A new translation of two essential works on Deleuze, written by one of his contemporaries. From the publication of Deleuze: A Philosophy of the Event to his untimely death in 2006, Francois Zourabichvili was regarded as one of the most important new voices of contemporary philosophy in France. His work continues to make an essential contribution to Deleuze scholarship today. This edition makes two of Zourabichvili's most important writings on the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze available in a single volume. A (...) Philosophy of the Event is an exposition of Deleuze's philosophy as a whole, while the complementary Deleuze's Vocabulary approaches Deleuze's work through an analysis of key concepts in a dictionary form. This new translation is set to become an event within Deleuze Studies for many years to come. Key Features: Distinguishes Deleuze's notion of the event from the phenomenological, ontological and voluntarist conceptions that continue to lay claim to it today; With an introduction by Gregg Lambert and Daniel W. Smith, two of the world's leading commentators on Deleuze, explaining the key themes and arguments of Zourabichvili's work. (shrink)

Abstract Employing an extended case method ethnography (Burawoy 1998), the researcher joined five new members forming a spiritualist's group under the leadership of an experienced advocate. Over a period of eighteen months, the researcher attended all the group's activities and events. Data were collected to reflexively interrogate the process theory of conversion proposed by Lewis Rambo (1993). The data revealed conversion to be a multifaceted and dynamic process of cognitive change, mediated by structural, and contextual forces. The results provide a (...) reconceptualization of Rambo's theory, presenting a theoretical expansion of the model emphasizing its mechanisms of action. The paper details the composition of the “Interaction-Commitment” mechanism, operationalized within four submechanisms emanating from Rambo's roles, rituals, rhetoric, and relationships. This longitudinal study shows that most of the hard work toward conversion occurs before any formal interaction with a conversion advocate. Conversion operates most effectively under conditions of cognitive economy wherein the belief path follows a path of least cognitive expenditure. (shrink)

The remarkable advances in continuing elucidation of the anatomy, physiology, and pathology of the central nervous system in recent experimental animal and clinical studies have provided new contexts for evaluating earlier historical and current controversies on human brain?structure?function and brain?mind relationships. Churchland's Neurophilosophy reviews and critically evaluates the implications of the recent advances in the various neurosciences for formulation of a comprehensive concept of the nature of the mind and the historical controversies on human structure?function and brain?mind relationships. Although uneven, (...) it is a monumental effort and a remarkable achievement that will provide new, broader, and deeper contexts for philosophers as well as for those engaged in the various neurosciences. (shrink)

This chapter provides an overview of the philosophy of Adam Smith by examining the place of history and the role of impartiality in his philosophy. A brief introduction to Smith and his writings is followed by discussions of impartiality and Smith’s engagement with the philosophical role of history and the historian. The section that follows focuses on Smith’s discussion of rights as providing a connection between his moral theory and history via the role of the impartial (...) spectator. The chapter concludes with a brief description of Smith’s history of moral systems. Throughout the chapter tries to show unified philosophical commitments in Smith’s range of writings. (shrink)

BackgroundThe U.S. Food and Drug Administration traditionally has kept confidential significant amounts of information relevant to the approval or non-approval of specific drugs, devices, and biologics and about the regulatory status of such medical products in FDA’s pipeline.ObjectiveTo develop practical recommendations for FDA to improve its transparency to the public that FDA could implement by rulemaking or other regulatory processes without further congressional authorization. These recommendations would build on the work of FDA’s Transparency Task Force in 2010.MethodsIn 2016-2017, we convened (...) a team of academic faculty from Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Yale Medical School, Yale Law School, and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health to develop recommendations through an iterative process of reviewing FDA’s practices, considering the legal and policy constraints on FDA in expanding transparency, and obtaining insights from independent observers of FDA.ResultsThe team developed 18 specific recommendations for improving FDA’s transparency to the public. FDA could adopt all these recommendations without further congressional action.FundingThe development of the Blueprint for Transparency at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was funded by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. (shrink)

