This work offers a groundbreaking exploration of the urgent need for creativity and innovation in contemporary military thought. In an era characterised by the ceaseless flux of global dynamics, traditional paradigms of warfare have become increasingly obsolete. The imperative has arisen to harness out-of-box thinking, underscoring creativity and innovation within the realm of military thought. The pursuit of victory no longer lies in the fixation upon past conflicts, but rather in the discerning assessment of and adaptation to the challenges that (...) will shape the conflicts of tomorrow. This innovative new work dissects the barriers that have thus far hindered the realisation of this potential. Furthermore, it challenges the status quo and advances a series of recommendations poised to steer international militaries towards success in the theatre of contemporary conflicts. Drawing from their extensive involvement with defence forces worldwide, the authors introduce concepts such as military design thinking as catalytic instruments of change. Through introspective reflections and real-world case studies, they present implications for mitigating cognitive biases, heralding a transformative epoch in military operations. It is this very transformation that furnishes militaries with the capacity to surge ahead of their adversaries, a capability proving to be indispensable in modern warfare. Offering a well-illuminated path for military entities to adapt and flourish within an ever-evolving global landscape, this book will be of much interest to students of military studies, security studies and International Relations, as well as military professionals. (shrink)

This paper presents, from the perspectives of both social scientists and microbiologists, a case study of the implementation and practice of Responsible Innovation (RI) in a UK-based synthetic biology project. We highlight the impact of interdisciplinary working and examine the benefits that arise from creating the time and space for shared reflection on research. Our discussions over the course of the project included concerns about the potential escape to the environment of laboratory-constructed genetic material and alternatives to the role that (...) antibiotic resistance genes play in synthetic biology. As a result, the design of a key product of the project was altered in ways that go beyond normal institutional requirements. We highlight our view of the importance of continued interdisciplinary collaboration and the utility of the framework of Responsible Innovation in achieving this. We conclude with observations on the difficulties of sustaining such collaborations. (shrink)

There have been numerous attempts to understand the role and importance of the Great Dionysia in Athens, and it is a festival that has been made crucial to varied and important characterizations of Greek culture as well as the history of drama or literature. Recent scholarship, however, has greatly extended our understanding of the formation of fifth-century Athenian ideology—in the sense of the structure of attitudes and norms of behaviour—and this developing interest in what might be called a ‘civic discourse’ (...) requires a reconsideration of the Great Dionysia as a city festival. For while there have been several fascinating readings of particular plays with regard to thepolisand its ideology, there is still a considerable need to place the festival itself in terms of the ideology of thepolis. Indeed, recent critics in a justifiable reaction away from writers such as Gilbert Murray have tended rather to emphasize on the one hand that the festival is a place of entertainment rather than religious ritual, and on the other hand that the plays should be approached primarily asdramaticperformances. (shrink)

"Simone Weil's bibliography": pages [181]-194. Includes index. Introduction / George Abbott White -- The jagged edge / Michele Murray -- Simone Weil's mind / Robert Coles -- The life and death of Simone Weil / J.M. Cameron -- Simone Weil, last things / Michele Murray -- Simone Weil's Iliad / Michael K. Ferber -- Notes on Simone Weil's Iliad / Joseph H. Summers -- Patriotism and The need for roots / Conor Cruise O'Brien -- Marxism-Leninism and the language (...) of Politics magazine / Staughton Lynd -- Simone Weil's work experiences / George Abbott White. (shrink)

In a compelling chronicle of her search to understand Beauvoir's philosophy in The Second Sex, Margaret A. Simons offers a unique perspective on Beauvoir's wide-ranging contribution to twentieth-century thought. She details the discovery of the origins of Beauvoir's existential philosophy in her handwritten diary from 1927; uncovers evidence of the sexist exclusion of Beauvoir from the philosophical canon; reveals evidence that the African-American writer Richard Wright provided Beauvoir with the theoretical model of oppression that she used in The Second (...) Sex; shows the influence of The Second Sex in transforming Sartre's philosophy and in laying the theoretical foundations of radical feminism; and addresses feminist issues of racism, motherhood, and lesbian identity. Simons also draws on her experience as a Women's Liberation organizer as she witnessed how women used The Second Sex in defining the foundations of radical feminism. Bringing together her work as both activist and scholar, Simons offers a highly original contribution to the renaissance of Beauvoir scholarship. (shrink)

