Book Title: Consensus as Democracy in Africa Book Author: Bernard Matolino Size: 168 x 240 mm. Pages: 240 pages. ISBN 13: 978-1-920033-31-6. Published: October 2018. Publishers: NISC Ltd for African Humanities Program. Cover: Paperback.

Several authors have recently begun to apply virtue theory to argumentation. Critics of this programme have suggested that no such theory can avoid committing an ad hominem fallacy. This criticism is shown to trade unsuccessfully on an ambiguity in the definition of ad hominem. The ambiguity is resolved and a virtue-theoretic account of ad hominem reasoning is defended.

Purpose This paper aims to present the baseline English survey used in the other papers in this special issue. Design/methodology/approach The survey includes yes/no, Likert scale and free text responses, which were analysed quantitatively and qualitatively. Findings Respondents to the survey expressed divergent views of whether they would emulate Snowden, even though most in all countries believed he had helped rather than harmed society. Originality/value This is the only such broad survey on attitudes to Snowden of which the authors are (...) aware. (shrink)

Interpretations of the inner word overlook the fact that for Gadamer language is both written and spoken and that these two mediums are in a dialectical relation. After disputing Zimmermann’s interpretation of the inner word, the paper uses McLuhan to explain Gadamer’s dialectical method for understanding how thought that comes to language participates in the self-unfolding structure of a living organism. Central to this argument is a turn of the inner ear which in contrast to sensory memory based on sight (...) recollects the musical origins of language in acoustic space and renders the movements of a dialogue comparable to song. (shrink)

Buchanan highlighted the inconsistencies that arise when public services are financed by general taxation. Citizens increase their demand for services, even though citizens are reticent to increase taxation. Buchanan invited readers to explore the impact of different assumptions of politicians’ behaviour. In this chapter, attention focuses on the way that vote maximising governments are likely to respond to the divorce between receipt and payment for services. Buchanan illustrated his analysis with reference to the National Health Service in the UK. Predictions (...) are tested with reference to the pattern of excess demand in the National Health Service between 1970 and 2012. (shrink)

PurposeAs part of an international study of knowledge of and attitudes to Snowden’s revelations about the activities of the National Security Agency/Government Communications Headquarters, this paper aims to deal with Germany, taking its socio-cultural and political environment surrounding privacy and state surveillance into account.Design/methodology/approachA questionnaire was answered by 76 German University students. The quantitative responses to the survey were statistically analysed as well as qualitative considerations of free text answers.FindingsSnowden’s revelations have had an important influence over German students’ attitudes toward (...) privacy and state surveillance, and show concerns over the privacy risks associated with Internet activity.Practical implicationsThe study results imply a need to build a collective awareness of the importance of the right to privacy and its responsibilities, the available technological options for individuals to exert their own privacy and security and the democratic means to agree and enforce appropriate legal restrictions on state surveillance.Social implicationsYoung Germans support Snowden’s actions and would be more willing to emulate him in Germany than in the USA. While many believe that people must give up some privacy and freedom for security, few seem to believe that current US or German approaches are valid and justified.Originality/valueThis study is the first attempt to investigate the social impact of Snowden’s revelations on German students’ attitudes toward privacy and state surveillance as part of cross-cultural analyses between eight countries. (shrink)

An integrity system is an integrated assemblage of institutional mechanisms, designed to minimize ethical misconduct and promote ethical health in institutions, organizations, occupations and the like. This book analyzes, describes and demonstrates the value of well-designed integrity systems for efficient, effective and ethically sustainable practice, in occupational groups in particular. Developing a blueprint for the design of integrity systems which can be tailored to the specific ethical needs of different occupational groups, this book furthers the general project of ethically informed (...) institutional design. The approach taken reflects the authors' academic background in professional ethics, as well as their extensive experience in the application of ethical theories and perspectives to the problems and challenges encountered by various occupational groups, such as accountants, business people, lawyers, doctors, nurses, social workers, engineers, emergency service workers and police. (shrink)

