Henri Bergson (1859-1941) was once the most famous philosopher in the world, but his reputation waned in the latter half of the 20th century. Barry Allen here makes the case for Bergson as a great philosopher, one whose thought has much to contribute to contemporary philosophical questions. Living in Time presents chapters on each of Bergson's four major works, explaining his theories of time, perception, memory, and panpsychic consciousness, his innovative concept of virtual existence, his objection to Darwin, his (...) controversy with Einstein, his philosophy of creative evolution, and his social philosophy of closed and open society. In particular Allen focusses on Bergson's powerful ideas on time. Classical arguments for determinism fallaciously apply spatial concepts to consciousness; once we take time seriously, which means acknowledging its reality as duration and its difference from space, Bergson showed that the arguments for determinism become insupportable. Bergson's ideas on time and evolution offer a comparison with Nietzsche, which Allen develops, exposing both philosophical concurrence and systematic difference. The book's conclusion discusses the question of Bergson and naturalism and summarizes the ontology of the virtual that emerges as a core part of Bergson's thought. (shrink)

abstract This article defends luck egalitarianism as an interpretation of the egalitarian ideal against two major criticisms levelled against it by Elizabeth Anderson — that it is trapped in the distributive paradigm, and that it treats the victims of bad option luck too harshly to be considered an egalitarian theory. Against the first criticism, I argue that luck egalitarianism will condemn non‐material inequalities and injustices if an appropriate conception of well‐being is adopted. I demonstrate this by showing how the approach (...) is sensitive to the five faces of oppression developed by Iris Young. Although the second criticism is more troubling, it does not defeat luck egalitarianism, either. I will show that few of the inequalities that arise in the real world result from option luck. Further, if cases do occur, rather than abandoning the theory, the best response is to combine luck egalitarianism with another egalitarian principle that will ensure that the basic needs of all citizens are satisfied. The paper concludes by defending the appeal of the distinction between option luck and brute luck, in light of the preceding discussion. (shrink)

Is human freedom and choice exaggerated in recent social theory? Should agency be the central in sociology? In this, penetrating and assured book, one of the leading commentators in the field asks where social theory is going. Barnes argues that social theory has taken the wrong turn in over-stating individual freedom. The result is that social contexts in which all individual actions are situated, is dangerously under-theorized. Barnes calls for a form of social theory that recognizes that sociability is the (...) essential characteristic of human life. It is our capacity to communicate with each other, and plan for each other’s welfare, that makes us truly human. Once this is allowed, notions of “agency”, “freedom”, and “choice” lose their connotation with free-floating individualism. Instead the embedded character of agency is starkly revealed. This is a model of well-informed and balanced analysis. It will be of interest to students of sociology, philosophy and social theory. (shrink)

Even if we do not observe those who own or manage capital doing anything, are there nevertheless good reasons for saying that they have power over government? My thesis is that, on any analysis of `power over others' that enables us to say that voters have power over those elected and that consumers have power over producers, we also have to say that those who own or control capital have power over government. Conversely, the reasons that can be given (and (...) have been given) for denying that owners of capital have power over governments would be equally good reasons for denying that voters have power over governments and that consumers have power over producers. Key Words: power • capitalism • democracy. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Work is a place where many adults devote significant portions of their waking lives, but it is also a place where civil liberties, including freedom of speech, are significantly constrained. I examine the regulation and control of expressive activity in and around the workplace from legal, managerial, and ethical perspectives. The focus of this article is onworkplace freedom of expression:the ability to engage in acts of expression at or away from the workplace, on subjects related or unrelated to the workplace, (...) free from the threat of discipline or discharge. I present a taxonomy of workplace-relevant acts of expression, describe the present legal status of workplace expression, review and integrate theoretical perspectives on free speech, drawn mainly from legal theory and philosophy, and critically assess the state of freedom of expression in the workplace, arguing that it is excessively and unnecessarily limited in both law and management practice. (shrink)

