Among the infinitude of nature’s various forms, precisely what should we aesthetically appreciate? And supposing we come to achieve such discernment, how should we properly appreciate the aesthetic qualities we thereby find? To address these questions, Carlson has argued that the aesthetic appreciation of nature ought to be guided by scientific insight. In response, non-cognitivists have levelled criticism and suggested alternatives, yet Carlson’s (2009) scientific cognitivism remains the best-argued approach to nature appreciation in the field. One non-cognitivist position that Carlson (...) rejects—although much too quickly—is Berleant’s (1985) engagement model. The purpose of this paper is to modify and revive that model. Specifically, I will argue that genuine engagement requires a particular form of disinterest. The result is a non-cognitivist approach to the aesthetic appreciation of nature, stronger than the extant alternatives. (shrink)

Views from one of the most original cultural critics of the twentieth century, Walter Benjamin.

This paper has two aims. The first is to present and defend a new argument for rights contributionism – the view that the notion of a moral claim-right is a contributory (or pro tanto) rather than overall normative notion. The argument is an inference to the best explanation: it is argued that (i) there are contributory moral factors that contrast with standard moral reasons by way of having a number of formal properties that are characteristic of rights, even though they (...) can be overridden, and (ii) that this is best explained by a view that takes these factors to correlate with rights. The second aim is to show that the truth of rights contributionism matters for normative ethics. More specifically, it is argued that rights contributionism clears the way for deontologists to justify the pre-theoretically plausible verdict that we have a duty to save the greater number in so-called Taurek scenarios – scenarios in which we have to choose between saving either a greater or a smaller number of different people. The chapter offers a novel and distinctively deontological explanation of this verdict that is based on the assumption that everyone has a pro tanto right to be saved in a Taurek scenario. (shrink)

A companion volume to Illuminations, the first collection of Walter Benjamin's writings, Reflections presents a further sampling of his wide-ranging work. Here Benjamin evolves a theory of language as the medium of all creation, discusses theater and surrealism, reminisces about Berlin in the 1920s, recalls conversations with Bertolt Brecht, and provides travelogues of various cities, including Moscow under Stalin. He moves seamlessly from literary criticism to autobiography to philosophical-theological speculations, cementing his reputation as one of the greatest and (...) most versatile writers of the twentieth century. Also included is a new preface by Leon Wieseltier that explores Benjamin's continued relevance for our times. (shrink)

While stakeholder theory has traditionally considered organization’s interactions with stakeholders in terms of independent, dyadic relationships, recent scholarship has pointed to the fact that organizations exist within a complex network of intertwining relationships [e.g., Rowley, T. J.: 1997, The Academy of Management Review 22(4), 887–910]. However, further theoretical and empirical development of the interactions between stakeholders has been lacking. In this paper, we develop a framework for understanding and measuring the effects upon the organization of competing, complementary and cooperative stakeholder (...) interactions, which we refer to as stakeholder multiplicity. We draw upon three forms of fit (i.e. fit as matching, fit as moderation, and fit as gestalts; Venkatraman, N.: 1989) to develop a framework for understanding stakeholder multiplicity based upon the direction, strength, and synergies of the interacting claims. Additionally, we draw upon the theory of stakeholder identification and salience of Mitchell et al. (1997), which we argue provides a more relevant and significantly more illustrative explanation of the nature and effects of stakeholder interactions upon the organization than the network approach of Rowley (1997). Furthermore, we ground our framework through reference to three stakeholder groups (i.e. governments, customers, and employees) and the stakeholder issue of concern for the natural environment. We propose a hierarchy of the multiplicity strength of influence of these three stakeholder groups. Potential measurement and implications are discussed. (shrink)

“Informed consent” implicitly links the transmission of information to the granting of permission on the part of patients, tissue donors, and research subjects. But what of the corollary, informed refusal? Drawing together insights from three moments of refusal, this article explores the rights and obligations of biological citizenship from the vantage point of biodefectors—those who attempt to resist technoscientific conscription. Taken together, the cases expose the limits of individual autonomy as one of the bedrocks of bioethics and suggest the need (...) for a justice-oriented approach to science, medicine, and technology that reclaims the epistemological and political value of refusal. (shrink)

