[opening paragraph]: Ramachandran and Hirstein in their article, ‘The Science of Art: A Neurological Theory of Aesthetic Experience’ make the grandiose claim of having developed a theory of human aesthetic experience, while reducing that very experience to meaningless terms. As a practising artist whose work is informed by contemporary theory as well as a Buddhist practice, I find it hard to take their argument seriously. Clearly, it is necessary to examine one's assumptions about the nature of the artistic experience before (...) attempting to develop grand theory. (shrink)

Can quite different values be rationally weighed against one another? Can the value of one thing always be ranked as greater than, equal to, or less than the value of something else? If the answer to these questions is no, then in what areas do we find commensurability and comparability unavailable? And what are the implications for moral and legal decision making? This book struggles with these questions, and arrives at distinctly different answers.".

How we experience space by listening: the concepts of aural architecture, with examples ranging from Gothic cathedrals to surround sound home theater. We experience spaces not only by seeing but also by listening. We can navigate a room in the dark, and "hear" the emptiness of a house without furniture. Our experience of music in a concert hall depends on whether we sit in the front row or under the balcony. The unique acoustics of religious spaces acquire symbolic meaning. Social (...) relationships are strongly influenced by the way that space changes sound. In Spaces Speak, Are You Listening?, Barry Blesser and Linda-Ruth Salter examine auditory spatial awareness: experiencing space by attentive listening. Every environment has an aural architecture.The audible attributes of physical space have always contributed to the fabric of human culture, as demonstrated by prehistoric multimedia cave paintings, classical Greek open-air theaters, Gothic cathedrals, acoustic geography of French villages, modern music reproduction, and virtual spaces in home theaters. Auditory spatial awareness is a prism that reveals a culture's attitudes toward hearing and space. Some listeners can learn to "see" objects with their ears, but even without training, we can all hear spatial geometry such as an open door or low ceiling. Integrating contributions from a wide range of disciplines—including architecture, music, acoustics, evolution, anthropology, cognitive psychology, audio engineering, and many others—Spaces Speak, Are You Listening? establishes the concepts and language of aural architecture. These concepts provide an interdisciplinary guide for anyone interested in gaining a better understanding of how space enhances our well-being. Aural architecture is not the exclusive domain of specialists. Accidentally or intentionally, we all function as aural architects. (shrink)

I argue that critical realists think pretty much what Tukka Kaidesoja says that he himself thinks, but also that Kaidesoja’s objections to the views that he attributes to critical realists are not persuasive.

According to Hume, the paradigm type of inductive reasoning involves a constant conjunction. But, as Price points out, Hume misrepresents ordinary induction: we experience very few constant conjunctions. In this paper, I examine several ways of defending Hume's (psychological) account of our practice against Price's objection, and conclude that the theory cannot be upheld.

Four key guidance points in the UNAIDS guidance document, Ethical Considerations in HIV Preventive Vaccine Research, are compared with analogous statements in three other recently issued documents dealing with international research. Those documents are: the Declaration of Helsinki, as revised in 2000; the report of the U.S. National Bioethics Advisory Commission, issued in 2001; and a current (2001) draft revision of the 1993 CIOMS International Ethical Guidelines for Biomedical Research Involving Human Subjects. The four guidance points compared with statements on (...) similar issues in the other three documents are Guidance Point 2, which deals with making available a safe and effective vaccine after trials are completed; the second half of Guidance Point 4, which requires that the desired outcome should potentially benefit the population from which research participants are drawn; Guidance Point 11, which discusses what should be provided to a control group in a vaccine trial; and Guidance Point 16, which addresses the care and treatment to be provided for trial participants who become infected with HIV during the trial. The analysis and comparison concludes that the UNAIDS guidance points are at least as ethically sound as analogous points in these other documents, and for the most part are ethically superior in providing greater benefits to research participants and to others. Nevertheless, they are subject to the criticism that they are too ‘aspirational’ and not sufficiently ‘pragmatic’. (shrink)