This paper brings together two theories that I have propounded separately elsewhere. The first is the view that concrete individuals are constituted completely by tropes, that they are trope bundles. The second and more recently developed theory is that of the two major categories of concrete individuals, continuants and occurrents, the latter are ontologically more basic than the former and that continuants are to be viewed as invariants among occurrents under equivalence relations. The latter theory embodies on its own an (...) account of the nature of identity through time of things that are in time but not extended in time. The question is whether this view is compatible with the trope bundle account of concrete particulars, and, assuming it is (both theories being separately attractive) whether bringing them together entails any modifications (other than complexity) to either theory. After examining likely metaphysical difficulties the tentative conclusion is that the attractiveness of the trope bundle theory persists despite the marriage, but that the mental picture of what tropes and trope bundles are must be overhauled. (shrink)

The relationship of part to whole is one of the most fundamental there is; this is the first and only full-length study of this concept. This book shows that mereology, the formal theory of part and whole, is essential to ontology. Peter Simons surveys and criticizes previous theories, especially the standard extensional view, and proposes a more adequate account which encompasses both temporal and modal considerations in detail. 'Parts could easily be the standard book on mereology for the next (...) twenty or thirty years.' Timothy Williamson, Grazer Philosophische Studien. (shrink)

stanislaw lesniewski, Collected Works, Edited by Stanislaw J. Surma, Jan T. Srzednicki and D. I. Barnett, with an annotated bibliography by V. Frederick Rickey. Warsaw:PWN?Polish Scientific Publishers; and Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer. 2 vols., xvi + 794 pp. $274/£163/Dfl. 480.

This paper offers a critical analysis of Stalnaker''s work on presupposition (Stalnaker1973, 1974, 1979, 1999, 2002). The paper examines two definitions of speaker presupposition offered by Stalnaker – the familiar common ground view, and the earlier,less familiar, dispositional account – and how Stalnaker relates this notion to the linguistic phenomenon of presupposition. Special attention is paid to Stalnaker's view of accommodation. I argue that given Stalnaker's views, accommodation is not rightly seen as driven by the presuppositional requirements of utterances, but (...) only by the interests of speakers in eliminating perceived differences among presuppositions. I also consider the revisions which are needed either to the definition of speaker presupposition or to the definition of sentence presupposition in light of the possibility of informative presupposition. In the concluding section, I discuss the ways in which some recent accounts of context and speaker presupposition depart from their Stalnakerian foundations. (shrink)

In his 2018 essay Down to Earth, the French philosopher Bruno Latour proposes a hypothesis that connects a number of contemporary issues, ranging from climate denialism to deregulation and growing inequality. While his hypothesis, namely that the elites act as if they live in another world and are leaving the rest of the world behind, might seem like a conspiracy theory, I will argue that there is a way to make sense of it. To do so, I will turn to (...) two other authors, Timothy Mitchell and Shoshana Zuboff, to highlight the kind of logic that Latour seems to have in mind. In the final section, I will propose to capture the commonalities of these authors through the concept of shifting reciprocities and will return to Latour’s political plea to define one’s territories, reinterpreted as reciprocities. (shrink)

Occurrents are entities that exist in time and, with few or no exceptions, extend over time as well, that is, they have parts corresponding to the different times at which they exist. This makes it very easy to say what makes it true that they exist at the times at which they do. Singular existential propositions, being contingent, positive and arguably atomic, stand in need of truth-makers, entities in virtue of whose existence they are true. The obvious candidate for what (...) makes it true that Tony Blair exists is the Right Honourable Member for Sedgefield himself: by virtue of his existing, it is true that he exists. Nothing could be more straightforward. However, things that exist in time, with few exceptions, exist at some times and not at others. So a proposition to the effect that a certain object exists at a certain time likewise stands in need of a truth-maker, one matching the requirements of the existential proposition in question in its temporal specificity. Take an occurrent such as a boxing match and suppose it is going on twenty minutes after starting: by virtue of what is this true? The obvious answer here is that it is by virtue of the existence of that temporal part or phase which extends just over the time in question. Other temporal parts of the same occurrent which do not extend over this time do not act as truth-maker for the temporally specific existential proposition, this one does. There is no problem because occurrents do have temporal parts which can do this job. (shrink)

In this paper, we develop the notion of a natural convention, and illustrate its usefulness in a detailed examination of indirect requests in English. Our treatment of convention is grounded in Lewis’s seminal account; we do not here redefine convention, but rather explore the space of possibilities within Lewis’s definition, highlighting certain types of variation that Lewis de-emphasized. Applied to the case of indirect requests, which we view through a Searlean lens, the notion of natural convention allows us to give (...) a nuanced answer to the question: Are indirect requests conventional? In conclusion, we reflect on the consequences of our view for the understanding of the semantics/pragmatics divide. (shrink)