We can and do reflect in very general terms on human beings and their place in the world, and we do so for a number of reasons and in a variety of ways. We can notice similarities between human beings and other parts of nature, or differences between them and most other things, or even respects in which they are unique in the world as we know it. Human beings are born and grow and they decline and die. They are (...) the only things in the universe who laugh. Human beings also act. Unlike rocks on a mountainside or branches of a tree, they do not just move, they do things. Other animals also do things, but humans differ from them in the extent to which they think about what to do, and then act as a result of that deliberation. And, not coincidentally, human beings also know things about the world around them. Knowledge is essential to deliberation and to informed action. (shrink)

There is no cure or vaccine for HIV/AIDS. The only life-prolonging treatment available is antiretroviral (ARV) therapy. WHO estimates, however, that less than 5 percent of those who require treatment in developing countries currently enjoy access to these medicines. In Africa fewer than 50,000 people–less than 2 percent of the people in need–currently receive ARV therapy. These facts have elicited strongly divergent reactions, and views about the appropriate response to this crisis have varied widely.The intensity of the debate concerning access (...) to life-prolonging medicines for the treatment of HIV/AIDS, and the heated rhetoric with which they are often conducted, suggest that these disagreements may be rooted in deeper disagreements of value. It is not obvious, however, what disagreements of value are at stake in this debate. By analyzing the statements of scholars, public officials, activist organizations, and private sector representatives, each of whom may endorse very different policy recommendations on access to HIV/AIDS drugs, we have identified and created a typology of the different sources of disagreement in the debate. We conclude that the central disagreements concerning access to medicines arise from competing understandings of how responsibilities for bringing remedy to hardships should be allocated to different agents and institutions. A central lesson that emerges from our analysis is that thinking about “health equity” must extend beyond the explanation and justification of goals, values, and ideals, and engage more honestly with the difficult question of how responsibilities for bringing remedy to health crises should be allocated in complex social contexts. (shrink)

In this sweeping volume of comparative philosophy and intellectual history, Barry Allen reassesses the values of experience and experiment in European and world traditions. His work traces the history of empirical philosophy from its birth in Greek medicine to its emergence as a philosophy of modern science. He surveys medical empiricism, Aristotlean and Epicurean empiricism, the empiricism of Gassendi and Locke, logical empiricism, radical empiricism, transcendental empiricism, and varieties of anti-empiricism from Parmenides to Wilfrid Sellars. Throughout this extensive intellectual (...) history, Allen builds an argument in three parts. A richly detailed account of history's empiricisms in Part One establishes a context in Part Two for reconsidering the work of the radical empiricists--William James, Henri Bergson, John Dewey, and Gilles Deleuze, each treated in a dedicated chapter. What is "radical" about them is their effort to return empiricism from epistemology to the ontology and natural philosophy where it began. In Part Three, Allen sets empirical philosophy in conversation with Chinese tradition, considering technological, scientific, medical, and alchemical sources, as well as selected Confucian, Daoist, and Mohist classics. The work shows how philosophical reflection on experience and a profound experimental practice coexist in traditional China with no interaction or even awareness of each other, slipping over each other instead of intertwining as they did in European history, a difference Allen attributes to a different understanding of the value of knowledge. Allen's book recovers empiricism's neglected, multi-textured contexts, and elucidates the enduring value of experience, to arrive at an idea of what is living and dead in philosophical empiricism. (shrink)

Attempts to look without preconception at the part of the text usually thought to contain Wittgenstein's main argument against the existence of a private language.