Adam Smith sought to explain the persistence of slavery as an institution in Wealth of Nations and Lectures on Jurispridence. In order to accomplish this he also drew on arguments he had developed in the Theory of Moral Sentiments. The result was a sophisticated explanation which bridged economic, psychological, and moral considerations. After presenting Smith’s explanation I will consider a discussion of the moral wrong of slavery in Ottobah Cugoano, the author of the incisive criticism of the slave (...) trade Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery (1787). I will suggest that Cugoano’s account of what is morally wrong in slavery shows an important lacuna in Smith‘s views. (shrink)

When people encounter potential hazards, their expectations and behaviours can be shaped by a variety of factors including other people's expressions of verbal likelihood. What is the impact of such expressions when a person also has numeric likelihood estimates from the same source? Two studies used a new task involving an abstract virtual environment in which people learned about and reacted to novel hazards. Verbal expressions attributed to peers influenced participants’ behaviour toward hazards even when numeric estimates were also available. (...) Namely, verbal expressions suggesting that the likelihood of harm from a hazard is low yielded more risk taking with respect to said hazard. There were also inverse collateral effects, whereby participants’ behaviour and estimates regarding another hazard in the same context were affected in the opposite direction. These effects may be based on directionality and relativity cues inferred from verbal likelihood expressions. (shrink)

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the main themes covered in the present volume. It highlights the interdisciplinary approach taken in the choice of contributors to the volume which it is hoped will result in new perspectives on the philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment. The chapter notes that the contributors approach Hutcheson, Hume, Smith, and Reid from new points of view, and other important figures and philosophical themes are discussed in terms of their contributions to a distinctively Scottish (...) philosophical scene in the eighteenth century. The chapter presents an outline of these themes including Scottish institutions and education, moral philosophy, aesthetic theory, religious thought, and historical and political theory. (shrink)

Preview: /Aaron J. Wendland interviewed by Przemysław Bursztyka/ “What Good Is Philosophy?” took place on 17-19 March 2023, and it aimed to raise the funds required to establish a Centre for Civic Engagement at Kyiv Mohyla Academy. This Centre will provide support for academic and civic institutions in Ukraine to counteract the destabilizing impact that Russia’s invasion has had on Ukrainian higher education and civilian life. Keynotes at the conference were delivered by world-renowned author, Margaret Atwood, one of the (...) most celebrated scholars of Ukrainian history, Timothy Snyder, and two of Ukraine’s preeminent public intellectuals, Mychailo Wynnyckyj and Volodymyr Yermolenko. Lectures were also given by some of the most influential philosophers writing today, including Peter Adamson, Elizabeth Anderson, Seyla Benhabib, Agnes Callard, Quassim Cassam, Tim Crane, Simon Critchley, David Enoch, Peter Godfrey-Smith, Sally Haslanger, Angie Hobbs, Barry Lam, Melissa Lane, Dominic Lopes, Kate Manne, Jeff McMahan, Jennifer Nagel, Philip Pettit, Kieran Setiya, Jason Stanley, Timothy Williamson, and Jonathan Wolff. The closing remarks were delivered by Ukraine’s Ambassador to Canada, Yulia Kovaliv. This benefit event was designed to provide members of the public, individual academics, colleges and universities, professional associations, charitable foundations, and private companies with a way to support students, scholars, and civic institutions in Ukraine. The entire conference is now available to be viewed online via on the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy’s YouTube channel. Here is the relevant link. I encourage everyone who watches the conference to make a donation to support students, scholars, and publicly engaged academics in Ukraine. All donations can be made here. And as the conference organizer, I am extremely grateful for any and every contribution to this cause. (shrink)

Through an absorbing investigation into recent, high-profile scandals involving one of the largest kosher slaughterhouses in the world, located unexpectedly in Postville, Iowa, Aaron S. Gross makes a powerful case for elevating the category of the animal in the study of religion. Major theorists have almost without exception approached religion as a phenomenon that radically marks humans off from other animals, but Gross rejects this paradigm, instead matching religion more closely with the life sciences to better theorize human nature. (...) Gross begins with a detailed account of the scandals at Agriprocessors and their significance for the American and international Jewish community. He argues that without a proper theorization of "animals and religion," we cannot fully understand religiously and ethically motivated diets and how and why the events at Agriprocessors took place. Subsequent chapters recognize the significance of animals to the study of religion in the work of Ernst Cassirer, Emile Durkheim, Mircea Eliade, Jonathan Z. Smith, and Jacques Derrida and the value of indigenous peoples' understanding of animals to the study of religion in our daily lives. Gross concludes by extending the Agribusiness scandal to the activities at slaughterhouses of all kinds, calling attention to the religiosity informing the regulation of "secular" slaughterhouses and its implications for our relationship with and self-imagination through animals. (shrink)

