This short article provides a response to Nowotny and Wynne's commentary on an earlier article by the author that examined the relation between science and technology studies and science policy. The article offers a reply with respect to understanding the domain of science policy; how Nowotny and Wynne seek to broaden the scope and so critical leverage of STS beyond the “policy room”; and the implications this has for the ways in which an STS/non-sts nexus might be configured in the (...) future. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Lyngzeidetson [1990] has claimed that a type of parallel computer called the ‘Connection Machine’ instantiates architectural principles which will ‘revolutionize which "functions" of the human mind can and cannot be modelled by (non-human) computational automata.’ In particular, he claims that the Connection Machine architecture shows the anti-mechanist argument from Gödel's theorem to be false for at least one kind of parallel computer. In the first part of this paper, I argue that Lyngzeidetson's claims are not supported (...) by his arguments; in the second part I consider some other aspects of parallel computation which may be of theoretical significance in cognitive science. (shrink)

The relationship between Kant’s “Doctrine of Right” and his broader moral philosophy is a fraught one, with some readers insisting that the two domains are mutually supporting parts of a cohesive practical philosophy and others arguing for their conceptual and legislative independence. In this paper I investigate the reasons for this disparity and argue that both main interpretive camps are mistaken, for Kant’s Rechtslehre can neither be reconciled to his moral philosophy nor stand on its own. I argue that this (...) failure results from Kant’s confused attempt to define the sphere of right as one that functions independently of the moral domain through the construction of non-moral yet categorical imperatives. The result is a fundamental tension in Kant’s text that can only be solved through either collapsing juridical duties into broad moral duties or denying any categorical status to duties of right. (shrink)

_Religious Education and Critical Realism: Knowledge, Reality and Religious Literacy_ seeks to bring the enterprise of religious education in schools, colleges and universities into conversation with the philosophy of Critical Realism. This book addresses the problem, not of the substance of our primal beliefs about the ultimate nature of reality and our place in the ultimate order-of-things, but of the process through which we might attend to questions of substance in more attentive, reasonable, responsible and intelligent ways. This book unpacks (...) the impact of modern and post-modern thought on key topics whilst also generating a new critically realistic vision. Offering an account of the relationship between Religious Education and Critical Realism, this book is essential reading for students, scholars and practitioners interested in philosophy, theology and education. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the way many people live their lives. The increasing amount of time spent indoors and isolated during periods of lockdown has been accompanied by an increase in the time people spend playing video games. One such game which soared in popularity during the early stages of the pandemic was Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Through semi-structured interviews with players, and using a theory-informed qualitative analysis, we document and examine players’ motivations and experiences playing Animal Crossing: New (...) Horizons during the pandemic. Findings suggest that playing the game helped satisfy various psychological needs—autonomy, relatedness, and competence—as described by Self-Determination Theory. Conversely, players stopped playing the game when they found that their psychological needs were thwarted or better met through other activities. Our findings offer support that video games can offer psychological relief in stressful contexts by providing opportunities for people to satisfy key psychological needs. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

This paper discusses the Internet’s role in promoting civic engagement in Asian countries. China and Singapore were selected because they have similar ethnic groups and cultural backgrounds. This paper concludes that the Internet has a limited role in promoting civic engagement due to Internet censorship and people’s political attitudes, which are deeply rooted for Confucian cultural reasons. Moreover the Internet censorship does not bother people in China and Singapore. The argument presented in this paper differs from previous studies that focused (...) only on the Internet censorship system and ignored the cultural and socio-historical dimensions. The paper argues that the cultural and socio-historical dimensions should be considered when studying censorship. (shrink)

Meaning is very important in Dooyeweerd’s Reformational philosophy. This essay seeks to examine what Dooyeweerd wrote about meaning and how he used it in mapping out the various domains of his philosophy. A distinction is drawn between different types of meaning, and it seems that what Dooyeweerd intended was a meaningfulness that exists prior to being, which surrounds and pervades us and is not limited to humans. The aims of the article are to paint a systematic picture of Dooyeweerd’s understanding (...) of meaning and suggest some ways in which it might be developed further by Reformational philosophers. This essay is intended, however, to be of wider interest than just to Reformational discourse, especially in conjunction with its companion paper, which discusses how Dooyeweerd’s understanding can be useful in the sciences and practice. (shrink)