Realists about practical reasons agree that judgments regarding reasons are beliefs. They disagree, however, over the question of how such beliefs motivate rational action. Some adopt a Humean conception of motivation, according to which beliefs about reasons must combine with independently existing desires in order to motivate rational action; others adopt an anti-Humean view, according to which beliefs can motivate rational action in their own right, either directly or by giving rise to a new desire that in turn motivates the (...) action. I argue that the realist who adopts a Humean model for explaining rational action will have a difficult time giving a plausible account of the role that desire plays in this explanation. I explore four interpretations of this role and argue that none allows a Humean theory to explain rational action as convincingly as an anti-Humean theory does. The first two models, in different ways, make acting on a reason impossible. The third allows this possibility, but only by positing a reason-sensitive desire that itself demands an explanation. The fourth avoids this explanatory challenge only by retreating to an empty form of the Humean view. In contrast, an anti-Humean theory can provide an intuitively plausible explanation of rational action. I conclude that the realist about reasons should adopt an anti-Humean theory to explain rational action. (shrink)

We provide a critical assessment of the National Science Foundation's “broader impacts criterion” for peer review, which has met with resistance from the scientific community and been characterized as unlikely to have much positive effect due to poor implementation and adherence to the linear model heuristic for innovation. In our view, the weakness of NSF's approach owes less to these issues than to the misguided assumption that the peer review process can be used to leverage more societal value from research. (...) This idea, although undoubtedly well-meaning, is fundamentally flawed. Retooling or refining the Broader Impacts Criterion does not alter the fact that conventional peer review, based on specialized scientific and technical expertise, is not up to the task of ensuring adequate judgements about social impact. We consider some possible alternative approaches to providing greater social impact in science and include in our assessment past and current efforts at NSF and throughout the federal research establishment that address, in some cases having addressed for decades, the intentions and goals of the Broader Impacts Criterion, albeit using alternate mechanisms. We conclude that institution-building and explicit and targeted policy-making are more useful and democratically legitimate approaches to ensuring broad social impacts. (shrink)

Despite their common core in statistics, insurance and epidemiology propel two different forms of solidarity. In insurance, the collective is a source of protection, thanks to the pooling of risks; in epidemics by contrast, the group remains the source of danger for the individual. The aim of this paper is to highlight the conceptions of community and solidarity at play in epidemics in contradistinction to insurance, with a focus on the shift introduced by big data and algorithms. Paradoxically, while the (...) new technologies and epidemiology share a common view on the relation between the individual and the collective, tracing apps were not widely adopted in the Covid-19 crisis. This reluctance to use current technologies for the sake of epidemic containments highlights, beyond legitimate interrogations, a confusion between two imaginaries of the social: insurance solidarity where the interdependence is a source of rights, and epidemic solidarity that imposes duties. (shrink)

ArgumentThe tension between theoretical and practical knowledge was particularly problematic for trainee physicians. Unlike civic apprenticeships in surgery and pharmacy, in early modern England there was no standard procedure for obtaining education in the practical aspects of the physician’s role, a very uncertain process of certification, and little regulation to ensure a suitable reward for their educational investment. For all the emphasis on academic learning and international travel, the majority of provincial physicians returned to practice in their home area, because (...) establishing a practice owed more to networks of kinship, patronage and credit than to formal qualifications. Only when (and where) practitioners had to rely solely on their professional qualification to establish their status as young practitioners that the community could trust would proposals to reform medical education, such as those put forward to address a crisis of medicine in Restoration London, which are examined here, be converted into national regulation of medical education in the early nineteenth century, although these proposals prefigured many informal developments in medical training in the eighteenth century. (shrink)

Based on results of an experiment, hypotheses are tested concerning the effects of computer use on decision commitment. The experiment required subjects to make an adoption decision regarding a hypothetical government agency's innovation. Subjects could choose from a variety of information sets, some computer based, some not, before making the decision. After their decision the subjects were given “new evidence” that contradicted their initial position. Two experimental treatments included more difficult access to the computer-based information and higher cost for the (...) computer-based information. Results indicate that access difficulty diminishes confidence in decisions and leads to lesser commitment. However, the cost of the computer information seems to have little bearing on decision commitment. (shrink)

