The central purpose of this article is to argue for the extreme pertinence of psychoanalysis for all contemporary thought on the state, violence, and war. I restrict myself exclusively to a close reading of Freud's writings , finding them a formidable instrument of political analysis rivaled only by the radical political thought of Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben, to whose work they bear a surprising affinity. Jacques Derrida has also highlighted the crucial importance of Freud's correspondence with Einstein for contemporary (...) reflections on war, violence, cruelty, and sovereignty. I attempt to show that Freud is thus a remarkably contemporary political thinker and a highly radical one as well. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:ContributorsMichael Bernard-Donals is the Nancy Hoefs Professor of English, and an affiliate member of the Mosse-Weinstein Center for Jewish Studies, at the University of Wisconsin—Madison. His most recent book is An Introduction to Holocaust Studies: History, Memory, and Representation.Oliver Marchart is a professor in the Department of Sociology, University of Lucerne, Switzerland. He is the author of books on Hannah Arendt (2005) and postfoundational political thought (2007) and coeditor, (...) with Simon Critchley, of Laclau: A Critical Reader (2004).Michèle Richman's research and publications focus primarily on the relations between Georges Bataille and other intellectuals with close ties to the French School of Sociology's founding figures, Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss. She is Professor of French Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.Anthony Sampson is a practicing psychoanalyst, member of the École lacanienne de psychanalyse, and teaches in the Institute of Psychology at the University del Valle, Cali, Colombia.An assistant professor of English at East Carolina University, Mikko Tuhkanen has published essays in American Literature, diacritics, African American Review, GLQ, Modern Fiction Studies, and elsewhere.Copyright © 2007 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

Over the last three decades, social theory has become an increasingly important subdiscipline within sociology. Social theory has attempted to elucidate the philosophical basis of sociology by defining the nature of social reality. According to social theory, society consists of objective institutions, structure, on the one hand, and individuals, agency on the other, it promotes human social relations, insisting that in every instance social reality consists of these relations.

Fallibilism about knowledge and justification is a widely held view in epistemology. In this paper. I will try to arrive at a proper formulation of fallibilism. Fallibilists often hold that Cartesian skepticism is a view that deserves to be taken seriously and dealt with somehow. I argue that it turns out that a canonical form of skeptical argument depends upon the denial of fallibilism. I conclude by considering a response on behalf of the skeptic.

This article considers financial risk management practice using a virtue ethics lens, in response to ongoing critiques of risk management from within business ethics. Risk management should be seen as embedded within a complex system of cultures, organizations and regulations that are underpinned by a quantitatively reductive or ‘mechanistic’ economic paradigm, where dominant logics of self-interest, profit maximization and short-termism prevail. Building on recent work applying virtue ethics in finance, an alternative to the values, normative expectations and priorities in financial (...) risk management is presented in the form of a refined ‘taxonomy’ of the virtues that can be applied to individuals and organizations engaged in financial risk management. This article aims to contribute to and extend debate on the ethical aspects of risk management and presents an alternative to more technically based critiques which do not engage with the underlying socially constructed foundations of risk management practice. It thereby provides a basis to critique the mechanistic and narrow approach used in the current regulation of the sector. (shrink)

There is an apparent problem stemming from the factivity of knowledge that seems to afflict both contextualism and subject-sensitive invariantism . 1 In this article, we will first explain how the problem arises for each theory, and then we will propose a uniform resolution.1. The factivity problem for contextualismLet K t stands for X knows _ at t. Let h stand for S has hands. According to contextualism, ‘K t’ is true as uttered in some ordinary conversational contexts. Let O (...) be such a context. So we have ‘K t’ is true in O.Consider a demanding conversational context D . Let S* be a participant in D. We have ‘K t’ is not true in D.In prose: ‘S* knows at t that S has hands’ is not true in D. 2 , 3 Let us suppose that S* has a favourable epistemic status with respect to , as follows: ‘K t[S*,‘K t’ is true in O]’ is true in D. says that a certain sentence about S*'s epistemic status at t is true in D. S*'s epistemic status with respect to which proposition? A certain metalinguistic proposition concerning the truth in O of the sentence ‘K t’. That sentence in turn concerns S's epistemic status at t with respect to the proposition that S has hands. Got it? 4The factivity of ‘knows’ yields the following consequence : ‘K t’ is true in O → hThis metalinguistic factivity claim is licensed by the fact that any sentence of the …. (shrink)

This book uncovers and examines the confusion in antiquity between Aristotle's hypothetical syllogistic and Stoic logic, and offers a fresh perspective on the ...

Paul Boghossian has put forward an influential argument against Tyler Burge's account of basic self‐knowledge. The argument focuses on the relation between externalism about mental content and memory. In this paper, I attempt to analyze and answer Boghossian's argument.