Against the growing trend in philosophy toward naturalistic analysis, Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment has gained significant attention. Some scholars suggest that Kant’s insights bear on our aesthetic appreciation of nature, others on our account of the life sciences. In this paper I draw these lines of inquiry together to identify two overlooked dimensions of Kant’s project: the role of moral hope in problematizing the limits of natural science and the role of culture in providing a solution. Kant (...) argues that we cannot think consistently unless we are able to conceive of nature as a domain that is hospitable to human freedom. His response is to identify the productive capacity of the imagination to transform the material of nature into something more. While the prevailing conception of nature today is at best indifferent and at worst antagonistic to human habitation, this dimension of Kant’s work has much to bear on contemporary thought. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:diacritics 30.2 (2000) 43-69 [Access article in PDF] Tracing Ricoeur Dudley Andrew François Dosse. Paul Ricoeur: Les Sens D'une Vie. Paris: La Découverte, 1997. [PR] The Time of the Tortoise Gilles Deleuze chose not to see the end of the century that Michel Foucault claimed would be named after him, a century that began just as philosophy registered the aftershocks caused by the work of his closest progenitors, (...) Nietzsche and Bergson. Amplifying the waves they made with tempests of his own, Deleuze tried to capsize the flat-bottom boat of academic philosophy by insisting that it look beyond its own discourse for both the life and the vocabulary to account for life that should be its only mission. Scanning French philosophy for what it might contribute to art, fiction, and cinema, I invoke the stirring character of Deleuze, but I do so to deflect attention to another figure, Paul Ricoeur, whom Deleuze conveniently sets off by contrast.Less than a decade since his death, Deleuze is in danger of having ceded his claim to Ricoeur, the real long-distance runner, who is now pressing his publications into the new century, moving relentlessly beyond his exhausted reviewers. Last year, a fanfare of publicity greeted La mémoire, l'histoire, l'oubli, another magisterial tome appearing too late to be included in François Dosse's intellectual biography or in my overview here, which lifts off from that biography. Ricoeur, destined to keep writing--unable to conclude his conversation with philosophy--has outlasted Deleuze, whose notoriety derives from the radical break he makes with the thought of our times, for his abrupt deviations and more abrupt conclusions. Ricoeur's reputation rests seldom on anything conclusive but instead on his persistent interaction with and deployment of so much of that thought. By accident or by savvy design, Ricoeur's trajectory (initiated in the phenomenological atmosphere of the prewar era) has taken him through myth criticism, psychoanalysis, structuralism, language philosophy, analytic philosophy, deconstruction, poetics, historiography, ethics, and epistemology. He carries his learning forward to each new endeavor, not believing in "the radical break" or the prefix post-.François Dosse tracks Ricoeur in a magnificent account that places its subject in relation to each of these movements. But Parisian academic fashion forms only one facet of a life whose brilliance is refracted as well by theology, politics, and a remarkable social network. The thickness of his life evidently provides Ricoeur the necessary ballast to maintain his orientation on the stormy seas of intellectual debate. In fact, across a span of seventy years of uninterrupted reading and writing, he has anticipated, invoked, or debated virtually every important school of French thought, doing so in a way that both establishes their value and serves his own agenda. Ricoeur profits from the productive tension that results, even--indeed, especially--when this brings about a dislocation of his views. These exchanges inevitably leave his own ideas clearer, more defensible, and invulnerable to charges of parochialism. Although Ricoeur concludes his three-volume Time and Narrative with an aggressive chapter explicitly asking, [End Page 43] "Should We Renounce Hegel?," there is something deeply Hegelian about this strategy of taking on, then managing to assimilate, all comers so as to emerge stronger. Ricoeur may not share Hegel's limitless arrogance (literally arrogating everything to himself), but his humility is equally ambitious.There was never any question for Deleuze about renouncing Hegel. His antipathy to this "philosophe de l'État" was immediate, total, and itself completely arrogant. As for Ricoeur, Deleuze apparently avoided the man Dosse dubs "philosophe de la Cité," at least before 1986. Then, he links their names after each had just published a multivolume treatise on temporality and fabulation, Deleuze's cinema books picking up the notion of "bifurcated time" that Ricoeur had just developed in Time and Narrative. Proust was explicitly a key source for both of their studies. But apparently, and outwardly, it gets no closer than this. In concatenating these two French philosophers, I follow the lead of Olivier Mongin, who finds them both to be supreme philosophers of time, yet incompatible on... (shrink)

