In _What Animals Teach Us about Politics_, Brian Massumi takes up the question of "the animal." By treating the human as animal, he develops a concept of an animal politics. His is not a human politics of the animal, but an integrally animal politics, freed from connotations of the "primitive" state of nature and the accompanying presuppositions about instinct permeating modern thought. Massumi integrates notions marginalized by the dominant currents in evolutionary biology, animal behavior, and philosophy—notions such as play, (...) sympathy, and creativity—into the concept of nature. As he does so, his inquiry necessarily expands, encompassing not only animal behavior but also animal thought and its distance from, or proximity to, those capacities over which human animals claim a monopoly: language and reflexive consciousness. For Massumi, humans and animals exist on a continuum. Understanding that continuum, while accounting for difference, requires a new logic of "mutual inclusion." Massumi finds the conceptual resources for this logic in the work of thinkers including Gregory Bateson, Henri Bergson, Gilbert Simondon, and Raymond Ruyer. This concise book intervenes in Deleuze studies, posthumanism, and animal studies, as well as areas of study as wide-ranging as affect theory, aesthetics, embodied cognition, political theory, process philosophy, the theory of play, and the thought of Alfred North Whitehead. (shrink)

This article introduces the special issue on middle-range theory in science and technology studies, providing the background to its production and reviewing different notions of “middle.” It begins with Merton's ideas about middle-range theory as a way of moving beyond the production of either descriptions or theories of everything. Instead of seeing the middle as the space between the theoretical imagination and the detailed depiction of everyday practices, the authors outline three ways of thinking about the middle range: as an (...) adjective, the closest to Merton's conception; as a noun, the liminal place between theories, audiences, and levels; and as a verb, a process, a means of making connections across time, discipline, community, and place. A summary of each of the articles in this special issue is provided, preceding a call for further discussion about the role of case studies and the nature of the middle in STS. (shrink)

This text represents an exploration of the possible significance of Bernard S. Cohn's 1980 essay, `History and Anthropology: The State of Play', for understanding the present of historical anthropology and its futures. My discussion has two aims: (1) to reflect on both Bernard S. Cohn's pedagogy and mode of inquiry; and (2) to explore the complexity and nuance of citationality as a generative principle within the constitution of historical anthropology's subject. Toward this, I examine Cohn's notion of `the colonial situation' (...) and reflect on how the emergence of the human sciences is intertwined with the proliferation of colonialism's enduring legacy within postcoloniality. (shrink)

Recently, a number of philosophers have turned to folk intuitions about mental states for data about qualia and phenomenal consciousness. In this paper I argue that current research along these lines does not tell us about these subjects. I focus on a series of studies, performed by Justin Sytsma and Edouard Machery, to make my argument. Folk judgments studied by these researchers are mostly likely generated by a certain cognitive system – System One – that will generate the same data (...) whether or not we experience phenomenal consciousness. This is a problem for a range of current experimental philosophy research into consciousness or our concept of it. If experimental philosophy is to shed light into phenomenal consciousness, it needs to be better founded in an understanding of how we make judgments. (shrink)

In this chapter, I argue that in addition to the generally accepted aim of reducing traffic-related injuries and deaths as much as possible, a principle of fairness in the distribution of risk should inform our thinking about how firms that produce autonomous vehicles ought to program them to respond in conflict situations involving human-driven vehicles. This principle, I claim, rules out programming autonomous vehicles to systematically prioritize the interests of their occupants over those of the occupants of other vehicles, including (...) human-driven vehicles. Because there is reason to think that most consumers would prefer to purchase autonomous vehicles that do systematically prioritize the interests of occupants over those of others, if my argument is correct it generates a substantial ethical restriction on firms’ efforts to gain market share in the initial stages of the introduction of autonomous vehicles onto the road. (shrink)

This is a comprehensive study of the varying conceptions of the human subject in the Western intellectual tradition. Although informed by an anthropological perspective, the author draws on material from all the major intellectual disciplines that have contributed to this tradition and offers biographical and theoretical vignettes of all the major Western scholars. By scrutinizing the classical texts of the Western tradition, he succeeds in delineating the differing conceptions of the human individual which emerge from these writings, and gives a (...) guide to the most important ideas in Western cultural traditions. (shrink)

This article explores the relation between the concept of symmetry and its formalisms. The standard view among philosophers and physicists is that symmetry is completely formalized by mathematical groups. For some mathematicians however, the groupoid is a competing and more general formalism. An analysis of symmetry that justifies this extension has not been adequately spelled out. After a brief explication of how groups, equivalence, and symmetries classes are related, we show that, while it’s true in some instances that groups are (...) too restrictive, there are other instances for which the standard extension to groupoids is too un restrictive. The connection between groups and equivalence classes, when generalized to groupoids, suggests a middle ground between the two. *Received July 2007. †To contact the authors, please write to: Alexandre Guay, UFR Sciences et Techniques, Université de Bourgogne, 9 Avenue Alain Savary, 21078 Dijon Cedex, France; e‐mail: [email protected] ; or to Brian Hepburn, Department of Philosophy, University of British Columbia, 1866 Main Mall E370, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z1; e‐mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

