Bioethics, Volume 36, Issue 1, Page 25-41, January 2022.

This volume collects twenty original essays on the philosophy of film. It uniquely brings together scholars working across a range of philosophical traditions and academic disciplines to broaden and advance debates on film and philosophy. The book includes contributions from a number of prominent philosophers of film including Noël Carroll, Chris Falzon, Deborah Knight, Paisley Livingston, Robert Sinnerbrink, Malcolm Turvey, and Thomas Wartenberg. While the topics explored by the contributors are diverse, there are a number of thematic threads that connect (...) them. Overall, the book seeks to bridge analytic and continental approaches to philosophy of film in fruitful ways. Moving to the individual essays, the first two sections offer novel takes on the philosophical value and the nature of film. The next section focuses on the film-as-philosophy debate. Section IV covers cinematic experience, while Section V includes interpretations of individual films that touch on questions of artificial intelligence, race and film, and cinema's biopolitical potential. Finally, the last section proposes new avenues for future research on the moving image beyond film. This book will appeal to a broad range of scholars working in film studies, theory, and philosophy. (shrink)

A provocative argument that environmental thinking would be better off if it dropped the concept of “nature” altogether and spoke instead of the built environment. -/- Environmentalism, in theory and practice, is concerned with protecting nature. But if we have now reached “the end of nature,” as Bill McKibben and other environmental thinkers have declared, what is there left to protect? In Thinking like a Mall, Steven Vogel argues that environmental thinking would be better off if it dropped the (...) concept of “nature” altogether and spoke instead of the “environment”—that is, the world that actually surrounds us, which is always a built world, the only one that we inhabit. We need to think not so much like a mountain (as Aldo Leopold urged) as like a mall. Shopping malls, too, are part of the environment and deserve as much serious consideration from environmental thinkers as do mountains. -/- Vogel argues provocatively that environmental philosophy, in its ethics, should no longer draw a distinction between the natural and the artificial and, in its politics, should abandon the idea that something beyond human practices (such as “nature”) can serve as a standard determining what those practices ought to be. The appeal to nature distinct from the built environment, he contends, may be not merely unhelpful to environmental thinking but in itself harmful to that thinking. The question for environmental philosophy is not “how can we save nature?” but rather “what environment should we inhabit, and what practices should we engage in to help build it?”. (shrink)

Are liberalism and perfectionism compatible? In this study Steven Wall presents and defends a perfectionist account of political morality that takes issue with many currently fashionable liberal ideas but retains the strong liberal commitment to the ideal of personal autonomy. He begins by critically discussing the most influential version of anti-perfectionist liberalism, examining the main arguments that have been offered in its defence. He then clarifies the ideal of personal autonomy, presents an account of its value and shows that (...) a strong commitment to personal autonomy is fully compatible with an endorsement of perfectionist political action designed to promote valuable pursuits and discourage base ones. (shrink)

With armed conflict in the Persian Gulf now upon us, Harvard archaeologist Steven LeBlanc takes a long-term view of the nature and roots of war, presenting a controversial thesis: The notion of the "noble savage" living in peace with one another and in harmony with nature is a fantasy. In Constant Battles: The Myth of the Peaceful, Noble Savage , LeBlanc contends that warfare and violent conflict have existed throughout human history, and that humans have never lived in ecological (...) balance with nature. The start of the second major U.S. military action in the Persian Gulf, combined with regular headlines about spiraling environmental destruction, would tempt anyone to conclude that humankind is fast approaching a catastrophic end. But as LeBlanc brilliantly argues, the archaeological record shows that the warfare and ecological destruction we find today fit into patterns of human behavior that have gone on for millions of years. Constant Battles surveys human history in terms of social organization-from hunter gatherers, to tribal agriculturalists, to more complex societies. LeBlanc takes the reader on his own digs around the world -- from New Guinea to the Southwestern U.S. to Turkey -- to show how he has come to discover warfare everywhere at every time. His own fieldwork combined with his archaeological, ethnographic, and historical research, presents a riveting account of how, throughout human history, people always have outgrown the carrying capacity of their environment, which has led to war. Ultimately, though, LeBlanc's point of view is reassuring and optimistic. As he explains the roots of warfare in human history, he also demonstrates that warfare today has far less impact than it did in the past. He also argues that, as awareness of these patterns and the advantages of modern technology increase, so does our ability to avoid war in the future. (shrink)

Reductionism--understanding complex processes by breaking them into simpler elements--dominates scientific thinking around the world and has certainly proved a powerful tool, leading to major discoveries in every field of science. But reductionism can be taken too far, especially in the life sciences, where sociobiological thinking has bordered on biological determinism. Thus popular science writers such as Richard Dawkins, author of the highly influential The Selfish Gene, can write that human beings are just "robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish (...) molecules known as genes." Indeed, for many in science, genes have become the fundamental unit for understanding human existence: genes determine every aspect of our lives, from personal success to existential despair: genes for health and illness, genes for criminality, violence, and sexual orientation. Others would say that this is reductionism with a vengeance. In Lifelines, biologist Steven Rose offers a powerful alternative to the ultradarwinist claims of Dawkins, E.O. Wilson, Daniel Dennett and others. Rose argues against an extreme reductionist approach that would make the gene the key to understanding human nature, in favor of a more complex and richer vision of life. He urges instead that we focus on the organism and in particular on the organism's lifeline: the trajectory it takes through time and space. Our personal lifeline, Rose points out, is unique--even identical twins, with identical genes at birth, will differ over time. These differences are obviously not embedded in our genes, but come about through our developmental trajectory in which genes, as part of the biochemical orchestra of trillions of cells in each human body, have an important part--but only a part--to play. To illustrate this idea, Rose examines recent research in modern biology, and especially two disciplines--genetics (which looks at the impact of genes on form) and developmental biology (which examines the interaction between the organism and the environment)--and he explores new ideas on biological complexity proposed by scientists such as Stuart Kauffman. He shows how our lifelines are constructed through the interplay of physical forces--such as the intrinsic chemistry of lipids and proteins, and the self-organizing and stabilizing properties of complex metabolic webs--and he reaches a startling conclusion: that organisms are active players in their own fate, not simply the playthings of the gods, nature, or the inevitable workings out of gene-driven natural selection. The organism is both the weaver and the pattern it weaves. Lifelines will be a rallying point for all who seek an alternative to the currently fashionable, deeply determinist accounts which dominate popular science writing and, in fact, crowd the pages of some of the major scientific journals. Based on solid, state-of-the-art research, it not only makes important contributions to our understanding of Darwin and natural selection, but will swing the pendulum back to a richer, more complex view of human nature and of life. (shrink)

