Single-country approaches to the study of Buddhism miss the crucial significance of international networks in the making of modern Buddhism, in a period when the material basis for such networks had been transformed. Southeast Asia in particular acted as a dynamic crossroads in this period enabling the emergence of a ?global Buddhism? not controlled by any single sect, while India and Japan both played unexpectedly significant roles in this crossroads. A key element of this process was the encounter between Asian (...) Buddhist networks and western would-be Buddhists. Those involved, however, were often marginal - ?creative failures? in many cases - whose stories enable us to think this history in a more diverse way than is often done. In other cases as isolated figures they could pave the way for the ?mainstreaming? of new forms of Buddhism by established actors in later decades. This article introduces the special issue of Contemporary Buddhism entitled ?A Buddhist crossroads: pioneer European Buddhists and globalizing Asian networks 1860?1960?. The research described in this issue often raises other methodological questions of representativity and significance, while posing important challenges around collaborative research and the use of new technologies. (shrink)

While those who sought solidarity between Asians and Europeans in the colonial era often ended up replicating the colonial divisions they had hoped to overcome, the interstitial position of working class and beachcomber Buddhist monks allowed for more substantive modes of solidarity and critique. U Dhammaloka offered a sophisticated critique of British colonialism in its religious, cultural and material modes, but opted to focus his efforts on Buddhism as an avenue of resistance because it offered him a means of connection, (...) like that which Leela Gandhi has identified as a ?politics of friendship.? (shrink)

In the wake of the paleobiological revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, paleontologists continue to investigate far-reaching questions about how evolution works. Many of those questions have a philosophical dimension. How is macroevolution related to evolutionary changes within populations? Is evolutionary history contingent? How much can we know about the causes of evolutionary trends? How do paleontologists read the patterns in the fossil record to learn about the underlying evolutionary processes? Derek Turner explores these and other questions, introducing the (...) reader to exciting recent work in the philosophy of paleontology and to theoretical issues including punctuated equilibria and species selection. He also critically examines some of the major accomplishments and arguments of paleontologists of the last 40 years. (shrink)

All normal human beings alive in the last fifty thousand years appear to have possessed, in Mark Turner's phrase, 'impressively atful minds'. Cognitively modern minds produced a staggering list of behavioural singularities - science, religion, mathematics, language, advanced tool use, decorative dress, dance, culture, art - that seems to indicate a mysterious and unexplained discontinuity between us and all other living things. This brute fact gives rise to some tantalizing questions: How did the artful mind emerge? What are the (...) basic mental operations that make art possible for us now, and how do they operate? These are the questions that occupy the distinguished contributors to this book, which emerged from a year-long Getty-funded research project hosted by the Centre for Advanced Study in the Behavioural Sciences at Stanford. (shrink)

This paper offers a paleobiological perspective on the debate concerning the possible use of biotechnology to bring back extinct species. One lesson from paleobiology is that extinction selectivity matters in addition to extinction rates and extinction magnitude. Combining some of Darwin’s insights about artificial selection with the theory of species selection that paleobiologists developed in the 1970s and 1980s provides a useful context for thinking about de-extinction. Using recent work on the prioritization of candidate species for de-extinction as a test (...) case, the paper argues that de-extinction would be a form of artificial species selection in which humans influence which species persist vs. go extinct. This points to a serious gap in our ethical theory: Much work has been done to clarify the value of biological diversity, but we also need theoretical guidance for decisions that amount to species sorting, and that will shape the macroevolutionary future. (shrink)

