IntroductionResilience is a factor in how youth respond to adversity. The 88-item Adolescent Resilience Questionnaire is a comprehensive, multi-dimensional self-report measure of resilience developed with Australian youth.MethodsUsing a cross-sectional adolescent population, confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to replicate the original factor structure. Over half of the adolescents were non-white and 9th graders with a mean age of 15.5.ResultsOur exploratory factor analysis shortened the measure for which we conducted the psychometric analyses. The original factor structure was not replicated. The exploratory factor (...) analysis provided a 49-item measure. Internal consistency reliability for all 12 factors ranged from acceptable. The revised factor total scores were highly and significantly correlated with item–total correlation coefficients.ConclusionThis revised shorter 49-item version of the Adolescent Resilience Questionnaire could be deployed and has acceptable psychometric properties. (shrink)

This unique book applies concepts from the field of anthropology to clinical settings to result in a powerful and dynamic model/theory of clinical anthropology.

Essays offer a glimpse of the Vienna-born philosopher's personality, character, and life's work.

The U.S. stock market is one of the largest and most complex marketplaces in the global financial system. Over the past several decades, this market has evolved at multiple structural and temporal scales. New exchanges became active, and others stopped trading, regulations have been introduced and adapted, and technological innovations have pushed the pace of trading activity to blistering speeds. These developments have supported the growth of a rich machine-trading ecology that leads to qualitative differences in trading behavior at human (...) and machine time scales. We conduct a longitudinal analysis of comprehensive market data to quantify nonstationary dynamics throughout this system. We quantify the relationship between fluctuations in the number of active trading venues and realized opportunity costs experienced by market participants. We find that information asymmetries, in the form of quote dislocations, predict market-wide volatility indicators. Lastly, we uncover multiple micro-to-macro level pathways, including those exhibiting evidence of self-organized criticality. (shrink)

In the introduction to our volume, we discuss the need for philosophical reflection on tourism as a cultural and human phenomenon. We give a brief account of the conference which was the starting point of the discussion and papers contained in this volume. We consider pressing social and environmental issues associated with the phenomenon of tourism, tracing its roots from antiquity to the present. Consideration of the peculiar connection between tourism and human behaviour, tourism and culture, provides insights into the (...) causes and possible solutions of problems arising from mass tourism, overtourism, “revenge tourism” in the post-pandemic world – problems of social justice, environmental protection, sustainability, economic and political security, human happiness and well-being. The journey of the tourist reveals itself as a journey of self-exploration and self-discovery in a world whose natural resources, biological and cultural diversity, and capacity to sustain humans’ pursuit of happiness and pleasure are fast diminishing. Despite the “breather” afforded by the global Covid-19 pandemic to all those engaged in the practice of tourism, whether as consumers or providers, lasting improvements have yet to be implemented. Instead, tourists and tourist providers everywhere are rushing to recoup their losses and make up for lost time. The papers in this volume examine crucial social, physical, psychological and cultural factors influencing tourism practice and their significance for the nurturing of human happiness and well-being, in order to help assure the preservation of the necessary conditions for life on earth. (shrink)

Stereotyping, particularly negative stereotyping, is an important and pragmatic social issue. Contemporary mores have rightly condemned stereotyping by race, nationality and gender. Stereotyping in medicine has a number of important practical connotations. One of the most important is the attitudinal tradition of medical paternalism. Doctors have often stereotyped patients as subjects not being capable of considering relevant options in their own personal, clinical circumstances - for example, where major surgical intervention might be one course of action. Withholding full information of (...) all the outcomes, and rushing the doctor-patient decision process in such circumstances, constitutes one type of unethical stereotyping. (shrink)

The General Data Protection Regulation is a European Union regulation that will replace the existing Data Protection Directive on 25 May 2018. The most significant change is a huge increase in the maximum fine that can be levied for breaches of the regulation. Yet fewer than half of UK companies are fully aware of GDPR—and a number of those who were preparing for it stopped doing so when the Brexit vote was announced. A last-minute rush to become compliant is (...) therefore expected, and numerous companies are starting to offer advice, checklists and consultancy on how to comply with GDPR. In such an environment, artificial intelligence technologies ought to be able to assist by providing best advice; asking all and only the relevant questions; monitoring activities; and carrying out assessments. The paper considers four areas of GDPR compliance where rule based technologies and/or machine learning techniques may be relevant: Following compliance checklists and codes of conduct; Supporting risk assessments; Complying with the new regulations regarding technologies that perform automatic profiling; Complying with the new regulations concerning recognising and reporting breaches of security. It concludes that AI technology can support each of these four areas. The requirements that GDPR state for explanation and justification of reasoning imply that rule-based approaches are likely to be more helpful than machine learning approaches. However, there may be good business reasons to take a different approach in some circumstances. (shrink)