_Race and State_ is the second of five books that Eric Voegehn wrote before his emigration to the United States from Austria in 1938. First published in Germany in 1933, the year Hitler came to power, the study was prompted in part by the rise of national socialism during the preceding year. Yet Voegelin neither descended to the level of contemporary debates on race nor dismissed these debates by way of value judgments. Although still young when he wrote this book, (...) Voegelin already demonstrates his singular analytical capacity as well as his ability to put political phenomena into a new perspective. In Part I Voegelin analyzes contemporary race theories by placing the question of race in the context of the more comprehensive philoiophical problem of the interrelationships of body, mind, and soul. He demonstrates the intellectual shortcomings and theoretical fallacies of current theories; more important, he contributes to the development of a modern philosophical anthropology that aims, as Helmuth Plessner put it in a review of _Race and State,_ "at a concept of the human being that does justice to its multilayered existence as a physical, vital, psychic, and intellectual being, without making one of these layers the measure and explanatory basis for the others." In Part II Voegelin deals with race ideas, which he distinguishes from race theories. Race ideas, like other political ideas, form a part of political reality itself, contributing to the formation of social groups and societies. Voegelin shows that the modern race idea is just one "body ideal" among others, such as the tribal state and the Kingdom of Christ, each offering a different symbolic image of community. He traces the rise of the modem race idea, analyzes its function to structure community, and offers an answer to the question of why race ideas became successful in Germany. Voegelin's meticulous sifting of all the Nazi race literature finally arrives at this blunt statement regarding its overall validity: "In order to preclude even the slightest possibility of a misunderstanding, let us again point out emphatically that the contrasting descriptions of the Semitic and the Aryan, the Jewish and the German character... contain little that is true about the nature of Jewishness.". (shrink)

According to the received view, Hume is a much more rigorous and consistent concept-empiricist than Locke. Hume is supposed to have taken as a starting point Locke's meaning-empiricism, and worked out its full radical implications. Locke, by way of contrast, cowered from drawing his theory's strange consequences. The received view about Locke's and Hume's concept-empiricism is mistaken, I shall argue. Hume may be more uncompromising (although he too falters), but he is not more rigorous than Locke. It is not because (...) of (intellectual) timidity that Locke does not draw Hume's conclusions from his empiricism. It is, rather, because of his much sounder method. (shrink)

Irrigation systems are recognized as common pool resources supplying water for agricultural production, but their role in supplying water for other uses is often overlooked. The importance of non-agricultural uses of irrigation water in livelihood strategies has implications for irrigation management and water rights, especially as increasing scarcity challenges existing water allocation mechanisms. This paper examines the multiple uses of water in the Kirindi Oya irrigation system in Sri Lanka, who the users are, and implications for water rights and management (...) policies. There are important residential, gender, and class differences among the water users. People use irrigation system water not only for field crops, but also for fishing, homestead gardens, and livestock. Even within irrigated farming households, men have more control over paddy crops in the main fields, whereas homestead gardens are women's domain. Because the irrigation system provides water for birds and animals, even wildlife and non-resident environmental groups can be considered stakeholders. Current policies emphasize user involvement in both irrigation and domestic water supply. While government agencies have had primary responsibility, institutions such as Farmers' Organizations are being promoted. These have the potential to serve as user platforms for negotiating water allocation among irrigated farmers. However, the user organizations reflect the sectoral responsibility of the government agencies. Their membership and structure do not take into account the multiple uses or users of water. Developing platforms that accommodate different user groups remains a major challenge for improving the overall productivity, as well as equity, of water use. (shrink)

In this interview, Ruth Groff discusses how she came to be a realist, her role as a community organizer, her relationship to critical realism, and various issues arising from her published work over the years. Discussion ranges across the nature of positivism and its legacy, the concept of falsehood, realism about causal powers, mind-independent reality, the history of philosophy, and the underlying interest in ideology-critique that runs through her thinking.

Most familiar approaches to social conflict moot reasonable ways of dealing with conflict, ways that aim to serve values such as legitimacy, justice, morality, fairness, fidelity to individual preferences, and so on. In this paper, I explore an alternative approach to social conflict that contrasts with the leading approaches of Rawlsians, perfectionists, and social choice theorists. The proposed approach takes intrinsic features of the conflict—what I call a conflict's evaluative ‘structure’—as grounds for a rational way of responding to that conflict. (...) Like conflict within a single person, social conflict can have a distinctive evaluative structure that supports certain rational responses over others. I suggest that one common structure in both intra- and interpersonal cases of conflict supports the rational response of ‘self-governance’. Self-governance in the case of social conflict involves a society's deliberating over the question, ‘What kind of society should we be?’ In liberal democracies, this rational response is also a reasonable one. (shrink)

