In common usage, quietism is often conflated with passivity, and pacifism is often equated with quietism. As a result, pacifism has often been confused with passivity. In the antebellum United States, John Brown and other militant abolitionists who endorsed the use of violent antislavery tactics criticized nonviolent reformers like William Lloyd Garrison as men of words instead of men of action. Garrison and his allies rejected the equation of their pacifism with quietism, but the charge that Garrisonian abolitionists were (...) more passive than Brown still survives. In fact, the most recent scholarship on John Brown has tended to reinforce Brown's own division of the movement into active reformers like himself and less radical pacifists like Garrison. In this article, McDaniel challenges this polarized view of the abolitionist movement, which is partly the product of the common polarization of quietism and activism. He shows that both Garrison and Brown were complex icons, neither of whom can be easily categorized as a quietist or activist. A careful look at the antislavery movement suggests, therefore, that pacifism and quietism are not synonymous. Moreover, a careful look at Brown suggests that quietism and activism are not antonyms. On some definitions of quietism, McDaniel argues, even a violent activist like Brown can exhibit quietistic aspects. This article therefore challenges, as well, the common connotation of quietism as inaction. (shrink)

This book asks whether evolution can help us to understand human behaviour and explores diverse evolutionary methods and arguments. It provides a short, readable introduction to the science behind the works of Dawkins, Dennett, Wilson and Pinker. It is widely used in undergraduate courses around the world.

This reference work aims describes all aspects of the study of meaning in language. It synthesises the latest scholarly positions on the construction, interpretation, clarification, obscurity, illustration, amplification, simplification, negotiation, contradiction, contraction and paraphrasing of meaning.

THE SOCIOLOGICAL TURN The problem we are concerned with is just this: How should we understand science? Are we to account for scientific knowledge (or ...

This book takes seriously the idea that at least some groups, such as corporations and governments, are genuine agents with mental states on which they act. For instance, in morally assessing a government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, we are interested in what the government knew at various points as the pandemic developed. And in predicting the outcome of the current war in Ukraine, we might ask what Russia believes about the West’s determination to defend Ukraine. The book examines a (...) range of phenomena central to the epistemic and moral assessment of groups: group evidence, group belief, the basis of group belief, group justified belief, group knowledge, group motivation, and group blameless ignorance. Overall, the book defends a ‘non-summative’ functionalist view of groups. On a non-summative account of group phenomena, it is neither necessary nor sufficient for a group to have a property α that some/most/all of its members have that same property. By contrast, on a summative account it is necessary and sufficient for a group to have a property α that some/most/all of its members have that same property. Across the book I provide new arguments for non-summativism and new accounts of key group phenomena many of which have been relatively neglected in existing literature. While I provide independent arguments for a non-summative view of each phenomenon discussed, the conclusions of the chapters are mutually reinforcing. For adopting a non-summative account of one group phenomenon motivates adopting a non-summative account of others. (shrink)

Quantum field theory, one of the most rapidly developing areas of contemporary physics, is full of problems of great theoretical and philosophical interest. This collection of essays is the first systematic exploration of the nature and implications of quantum field theory. The contributors discuss quantum field theory from a wide variety of standpoints, exploring in detail its mathematical structure and metaphysical and methodological implications.

Philosophy Compass, Volume 17, Issue 5, May 2022.

_Philosophy of Mathematics_ is an excellent introductory text. This student friendly book discusses the great philosophers and the importance of mathematics to their thought. It includes the following topics: * the mathematical image * platonism * picture-proofs * applied mathematics * Hilbert and Godel * knots and nations * definitions * picture-proofs and Wittgenstein * computation, proof and conjecture. The book is ideal for courses on philosophy of mathematics and logic.

Semiotic objections to market exchange of a good or service maintain that such exchanges signal an inappropriate attitude to the good or to associated individuals, and that this provides a weighty reason against having or participating in such markets. This style of argument has recently come under withering attack from Jason Brennan and Peter Jaworski (2015a, 2015b). They point out that the significance of any market exchange is explained by a contingent semiotic norm. Given the tremendous value that could be (...) realised by markets in, for instance, bone marrow, or kidneys, deferring to such norms across the board would have very significant opportunity costs. In the absence of any rationale for these norms, they should be ignored completely. We provide one important rationale. Unlike many semiotic objections to markets, we provide a broadly consequentialist semiotic argument. We argue that a range of behaviours play important signalling roles in interpersonal social practices; in particular, in practices involving caring, esteem, and testimony. Markets in these behaviours would distort these signals. Moreover, many of the productive advantages yielded by markets rely in turn on positive market norms that also inhibit the signalling behaviours associated with these nonmarket behaviours. We conclude that there will inevitably be trade-offs between the distributive advantages of new markets and these interpersonal social practices. (shrink)

Should harms to different individuals be aggregated? Moderate views answer yes and no. Aggregation is appropriate in some but not all cases. Such views need to determine a threshold at which aggregation switches from appropriate to inappropriate. Alex Voorhoeve proposes a method for determining this threshold which links other-regarding and self-regarding ethics. This proposal, however, implies a spurious correlation between favoring aggregation and egoism.