The Birth of American Law: An Italian Philosopher and the American Revolution tells the forgotten, untold story of the origins of U.S. law. Before the Revolutionary War, a 26-year-old Italian thinker, Cesare Beccaria, published On Crimes and Punishments, a runaway bestseller that shaped the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and early American laws. America's Founding Fathers, including early U.S. Presidents, avidly read Beccaria's book--a product of the Italian Enlightenment that argued against tyranny and the death penalty. Beccaria's book shaped (...) American views on everything from free speech to republicanism, to "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness," to gun ownership and the founders' understanding of "cruel and unusual punishments," the famous phrase in the U.S. Constitution's Eighth Amendment. In opposing torture and infamy, Beccaria inspired America's founders to jettison England's Bloody Code, heavily reliant on executions and corporal punishments, and to adopt the penitentiary system. The cast of characters in The Birth of American Law includes the usual suspects--George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and James Madison. But it also includes the now little-remembered Count Luigi Castiglioni, a botanist from Milan who--decades before Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America--toured all thirteen original American states before the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Also figuring in this dramatic story of the American Revolution: Madison's Princeton classmate William Bradford, an early U.S. Attorney General and Beccaria devotee; John Dickinson, the "Penman of the Revolution" who wrote of Beccaria's "genius" and "masterly hand"; James Wilson and Dr. Benjamin Rush, signers of the Declaration of Independence and fellow Beccaria admirers; and Philip Mazzei, Jefferson's Italian-American neighbor at Monticello and yet another Beccaria enthusiast. In documenting Beccaria's game-changing influence, The Birth of American Law sheds important new light on the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the creation of American law. This book is part of the Legal History Series, edited by H. Jefferson Powell, Duke University School of Law. The Birth of American Law was awarded the 2015 Scribes Book Award and the First Prize in the 2015 AAIS Book Award competition (in the 18th/19th century category). It was also named INDIEFAB's 2014 Gold Winner for History! (shrink)

A sharp distinction between religion and science is, it is argued here, implicit in Rush Rhees's thought. This distinction is, moreover, underpinned by a view of philosophy as purely descriptive, which Rhees shares with Wittgenstein. The first half of this paper criticises both the distinction and this view of philosophy. The second half is constructive rather than critical. A pattern of reasoning in religion is explored, which offers a possibility of insight to those afflicted by the tragic and premature (...) loss of loved ones; a pattern of a kind which is effectively denied by Rhees. Logical relations between this reasoning in religion and reasoning in physics are then discussed, which lend further support to the earlier critical arguments. These relations also exhibit aspects of the coherence of the conception of the world as a divinely created Cosmos, which is consistent with classical theism. (shrink)

On Simone Weil’s “Pythagorean” view, mathematics has a mystical significance. In this paper, the nature of this significance and the coherence of Weil’s view are explored. To sharpen the discussion, consideration is given to both Rush Rhees’ criticism of Weil and Vance Morgan’s rebuttal of Rhees. It is argued here that while Morgan underestimates the force of Rhees’ criticism, Rhees’ take on Weil is, nevertheless, flawed for two reasons. First, Rhees fails to engage adequately with either the assumptions underlying (...) Weil’s religious conception of philosophy or its dialectical method. Second, Rhees’ reading of Weil reflects an anti‐Platonist conception of mathematics his justification of which is unsound and whose influence impedes recognition of the coherence of Weil’s position. (shrink)

Water is the chemical matrix required for life, the molecular chain that connects all organisms on the planet. But in the twenty-first century, water may replace oil as the most prized of resources. Just as gas-guzzling SUVs use more than their share of fuel, water-guzzling regions threaten the water supply for the rest of the world. In Water, writers, scientists, architects, and artists consider the many aspects of water, at levels from the microscopic to the global, touching on subjects that (...) range from new water infrastructures to ancient bathing rituals. Water includes a chemist's accounting of the true cost of water; photographs taken inside a city's secret waterways; an urban planner's description of how Toronto, New York, Hamburg, and Seoul have redesigned and rethought their waterfront areas; a conceptual artist's series of water bottles "branded" with various modern credos; photographs of a water-damaged ledger from the 1905 Yukon gold rush; two architects' rethinking of how to collect, divert, and transport water from water-rich to water-poor regions; a philosopher's invocation of the spiritual lessons of water; and photographs of a disturbingly beautiful flooded landscape. (shrink)

