This article compares the information processing and dynamical systems perspectives on problem solving. Key theoretical constructs of the information-processing perspective include “searching” a “p...

In this essay I aim to broaden this discussion of positionality in Philosophy for Children in order to explore the ways that sociopolitical and philosophical context can impact the sorts of questions and discussions generated by children in P4C programs. In particular, I show how the context of Oaxaca City shapes the philosophical contributions of the children of the Oaxaca Philosophy for Children Initiative—in a way that often challenges western philosophical frameworks. I use the narrative of the Oaxaca Philosophy for (...) Children Initiative to argue for a "place-based P4C" in which the instructor often learns far more philosophy than she teaches. (shrink)

Millar showed that for each n<ω, there is a complete decidable theory having precisely eighteen nonisomorphic countable models where some of these are decidable exactly in the hyperarithmetic set H. By combining ideas from Millar's proof with a technique of Peretyat'kin, the author reduces the number of countable models to five. By a theorem of Millar, this is the smallest number of countable models a decidable theory can have if some of the models are not 0″-decidable.

The emphasis in most process-oriented models of argumentation is placed heavily upon analysis of dialogue. The current work puts forward an account which examines the argumentation involved in persuasive monologue, drawing upon commitment-based theories of dialogue. The various differences between monologue and dialogue are discussed, with particular reference to the possibility of designing a monologue game in which commitments are dynamically incurred and updated as the monologue is created. Finally, the computational advantages of adopting such an approach are explored in (...) the context of an existing architecture for the generation of natural language arguments. (shrink)

A simple thought experiment and web search tools are brought to bear on conventional notions of disability. A Nobel Prize winner weighs in.

The elections of Harold Washington and Wilson Goode, along with the near election of Mel King, have generated new speculations about black urban adminstrations. The tacit assumptions here concern the significance of these administrations for racial democracy in the U.S. The fact that a black or Hispanic candidate is elected mayor is taken as evidence of “progress.” Presumably, if an electorate selects a candidate, that candidate must have been able to transcend previously insurmountable boundaries to galvanize a winning coalition. This (...) view, of course, does not account for the fact that blacks tend overwhelmingly — unless black candidates are woefully pock-marked politically — to vote black and whites are just as likely to vote white. (shrink)

This essay addresses the question of what it means to be an American today. In the first half, I respond to Samuel P. Huntington’s claim that America’s national identity is fundamentally Anglo-Protestant by rehearsing Jacques Derrida’s argument that the founding of a nation whose self-understanding is based on the idea of a social contract, such as the United States, implies an “originating violence” governed by extralegal considerations. In the second half, I discuss the “melting pot” and “salad bowl” concepts of (...) American identity and show how deconstruction does not force us to choose between them. However, I suggest that the dynamic nature of the melting pot is more consonant with the deconstructionist idea of the American people “to come” presented in the first half. (shrink)

This essay argues that a restatement of Thomistic natural law reasoning is increasingly necessary in jurisprudential debate about international law. Mindful of Pope John Paul II's call for a renewal of international law, the essay engages with the present-day tension between Morgenthau-type realism and neo-Kantian discourse-oriented cosmopolitanism. The essay addresses whether the former is sufficiently realistic in our global 21st century context, and whether the latter is adequately cosmopolitan. Attention is drawn to Aquinas's understanding of the relation between custom, consent (...) and political authority in order to expose some of the limits of present-day statism, and to suggest that Thomistic natural law reasoning is, potentially at least, better able to cope with the intractable disagreement that characterises 21st century global relations than some forms of neo-Kantian jurisprudence. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that Oaxacan Indigenous "transborder communities" that exist simultaneously in Oaxaca, Mexico and the United States are entitled to a freedom of movement right--understood as a group right--across the Mexico-U.S. border. I further argue that the experiences and nature of Oaxacan Indigenous transborder communities call into question that sharp divide drawn by Kymlicka between "national minority rights" and "polyethnic rights" in his work on multicultural citizenship.

This paper looks at the relation between scientific knowledge and normative pragmatics from the point of view of cosmological milieus that map out a sense of purposefulness, as argued by Bentley Allan. Cosmological consequences are drawn out in light of the model of the Stack, as postulated by Benjamin Bratton, through the lens of Haraway’s “situated knowledge” through which new modes of governance and self-understanding emerge, demanding an adaptation of strictly human-centered political theory. The reciprocal dynamics of the interface are (...) explored as a distributed site, not only for the invention of narrative, non-homogenizing meaning from the “totality” of the Stack, but equally as a site of intervention to guide and weight otherwise the non-linear causal forces of our complex, interconnected condition. (shrink)

This article inquires into what the gospel of peace might mean for Christian theological engagement with international law and sets a provisional agenda for peace ethics in an age of global risks. Two warnings are sounded with respect to the language of ‘peace ethics’ and ‘the rule of law’. Three priorities are identified: (i) thinking with and about the global poor in ways that do not render ‘the other’ somehow different from myself; (ii) retrieval of the twin ideas of ‘naturalness’ (...) and distributive justice in natural law reasoning as they bear upon international law and the use of force; (iii) how to conceive of international common good by considering ‘peace through law’ as a potentially subversive endeavour when employed in the service of the global poor. (shrink)

This article tests the proposition that new weapons technology requires Christian ethics to dispense with the just war tradition (JWT) and argues for its development rather than dissolution. Those working in the JWT should be under no illusions, however, that new weapons technologies could (or do already) represent threats to the doing of justice in the theatre of war. These threats include weapons systems that deliver indiscriminate, disproportionate or otherwise unjust outcomes, or that are operated within (quasi-)legal frameworks marked by (...) accountability gaps. The temptation to abrogate (L. abrogare—repeal, evade) responsibility to the machine is also a moral threat to the doing of justice in the theatre of war. (shrink)

The Liberating art of philosophy: a foundational anthology provides students with seminal texts and articles that pique their philosophical curiosity, encourage critical thought, and invite questioning.

This essay frames the question of responsibility as a problem of agency in relation to the systems and structures of globalization. Responsibility is a “shattered concept” when considered too narrowly as a problem of act, agency, and individual freedom. Constructively, the essay introduces Dietrich Bonhoeffer as the most promising theological dialogue partner for rethinking the meaning of responsibility today. His challenge is to find a way of talking about responsibility that does not collapse into individualism or become ensconced within a (...) univocal logic that subsumes socioeconomic, cultural, and religious differences within itself. The claim is that Bonhoeffer’s reflections on the center, boundaries, and limits of responsibility are helpful today to Christian people struggling with an increasingly exhausted concept of responsibility, when linear agent-act-consequence connections to distant others and far away harms are increasingly difficult to trace. (shrink)