The central unifying element in the philosophy of Peter Browne is his theory of analogy. Although Browne's theory was originally developed to deal with some problems about religious language, Browne regards analogy as a general purpose cognitive mechanism whereby we substitute an idea we have to stand for an object of which we, strictly speaking, have no idea. According to Browne, all of our ideas are ideas of sense, and ideas of sense are ideas of material things. Hence we (...) can conceive of spiritual things – including even our own spirit – only by analogy. One interesting application Browne makes of his theory is an account of how concepts such as knowledge can be correctly applied to beings that have no intrinsic properties in common, such as non-human animals, humans, angels, and God. I argue that this is best understood as what, in the contemporary literature, is known as a ‘multiple realizability’ problem and that Browne's solution to this problem has important similarities to functionalist theories in recent philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Contemporary discussions of the epistemology of testimony are often framed in terms of the disagreement on this topic between Hume and Reid. However, it is widely assumed that, prior to Hume, philosophers in the grip of Enlightenment individualism neglected philosophical questions about testimony, simply treating testimony as ordinary empirical evidence. In fact, although the evidential model of testimony was popular in early modern philosophy, it was also the subject of vigorous debate. This chapter examines Locke's defence of the evidential model (...) of testimony along with the opposing views of three early critics of Locke: G. W. Leibniz, Mary Astell, and Peter Browne. (shrink)

This paper will proceed from the assumption of scholars like Anne Fernihough, Peter Fjagsund, Michael Black, and Michael Bell that there are sufficient connecting links between the literary oeuvre of D.H. Lawrence and the philosophizing of Martin Heidegger that they warrant consideration in each other's company. The paper will attempt to provide more evidence for what these scholars have been contending. It seeks to make the case that although D.H. Lawrence and Martin Heidegger start from very different beginning points, (...) the one literary, the other epistemological (so to speak), they arrive at surprisingly similar conclusions about the deficiencies in the specifically modern way of viewing human existence and the world. The paper isolates certain of Lawrence and Heidegger's key passages relevant to the themes of science, humanism, art and death and reveals them as looking at these fundamental issues from a remarkably similar standpoint. These two metaphysicians were groping for the right path forward from the intellectual and social crises of the twentieth century and the evidence suggests they saw it as lying in the same direction. (shrink)

I was delighted to be asked to comment on Peter Zachar’s paper, partly because he presents an elegant proposal for how personality disorders (PD) might be considered to fit into a broadly medical conception of disorder, but also because the overlap between moral and clinical elements of disorder, and more broadly moral and clinical psychiatric kinds, seems to me to be a question central to the theory and practice of psychiatry. The moral context of diagnosis and treatment is a (...) question not just in the PD field (Pearce and Pickard 2009, 2010). The fact that over half of prisoners in the United Kingdom have a PD and a similar number can be diagnosed with a neurotic disorder (Singleton, Meltzer, and Gatward 1998) .. (shrink)

This volume presents a selection of new articles examining the state of Irish philosophy during the lifetime of Ireland's most famous philosopher, Bishop George Berkeley (1685-1753). The thinkers examined include Berkeley, Robert Boyle, William King, William Molyneux, Robert Molesworth, Peter Browne, Jonathan Swift, John Toland, Thomas Prior, Samuel Madden, Arthur Dobbs, Francis Hutcheson, Mary Barber, Constantia Grierson, Laetitia Pilkington, Elizabeth Sican, and John Austin. This interdisciplinary collection includes attention both to local Irish concerns and to Ireland's relation to the (...) broader European context, and discusses philosophical reflections on topics as diverse as religion, economics, laughter, and motherhood. (shrink)

This short book is a history of what might be called the Chicago school of pragmatist evolutionary ethics. It places John Dewey and Jane Addams in their late-nineteenth-century intellectual context, emphasizing in particular how they drew on the work of Herbert Spencer, Thomas Henry Huxley, and Peter Kropotkin. Eddy suggests in her introduction that because today’s “social climate” is similar in many respects to that of the United States circa 1900, pragmatism may offer “significant insights for our situation now” (...) (p. xi). Her overall thesis is that although the ethical approach of Dewey and Addams was sometimes marred by a commitment to “teleological progress” (p. 38), at its best it defended a “melioristic hope” (p. 119): we try to make the world better, but there are no guarantees. Although the book provides some helpful context for the ethical work of the Chicago pragmatists, Eddy does not convincingly show that Addams and Dewey ever saw progress as “teleological,” in the sense of inevitable movement toward a specific end. (shrink)

Book reviewed:Peter Carruthers, Phenomenal Consciousness: A Naturalistic Theory.