In this article we consider the material dimensions of schooling as constitutive of the possibilities inherent in “fixing” education. We begin by mapping out the problem of “fixing education,” pointing to the necrophilic tendencies of contemporary education—a desire to kill what otherwise might be life-giving. In this sense, to “fix” education is to make otherwise fluid processes-of-living static. We next point to the material realities of this move to fix. After establishing the material consequences of perpetually fixing schools, we provide (...) a brief overview of two critical perspectives that might be shown as attempts to “unfix” education: critical pedagogy and unschooling. Though both offer critiques of normative education, these approaches are also bound by their failure to fully engage with the material dimensions of schooling. As such, both critical pedagogy and unschooling inadvertently cut off key possibilities for human flourishing within educational environments. In their rush to “unfix”—to counter the necrophilic tendencies of contemporary education—these approaches exclude or otherwise foreclose upon resistive challenges to the normative order that extend from the margins. In response, we turn to the possibilities for unschooling within the materially public spaces of schools. These are the spaces where fixity fails—possibility extends from unschooling in schools, from unfixing the process of fixing education. We end by considering the possibilities inherent in Community Service Learning as a valuable means to engage in a radically public, and unfixed, educational system. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Trains Of Thought And AfterthoughtsJohn EllisWhen I think about how this conference has gone, it’s hard not to begin with the fact that so many came. “We happy few” turned out not to be so few after all.* While I cannot be the most objective judge of a conference that I spent so much time helping to plan, it still seems to me that being able to listen, on (...) two successive evenings, to talks of the quality of Bernard Knox’s and Stanley Crouch’s was a rare treat. Stanley’s talk had the effect that all first-rate criticism must have; it made those who heard it want to rush out and get the book to read or reread it. And I shall long remember Bernard’s anecdote about Aristophanes being subpoenaed, which was just about the funniest and most instructive story I’ve ever heard. Singling out any of the shorter papers is unfair, for I enjoyed all of them, but I have to say that poetry as a genre would not be lagging behind the other genres (fiction and drama) in our age if there were more people who could read poetry like Rosanna Warren.Rather than commenting on how things turned out, I should tell you a little of how we wanted things to turn out, so that you can get your own sense of the relation between our intent and what actually happened. The one stark fact that faced everyone involved in planning this conference was that it was easy to say what we didn’t want to do—we could see examples of that everywhere—but deciding how to chart a new course was an altogether different question. There was one shape [End Page 197] we knew we didn’t want, but there were all kinds of possible shapes we could have chosen to replace it. The program as you heard it was in fact the result of many different trains of thought.Take the panel on poets and critics; it might seem just a nice invention, but was actually the result of a studied train of thought. The most visible sign of what has gone wrong with academic criticism is that it is now largely written for and read by other academic critics. Academic criticism in the process has lost touch with the wider world of readers and writers. Academic critical essays have become a game played on campuses in an increasingly isolated and parochial world where they are heavily involved in matters of professional hierarchy and the place of individuals within it, but in very little else in the real world. The “poets and critics” panel was, in part, an attempt to begin to bring academic criticism back to the reality of readers and writers, to subordinate the unquestionable cleverness and intellectual ingenuity of academics to a common sense and realism that recently seem to have been in somewhat short supply.The panel on how to read a book results from a quite different train of thought. Academic criticism has now assumed a forbidding verbal complexity. A highly elaborate verbal superstructure covers over the essentials of the situation—literature and its readers—to the extent that it becomes a barrier that obscures what is real in it. This panel was in part an attempt to cut through pseudo-complexity and to return to the basic elements of the situation. I might well have said “the basic theory of the situation,” since I’m always reluctant to concede theory to people who have no exclusive claim to it (as they imagine) but merely misuse it.1The notion of “back to basics” really requires no justification. There is a charming story of a man who has played golf all his life, but each year goes back to his first teacher and says to him quite simply: teach me how to play golf. The teacher instructs him as he does anyone else who has never played the game, beginning with how to hold a club, how to stand, and so on. This might seem a rather obsessive habit—unless you know who this man is. One has to assume that this... (shrink)

IN HIS COMMENTARY on Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, Garth Hallett records Wittgenstein's extensive reading of Augustine's Confessions. By contrast, he remarks that Wittgenstein never read anything of Aristotle. However, he also reports Rush Rhees as saying that at the time of his death Wittgenstein had in his possession the first two volumes of a German-Latin edition of Aquinas's Summa Theologiae, containing questions 1-26 of the Prima Pars. Question 13 concerns the Divine Names, the first article asking whether a name can (...) be given to God. Aquinas begins his answer by referring to the passage from De Interpretatione quoted above: "Since, according to the Philosopher, words are signs of ideas, and ideas the similitudes of things, it is evident that words function in the signification of things through the conception of the intellect.". (shrink)