Cognitive science is transforming our understanding of the mind. New discoveries are changing how we comprehend not just language, but thought itself. Yet, surprisingly little of the new learning has penetrated discussions and analysis of the most important social institution affecting our lives-the law. Drawing on work in philosophy, psychology, anthropology, linguistics, and literary theory, Steven L. Winter has created nothing less than a tour de force of interdisciplinary analysis. A Clearing in the Forest rests on the simple notion (...) that the better we understand the workings of the mind, the better we will understand all its products-especially law. Legal studies today focus on analytic skills and grand normative theories. But, to understand how real-world, legal actors reason and decide, we need a different set of tools. Cognitive science provides those tools, opening a window on the imaginative, yet orderly mental processes that animate thinking and decisionmaking among lawyers, judges, and lay persons alike. Recent findings about how humans actually categorize and reason make it possible to explain legal reasoning in new, more cogent, more productive ways. A Clearing in the Forest is a compelling meditation on both how the law works and what it all means. In uncovering the irrepressibly imaginative, creative quality of human reason, Winter shows how what we are learning about the mind changes not only our understanding of law, but ultimately of ourselves. He charts a unique course to understanding the world we inhabit, showing us the way to the clearing in the forest. (shrink)

Pre-publication certification through peer review stands in need of philosophical examination. In this paper, philosopher-psychologist Steven James Bartlett recalls the arguments marshalled four hundred years ago by English poet John Milton against restraint of publication by the "gatekeepers of publication," AKA today's peer reviewers.

This is the introduction to Self-reference: Reflections on Reflexivity, edited by Steven James Bartlett and Peter Suber. The introduction identifies and describes a wide range of varieties of self-reference, some which have become important topics of investigation in philosophy, and others which are of significance in other disciplines. /// The anthology is the first published collection of essays to give a sense of depth and breadth of current work on this fascinating and important set of issues. The volume contains (...) 13 essays by well-known authors in this field, written on special invitation for this collection. In addition, the book includes the first general bibliography of works on self-reference, comprising more than 1,200 citations. (shrink)

How might we change ourselves without ending our existence? What could we become, if we had access to an advanced form of bioengineering that allowed us dramatically to alter our genome? Could we remain in existence after ceasing to be alive? What is it to be human? Might we still exist after changing ourselves into something that is not human? What is the significance of human extinction? Steven Luper addresses these questions and more in this thought-provoking study. He defends (...) an animalist account, which says that we are organisms, but claims that we are also material objects. His book goes to the heart of the most complex questions about what we are and what we might become. Using case studies from the life sciences as well as thought experiments, Luper develops a new way of thinking about the nature of life and death, and whether and how human extinction matters. (shrink)

In Life Beyond the Gene, Steven Rose offers a theory of life which insists that we as humans -- and indeed all living creatures -- create our own futures, though in circumstances not of our own choosing. Placing the organism at the center of life, Rose confronts the ideology of reductionism and ultra-Darwinism, with its insistence that all aspects of human life from sexual preference to infanticide, political orientation to violence, male domination to alcoholism, are in our genes and (...) are the inevitable consequences of natural selection. These claims, Rose asserts, are not only socially naive, but fundamentally misunderstand the active and irreducible nature of living processes. Rose argues that life depends on the elaborate web of interactions that occur within cells, organisms, and ecosystems, in which DNA has one part to play. From early in their development, living organisms have to be capable of quasi-independent existence while growing to maturity. If we are to understand life, we must recapture an understanding of the entire living organism and its trajectory through time and space. Rose calls these trajectories lifelines. Provocative and incisive, Life Beyond the Gene provides a compelling response to those enthusiasts of the gene who would deny the complexity of life. (shrink)

Louis de La Forge and the Development of Occasionalism: Continuous Creation and the Activity of the Soul STEVEN NADLER THE DOCTRINE OF DIVINE CONSERVATION is a dangerous one. It is not theologi- cally dangerous, at least not in itself. From the thirteenth century onwards, and particularly with the Summa Theologiae of St. Thomas, the notion of the continuous divine sustenance of the world of created things was, if not univer- sally accepted, a nonetheless common feature of theological orthodoxy, Chris- (...) tian and otherwise. Rather, the danger is philosophical in nature . The philosophical problem I am concerned with is not some logical incoherence at the heart of the doctrine; nor does it lie in any objections that can be raised against the arguments that, historically, have been given for the thesis that God, as a causa secundum esse, must continually act in order to conserve the world in being. The question I address -- and it is a pressing one for any seventeenth-century Cartesianmis whether the doctrine of divine conservation establishes too much. I believe that, under certain circumstances, it does, and that the ultimate ramifications of the doctrine for natural causality must be unacceptable to an orthodox Cartesian such as Louis de La Forge , perhaps the most strict follower of Descartes of the.. (shrink)

This book is an introduction to French phenomenology in the post 1945 period. Whilst many of phenomenology's greatest thinkers - Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty - wrote before this period, Steven DeLay introduces and assesses the creative and important turn phenomenology took after these figures. He presents a clear and rigorous introduction to the work of relatively unfamiliar and underexplored philosophers, including Jean-Louis Chrétien, Michel Henry, Jean-Yves Lacoste, Jean-Luc Marion and others. -/- After an introduction setting out the crucial (...) Husserlian and Heideggerian background to French phenomenology, DeLay explores Emmanuel Levinas’s ethics as first philosophy, Henry’s material phenomenology, Marion’s phenomenology of givenness, Lacoste’s phenomenology of liturgical man, Chrétien’s phenomenology of the call, Claude Romano’s evential hermeneutics, and Emmanuel Falque’s phenomenology of the borderlands. Starting with the reception of Husserl and Heidegger in France, DeLay explains how this phenomenological thought challenges boundaries between philosophy and theology. Taking stock of its promise in light of the legacy it has transformed, DeLay concludes with a summary of the field’s relevance to theology and analytic philosophy, and indicates what the future holds for phenomenology. -/- Phenomenology in France: A Philosophical and Theological Introduction is an excellent resource for all students and scholars of phenomenology and continental philosophy, and will also be useful to those in related disciplines such as theology, literature and French studies. (shrink)