It is clear throughout Cognitive Gadgets Heyes believes the development of cognitive capacities results from the interaction of genes and experience. However, she opposes cognitive instincts theorists to her own view that uniquely human capacities are cognitive gadgets. Instinct theorists believe that cognitive capacities are substantially produced by selection, with the environment playing a triggering role. Heyes’s position is that humans have similar general learning capacities to those present across taxa, and that sophisticated human cognition is substantially created by our (...) socioculturally transmitted environment. It is a core strategy of Heyes to provide evidence of learning altering a cognitive capacity to conclude that a capacity is a cognitive gadget and not an instinct. We draw on recent work on the evolution of learning preparedness to examine the adequacy of this strategy. In particular, we analyse experimental evolution work showing how selection affects cognition within the laboratory. First, this work reveals that change due to learning can still be retained under genetic assimilation. This suggests that domain-specific adaptation can coexist with learning, moderate nativism, an option missed by the instinct versus gadget distinction. Second, we describe the conditions that select for increased preparedness in learning: certainty, reliability, and particular costs. We consider how these conditions can be used when conducting evolutionary reasoning about cognition, applying them to the important capacity for imitation. We find that the conditions lend theoretical support to moderate nativism about the capacity to imitate, which is supported by psychological evidence. (shrink)

John Stuart Mill's defense of freedom of discussion in On Liberty remains a major influence on philosophical and public debates about free speech. By highlighting underappreciated textual evidence and key distinctions, this introduction attempts to show how the contributions of the symposium authors – Melina Constantine Bell, Rafael Cejudo, Christopher Macleod, and Dale E. Miller – point toward a more complete account of Mill's views.

In Logics for Artificial Intelligence, Raymond Turner leads us on a whirl-wind tour of nonstandard logics and their general applications to Al and computer science.

Through a re-articulation of Derridean différance, Bernard Stiegler claims that the human is defined by an originary default that displaces all psychic and social life onto technical supplements. His philosophy of technics re-articulates the logic of the supplement as concerning both human reflexivity and its supports, and the history of the différance of life itself. This has been criticised for reducing Derrida's work to a metaphysics of presence, and for instituting a humanism of the relation to the inorganic. By refuting (...) these claims, this article will show that Stiegler's doubling of différance enables him to articulate the human as constituted by both the individuation characteristic of ‘life’, and that of a technical, psychic, and collective individuation. Putting forward a reading of the logic of the trace in life, and emphasising the aspects of Leroi-Gourhan, Simondon, and Canguilhem that Stiegler uses in his reading of Derrida, I will demonstrate that the political stakes of adaption and adoption in his Noopolitics require this re-articulation of différance. Technics shapes the human future, arising from this differential mutation; marking the invention of the human as the site of the political. (shrink)

It is a common complaint that sociology has little regard for history. One important exception to this standard criticism is the sociology of religion of Robert N. Bellah and his ‘revival’ of Karl Jasper’s notion of the axial age. In this article, Bellah’s evolutionary notions of religion are explored within a debate about historical disjunctures and continuities. A significant challenge to the idea of the continuity of axial-age religions comes from the notion of an Anthropocene. Our relationship to nature has (...) fundamentally changed and the possibilities for ‘improving’ the human body create a significant ontological challenge to the continuity/preservation of embodied practice as the underpinning of axial-age religions. The Anthropocene age presents a turning away from the religious legacies of the past, because biotechnical developments change not only our relationship to nature but they presage a radical change to the human body. Can the axial-age religions as our contemporaries survive the construction of hybrid post-bodies? In conclusion, insofar as there has been a ‘protestantization’ of religions with modernity involving an erosion of habitualized religion, an individualized and dis-embodied religiosity may be compatible with our anthropocenic future, but this possibility represents a discontinuity with the past and not a continuity. (shrink)

The \CDM cosmological model is remarkable: with just six parameters it describes the evolution of the Universe from a very early time when all structures were quantum fluctuations on subatomic scales to the present, and it is consistent with a wealth of high-precision data, both laboratory measurements and astronomical observations. However, the foundation of \CDM involves physics beyond the standard model of particle physics: particle dark matter, dark energy and cosmic inflation. Until this ‘new physics’ is clarified, \CDM is at (...) best incomplete and at worst a phenomenological construct that accommodates the data. I discuss the path forward, which involves both discovery and disruption, some grand challenges and finally the limits of scientific cosmology. (shrink)

In recent work, W. Matthews Grant challenges the common assumption that if humans have libertarian free will, and the moral responsibility it affords, then it is impossible for God to cause what humans freely do. He does this by offering a “non-competitivist” model that he calls the “Dual Sources” account of divine and human causation. Although we find Grant’s Dual Sources model to be the most compelling of models on offer for non-competitivism, we argue that it fails to circumvent a (...) theological version of Peter van Inwagen’s direct argument for incompatibilism. In the paper, we motivate and deploy a theological take on the direct argument, and we contend that this theological rendition of the direct argument effectively dismantles Grant’s Dual Sources account of non-competitivism. (shrink)