This new history of Scottish philosophy will include two volumes that focus on the Scottish Enlightenment. In this volume a team of leading experts explore the ideas, intellectual context, and influence of Hutcheson, Hume, Smith, Reid, and many other thinkers, frame old issues in fresh ways, and introduce new topics and questions into debates about the philosophy of this remarkable period. The contributors explore the distinctively Scottish context of this philosophical flourishing, and juxtapose the work of canonical philosophers with (...) contemporaries now very seldom read. The outcome is a broadening-out, and a filling-in of the detail, of the picture of the philosophical scene of Scotland in the eighteenth century. (shrink)

This paper develops ‘primitive accumulation’ prior to and then in Karl Marx’s œuvre. By exploring the concept in Adam Smith and Sir James Steuart the paper highlights early influences on Marx’s evolving constructions. Marx’s construction in the Grundrisse begins with a logical determination much like Smith’s and moves, by drawing on Steuart, towards a socio-historical determination of a transitional violence. In Capital, ‘primitive accumulation’ still retains its transitional structure and delimited history, but it also points to the oppressive (...) afterlife of the processes of primitive accumulation. The political key to ‘primitive accumulation’ in Capital flows from determining primitive accumulation as temporally bounded, but having an afterlife in the oppressive social reproduction of capitalist societies. Against deriving political stakes through extended readings of ‘primitive accumulation’, this paper shows that an ‘originating’ view is textually accurate in a way that centres rather than sidelines the social reproduction of oppressions in capitalist societies. (shrink)

In the third volume of the History of England, David Hume considers the political ramifications of the Protestant reformation with a “Digression concerning the ecclesiastical state.” He advocates the establishment of a state church, believing it will dampen religious “enthusiasm” in the polity. Unlike later secularization theorists, Hume assumes an intractable basis for religion in the human passions. Tensions in Hume’s “cooptation” strategy are evident from Adam Smith’s famous attack upon it in section five of The Wealth of Nations, (...) and in Hume’s own treatment of seventeenth century independency in the fifth volume of the History. Smith argues that public competition among sects facilitates political moderation. In History V Hume stresses the positive role of enthusiasm in fostering civil liberty. This article traces Hume’s indecision to his “external” mode of moral and historical analysis, arguing that a secular policy on religion cannot proceed fruitfully without engaging the theological particulars of the religions at issue. (shrink)

In this essay, I discuss a few ways in which songs are used, ways in which listeners engage with and find meaning in music. I am most interested in sad songs—those that typically feature narratives about lost love, separation, missed opportunity, regret, hardship, and all manner of heartache. Many of us are drawn to sad songs in moments of emotional distress. The problem is that sad songs do not always make us feel better; to the contrary, they often make us (...) feel worse. So, why do we listen to sad songs? I argue that we seek out sad songs, partly, to intensify distress, which helps us reflect on situations of profound personal significance. (shrink)

A History of Scottish Philosophy is a series of collaborative studies by expert authors, each volume being devoted to a specific period. Together they provide a comprehensive account of the Scottish philosophical tradition, from the centuries that laid the foundation of the remarkable burst of intellectual fertility known as the Scottish Enlightenment, through the Victorian age and beyond, when it continued to exercise powerful intellectual influence at home and abroad. The books aim to be historically informative, while at the same (...) time serving to renew philosophical interest in the problems with which the Scottish philosophers grappled, and in the solutions they proposed. This new history of Scottish philosophy will include two volumes that focus on the Scottish Enlightenment. In this volume a team of leading experts explore the ideas, intellectual context, and influence of Hutcheson, Hume, Smith, Reid, and many other thinkers, frame old issues in fresh ways, and introduce new topics and questions into debates about the philosophy of this remarkable period. The contributors explore the distinctively Scottish context of this philosophical flourishing, and juxtapose the work of canonical philosophers with contemporaries now very seldom read. The outcome is a broadening-out, and a filling-in of the detail, of the picture of the philosophical scene of Scotland in the eighteenth century. General Editor: Gordon Graham, Princeton Theological Seminary. (shrink)

