From the publication of The Possibility of Naturalism, Bhaskar’s critical naturalism or realism has argued for a dualistic social ontology of interpreting individuals and objective, ‘real’ social structures. In arguing for a dualistic ontology, Bhaskar commits himself to two antinomies; he insists that society is dependent on individuals but also independent of them, and that social action is always intentional but it also has non-intentional, material features. These antinomies are apparently resolved by appeals to emergence. In fact, the appeal to (...) emergence is merely a disguised regression into reification and the only genuine path out of these antinomies is the adoption of a fully hermeneutic social theory in line with the positions of Winch and Gadamer. (shrink)

There is no doubt that the model presented here is incomplete. Many important categories, particularly negation and the adverbials, have been entirely ignored, and the treatment of Tense and the affixes is certainly inadequate. It also remains to be seen how the many constructions that have been ignored here are to be accommodated within the framework that has been outlined. However, the fact that a standard categorial lexicon, plus the four rule schemata, seems to come close to exhaustively specifying the (...) main clause constructions of English, and also seems to explain a number of major constraints on transformations, encourages us to compare the theory with certain alternatives, and to examine its broader implications. (shrink)

The question of whether democracy is a human right or not has received increased attention in recent years from philosophers, and in the light of recent world events, from the general public. Tom Campbell provides a minimalist strategy to support the human rights status of democracy, one linked to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and subsequent developments in International Law and global institutions. I suggest that we need to consider the question at a more philosophical level and argue that (...) Campbell’s minimalist strategy for understanding the right to democracy is inadequate to both the normative and symbolic claims associated with the idea. I develop my argument by considering two themes also engaged by Campbell: the demandingness of democracy, and the relationship between rights and interventions. (shrink)

Apoptosis is an essential part of the normal cellular phenotype repertoire. In the absence of appropriate survival factors, apoptosis is activated through specific signalling cassettes. Epithelia form distinctive three‐dimensional cohesive structures that depend on adhesive interactions in order for these tissues to carry out their specialised roles, such as secretion and reproduction. The cellular programme that triggers apoptosis in epithelial cells has not yet been shown to differ from that in other cell types, yet the unique characteristics of epithelia endow (...) them with specific determinants for survival. In particular, cell‐matrix and cell‐cell interactions are required to prevent entry of epithelial cells into apoptosis, and soluble factors that have profound effects on epithelia, such as steroid hormones or hepatocyte growth factor, also influence their survival. The regenerative capacity of certain epithelia is controlled by intrinsic expression of survival genes within stem cell populations, and may regulate the susceptibility of different epithelial tissues to undergo carcinogenesis. (shrink)

Africa has always been viewed as a land of the world’s greatest potential. It has been described ad nauseam as a land of abundant natural and human resources, the cradle of civilization and the bastion of man’s natural spirituality. In spite of this apparent superlative richness, the present African condition is also well documented as a paradox. If Africa is this resource rich, why is it so backward and economically poor? In line with the existentialist notion of solicitude and care, (...) this paper argues for a case of global ‘Samaritanism’, that is, an unsolicited care for the other that is nonetheless morally obligatory by virtue of a shared world and common existence. Drawing insight from the submission of Peter Singer, this paper posits that, if we have the capacity to intervene and prevent something bad from happening, without sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought morally to do it. This paper’s contribution to existing knowledge rests on the extension of Singer’s principle of ‘Samaritanism’ to include solicitude and actionable intervention on life-threatening human conditions of whatever kind. Key words : Africa, Cultural Menaces, Singer, Samaritanism, Existentialism, Fursorge. (shrink)

This article traces the association between the European overseas empires and the concept of sovereignty, arguing that, ever since the days of Cicero—if not earlier—Europeans had clung to the idea that there was a close association between a people and the territory it happened to occupy. This made it necessary to think of an “empire” as a unity—an “immense body,” to use Tacitus’s phrase—that would embrace all its subjects under a single sovereign. By the end of the eighteenth century it (...) had become possible, in this way, to speak of “empires of liberty” that would operate for the ultimate benefit of all their “citizens,” freeing them from previous tyrannical rulers and bringing them under the protection of more benign regimes. In such empires sovereignty could only ever be, as it had become in Europe, undivided. The collapse of Europe's “first” empires in the Americas, however, was followed rapidly by Napoleon’s attempt to create a new kind of Empire in Europe. The ultimate, and costly, failure of this project led many, Benjamin Constant among them, to believe that the age of empires was now over and had been replaced by the age of commerce. But what in fact succeeded Napoleon was the modern European state system, which attempted not to replace empire by trade, as Constant had hoped, but to create a new kind of empire, one that sought to minimize domination and settlement, and to make a sharp distinction between imperial ruler and imperial subject. In this kind of empire, sovereignty could only be “divided.” Various kinds of divided rule were thus devised in the nineteenth century. Far, however, from being an improvement on the past, this ultimately resulted in—or at least contributed greatly to—the emergence of the largely fictional and inevitably unstable societies that after the final collapse of the European empires became the new states of the “developing world.”. (shrink)

In terms of its impact on Britain, historians have long treated the American Revolution as the poor cousin of the French Revolution. Following E P Thompson's Marxist emphasis on the 1790s as the start of The making of the English working class (1963), scholars have devoted enormous amounts of time and energy to studying British popular politics and intellectual developments in the last decade of the eighteenth century. The American Revolution has traditionally attracted less attention outside American national historiography.