Abstract The institution of war is the broad framework of rules, norms, and organizations dedicated to the prevention, prosecution, and resolution of violent conflict between political entities. Important parts of that institution consist of the accountability arrangements that hold between armed forces, the political leaders who oversee and direct the use of those forces, and the people in whose name the leaders act and from whose ranks the members of the armed forces are drawn. Like other parts of the institution, (...) these arrangements are responsive to changes in military technology and needs, to geopolitical facts, and to moral and political norms. In particular, they are sensitive to the forms that military organization takes. Since the emergence of modern states in Europe some 500 years ago, there have been three main such forms: private providers?in the form of mercenaries, in early modern Europe?then professional standing armies, which in turn developed into citizen armies. Although elements of the three organizations have coexisted in many armies, the citizen army model has dominated until recently. That model brought with it a particular conception of the accountability relations between the army, the state, and the people. The state had authority over and directed the army, which was accountable to it. In turn the state was accountable for its use of the army to the people, on whose behalf it acted. The dominance of state authority over the military is now under strain, with the professional and private elements?in the form of private military and security companies (PMSCs)?having increasing importance. As those elements increase in power and presence, so it becomes more difficult to make the state accountable to the people for its use of the military, and more difficult for the people to act as a restraining force on the way in which the military used. In this essay, I outline and assess these developments?with particular emphasis on the emergence of PMSCs?in the light of a liberal view of (political) violence. The essay focuses on the situation in the United States, which possesses by far the most important military force in the world today, and in which the use of PMSCs is most developed. The paper has three main sections and a brief conclusion: the first section sketches the liberal view of violence and its implications for organizations dedicated to its use; the second outlines the salient characteristics of the three historically dominant forms of armies; and the third looks at the current situation in which the three forms coexist uneasily. (shrink)

The galvanising purpose of Federation was the creation of the Commonwealth and the distribution of power between it and the former colonies, simultaneously elevated to Statehood. But beyond this simple fact, consensus about Australian federalism has traditionally been elusive and is, if anything, only increasingly so. While the contemporary political debate over federal reform proceeds from a shared sense that our existing arrangements have manifest shortcomings, there is far from unanimity as to which of its particular features are strengths, and (...) which are deficiencies. The structure of this paper is as follows. In Part II, the range of understandings as to the character of the federal relationship between Australian governments is canvassed. Consideration is given to the views of the Constitution’s Framers and commentators, but most centrally to members of the High Court since these have brought about great change in federal arrangements. The significance of the Court’s marked preference for adhering only to constitutional structure and its inability or unwillingness to develop ‘a federal jurisprudence’ is examined in two respects. First, the effect of the Court’s arid Engineers’ Case methodology has been to reject any suggestion that fidelity to a concept of ‘federal balance’ is consistent with both the contents and purpose of the Constitution and also the principles of divided government. Particular consideration is given to the limitations of a commitment to federalism in only a structural sense, as revealed by the judicial reasons of the majority and dissenting judges in the recent case of New South Wales v Commonwealth. Second, the tension between competing assumptions of the kind of federal system established by the Commonwealth Constitution has produced an unstable and uncertain environment for the development of cooperative schemes between the Commonwealth and States. In Part III we consider how an attempt to ‘constitutionalise’ the relationship between the tiers of government as one underpinned by cooperation and respect would impact on the Court’s approach. Drawing on foreign constitutions, and adapting these in light of Australia’s politico-legal conditions and history, we suggest how a commitment to cooperative federalism might best be shaped for possible inclusion in the Commonwealth Constitution. (shrink)

Poststructuralism and the Politics of Method examines the political possibilities emerging with poststructuralist epistemology. Beginning with the premises for the construction of knowledge claims, Koch explores the dimensions of materialism, democracy, power, leftist politics, and other themes emerging from the this twentieth century philosophic movement.

This thesis is a critique of functionalism in the philosophy of mind. I distinguish three tenets, or 'dogmas' of functionalism, viz: Mental states are causes of behaviour; Mental states can, in principle, be defined in non-mental terms; We understand everything, or at least everything of importance, about the mental states of people, by subsuming token mental states under one or other mental state type. ;The first dogma is rejected in the form which identifies mental state types with physical types, on (...) the ground that it commits us to the doubtful possibilities of mental states without any relevant behaviour, and behaviour without a relevant mental state . It is found to be not mandatory in the form which identifies mental state types with functional types, on the ground that the phenomena appealed to in support of the dogma is consistent with a view of mental states which endorses the dogma in at best a trite and philosophically uninteresting sense . The second dogma is rejected on the ground that cannot account for what I call the 'affective animation' of the behaviour of creatures with mental states . I develop a concept I call personal response---the kind of response we have to other human beings as opposed to inanimate nature---and defend principle which says: Commonsense understanding that someone is in a mental state requires proneness to a personal response in relation to that person. ;Certain implications are drawn from for reductionism, for meta-ethics, and for the third dogma . I argue that the third dogma is false on the around that it cannot account for our sense of the individuality of persons, unless that very notion of individuality, which comes from quite outside functionalism, is used to gloss the idea of subsumption under a type. (shrink)