Theories in the usual sense, as characterized by a language and a set of theorems in that language ("statement view"), are related to theories in the structuralist sense, in turn characterized by a set of potential models and a subset thereof as models ("non-statement view", J. Sneed, W. Stegmüller). It is shown that reductions of theories in the structuralist sense (that is, functions on structures) give rise to so-called "representations" of theories in the statement sense and vice versa, where representations (...) are understood as functions that map sentences of one theory into another theory. It is argued that commensurability between theories should be based on functions on open formulas and open terms so that reducibility does not necessarily imply commensurability. This is in accordance with a central claim by Stegmüller on the compatibility of reducibility and incommensurability that has recently been challenged by D. Pearce. (shrink)

Do we have introspective access to our own thoughts? Peter Carruthers challenges the consensus that we do: he argues that access to our own thoughts is always interpretive, grounded in perceptual awareness and sensory imagery. He proposes a bold new theory of self-knowledge, with radical implications for understanding of consciousness and agency.

If we agree with the notion of a global community, then we must extend our concepts of justice, fairness, and equity beyond national borders by supporting measures to decrease global warming and to increase foreign aid, argues Peter Singer.

I respond to the commentaries on 'Grace de Laguna's Analytic and Speculative Philosophy' offered by Peter Olen [2023], Trevor Pearce, Anthony Fisher, Marguerite La Caze and Frederique Janssen-Lauret. In doing so, I bring out some of the value of de Laguna’s perspectivism and of her treatment of modality. I also further clarify how she departs from pragmatism and from analytic philosophy, and how she relates to continental philosophy.

Peter Anstey presents a thorough and innovative study of John Locke's views on the method and content of natural philosophy. Focusing on Locke's Essay concerning Human Understanding, but also drawing extensively from his other writings and manuscript remains, Anstey argues that Locke was an advocate of the Experimental Philosophy: the new approach to natural philosophy championed by Robert Boyle and the early Royal Society who were opposed to speculative philosophy. On the question of method, Anstey shows how Locke's pessimism (...) about the prospects for a demonstrative science of nature led him, in the Essay, to promote Francis Bacon's method of natural history, and to downplay the value of hypotheses and analogical reasoning in science. But, according to Anstey, Locke never abandoned the ideal of a demonstrative natural philosophy, for he believed that if we could discover the primary qualities of the tiny corpuscles that constitute material bodies, we could then establish a kind of corpuscular metric that would allow us a genuine science of nature. It was only after the publication of the Essay, however, that Locke came to realize that Newton's Principia provided a model for the role of demonstrative reasoning in science based on principles established upon observation, and this led him to make significant revisions to his views in the 1690s. On the content of Locke's natural philosophy, it is argued that even though Locke adhered to the Experimental Philosophy, he was not averse to speculation about the corpuscular nature of matter. Anstey takes us into new terrain and new interpretations of Locke's thought in his explorations of his mercurialist transmutational chymistry, his theory of generation by seminal principles, and his conventionalism about species. (shrink)

In this remarkably clear and original study of the Tractatus Peter Carruthers has two principal aims. He seeks to make sense of Wittgenstein's metaphysical doctrines, showing how powerful arguments may be deployed in their support. He also aims to locate the crux of the conflict between Wittgenstein's early and late philosophies. This is shown to arise from his earlier commitment to the objectivity of logic and logical relations, which is the true target of attack of his later discussion of (...) rule-following. Within this general framework Dr Carruthers explores a number of themes, including the early Wittgenstein's doctrine of the priority of logic over metaphysics, the nature and purpose of his programme of analysis for ordinary language and the various possible arguments supporting the existence of Simples. He offers many original interpretations and defends them with considerable attention to textual detail, yet the book's clarity and directness will make it accessible to anyone acquainted with the Tractatus. It will be required reading for all serious students of Wittgenstein's philosophy. (shrink)

Peter Frankental, Head of Business Networks, Amnesty International, explores the role of The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a corporate code of conduct. Frankental observes a changing business context, which overall increases the risk to business of dealing with other parties, including countries, subcontractors, joint venture partners and their stockholders. The paper proceeds to examine the barriers to integration of human rights, and identifies dilemmas that firms need to resolve. While in the author’s view ethical behaviour does (...) not confer competitive advantages in the short run, companies that base their codes of conduct on the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights are likely to find themselves in the stronger position to protect their reputation, brands and assets in the longer term. (shrink)

David Chalmers argues that virtual objects exist in the form of data structures that have causal powers. I argue that there is a large class of virtual objects that are social objects and that do not depend upon data structures for their existence. I also argue that data structures are themselves fundamentally social objects. Thus, virtual objects are fundamentally social objects.