Benjamin Barber is one of America's preeminent political theorists. He has been a significant voice in the continuing debate about the nature and role of democracy in the contemporary world. A Passion for Democracy collects twenty of his most important writings on American democracy. Together they refine his distinctive position in democratic theory. Barber's conception of "strong democracy" contrasts with traditional concepts of "liberal democracy," especially in its emphasis on citizen participation in central issues of public debate. These essays (...) critique the "thin representation" of liberal democracy and buttress the arguments presented in Barber's twelve books, most recently in his well-received Jihad vs. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism Are Re-shaping the World. In these pieces, Barber argues for participatory democracy without dependence on abstract metaphysical foundations, and he stresses the relationship among democracy and civil society, civic education, and culture. A Passion for Democracy is divided into four sections. In the first, "American Theory: Democracy, Liberalism, and Rights," Barber addresses issues of ongoing relevance to today's debates about the roots of participatory democracy, including individualism vs. community, the importance of consent, and the irrelevance of Marxism. Essays in the second section, "American Practice: Leadership, Citizenship, and Censorship" provide a "strong democracy" critique of American democratic practice. "Education for Democracy: Civic Education, Service, and Citizenship" applies Barber's theories to three related topics and includes his much-discussed essay "America Skips School." The final section, "Democracy and Technology: Endless Frontier or End of Democracy?" provides glimpses into a future that technology alone cannot secure for democracy. In his preface, Barber writes: "In these essays... I have been hard on my country. Like most ardent democrats, I want more for it than it has achieved, despite the fact that it has achieved more than most people have dared to want." This wide-ranging collection displays not only his passion for democracy, but also his unique perspective on issues of abiding importance for the democratic process. (shrink)

Deflationary positions have been defended in many areas of philosophy. Most prominent are semantic deflationism about truth and reference, and meta-ontological deflationism, according to which existence has no deep nature and the standard neo-Quinean approach to ontology is misguided. Although both kinds of views have generated much discussion, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the question of how they relate to each other. Are they independent, is it advisable to hold them all at once, or do they even entail (...) each other? One exception is Amie Thomasson, who has argued that semantic deflationism actually entails meta-ontological deflationism. This is unexpected, since semantic deflationism is usually regarded as much less controversial than meta-ontological deflationism. In our paper, we will argue that Thomasson’s argument fails though, and that the connection between the views is in fact weaker than she makes them out to be. (shrink)

The authors of this book are presenting the written materials ascribed to the early Greek philosophers (c. 585 B.C.- 400 B.C.) and the historical context in which those writings occurred.

This paper reveals the original teaching from Sinai that Rosenzweig claims to have discovered while translating Exodus 3 with Martin Buber, and why he viewed this discovery as vindicating their decision to translate the Tetragrammaton in the way they did. A report of this discovery is to be found, I show, in the exchange between Buber and Rosenzweig during their translation of Exodus, as recorded in the Working Papers (Arbeitspapiere). The significance of Rosenzweig’s account of the divine name only becomes (...) fully clear, however, when viewed against the background of the revelation of the divine name in The Star of Redemption. (shrink)

The public transport sector in the urban landscape in Nigeria is a prominent social site for the spatial distribution of automobile graffiti signatures. Transporters have various kinds of symbolic tags on their vehicles that convey different messages which represent their local attitudes, beliefs, religious identities, folk psychology, and safety precautionary measures to recipients (other road users and passers-by). This article, based on two case studies, examines the practice of automobile graffiti on trucks and lorries in Calabar metropolis, Cross River State, (...) south-eastern Nigeria. It investigates the motivations, thematic categories, and subjective semiotic interpretations of these verbal signatures from the perspectives of visual semiotics theory using participant observations, semi-structured interviews, and informal conversations. The study demonstrates that truck drivers/owners use their vehicles as visible artistic platforms in the public space to express their thoughts and sentiments on personal, social, and religious issues affecting the society. The study concludes that these inscriptions and imageries are artistic subcultures that mirror wide ranging value categories and provide outlets for spatial transformation, creative agencies, and social commentaries. (shrink)