The Library of Scottish Philosophy: Volumes 1 – 6, Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2004 James Otteson , ed. Adam Smith: Selected Philosophical Writings, 247pp. Paperback £12.95. ISBN 184540-001-1 James Harris , ed. James Beattie: Selected Philosophical Writings, 204pp. Paperback £12.95. ISBN 0907845-711 David Boucher , ed. The Scottish Idealists: Selected Philosophical Writings, 201pp. Paperback £12.95. ISBN 0907845-72X Jonathan Friday , ed. Art and Enlightenment: Scottish Aesthetics in the 18th century, 212pp. Paperback £12.95. ISBN 0907845-762 Gordon Graham , ed. Scottish Philosophy: (...) Selected Writings 1690–1960, 253pp. Paperback £12.95. ISBN 0907845-746 Esther McIntosh , ed. John Macmurray: Selected Philosophical Writings, 198pp. Paperback £12.95. ISBN 0907845-738. (shrink)

Much of our private and public ethical discourse occurs in the giving, receiving, or demanding of an apology, yet we suffer deep confusion regarding what an apology actually is. Most of us have never made explicit precisely what we expect from a full apology and therefore apologizing has become a vague and clumsy ritual. Full apologies can be morally and emotionally powerful, but, as with most valuable things, frauds masquerade as the genuine article. These semblances of apologies often deceive and (...) manipulate, and such duplicity is common between lovers, families, litigants, and nations. In response to this, I propose nine elements that an apology must satisfy in order to be considered categorical. I believe we have such a categorical apology in mind when we seek a full apology. The standards for a categorical apology are rigorous and precise, and I hope to disentangle the distinct elements of apologies. A categorical apology is a rare and burdensome act, and under certain circumstances full apologies may not be possible regardless of how badly we may desire them. While the leading social science accounts by Aaron Lazare and Nicolas Tavuchis aptly demonstrate how apologies lubricate reciprocally egoist relationships, such theories ultimately prove unsatisfying because apologies achieve their highest meaning as morally rich acts. Both Tavuchis and Lazare offer merely descriptive accounts when a prescriptive argument seems necessary. No philosopher, however, has ever devoted a monograph to the topic and only a handful of papers on apologies have appeared in philosophy journals. (shrink)

To Aaron Pacitti and Michael Cauvel–whose journal article, “Rent-Seeking Behavior and Economic Justice: A Classroom Exercise” broadly argues that “understanding the [complexities] of rent-seeking behavior helps fill the gap between economics and politics”–the varieties of rent are wide and, therefore, can only be described in their category-specific positions. I will discuss three of these categories in more detail below, but for now, I propose that a useful working grasp of economic rent involves “the amount paid to the owner of (...) a factor of production over the cost that is to be necessarily incurred on utilizing such elements in the production process.” In math terms, ‘economic rent’ equals the agreed-upon-amount paid by the consumer (when that amount far exceeds the market value of the product) minus the cost spent by the producer to make the product (when that cost is far below the typical amount to produce the product). Originally, the concept of economic rent concerned land ownership and the production of natural goods. Two major economists, Adam Smith and David Ricardo, offered insights into the general makeup and logic of what they called, the rent of land and simply rent, respectively. (shrink)

This essay explores the interrelation of skills and virtues. I first trace one line of analysis from Aristotle to Alasdair MacIntyre, which argues that there is a categorical difference between skills and virtues, in their ends and intrinsic character. This familiar distinction is fine in certain respects but still importantly misleading. Virtue in general, and also some particular virtues such as ritual propriety and practical wisdom, are not just exercised in practical contexts, but are in fact partially constituted by the (...) mastery of certain skills. This has implications for moral psychology, specifically how we might understand the acquisition of virtue, as well as its very nature. To try to make this claim plausible I analyze two case studies from early Confucianism: treatment of ritual propriety as a cardinal virtue, and Mencius's less carefully integrated treatment of excellence at moral discernment. I conclude by revisiting the question of the relations between skill and virtue, and exploring a few of the difficulties implied by my account of early Confucian ethics. (shrink)

This title is written to match GCSE Religious Studies AQA B, option 2 and can be used as part of a full course or short course. It contains summaries and practise exam questions at the end of each section to help prepare for exams.

