental literature, and thought that the theory of several glaciations, developed by Albrecht Penck in the 1880s, on the basis of observations of the valleys and rivers terraces running north from the Alps, fitted well with Croll's theory. Thus the idea of a sequence of glaciations was applied to Britain with some success, partly as a result of Geikie's advocacy. But the evidence of such a sequence in the Lake District itself was by no means clear, and it was not developed for the region until the work of Frederick Trotter and Sidney Hollingworth . In the meantime, much geomorphological work on the form and formation of lakes and tarns had been done by the chief aficionado of Lakeland geology, Cambridge professor, John Marr. But he thought there might have been only one major glaciation. The paradox is that, for England, the glacial sequence has had to be worked out more by examination of deposits in the flatter southern regions, as much as in the mountains where the glaciers were formed and most active. In the Lakeland mountains, as in other parts of the world, the last glaciation has tended to remove or obscure the products of earlier glaciations. (shrink)

I met Ernie in 1965 on the wrestling mats of our high school in North Bergen, New Jersey, a township on top of the plateau overlooking Hoboken and across the Hudson River from Manhattan. Hoboken then was still the Hoboken of Elia Kazan’s “On the Waterfront” (1954).1 Even though the Hudson was less than a mile across at that point, it was a wide spiritual divide. We were Jersey boys, not New Yorkers. Ernie was as ambitious as I (...) was about wrestling, and, so, after the season was over, we used to take a bus to Journal Square in Jersey City, and then walk about eight city blocks to a gym to lift weights. In those days, high schools didn’t have weight rooms; and gyms were scarce, men only, quite filthy, and entirely devoid of cardio equipment and Nautilus machines. They were all sweat, grunts, groans, and clanking iron. By 1968, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, after a grueling wrestling practice at the high school, we would take a bus to New York City (it took about a half hour to get into “the City” by bus, less if the Lincoln Tunnel was not crowded), and then a short subway ride up to the New York Athletic Club on 59th street, across from Central Park, to spend a couple of hours working out with former university wrestling stars—guys in their mid-twenties from places like Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Iowa—who were training to make the Olympic team. Even with all of this wrestling time, we were frustrated by the fact that there was nowhere to work out on Sundays. We investigated and found out that the Jersey City YMCA had a wrestling mat and was open on Sundays. We then spent our Sunday afternoons working out there, so as not to miss a day of wrestling. Wrestling was our savior: a healthy way to get out anger.2 But it wasn’t all wrestling. We did something else too: We talked. We spent many hours together introspecting out loud, and just trying to make sense of things. Ernie has mentioned in print one early topic of discussion: “We spent years trying to solve various logical conundra like how on earth the Virgin Mary could have been a virgin.... (shrink)