Commonsense ontology contains both continuants and occurrents, but are continuants necessary? I argue that they are neither occurrents nor easily replaceable by them. The worst problem for continuants is the question in virtue of what a given continuant exists at a given time. For such truthmakers we must have recourse to occurrents, those vital to the continuant at that time. Continuants are, like abstract objects, invariants under equivalences over occurrents. But they are not abstract, and their being invariants enables us (...) to infer both their lack of temporal parts and that non-invariant predications about them must be relativized to times. \\\ [Joseph Melia] In this paper I try to eliminate occurrents from our ontology. I argue against Simons' position that occurrents are needed to supply truthmakers for existential claims about continuants. Nevertheless, those who would eliminate occurrents still need some account of our willingness to assert sentences that logically entail their existence. Though it turns out to be impossible to paraphrase away our reference to occurrents, I show that the truthmakers for such sentences are facts that involve only continuants. This is enough to allow us to regard our ordinary talk about occurrents as fictional. Finally, I argue that a proper conception of the underlying temporal facts about continuants can both avoid the problematic tensed theory of time and the problem of temporary intrinsics. (shrink)

This paper discusses three potential varieties of update: updates to the common ground, structuring updates, and updates that introduce discourse referents. These different types of update are used to model different aspects of natural language phenomena. Not-at-issue information directly updates the common ground. The illocutionary mood of a sentence structures the context. Other updates introduce discourse referents of various types, including propositional discourse referents for at-issue information. Distinguishing these types of update allows a unified treatment of a broad range of (...) phenomena, including the grammatical evidentials found in Cheyenne (Algonquian) as well as English evidential parentheticals, appositives, and mood marking. An update semantics that can formalize all of these varieties of update is given, integrating the different kinds of semantic contributions into a single representation of meaning. (shrink)

Following its welcome revival in the late twentieth century, metaphysics in the analytic tradition has succumbed to decadence, with an astonishing variety of outlandish and extreme positions or “metaphysical follies” being taken seriously. This has caused an inevitable backlash among more scientifically-minded philosophers and incurred the scorn of scientists. Much of the reason for this is the blithe ignoring of empirical science by armchair metaphysicians. The roles of empirical knowledge in good, scientific metaphysics are however unclear. In virtue of its (...) maximal generality, metaphysics is remote from straightforward empirical checks. This article explores, with historical and contemporary examples, the ways in which empirical information may inform and be fed back into metaphysics, the disputed role of common sense, and the delicate balance to be maintained, within a fallibilist, scientific metaphysics, between speculative, categorial and empirical elements. (shrink)

Rafal Urbaniak. Leśniewski’s Systems of Logic and Foundations of Mathematics. Trends in Logic; 37. Springer, 2014. ISBN: 978-3-319-00481-5, 978-3-319-34416-4, 978-3-319-00482-2. Pp. xiii + 229.

Lars von Trier's movies can be seen as a series of iterations in an infinitely repeated prisoner's dilemma. After testing the logic of this game, at the core of which is the dilemma of cooperation or conflict, at the middle level at which an individual confronts a community up till Dogville, he has transposed the game to the level of social systems in Manderlay and the level of the minimal social unit, the couple in Anti-Christ. The story is the Oedipus (...) myth reversed and fit into the logic of the prisoner's dilemma which is, one could argue, the mathematical model of a Hobbesian world view. In that sense it could be called Von Trier's Anti-Oedipus. Moreover, this is the first film in which Von Trier fully embraces digital technologies. It is as if he as a filmmaker acts like the male protagonist in Anti-Christ, and assumes the role of the Anti-Christ in order to become a Savior, since digital technologies and special effects are aligned with 'evil' in this movie. (shrink)

Promoting translational research as a means to overcoming chasms in the translation of knowledge through successive fields of research from basic science to public health impacts and back is a central challenge for research managers and policymakers. Organizational leaders need to assess baseline conditions, identify areas needing improvement, and to judge the impact of specific initiatives to sustain or improve translational research practices at their institutions. Currently, there is a lack of such an assessment tool addressing the specific context of (...) translational biomedical research. To close this gap, we have developed a new survey for assessing theorganizational climate for translational research. This self-assessment tool measures employees’ perceptions of translational research climate and underlying research practices in organizational environments and builds on the established Survey of Organizational Research Climate, assessing research integrity. Using this tool, we show that scientists at a large university hospital (Charité Berlin) perceive translation as a central and important component of their work. Importantly, local resources and direct support are main contributing factors for the practical implementation of translation into their own research practice. We identify and discuss potential leverage points for an improvement of research climate to foster successful translational research. (shrink)