One of the fundamental questions in post-Fregean philosophy is how to account for the normativity involved in assertoric claims once the traditional subject-object view of thinking is rejected. One of the more productive lines of inquiry in the contemporary literature attributes normativity to second nature, which is presented as a sui generis space of reason giving and receiving distinct from the space of nature studied by the natural sciences. In this paper I suggest an alternative account by drawing from Castoriadis’s (...) philosophical interpretation of autopoiesis. For Castoriadis, the idea of second nature protects the modern conception of nature from undergoing the radical critique it requires, for it restricts normativity to the anthropic sphere. In contrast, he proposes an autopoietic account of the subject that grounds the capacity to know that one knows in the activity of the living being. Castoriadis demonstrates that the normativity of assertoric claims is not a vertical break from nature but rather a horizontal transformation of the biological capacity for self-referentiality. (shrink)

Per Persson _Understanding Cinema: A Psychological Theory of Moving Imagery_ Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003 ISBN 0-521-81328-X 52 illustrations, 281 pp.

(1998). Speculative imagination and the problem of legitimation: On David Ingram's Reason, History, and Politics: The communitarian grounds of Legitimation in the modern age. Social Epistemology: Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 117-126.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:...

In England, higher education institutions, together with the schools whose staff they train, are being required to incorporate synthetic phonics as one of the key approaches to the teaching of reading. Yet even if synthetic phonics can be identified as one of the component ‘skills’ of reading, an assumption vigorously contested in this paper, it does not follow that it can or should be taught explicitly and independently of reading for meaning. Imposing such a ‘method’ is, at a deep level, (...) incompatible with teachers acting as teachers and potentially constitutes a kind of abuse of early readers. Moreover, because of the conceptual difficulties confronting any attempt to specify synthetic phonics as an approach, there cannot exist, in principle, empirical research that actually supports its value. Current policy in England since the Rose Report, at least, assumes the opposite. All this cannot be dismissed as a little local difficulty for England concerning the teaching of reading English with all its spelling irregularities: there are broader implications for the relationship between research and teaching, together with continuing tendencies to impose ‘teacher proof’ approaches on schools and their staff in many countries. (shrink)

‘It worked there. Will it work here?’ We have to be able to identify the ‘it’ in that aphoristic question. Classifications of teaching methods belong in the social realm, where human intentions play a fundamental role in how phenomena are categorized. The social realm is characterized with the help of John Searle. Social phenomena are often open to interpretation, rather than definitive verdicts. The nature of the social limits the possibility of consistency in how teaching should be classified, which in (...) turn limits the viability of standard quantitative empirical research into effectiveness. Either classifications of teaching are very broad, which robs them of a researchable identity, or they are more specific, which can undermine their credentials as true teaching. So-called ‘Direct Instruction’ is a case in point. (shrink)

This meticulous work, the product of years of scholarship and effort, contains a great deal to admire. It rightly rejects the frame, still common in philosophy departments, of Hume as someone who, after writing the Treatise, "abandoned philosophy" for the sake of lesser inquiries like politics and history. It convincingly portrays Hume's vast classical learning as devoted, in the end, to modern conversations and modern purposes, not to the pursuit of ancient wisdom as directly therapeutic for individuals. It deftly places (...) Hume's work not in a narrow Scottish or English context, but in the larger conversation of European letters... (shrink)

This collection of essays and thoughts covers such areas as basic Christian thought, which includes traditional family morality and a great concern for alleviating poverty and promoting social justice, political thought comparing the need for a system which includes both socialist and capitalist elements, and the need for values in our society, which has come to emphasize money, power, and greed as philosophical goals and values, though they are not. The book also has thoughts concerning literature, a consideration of what (...) constitutes true progress, the denial in our society of any absolute moral truth, and the substitution of moral relativism as a mistaken ethical system. --publisher description. (shrink)