Throughout his long and controversial career, Martin Heidegger developed a substantial contribution to the phenomenology of religion. In Heidegger's Phenomenology of Religion, Benjamin D. Crowe examines the key concepts and developmental phases that characterized Heidegger's work. Crowe shows that Heidegger's account of the meaning and structure of religious life belongs to his larger project of exposing and criticizing the fundamental assumptions of late modern culture. He reveals Heidegger as a realist through careful readings of his views on religious attitudes (...) and activities. Crowe challenges interpretations of Heidegger's early efforts in the phenomenology of religion and later writings on religion, including discussions of Greek religion and Hölderlin's poetry. This book is sure to spark discussion and debate as Heidegger's work in religion and the philosophy of religion becomes increasingly important to scholars and beyond. (shrink)

Este artigo tem como objetivo apontar algumas relações entre a teoria do reconhecimento de Hegel e a teoria psicológica de Vygotsky. Aqui serão apresentadas duas hipóteses. A primeira é que Vygotsky foi profundamente influenciado por Hegel. Esse fato da obra vygotskyana não é muito destacado por seus intérpretes, mas pode ser confirmado nos próprios textos do autor. Uma segunda hipótese: a estrutura teórica desenvolvida por Vygotsky está vinculada ao quadro teórico do reconhecimento elaborado por Hegel. Analisaremos algumas passagens das obras (...) dos dois teóricos que evidenciam as hipóteses levantadas. (shrink)

How should we evaluate the global protests against the financial crisis from 2011 and onwards? Do demonstrations on central squares such as Syntagma, Puerta de Sol and Zucotti Park point towards alternative democratic models beyond representative democracy? This article identifies a schism between the protests as events and the protests as self-organisation. Whereas the protests as events remains the dominant interpretation of the protests – delivered with negative connotations by Ivan Krastev and with positive consequences by Slavoj Žizek and Alain (...) Badiou – this article will investigate the protests as self-organisation by emphasizing some of the many examples of autonomous political institution-building and creation of permanent structures of political participation, which have appeared as natural continuations of the protests. I argue that the protests as self-organisation can be seen as re-actualisations of the practices and ideals of council democracy as interpreted by Hannah Arendt and Cornelius Castoriadis. By interpreting the protests through the prism of council democracy, I argue that the manifold political and societal initiatives that have appeared in the wake of these protests attempt to realise a specific notion of democratic autonomy and political freedom. (shrink)

No question has demanded so much attention from the philosopher of mind as has this one: What is consciousness? One promising answer begins by noting that consciousness is, itself, a conjugate of more basic stuff. For the ethicist, there is a question that seems at least formally related to the question of consciousness: What is conscience? Could it be that a similar approach carries similar promise? The following short paper first examines consciousness as a conjugate, and then pursues the implications (...) of this analysis for a novel understanding of conscience as the grounds for a science of ethics. (shrink)

The compass point of Kantian ethics is Kant’s categorical imperative. The compass point of Kantian ethics directs persons to ends of actions. It directs to ends the attainment of which can be universally prescribed. It directs away from those which can not. Most reviews of the demands of the categorical imperative tend torest in an assay of rationality and its demands. I think that this is a mistake. I think that on Kant’s mature view, the conscience, and so the categorical (...) imperative, have nothing necessarily to do with rationality at all. The following work develops this position. (shrink)

This paper argues that it is prudentially wise to defer to groups about how they are essentially constituted and defined. After a few words situating the paper in my greater research project (§1), I articulate the kind of deference I have in mind (§2). Then I offer two conditional arguments on why it is epistemically desirable to let other people tell you how they ought to be identified (§3). The first argument is that people are owed lexical sovereignty because denying (...) it is absurd; the second is that modest skeptics ought to agree with it on the basis of some relatively anodyne and plausible epistemic considerations. (shrink)

OBJECTIVE: Pilot study to characterize treatment differences between patients treated in clinical trials and those treated in a clinical setting. Previous studies have shown higher survival rates for participants in trials of cancer therapy. This difference is observed even after rates are adjusted for important covariates such as age and stage of disease. DESIGN: Retrospective chart review. SETTING: Oncology outpatient department in a tertiary care hospital. PATIENTS: Ninety women 18 to 70 years of age with early-stage breast cancer who were (...) diagnosed in 1990. Fifty-one of the women were treated through clinical trials and 39 were treated outside of clinical trials. OUTCOME MEASURES: Number of blood tests, telephone calls, clinic visits and imaging procedures as well as intensity of chemotherapy and use of radiation therapy. The age of the patient and the stage of disease were important covariates. RESULTS: After the analysis was controlled for patient age and stage of disease, patients treated through a clinical trial were more likely to receive standard-dose chemotherapy (p = 0.020, 95% confidence interval 1.20 to 200.73) and more frequent blood tests (p < 0.001, 95% confidence interval 1.02 to 1.13) than other patients treated in the clinic. CONCLUSIONS: Our results provide a plausible mechanism for the observed survival advantage for participants in clinical trials in oncology. Further study is called for. If these results are confirmed, they have important implications for informed consent to participate in clinical trials and for clinical practice. (shrink)