First published in 1980, this book examines the nature of sociological explanation. The tactics of interpretive sociology have often remained obscure because of confusion over the nature of the evidence for interpretation and the nature of decisions among alternative interpretations. In providing an account of the problem of interpretive sociological claims, the author argues that there is rationality to interpretation. He also presents a fresh view of the relationship between qualitative and statistical claims and shows their complementary character. Dr. (...) class='Hi'>Turner's lucid and comprehensive analysis breaks new ground in its fundamental re-examination of the conceptual basis for “explaining” social behaviour. By its call for more rigourous conceptual sophistication in attempted explanations of social behaviour, this book will stimulate controversy and lively discussion among sociologists. (shrink)

The Huntington thesis of the clash of cultures and American foreign policy analysis are both aspects of the legacy of Carl Schmitt's distinction between friend and foe. This article explores Schmitt's political theology as the theoretical basis of modern politics in terms of the concepts of state sovereignty and the idea of a permanent emergency. Within this Schmittian framework, the analysis of Islam as presented by writers such as Huntington, Fukuyama and Barber is critically analysed. Their analysis of fundamentalism and (...) political Islam fails to grasp the complexity and diversity of modern Islam. The article concludes by examining a number of social and economic processes that make the political division between friend and foe untenable. (shrink)

The modal version of the ontological argument (MOA) for God’s existence is controversial, primarily, at its first premise, the premise that reads “possibly, there exists a maximally great being.” So, what’s needed is an argument for the possibility of a maximally great being, a being that is omnipotent, omniscient, morally perfect, has these properties essentially, and is such that it exists necessarily. Ironically, I think that such an argument can be found in the literature on the problem of evil, literature (...) generally devoted to arguments against God’s existence. In particular, I argue that Alvin Plantinga’s “free will defense” (FWD) gives us such an argument. Moreover, since most philosophers agree that the FWD is successful, I argue that most philosophers should agree that FWD gives us a successful argument for the first premise of MOA. Thus, I argue that if most philosophers agree FWD is successful, then most philosophers should agree that God exists. There are several pressing objections to this line of reasoning that I consider in the paper. I argue that these objections fail. (shrink)

_A concise and illuminating introduction to the elusive Thomas Aquinas, the man and the saint_ Leaving so few traces of himself behind, Thomas Aquinas seems to defy the efforts of the biographer. Highly visible as a public teacher, preacher, and theologian, he nevertheless has remained nearly invisible as man and saint. What can be discovered about Thomas Aquinas as a whole? In this short, compelling portrait, Denys Turner clears away the haze of time and brings Thomas vividly to life (...) for contemporary readers—those unfamiliar with the saint as well as those well acquainted with his teachings. Building on the best biographical scholarship available today and reading the works of Thomas with piercing acuity, Turner seeks the point at which the man, the mind, and the soul of Thomas Aquinas intersect. Reflecting upon Thomas, a man of Christian Trinitarian faith yet one whose thought is grounded firmly in the body’s interaction with the material world, a thinker at once confident in the powers of human reason and a man of prayer, Turner provides a more detailed human portrait than ever before of one of the most influential philosophers and theologians in all of Western thought. (shrink)

The writings of Bruno Latour have invigorated empirical inquiry in the social sciences and in the process helped to redefine their character. In recent years the philosophy of social science that made this inquiry possible has been deployed to a different end, namely that of rethinking the character of politics. Here I suggest that in the pursuit of this goal, inflated claims are made about that philosophy, and some basic theoretical tools are asked to do a job for which they (...) may not be best equipped. (shrink)

