The development of postgraduate studies and the establishment of the Ph.D. in Britain are discussed. Events leading to the introduction of the Ph.D. degree between 1917 and 1920 are traced, and Germany and America's influence on the acceptance of postgraduate education and research in Britain is addressed. An analysis of the highly developed college system peculiar to the ancient English universities is included to identify factors that delayed the introduction of the Ph.D. in Britain. Individual provincial universities are chronicled, together (...) with Cambridge, London, Scotland, Wales, and Oxford (the first to institute the Ph.D.). In analyzing the political forces at work in the inception of the research degree, attention is directed to the vital role played by the Universities Bureau of the British Empire (predecessor of the Association of Commonwealth Universities) and the pressures exerted by government to persuade the universities to cooperate with each other in providing postgradute courses and degrees. It is concluded that the arrival of the Ph.D. at British universities symbolized the modern era of organized training in research that was conceived and nurtured in Germany and imported and commercialized by America. (SW). (shrink)

Among the works on ethics in the Aristotelian corpus, there is no serious dispute among scholars that the "Eudemian Ethics "is authentic. The "Eudemian Ethics "is" "increasingly read and used by scholars as a useful support and confirmation and sometimes contrast to the "Nicomachean Ethics." Yet, it remains a largely neglected work in the study of Aristotle's ethics, both among scholars and moral philosophers. Peter L. P. Simpson provides an analytical outline of the entire work together with summaries of (...) each individual section, making the overall structure and detailed argument clear. His translation and explanatory notes include the common books that the "Eudemian" "Ethics" shares with the "Nicomachean." This translation contains renderings of words and phrases, and proposals for emending the text that differ from what other translators and scholars have adopted. This translation is literal, without expansion or paraphrase, and yet also readable. A readable but literal translation is necessary because in the "Eudemian Ethics," more than usual in Aristotle's writings, the logic of the argumentation can turn on the peculiar wording or order. Simpson explains the argumentation where necessary in notes and separate explanatory comments. This book is a fresh, twenty-first-century rendition of the work of one of the most eminent philosophers of all time. (shrink)

In this empirical paper, we present a model of the dynamic legitimizing processes involved in the receiving and giving of compassion. We focus on the idea of being ‘worthy of compassion’ and show how ideas on giving and receiving compassion are highly contestable. Recognition of a worthy recipient or giver of compassion constitutes a socially recognized claim to privilege, which has ethical managerial and organizational implications. We offer a model that assists managers in fostering ethical strength in their performance by (...) encouraging reflection on the ethical complexity involved in compassion relations. The model emphasizes the dynamics of both the givers and receivers of compassion and so can also be used by organizations to both assess how others may view the legitimacy of their compassion relations and also to develop a positive organizational ethic of compassionate conduct. (shrink)

This conceptual paper argues for the reconfiguring of Intercultural Communication Education (ICE) through a dialogical engagement with Istina (Truth) and Pravda (Truth in Justice). The paper argues that the field of ICE is predominantly characterised by normative conceptualisations of truth (e.g., characterised by fixed or ‘objective’ interpretations of language and culture) or hyper-relativist post-truth conceptualisations (e.g., non-essentialist approaches to ICE). This conceptual paper, therefore, addresses the following research question: To what extent can a dialogical approach to truth address and redress (...) epistemic power imbalances in ICE? Through engaging with Russian language and the dialogical approach of Mikhail Bakhtin a non-normative approach for ICE is proposed. The paper conceptually argues in moving beyond the binary of normative and post-truth interpretations in ICE through dialogism. The paper serves at an important juncture amidst calls that the field of ICE is characterised by epistemic violence and epistemic power imbalances. The proposed dialogical approach to truth in ICE aims to redress epistemic imbalances in arguing for a form of non-normative dialogical ethics. (shrink)

Establishing trust among individual agents has defined a central issue of practical reasoning since the dawning of liberal individualism. Hobbes was convinced that foolish self-interest always threatens to defeat uncompelled cooperation when one can gain by abandoning a joint effort. Against this philosophical background, scientific studies of human beings display a surprisingly cooperative species. It would seem to follow that biologically inherited characteristics impair our reason. The response proposed here distinguishes rationality and reasonableness as two forms of good reasoning. One (...) is consistent with the model of strategic rationality, the other with a model of emotional relationship. From the Hobbesian perspective trusting agents are not rational if their makeup discourages advantageous defection even when one knows it will not be detected or punished. The point is indecisive because reasonable trust insulates cooperative action from the factors that have appeared to make it chancy or unstable without some enforcing power. A critical theme is that trust does not simply rest upon a biological disposition to conform to norms. That would explain but not justify aversion to defection. In fact, trust can survive reasoned challenges to norm-conforming dispositions, displaying the responsible social animal living along with the rational individual. (shrink)

A well known fact is that every Lebesgue measurable set is regular, i.e., it includes an F$_{\sigma}$ set of the same measure. We analyze this fact from a metamathematical or foundational standpoint. We study a family of Muchnik degrees corresponding to measure-theoretic regularity at all levels of the effective Borel hierarchy. We prove some new results concerning Nies's notion of LR-reducibility. We build some $\omega$-models of RCA$_0$which are relevant for the reverse mathematics of measure-theoretic regularity.