The early Epicurean revival in Florence and Italy -- Medicean Florence : Ficino and Bartolomeo Scala -- Republican Florence : the university lectures of Marcello Adriani -- Niccol Machiavelli and the influence of Lucretius -- Lucretian networks in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries -- Appendix : notes on Machiavelli's transcription of MS Vat. Rossi 884.

Efforts to develop a coherent role for white people in racial justice initiatives in the USA are often stymied by the defensiveness, paternalism, and guilt of many white liberals. Such efforts are also undermined by critiques of whiteness that conflate white identity and white supremacy. I address this dilemma by developing an account of antiracist white identity politics, conceived of here as taking responsibility for the effects of being socially defined as white. I locate conceptual resources for this project in (...) James Baldwin’s reflections on tragedy, love, and identity. In contrast to those who invoke Baldwin to argue for abolishing white identity, I make a case for politicizing it. I draw on Baldwin’s articulation of a tragic sensibility to argue that white antiracism requires accepting a morally compromised identity one has not chosen. It also requires accepting that serious efforts to end white supremacy inevitably lead to mistakes, misunderstandings, and counterproductive outcomes. By adopting a tragic perspective on these aspects of white antiracism, white people would become more capable of forging antiracist white identities through robust engagement in struggles for racial justice. (shrink)

Thought experiments provide us with scientific understanding and theoretical advances which are sometimes quite significant, yet they do this without new empirical input, and possibly without any empirical input at all. How is this possible? The challenge to empiricism is to give an account which is compatible with the traditional empiricist principle that all knowledge is based on sensory experience. Thought experiments present an enormous challenge to empiricist views of knowledge; so much so that some of us have thrown in (...) the towel and embraced good old fashioned platonism. I'll try to explain why one brand of empiricism, namely John Norton's argument view of thought experiments, won't work. (shrink)

Loosely put, colour constancy for example occurs when you experience a partly shadowed wall to be uniformly coloured, or experience your favourite shirt to be the same colour both with and without sunglasses on. Controversy ensues when one seeks to interpret ‘experience’ in these contexts, for evidence of a constant colour may be indicative a constant colour in the objective world, a judgement that a constant colour would be present were things thus and so, et cetera. My primary aim is (...) to articulate a viable conception of Present Constancy, of what occurs when a constant colour is present in experience, despite the additional presence of some experienced colour variation (e.g., correlating to a change in illumination). My proposed conception involves experienced colour layering – experiencing one opaque colour through another transparent one – and in particular requires one of those experienced layers to remain constant while the other changes. The aim is not to propose this layering conception of colour constancy as the correct interpretation of all constancy cases, but rather to develop the conception enough to demonstrate how it could and plausibly should be applied to various cases, and the virtues it has over rivals. Its virtues include a seamless application to constancy cases involving variations in filters (e.g., sunglasses) and illuminants; its ability to accommodate experiences of partial colours and error-free interpretations of difficult cases; and its broad theoretical-neutrality, allowing it to be incorporated into numerous perceptual epistemologies and ontologies. If layered constancy is prevalent, as I suspect it is, then our experiential access to colours is critically nuanced: we have been plunged into a world of colour without being told that we will rarely, if ever, look to a location and experience just one of them. (shrink)

The ACA shifted U.S. health policy from centering on principles of actuarial fairness toward social solidarity. Yet four legal fixtures of the health care system have prevented the achievement of social solidarity: federalism, fiscal pluralism, privatization, and individualism. Future reforms must confront these fixtures to realize social solidarity in health care, American-style.

We should be suspicious of the idea that experiencing pain could enable animals to trade off different motivations in a common currency. It is not even clear that humans have a common motivational currency reflected in evaluative experience. Instead, pain may capture attention, inhibiting attention to competing motivations and needs, thereby making genuine trade-offs harder. Our criteria for pain in invertebrates should be part of a more subtle theory of the relationship between pain and decision-making.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was one of the first Modern philosophers, and as such, one of the most significant. His contributions were often pathbreaking and his imprint still remains on fields such as logic, mathematics, science, international law, and ethics. While publishing relatively little during his life, he was in regular correspondence with important philosophers and even political leaders.