This well crafted volume provides unflinching assessments of the philosophical values that are beginning to unite - and that continue to divide - the cultures of America and Europe. Its contributors offer arguments that are once timely, provocative, and accessible. - Larry A. Hickman, The Center for Dewey Studies, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Carbondale IL American and European Values is a far richer book than a misreading of its title might suggest: it is truly a both (American)-and (European), not an (...) either-or. The perspectives of its contributors range over time and place, from the anarchic California of Gold Rush days to modern Poland, Russia, and Turkey. Eclectic in the best sense of that word, it combines philosophy, literature, history, and even religion without ever straying far from its central theme. And, somewhat incidentally, it also demonstrates just how multifaceted and complex is the idea of pragmatism. - William McBride, Ph.D. is Arthur G. Hansen Distinguished Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Purdue University, Indiana. (shrink)

The proceedings of the Seventh Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference at the University of Nottinghamin April 1997. Contents: Material culture abd the question of social continuity in Roman Britain ( M. Grahame ); Motivation and ideologies of Romanization ( R. Haussler ); The Romanization of Italy: global accluaturation or cultural bricolage? ( N. Terrenato ); Social change and architectural diversity in Roman period Britain ( S. Clarke ); Reflections in the archaeological record of social developements of Lepcis Magna, Tripolitania ( F. (...) Condron ); Theoretical influences on two reports of Romano-British land division ( J. W. M. Peterson ); Phenoemological perspectives on roads in the landscape ( P. Rush ); The ancient monument in Romano-British ritual practices ( C. Forcey ); The sequence of ritual in cremation burials of the Roman period ( J. Pearce ); Burial and gender in alte and sub-Roman Britain ( D. Petts ); Brooches and identity in 1st century AD Britain ( S. Jundi and J. D. Hill ); A persional view of archaeology and equal opportunities' ( E. Scott ); Clavus annalis, defixiones and minski ( D. Dungworth ); Pottery and paradigms in the early western empire ( J. W. J. Hawthorne ). (shrink)

As an illustration of what Phillips called the "heterogeneity of sense," this essay concentrates on differences in what is meant by a "reason for belief." Sometimes saying that a belief is reasonable simply commends the belief's unquestioned acceptance as a part of what we understand as a sensible outlook. Here the standard picture of justifying truth claims on evidential grounds breaks down; and it also breaks down in cases of fundamental moral and religious disagreement, where the basic beliefs that we (...) hold affect our conception of what counts as a reliable ground of judgment. Phillips accepts the resultant variations in our conceptions of rational judgment as a part of logic, just as Wittgenstein did. All objective means of determining the truth or falsity of an assertion presume some underlying conceptual agreement about what counts as good judgment. This means that the possibility of objective justification is limited. But no pernicious relativism results from this view, for as Wittgenstein said, "After reason comes persuasion." There is, moreover, a non-objective criterion of sorts in the moral and religious requirement that one be able to live with one's commitments. In such cases, good judgment is still possible, but it differs markedly from the standard model of making rational inferences. (shrink)

In approaching the subject of this symposium we have both worked from an assumption about the future of philosophia perennis. This is that a better general assessment of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language in his Philosophical Investigations is likely to lead to better work in the crucial areas of metaphysics and epistemology. We shall not argue for this assumption here. But we begin by stating it to make clear why we shall attempt some particular assessments of a few passages early (...) in the Investigations and of a few famous remarks offered about them by Wittgenstein’s close disciple and critical commentator, Rush Rhees. For we are flirting with at least two further assumptions. A stronger and riskier one is that the strengths and weaknesses of the Investigations’ initial discussions may well have had a profound effect on the wisdom of the work as a whole. A weaker one is that if we can find sources of error as well as inspiration in some of Wittgenstein’s beginning remarks and in some of his dedicated followers’ comments, then other philosophers will be less intimidated by his philosophical and literary genius or by the obvious talents of many who are called Wittgensteinians. Thus we hope that our particular investigations can contribute to a more effective general assessment of his philosophy of language and so stimulate further hopes among those who believe—as we do—that the most central problems of philosophy can gradually be solved but never be dissolved. (shrink)