This chapter sketches the outlines of what a reasonable form of nativism might look like. The neuroconstructivists' challenge indicates that some misunderstanding continues to exist among certain self-titled nonnativists over what it is that practicing nativists actually claim, together with a mistaken belief that current neurodevelopmental data is not or cannot be compatible with the nativist program. Both these issues are addressed by first providing further explication of the claims of practicing nativists, and then showing how these claims provide the (...) basis for a reasonable nativism that is fully cognizant of and consistent with empirical data from all the developmental sciences, neuroconstructivism included. (shrink)

Terminally ill in 1776, Hume was relieved from anxieties over Smith's masterwork when it finally reached him on 1 April, and he gave it unstinted praise, though not without offering cogent criticism. The two‐part structure of WN is discussed in context. Books I and II are analytical and identify the principles, chiefly division of labour, which naturally lead to economic growth where the free‐market system, or something close to it, is adopted. Books III to V are historical and evaluative, focused (...) on what legislators, to whom the book is addressed, have done and should do to promote growth. This second part of WN assesses alternatives to the free‐market system, denouncing mercantilism's injudicious restraints and incentives, and Physiocracy's blindness to the benefits of industry and trade. Smith settles for some restrictions on individual economic freedom, to provide resources for society's chief needs identified as defence, justice, public works, and education, and he manifests grave concern about the mental torpor found in workers subjected to extensive division of labour. (shrink)

From April to July, 1787 Smith was in London receiving medical attention and conferring with the government about fiscal and commercial reforms that allowed Britain to recover from the strains of the American war. On his return to Edinburgh in somewhat restored health, he set about preparing a greatly expanded sixth edition of TMS. This developed further the concept of the impartial spectator, and included an entirely new part VI, focused on moral theory applicable to such crucial issues as new‐modelling (...) a political constitution, highly relevant in view of the revolutions in America and France. He also added a chapter arguing that while our disposition to admire the rich and powerful is necessary to maintain the ‘order of society,’ it is the most universal cause of the ‘corruption of our moral sentiments.’ His Stoic outlook thus affords him a standpoint for criticism of the mechanisms of the acquisitive society analysed in WN, but at the same time, he suggests that the contemporary literature of sensibility dealing with love and friendship does more for us than the arguments for ‘stoical apathy.’. (shrink)

Is there a justified presumption that a speaker is testifying sincerely? Anti-reductionism about testimony claims that there is, absent reasons to the contrary. Yet why believe this, given the actuality and prevalence of lies and deception? I examine one argument that may be appropriated to meet this challenge, David Lewis's claim that truthfulness is a convention. I argue that it fails, and that the supposition that there is a presumption of sincerity remains unsupported. The failure of Lewis's argument is instructive, (...) however, for it shows us a better way of approaching language use than the standard anti-reductionist treatment. As speech is an intentional action, so a presumption of the sincerity or otherwise of others' testimony must be explicable in the terms we normally use to explain action. (shrink)

“Let me tell you where I'm coming from...”—so begins many a discussion in contemporary U.S. culture. Pressed by an almost compulsive desire to situate ourselves within a definite matrix of reference points in both scholarly inquiry and everyday parlance, we seem to reject adamantly the idea of a universal human subject. Yet what does this rhetoric of self-affiliation tell us? What is its history? David Simpson’s _Situatedness_ casts a critical eye on this currently popular form of identification, suggesting that, (...) far from being a simple turn of phrase, it demarcates a whole structure of thinking. Simpson traces the rhetorical syndrome through its truly interdisciplinary genealogy. Discussing its roles within the fields of legal theory, social science, fiction, philosophy, and ethics, he argues that the discourse of situatedness consists of a volatile fusion of modesty and aggressiveness. It oscillates, in other words, between accepting complete causal predetermination and advocating personal agency and responsibility. Simpson’s study neither fully rejects nor endorses the present-day language of self-specification. Rather it calls attention to the limitations and opportunities of situatedness—a notion whose ideological slippage it ultimately sees as allowing late-capitalist liberal democracies to function. Given its wide scope and lively rendering, _Situatedness_ will attract a range of scholars in the humanities and legal studies. It will also interest all those for whom the politics of subjectivity pose real problems of authority, identity, and belief. (shrink)