Recent arguments in plant biology that claim to be uncovering the scientific basis for sentience in plants are grounded on assumptions that have not been sufficiently scrutinized. This paper focuses on two assumptions in particular – the semantic assumption that psychological predicates are non-rigid and hence can be extended to plants, and the assumption that Darwinian gradualism is inconsistent with consciousness emerging at a specific place on the phylogenetic tree. We interrogate both assumptions, advocating that a careful semantic analysis of (...) psychological predicates does not warrant their extension to plants on the available evidence, and that gradualism and emergentism, properly construed, are not inconsistent. (shrink)

I want to make plausible the following claim:Analyzing scientific inquiry as a species of socially distributed cognition has a variety of advantages for science studies, among them the prospects of bringing together philosophy and sociology of science. This is not a particularly novel claim, but one that faces major obstacles. I will retrace some of the major steps that have been made in the pursuit of a distributed cognition approach to science studies, paying special attention to the promise that such (...) an approach holds out for bridging the rift between philosophy and the social studies of science. (shrink)

First published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

De Coubertin developed the sport philosophy of Olympism and the Olympic Games as a response to social and political crisis to promote peace, fair play, and the development of Christian masculinity. The purpose of this paper is to examine how crisis discourse functions as an important shaper of contemporary understandings of Olympism and how conflicting discourses have mobilized crisis discourse to produce competing 'truths' in which to rationalize and understand the Olympic Games. In drawing from Foucault's work and de Certeau's (...) text, Heterologies: Discourse on the other, I argue that 'crisis' as the rationalization for Olympism and the Olympic Games has proven an unsuccessful venture for de Coubertin; as the Olympic Games have produced conservative outcomes based on a neoliberal agenda focused on elitism, professionalism, nationalism, and commercialism. This historical case raises important questions about the role of Olympism and its power to act as a catalyst for change. (shrink)

Looks at how the case for evolution developed over time, covering Darwin and the Beagle, heredity and natural selection, DNA, and man's place in the natural world.

Sulla base del ms. Vat. Borg. 39 viene edita la quaestio I del Quodlibet IV. Nell'introduzione l'A. ricorda le posizioni espresse da Enrico di Gand, Duns Scoto, Gerardo da Bologna e Erveo Natale sul tema in questione. La posizione di Guido sull'analogia dell'essere, per quanto originale, si costituisce come una valida alternativa alla opinio communis rappresentata da Gerardo da Bologna, Erveo Natale e da molti altri autori attivi tra la fine del XIII sec. e gli inizi del XIV.

Organizational life and social culture compel individuals toward more radical manifestations of individualism as bureaucracy and society increasingly define personal relationships by rules, regulations and rights. Otherwise incompatible with individualism, this actually contributes to individual and group differentiation when individuals function simply as technicians without the opportunity to gain fulfillment, and they experience existential isolation, becoming detached from their moral and spiritual side. For identity in and control over their own lives, people engage in even more individualistic behavior; working, planning, (...) attaining, or rebelling. The true meaning of freedom and individual rights are perverted and trivialized by this radical individualism as a way of fighting back, but it too has corrosive effects that diminish individual autonomy. ;Through a history of individualism culled from U.S. history and the history of Western philosophy, this paper describes what role the individual played in philosophical and political thought from the early Greek and Western religious influences up to and including modern times. The purpose of this research is to develop a theoretical, normative model of authentic individualism--a journeyman philosophy--that can be adopted by the individual citizen and public administrator as a basis for action, and consider the ramifications of that model for organizational theory, leadership theory, and ethics in government. ;The resulting model of authentic individualism focuses on self only in the context of social responsibility and larger considerations of the whole. An other-regarding world view emerges from this model whose essence is in human dignity and commonalty and which: judges every decision by whether it protects or undermines the dignity of the human person; teaches government and organizational leaders to view people as morally developmental individuals driven by values, principles and the desire to do good rather than acquisitive wants, needs, and desires for goods; forces organizations to take a greater societal role with the same responsibility toward others as is expected of individuals; helps managers define their organizations to facilitate total personhood, rather than to demean the individual by treating humans as property; and defines management as a sacred trust for the well-being of others placed in one's care. (shrink)

Excerpt from An Inquiry Concerning the Nature, End, and Practicability of a Course of Philosophical Education: To Which Is Subjoined a Moral Catechism BE IT remembered, That on the twenty Second day of Nlay in the year of ourlord Ohe thou sand eight hundred and twenty-two, and of'the Inde pendence of the Umted States bf America, the forty-sixth Paul Brown, -of the said District, hath deposited in the office of the, clerk of the District Court for the District of (...) Columbia, the title of a book, the right whereof he claims as proprietor in the words follow mg, to Wit An inquiry concerning the nature, end, and Pagacti cability of a course of philosophical education To which is sub joined a moral catechism. By Paul Brown. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)