According to the fox koan, the second case in the Wu-men kuan koan collection, Zen master Pai-chang encounters a fox who claims to be a former abbot punished through endless reincarnations for denying the efficacy of karmic causality. In the end he is liberated by Pai-chang's turning word, which asserts the inexorability of cause-and-effect. Most traditional interpretations of the koan focus on the philosophical issue of causality in relation to earlier Buddhist doctrines, such as dependent origination and emptiness. Dogen, the (...) founder of the Japanese Soto school, devoted two fascicles of the Shobogenzo exclusively to the fox koan. One fascicle supports a paradoxical view of causality and non-causality, the two being "two sides of the same coin"; the second strongly attacks this interpretation and defends a literal reading that asserts causality and denies non-causality. Dogen's apparent change of heart on this topic has inspired scholars of the recent Critical Buddhist methodology to evaluate the merits and weaknesses in Zen's attitude toward ethical issues and social affairs. Shifting Shape, Shaping Text examines the fox koan in relation to philosophical and institutional issues facing the Ch'an/Zen tradition in both Sung China and medieval and contemporary Japan. Steven Heine integrates his own philological analysis of the koan, textual analysis of koan collections and related literary genres in T'ang and Sung China, folklore studies, recent discourse theory, Dogen studies, and research on monastic codes and institutional history to craft an original and compelling work. More specifically, he illuminates a fascinating dimension of the entire Ch'an/Zen tradition as he carefully lays out the philosophical issues in the koan concerning causality/karma and enlightenment, the ethical issues contained therein, the bearing that certain interpretations of causality had on the creation of monastic codes and institutional security in China, the relation between Zen and folk religion as revealed by the koan, and the issue of possible antinomianism in Zen, especially as grappled with by later thinkers such as Dogen and contemporary representatives of Critical Buddhism. Finally he applies theories of "high" and "low" religion and contemporary discourse and in the process rethinks the theories and their applicability across cultures. Far-reaching yet rigorous, Shifting Shape, Shaping Text will not only attract the interest of Ch'an/Zen specialists, but also those studying folklore, popular religion, and issues concerning the nature of discourse and the relation between "high" and "low" religions. (shrink)

While previous writing on the philosophy of sport has tended to see sport as a kind of testing ground for philosophical theories devised to deal with other kinds of problems—of ethics, aesthetics, or logical categorization—here Steven Connor offers a new philosophical understanding of sport in its own terms. In order to define what sport essentially is and means, Connor presents a complete grammar of sport, isolating and describing its essential elements, including the characteristic spaces of sport, the nature of (...) sporting time, the importance of sporting objects like bats and balls, the methods of movement in sport, the role of rules and chance, and what it really means to cheat and to win. Defined as games that involve bodily exertion and exhaustion, sports simultaneously require constraint and the ability to overcome it. Sport, argues Connor, is a fundamental feature of modern humans. It is shown to be one of the most powerful ways in which we negotiate the relationship between the human and natural worlds. Encompassing a huge range of different sports, and enlisting the help of Hegel, Freud, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Adorno, Sartre, Ayer, Deleuze, and Serres, _A Philosophy of Sport _will inform, surprise, and delight thoughtful athletes and sporty philosophers alike. (shrink)

Classics of Political and Moral Philosophy provides in one volume the major writings from nearly 2,500 years of political and moral philosophy. The most comprehensive collection of its kind, it moves from classical thought (Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Cicero) through medieval views (Augustine, Aquinas) to modern perspectives (Machiavelli, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Rousseau, Hume, Adam Smith, Kant). It includes major nineteenth-century thinkers (Hegel, Bentham, Mill, Nietzsche) as well as twentieth-century theorists (Rawls, Nozick, Nagel, Foucault, Habermas, Nussbaum). Also included are numerous essays from (...) The Federalist Papers and a variety of notable documents and addresses, among them Pericles' Funeral Oration, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, and speeches by Edmund Burke, Abraham Lincoln, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, John Dewey, and Martin Luther King, Jr. The readings are substantial or complete texts, not fragments. An especially valuable feature of this volume is that the works of each author are introduced with a substantive and engaging essay by a leading contemporary authority. These introductions include Richard Kraut on Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, and Cicero; Paul J. Weithman on Augustine and Aquinas; Roger D. Masters on Machiavelli; Jean Hampton on Hobbes; Steven B. Smith on Spinoza and Hegel; A. John Simmons on Locke; Joshua Cohen on Rousseau and Rawls; Donald W. Livingston on Hume; Charles L. Griswold, Jr., on Smith; Bernard E. Brown on Hamilton and Madison; Jeremy Waldron on Bentham and Mill; Paul Guyer on Kant; Richard Miller on Marx and Engels; Richard Schacht on Nietzsche; Thomas Christiano on Nozick; John Deigh on Nagel; Thomas A. McCarthy on Foucault and Habermas; and Eva Feder Kittay on Nussbaum. Offering unprecedented breadth of coverage, Classics of Political and Moral Philosophy is an ideal text for courses in social and political philosophy, moral philosophy, or surveys in Western civilization. (shrink)

Plessner, Helmuth, The Limits of Community: A Critique of Social Radicalism (reviewed by Steven Grosby).

