Chronological explanation of physics from early history through current studies geared to lay readers with limited mathematical training.

Throughout his career, Deleuze developed a series of original philosophies of time and applied them successfully to many different fields. Now James Williams presents Deleuze's philosophy of time as the central concept that connects his philosophy as a whole. Through this conceptual approach, the book covers all the main periods of Deleuze's philosophy: the early studies of Hume, Nietzsche, Kant, Bergson and Spinoza, the two great philosophical works, Difference and Repetition and Logic of Sense, the Capitalism and Schizophrenia works (...) with Guattari, and the late influential studies of literature, film and painting.The result is an important reading of Deleuze and the first full interpretation of his philosophy of time. (shrink)

Constructive empiricism is supposed to offer a positive alternative to scientific realism that dispenses with the need for metaphysics. I first review the terms of the debate before arguing that the standard objections to constructive empiricism are not decisive. I then explain van Fraassen's views on modality and counterfactuals, and argue that, because constructive empiricism recommends on epistemological grounds belief in the empirical adequacy rather than the truth of theories, it requires that there be an objective modal distinction between the (...) observable and the unobservable. This conclusion is incompatible with van Fraassen's empiricism. Finally I explain some further problems for constructive empiricism that arise when we consider modal matters. (shrink)

Review of: Wood, Allen W., Kant and Religion, Cambridge, Cambridge U.P., 2020, 250 pp. ISBN: 978-0521799980.

The term "virtue" has traditionally been used to designate morally good character traits such as benevolence, charity, honesty, wisdom, and honor. Although ethicists do not commonly offer a definitive list of virtues, the number of virtues discussed is often short and their moral significance is clear. Hume's analysis of the virtues departs from this tradition both in terms of the quantity of virtues discussed and their obvious moral significance. A conservative estimate of the various virtues Hume refers to in his (...) moral writings would put the number at around seventy, with the more untraditional ones including wit, good manners, and dialog. Unsurprisingly, Hume's critics have attacked him for making nonsense of the concept of virtue by construing it so widely. Hume was aware that his broad understanding of virtue was controversial and he offered several defenses for it. After presenting the neglected attacks of his contemporaries along with Hume's response, I argue that a problem remains: by failing to distinguish between degrees of virtue, Hume also fails to distinguish between degrees of vice. But, some vices clearly deserve punishment whereas other alleged vices clearly do not. Thus, for adequate retribution, a distinction is needed between important and less important virtues and vices. I conclude that Hume could have used his own account of instinctive vengeance as a natural indicator for distinguishing between important and unimportant vices. (shrink)

This article explores the meanings of manhood as articulated by Afro-American men. Conceptualization and Q-sort methods are used to examine men's construction of manhood and men's ratings of the importance of selected attributes to being a man. Manhood emerged as a multidimensional construct with four major domains and 15 distinct clusters of ideas. The cluster of attributes rated as most important to being a man paralleled the conceptualization of manhood derived from the open-ended interviews for both professional and nonprofessional men. (...) Men's ratings of attributes in the areas of ownership, manliness, spiritual and religious, and power varied by occupational status. (shrink)

Amid undulating conceptions of the role and prowess of federalism emerges its central constitutional role: protecting American liberties against unwarranted governmental intrusions. To the extent that federalism is used as a guise for withdrawing fundamental rights to abortion by the U.S. Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, individual rights are sacrificed in contravention of constitutional structural norms.

International Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Volume 25, Issue 3, Page 203-204, September 2011.

Upon completing Marthe Atwater Chandler's Expressing the Heart's Intent: Explorations in Chinese Aesthetics I am struck by how much can be gleaned retroactively from the title. At the outset the title indeed made me somewhat wary, having seen how on many occasions Chinese philosophical terms become mangled in English-language translation in ways that unnecessarily import, either implicitly or explicitly, misleading conceptual frameworks. Words like "expressing," "heart," and "intent" all triggered various suspicions on my part. Fortunately, these suspicions were quickly addressed, (...) as Chandler advances an adept reading of the shi yan zhi 詩言志 conceit so central to Chinese aesthetics since its introduction in the... (shrink)

ABSTRACT Heidegger’s remarks about language in Being and Time do not constitute a comprehensive theory of language. Hubert Dreyfus, William Blattner and Mark Wrathall each propose a derivativist reading of these remarks. Derivativism is the theory that language is derivative of a pre-linguistically articulated experience of the world – but derivativism is not quite right. It does not account adequately for the relationship between the disclosedness of being-in-the-world and what Heidegger calls discourse [Rede]. I claim that although language has its (...) ontological foundation in the constitution of disclosedness, this does not mean that language is prefigured by a way of being-in-the-world that is existentially prelinguistic. Finally, I develop Wrathall’s claims about disclosedness into a more palatable account of the relationship between discourse and language, which I test against Heidegger’s claims about the relationship between discourse and language in Being and Time. (shrink)