Research on brain or cognitive/affective processes, culture, social interaction, and structural analysis are overlapping but often independent ways humans have attempted to understand the origins of their evolution, historical, and contemporary development. Each level seeks to employ its own theoretical concepts and methods for depicting human nature and categorizing objects and events in the world, and often relies on different sources of evidence to support theoretical claims. Each level makes reference to different temporal bandwidths (milliseconds, seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, (...) years, decades, and centuries) and focuses on different spatio-temporal activities and controlled and non-controlled stimulus conditions. Biological mechanisms and environmental pressures for survival simultaneously created a gradual intersection and enhancement of cognitive/affective skills, cultural practices, and changes in collaborative social interaction and communicative skills. The evolution of a given level of analysis is assumed to have been incremental and overlapping. These innovative and independent ways humans have learned to characterize their brain or cognitive/affective and social/economic/political life often depend on unexamined, representational re-descriptions or cognitive/affective and socio-cultural devices and forms of communication that facilitate the depiction of practices and beliefs we attribute to respondents or subjects and research colleagues. (shrink)

Transplantation is now the best therapy for eligible patients with end-stage organ disease. For patients with failed kidneys, successful renal transplantation improves the quality and increases the quantity of their lives. For people with other types of organ failure, transplantation offers the only hope for long-term survival. a.

In this article, I assess the current state of neuroaesthetics by reviewing 10 recent books on neuroscientific and evolutionary aspects of aesthetic cognition. These books largely continue the main thrust of this genre since its inception. Virtually all are insightful and thought-provoking, though their individual strengths vary. Among them, Shimamura and Palmer's edited book, Aesthetic Science, provides the most useful and balanced interdisciplinary framework, making philosophy and psychology equal partners with neuroscience. This pluralistic mode, dethroning neuroscience from its usual hegemony, (...) seems best poised to address heretofore neglected issues in neuroaesthetics research. I address several dichotomous tensions—high versus low art, the drive for creative innovation versus evolutionarily canalized aesthetic biases, and explicit versus implicit aspects of aesthetic cognition—to identify promising future research directions, which can best be fulfilled though interdisciplinary cooperation and debate, with a continued emphasis on evolutionary theory. (shrink)

This dissertation compares the thought and practice of Xunzi, a 4th--3rd century BCE Confucian, with that of Augustine of Hippo, a 4th--5th century CE Christian. Specifically, it compares their versions of the view that human nature is significantly bad or evil, and their prescriptions for the cultivation of ethically and religiously preferable modes of life, through the practice of what Pierre Hadot has called "spiritual exercises." ;Xunzi and Augustine deploy conceptual apparatuses structured by distinctive terms of art, responding to debates (...) within their own contexts. Their articulations of human personhood deeply shape their proposals and hopes for personal cultivation. This thesis examines their different anthropologies, with special attention to Augustine's concept of natura and Xunzi's idea of xing, both traditionally rendered in English as "human nature." It then discusses their positive proposals for ethico-religious education and personal cultivation, focusing on the specific practices they recommend and their accounts of how and why these practices are effective in the production of flourishing human beings. It explores Xunzi's opposition of "nature" and "artifice," his analysis of emotion, desire, and action, and his accounts of study, ritual practice, and music as spiritual exercises. It investigates Augustine's views of original sin and the mind imaging God, his account of disciplina "teaching" and "discipline," and his understandings of the liberal arts, learning from scripture, fasting, the Eucharist, and different types of prayer. ;Comparison of Xunzi and Augustine makes three contributions. First, it refines our analytical categories as students of religious thought and practice, especially in this case "human nature" and "spiritual exercises." Second, it illuminates both thinkers' views more fully, in particular deepening our understanding of Xunzi's moral psychology and Augustine's theories of Christian formation after "conversion" and baptism. Third, it contributes to contemporary debates in religious ethics: first, about moral personhood, proposing a new model of "chastened intellectualism" but underscoring the limitations of universalistic accounts; and second, about spiritual exercises, retrieving elements of Xunzi's account of ritual and Augustine's techniques for affecting one's inner discourse of interpretation and judgment. (shrink)