In Good Jew, Bad Jew Steven Friedman argues that the meaning of anti-Semitism favoured by the Israeli government and its allies prioritises loyalty to the Israeli state over identification with the Jewish people. On this view, ‘good Jews’ are those who support the Israeli state, and ‘bad Jews’ are those who criticise Zionism. This framing reflects a discursive transition over decades linked to the desire to make Israel part of Europe politically and culturally. Not only has the Zionist version (...) of anti-Semitism inverted traditional notions of Jewishness but it has transformed ‘Jewishness’ from the ‘other’ to whiteness, to an ally of white supremacists. This racial embrace goes hand in glove with the brutal practice of colonial violence evident in Gaza. Friedman makes his case drawing on the work African scholars such as Biko, Fanon and Mamdani, Southern scholars such as Ashis Nandy, as well as established scholars of the North. (shrink)

Now even more affordably priced in its second edition, Classic and Contemporary Readings in the Philosophy of Education is ideal for undergraduate and graduate philosophy of education courses. Editor Steven M. Cahn, a highly respected contributor to the field, brings together writings by leading figures in the history of philosophy and notable contemporary thinkers. The first section of the book provides material from nine classic writers, while the second section presents twenty-one recent selections that reflect diverse approaches, including pragmatism, (...) analytic philosophy, feminism, and multiculturalism. The second edition features expanded selections by Locke, Rousseau, Kant, and Dewey, along with eight new readings. (shrink)

The book_ Fate, Time, and Language: An Essay on Free Will_, published in 2010 by Columbia University Press, presented David Foster Wallace's challenge to Richard Taylor's argument for fatalism. In this anthology, notable philosophers engage directly with that work and assess Wallace's reply to Taylor as well as other aspects of Wallace's thought. With an introduction by Steven M. Cahn and Maureen Eckert, this collection includes essays by William Hasker, Gila Sher, Marcello Oreste Fiocco, Daniel R. Kelly, Nathan Ballantyne, (...) Justin Tosi, and Maureen Eckert. These thinkers explore Wallace's philosophical and literary work, illustrating remarkable ways in which his philosophical views influenced and were influenced by themes developed in his other writings, both fictional and nonfictional. Together with _Fate, Time, and Language_, this critical set unlocks key components of Wallace's work and its traces in modern literature and thought. (shrink)

This anthology applies phenomenological concepts and methods to issues of philosophical theology and philosophical theology and philosophy: the being and nature of God, and the divine modes of relatedness to nature, to society, and to the self. Essays in Phenomenological Theology contains previously unpublished papers by Iso Kern, J. N. Findlay, Charles Courtney, Thomas Prufer, Robert Williams, James Hart, Steven Laycock, and James Buchanan. It is the first volume to assemble an entire spectrum of phenomenological-theological ideas, including those of (...) neo-Platonic meditation, phenomenological neo-Thomism, Hegelian phenomenological dialectics, Husserlian transcendental reflection, and post-modern deconstructive iconoclasm. The book will be useful to philosophers and theologians seeking an enriched understanding of the rapidly-burgeoning discipline of phenomenological theology, and promises unexpected insights even to seasoned phenomenologists seeking to expand their horizons. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Steven Fuller A FRENCH SCIENCE (WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES) It is of no news to anyone with even a passing interest in the theoretical wranglings of literary critics that deconstruction is on the defensive. This is of special interest to an historian and philosopher of science such as myself because (with the notable exception of Frank Lentricchia's revisionist history of contemporary critical trends) ] most of the recent salvos (...) launched against deconstruction have been supplied by analytic philosophy.2 Indeed, some analytic philosophers have felt bold enough to enter the fray themselves. And as with other Anglo-American incursions into theoretical debates of continental origin, whatever is lost in subtlety and sheer ingenuity is made up for in clarity and commonsense. If there is one theme common to adi analytically inspired attacks on deconstruction, it is that critical method ought to be a systematic articulation of the intuitions of the average reflective reader. To be a literary critic is not to achieve esoteric insight into the uncommunicative nature of texts; rather, it is to become more fully aware of the many ways in which texts do communicate. While such advice may be reassuring, it is certainly not very "philosophical" in the sense of "deeply problematic" that deconstructionists would claim for the nature of texts. And the deconstructionists are right — so I believe. At least, I will try to show that the case for deconstruction, in all its radicalness, can be made with something of the clarity desired by analytic philosophers. A contentious critic might wonder, at this point, why the deconstructionists were not clear in the first place (thereby rendering this article superfluous). The reason, contrary to what certain "friends of deconstruction" in the analytic tradition would have us believe, is that there are few precedents in the recent history of philosophy for claims made by deconstructionists.3 It would indeed be faint praise to find, as Hacking and Rorty have maintained, that the theses of Barthes, Foucault, and Derrida were anticipated in the limpid prose style of a Quine, a Goodman, or a Kuhn.4 Why is the latter set of writers so clear, while the former set is so obscure? Our contentious critic might conclude diat clarity of style reflects a clarity of thought, and likewise for obscurity of style. In any case, both friends 2 Philosophy and Literature and foes of deconstruction tend to agree diat whatever is of value in the French texts may be derived with less effort by reading the American ones. The friends want to place deconstruction among several strains oftwentieth-century thought that would dissolve classical philosophy into a critical history of ideas, while the foes (more ingenuously perhaps) want to resume the business of practical criticism as usual and its attendant function (à la F. R. Leavis) of preserving Western Culture. Since the analytic devil can (and will) cite deconstructionist scripture for his own purposes, it is not clear that explicating Derrida will settle matters, especially since deconstruction gives an ironic twist to the search for what an author "had in mind" when he composed a particular text. It is, however, interesting to note that when one analytic philosopher recently presented a paradigm of literary criticism that allegedly compensated for the excesses of deconstruction, he resorted to Kantian talk about the intentions of the author being a "regulative ideal" toward which all responsible practical criticism aspires.5 This paradigm claims to owe to deconstruction the idea that, once an author is separated from his text, die reader becomes unable to verify any hypotheses about what the author meant by what he wrote. However, the evidence surrounding the text's composition (as well as the text itself) may be reconstructed so as to suggest a model of the audioes intentions. In that case, the explanatory adequacy of such a model would be relative to the evidence and methods available to the critic. And so, while the text certainly had a real audior who possessed a set of determinate intentions at the time ofwriting, mere is no reason to think that the most plausible model of the currendy available evidence picks out those intentions. What we have here is the first of two species of... (shrink)