There is widespread controversy about the use of intuitions in philosophy. In this paper I will argue that there are legitimate concerns about this use, and that these concerns cannot be fully responded to using the traditional methods of philosophy. We need an understanding of how intuitions are generated and what it is they are based on, and this understanding must be founded on the psychological investigation of the mind. I explore how a psychological understanding of intuitions is likely to (...) impact a range of philosophical projects, from conceptual analysis to the study of (non-conceptual) "things themselves" to experimental philosophy. (shrink)

One standard criterion for there being objectivity in an area of discourse is that there is conceptual space between what someone thinks to be the case and what actually is the case. That is, participants can be mistaken. This article explores one aspect of the objectivity debate as regards law: does it make sense to say that all legal officials or practitioners in a jurisdiction are mistaken (over a significant period of time) about some legal proposition? The possibility of legal (...) error is important to discourse within and about the law. In contrast to the views of some American legal realists, it is important to deny that law is only what the officials declare it to be. However, as this article argues, claims of long-term global error in law are more problematic. The truth of legal propositions seems to be a complex function of official actions and the meaning of the terms used in authoritative legal texts. Because of the conventional nature of law, there are problems with claiming global error regarding propositions of (within) law, the existence of legal norms, and structural priorities among types of legal norms. At times, the law may in fact simply be what officials (collectively) say it is, over the long term. However, the article also notes areas where claims of long-term global error are more sustainable: where the law incorporates a term from another discourse, or where the law purports to interpret an authoritative text. (shrink)

Daniel Dennett has claimed that if Chalmers' argument for the irreducibility of consciousness were to succeed, an analogous argument would establish the truth of Vitalism. Chalmers denies that there is such an analogy. I argue that the analogy does have merit and that skepticism is called for.

Consent, in terms of voluntary choice, is - or, at least, appears to be or purports to be - at the essence of contract law. Contract law, both in principle and in practice, is about allowing parties to enter arrangements on terms they choose - each party imposing obligations on itself in return for obligations another party has placed upon itself. This freedom of contract- an ideal by which there are obligations to the extent, but only to the extent, freely (...) chosen by the parties - is contrasted to the duties of criminal law and tort law, which bind all parties regardless of consent. At the same time, consent, in the robust sense expressed by the ideal of freedom of contract, is arguably absent in the vast majority of the contracts we enter these days, but its absence does little to affect the enforceability of those agreements. Consent to contractual terms often looks like consent to government: present, if at all, only under a fictional (as if) or attenuated rubric. This article explores a variety of topics relating to consent, and the role it plays in contract law doctrine and theory. The article begins by a brief examination of the nature of consent, then turns to contract doctrines that turn on the alleged absence of consent (e.g., duress and undue influence); contract rules and principles (e.g., implied terms) that turn on hypothetical consent; the challenges to consent that arise from electronic contracting and bounded rationality, and theories of contract law that emphasize consent. (shrink)

This book argues that, despite recent calls to arms to seek out and remove "corporate psychopaths" from the business world, efforts to eliminate the corporate psychopath presence would be illegal as well as unethical.

Historians are increasingly working with material that is not only digital but has been digitized. Early digitization projects aimed to encode data for systematic analysis; more recent projects have sought to reproduce unique archival material in a manner that allows for open-ended historical inquiry without the need to travel to archives and manipulate physical objects. Such projects have undeniable benefits for the preservation of documents and access to them. Yet historians must be aware of the scope of digitization, the reasons (...) why material is chosen to be digitized, and limitations on the dissemination of digitized sources. Furthermore, some physical aspects of sources, and of collections of sources, are lost in their digital simulacra. Nonetheless, digitization and the standardization of metadata offer significant possibilities for future archival research and documentation. (shrink)

I defend, in this paper, a version of a philosophy of common sense. I have use of some things from Reid's account of these matters, others from Wittgenstein's. Scepticism looms large—as do the questions of arguments for and examples of common sense. At least two different notions of common sense emerge, one of which has often been overlooked by philosophers.

A number of important legal theorists have recently argued for metaphysically realist approaches to legal determinacy grounded in particular semantic theories or theories of reference, in particular, views of meaning and reference based on the works of Putnam and Kripke. The basic position of these theorists is that questions of legal interpretation and legal determinacy should be approached through semantic meaning. However, the role of authority (in the form of lawmaker choice) in law in general, and democratic systems in particular, (...) require that these realist solutions to the problem of legal determinacy be rejected, or at least significantly revised. (shrink)

A concept for teaching business ethics and its relationship with business law is developed. Legal regulations form the essential boundaries of the business game. Many students do not realize the degree to which law is dependent upon ethical actors to achieve its objectives. At least three examples are insightful in this regard: First, the interpretive requirements of legal rules often rely on the ethical character of the interpreting business actor to achieve their objectives. Second, law does not prohibit harms from (...) occurring, it only associates costs with behaviors. Third, law cannot compensate society for non-fungible harms. Legal regulations do not sustain the orderly function of society without ethical business actors. (shrink)