This book develops in detail the simple idea that assertion is the expression of belief. In it the author puts forward a version of 'probabilistic semantics' which acknowledges that we are not perfectly rational, and which offers a significant advance in generality on theories of meaning couched in terms of truth conditions. It promises to challenge a number of entrenched and widespread views about the relations of language and mind. Part I presents a functionalist account of belief, worked through a (...) modified form of decision theory. In Part II the author generates a theory of meaning in terms of 'assertibility conditions', whereby to know the meaning of an assertion is to know the belief it expresses. (shrink)

The proliferation of personal data collection practices fundamentally reshapes how society is ordered and commercialized, and demands reconsideration of the possibilities for a just and equitable s...

Massimo Dell'Utri (1990) provides a reconstruction of Hilary Putnam's argument (1981, chapter 1) to show that the hypothesis that we are brains in a vat is self-refuting. I will explain why the argument Dell'Utri offers us is, on the face of it, quite problematic. Then I will provide a way out of the difficulty.

This collection of germinal work in the field by Anthony Weston presents his pragmatic environmental philosophy, calling for reconstruction and imagination rather than deconstruction and analysis. It is a philosopher's invitation to environmental ethics in an unexpectedly inviting and down-to-earth key. On the pragmatic view advanced here, environmental values are thoroughly natural—what else could they be?—and are open-ended and in flux. Rather than passing judgment on the world as it is, we are called to rediscover and remake the world (...) as it might be. We require an environmental etiquette more than a formal ethic; an etiquette whose development must be an ongoing process; and a process in turn that is genuinely multicentric, challenging us to negotiate our place among the exuberant variety of living and other forms. (shrink)

Henry Sidgwick's Practical Ethics offers a novel approach to practical moral issues. In this article, I defend Sidgwick's approach against recent objections advanced by Sissela Bok, Karen Hanson, Michael S. Pritchard, and Michael Davis. In the first section, I provide some context within which to situate Sidgwick's view. In the second, I outline the main features of Sidgwick's methodology and the powerful rationale that lies behind it. I emphasize elements of the view that help to defend it, noting some affinities (...) it has with those of the later Rawls. In the third section, I indicate how it promises to help alleviate some difficulties facing modern practical ethics. In the fourth, I respond to Bok's objections. I argue that her own work on practical ethics has some similarities to Sidgwick's which should make them friends, not enemies. In the fifth section, I respond to Hanson, Pritchard and Davis. (shrink)

Reviews goodman's claims about representation, Expression and identity of works of art. Claims that the underlying nominalist logic effectively prohibits our understanding of these notions (pace goodman) and leaves everything which is of specific artistic and aesthetic interest out of account.

This paper examines the concepts of desert and luck, familiar in political theory but neglected by sociologists. I argue that the idea of desert is composed of both personal performance and the degree of responsibility a person has over that performance. Distribution ought to be in accordance with the indebtedness created by the person's performance. This can be compromised by luck; that is, personal desert is undermined where lack of performance scuttles the applicability of the contributory model. This paper examines (...) recent work, focusing on establishing desert criteria for each person's ends and life‐plans, and a formula for distribution according to personal welfare. (shrink)

This article is an attempt to develop a practical politico-jurisprudential account of the corporate person, which it does by building on contemporary ideas about collective and shared intentions. It argues for a model of shared intentions, which posits a set of interlocking preferences, and other supporting attitudes. It examines the work of Bratman, Gilbert, Hurley, and Sugden and addresses issues of choice, coercion and will.

Beckett often made use of images from the visual arts and readapted them, staging them in his plays, or using them in his fiction. Anthony Uhlmann sets out to explain how an image differs from other terms, like 'metaphor' or 'representation', and, in the process, to analyse Beckett's use of images borrowed from philosophy and aesthetics. This is the first study to carefully examine Beckett's thoughts on the image in his literary works and his extensive notes to the philosopher (...) Arnold Geulincx. Uhlmann considers how images might allow one kind of interaction between philosophy and literature, and how Beckett makes use of images which are borrowed from, or drawn into dialogue with, philosophical images from Geulincx, Berkeley, Bergson, and the ancient Stoics. Uhlmann's reading of Beckett's aesthetic and philosophical interests provides a revolutionary new reading of the importance of the image in his work. (shrink)

A distinguished group of authors reflects on problems currently enlivening the space shared by philosophy and literary theory in a series of chapters that range in scope from Plato to postmodernism.

