Stephen Nickell: Practical Issues in UK Monetary Policy, 2000-2005 Alan C Dessen: Staging Matters: Shakespeare, the Director, and the Theatre Historian Lord Bingham of Cornhill: The Judges: Active or Passive? Marilyn Strathern: Useful Knowledge Jane Stabler: Byron, Conversation and Discord Keith Wrightson: Mutualities and Obligations: Changing Social Relationships in Early Modern England Carlo Ginzburg: Dante's Epistle to Cangrande and its Two Authors Colin Renfrew: Becoming Human: the Archaeological Challenge Lothar von Falkenhausen: The Inscribed Bronzes from Yangjiacun: New Evidence (...) on Social Structure and Historical Consciousness in Late Western Zhou China Joseph Koerner: Everyman in Motion: from Bosch to Bruegels and Notes on Lectures. (shrink)

CONSENSUS AND PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUES Various atomistic and individualistic theories of knowledge, language, ethics and politics have dominated philosophical ...

In addressing the metaphysical question of what colours are, a consideration that is commonly appealed to is how colours are represented—typically in perceptual experiences, but also in beliefs and linguistic utterances. Although representations need not accurately reflect the nature of what they represent—indeed, they need not represent anything that actually exists at all—the way colours are represented is often taken to provide at least a defeasible guide to the metaphysics: all else being equal, it seems we should prefer a theory (...) of what colours that is consistent with the way that they appear; otherwise, our theory of the nature of colour entails a potentially unattractive error theory about ordinary colour ascriptions. (shrink)

The Metaphysics of Knowledge presents the thesis that knowledge is an absolutely fundamental relation, with an indispensable role to play in metaphysics, philosophical logic, and philosophy of mind and language. Knowledge has been generally assumed to be a propositional attitude like belief. But Keith Hossack argues that knowledge is not a relation to a content; rather, it a relation to a fact. This point of view allows us to explain many of the concepts of philosophical logic in terms of (...) knowledge. Hossack provides a theory of facts as structured combinations of particulars and universals, and presents a theory of content as the property of a mental act that determines its value for getting knowledge. He also defends a theory of representation in which the conceptual structure of a content is taken to picture the fact it represents. This permits definitions to be given of reference, truth, and necessity in terms of knowledge. Turning to the metaphysics of mind and language, Hossack argues that a conscious state is one that is identical with knowledge of its own occurrence. This allows us to characterize subjectivity, and, by illuminating the "I"-concept, allows us to gain a better understanding of the concept of a person. Language is then explained in terms of knowledge, as a device used by a community of persons for exchanging knowledge by testimony. The Metaphysics of Knowledge concludes that knowledge is too fundamental to be constituted by something else, such as one's functional or physical state; other things may cause knowledge, but do not constitute it. (shrink)

This book examines the politics of diversity, and explores potential sources of support for an inclusive solidarity, in particular political sources of solidarity.

A critical prediction of the E-Z Reader model is that experimental manipulations that disrupt early encoding of visual and orthographic features of the fixated word without affecting subsequent lexical processing should influence the processing difficulty of the fixated word without affecting the processing of the next word. We tested this prediction by monitoring participants’ eye movements while they read sentences in which a target word was presented either normally or altered. In the critical condition, the contrast between the target word (...) and the background was substantially reduced. Such a reduction in stimulus quality is typically assumed to have an impact that is largely confined to a very early stage of word recognition. Results were consistent with the E-Z Reader model: This faint presentation had a robust influence on the duration of fixations on the target word without substantially altering the processing of the next word. (shrink)

Knowing the content of art -- Consciousness, exemplars, and art -- Aesthetic theory, feminist art ,and autonomy -- Value, expression, and globalization -- Artistic creation, freedom, and self -- Aesthetics, death, and beauty -- Aesthetic experience, intentionality, and the form of representation -- Theories of art, and art as theory of the world -- Self-trust, disagreement, and reasonable acceptance -- Social reason, aggregation, and collective wisdom -- Knowledge, autonomy, and art in loop theory.

In the final third of his paper, Pailthorp proposes the following analysis of knowledge.

Harry G. Frankfurt has presented a case of a counterfactual intervener CI with knowledge and power to control an agent so he will do A. He concludes that if the agent prefers to do A and there is no intervention by CI, the agent has acted of his own free will and is morally responsible for doing A, though he lacked an alternative possibility. I consider the consequences for freedom and moral responsibility of CI having a complete plan P for (...) all actions of an agent, Lucky, who luckily has preferences that accord with P, and I extend the argument to all citizens of a land, Luckyland, who are like Lucky. I argue the citizens of Luckyland have free will but lack moral responsibility because of the connection between moral responsibility, reactive attitudes and future action. Furthermore, the presence of CI and his plan P may allow free will but is incompatible with freedom of preference. Preference concerns alternatives excluded by CI. I argue that a special higher order preference for the preference structure, a power preference, ends the regress of higher order preference and explains the first order preference. Causal determinism is compatible with freedom of preference explained by a power preference when a power preference would also explain an alternative preference. The remoteness argument for incompatibility fails because of a lack of transitivity causal explanation. The power preference is the self-explained source of freedom of preference. That basic freedom may be limited by government knowledge of our preferences, even if, like Lucky, our preferences do not provoke intervention and we conform of our own free will. (shrink)

The monograph explains how knowledge requires the capacity to justify or defend the target claim of knowledge. Defensibility is based on a background system. Lehrer argues that reflection on experience yields a self-referential exemplar representation.This is the novel contribution of his new book to truth about the perceptual world.