A concept for teaching business ethics and its relationship with business law is developed. Legal regulations form the essential boundaries of the business game. Many students do not realize the degree to which law is dependent upon ethical actors to achieve its objectives. At least three examples are insightful in this regard: First, the interpretive requirements of legal rules often rely on the ethical character of the interpreting business actor to achieve their objectives. Second, law does not prohibit harms from (...) occurring, it only associates costs with behaviors. Third, law cannot compensate society for non-fungible harms. Legal regulations do not sustain the orderly function of society without ethical business actors. (shrink)

There are a growing number of general theories of contract law and of other doctrinal areas. These theories are vastly ambitious in their aims. This article explores the nature of these claims, and the motivations for offering such theories, while considering the challenges to success. It is in the nature of theorizing to seek general categories, including doctrinal categories, and to try to discover insights that hold across those categories. However, differences both within a doctrinal area and across legal systems (...) undermine the case for universal and general theories. Also, unjustifiably general theories may distract us from developing properly contextual legal rules, and might even have the unintended effect of legitimating unjust rules. (shrink)

This paper examines Heidegger’s account of the proper relation between philosophy and theology, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s critique thereof. Part I outlines Heidegger’s proposal for this relationship in his lecture “Phenomenology and Theology,” where he suggests that philosophy might aid theology by means of ‘formal indication.’ In that context Heidegger never articulates what formal indication is, so Part II exposits this obscure notion by looking at its treatment in Heidegger’s early lecture courses, as well as its roots in Husserl. Part III (...) presents Bonhoeffer’s theological response, which challenges Heidegger’s attempt to maintain a neutral ontology that remains unaffected by both sin and faith. (shrink)

Renin is the rate‐limiting enzyme in a cascade that leads to production of angiotensin II, which is perhaps our most important regulator of salt and water balance and blood pressure. In this personal perspective, I describe how I entered the renin field 33 years ago by discovering that proteases increased the level of renin activity in biological fluids, so revealing the existence of a ‘pro’ form of the molecule. This led me on a journey that encapsulated all of the major (...) milestones in molecular discovery for renin. These included (1) the elucidation of the steps in renin biosynthesis, (2) the cloning of renin cDNA and its gene, (3) demonstration of the structure of the renin protein, (4) using the renin gene in the first genetic studies in hypertension, (5) finding the mechanism by which the major controller, cyclic AMP, regulates the promoter, (6) showing that a strong enhancer and its weak promoter control this physiologically regulatable gene in accord with the variegation (on/off switching) model, and (7) being the first to identify molecules involved in posttranscriptional control. The renin molecule, its gene and molecular control are now very well understood, but more fine details on the topic of renin continue to emerge to delight ‘reninologists’ and others. BioEssays 25:520–527, 2003. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

In recent years, a number of philosophers have argued that much theorizing about the value of equality, and about justice more generally, has focused unduly on distributive issues and neglected the importance of egalitarian social relationships. As a result, relational egalitarian views, according to which the value of egalitarian social relations provides the grounds of the commitment that we ought to have to equality, have gained prominence as alternatives to more fundamentally distributive accounts of the basis of egalitarianism, and of (...) justice-based entitlements. In this paper, I will suggest that reflecting on the kind of explanation of a certain class of our justice-based entitlements that relational egalitarian considerations can offer raises doubts about the project, endorsed by at least some relational egalitarians, of attempting to ground all entitlements of justice in the value of egalitarian social relationships. I will use the entitlement to healthcare provision as my central example. The central claim that I will defend is that even if relational egalitarian accounts can avoid implausible implications regarding the extension of justice-based entitlements to health care, it is more difficult to see how they can avoid what seem to me to be implausible explanations of why individuals have the justice-based entitlements that they do. To the extent that I am correct that relational egalitarian views are committed to offering implausible explanations of the grounds of justice-based entitlements to healthcare, this seems to me to provide at least some support for a more fundamentally distributive approach to thinking about justice in healthcare provision. (shrink)

Homology continues to be a concept of central importance in the study of phylogenetic relations, but its relation to ontogenetic processes remains problematical. A definition of homology in terms of equivalent morphogenetic processes is defined and applied to the comparative study of tetrapod limbs. This allows for a consistent treatment of relations of similarity and difference of appendage structure in vertebrates, and the distinction between fishes fins and tetrapod limbs in terms of the concept of equivalence is described. The role (...) of genes can also be clarified in this context, in particular the influence of the Hox 4 complex in determining digit character and the homeotic transformations that arise from changes in their expression patterns. It is argued that these observations are not compatible with the notion of homology between individual digits (I, II, III, etc.) across the tetrapods, and that homology cannot be consistently identified with gene action. The relations between homology and the properties of the morphogenetic limb field are discussed. (shrink)

A study of the major themes in traditional and contemporary philosophy.