We use the term “Zoomification” to refer to the primary mode of research collaboration used by academic researchers during much of the COVID-19 pandemic. While neither video-enabled technology or remote collaboration is new, the technology developments and needs that occurred during the pandemic proved exceptional, indeed a step-change in approaches to research collaboration. This study, based on in-depth interviews with 65 tenured and tenure track professors in dozens of United States universities in a wide variety of STEM disciplines, focuses on (...) collegial effects of Zoomification on research collaboration, including research with graduate students. We find diverse impacts according to career status, with younger faculty and doctoral students faring least well with an absence of face-to-face communication. As expected, impacts vary according to the nature of work, including the need to work in the field, reliance on laboratory equipment, laboratory animals, samples and high cost, centralized equipment. The effects of remote collaboration are to some extent predictable but there are results that point toward realignment in some of the ways research collaboration is established and maintained. We conclude with speculations about the long-range implications of Zoomification of research collaboration. (shrink)

Emerging Adults' Religiousness and Spirituality seeks to understand how the developmental process of meaning-making encompasses American emerging adults' religiousness and spirituality. This volume does not focus on disentangling religion and spirituality conceptually, but rather emphasizes their centrality in the psychology of human development. It highlights the range of experiences and perspectives of emerging adults in the U.S. grounded in social context, social position, and religious or spiritual identification. Chapters are written by an interdisciplinary group of authors and explore topics such (...) as the benefits and detriments of religiousness and spirituality to emerging adults; contexts and socializing agents such as parents and peers, the media, religious communities, and universities; and variations of religiousness and spirituality concerning gender, sexuality, culture, and social position. (shrink)

Malebranche argues that we lack a clear idea of the mind because we cannot, even in principle, derive all the possible modes of mind solely from the idea of thought. But we can, in principle, derive all the possible modes of body from the idea of extension. Therefore, there is epistemic asymmetry between our ideas of mind and body. I offer a defense of Descartes whereby he can assert that we have a clear idea of mind despite this asymmetry. I (...) argue that he can do this by distinguishing the simplicity of mind from the divisibility of body. (shrink)

ABSTRACTDifficulties with inhibiting fear have been associated with the emergence of anxiety problems and poor response to cognitive–behavioural treatment. Fear inhibition problems measured using experimental paradigms involving aversive stimuli may be inappropriate for vulnerable samples and may not capture fear inhibition problems evident in everyday life. We present the Fear Inhibition Questionnaire, a self-report measure of fear inhibition abilities. We assess the FIQ’s factor structure across two cultures and how well it correlates with fear inhibition indices derived experimentally. Adolescent participants (...) from Hong Kong and England completed the FIQ, with the English participants also completing a conditioning and extinction task to assess fear inhibition problems. Across both cultures, the FIQ showed a single factor structure and low FIQ scores, or worse fear inhibition problems, were associated with self-reports of heightened anxiety. Correlation of FIQ scores with experimental indices, whi... (shrink)

My argument in this paper is that Charles Taylor’s view of liberty and ethics unites Isaiah Berlin’s liberal pluralism with Elizabeth Anscombe’s virtue ethics. Berlin identifies, in “Two Concepts of Liberty,” a tradition of negative liberty advocated by figures like Locke and Mill. He maintains that this concept of liberty is unique to modernity, and it is the form of liberty best suited to the political sphere. The much older concept of positive liberty, which is found in ancient philosophers like (...) Plato and Aristotle, as well as modern thinkers like Hegel, Berlin regards as ill-suited to the political sphere. Anscombe, in “Modern Moral Philosophy,” specifically identifies and criticizes the Anglo-Saxon tradition of moral philosophy. Utilitarian thinkers like Mill are, for Anscombe, consequentialists. The virtue ethics of Aristotle gives a basis for the intrinsic goodness and badness of actions not in sentiment but reason. Charles Taylor draws upon the views of both thinkers. He advocates a liberal pluralism in a manner comparable to Berlin. However, Taylor strongly emphasizes, with Anscombe, that the most complete conception of ethical and political life must be rooted in virtue ethics and positive liberty. Thus, Taylor’s views constitute a synthesis of the approaches of his two mentors. (shrink)