Propositional quantifiers are added to a propositional modal language with two modal operators. The resulting language is interpreted over so-called products of Kripke frames whose accessibility relations are equivalence relations, letting propositional quantifiers range over the powerset of the set of worlds of the frame. It is first shown that full second-order logic can be recursively embedded in the resulting logic, which entails that the two logics are recursively isomorphic. The embedding is then extended to all sublogics containing the logic (...) of so-called fusions of frames with equivalence relations. This generalizes a result due to Antonelli and Thomason, who construct such an embedding for the logic of such fusions. (shrink)

Scientist, mathematician, thinker, the father of pragmatism, the inspiration for William James and John Dewey, Charles Peirce has remained until recently a philosopher's philosopher. Peirce trod a fine line between the extremes of nominalism and realism, tough-minded pragmatism and metaphysical speculation. As Peter Skagestad makes clear, Peirce's system of thought was fragmented, incomplete, and sometimes inconsistent. But one overriding concern gives unity to the whole: the road of inquiry must never be blocked.

RÉSUMÉLes œuvres musicales sont à la fois multiples et audibles. Dans le domaine de l'ontologie musicale, deux des principaux modèles conçus pour expliquer ces caractéristiques des œuvres musicales sont le modèle type/instanciation et le modèle étape/continuité. Julian Dodd a soutenu que le modèle type/instanciation a un avantage sur le modèle étape/continuité, car il peut offrir une explication directe de l'audibilité des œuvres musicales en termes de catégorie ontologique. Je défends le modèle étape/continuité contre l'argument de Dodd en invoquant une relation (...) de continuité qui unifie l’œuvre. (shrink)

This article is concerned with the principle of compositionality, i.e. the principle that the meaning of a complex expression is a function of the meanings of its parts and its mode of composition. After a brief historical background, a formal algebraic framework for syntax and semantics is presented. In this framework, both syntactic operations and semantic functions are partial. Using 20 the framework, the basic idea of compositionality is given a precise statement, and several variants, both weaker and stronger, as (...) well as related properties, are distinguished. Several arguments for compositionality are discussed, and the standard arguments are found inconclusive. Also, several arguments against compositionality, and for the claim that it is a trivial property, are discussed, 25 and are found to be flawed. Finally, a number of real or apparent problems for compositionality are considered, and some solutions are proposed. (shrink)

Discovering a deep unity in Nietzsche's work by exploring the structure and argumentative movement of a wide range of his books, Berkowitz shows that Nietzsche is a moral and political philosopher in the Socratic sense whose governing question is, "What is the best life?".