This article traces the consequences for Badiou’s political subjectivity if his understanding of the Cartesian subject is incorrect. For Badiou, the faithful subject, political and otherwise, is formed through fidelity to the appearance of an event of truth, and the process of this fidelity creates a world. These truths are immanent to the worlds in which they appear. An obscure subject, however, is faithful to a negation, while a reactive subject denies the appearance of a truth’s event. Badiou’s subject radicalizes (...) Lacan’s radicalization of the Cartesian subject, but for him both Descartes and Lacan consider the subject stable since they are caused by truth rather than by the event of a truth. However, immanent to Descartes’s philosophy is an unstable subject, thanks to the role of the imagination in the discovery of the cogito. Fidelity to this immanent Cartesian subject shows Lacan as an obscure subject and Badiou as reactive. (shrink)

Hong Kong’s adherence to the rule of law has been widely understood as one of its “core values.” As such, it has been understood as an institution necessary for good governance and a check against the abuse of governmental power as well as a feature that differentiates Hong Kong’s system of governance from other parts of China. At the same time, intervening issues of immigration and of constitutional interpretation have begun to challenge this perception. This paper argues that a recent (...) landmark decision involving the right to permanent residence has served to weaken the rule of law in Hong Kong. It has further highlighted a lack of commitment by the judiciary to either human rights claims or equal treatment under the law. (shrink)

Like Prometheus, Ayn Rand's heroes would seem valuable much less for what they do for themselves, than for others. I argue, first, however, that the ethical scheme implied by her treatment of these figures is properly classed as neither "egoist" nor "altruist,"for the value invested by the creator in his creation eludes both views. A more satisfactory Randian ethic of creation, it becomes clear, must involve a distinction between Nietzschean "self-reverence" versus mere "self-interest" and, much more substantially, Aristotle's distinction between (...) those in whom "self-love" is good and those in whom it is not. (shrink)

Abstract:In conversation with Kiarina Kordela's Epistemontology, this essay considers how biopolitical capitalism relies upon the structural exclusion of experiences of dying and loss, while valorizing semblances of immortal transcendence. Following Kordela's argument that biopower attempts to "eternalize" the capitalist equation of being and value as coterminous with life through the production of experiences of false transcendence, this essay adds that the Hegelian critique of finitude clarifies the stakes of biopower's foreclosures of the death-event. With Lacan's account of foreclosure in mourning (...) in Seminar VI, the essay concludes with how the potentiality of loss can reinscribe the subject's (non)rapport with eternity. (shrink)

God is speaking-clearer than ever before. But are we listening? Full of hope and insight, this book is a clarion call to believers to lean in and pursue hearing God again. Here is what you need to rediscover how to listen to him with accuracy-and help restore integrity and trust in the only Voice that speaks peace in these troubled, unprecedented times.

Postmodernism is not so much a theory as an attitude. It is an attitude of suspicion – suspicion about claims of truth and about appeals to rational argument. Its corrupting effects must be answered by finding a better alternative, which must include a defence of the objecvity of both reason and ethics. Natural law thinking is necessary for the latter.

From August 2000 to February 2001, I conducted an online survey of what eventually became 140 self-identified Satanists. A report detailing my findings from that questionnaire research was published in the Marburg Journal of Religion under the title “Who Serves Satan? A Demographic and Ideological Profile.” Eight years later, from June through December of 2009, a comparable online survey of 300 Satanists was conducted. However, because of certain problems with the second questionnaire, a third online survey was launched in 2011 (...) – a third survey which, as this article went to press, was still in process. The present paper compares findings from the first survey with the second, using preliminary statistics from the third survey to counterbalance inadequacies in certain of the statistics from the second. Comparing results from the first with results from the second, the average age of respondents rose from twenty-five to twenty-nine. Partly as a consequence of higher average age, the new sample exhibited more diversity – in terms of respondents having a broader range of educational backgrounds, an increased likelihood of being a parent, and the like. Similarly, while the majority of respondents to the new survey were still broadly within the LaVeyan tradition,a far greater percentage than in the old survey professed some variety of theistic or esoteric Satanism. (shrink)

Bradley contends that the semiology of Charles Sanders Peirce , the founder of pragmatism, is a standing challenge as much to Gadamerian hermeneutics as to Saussure’s structuralism and its deconstructionist progeny. For Peirce physical matter itself is one specific mode of the activity of semiosis or sign interpretation. The paper outlines the central point and purpose of Peirce’s general metaphysics and describe the basic features of his theory of signs.

In this essay I describe seven central characteristics of Philip Quinn's approach to the epistemic challenge of religious diversity as they surface in his responses to other contemporary approaches. In the process an assessment is given of Quinn's contribution, and continued relevance, to the contemporary discussions about this topic. The first three sections describe Quinn's confrontations with Alvin Plantinga, William Alston, and John Hick. The next section presents critical comments on Quinn's unique notion of thinning.