Our greatest certainty and greatest mystery is our mortality. In this book, Steven M. Rosen explores the profound mystery of death and rebirth from psychological, philosophical, and alchemical perspectives. To model, embody, and contain the paradoxical transformations involved in the death-rebirth enigma, Rosen employs a paradoxical form of mathematics: the topology of the Moebius strip and Klein bottle. As we follow this alchemical odyssey, the author makes himself transparent through his dreams and brings himself tangibly into his text so (...) as to enact a dialectic of ego and Self. "In tackling the subject of death and rebirth Steven Rosen writes about our modern state of mind, how we got like this and where we need to go from here. He does all this with a psychotherapeutic insight that begins with his own subjectivity--and his own dreams--and ends with the subjectivity of the modern world. Using myths, dreams, and alchemical symbolism as well as psychological research and Jungian insights, Rosen speaks to us all from the self and the Self. A book to be read immediately, and then read again." --Christopher Hauke, Jungian analyst and author of Jung and the Postmodern: The Interpretation of Realities "How does a mental-spiritual ego, the creation of our post-Renaissance world, embrace the body as a living partner? In Dreams, Death, Rebirth, Steven M. Rosen offers a topological analysis that meets the challenge of this daunting endeavor. It is a remarkable accomplishment, and vital for the advancement of psychotherapy." --Nathan Schwartz-Salant, Jungian analyst and author of The Black Nightgown: The Fusional Complex and the Unlived Life Steven M. Rosen is professor emeritus of psychology at the College of Staten Island of the City University of New York. After receiving his PhD in psychology in 1971, he began exploring the foundations, frontiers, and poetics of science, and his work became transdisciplinary and philosophical in nature. His essays have appeared in journals and collections spanning the fields of psychology, philosophy, theoretical physics, education, semiotics, and ecology. He is the author of Science, Paradox, and the Moebius Principle (1994), Dimensions of Apeiron (2004), Topologies of the Flesh (2006), and The Self-Evolving Cosmos (2008). (shrink)

While equal opportunity for all candidates is widely recognized as a goal within academia, the implementation of specific procedures to achieve equality has resulted in vehement disputes regarding both the means and ends. To encourage a reexamination of this issue, Cahn asked three prominent American social philosophers-Leslie Pickering Francis, Robert L. Simon, and Lawrence C. Becker-who hold divergent views about affirmative action, to write extended essays presenting their views. Twenty-two other philosophers then respond to these three principal essays. While no (...) consensus is reached, the resulting clash of reasoned judgments will serve to revitalize the issues raised by affirmative action. Author note: Steven M. Cahn is Professor of Philosophy and former Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He has published numerous other books, including Morality, Responsibility, and the University. (shrink)

In this remarkably accessible, concise, and engaging introduction to moral philosophy, Steven M. Cahn brings together a rich, balanced, and wide-ranging collection of fifty readings on ethical theory and contemporary moral issues. He has carefully edited all the articles to ensure that they will be exceptionally clear and understandable to undergraduate students. The selections are organized into three parts--Challenges to Morality, Moral Theories, and Moral Problems--providing instructors with flexibility in designing and teaching a variety of ethics courses. Each reading (...) is followed by study questions. The third edition of Exploring Ethics provides more coverage of contemporary problems, featuring new selections on euthanasia, capital punishment, animal rights, affirmative action, academic ethics, the trolley problem, and the meaning of life. A Companion Website at www.oup.com/us/cahn offers a password-protected Instructor's Manual--containing a test bank, key terms with definitions, reading summaries, and PowerPoint lectures--and self-quizzes, vocabulary flashcards, and useful links for students. (shrink)

Ideal for survey courses in social and political philosophy, this volume is a substantially abridged and slightly altered version of Steven M. Cahn's Classics of Political and Moral Philosophy (OUP, 2001). Offering coverage from antiquity to the present, Political Philosophy: The Essential Texts is a historically organized collection of the most significant works from nearly 2,500 years of political philosophy. It moves from classical thought (Plato, Aristotle) through the medieval period (Aquinas) to modern perspectives (Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Hume, (...) Adam Smith, Hamilton and Madison, Kant). The book includes work from major nineteenth-century thinkers (Hegel, Marx and Engels, Mill) and twentieth-century theorists (Rawls, Nozick, Foucault, Habermas, Nussbaum) and also presents a variety of notable documents and addresses, including the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and speeches by Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr. The readings are substantial or complete texts, not fragments. An especially valuable feature of this volume is that the works of each author are introduced with an engaging essay by a leading contemporary authority. These introductions include Richard Kraut on Plato and Aristotle; Paul J. Weithman on Aquinas; Roger D. Masters on Machiavelli; Jean Hampton on Hobbes; A. John Simmons on Locke; Joshua Cohen on Rousseau and Rawls; Donald W. Livingston on Hume; Charles L. Griswold, Jr., on Adam Smith; Bernard E. Brown on Hamilton and Madison; Paul Guyer on Kant; Steven B. Smith on Hegel; Richard Miller on Marx and Engels; Jeremy Waldron on Mill; Thomas Christiano on Nozick; Thomas A. McCarthy on Foucault and Habermas; and Eva Feder Kittay on Nussbaum. (shrink)

Many human beings have considered the powers and the limits of human knowledge, but few have wondered about the power that the idea of knowledge has over us. Steven Connor's The Madness of Knowledge is the first book to investigate this emotional inner life of knowledge - the lusts, fantasies, dreams, and fears that the idea of knowing provokes. There are in-depth discussions of the imperious will to know, of Freud's epistemophilia (or love of knowledge), and the curiously insistent (...) links between madness, magical thinking, and the desire for knowledge. Connor also probes secrets and revelations, quarreling and the history of quizzes and "general knowledge," charlatanry and pretension, both the violent disdain and the sanctification of the stupid, as well as the emotional investment in the spaces and places of knowledge, from the study to the library. In an age of artificial intelligence, alternative facts, and mistrust of truth, The Madness of Knowledge offers an opulent, enlarging, and sometimes unnerving psychopathology of intellectual life. -- From Publisher, page 2 of cover. (shrink)

"To my knowledge, there has never [before] been a volume that analyzes, in one place, the actual language of science--those elements of thinking that are acknowledged to be the basis of scientific thought. . . . [Thus] this is a very important book, contributing to several fields: science, education, rhetoric, medicine, and perhaps even philosophy. . . . Darian's erudition is truly astonishing." --Celest A. Martin, Associate Professor, College Writing Program, University of Rhode Island From astronomy to zoology, the practice (...) of science proceeds from scientific ways of thinking. These patterns of thought, such as defining and classifying, hypothesizing and experimenting, form the building blocks of all scientific endeavor. Understanding how they work is therefore an essential foundation for everyone involved in scientific study or teaching, from elementary school students to classroom teachers and professional scientists. In this book, Steven Darian examines the language of science in order to analyze the patterns of thinking that underlie scientific endeavor. He draws examples from university science textbooks in a variety of disciplines, since these offer a common, even canonical, language for scientific expression. Darian identifies and focuses in depth on nine patterns--defining, classifying, using figurative language, determining cause and effect, hypothesizing, experimenting, visualizing, quantifying, and comparing--and shows how they interact in practice. He also traces how these thought modes developed historically from Pythagoras through Newton. (shrink)