We present Birch and colleagues with a dilemma. On one interpretation, they aim to chart the distribution of a sort of minimal perceptual awareness across the animal kingdom, where that awareness can be fully characterized in third-person psychological terms. On this interpretation, the project is worthy but dull, since it doesn’t touch the question that has excited most people: whether other animals are phenomenally conscious. On an alternative interpretation, in contrast, they hope to resolve this latter question, arguing that phenomenal (...) consciousness is extremely widespread. But if this is their intention, then their argument begs the question. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 10.2 (2003) 161-167 [Access article in PDF] Social, Cognitive, and Neural Constraints on Subjectivity and Agency:Implications for Dissociative Identity Disorder Peter Q. Deeley In this commentary, I consider Matthew's argument after making some general observations about dissociative identity disorder (DID). In contrast to Matthew's statement that "cases of DID, although not science fiction, are extraordinary" (p. 148), I believe that there are natural analogs (...) of the disorder that, when considered, make it seem less puzzling and exotic. After discussing these examples, I examine the relations between social, cognitive, and neural processes supporting subjectivity and agency, to identify sources of personal identity in cases of DID that can be used as a basis for assessing Matthew's points against Behnke and Sinnott-Armstrong. I am not proposing a comprehensive theory, but rather identifying what I believe are components of such a theory. I then outline an approach to determining criminal responsibility in DID, drawing on analogies with other psychiatric disorders. Dissociative Identity Disorder DID is a disorder described in DSM-IV, which "is characterised by the presence of two or more distinct identities or personality states that recurrently take control of the individual's behaviour accompanied by an inability to recall important personal information that is too extensive to be explained by ordinary forgetfulness" (American Psychiatric Association, p. 519). Recognizing Personal Identity How is personal identity recognized in normal cognition? If we take personhood to involve recognition of continuity of social, psychological, and physical identity for a given individual, then such judgments are routinely made rapidly and automatically as an aspect of what has come to be termed social cognition (Adolphs 2003). There is likely to be considerable redundancy in [End Page 161] the types of information used to make judgments about whether a person is the same as one who was previously encountered, or perhaps heard about—for example, facial features, movement patterns, speech prosody, dress, speech content, gender, ethnicity, social role, among other features, all provide information about individual identity, and hence personhood. When uncertainty exists, it is likely to reflect a loss or alteration of cues that would ordinarily be used in a rapid, automatic, unexamined way (Adolphs 2003). In such extreme cases (for example, severe mental illness or disfigurement), the problem of identification becomes the subject of explicit reasoning (and hence of potential disagreement, because we then engage in post hoc rationalizations to establish criteria for determining personhood, whereas normally we rely on essentially automatic, implicit abilities that work in most circumstances, some of which make little use of linguistic representations and formal reasoning—for example, individual facial identity recognition, which may occur as quickly as 170 ms after stimulus onset [Adolphs 2003]). Nevertheless, examining our judgments and intuitions in cases that force us to explicitly consider whether personal identity is preserved may provide analogies and clues for how we should proceed with DID. Let us consider, then, some natural analogs of DID. Natural Analogs of DID Method Acting I suggest that method acting is an analog of DID (Manderino 1985). Method acting refers to an approach to acting training and performance in which emphasis is placed on intensely imagining and identifying with the mental life of the character being portrayed. Training courses and manuals list many techniques and practices that can be used to facilitate absorption in a role, drawing on different kinds of memory—for example, experiential memories, memories of others, general knowledge (semantic memory), and memories of sensations and feelings, to creative a vivid sense of the subjective experience and actions of the character. Manderino, a method acting teacher, comments: "it is important to investigate the way in which your own mental makeup can improperly influence a character. Insecurities, self-consciousness, shyness or self-doubts can maintain a strong hold, and permitting any of these feelings to enter a performance is to remain the actor and not enter into the mental life of the character. For some, acting allows personal problems to be left behind, and they are thankful for the complete escape that... (shrink)

Peter Homans offers a new understanding of the origins of psychoanalysis and relates the psychoanalytic project as a whole to the sweep of Western culture, past and present. He argues that Freud's fundamental goal was the interpretation of culture and that, therefore, psychoanalysis is fundamentally a humanistic social science. To establish this claim, Homans looks back at Freud's self-analysis in light of the crucial years from 1906 to 1914 when the psychoanalytic movement was formed and shows how these experiences (...) culminated in Freud's cultural texts. By exploring the "culture of psychoanalysis," Homans seeks a better understanding of what a "psychoanalysis of culture" might be. Psychoanalysis, Homans shows, originated as a creative response to the withering away of traditional communities and their symbols in the aftermath of the industrial revolution. The loss of these attachments played a crucial role in the lives of the founders of psychoanalysis, especially Sigmund Freud but also Karl Abraham, Carl Jung, Otto Rank, and Ernest Jones. The personal, political, and religious losses that these figures experienced, the introspection that followed, and the psychological discovery that resulted are what Homans calls "the ability to mourn." Homans expands this historical analysis to construct a general model of psychological discovery: the loss of shared ideals and symbols can produce a deeper sense of self (psychological structure-building, or individuation) and can then lead to the creation of new forms of meaning and self-understanding. He shows how Freud, Jung, and other psychoanalysts began to extend their introspection outward, reinterpreting the meanings of Western art, history, and religion. In conclusion, Homans evaluates Freud's theory of culture and discusses the role that psychoanalysis might play in social and cultural criticism. Throughout the book, Homans makes use of the many histories, biographies, and psychobiographies that have been written about the origins of psychoanalysis, drawing them into a comprehensive sociocultural model. Rich in insights and highly original in approach, this work will interest psychoanalysts and students of Freud, sociologists concerned with modernity and psychoanalysis, and cultural critics in the fields of religion, anthropology, political science, and social history. (shrink)