The idea for this collection of essays arose out of conversations I had with D. Z. Phillips in Claremont in 2000: a set of philosophical essays recognizing and arising out of something I took to be both interesting and good going on at University College, Swansea, roughly from the 1950s into the 1990s. I envisioned eight essays, each in some way taking up the work of one of eight individuals - Rush Rhees, Peter Winch, R. F. Holland, J. R. (...) Jones, H. O. Mounce, D. Z. Phillips, Ilham Dilman, and R. W. Beardsmore - each of whom taught at Swansea for a substantial period during those years, these being followed by a ninth essay providing something of an overview of the other eight essays and thereby of philosophy at Swansea during the same period. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:John Gregory and the Invention of Professional Medical Ethics and the Profession of Medicine by Laurence B. McCullough, John Gregory’s Writings on Medical Ethics and Philosophy of Medicine ed. by Laurence B. McCullough, Medicine and Morals in the Enlightenment: John Gregory, Thomas Percival and Benjamin Rush by Lisbeth HaakonssenHeiner F. KlemmeLaurence B. McCullough. John Gregory and the Invention of Professional Medical Ethics and (...) the Profession of Medicine. Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998. Pp. xv + 347. Cloth, $140.00.Laurence B. McCullough, editor. John Gregory’s Writings on Medical Ethics and Philosophy of Medicine. Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998. Pp. xi + 254. Cloth, $105.00.Lisbeth Haakonssen. Medicine and Morals in the Enlightenment: John Gregory, Thomas Percival and Benjamin Rush. Amsterdam, Atlanta: Rodopi, 1997. Pp. x + 247. Paper, $20.50.The Scottish Enlightenment is widely appreciated for its contributions to philosophy, economics, sociology, law, chemistry, and medicine. The ideas and theories advanced by Hume, Smith, Millar, and Ferguson are still widely debated. John Gregory (1724–1773), important in his own time, is not as well known as some of his friends and colleagues. He was professor of medicine at the University of Edinburgh from 1766 to 1773, where he taught introductory lectures on the theory and practice of medicine. A set of extensive student notes from these lectures, entitled Observations on the Duties and Offices of a Physician, appeared anonymously in 1770. Two years later, Gregory himself published a revised version of his lectures under the title Lectures on the Duties and Qualifications of a Physician. These two books are said to mark the beginnings of professional medical ethics in the English-speaking world. They are also sometimes characterized as having anticipated bioethics.McCullough’s comprehensive John Gregory and the Invention of Professional Medical Ethics and the Profession of Medicine is the first modern intellectual biography of Gregory. Based on extensive research into eighteenth-century institutional context and the study of hitherto unknown manuscripts, he gives a full account of Gregory’s education at Edinburgh and Leiden, and his practice and teaching of medicine at Aberdeen, London, and Edinburgh. He stresses the importance of Gregory’s membership in the Aberdeen Philosophical Society and his close contact with Mrs. Montagu and her Circle for the understanding of his medical ethics. McCullough also shows that Bacon’s experimental method had a decisive influence on Gregory. Gregory took over Bacon’s three offices or ends of medicine: preservation of health, prolonging of life, and curing of diseases. In 1772, perhaps anticipating his premature death from hereditary gout, he added a fourth office, namely easing the pain of dying. Gregory referred mainly to Bacon (and Reid) in his Lectures to make clear how we can enlarge our medical knowledge by the method of experience and observation, pointing out that the progress of medicine had been seriously retarded by the way in which it was taught since Hippocrates. He also thought it was handicapped by the view that only professionals [End Page 535] should practice it, and claimed that even quacks have their advantages because their interest and reputation seldom suffer from the failure of the experiments necessary for the improvement of the medical profession.Gregory also argued that we should regard medicine not as a trade but as an art. In this context the principle of sympathy (or humanity) became important for him. Sympathy was the basis of the central duties in his Lectures. In a time of extreme instability of manners, when medicine was regarded more as a trade than an art, there was no physician-patient relationship based on the epistemological and moral authority of the physician. According to McCullough, it was Gregory who created “the physician-patient relationship as fiduciary. The virtues of the physician as fiduciary—openness to conviction, tenderness, and steadiness—provided for him the moral causes that would gather physicians together into a group worthy of the name, ‘profession,’ in its intellectual and moral senses” (265). The physician should no longer view his patients as moral strangers.McCullough claims that Gregory’s medical ethics is not just of historical interest, providing bioethics with its own history. It is also of... (shrink)

When President Donald Trump honored radio host Rush Limbaugh with the Presidential Medal of Freedom during the State of the Union Address in 2020, nearly everyone knew why this was happening. A rad...