Social order is regulated from above by the law but its foundation is built on norms and customs, informal social practices that enable people to make meaningful and productive uses of their time and resources. Despite the importance of these practices in keeping the social fabric together, very little of the jurisprudential literature has focused on a discussion of these norms and customs. In Social Norms in a Wired World Steven Hetcher argues that the traditional conception of norms as (...) rule-like linguistic entities is erroneous. Instead, norms must be understood as patterns of rationally governed behaviour maintained in groups by acts of conformity. Using informal game theory in the analysis of norms and customs, Hetcher applies his theory of norms to tort law and Internet privacy laws. This book will appeal to students and professionals in law, philosophy, and political and social theory. (shrink)

Nicolas de Condorcet, the innovating founder of mathematical thinking in politics, was the last great philosophe of the French Enlightenment and a central figure in the early years of the French Revolution. His political writings give a compelling vision of human progress across world history and express the hopes of that time in the future perfectibility of man. This volume contains a revised translation of 'The Sketch', written while in hiding from the Jacobin Terror, together with lesser-known writings on the (...) emancipation of women, the abolition of slavery, the meanings of freedom and despotism and reflections on revolutionary violence. The introduction by Steven Lukes and Nadia Urbinati sets these works in context and shows why Condorcet is of real interest today as we reinterpret the meaning of Enlightenment, the very idea of progress and the founding ideas of social democracy. (shrink)

Leszek Kolakowski, an eminent philosopher known mainly outside his native Poland for Main Currents of Marxism, was an enormously influential public figure in Poland. He was awarded the Order of the White Eagle when Poland was liberated and went into exile in 1968, first to North America, where he continued to give active support and advice to Solidarity, and then to Oxford. Kolakowski, who became a Fellow of the British Academy in 1980, was buried in Poland with military honours and (...) a minute's silence in the national Parliament. Obituary by Steven Lukes FBA. (shrink)

The crux of Fish's argument in "Interpreting the Variorum" is that people read in different ways because they belong to different interpretive communities. True enough. However, in the course of his argument Fish seems to collapse the distinction between the interpretive act of reading and the interpretive act of criticism. Fish uses the term interpretive strategies to refer to both the interpretive strategies performed by readers and to his critical strategy which describes these acts. However, critical models are not isomorphic (...) with reading strategies; that is, critical interpretations like Fish's are descriptions of perpetual strategies and not the strategies themselves. Fish's implicit dismissal of the reading process/reading description distinction for his own approach leads him to dismiss the distinction for other approaches. And since he has already acknowledged that people read in different ways, he concludes that different critical models are equally valid. Therefore, according to Fish, critics disagree because they read differently.1 But, as I will show, critical interpretations differ, not because critics belong to different interpretive communities of readers, but because they belong to different interpretive communities of critics. · 1. Of course, the definition of reading becomes crucial here. I am using the term to refer to the temporal interaction of the reader with the text, the moment-by-moment psycholinguistic process that occurs from the instant I open a book and perceive the title or first line, "In my younger and more vulnerable years . . ." to the moment I comprehend the final sentence, "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." Steven Mailloux, a doctoral candidate in rhetoric, linguistics, and literature at the University of Southern California, is coeditor of Checklist of Melville Reviews, and his Herman Melville: The Critical Reception and Henry David Thoreau: A Reference Guide are now in press. He is currently working on a book about contemporary movements in American literary criticism. (shrink)

An original metaphysical proposal building on classical and contemporary sources. In Centering and Extending, Steven G. Smith retrieves and refashions some of the best ideas of classical and early modern metaphysics to support insight into the natures of mental and material beings and their relations. Avoiding what he critiques as distortive paths of idealism, materialism, repressive monism, and overly permissive pluralism, Smith builds his framework on centering and extending as universal principles of formation. Identifying the basic consistency of being (...) with these principles in symmetrical partnership enables a naturalist process view that, unlike Whitehead’s, does not overbalance toward the subjective and teleological and, unlike Deleuze and Guattari’s, does not overbalance toward the material and chaotic. This view supports useful conceptions of mind and matter, form and energy, reason and cause, and a layered world order without relying on a blind concept of supervenience or emergence. It also respects and reinforces a division of roles between metaphysical sense-making and spiritual determinations of meaningfulness. Steven G. Smith is Jennie Carlisle Golding Professor of Philosophy at Millsaps College. He is the author of several books, including Worth Doing, also published by SUNY Press. (shrink)