Human Quality Treatment (HQT) is a theoretical approach expressing different ways of dealing with employees within an organization and is embedded in humanistic management tenants of dignity, care, and personal development, seeking to produce morally excellent employees. We build on the theoretical exposition and present a measure of HQT-Scale across several studies including cross-culturally to enhance confidence in our results. Our first study generates the 25 items for the HQT-Scale and provides initial support for the items. We then followed up (...) with a large study of managers (n = 363) from Nigeria in study 2, which confirms the theoretical properties of the five dimensions of HQT and highlights a two-factor construct: HQT Ethically Unacceptable and HQT Ethically Acceptable using a 20-item HQT-Scale. Study 3 with a large sample of New Zealand employees (n = 452) again confirms the nature of the construct and provides construct validity tests. Finally, using time-lagged data, study 4 (n = 308) focuses on New Zealand employees and job attitudes and behaviors, and a well-being outcome. That study not only confirms the theoretically implied effects but also shows the HQT Ethically Acceptable factor mediates the detrimental effects of HQT Ethically Unacceptable. Overall, our four studies provide strong support for the HQT-Scale and highlight important understandings of HQT and humanistic management in the workplace. (shrink)

BackgroundPatient-centred care and patient autonomy is one of the key factors to better quality of service provision, hence patient outcomes. It enables the development of patients’ trusts which is an important element to a better doctor-patient relationship. Given the increasing number of patient disputes and conflicts between patients and doctors in Chinese public hospital, it is timely to ensure patient-centred care is fully and successfully implemented. However, limited studies have examined the views and practice in different aspects of patient-centred care (...) among doctors in the Chinese public hospitals.MethodsA quantitative approach was adopted by distributing paper-based questionnaires to doctors and patients in two hospitals (Level III and Level II) in Jinan, Shandong province, China.ResultsIn total, 614 doctors from the surgical and internal medicine units of the two hospitals participated in the survey yielding 90% response rates. The study confirmed the inconsistent views among doctors in terms of their perception and practice in various aspects patient-centred care and patient autonomy regardless of the hospital where they work (category II or category III), their unit speciality (surgical or non-surgical), their gender or seniority. The high proportion of doctors (more than 20%) who did not perceive the importance of patient consultation prior to determining diagnostic and treatment procedure is alarming. This in in part due to the belief held by more than half of the doctors that patients were unable to make rational decisions and their involvement in treatment planning process did not necessarily lead to better treatment outcomes.ConclusionThe study calls for the development of system level policy and organisation wide strategies in encouraging and enabling the practice of patient-centred care and patient autonomy with the purposes of improving the quality of the service provided to patients by Chinese hospitals. (shrink)

In the first two volumes of On What Matters Derek Parfit argues that there are objective moral truths, and other normative truths about what we have reasons to believe, and to want, and to do. In defending his view, Parfit argues that if there are no objective normative truths, nihilism follows, and nothing matters. He criticizes many leading contemporary philosophers working on ethics, including Simon Blackburn, Stephen Darwall, Allen Gibbard, Frank Jackson, Peter Railton, Mark Schroeder, Michael Smith, and Sharon (...) Street. Does Anything Really Matter? gives these philosophers an opportunity to respond to Parfit, and includes essays by Richard Chappell, Andrew Huddleston, Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer, Bruce Russell, and Larry Temkin. A third volume of On What Matters, in which Parfit engages with his critics and breaks new ground in finding significant agreement between his own views and theirs, is appearing as a separate companion volume. (shrink)

In this compelling and timely treatise, cultural theorist and educator Peter Trifonas puts forth the first book-length study of Jacques Derrida's 'educational texts:' that is, those writings most explicitly concerned with the ethics and politics of the historico-philosophical structures constituting the scene of teaching. The text examines how deconstruction allows us to re-think the socio-historical and ethico-philosophical aspects of pedagogical practices and policies, including pedagogical theories that have had direct bearing on the ethical and cultural ideals forming the reason (...) of Western educational systems and the exclusion of its 'Others.'. (shrink)