There are those philosophers and historians of science who claim that the acceptance and rejection of scientific theories is underdetermined by experimental results. They conclude that there is no rational method for deciding such matters solely on the basis of empirical information. The acceptance and rejection of scientific theories depends on social influence and is settled by social dominance. This I call the dominance thesis. There are also those who hold, on the contrary, that the acceptance and rejection of theories (...) in science is based solely on empirical information according to a rational method. They conclude that the acceptance and rejection of scientific theories is fully determined by experimental results. This I call the experimentalism thesis. The dominance thesis and the experimentalism thesis are both false. Both share a common premise, to wit, that empirical information is limited to experimental results. There is, however, another source of empirical information, the opinions of experts. When such social information is properly aggregated, the acceptance and rejection of scientific theories, though underdetermined by experimental results, is fully determined by the total information available. (shrink)

Some critiques of cybermedicine claim that it is problematic because it fails to create physician–patient relationships. But, electronically mediated encounters do create such relationships. The issue is the nature and quality of those relationships and whether they are conducive to good patient care and meet the ethical ideals and standards of medicine. In this paper, I argue that effective communication and compassion are, in most cases, necessary for the establishment of trusting and morally appropriate physician–patient relationships. The creation of these (...) relationships requires patients and physicians to take psychological and emotional risks and to make commitments to each other. The problem is that by altering the form and content of verbal and non-verbal behaviors and by limiting the kinds of interactions that can take place, cybermedicine makes risk-free interactions easier and more commonplace and retards the development of physician compassion and patient trust. In doing so, cybermedicine encourages morally inappropriate physician–patient relationships. I argue that Merleau-Ponty''s notion of embodiment and Kierkegaard''s criticisms of disinterested reflection help us to understand how cybermedicine can undermine patient health and well being and why it should be seen as a possible threat to the moral integrity of physician–patient relationships. (shrink)

Analytic political philosophy tries to make our political language more precise. But in doing so it risks departing from our natural language and intuitions. This article examines this tension. We...

An examination, by a diverse field of experts, of Pickering's mangle theory and its applicability (or lack thereof) beyond the limited cases he presented in the ...

Why History? is a compelling introduction to the issue of history and ethics. Designed to provoke discussion, the book asks whether and why a good knowledge and understanding of the past is desirable. In the context of current postmodern thinking, Keith Jenkins suggests that the goal of "learning lessons from the past" actually means learning lessons from stories written by historians and others. If the past as history has no foundation, can anything ethical be gained from history? Daring and (...) controversial, Why History? presents liberating challenges to history and ethics, proposing that we have reached an emancipatory moment which is well beyond the "end of history.". (shrink)

This article supports H. L. A. Hart's “any reasons” thesis (defended consistently from the first edition of The Concept of Law in 1961 to the Postscript to the second edition of 1994) that legal officials may accept law for any reasons, including non‐moral reasons. I develop a conception of non‐moral aesthetic ideals of official conduct which may provide legal officials with reasons to accept and apply even morally iniquitous law. I use this conception in order to rebut Gerald Postema's and (...) Joseph Raz's criticisms of Hart's view, and suggest that my revisions offer reasons for renewed confidence in Hart's account of law's normativity. (shrink)

There is a contemporary conflict between individualistic andcommunitarian conceptions of rationality. Robert Goodin describes it asa conflict between an enlightenment individualistic conception of a``sovereign artificer'''' and ``a socially unencumbered self'''' ascontrasted with the communitarian conception of a ``socially embeddedself'''' whose identity is formed by his or her community. Should wejustify and explain rationality individualistically or socially? This isa false dilemma when consensus is reached by a model articulated byKeith Lehrer and Carl Wagner. According to this model, the consensusresults from the (...) positive weights individuals give to others and use tocontinually average and, thus, aggregate their allocations. Aggregationconverges toward a consensus in which the social preference and theindividual preferences become identical. The truth of communitarianismis to be found in the aggregate and the truth of individualism in theaggregation. The original conflict dissolves in rational consensus. (shrink)

We would like to thank Ian Carter and Matthew Kramer for their challenging reply to our recent article. Dowding and van Hees is one of a series of articles in which we try to address measurement issues with regard to individual freedom. Our aim is to provide a conception of freedom that will eventually yield a way of measuring the relative freedom of groups of people within a society and a relative measure of freedom across societies. In doing so, we (...) draw upon the important work of Carter and Kramer, but as should be clear, we also depart from it in several respects. (shrink)

Environmental eco-centrism, the claim that all members of the biosphere are ontologically and axiologically equal, presents a challenge to traditional ethical conceptions of the special status of humanity. Confucian and Kantian ethics approach this topic, and its application to other animals, in different ways: Confucianism employs stories that promote insight into the importance of sincerity and compassion to all animals, including non-human ones; Kant employs abstract reasoning to argue that non-human animals deserve respect because we humans share their basic nature. (...) We argue that, taken together, these two approaches preserve what is most important in eco-centrism, but without sacrificing human dignity in the process. (shrink)

I argue here (in Part II) for mind-body dualism --- a dualism of substances, not merely of properties. I also investigate (in Part Ill) dualism’s relevance to the question of whether one can survive the death of one’s body. Naturally the argument occurs in a philosophical context, and (in Part I) I begin by making that context explicit.