In (...) British history, the American war has been studied mostly as a problem of high politics. British historians have written many fine studies of the complex politics of the 1760s through to the war of 1775-83. While American historians have searched long and hard for long term social and economic causes of their revolution, British historians have tended to view the war as primarily a failure of politics. Ian Christie argued that 'the Revolution was a human tragedy, for which certain men were responsible, more particularly because, in Great Britain, the politicians who had the common sense and vision were out of power (owing to their own weakness and limitations) and those who were in power lacked the vision'. John Cannon has argued that Britain was little affected by the loss of America. Economic ties reconnected after 1783 and Britons moved on with their lives at the centre of an empire that was still strong in the West Indies and Canada, and expanding in the eastern hemisphere.

There have been some impressive studies of the impact of the American Revolution on British popular politics. H T Dickinson has written a number of influential studies of popular politics in the eighteenth century and edited an important volume of essays on _Britain and the American Revolution_ (1988). James E Bradley has analysed a wealth of empirical detail on Dissenting religion and political agitation during the American crisis. Eliga H Gould's _The persistence of empire: British political culture in the age of the American Revolution_ (2000) has provided an insightful study of the strength of loyalism. While of high quality, however, the quantity of such studies has long been dwarfed by the 1790s industry.

In recent years, however, scholars have begun to emphasise the importance of the period before the French Revolution. The impact of war on the development of state and society in the middle decades of the eighteenth century is now attracting attention. In _The British Isles and the War of American Independence_ (2000) Stephen Conway has detailed the significant impact the war had on state and society in Britain. In British history, according to Sarah Knott, 'where once the French Revolution, and its ricochets, was the fin-de-siècle story of transformation, now the years of the American war are the location of all manner of historical change.'. (shrink)

Archer recognizes that sexual selection theory is sensitive to the effects of ecologies on sex differences, yet he does not explain the impact of such variation. For example, to what degree are there sex differences in aggression in polygynous and monogamous societies? I demonstrate how differences in mating perceptions affect the traditional dichotomy that males compete for and females choose mates.

The Unspeakable Girl is more important for Agamben’s thought than its short length, antiquarianism, and belletristic format suggest. In discussing ancient initiation rites through an analysis of the figure of the Kore – the unspeakable girl – it suggests how we might conceive of initiation into form-of-life, thus addressing a pressing question that emerges from Agamben’s Homo Sacer project: if Agamben’s thought aims at the demystification of philosophy, yet mystery is the essence of philosophical initiation as traditionally conceived and philosophy (...) needs some kind of initiation, how could one conceive of an initiation into that which is without mystery – into the profane. Yet by insisting on an opposition between “authentic” interior gestures and their vulgar betrayal, Agamben undermines his own most radical insight. Such a distinction can never be drawn, and hence a different kind of initiation must be envisioned: not into the critical spectatorship of the dance, but into the dance itself. (shrink)

Note posted 9 Jun 08 : Modifications made today include a new section on predictive validity, and addition of recently published article and in in-press article, both by Nosek & Hansen, under the "CULTURE VS. PERSON" heading, which replaces a previously listed unpublished ms. of theirs. I continue to encourage all interested to send material that they are willing to be included on this page. Please also to let me know about errors, including faulty links.

The author begins by observing that he has often been described as an analytical Thomist. He proceeds to argue that—regardless of what school one belongs to—genuine philosophical engagement with Aquinas’s texts means one should be both reverent and critical. If we are to consider the relevance of Aquinas’s thought for contemporary philosophy, the author suggests, the best way for us to write about Aquinas is the way in which he wrote about Aristotle: stating his views as clearly and sympathetically as (...) possible, showing their connection with current concerns, and contesting them politely but firmly if they appear to be erroneous. (shrink)

Montesquieu, Hume, Voltaire, Diderot, Smith, Gibbon, Bentham... These are among the great thinkers who contributed to the dramatic developments in religion, science, and philosophy that we now call the Enlightenment. Written by a world authority, this brief history of the Enlightenment concludes with a perceptive assessment of the cultural, religious, ethical, and political dimensions of its legacy.

(3) a. Stijn-tje-se moeder kwam ons halen (Dutch child language: 6;7.14) Stijntje-se mother came us get (Stijntje is a girl’s name) Standard adult : Stijntjes moeder kwam ons halen b. Dit is wie-se? (Dutch child language: 6;3) This is whose? Standard adult: Van wie is dit? (4) a. vader-sen hond (dialect of Helmond) father-sen dog b. wie-se stoel (dialect of Helmond) who-se chair..

This work takes up the problem of moral conflict, wherein a person must choose between two or more evils. The problem lies behind such issues as the defensive war, therapeutic abortion, and contraception. It becomes a religious question because, as the author argues, religion elicits the same kind of openness to values as is needed for addressing moral dilemmas. After culling insights out of the history of Christian ethics, Blasi presents phenomenologies of both moral decision making and religion, and uses (...) the results to address the variety of moral dilemmas. (shrink)

_Sociologies of Religion: National Traditions_ presents fourteen histories of the sociological study of religion in a diverse set of nations. The authors narrate the stories behind major personages, theoretical traditions, seminal works, research institutes, and professional associations.