Despite considerable recent attention, important features of Schelling’s famous work, the 1809 treatise On the Essence of Human Freedom, remain under-explored. One of these is the methodological dualism which Schelling advocates at the very start of the text. Schelling aims to weld together into a coherent position a first-person phenomenology of freedom and an explanation achieved by locating freedom within a conceptual system articulating the basic structure of the world. Most interpretations of the Freiheitsschrift, however, concentrate on only one of (...) these approaches, thus foreshortening their understanding of Schelling’s enterprise. The article explores this tendency towards one-sidedness by considering two sophisticated recent interpretations of the work, taking opposite tacks. One, by Markus Gabriel, focuses on the distinctive, self-reflexive metaphysics which Schelling proposes, while the other, by Sebastian Gardner, claims that Schelling’s ontology is extrapolated entirely from his account of our moral consciousness, a procedure pioneered by Kant. The article argues that neither of these interpretations can do full justice to Schelling’s project. Furthermore, although the Freiheitsschrift is not entirely successful, and hence points towards later developments in Schelling’s thinking, its treatment of freedom is superior to the ‘soft naturalism’ pioneered by Peter Strawson, and currently influential across various philosophical traditions. (shrink)

In 1936, G. Birkhoff and J. v. Neumann published an article with the title The logic of quantum mechanics'. In this paper, the authors demonstrated that in quantum mechanics the most simple observables which correspond to yes-no propositions about a quantum physical system constitute an algebraic structure, the most important proper ties of which are given by an orthocomplemented and quasimodular lattice Lq. Furthermore, this lattice of quantum mechanical proposi tions has, from a formal point of view, many similarities with (...) a Boolean lattice L8 which is known to be the lattice of classical propositional logic. Therefore, one could conjecture that due to the algebraic structure of quantum mechanical observables a logical calculus Q of quantum mechanical propositions is established, which is slightly different from the calculus L of classical propositional logic but which is applicable to all quantum mechanical propositions. This calculus has sometimes been called 'quan tum logic'. However, the statement that propositions about quantum physical systems are governed by the laws of quantum logic, which differ from ordinary classical logic and which are based on the empirically well-established quantum theory, is exposed to two serious objec tions: Logic is a theory which deals with those relationships between various propositions that are valid independent of the content of the respective propositions. Thus, the validity of logical relationships is not restricted to a special type of proposition, e. g. to propositions about classical physical systems. (shrink)

Among the objections to the implementation of what I will call "genome editing in human reproduction" is that it does not address any unmet medical need, and therefore fails to meet an important criterion for introducing an unproven procedure with potentially adverse consequences. To be clear: what I mean by GEHR is the use of any one of a number of related biological techniques, such as the CRISPR-Cas9 system, deliberately to modify a functional sequence of DNA in a cell of (...) a human embryo, so that the modified sequence is replicated in the cells of a resulting child and may, without further intervention, be passed on to that child's biological descendants. It is... (shrink)

By reference to Maxwell's kinetic theory, one feature of hypothetico-deductivism is defended. A scientist need make no inference to a hypothesis when he first proposes it. He may have no reason at all for thinking it is true. Yet it may be worth considering. In developing his kinetic theory there were central assumptions Maxwell made (for example, that molecules are spherical, that they exert contact forces, and that their motion is linear) that he had no reason to believe true. In (...) this paper I develop a position that explains why they were worth considering, and that rejects the retroductive position that a hypothesis is worth considering when, if true, it would explain the observed data. (shrink)

The world as we perceive it is structured into objects, actions and places that form parts of events. In this article, my aim is to explain why these categories are cognitively primary. From an empiricist and evolutionary standpoint, it is argued that the reduction of the complexity of sensory signals is based on the brain's capacity to identify various types of invariances that are evolutionarily relevant for the activities of the organism. The first aim of the article is to explain (...) why places, object and actions are primary cognitive categories in our constructions of the external world. It is shown that the invariances that determine these categories have their separate characteristics and that they are, by and large, independent of each other. This separation is supported by what is known about the neural mechanisms. The second aim is to show that the category of events can be analyzed as being constituted of the primary categories. The category of numbers is briefly discussed. Some implications for computational models of the categories are also presented. (shrink)