It is widely thought that sceptical arguments, if correct, would show that everyday empirical knowledge‐claims are false. Against this, I argue that the very generality of traditional sceptical arguments means that there is no direct incompatibility between everyday empirical claims and sceptical scenarios. Scepticism calls into doubt, not ordinary empirical beliefs, but philosophical attempts to give a deep ontological explanation of such beliefs. G. E. Moore's attempt to refute scepticism (and idealism) was unsuccessful, because it failed to recognise that philosophical (...) scepticism operates on a different level from that on which we make – or doubt – particular empirical claims. And, as I argue with specific reference to work by Nozick and Fogelin, Moore’s basic confusion is still widely shared in contemporary discussions of scepticism. (shrink)

This is an indispensible book for students, teachers and professional researchers in sociology, cultural studies, politics, feminism and philosophy.

Information processing that subserves conscious cognitive functions is thought to involve recurrent signaling through feedforward and feedback loops among hierarchically arranged functional regions of the cerebral cortex. In the current issue of Consciousness and Cognition, Lee et al. report that loss of consciousness, as produced by a bolus injection of the general anesthetic propofol to human volunteers, was accompanied by a decrease in wide-band EEG feedback connectivity from frontal cortex to parietal cortex, confirming a prediction from previous experimental studies. Interestingly, (...) frontoparietal feedback connectivity did not fully recover after the anesthetic effect wore off and the subjects first opened their eyes in response to a verbal command. Possible interpretations of the results and their implications with respect to the neural correlates of consciousness and unconsciousness are discussed. (shrink)

Following Milward and Moravcsik’s injunction that the analysis of European integration requires evidence-based empirical observation, this article focuses on one area of state activity - the armed forces - to illustrate the current trajectory of state transformation in Europe. The article argues that European armed forces are becoming ‘transnational’. They are undergoing a process of concentration and transnationalization. Budgets and resources are focusing on specialist military units, organized into joint rapid reaction forces, which are co-operating at an increasingly lower level (...) with other similarly concentrated units in other states. The article concludes by suggesting that the transnationalization of the armed forces reflects the wider transformation of states; across a range of activities, states are contracting to concentrate on their core functions and co-operating ever more closely with each other to fulfil them. (shrink)

In this recent history of British sociology, Andrew Halsey suggests an intriguing connection between political economic régimes in the twentieth century and the development of sociology as an academic discipline, dividing British sociology into four periods, 1900-1950, 1950-1967, 1968-1975, and 1975-2000. In this way, by connecting disciplinary developments with contemporaneous régimes of economic regulation, Halsey begins to outline a sociology of sociology. However, although much of Halsey's book is informative, especially his description of the period from 1950-1967 when he personally (...) entered the discipline, Halsey ultimately fails to develop his sociology of the discipline sufficiently, especially after 1967. Although it does not claim to be comprehensive, this essay attempts to develop Halsey's sociology of the discipline. Key Words: British sociology • social theory • twentieth century. (shrink)

This article surveys some of the more important work in the philosophy of punishment in past ten years or so.

Although information-processing theories cannot provide a full explanatory account of P-consciousness, there is less conflation and confusion in cognitive psychology than Block suspects. Some of the reasoning that Block criticises can be interpreted plausibly in the light of a folk psychological view of the relation between P-consciousness and A-consciousness.

This is a response to a recent Philosophical Studies article by Bredo Johnsen, in which he makes a number of criticisms of Putnamian anti-skeptical arguments.

It is argued that contrary to appearances, Berkeleyan Idealism lacks anti-sceptical force. The problem stems from the way in which the idealist draws the appearance/reality distinction.

In this paper I try to defend the notion that the dead can be harmed, in opposition to Callahan and in accord with some ideas of Feinberg. In agreement with Parlit, I argue that the existence of a person has degrees. I suggest that properlies of a subject, such as “reputations” and claims, can persist after death, aIthough the subject as such does not and that these can be harmed. A promise, e.g., can be frustrated merely by being ignored; in (...) that sense a dead person can be wronged, and if wronged, s/he can be harmed. (shrink)

This collection of essays contains a selection of readings from the works of the pre-eminent social theorist, Anthony Giddens. A wide range of theoretical issues are covered, including the author's encounter with the writings of Marx, Durkheim, Weber, Parsons and Foucault.

Aristotle has arguably been the most influential of all philosophers. This selection of works by Aristotle, along with essays by Aristotle scholar Anthony Kenny, traces the philosopher's profound influence throughout the ages. It covers in-depth his ethics and philosophy of mind and shows how they provided the framework for fruitful developments in the Middle Ages as well as in the present day. It also includes various contributions to the most recent form of Aristotelian scholarship: computer-assisted stylometry. Anyone who has (...) ever been fascinated by Aristotle's brilliant insight and intellectual legacy will be delighted with this engaging collection. (shrink)