Several themes can be identified in the commentaries. The first is that the climbing fibers may have more than one function; the second is that the climbing fibers provide sensory rather than motor signals. We accept the possibility that climbing fibers may have more than one function consequence(s)’ in the title. Until we know more about the function of the inhibitory input to the inferior olive from the cerebellar nuclei, which are motor structures, we have to keep open the possibility (...) that the climbing fiber signals can be a combination of sensory and motor signals. (shrink)

In a recent article in this journal, Calum Miller skillfully and creatively argues for the counterintuitive view that there aren’t any good reasons to believe that non-human animals feel pain in a morally relevant sense. By Miller’s lights, such reasons are either weak in their own right or they also favor the view that non-human animals don’t feel morally relevant pain. In this paper, I explain why Miller’s view is mistaken. In particular, I sketch a very reasonable abductive argument for (...) the conclusion that non-human animals feel morally relevant pain. This argument shows that, even in the face of Miller’s moderate skepticism about whether non-human animals feel pain in a morally relevant sense, it’s still more epistemically reasonable to believe that non-human animals feel pain in a morally relevant sense than not. In which case, I conclude that Miller has failed to show that there aren’t any good reasons to believe that non-human animals don’t feel pain in a morally relevant sense that don’t also count in favor of the view that non-human animals don’t feel morally relevant pain. (shrink)

Is art a form of communication? If so, what does art express or represent? How should we interpret the meaning of works created by more than one artist? Is art an adaptation, via natural selection? In what ways is art similar to—and different from—language? Art as Communication: Aesthetics, Evolution, and Signaling employs information theory, the theory of evolution, and the newly developed sender-receiver model of communication to reason about art, aesthetic behavior, and its communicative nature. Shawn Simpson considers whether (...) art, from a biological point of view, is the province of only humans or whether animals might reasonably be said to create art. Examining the work of evolutionary biologists, art theorists, linguists, and philosophers—including Charles Darwin, Stephen Davies, H. Paul Grice, and others—he addresses how well different theories of communication explain meaning and expression in art and argues that art is much more continuous with other forms of communication than previously thought. (shrink)

If any emergent historical criticism will tend by its own choice toward inclusiveness and eclecticism, it is also likely to be constrained by more subtle forms of complicity with the theoretical subculture within which it seeks its audience. It is not in principle impossible that we might choose to set going an initiative that is very different indeed from the methods and approaches already in place. But is nonetheless clear that we must be aware, in some propaedeutic way, of the (...) predispositions for or against such change that are latent in the horizons of the field as they are presently conceived and transmitted. An account of these predispositions will take up most of the following essay. Whether or not the particular texts I shall discuss constitute anything as firm as an establishment in the absolute sense does not matter much: they neither sum up the ongoing careers of their particular authors, in the diachronic sense, nor do they represent any simple totality in the critical culture of the late 1960s. All we need here is the weaker assumption: that these writings by Derrida, Paul de Man, Michel Foucault, and Pierre Macherey do offer, by virtue of their very notoriety, evidence of the priorities within the discipline that have afforded them their reputations in the first place. Thus, while they do not in themselves prohibit the emergence of alternatives, they do give us clues about the residual pressures that might constrain those alternatives, and they signal the questions that the historical party must respond to if it is to be recognized as making an important contribution to a debate. My argument will be that the influential critics of the late 1960s have made it very hard indeed to find a place for history, so much so that the avowedly Marxist alternative set forth by Jameson finds itself making disabling concessions to those very influences. I do not claim to describe the entire range of options and alternatives, and indeed offer no discussion of the most excitingly contested field of all, that represented by contemporary feminisms. I mean instead to demonstrate, through a reading of those methodologies that have become authoritative, that the status of historical inquiry has been so eroded that its reactive renaissance, in whatever form, threatens to remain merely gestural and generic. “History” promises thus to function as legitimating any reference to a context beyond literature exclusively conceived, whether it be one of discourse, biography, political or material circumstance. In particular, given the current popularity of discourse analysis, it seems likely that for many practitioners the historical method will remain founded in covertly idealist reconstructions. David Simpson is professor of English and comparative literature at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He is the author of various books and essays, most recently The Politics of American English, 1776-1850 and Wordsworth’s Historical Imagination: The Poetry of Displacement. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Russell's 90th Birthday MedallionTony Simpson Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 69] Click for larger view View full resolutionIn this 150th anniversary year of Russell's birth—and with the nuclear peril again rising—it seems fitting to recall his anti-nuclear campaign and how it was celebrated for another landmark birthday, his 90th, in May 1962. In addition to notable events in Russell's honour at London's Festival Hall and (...) Café Royal, as well as in the House of Commons, English coin designer and painter Christopher Ironside (1913–1992) was commissioned to produce this bronze medallion. Only twelve copies were cast, including this one, originally in Russell's possession at Plas Penrhyn and now held by the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation. (Another copy is in the Russell Archives.) Inscribed on the obverse of the medallion (diameter: 128 mm.) are the titles of fourteen Russell books. The reverse depicts a mushroom cloud rising over Trafalgar Square with Russell in the foreground of a crowded sit-down protest. The inscription around the edge of this side is of Russell's best-known appeal for peace. [End Page 70]Tony SimpsonBertrand Russell Peace Foundation 5 Churchill Park, Nottingham NG4 2HF, UK [email protected] © 2022 McMaster University... (shrink)