The admiration of the Soviet Union amongst Britain's interwar scientific left is well known. This article reveals a parallel story. Focusing on the biologists Julian Huxley and Lancelot Hogben and the scientific journalist J.G. Crowther, I show that a number of scientific thinkers began to look west, to the US. In the mid- to late 1930s and into the 1940s, Huxley, Crowther and Hogben all visited the US and commented favourably on Roosevelt's New Deal, in particular its experimental approach to (...) politics (in the form of planning). Huxley was first to appreciate the significance of the experiment; he looked to the Tennessee Valley Authority as a model of democratic planning by persuasion that could also be applied in Britain. Crowther, meanwhile, examined the US through the lens of history of science. InFamous American Men of Science(1937) and in lectures at Harvard University, he aimed to shed light on the flaws in the Constitution which were frustrating the New Deal. Finally, Hogben's interest in the US was related to his long-standing opposition to dialectical materialism, and when he finally saw the US at first hand, he regarded it as a model for how to bring about a planned socialist society through peaceful persuasion. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Environment 8.2 (2003) 8-30 [Access article in PDF] Dialogue, Responsibility, and Oil and Gas Leasing on Montana's Rocky Mountain Front Scott Friskics "How does nature speak to our concern? That is the question" (Bugbee 1978, 11). It's a late afternoon in mid-March and I'm standing outside my friends' house on the southwest edge of Augusta, Montana, a small town of about 500 residents. I'm here to (...) meet a companion who's headed out from Great Falls to spend the weekend at my cabin, which is located up in the mountains approximately 20 miles west of here. As is often the case, I'm a bit early for our rendezvous. Blame it on unbridled anticipation or a latent preoccupation with punctuality, but my premature arrival offers me a few stolen moments of enforced inactivity with which I can revel in the sensory fullness of a pleasant, pre-spring afternoon.Out here on the plains, spring seems much nearer at hand than it does back up in the mountains. The air's still cool and the wind still bites, but the warm afternoon sun embraces me and unlocks a host of smells long-held in winter's freeze: earthy mud puddles, sweet horse manure, damp hay. [End Page 8]While waiting, I wander over to the nearby corral to greet three gentle, mud-splattered horses. As I absently rub their chins and stroke their long, slender noses, I gaze out beyond the horses, out beyond the soupy corral, beyond the expanse of wrinkled, sere, brown plains. My eyes focus on the blue-shadowed wall of mountains from which I've just emerged: Montana's Rocky Mountain Front. From this vantage point, the Front presents itself as a horizon-filling tidal wave of rock—fluid, walking mountains that, over the course of their long march through time, have been thrust skyward and pushed eastward to where their easternmost reefs and ridges now hang precipitously over the wide expanse of the northern Great Plains.Dead center in my line of vision stands the tilted summit of Crown Mountain—the univocal, eloquent peak that towers about the narrow mountain valley where I live, provides me with the ultimate spatial reference point for my life, and fills my days with the gracious bounty of its abiding presence. From here, however, Crown Mountain presents itself to me not so much as a soloist, but rather as one voice in a chorus of mountain song. Working southward from this orienting center, I encounter Crown Mountain's nameless twin and the rocky ridge line descending to Welcome Pass, above the notch of which rises the deceptively unassuming head of the Scapegoat Massif. Much nearer at hand and dominating the foreground stands the dark cone of Haystack Butte—an intrusive igneous island in a sea of sedimentary mountains. Further south runs the high ridge guarding the headwaters of the Dearborn River, with Steamboat Mountain rising above the rugged country drained by Elk Creek, Blubber Creek, Falls Creek, Cuniff Creek.Working northward from the crown, the mountains are no less spectacular, no less evocative: the slanting summit of Fairview Mountain, the jagged gray wall of Sawtooth Ridge, the low gap of Sun Canyon (where the united Sun River flows out onto the plains and benches of central Montana), the flattened rock face of Castle Reef, and, framing the northern edge of my vista, the rising bulk of Ear Mountain. Of course, standing here in Augusta I'm well aware that what I can see from this spot is less than half of the Front, so my imagination continues north to Blackleaf Canyon, the Birch Creek country, the Badger-Two Medicine, the east slopes of Glacier National Park, and that holy border sentinel, Chief Mountain.I first saw this glorious stretch of country on a blustery November day 16 years ago, and I have yet to encounter another place that speaks to me with such force and beauty, such overwhelming, undeniable eloquence. [End Page 9] And, on this soul-stirring March afternoon, the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:'Is* and Ought' in Context: Maclntyre's Mistake1 Murray MacBeth (1)What drives Hume to the conclusion that morality must be understood in terms of, explained and justified by reference to, the place of the passions and desires in human life is his initial assumption that either morality is the work of reason or it is the work of the passions and his own apparently conclusive arguments that it cannot be (...) the work ofreason. (2)At the same time as they [Diderot, Hume, Kierkegaard and Kant] agree largely on the character of morality, they agree also upon what a rationaljustification ofmorality would have to be. Its key premises would characterise some feature or features of human nature; and the rules of morality would then be explained and justified as being those rules which a being possessing just such a nature could be expected to accept. (3)[Hume] treats this ground for the justification of the rules of property and this explanation ofthem as holding for all times andplaces, prosperous as well as unprosperous, ever since the rules were first artificially contrived. (4)It isjust suchreasoning which Hume advanced both to explain and to justify the rules ofjustice, conceived as he conceived them, and the obligations imposed by those rules, understood as he understood them. One characteristic common to these four quotations from Alasdair Maclntyre's influential books After Virtue and Whose Justice? Which Rationality? is a yoking which is neither explained nor justified in the surrounding context, of the concepts of explanation and justification. Hume is said to be concerned both to explain and to justify (1) "morality," (2) "the rules of morality," (3) "the rules of property," and (4) "the rules ofjustice," and it seems that in each case he used the same argument to do both. My aim in this paper is to argue that Maclntyre altogether fails to dojustice to the distinctionbetweenjustification and Volume XVII Number 2 41 MURRAY MACBETH explanation, a distinction which is of the utmost importance for the interpretation ofHume—and notjust ofHume's moral philosophy. I take as my target, however, not either ofthe books from which I drew my opening quotations, but a much earlier article ofMaclntyre's, "Hume on 'Is' and 'Ought'," in which the ideas expressed in the above quotations are foreshadowed. An examination ofaspects ofthis article will enable me to show, if I am right, how Maclntyre goes startlingly astray. That 1959 article set in motion a lively discussion of the interpretation of Hume: no less than six articles, by Atkinson, Flew, Hudson, and Hunter, all contributions to the debate sparked off by Maclntyre, are reprinted in either or both of Chappell (1968) and Hudson (1969).6 I am in broad agreement with the criticisms made of his article by Atkinson and Flew; but I think it instructive to identify, as they failed to do, Maclntyre's fundamental mistake, which, I shall argue at the end ofthis paper, resulted from the very kind ofconfusion against which Hume warned his readers, and warned them in precisely that passage with which Maclntyre was primarily concerned, the famous paragraph about "is" and "ought" at the end of the opening section of book 3 of Hume's Treatise. My identification of Maclntyre's mistake involves putting that "is"-"ought" paragraph in context: in both, ambitiously on my part, the broad context of the Treatise as a whole, and also the more immediate context of the opening sections of book 3. Maclntyre wrote his article less as a contribution to an ongoing discussion of Hume than as a contribution to an ongoing discussion of ethical naturalism. Mid-twentieth century anti-naturalists, as Maclntyre pointed out, often invoked the "is"-"ought" paragraph as putting forward a view which was direct a ancestor oftheir own. Hare, for instance, appeals in his article "Universalisability" to what he calls "Hume's Law,"7 with a footnote referring the reader to this paragraph of the Treatise; the "law" in question is, roughly, that "ought"-judgements cannot be deduced from "is"-judgements. Maclntyre argued that such an interpretation of Hume was mistaken; and a crucial part ofhis evidence was the claim that, "ifthe currentinterpretation ofHume'sviews on "is'and'ought... (shrink)