Ralph Ellison offers crucial insight into the meaning of conscientious citizenship in American democracy. In doing so, he follows his nineteenth-century Transcendentalist forebears--Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman--who have become key figures in contemporary efforts to theorize liberal democratic character. At the center of Emersonian ethics is the idea of " awakening." " Awakening " is the Emersonians' name for honest and courageous confrontation with reality. Ellison broadens the Emersonians' vision by insisting that one cannot be "well awake" in America without confronting (...) the ways historical white supremacy shapes one's identity and chances in life. Political theorists who draw inspiration from the Emersonians in theorizing democratic individuality need to pay attention to Ellison--for he demonstrates that one cannot achieve democratic individuality without awakening to race. (shrink)

In this chapter, I examine the three main arguments of On Liberty: first, a largely epistemic argument that individual and social improvement, because they depend so much on intellectual development, require social conditions allowing for free discussion and “experiments of living;” second, an argument that individuality, or self‐directedness, is itself a key constitutive part of the individual human good; third, the introduction of a principle – the liberty principle – according to which only considerations of nonconsensual “harm to others” may (...) justify social or political interference. I then consider whether Mill, as a liberal utilitarian, has anything to offer the public reason tradition that dominates contemporary liberal thought. (shrink)

Genetic studies of present human populations are very useful to understand the history of modern Human migrations throughout the world, especially when the results are compared with the information provided by historical linguistics and archaelogy. However, an inaccurate methodology is commonly applied to the analysis of the most recent molecular data and may lead to some erroneous conclusions on our first origins.

Wildlife conservation aims to protect the natural world, plant and animal species, and the habitats they form part of and rely on for survival. More particularly, it focuses on species that are considered important, be it from economic, ecological and other perspectives, and preventing harm to these species. While conservation activities, based on common conservation values such as species fitness and biodiversity, are no doubt beneficial to animals in general, there seems to be a fundamental disjoint between this approach and (...) the mainstay of current ethical theories regarding animals, which focus on the treatment and welfare of individual entities. I will argue that the conflict between wildlife conservation and animal ethics arises both in the aims, as well as the application of conservation. In its aims, the focus on species as a whole often comes at a cost to individual animals, and in its application individual animals are often harmed as well. To demonstrate these two points, I will use the case study of the cloning and reintroduction of the currently extinct northern white rhino. I will then conclude that wildlife conservation, while aiming to benefit animals, is fundamentally at odds with any animal ethic that considers individual wellbeing as central. (shrink)

The dispute between simulation theorists and theory theorists follows a basic pattern in philosophical discussions of cognitive science. This chapter brings some of the topics of social theory into the discussion. The discussion of the problem of understanding in social theory has developed in two traditions: Verstehen, or empathy, the German tradition of Wilhelm Dilthey and Max Weber, and in taking the role of the other originating in the thought of G. H. Mead. Each regards understanding as both an activity (...) of theorists and of human beings themselves in the course of their dealings with one another. The topic of imitation became important in American psychology for reasons quite separate from its role in social theory. The psychological explanation holds that at least some emotions, and perhaps all real emotions, are universal and are explicable by features of human psychology, biology, and development that are themselves universal. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on a question about one role: the explanatory role of normativism or normativity in relation to ordinary 'scientific', meaning social scientific, explanations of actions and beliefs, especially the empirical, observable, or empirically relevant aspects of human conduct. Call this the epistemic form of the naturalistic moment problem. It call this a 'naturalistic moment', a place where normativism makes factual assertions about real processes in the natural world. This pseudo argument boils down to a series of equivocations. The (...) normativist must claim that there is some super-added normative element that cannot be accounted for naturalistically or by social science. Transcendental arguments to the effect that they have to have such and such mental content are likely to fail the mosquito test. The default position of rationalistic normativists, well encapsulated by Korsgaard, who rejects it, is that normativity in particular, rightness is an objective property grasped by reason. (shrink)

The classic sociological formulation of the “norms of science” was given by Robert K. Merton, in an article originally published as “A Note on Science and Democracy” and reprinted as “Science and Democratic Social Structure” in his Social Theory and Social Structure and as “The Normative Structure of Science” in The Sociology of Science. The formulation is sometimes known by its initials, CUDOS, which stands for the four norms: communism, universalism, disinterestedness, and organized skepticism. Merton's representation of the normative character (...) of science has proved to be one of the most enduring of all sociological analyses. It has been discussed at length by both critics, who proposed the concept of counternorms, and sympathizers, and in the late 1960s and early 1970s became emblematic of the “Mertonian” approach to the social study of science. Nor has it remained static. “Replication” is sometimes called the fifth norm. John Ziman suggested that “originality” be added as a norm, and in many recent explanations of the acronym CUDOS the O is used for originality. (shrink)