I consider the contribution that a biocentric perspective might make to the ethical debate concerning the practice of genetic engineering. I claim that genetic engineering itself raises novel ethical questions, and particularly so when confronted with biocentric sensibilities. I outline the nature of these questions and describe the biocentric basis for them. I suggest that fundamentalist opposition to projects of genetic engineering is unhelpful, but that biocentric claims should now be a feature of ethical consideration. I conclude, though, that while (...) environmental ethicists can contribute powerfully to debates concerning the future of genetic engineering, the ultimate direction it takes is likely to be beyond their control. (shrink)

De fato 35 is part of Cicero's argument against the Stoic theory of causation. He claims in general that the Stoic chain of causes consists of antecedent but not efficient causes. To the examples cited in the previous chapter he adds verses from the opening of Ennius’ Medea exul (lines 208–11 Jocelyn = FRL 2 and TRF 89.1–4) containing the Nurse's lamentation over the origins of the Argonautic expedition that led, ultimately, to Medea's current mental distress. Then follows the question (...) quorsum haec praeterita? and the answer quia sequitur illud, ‘nam numquam era errans mea domo ecferret pedem | Medea, animo aegro, amore saeuo saucia’, non ut eae res causam adferrent amoris, citing Ennius, Medea exul 215–16 Jocelyn = FRL 2 and TRF 89.8–9. Editors and commentators have struggled to explain the relation of the answer to the question. Here it is argued that the relation becomes clear if one adopts non for non and punctuates with a query after amoris. The sense will be: ‘Why have these past events been cited? In view of the sequel … was it not so that they bring on the cause of love?’ In other words, the Nurse, like the Stoics in Cicero's view, cites antecedent events as if they were efficient causes. (shrink)

This paper considers further evidence that five comic poets as opposed to three competed at the Lenaia and City Dionysia festivals in Athens during the Peloponnesian War. Aristophanes’ abuse of his comic rivals Phrynichos, Ameipsias and Lykis in the opening scene ofFrogs, produced at the Lenaia of 405, is interpreted as a response to his immediate competitors at the dramatic contest that year. A survey of the evidence elsewhere in comedy suggests that comic poets usually reserved such attacks on rival (...) poets for occasions when all were in direct competition at the same festival. Further analysis of Aristophanes’ competitive strategies also suggests these poets immediate participation in the festival and therefore that five poets competed at the Lenaia that year. (shrink)

This paper suffers from a disconcerting generality. I need an excuse for wandering from Wittgenstein's Tractatus to Picasso's drawing of a Weeping Woman, via the philosophy of science and the theory of sense data. The thesis of the paper is that I have such an excuse. These are all areas where the concept of representation either exists in its own right, or has been found to be illuminating by philosophers. An important question is whether it could be the same concept (...) in all these cases. I wish to claim that there is an illuminating common concept, even though to find it may require some fairly drastic modifications of some of the philosophical theses that are involved. (shrink)

Here I will explore through a literature review three important but different ways in which skepticism has been developed. The first is that of the Gettier problem and its potentially skeptical implications for knowledge. The second is Agrippa’s Trilemma, in which the non-skeptic ostensibly struggles to develop a satisfactory account of epistemic justification. Third and lastly, there are brain-in-a-vat scenarios, as one attempts to meet the skeptic’s challenge of having knowledge of the external world. I conclude that the above are (...) important challenges while still maintaining that the non-skeptic has formulated responses worth our consideration. (shrink)

Many theists believe that God is continuously acting to sustain the universe in existence. One way of understanding this act of sustenance is to see God as actually creating the universe anew at each moment. This paper argues against the coherence of this view by drawing out some of its consequences. I argue that the re-creationist must deny the causal efficacy of created f things, as well as the identity of things across time. Most problematically, I argue that re-creationism ultimately (...) denies the reality of time itself. (shrink)

First published in 1996. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This archive of source materials from Victorian periodicals provides insight into the evolving moral and political thought of Britain in the 1800s. It is a treasure-trove for the historian of philosophy and anyone interested in utilitarianism.

A common feature of much recent work done in a variety of disciplines is the foregrounding of embodiment. Thinking in terms of a situated body however, brings up a complex problem which has often been overlooked: the re-importation of a kind of metaphysics of the body or a covert idealism, which stubbornly persists in many such discussions. This is seen in treatments ofthe body as a mediation or as a site for inscription of socio-cultural codings. We will briefly show how (...) even such an influential account ofritualization practices, that of Catherine Bell, shows traces of these problems. The corrective strategy to such conceptions is a properly situational ontology as suggested by Merleau-Ponty's later philosophy and Tim Ingolds critical work on environments. (shrink)