Dignity is an expansive ideal, figuring in international covenants, codes of research involving human participants, and debates about decision making at the end of life. One result of this expansiveness is that human dignity can be appropriated by proponents on both sides of many issues, thereby appearing more as a rhetorical flourish than as a serious element in argumentation. However, an appreciation of narrative inquiry shows that opposing representations of dignity constitute alternative assessments of responsible action, both of which can (...) be morally reasonable. One implication is that normative disagreements, as between deathbed decisions about palliative care or euthanasia, can be expected to occur, so that the ideal of dignity should be legally expressed in a practice of supportive laissez-faire in preference to any undue regulation of dying. (shrink)

Elaborates some of the background assumptions made by the chapters that follow and situates the theory that the author espouses within a wider context and range of alternatives. More specifically, it distinguishes between creature consciousness and state consciousness, and between access consciousness and phenomenal consciousness. And it defends representationalist accounts of consciousness against brute physicalist accounts. The chapter also introduces the remaining 11 chapters.

An illuminating guide to the pervasiveness and intricacies of law and an ideal invitation for those interested in its mechanics, purposes and functions. It is a thorough guide to a mysterious and complex institution and profession.

Life as Art synthesizes a number of aesthetic theories in philosophy after 1850 and shows the ways in which they contribute to a unified field of analysis and potential implementation. The book is framed both as a secondary text, analyzing 19th and 20th Century aesthetics, and a primary argument for the viability of life as art as a unified philosophical position.

Based on mirror neurons' properties, viewers are emotionally engaged when observing others infant interactions.

Nucleosome positioning refers to sequence‐specific locations for histones interacting with the nucleic acid. Examples of occurrence of this phenomenon, its possible mechanisms and its significance are presented.

This brief text assists students in understanding Karol Wojtyla's philosophy and thinking so they can more fully engage in useful, intelligent class dialogue and improve their understanding of course content. Part of the Wadsworth Notes Series, (which will eventually consist of approximately 100 titles, each focusing on a single "thinker" from ancient times to the present), ON KAROL WOJTYLA is written by a philosopher deeply versed in the philosophy of this key thinker. Like other books in the series, this concise (...) book offers sufficient insight into the thinking of a notable philosopher, better enabling students to engage in reading and to discuss the material in class and on paper. (shrink)

Ernest Barker wrote two books on the political thought of Plato, both of which were also directly related to his study of the political thought of Aristotle. This essay examines the way Barker’s readings of Plato changed, first from the earlier to the later of his two books, and then from the later of these books, written during WWI, to his translation of Aristotle’s Politics, written during WWII. The contention is that, as Barker himself partly confessed, WWI led him to (...) read hopes into Plato’s works that he not had before and that he abandoned in WWII. This shift in reading Plato was essentially a shift in Barker’s allegiance to political Hegelianism, which, while it intensified during WWI, had given way entirely to a thoroughly English Whig Constitutionalism by the end of WWII. The abandonment of Hegel enabled Barker to reach not only a better understanding of Plato in his Aristotle book but also a better and more wry understanding of German philosophy. (shrink)

The longevity of the Berlin and Kay theses results from the way in which they were formulated, contrasted with extreme relativism. Saunders & van Brakel need not reject colour opponency to reject universal colour categories. Colour opponency does not manifest itself in language, even when dealing directly with spectral colours.

Locke and descartes only disagree about innate knowledge because they both accept the principle that knowledge that comes through the senses is sensible knowledge or reducible to such knowledge. Other philosophers from berkeley to wittgenstein share the same principle. This principle is rejected by aristotle and the aristotelian tradition; consequently aristotle is able to give a more convincing account of knowledge and its acquisition. A summary of this account is given and defended.

Originally published in 1988, this book provides a comprehensive anthology in English of the major texts of German literary and aesthetic theory between Lessing ...