_A rediscovery of patriotism as a virtue in line with the core values of democracy in an extremist age__ “Like you perhaps, I still regard myself as an extremely patriotic person. Which is why I so admired [this book].... __It explained my emotion to me, as it might yours to you." —David Brooks, _New York Times___ “Smith superbly illuminates the distinctiveness of the American idea of patriotism and reminds us of how important patriotism is, and how essential to making America (...) better.”—Leslie Lenkowsky, _Wall Street Journal__ The concept of patriotism has fallen on hard times. What was once a value that united Americans has become so politicized by both the left and the right that it threatens to rip apart the social fabric. On the right, patriotism has become synonymous with nationalism and an “us versus them” worldview, while on the left it is seen as an impediment to acknowledging important ethnic, religious, or racial identities and a threat to cosmopolitan globalism. Steven B. Smith reclaims patriotism from these extremist positions and advocates for a patriotism that is broad enough to balance loyalty to country with other loyalties. Describing how it is a matter of both the head and the heart, Smith shows how patriotism can bring the country together around the highest ideals of equality and is a central and ennobling disposition that democratic societies cannot afford to do without. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Mild Cognitive Impairment:What's in a Name?Steven R. Sabat (bio)Keywordslabeling, mild cognitive impairment, recall memory, selfhood, stereotype threatCorner and Bond (2006) raise a number of important conceptual issues related to the problems involved in defining mild cognitive impairment (MCI), differentiating it from normal aging, the definition of normal aging itself, and ethical issues surrounding the possible adverse effects of a diagnosis of MCI on the individuals thus described. It (...) would seem that portentous ramifications are involved and that clarifying the conceptual issues would be of great value, not only to researchers but also to the ever-growing population of elderly people. In what follows, I address some of these issues further.Problems of Definition and MeasurementOne of the problems that the authors discuss at the outset of their article concerns what methods are appropriate for detecting those with MCI: "Neuropsychological tests alone do not discriminate between normal aged-related memory loss and MCI or dementia and clinical judgment remains central to diagnosis" (Corner and Bond 2006, 5). Of course, to be able to discriminate between normal aged-related memory problems and MCI, we must first be able to define the former. What exactly is normal? As the authors correctly point out, the term has different meanings, one being normative (usual), another being nonpathologic. Is it normal (usual) for some sort of breakdown to occur in brain systems as a function of increased age? If so, is there a threshold age below which the very same physiologic breakdown is unusual? Would such a threshold age, if one existed, be the same for everyone, regardless of genotype and the cumulative interactive effects of nutrition, health, and stress-related factors over a period of decades? In effect, is some sort of memory impairment part of the natural (usual) process of aging for some people at particular ages rather than for others? And exactly what does it mean to be mildly impaired in the cognitive domain?Hogan and McKeith (2001) presented a working group's definition characterizing MCI such that people who complain about memory problems and who also provide objective evidence of such problems, yet who simultaneously display "normal general cognitive function and intact activities of daily living" (Hogan and McKeith 2001, 1131), should be identified and followed. Here again, however, we confront the problem of defining "normal general cognitive function" as well as "normal activities of daily living." Can one have normal general cognitive function without normal memory function? If so, what exactly constitutes [End Page 13] general cognitive function and on what conceptual or theoretical basis is such a definition valid? Furthermore, what sort of memory function are we talking about? Memory can be said to involve a number of stages: encoding, storage, and retrieval. Retrieval can be of the explicit type (conscious recall or recognition of specific information) with which people with Alzheimer's disease (AD) often reveal deficits or of the implicit type (a change in behavior as a result of previous experience of which the person may have no conscious recollection) as demonstrated in people with AD (Knopman and Nissen 1987). That is, people with AD can display deficits in explicit memory functions without similar deficits simultaneously in implicit memory functions.A partial answer to the question about memory loss in MCI may be found in the use of the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE; Folstein, Folstein, and McHugh 1975), originally intended to be used as a screening device, but employed more and more frequently as an outcome measure to assess cognitive decline as well as the efficacy of drug treatments. Although the examination purports to test orientation, registration, attention, calculation, recall, language (naming, repeating, reading, writing, three-stage command), and construction, a task analysis reveals that the test is not quite as "global" in the cognitive domain as it is purported to be. For example, ten of the maximum thirty points on the examination are earned for "orientation" in time and place. Yet, all of the questions in this section of the test require intact recall of the relevant information. For example, if a person is asked, "What day of the week is this?" and replies "I don't know," the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 9.1 (2002) 13-14 [Access article in PDF] Unconscious Evil Principles Steven Sverdlik DAVID WARD CONTENDS that Kant cannot explain why people perform evil acts, in the special sense that Ward attaches to the term. He suggests that if we utilize a notion of the unconscious acceptance of certain sorts of principle then a plausible explanation—that still draws on some Kantian ideas—can be given. I (...) have some worries about how successful Ward's proposal is.I do not want to go deeply into the interpretation of Kant's texts. However, I think that Ward is mistaken in claiming that "Kant was not in possession of the idea of the unconscious." The Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals contains a well-known passage suggesting some notion of unconscious motivation. The second chapter opens with a strikingly modern discussion of our inability to know our motives for acting. Kant writes that "we can never, even by the most strenuous self-examination, get to the bottom of our secret impulsions; for when moral value is in question, we are concerned, not with the actions which we can see, but with their inner principles, which we cannot see" (Paton 1964, 75). Needless to say, this is not a detailed theory about the mechanisms operating unconsciously, but it leaves room for such an account. So let us credit Kant with accepting the idea of unconscious motivation and thought. How will this help to solve the problem that Ward sees?Evil behavior, as Ward understands it, is done "simply because it is wrong." It is contrasted with nasty behavior that is due to the operation of some natural desire or emotion such as lust or anger. The problem that Ward finds in evil behavior is that it must be based on some principle. It is not instinctive or unthinking. But if we evaluate practical principles with Kantian tests, we see that evil principles fail. That is, they will be seen as incapable of being universalized. This establishes that action based on such principles is wrong, in Kant's approach. Here is where Ward finds the notion of an unconscious principle helpful. Evil people have unconsciously adopted a principle like "protect your self-image at all costs." And this can explain their harmful actions, which indeed they may not even enjoy doing.I assume that Ward means to be giving a general scheme for explaining evil behavior. Although he uses M. Scott Peck's concept of "malignant narcissism" as an illustration, the general concept of unconscious principles clearly allows for other sorts of evil. While I am not familiar with Peck's work, I have a clear sense from Ward's quotations from it that there are indeed other sorts of behavior that would strike us as evil in at least roughly Ward's sense of the term. Ward himself mentions in passing the example of concentration camp guards. I assume that some of these people are not malignant narcissists. I will therefore concentrate on the general concept of evil behavior, and the adequacy of the appeal to unconscious principles in explaining it. [End Page 13]One of my worries about Ward's proposal concerns the explanandum, the other concerns the explanans.First, consider the explanadum evil behavior. Ward's initial characterization of evil behavior is that it is "doing the wrong thing simply because it is wrong." But doing evil for its own sake—the behavior fictionally exemplified by Milton's Satan—is often said to be a conceptual impossibility. (There are, however, philosophers who have defended the idea of its possibility.) The important point is that many sorts of character that would strike us as evil in some sense do not conform to this paradoxical idea. Concentration camp guards, again, do not seem plausibly characterized as killing people simply because it is wrong to do so. Perhaps they believe that inferior races ought to be exterminated to advance the destiny of superior ones. And, curiously enough, Ward's own example of evil, Peck's malignant narcissism, is said by Ward to operate on the principle of protecting your... (shrink)

This book is third in a series dedicated to the first Homo sapiens: the Australian Aboriginal people. Steven and Evan Strong continue their investigation into the global impact of Aboriginal people, relaying that the First Australians are unique, and in no way descended from Africans or any other race.