Acknowledgements -- 1. Interpreting Eighteenth-Century Medical Ethics -- Etiquette and Monopoly -- Sympathy and Contract -- A New Interpretation -- 2. John Gregory: Medical Ethics and Common Sense -- Personality and Profession -- The Art and Science of Medicine -- Duties of a Polite Profession -- 3. Thomas Percival: The Duty of Public Office -- Character and Context -- Medical Ethics and Medical Practice -- 4. Benjamin Rush: Medical Ethics for a New Republic -- Character and Connections -- (...) Medical Science -- Medicalized Ethics -- Epilogue -- Index. (shrink)

In his well known paper ‘Wittgenstein’s Builders’ Professor Rush Rhees has rightly criticized some appeals that Wittgenstein made to certain so-called ‘primitive languages’ while developing the early sections of the Philosophical Investigations. These appeals are taken by Wittgenstein to expose the shortcomings of an account given by Augustine at Confessions I, 8 of meaning and of learning language. I shall try first in this discussion to make it clear that at least some of Rhees’ criticisms and complaints are made (...) for very dubious reasons. Then I shall try to show that there are much better reasons for dissatisfaction, reasons which may tie up with recurrent muddles in Wittgenstein’s later thought. It will be contended that there is real point in construing several Wittgensteinian appeals to primitive languages as being somewhat vitiated by a systematic mistake. For, if I am right, a curious ambivalence arises in the text which results from confusion about what is largely false, because it is so inadequate, and what is wholly in error, because it is so fundamentally incoherent as to invite the label ‘Nonsense’. (shrink)

John Locke's political theory has been the subject of many detailed treatments by philosophers and political scientists. But The Lockean Theory of Rights is the first systematic, full-length study of Locke's theory of rights and of its potential for making genuine contributions to contemporary debates about rights and their place in political philosophy. Given that the rights of persons are the central moral concept at work in Locke's and Lockean political philosophy, such a study is long overdue.

Three general issues emerge from the preceding papers: a confusion between judgement and related activities such as decision making, problem solving, and attitudes; differences in the underlying assumptions about the nature of judgement; and different approaches for testing the adequacy of theories human judgement. The implications of these issues for studying human judgement processes and for future research priorities in this area are briefly discussed.

In this essay I will discuss the relationship between two of the most basic ideas in political and legal philosophy: the justification of the state and state legitimacy. I plainly cannot aspire here to a complete account of these matters; but I hope to be able to say enough to motivate a way of thinking about the relation between these notions that is, I believe, superior to the approach which seems to be dominant in contemporary political philosophy. Today showing that (...) a state is justified and showing that it is legitimate are typically taken to require the very same arguments. I will argue that this contemporary stance obscures the difference between two central ways in which we should morally evaluate states, and it generates confusions about other serious practical issues, such as those surrounding our moral obligations to comply with law. I begin with brief discussions of the ideas of justification and legitimacy and with an attempt to capture what ought to be most central in our concerns about these ideas. I turn then to two basic ways of thinking about the relation between justification and legitimacy that I want to distinguish: what I will call the Lockean and the Kantian approaches. Next, I argue that the minority Lockean approach to this issue captures essential features of institutional evaluation that the majority Kantian approach does not; and I add brief mention of one further complication facing any adequate account of political evaluation. (shrink)

‘Rights and Territories: A Reply to Nine, Miller, and Stilz’ defends the Lockean theory of states’ territorial rights (as this theory was presented in Boundaries of Authority) against the critiques of Nine, Miller, and Stilz. In response to Nine’s concern that such a Lockean theory cannot justify the right of legitimate states to exclude aliens, it is argued that a consent-based theory like the Lockean one is flexible enough to justify a wide range of possible incidents of territorial rights – (...) importantly including, though not necessarily including, the sort of right to exclude aliens that is familiar from actual political practice. Miller’s criticisms are more wide-ranging. In response, the article argues that Lockean labor-based property rights are both stronger and more enduring than Miller suggests and that nationalism’s resources for dealing with concerns about rights-supersession and trapped minorities are importantly overstated by Miller. Against Stilz’s Kantian, ‘presentist’ account of states’ authority over persons and territories, it is argued that the rectification of past (historical) wrongs remains morally crucial even in the context of otherwise-just societies and that Stilz’s Kantian/rawlsian position unconvincingly privileges the rights to autonomy of territorially concentrated groups over those of dissenting individuals or wrongfully dispersed groups. (shrink)

Every political theorist will need this book . . . . It is more 'important' than 90% of the work published in philosophy."--Joel Feinberg, University of Arizona.