Within French epistemology the question is central whether the present can be a reference point for the history of science or whether scientific practices should be understood within their own historical context. Both positions are linked with problems: either it results in a ‘whig history’ written from the perspective of the victors or it leads to the accusation of relativism and to resistance from the scientists themselves. Isabelle Stengers claims that this resistance by scientists must be considered as an essential (...) element in the historiography of the sciences. She is part of a more recent generation of French philosophers of science, who build on the work of the earlier generation but with significant differences. Stengers interprets the scientist’s work as ‘in the service of history’: everyone must be forced to recognize their work not as the product of personal construction but as a necessary discovery in the history of science. The work of the historian of science is in conflict with the aims of the scientists themselves, who want to be seen as the norm of the present by which one should read the history of science. This service of history is not some external ideological factor, but an internal part of the scientific practice itself. The construction of the difference between the discovery of a pre-given fact and the construction of a fiction is for Stengers the core of the scientific practices. This use of history will be illustrated by the case of synthetic biology, as described by Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent. Synthetic biologists are invoking specific past or future scenario’s, such as that of synthetic chemistry or computer engineering, to legitimatize their current research projects and ambitions. From this perspective, the problematic tension between the past and the present is so hard to cope with because it is not merely a struggle among historians and philosophers of science, but also among the scientists themselves. (shrink)

Alexius Meinong is one of the foremost, most independent-minded, most distinctive, most misunderstood and most unjustly maligned of all philosophers. He was pilloried by his own teacher Brentano and his one-time admirer Bertrand Russell as what Gilbert Ryle called “perhaps the supreme entity-multiplier in the history of philosophy.” It is often enough to employ the adjective ‘Meinongian’ to cast a philosopher’s views into the outer darkness. But as supreme commentator J. N. Findlay observes, Meinong was a painstakingly careful and methodical (...) thinker, who inched his way forward to his radical ontological views. Meinong maintained a running interest in ethics and value theory, and the subjective experiences of feeling and desire that correlate to these spheres, from his 1894 Psychological-ethical investigations in value theory to his late works Emotional presentation and the posthumous On the foundation of general value theory. In the process he graduated from value subjectivism to value objectivism. In this paper we will survey Meinong’s mature theory of intentionality and its objects, with particular attention to the otherwise neglected dignitatives and desideratives. (shrink)

The emerging field of synthetic biology aims to design biological entities by engineering methods. Nature is explicitly no longer something ‘out there’, but instead as whatever is actively made in scientific laboratories. Although apparently unrelated to the Anthropocene, interesting discussions arise once confronted with each other. On the one hand, authors such as Bruno Latour have forced us to reflect on how we are not the masters of nature as was claimed before. We can even speak of ‘the end of (...) nature’. On the other hand, synthetic biology claims that we can now be the masters of nature we have never been before. Nature exists indeed, namely the nature that we have created in the laboratory. How to relate these two perspectives? Their simultaneous emergence appears paradoxical, but must not too hastily result in the conclusion that synthetic biology is merely the latest shape of our childish, modern dreams. Rather synthetic biology can be a critical interrogator of the ‘end of nature’. Can we really endorse that it is impossible to “return to a pre-modern notion of nature” and this “take-offpoint is irretrievably lost”? Or must we make the more modest claim, that modern projects often fail, but that success is not excluded? I argue that Latour mix up two possible conclusions: starting from the correct conclusion that we are uncertain that we are certain they jump to stating that we are certain that we are uncertain, which does not follow. We can never be certain again that we can reduce things to passive nature, although it might work for some cases, perhaps even synthetic biology. (shrink)

Traditionally, ‘education through research’ is understood to be a main characteristic of education at the university. In this article we will explore how ‘education through research’ is argued to be of major importance for the European knowledge society, how there is still a reference to the idea of Bildung or liberal education, and what research is presumed to be like if it is to have this edifying potential. It will be argued that the edifying potential of research is related to (...) a normative component in the research activity and that this normative orientation and its presuppositions are problematic today. This lays the way for the exploration of alternative approaches to the edifying potential of research (with reference especially to Jürgen Mittelstrass and Jacques Derrida) and for the discussion of what could be at stake for ‘education through research’. (shrink)