The question of whether sociology progresses, and how, has been an issue within sociology itself. In this chapter, the reasons for this are explored. The first set relates to the status of ‘theories’ in sociology, which, despite historical aspirations to universality, are not predictive systems that generate puzzles but second-order definitions and ideal types, which abstract over intelligible world of the subjects. They can loosely be said to progress in the sense of providing new ways of framing in response to (...) generically defined concerns, such as the stability of elites, and novel social situations. The second set relates to quantitative models. Examples from causal modelling, a basic form of statistical modelling, are discussed to show how this same problem bears on them. They depend on assumptions about which correlations can be plausibly regarded as causal, and which are outside the system and can be ignored. As the social world changes, these assumptions gain or lose plausibility, and the models themselves lose applicability and predictive power. Change here amounts to providing a better fit to novel situations. But the models are purpose relative and the aims, and therefore progress, are externally defined, typically by changing normative or policy concerns. (shrink)

This chapter presents a brief history of American Rural Sociology. It discusses the key early figures, such as C.J. Galpin, Kenyon Butterfield, Dwight Sanderson, and Thomas Carver Nixon. But the focus is on the next generation, and the distinctive institutional character of rural sociology as it developed in the twenties and thirties, and evolved in relation to events in the postwar period. Rural sociology shared many features with the “Social Survey” movement, including its commitment to community development, and to some (...) extent its methods. The “Survey Movement” petered out, for reasons having to do with the willingness of communities to subject themselves to the kind of scrutiny needed for reform. The community studies of Rural Sociology were caught between similar forces, and were also politically vulnerable. Postwar rural sociology responded to these vulnerabilities, but faced changes in agriculture that undermined the original purpose of im - proving rural life. The field nevertheless retained its commitment to engagement, and found new ways of doing so. In this respect, it deviated significantly from general, which had an acrimonious split from the survey movement. Ironically, however, general sociology has returned to engagement, at a time that rural sociology has lost its original subject matter and raison d’être. (shrink)

In Alain Badiou’s most recent work, L’immanence des vérités ( The Immanence of Truths), psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan once again figures peripherally but saliently. What is their specific relation in this text, however? We argue that Badiou responds here to the problem raised precisely by the Lacanian subject, situated as it is between the radical subjectivity of the symptom and the possibility of formalization. In L’immanence, he introduces the term ‘absoluteness’ to secure truths against both relativism and transcendental construction. We show (...) that in drawing on Lacan to establish an understanding of the absolute, Badiou highlights the implicit tension between psychoanalysis and philosophy. We treat central cross-currents – truths, knowledge, the event and love – to help reveal the specific character of their confluence in this third book of Badiou’s trilogy. Although he stresses the unity of his and Lacan’s efforts, the impossible Real marking their divisions also invariably emerges the closer one investigates. (shrink)

The Lacanian concept of fantasy is an essential locus for the conception of subjectivity and reality in the work of Slavoj Žižek, particularly in his initial English texts from 1989–2002. Whilst looked at creatively in its various guises and extended beyond clinical applications in his vast oeuvre – e.g. toward the exploration of the social, in terms of ideological fantasy foremost, to fuller elaborations in The Plague of Fantasies and beyond – the conceptual heritage is in need of fleshing out (...) within contemporary scholarship. To this end, and as part of a larger project currently underway, in the following we will trace the somewhat staggered development of the concept of fantasy in Lacan's initial meetings held at le Centre hospitalier Sainte-Anne between 1953 and 1961 where 'fantasy' as subjective component was truly born. Ultimately, the understanding of this trajectory and the changing significations involved in conceptual evolution can broaden our insight into Lacan's theoretical methodology as well as their insistence on retaining the category of subject in the philosophical tradition. (shrink)