In this article, I examine and respond to Charles Taylor’s phenomenology of language. Taylor argues for the constitutive theory of language by refuting the designative theory of language. According to Taylor, designative theory fails to grasp the constitutive nature of language which opens up human meanings and values, shapes our emotions, and defines our social footings. Metaphors and symbols convey important insights about human reality through extending our language capacity. By comparing with Paul Ricoeur’s and Avery Dulles’ analysis of symbols, (...) we can also see the significance of figurative speech in religious life. Finally, the anticipated criticism of Taylor’s argument of moral felt intuition is also defended. (shrink)

Moral Victories is the first book-length treatment of the ethical dimensions of victory in war.

This paper explores a distinction between two types of response- dependence (RD) account (shallow vs. deep). This distinction is inherent in much of the existing literature, however it is neither widely nor well understood, and has never been drawn explicitly. The distinction is often taken to be a metaphysical, or ‘realism-relevant’ one—i.e. deep RD accounts entail qualified realism (or perhaps anti-realism), while shallow RD accounts are metaphysically neutral. I argue that the distinction is not reliably realism-relevant. I formulate a weaker (...) version of the distinction that may help prevent some common and understandable confusion about RD biconditionals and their relationship to realism. The weaker distinction rests on the different roles assigned to RD biconditionals by the two types of account. (shrink)

Event synopsis: This conference will explore Friedrich Nietzsche's critical relation to Kantian political philosophy. Taking 'Kantian politics' to include modern and contemporary Kantian theories as well as Kant's own theories, the conference will examine Nietzsche's engagement with such Kantian themes as autonomy and rights, equality and democracy, morality and politics, war and cosmopolitanism, history and anthropology. The speakers are renowned scholars of political philosophy from the United States and Europe, and the format of the conferences involves the pre-circulation of papers (...) among participants and extended sessions, so as to allow much time for discussion. The conference is the sixth in a series examining Nietzsche's relation to Kant and Kantianism, each focusing on specific areas and texts of Kant's philosophy. Previous conferences were held on ethics in Leiden, aesthetics in London, epistemology in Lisbon, religion in Belo Horizonte, and anthropology in Lecce, and another will be held on the transcendental in Galway in March 2014. The conference is organized by Tom Bailey (tbailey@johncabot.edu) and funded by John Cabot University. There is no conference fee, but if you plan to attend, please register with Tom Bailey, who will also provide you with practical information and the conference papers. All sessions will take place at the University's Guarini campus, in Via della Lungara 233, Trastevere, Rome. The Friday morning sessions will take place in the Aula Magna Regina, and the following sessions in the Board Room. (shrink)

One aim of this essay is to understand why white evangelical Christians, more than any other religious adherents in the United States, are deeply invested in denying the emergency of anthropogenic climate change and in obstructing action to address anthropogenic climate change. Michael S. Hogue, in his recent book, American Immanence, blames a religious imaginary he names the “redeemer symbolic.” This symbolic complex inspires the devotion of the politically powerful white evangelical Christian and nationalist movement in the United States at (...) the present time. A second aim of the essay is to analyze the redeemer symbolic. Through a reading of Maurice Sendak’s much-loved illustrated children’s book, Where the Wild Things Are, the essay suggests that U.S. white evangelical devotees of the redeemer symbolic share a kind of inability to come to terms with a vital and ineliminable wildness in persons and cultures; further, that this inability correlates with a political-theological failure, even refusal, to grasp the emergency of anthropogenic climate change. The essay first explicates the redeemer symbolic, with a particular focus on its implication in the legitimation of climate skepticism. Then, with the aid of key concepts from the psychoanalytic theory of D.W. Winnicott, it interprets the story of Max, the protagonist in Where the Wild Things Are, as a fable of healthy development of what Winnicott calls “transitional space” and a related “capacity to be alone.” Unsuccessful development of those resources, it is suggested, contributes to an account of why adherents of the redeemer symbolic typically refuse wildness and thus may be prone to climate negligence. More importantly, though, recognizing the cultural-psychological importance of “wild things” may help fire imaginative ways around the obstructiveness of the redeemer symbolic, to more effectively address climate change in particular, and human well-being in nature in general. (shrink)