In men and women sexual arousal culminates in orgasm, with female orgasm solely from sexual intercourse often regarded as a unique feature of human sexuality. However, orgasm from sexual intercourse occurs more reliably in men than in women, likely reflecting the different types of physical stimulation men and women require for orgasm. In men, orgasms are under strong selective pressure as orgasms are coupled with ejaculation and thus contribute to male reproductive success. By contrast, women's orgasms in intercourse are highly (...) variable and are under little selective pressure as they are not a reproductive necessity. The proximal mechanisms producing variability in women's orgasms are little understood. In 1924 Marie Bonaparte proposed that a shorter distance between a woman's clitoris and her urethral meatus (CUMD) increased her likelihood of experiencing orgasm in intercourse. She based this on her published data that were never statistically analyzed. In 1940 Landis and colleagues published similar data suggesting the same relationship, but these data too were never fully analyzed. We analyzed raw data from these two studies and found that both demonstrate a strong inverse relationship between CUMD and orgasm during intercourse. Unresolved is whether this increased likelihood of orgasm with shorter CUMD reflects increased penile–clitoral contact during sexual intercourse or increased penile stimulation of internal aspects of the clitoris. CUMD likely reflects prenatal androgen exposure, with higher androgen levels producing larger distances. Thus these results suggest that women exposed to lower levels of prenatal androgens are more likely to experience orgasm during sexual intercourse. . (shrink)

Ruth Garrett Millikan presents a strikingly original account of how we get to grips with the world in thought. Her question is Kant's 'How is knowledge possible?', answered from a contemporary naturalist standpoint. We begin with an understanding of what the world is like prior to cognition, then develop a theory of cognition within that world.

Sainsbury and Tye (2011) propose that, in the case of names and other simple extensional terms, we should substitute for Frege's second level of content—for his senses—a second level of meaning vehicle—words in the language of thought. I agree. They also offer a theory of atomic concept reference—their ‘originalist’ theory—which implies that people knowing the same word have the ‘same concept’. This I reject, arguing for a symmetrical rather than an originalist theory of concept reference, claiming that individual concepts are (...) possessed only by individual people. Concepts are classified rather than identified across different people. (shrink)

Offers an analysis of three strongly contrasting primitive civilizations, showing how behavior is influenced by custom and tradition.

This paper is the introduction to the volume. It gives an argumentative view of the philosophical landscape concerning incommensurability and incomparability. It argues that incomparability, not incommensurability, is the important phenomenon on which philosophers should be focusing and that the arguments for the existence of incomparability are so far not compelling.

Questioning the usual judgements of political ethics, Ruth W. Grant argues that hypocrisy can actually be constructive while strictly principled behavior can be destructive. _Hypocrisy and Integrity_ offers a new conceptual framework that clarifies the differences between idealism and fanaticism while it uncovers the moral limits of compromise. "Exciting and provocative.... Grant's work is to be highly recommended, offering a fresh reading of Rousseau and Machiavelli as well as presenting a penetrating analysis of hypocrisy and integrity."—Ronald J. Terchek, _American (...) Political Science Review_ "A great refreshment.... With liberalism's best interests at heart, Grant seeks to make available a better understanding of the limits of reason in politics."—Peter Berkowitz, _New Republic_. (shrink)

Readers of this book are sure to view the ethics of incentives in a new light.