My favourite leading question when teaching Philosophy of Mind is ‘Could a goldfish long for its mother?’ This introduces the philosophical technique of ‘conceptual analysis’, essential for the study of mind (Sloman 1978, ch. 4). By analysing what we mean by ‘A longs for B’, and similar descriptions of emotional states we see that they inv olve rich cognitive structures and processes, i.e. computations. Anything which could long for its mother, would have to hav e some sort of representation of (...) its mother, would have to believe that she is not in the vicinity, would have to be able to represent the _possibility _of being close to her, would have to desire that possibility, and would have to be to some extent pre-occupied or obsessed with that desire. That is, it should intrude into and interfere with other activities, like admiring the scenery, catching smaller fish, etc. If the desire were there, but could be calmly put aside, whilst other interests were pursued, then it would not be truly a state of longing. It might be a state of preferring. Thus longing involves computational interrupts. The same seems to be true of all emotions. (shrink)

This paper outlines a design-based methodology for the study of mind as a part of the broad discipline of Artificial Intelligence. Within that framework some architectural requirements for human-like minds are discussed, and some preliminary suggestions made regarding mechanisms underlying motivation, emotions, and personality. A brief description is given of the `Nursemaid' or `Minder' scenario being used at the University of Birmingham as a framework for research on these problems. It may be possible later to combine some of these ideas (...) with work on synthetic agents inhabiting virtual reality environments. (shrink)

Past discussions of the public role of religious ethics scholarship have tended to focus on the propriety of religious argumentation in the public square. Rather than critiquing or vindicating such public engagement by explicitly religious thinkers, this essay recommends broader public engagement by scholars of comparatively oriented religious ethics, exploring why this goal is worthwhile, some possible objections, and various models of how it might be accomplished.

The common assumption is that works of popular are less serious, less artistically valuable. Popular art is driven by a profit motive; real art, high art, is produced for loftier goals, such as aesthetic appreciation. Further, popular art is formulaic and gravitates toward the lowest common denominator. High art is innovative. It enriches, elevates, and inspires; popular art just entertains. Worse, popular art inculcates cultural biases. It is a corporate tool of ideological indoctrination, making contingent social and economic arrangements seem (...) necessary. Or so the common view holds. In light of these common assumptions, we must ask just what marks the distinction between high art and popular art? Is there really any important difference at all? Is there reason to think that popular is by its very nature aesthetically inferior to high art? In this article, I consider some of the prominent answers to these questions. The discussion is organized around questions concerning two general topics: (1) the nature of popular art, and (2) the putative aesthetic deficiencies of popular art. (shrink)

The most surprising conclusion of our analysis is that videogames can be most effective in generating suspense not by highlighting their unique ability to be interactive, but, to the contrary, limiting interactivity at key points, thereby turning players into helpless spectators like those that watch films. Discovering this technique in video games allows us to turn our attention back to film, where we are able to highlight a previously ignored feature of viewer film interaction, namely, helplessness.

In "Of Scepticism with Regard to the Senses" (Treatise I.IV.II) David Hume begins by saying that he will attempt to trace the causes of our belief in a mind-independent world, "a belief we must take for granted in all our reasonings". Yet the causes arrived at – namely natural inclination or imagination - are presented as so untrustworthy as to cast doubt on the credibility of the inescapable belief itself. However, in the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding Hume presents a radically (...) different evaluation of natural inclination, in which Nature is seen as a trustworthy, guiding Supreme Mother. I attempt to explain why Nature earns a disparaging evaluation within "Scepticism," and the significance of these metaphors to different versions of his argument. (shrink)