This article addresses the way in which therapeutic practice in an English prison creates conditions whereby both prisoners and prison officers are caught up in networks and relationships of power that contribute to the constitution of particular subjects. The development of therapeutic practice, in relation to prisons and probation, is described and contextualised. Subsequently, the practices of group therapy in operation at Grendon prison - a rather unique institution built on principles of therapeutic community – are analysed with a focus (...) on five ”practices of moulding,” namely, naming, confession, assessment and surveillance, tolerance and participation. The argument that psychotherapy, under conditions of imprisonment, is a form of repression or social control is discussed and dismissed as too simple a model to account for the relations of power and constitutive practices that effect all participants, not only prisoners. Members of staff, as well as prisoners, are shown to be caught up in the disciplinary web. Discipline, as opposed to control, is advocated as a more appropriate concept for understanding therapeutic practices in prison. The work of Thomas Mathiesen, on the concept of synoptic power, is introduced to help illustrate these dynamics. The article represents a shift in my own thinking, from scepticism to a pragmatic idealist position, that creates space for institutions like Grendon to be imagined as potential least worst options for people convicted of offences and obliged to serve “time”. It is my hope, argued for in the article, that Grendon can be conceived of as a “visionary space” with emancipatory potential. (shrink)

What is the true calling of the intellectual? In this provocative new book, Andrew Shanks presents a distinctive fresh answer. The Other Calling is a systematic riposte both to the elitism of philosophy in the heritage of Plato, and to the typical individualism of Plato's philosophic opponents. Here, instead, intellectual integrity is identified with a form of priesthood. Asserts that intellectuals are critical to bringing together the common aspirations of a community Offers a strikingly original approach to the moral (...) and political aspects of theology’s relationship with philosophy, exploring the perspectives of both disciplines Draws on the work and thought of Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Agnostics, and Atheists Argues for a new, religiously multicultural “priesthood of all thinkers”, considering how once, all intellectuals were as a matter of course also priests Published in the new and prestigious Illuminations series. (shrink)

The article by Jessica Pierce and Christina Kerby, raises some important but seldom asked questions about the use of natural resources in healthcare. They take for their example latex gloves, which are in wide everyday use, especially since the establishment of principles of universal precautions in infection control as a reaction to the spread of HIV. They trace the production of latex gloves back through rubber processing to their origins in Malaysian rubber plantations and elsewhere. They then ask, but do (...) not answer, some hard questions about the ethics of our relationship as patients to the impact of the materials we use on communities and the environment. To draw out their theme more starkly, consider the rumor widespread in South America that some babies purportedly adopted by Northerners are sold and cut up for their organs. Suppose this story were true; suppose your donated organ were obtained in this way. You would probably be so revolted by the immorality of its acquisition that you would refuse to accept it. But now take a morally more ambiguous case, as Pierce and Kerby intend. Suppose that the process of obtaining latex gloves is part of the gradual erosion of the Malaysian environment, and that workers in latex factories are poorly paid. Now, should or would you refuse to use latex gloves? Should or would you even be more selective in their use? The practice of universal precautions presumes a virtually unlimited supply of gloves; yet to react to resource scarcity with selective precautions hazards discrimination. Is there any way philosophically to balance the local justice issue of discrimination in comparison to injustice on a global scale and to future generations? (shrink)

This article offers a comparative study of the approaches of Dworkin and Aristotle to money and the market. For Dworkin the importance of this subject lies in the use he makes of the device of a hypothetical auction to provide the basis of a conception of equality of resources, compatible with liberty, and sustained by his view of ethical individualism. The technical adequacy of Dworkin's auction is considered with the assistance of an insight taken from Aristotle's comments on money, which (...) brings to light the secondary conceptual status of money. Dworkin's attempts to produce a metric of equality of resources are found wanting. It is suggested that Aristotle's insight has repercussions for Dworkin's broader project, as well as implication for any attempt to use the market to provide a sense of value in human affairs. (shrink)