"The desert opens up beyond the proliferation of big box chains, car dealerships, fast food joints, and the bland sprawl along California State Highway 62. Out there, where signs of familiar habitation seem to fade from view, a change occurs in the landscape: small, dusty, mostly abandoned cabins dot the arid flatland. The majority of the existing cabins, historically found throughout the larger region known as the Morongo Basin, lie east of Twentynine Palms in outlying Wonder Valley. The curious (...) presence of these structures signifies that you are entering one of the few remaining clusters of "jackrabbit" homesteads in the American West. The mostly derelict structures-many vacant, some inhabited-are the physical reminder of former occupants who were the last to form the U.S. government's Small Tract Act of 1938." "One of the many land acts designed to dispose of "useless" federal lands from the public domain, the Small Tract Act authorized citizens to lease up to five acres of desert for recreational purposes or for use as a home or business. When the applicant made the required improvements to his or her claim by constructing a small dwelling within the three-year lease, they could file for a patent-the federal government's form of a deed. This mid-century homestead movement reflects the quintessential American desire to claim territory and own a piece of land even when the property in question was deemed "worthless" from an economic and governmental perspective."--Jacket. (shrink)

Summary Descriptions of the administration of imperial domains in Africa Proconsularis share much common ground in their interpretations. The literature features a widespread emphasis on the special role of the governments of Trajan and Hadrian in reorganising the imperial domains in this province – and especially in the Bagradas Valley, which has furnished us with exceptional epigraphic material in the form of agrarian inscriptions. While the 2nd-century administrative operations of imperial domains are fairly well understood – mainly due to (...) this category of inscriptions – the 1st century remains something of a mystery. Researchers have dated the beginning of fundamental changes to how domain administration was organised to the times of the Flavians, after the great confiscations of Nero. However, a re-interpretation of a procuratorial title from CIL VIII 14727 = ILPBardo 229 and a broader analysis of the epigraphic material shed new light on the beginnings of the administration of imperial domains in Africa Proconsularis, and especially in the grain-growing region of Byzacium; there, perhaps even in the mid-1st century, there was an imperial administration and a domain district modelled after another grain province of Egypt. (shrink)

Hud Hudson offers a fascinating examination of philosophical reasons to believe in hyperspace. He explores non-theistic reasons in the first chapter and theistic ones towards the end; in the intervening sections he inquires into a variety of puzzles in the metaphysics of material objects that are either generated by the hypothesis of hyperspace or else informed by it, with discussions of receptacles, boundaries, contact, occupation, and superluminal motion. Anyone engaged with contemporary metaphysics, and many philosophers of religion, will find (...) much to stimulate them here. (shrink)

Hud Hudson presents an innovative view of the metaphysics of human persons according to which human persons are material objects but not human organisms. In developing his account, he formulates and defends a unique collection of positions on parthood, persistence, vagueness, composition, identity, and various puzzles of material constitution. The author also applies his materialist metaphysics to issues in ethics and in the philosophy of religion. He examines the implications for ethics of his metaphysical views for standard arguments addressing (...) the moral permissibility of our treatment of human persons and their parts, fetuses and infants, the irreversibly comatose, and corpses. He argues that his metaphysics provides the best foundation in the philosophy of religion for the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the body. Hudson addresses a broad range of metaphysical issues, but among his most strikingly original contributions are his defense of the "Partist" view and his argument for the compatibility of Christianity with a materialistic theory of human persons. (shrink)

Hud Hudson shows that apparently irreconcilable conflicts between science and religion often turn out to be misdescribed battles about negotiable philosophical assumptions. He defends an original Hypertime Hypothesis which reconciles the Christian doctrines of The Fall and Original Sin with reigning scientific orthodoxy.