One of the leading scholars and academic administrators of his time, Benjamin Jowett was Master of Balliol College as well as Regius Professor of Greek and, for a time, vice-chancellor at Oxford University. Along with his achievements in the area of academic reform, Jowett is remembered for this four-volume translation of Plato's dialogues. Characterising Plato as the 'father of idealism', Jowett reminds readers that while 'he may be illustrated by the writings of moderns … he must be interpreted by (...) his own, and by his place in the history of philosophy'. In this first volume, he includes fourteen early and middle dialogues such as Charmides, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo, each presented with a separate editorial introduction. Jowett's work represents a towering achievement in the field of classical and philosophical studies that had important influence on the subsequent study of Plato. (shrink)

Evolutionary algorithms typically use direct encodings, where each element of the phenotype is specified independently in the genotype. Because direct encodings have difficulty evolving modular and symmetric phenotypes, some researchers use indirect encodings, wherein one genomic element can influence multiple parts of a phenotype. We have previously shown that Hyper- NEAT, an indirect encoding, outperforms FT-NEAT, a direct-encoding control, on many problems, especially as the regularity of the problem increases. However, HyperNEAT is no panacea; it had difficulty accounting for irregularities (...) in problems. In this paper, we propose a new algorithm, a Hybridized Indirect and Direct encoding (HybrID), which discovers the regularity of a problem with an indirect encoding and accounts for irregularities via a direct encoding. In three different problem domains, HybrID outperforms HyperNEAT in most situations, with performance improvements as large as 40%. Our work suggests that hybridizing indirect and direct encodings can be an effective way to improve the performance of evolutionary algorithms. (shrink)

So called “shapes of opposition”—like the classical square of opposition and its extensions—can be seen as graphical representations of the ways in which types of statements constrain each other in their possible truth values. As such, they can be used as a novel way of analysing the subject matter of disputes. While there have been great refinements and extensions of this logico-topological tool in the last years, the broad range of shapes of opposition are not widely known outside of a (...) circle of specialists. This ignorance may lead to the presumption that the classical square of opposition fits all disputes. A broader view, which takes expanded shapes of opposition into account, may come to a more nuanced appraisal of possible disputes. Once we take other shapes of opposition into account, some alleged disputes may turn out to be Scheindisputes. In order to do the wide range of linguistic expressions justice and to differentiate Scheindisputes from real ones, a broader view is advised. To illustrate this point, I discuss the notion of “introspective disputes”. These are commonly reconstructed as obeying the square, but are more aptly reconstructed with a more complex octagon. If we reconstruct these disputes based on Buridan’s octagon, it becomes obvious that “introspective disputes” are likely Scheindisputes. (shrink)

An exploration of commercially available technologies that can enhance energy security and address climate change and public policy options crucial to their adoption.

In “Wheeler and Thompson’s Appeal: refounding utilitarianism through equality between men and women?”, Benjamin Bourcier studies this Appeal in which, in response to James Mill’s article On Government, Anna Wheeler and William Thompson offer a radical critique of utilitarian thought, but also of Mill’s political exclusion of women and legitimization of patriarchy. In contrast to Mill, they defend the political inclusion and equality of women, in order to meet the aspirations of a society of equals and the greatest happiness (...) for all. (shrink)

The focus of the following paper is the phenomenon of the collective agent; what constitutes the appearance of a collective agent? I begin by investigating one simple argument for the existence of collective agents. Two critical issues emerge: does it make sense to hold a collective agent blameworthy, and, what is the motivation for doing so, one way or the other? I then dissolve these issues with a distinction, that between blameworthiness and responsibility. In light of this distinction, there appears (...) to be no use for the introduction of collectives as agents in their own right, outside of expedience of reference and deference of blame. (shrink)

A little girl gradually becomes reconciled to her new twin sisters.