Noel Carroll, film scholar and philosopher, offers the first serious look at the aesthetics of horror. In this book he discusses the nature and narrative structures of the genre, dealing with horror as a "transmedia" phenomenon. A fan and serious student of the horror genre, Carroll brings to bear his comprehensive knowledge of obscure and forgotten works, as well as of the horror masterpieces. Working from a philosophical perspective, he tries to account for how people can find pleasure in (...) having their wits scared out of them. What, after all, are those "paradoxes of the heart" that make us want to be horrified? (shrink)

Noel Carroll, film scholar and philosopher, offers the first serious look at the aesthetics of horror. In this book he discusses the nature and narrative structures of the genre, dealing with horror as a "transmedia" phenomenon. A fan and serious student of the horror genre, Carroll brings to bear his comprehensive knowledge of obscure and forgotten works, as well as of the horror masterpieces. Working from a philosophical perspective, he tries to account for how people can find pleasure in (...) having their wits scared out of them. What, after all, are those "paradoxes of the heart" that make us want to be horrified? (shrink)

Humour is a universal feature of human life. In this Very Short Introduction Noel Carroll considers the nature and value of humour, from its leading theories and its relation to emotion and cognition, to ethical questions of its morality and its significance in shaping society.

Noel Malcolm, one of the world's leading experts on Thomas Hobbes, presents a set of extended essays on a wide variety of aspects of the life and work of this giant of early modern thought. Malcolm offers a succinct introduction to Hobbes's life and thought, as a foundation for his discussion of such topics as his political philosophy, his theory of international relations, the development of his mechanistic world-view, and his subversive Biblical criticism. Several of the essays pay special (...) attention to the European dimensions of Hobbes's life, his sources and his influence; the longest surveys the entire European reception of his work from the 1640s to the 1750s. All the essays are based on a deep knowledge of primary sources, and many present striking new discoveries about Hobbes's life, his manuscripts, and the printing history of his works. Aspects of Hobbes will be essential reading not only for Hobbes specialists, but also for all those interested in seventeenth-century intellectual history more generally, both British and European. (shrink)

In this essay, then, I would like to address what I believe are the most compelling epistemic arguments against the notion that literature (and art more broadly) can function as an instrument of education and a source of knowledge.

Book notice Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-1 DOI 10.1007/s11016-011-9591-8 Authors Steven French, Department of Philosophy, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT UK Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Pretexts of Authority: The Rhetoric of Authorship in the Renaissance PrefaceSteven RendallPretexts of Authority: The Rhetoric of Authorship in the Renaissance Preface, by Kevin Dunn; xii & 198 pp. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994, $32.50.This study is of broader interest than its title might suggest; it engages many of the current issues in literary and cultural studies, and does so with exceptional intelligence. Drawing on Jürgen Habermas’s notion (...) of “the public sphere” and recent research on the history of private life, Dunn focuses on prefatory rhetoric in order to study the ways in which writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries struggled to establish their authority, to define themselves as authors and to regulate their relations with their readers. As they challenged collapsing medieval models of authority, Dunn argues, Renaissance writers had to invent different strategies of self-presentation and discursive legitimation, developing in the process the Renaissance conception of authorship, and eventually a new model of intellectual activity in the service of the public good. [End Page 181]The first part of the book discusses Luther’s effort to ground an oppositional discourse in a personal narrative of suffering and redemption, and Milton’s later recognition of himself as a “member incorporate” of a (Puritan) body for which he can speak as a representative; these represent two termini of the development of Protestant prefatory rhetoric. The second part traces a parallel development in “scientific” writers (Descartes, Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Sprat), moving from the Cartesian effort to ground science in a personal narrative of discovery to Bacon’s institutionalization of science and Hobbes’s theory of representation based on “common sense.”These chapters offer many insights that deserve close attention. However, since I lack space here to discuss each of them in detail, I will mention only a few points that suggest the wider implications of Dunn’s study. First: he is alive to the role of the body in prefatory rhetoric, as a “private” proof of spiritual authority (in Paul), as a flawed textual corpus (in Luther), and as a model of the body politic (in Hobbes and others). Second: he challenges—correctly, in my view—Foucault’s famous claim about the role of “penal appropriation” in the development of the modern conception of the author, arguing that “texts, books, and discourses begin to need authors at the moment when their transgression itself seeks institutionalization. In other words, it is when the subversive discourse finds itself on the brink of empowerment, of articulating something more than a negative critique of reigning orthodoxies, that the authority of the author becomes necessary” (p. 10). Third: he describes the conflict in Renaissance authors between self-authorization and the desire to prevent readers from following their example—that is, they strive both to open up and to shut off a discursive potential—and offers a subtle account of the persistence of this desire, in the form of the claim to authorial ownership, in writers fully involved in the literary marketplace. Fourth: most of the authors examined here are not traditionally regarded as “literary”; Dunn is casting a broader net, including theological, philosophical, political, and scientific writing, and this is, of course, very much in the spirit of the times—both of our own, and that of the writers discussed. For as Dunn observes, the modern notion of “literature” arises sometime around the end of the Period with which he is concerned in this book—and, perhaps, as a result of the development he describes in it. He argues that “with science having secured its discursive boundaries through the complementary myths of objectivity and public utility, literature became the new site for working out the completing claims of public and private. It is at such a site that literature begins to emerge as an independent category, a place crucial for cultural and political negotiations” (p. 16). As Dunn shows, this is reflected in the way late seventeenth-century French and English prefaces abandon advocacy for critical judgment, handing down sentences based on publicly accepted, secular norms.This fine, illuminating, readable book makes a stimulating contribution to our understanding of the history of cultural authority.Steven RendallUniversity... (shrink)

The statue and the lump of clay that constitutes it fail to share all of their kind and modal properties. Therefore, by Leibniz’s Law, the statue is not the lump. Question: What grounds the kind and modal differences between the statue and the lump? In virtue of what is it that the lump of clay, but not the statue, can survive being smashed? This is the grounding problem. Now a number of solutions to the grounding problem require that we substantially (...) revise our view of reality. In this paper, I provide a solution to this problem that does not require such a revision. I then show how my solution to the grounding problem can solve a related problem and answer a related question. The upshot is that the solution I offer is not only non-revisionary, but also fruitful. (shrink)