This book provides an analysis of the debate surrounding cultural diversity, and attempts to reconcile the seemingly opposing views of "ethical imperialism," the belief that each individual is entitled to fundamental human rights, and cultural relativism, the belief that ethics must be relative to particular cultures and societies. The author examines the role of cultural tradition, often used as a defense against critical ethical judgments. Key issues in health and medicine are explored in the context of cultural diversity: the physician-patient (...) relationship, disclosing a diagnosis of a fatal illness, informed consent, brain death and organ transplantation, rituals surrounding birth and death, female genital mutilation, sex selection of offspring, fertility regulation, and biomedical research involving human subjects. Among the conclusions the author reaches are that ethical universals exist, but must not be confused with ethical absolutes. The existence of ethical universals is compatible with a variety of culturally relative interpretations, and some rights related to medicine and health care should be considered human rights. Illustrative examples are drawn from the author's experiences serving on international ethical review committees and her travels to countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, where she conducted educational workshops and carried out out her own research. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Knowing Better: Sex, Cultural Criticism, and the Pedagogical Imperative in the 1990sRichard Burt (bio) and Jeffrey Wallen (bio)Teacher Petting“A distinguished professor and her graduate student French-kissed in front of a semicircle of gaping students. Were they furthering ‘an exploration of the erotics of the relation between teacher and student’ as the professor says—or was it part of a pattern of sexual harassment as the student later charged?” So (...) ran the copy on an envelope advertising in 1994 an “extraordinary one-time offer $9.95 trial subscription” to Lingua Franca in 1994. 1 The enclosed letter relates an anecdote about two complaints against Jane Gallop filed by two female graduate students alleging she had sexually harassed them. Gallop defended having French-kissed a graduate student in a bar in front of other students in the same class by saying it was a pedagogical performance. The letter quotes from a Lingua Franca cover story that came to Gallop’s defense [Talbot].As sex between students and professors has become a topic of new interest in the wake of sexual harassment legislation, as colleges have adopted campus sexual conduct codes or debate doing so, and as debates and incidents involving sex and teaching have attracted widespread media attention, the anecdote has become central. Some critics might want to dismiss the Lingua Franca story as nothing more than titillating tabloid gossip or take it seriously only by regarding it as an effort to combat a right-wing agenda to smear innocent professors who, as feminist or queer, are politically and intellectually well to the left of the mainstream. But the anecdotal interests us precisely because it involves more than just a tabloid scandal in any simple sense. Sex is not merely a way one can slur kinds of criticism one doesn’t like by tarnishing its proponents (for teaching sexual, transgressive material to shock, pervert, or in the extreme case—as in this instance—literally seduce students) though it can sometimes function in this way. For sex comes up in anecdotes told by cultural critics to one another, and when it comes up, it comes up in the same way it does in “tabloid” coverage. The anecdote about sex is never really just about sex, about who did or didn’t (French) kiss, suck, and/or fuck whom: it is rather a story about something in the pedagogical relation that has gone wrong, about a connection that has gone off track. Anecdotes about sex and teaching are really stories about criticism, about pedagogy itself as a form of criticism, and about failed pedagogy as the occasion for self-criticism.Yet if the anecdote is not really about sex, sex is hardly irrelevant to the production of what the anecdote is really about, namely, criticism. Indeed, we want to focus on the question of sex between students and professors because it is precisely sexuality that puts pressure on different, key aspects of the project of cultural criticism and on the present contestation over it within and outside of academia. Campus codes are being introduced [End Page 72] as new pedagogical practices, and new courses are being introduced into the classroom: disruption though impersonation, performative strategies, bringing the personal and the erotic into the classroom, and classes making use of pornography, even hardcore visual pornography, often taught by feminist women. 2 According to leading cultural critics, destabilizing gender roles shows us how gender is constructed, and tells us about power in ways that are politically and performatively effective. 3But there is often a moment when the game breaks down in the classroom. Someone gets offended, and given the way that for some sexual harassment extends from unwanted sexual advances or trading grades for sexual favors to classroom materials (both written and visual), offense can easily move into complaint, legal action, media attention, and of course administrative and professorial panic. The usual rationale for transgressive pedagogy is that this disruption will be successful, not just anarchic: it will be successful in that it gets in the way of the replication and reproduction of power (this is the new mission for teaching: to disrupt the transmission and reproduction of patriarchal power structures... (shrink)

The central aim of this book is to answer two questions: Are alternatives for choice ever incomparable? and, In what ways can items be compared? The arguments offered suggest that alternatives for choice no matter how different are never incomparable, and that the ways in which items can be compared are richer and more varied than commonly supposed. This work is the first book length treatment of the topics of incomparability, value, and practical reason.

Do we really know the things we think we know? Are any of our beliefs reasonable? Scepticism gives a pessimistic reply to these important epistemological questions - we don't know anything; none of our beliefs are reasonable. But can such a seemingly paradoxical claim be more than an intellectual curiousity? And if it is, can it be refuted? Ruth Weintraub answers yes to both these questions. The sceptical challenge is a formidable one, and should be confronted, not dismissed. The (...) theoretical and practical difficulties it presents - in that the sceptical life cannot be lived, and the doctrine seems self-defeating - are in fact superficial, according to Ruth Weintraub. Her study looks at the sceptical arguments of Descartes, Hume and the ancient Greek sceptic, Sextus Empiricus. The author argues that by drawing on philosophy, rather than science, the sceptical challenge can be answered. _The Sceptical Challenge_ is a bold and original response to scepticism; it represents a new way of looking at the field for philosophers of epistemology. (shrink)

Ruth Abbey presents a close study of Nietzsche's works, Human, All Too Human, Daybreak, and The Gay Science. Although these middle period works tend to be neglected in commentaries on Nietzsche, they repay careful attention. Abbey's commentary brings to light important differences across Nietzsche's oeuvre that have gone unnoticed, filling a serious gap in the literature.