A. John Simmons is widely regarded as one of the most innovative and creative of today's political philosophers. His work on political obligation is regarded as definitive and he is also internationally respected as an interpreter of John Locke. The characteristic features of clear argumentation and careful scholarship that have been hallmarks of his philosophy are everywhere evident in this collection. The essays focus on the problems of political obligation and state legitimacy as well as on historical theories (...) of property and justice. Cumulatively the collection presents a distinctive social and political philosophy, exploring the nature of our most fundamental rights and obligations, and displaying the power and plausibility of Lockean ideal theory. (shrink)

A. John Simmons is widely regarded as one of the most innovative and creative of today's political philosophers. His work on political obligation is regarded as definitive and he is also internationally respected as an interpreter of John Locke. The characteristic features of clear argumentation and careful scholarship that have been hallmarks of his philosophy are everywhere evident in this collection. The essays focus on the problems of political obligation and state legitimacy as well as on historical theories (...) of property and justice. Cumulatively the collection presents a distinctive social and political philosophy, exploring the nature of our most fundamental rights and obligations, and displaying the power and plausibility of Lockean ideal theory. (shrink)

There is a theorem that shows that it is impossible for an algorithm to jointly satisfy the statistical fairness criteria of Calibration and Equalized Odds non-trivially. But what about the recently advocated alternative to Calibration, Base Rate Tracking? Here we show that Base Rate Tracking is strictly weaker than Calibration, and then take up the question of whether it is possible to jointly satisfy Base Rate Tracking and Equalized Odds in non-trivial scenarios. We show that it is not, thereby establishing (...) an even more general impossibility theorem. (shrink)

In these discussions, Rush Rhees, who was a student and close friend of Wittgenstein, works out what he has learned from Wittgenstein's personal teaching and from study of his published and (at the time) unpublished writings. Some are review articles of books on Wittgenstein, and these are devoted to exposition of Wittgenstein's views. Others are independent discussions of special points in Wittgenstein's philosophy. The longest article, here published for the first time, is an account or record of what Wittgenstein (...) said about continuity in private discussion in 1938. (shrink)

It is claimed by philosophers as diverse as Burke, Walzer, Dworkin, and MacIntyre that our political obligations are best understood as "associative" or "communal" obligations--that is, as obligations that require neither voluntary undertaking nor justification by "external" moral principles, but rather as "local" moral responsibilities whose normative weight derives entirely from their assignment by social practice. This paper identifies three primary lines of argument that appear to support such assertions: conceptual arguments, the arguments of nonvoluntarist contract theory, and communitarian arguments (...) (which emphasize both an "identity thesis" and a "normative independence thesis"). However, each of these lines of argument fails to show that political obligations are associative obligations. (shrink)

When officials of some political society portray their state as legitimate - and when do they not! - they intend to be laying claim to a large body of rights, the rights in which their state's legitimacy allegedly consists. The rights claimed are minimally those that states must exercise if they are to retain effective control over their territories and populations in a world composed of numerous autonomous states. Often the rights states are trying to claim in asserting their legitimacy (...) go far beyond this minimum. But whether a state's claims are modest or extravagant, the rights claimed invariably fall into three categories. The first category is a set of rights held over or against those persons who fall within the state's claimed legal jurisdiction - what I will call rights over subjects. The second is a set of rights claimed against those persons without the state's jurisdiction - what we can call rights against aliens. And the third category is a set of rights held over a particular geographical territory (whose extent largely determines the scope of the state's jurisdiction) - call these rights over territory. The rights states claim in these three categories jointly define their conception of the sovereignty that they (or their governments or institutions) enjoy, sovereignty that is more extensive (strong, absolute) as the rights asserted in these categories are more numerous and wide-ranging. It is principally on the third of these categories - on the nature and possible moral bases for the claims states make over geographical territories - that I will focus in this essay. The modern state is a territorial entity, and it claims to be legitimately so. Sidgwick was surely correct when he wrote that "it seems essential to the modern conception of a State that its government should exercise supreme dominion over a particular portion of the earth's surface ... Indeed, in modern political thought the connection between a political society and its territory is so close that the two notions almost blend." Common sense seems to view the territoriality of the modern state as natural and unquestionable. That, perhaps, explains why so little has been written, either by contemporary theorists or by the authors of the classics of modern political philosophy, on the moral bases of the modern state's claimed rights over territory. States typically claim not only legal authority over their territories (i.e., that their rights over those territories should be affirmed by international law), but moral authority as well - at the very least insofar as the relevant principles of international law are thought themselves to have moral weight. My concern here, then, will be with the possible moral bases for the kinds of claims made over geographical territories by typical modern states. (shrink)