Secession and the civil war that followed are often regarded as having exclusively structural determinants, expressed in political cleavages. From this point of view, these events are explained, variously, by the rise of abolitionism in the North or sectionalism in the Union or some cultural attribute of the South. This focus gets us part of the way in understanding the events that led to secession, the creation of a Southern Confederacy, and civil war, but this interpretation says too little about (...) precisely how these events and processes played out. Secession occurred in time, sequentially and dynamically, with one state leading and other states following. This article offers a processual specification of the conditions of Southern secession and the creation of a Southern Confederacy. It does so by focusing on mobilization within the vanguard state, South Carolina, and the consequences of this activity for other Southern states. (shrink)

This book argues that language is a network of concepts which in turn is part of the general cognitive network of the mind. It challenges the widely-held view that language is an innate mental module with its own special internal organization. It shows that language has the same internal organization as other areas of knowledge such as social relations and action schemas, and reveals the rich links between linguistic elements and contextual categories. Professor Hudson presents a new theory of (...) how we learn and use our knowledge of language. He puts this to work in a series of extended explorations of morphology, syntax, semantics, and sociolinguistics. Every step of his argument and exposition is illustrated with examples, including the kind mainstream theory finds it hard to analyse. He introduces the latest version of his influential theory of Word Grammar and shows how it can be used to explain the operations of language and as a key to understanding the associated operations of the mind. (shrink)

In an important 2006 paper, Nishi Shah defends ‘evidentialism’, the position that only evidence for a proposition’s truth constitutes a reason to believe this proposition. In opposition to Shah, Anthony Robert Booth, Andrew Reisner and Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen argue that things other than evidence of truth, so-called non-evidential or ‘pragmatic’ reasons, constitute reasons to believe a proposition. I argue that we can effectively respond to Shah’s pragmatist critics if, following Shah, we are careful to distinguish the evaluation of the reasons for (...) a belief from the process of actually forming a belief and allowing it to influence action. Drawing this distinction is assisted if we utilize Rudolf Carnap’s probabilistic interpretation of what it means to be disposed to believe a claim. (shrink)

In Seeing Things, Robert Hudson assesses a common way of arguing about observation reports called "robustness reasoning." Robustness reasoning claims that an observation report is more likely to be true if the report is produced by multiple, independent sources. Seeing Things argues that robustness reasoning lacks the special value it is often claimed to have. Hudson exposes key flaws in various popular philosophical defenses of robustness reasoning. This philosophical critique of robustness is extended by recounting five episodes in (...) the history of science (from experimental microbiology, atomic theory, astrophysics, and astronomy) where robustness reasoning is — or could be claimed to have been — used. Hudson goes on to show that none of these episodes do in fact exhibit robustness reasoning. In this way, the significance of robustness reasoning is rebutted on both philosophical and historical grounds. But the book does more than critique robustness reasoning. It also develops a better defense of the informative value of observation reports. The book concludes by relating insights into the failure of robustness reasoning to a popular approach to scientific realism called "(theoretical) preservationism." Hudson argues that those who defend this approach to realism commit similar errors to those who advocate robustness reasoning. In turn, a new form of realism is formulated and defended. Called "methodological preservationism," it recognizes the fundamental value of naked-eye observation to scientists — and the rest of us. (shrink)

(2003). Intellectuals for our times. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy: Vol. 6, The Public Role of Intellectuals, pp. 33-50. doi: 10.1080/1369823042000241258.

Psychiatric inpatients with capacity may be treated paternalistically under the Mental Health Act 1983. This violates bodily autonomy and causes potentially significant harm to health and moral status, both of which may be long-lasting. I suggest that such harms may extend to killing moral persons through the impact of psychotropic drugs on psychological connectedness. Unsurprisingly, existing legislation is overwhelmingly disliked by psychiatric inpatients, the majority of whom have capacity. I present four arguments for involuntary treatment: individual safety, public safety, authentic (...) wishes and protection of autonomy. I explore these through a case study: a patient with schizophrenia admitted to a psychiatric hospital under the Mental Health Act 1983 after an episode of self-poisoning. Through its discussion of preventative detention, the public safety argument articulates the (un)ethical underpinnings of the current position in English law. Ultimately, none of the four arguments are cogent—all fail to justify the current legal discrimination faced by psychiatric inpatients. I conclude against any use of involuntary treatment in psychiatric inpatients with capacity, endorsing the fusion approach where only psychiatric patients lacking capacity may be treated involuntarily. (shrink)