This article explores a framework for analyses of what has variously been termed the ‘implied’, ‘imagined’, ‘virtual’ or ‘putative’ reader/addressee – the effect by which ostensibly ‘monologic’ texts, such as news media commentary, political pronouncements and academic essays project particular attitudes, beliefs and expectations on to the reader/addressee. The framework is demonstrated in being applied to an examination of the construal of putative addressee positioning in a selection of mass media texts concerned with the Israeli military’s invasion of Gaza in (...) 2014. The framework is novel in the way in which it mobilises the account of the options for dialogistic positioning offered by the appraisal-framework literature, combined with some insights from Toulmin’s notion of the argumentative ‘warrant’. Conclusions are offered as to how such analyses of the readers being ‘written into the text’ can extend insights into the rhetorical workings of such texts and their ideological functionality in naturalising particular value positions. (shrink)

[1] In twelve quite demanding chapters, outstanding scholars provide an overall view of the key issues of Scotus’s philosophical thought. To this a very concise introduction is added, concerning the life and works of John Duns (very good, especially the survey of works and the information on critical editions etc.). Throughout the book, I find the information clear and the difficult topics well explained. Moreover, the volume gives a quick entrance to the vast literature. Among the topics discussed are: ‘Metaphysics’ (...) (Peter King), ‘Universals and Individuation’ (Timothy Noone), ‘Modal Theory’ (Calvin Normore), ‘Natural Theology’ (James Ross & Todd Bates), ‘Philosophy of Mind’ (Richard Cross), ‘Cognition’ (Robert Pasnau), ‘Moral Dispositions’ (Bonnie Kent). What strikes the eye is the absence of important theological subjects: Trinity, Christology, sin and grace, to name a few. Since the cover text promises that ‘the essays in this volume systematically survey the full range of Scotus’ thought’, this omission is remarkable. It stems, I guess, from the strict philosophical scope of the series of the Cambridge Companions, but such a limitation should have been recognised explicitly: this companion provides, in fact, an introduction to John Duns’s philosophy—i.e., philosophy in our modern sense. Of course, this separation of philosophical from theological thought is not from Scotus. Most of his innovative ‘philosophical’ ideas are developed in a profoundly theological context! (shrink)

For the modern-day jihadist, the digital self-portrait or, more specifically, battlefield selfie is a popular tool for identity building. Similarly to the selfies taken by non-violent practitioners of self-capture culture, the jihadist selfie represents an alternative to the Cartesian formulation of a unitary and indivisible self. Rather, it is a product of social relations and performative actions, constituted in dialogue with others through very specific socio-cultural frameworks and expectations. However, unlike its non-violent Doppelganger, the expectations of this dialogue are centred (...) around a larger political agenda which actively seeks to reformat collective memories of imperial Islamic conquests and co-opt religion as a way to impose a moral order on its violence. Importantly, the battlefield selfie allows the jihadist easily to traverse the boundaries between two seemingly opposing belief systems. Although there exists a wealth of scholarship of self-capture culture, image sharing sites and micro-celebritism, their pervasive influence and practice on battlefield is understudied. This article draws from the personal histories of key Islamic extremists who were both lionized and demonized as a result of their battlefield micro-influencer practices. Today, however, the same individuals can achieve internet fame by participating in self-capture culture – posting selfies, videos or blogging. In other words, never before has a soldier’s public communication been so personal yet collective. (shrink)

First published in 1998, this volume argues that two conditions need to be met for any agreement between people with conflicting desires to count as an unforced one, namely, that the parties argue as if they had equal power and that their antipathy to being coerced exceeds their desire to coerce others. These conditions entail objective moral principles and a theory of justice, modifying and developing Rawls' contractarian theory, but without the veil of ignorance. They support Rawls on basic civil (...) liberties and constitutional liberal democratic government, including religious tolerance, anti-paternalism, anti-racism and anti-sexism, but dispute his Difference Principle, his circumstances of justice, Laws of Peoples, reflective equilibrium, and freedom of conscience as a basic liberty. The book also gives a contractarian account of epistemology, metaethics, education, the rationality of being moral, the rights of animals and other non-persons, and the rights of indigenous peoples. Writers such as Brian Barry, R.S. Peters, Isaiah Berlin, Vinit Haksar, Jurgen Habermas, R.M. Hare, Philip Pettit, Derek Parfit, Michael Smith, Peter Geach, Philippa Foot, Bronwyn Davies, Quentin Skinner and Will Kymlicka are also discussed. (shrink)