My aim of this paper is to clarify, and in a certain very limited way to defend, historical theories of property rights (and their associated theories of social or distributive justice). It is important, I think, to better understand historical rights for several reasons: first, because of the extent to which historical theories capture commonsense, unphilosophical views about property and justice; then, because historical theories have fallen out of philosophical fashion, and are consequently not much scrutinized anymore; and finally, because (...) of (what I see as) the continuing need to better understand the historical components of our society's responsibilities to the descendants of victims of systematic injustice in our own past. The case I will have in mind throughout is that of the property claims of Native American tribes, claims based on their historical standing as the original owners of certain lands and resources. And while I will concentrate here only on the question of rectifying past violations of property rights, this will constitute at least a start to answering more general questions about just rectification, which includes the more serious and less compensable wrongs of violence against persons. (shrink)

The problem of justifying legal punishment has been at the heart of legal and social philosophy from the very earliest recorded philosophical texts. However, despite several hundred years of debate, philosophers have not reached agreement about how legal punishment can be morally justified. That is the central issue addressed by the contributors to this volume. All of the essays collected here have been published in the highly respected journal Philosophy & Public Affairs. Taken together, they offer not only significant proposals (...) for improving established theories of punishment and compelling arguments against long-held positions, but also ori-ginal and important answers to the question, "How is punishment to be justified?"Part I of this collection, "Justifications of Punishment," examines how any practice of punishment can be morally justified. Contributors include Jeffrie G. Murphy, Alan H. Goldman, Warren Quinn, C. S. Nino, and Jean Hampton. The papers in Part II, "Problems of Punishment," address more specific issues arising in established theories. The authors are Martha C. Nussbaum, Michael Davis, and A. John Simmons. In the final section, "Capital Punishment," contributors discuss the justifiability of capital punishment, one of the most debated philosophical topics of this century. Essayists include David A. Conway, Jeffrey H. Reiman, Stephen Nathanson, and Ernest van den Haag. (shrink)

Anarchist political philosophers normally include in their theories (or implicitly rely upon) a vision of a social life very different than the life experienced by most persons today. Theirs is a vision of autonomous, noncoercive, productive interaction among equals, liberated from and without need for distinctively political institutions, such as formal legal systems or governments or the state. This "positive" part of anarchist theories, this vision of the good social life, will be discussed only indirectly in this essay. Rather, I (...) want to focus here on the "negative" side of anarchism, on its general critique of the state or its more limited critique of the specific kinds of political arrangements within which most residents of modern political societies live. Even more specifically, I will center my discussion on one particular version of this anarchist critique - the version that is part of the theory now commonly referred to as "philosophical anarchism". Philosophical anarchism has been much discussed by political philosophers in recent years. But it has not, I think, been very carefully defined or adequately understood. My object here will be to clear the ground for a fair evaluation of philosophical anarchism, by offering a more systematic account of the nature of the theory and of possible variants of the theory, and by responding to the most frequent objections to the theory. I hope by this effort to present philosophical anarchism as a more attractive, or at least a less obviously flawed, political philosophy. (shrink)

John Locke's name is invariably included on lists of the modern fathers of social contract thought. This chapter begins with a brief discussion on the basics of social contract thought and the specific ways in which Locke's political philosophy participates in the social contract tradition. In Locke's day, and for well over a century before Locke, social contract theories almost always involved historical claims as well, with the precise relationship between the historical and normative wings of the theory varying (...) considerably between theories. The political voluntarism of Locke's social contract theory is utterly non‐historical and thoroughly individualist. To join an existing society simply involves consenting to the standing terms of the social contract of that society. Locke voices the now familiar democratic insistence that representative government must involve only "fair and equal representation". (shrink)

[Edited from Conclusion section:] We have looked at various challenging issues to do with getting connectionism to cope with high-level cognitive activities such a reasoning and natural language understanding. The issues are to do with various facets of generalization that are not commonly noted. We have been concerned in particular with the special forms these issues take in the arena of propositional attitude processing. The main problems we have looked at are: (1) The need to construct explicit representations of generalizations, (...) not just generalize correctly to individual cases; (2) The need to be able to match two or more complex short-term information structures, to enable rapid generalization from recent examples rather than from long-term memories; (3) The need to represent and reason with anomalous combinations of concepts; (4) The need to perform embedded reasoning. This presents special problems for systems using non-concatenative representations (as in mainstream connectionist approaches). We also touched on vague quantification in attitude report complements. Neither this topic nor that of analogies between short-term structures (point 2) has been adequately addressed in the symbolic framework, let alone in connectionism. -/- The opportunities and problems covered are put forward as things worth being optimistic about or pessimistic about, respectively. They are not put forward as decisive arguments for or against connectionism. The hope is that this chapter contributes to a greater understanding of the connectionist/symbolist gap by presenting some unusual issues and by throwing new light on some well known ones. (shrink)