INDUS-EM is India’s only level one conference imparting and exchanging quality knowledge in acute care. Specifically, in general and specialized emergency care and training in trauma, burns, cardiac, stroke, environmental and disaster medicine. It provides a series of exchanges regarding academic development and implementation of training tools related to developing future academic faculty and residents in Emergency Medicine in India. The INDUS-EM leadership and board of directors invited scholars from multiple institutions to participate in this advanced educational symposium that was (...) held in Thrissur, Kerala in October 2013. (shrink)

This book investigates the subjective and objective representations of the world, developing analogies between secondary qualities and indexical thoughts and arguing that subjective representations are ineliminable. Throughout, McGinn brings together historical and contemporary discussions to illuminate old problems in a novel way.

One of the central debates in contemporary Kant scholarship concerns whether Kant endorses a “conceptualist” account of the nature of sensory experience. Understanding the debate is crucial for getting a full grasp of Kant's theory of mind, cognition, perception, and epistemology. This paper situates the debate in the context of Kant's broader theory of cognition and surveys some of the major arguments for conceptualist and non-conceptualist interpretations of his critical philosophy.

Whether it's conkers in the schoolyard, kicking a football in the park, or playing tennis on Wimbledon Centre Court, sport impacts all of our lives. But what is sport and why do we do it? Colin McGinn, renowned philosopher , reflects on our love of sport and explores the value it has for us and the part it plays in a life lived well. Written in the form of a memoir, McGinn discusses many of the sports he has engaged (...) in - from pole-vaulting and gymnastics to windsurfing and tennis - and describes the athletic experience from the inside, as a participant, articulating what is uniquely valuable about sport as an activity. Sport, argues McGinn, takes us to our fullest potential as human beings, it's what we fling at mortality to keep it at bay, a holiday from the Unbearable Heaviness of Being. "Sport" expresses our nature, it bears upon our self-realization. If a happy life consists in one that expresses fully our natural faculties, then sports must play an essential role in our lifes. Mind-body unity, the nature of practical knowledge and physical skill, success and failure, the ethics of competition, peak experiences, the spectacle of professional sport, aesthetics and death, McGinn discusses these and many other issues while telling of his own sporting mishaps and adventures. To use the vernacular of philosophy, "Sport" captures the phenomenology of sport - what it's like to do it - and in doing so shows how sport is a way of expressing and understanding who and what we are, way beyond whether we are a good sportsman, a bad loser or a team-player. For anyone who has ever thought that there must be less humiliating ways to enjoy yourself than being thrashed on the tennis court, "Sport" will reassure you that it's time not wasted. (shrink)

The agent-structure problem is a much discussed issue in the field of international relations. In his comprehensive analysis of this problem, Colin Wight deconstructs the accounts of structure and agency embedded within differing IR theories and, on the basis of this analysis, explores the implications of ontology - the metaphysical study of existence and reality. Wight argues that there are many gaps in IR theory that can only be understood by focusing on the ontological differences that construct the theoretical (...) landscape. By integrating the treatment of the agent-structure problem in IR theory with that in social theory, Wight makes a positive contribution to the problem as an issue of concern to the wider human sciences. At the most fundamental level politics is concerned with competing visions of how the world is and how it should be, thus politics is ontology. (shrink)

We investigate how epistemic injustice can manifest itself in mathematical practices. We do this as both a social epistemological and virtue-theoretic investigation of mathematical practices. We delineate the concept both positively—we show that a certain type of folk theorem can be a source of epistemic injustice in mathematics—and negatively by exploring cases where the obstacles to participation in a mathematical practice do not amount to epistemic injustice. Having explored what epistemic injustice in mathematics can amount to, we use the concept (...) to highlight a potential danger of intellectual enculturation. (shrink)

Contrary to political and philosophical consensus, we argue that the threats posed by climate change justify population engineering, the intentional manipulation of the size and structure of human populations. Specifically, we defend three types of policies aimed at reducing fertility rates: choice enhancement, preference adjustment, and incentivization. While few object to the first type of policy, the latter two are generally rejected because of their potential for coercion or morally objectionable manipulation. We argue that forms of each policy type are (...) pragmatically and morally justified tools for preventing the harms of global climate change. (shrink)

The complexities of how justice comes to be realized, and by which agents, is a relatively neglected element in contemporary theories of justice. This has left several crucial questions about agency and justice undertheorized, such as why some particular agents are responsible for realizing justice, how their contribution towards realizing justice should be understood, and what role agents such as activists and community leaders play in realizing justice. We aim to contribute towards a better understanding of the landscape of these (...) kinds of questions. First, we argue that theorists should distinguish between (i) agents who are responsible for realizing justice, but not committed to it, (ii) agents who are not responsible for realizing justice, but who are committed to it, and (iii) agents who are both responsible for and committed to realizing justice. Second, we discuss how to incorporate agents of justice more robustly into theorizing about justice. (shrink)

Now available in paperback, this acclaimed book introduces categories and elementary toposes in a manner requiring little mathematical background. It defines the key concepts and gives complete elementary proofs of theorems, including the fundamental theorem of toposes and the sheafification theorem. It ends with topos theoretic descriptions of sets, of basic differential geometry, and of recursive analysis.

Logical consequence is the relation that obtains between premises and conclusion(s) in a valid argument. Orthodoxy has it that valid arguments are necessarily truth-preserving, but this platitude only raises a number of further questions, such as: how does the truth of premises guarantee the truth of a conclusion, and what constraints does validity impose on rational belief? This volume presents thirteen essays by some of the most important scholars in the field of philosophical logic. The essays offer ground-breaking new insights (...) into the nature of logical consequence; the relation between logic and inference; how the semantics and pragmatics of natural language bear on logic; the relativity of logic; and the structural properties of the consequence relation. (shrink)

In this paper, I describe grounds for dissatisfaction with certain aspects of the sciences of animal cognition and argue that a turn toward mathematical modeling of animal cognition is warranted. I consider some objections to this call and argue that the implications of such a turn are not as drastic for ordinary, commonsense understanding of animal minds as they might seem.

The Continuum Problem has inspired set theorists and philosophers since the days of Cantorian set theory. In the last 15 years, W. Hugh Woodin, a leading set theorist, has not only taken it upon himself to engage in this question, he has also changed his mind about the answer. This paper illustrates Woodin’s solutions to the problem, starting in Sect. 3 with his 1999–2004 argument that Cantor’s hypothesis about the continuum was incorrect. From 2010 onwards, Woodin presents a very different (...) argument, an argument that Cantor’s hypothesis is in fact true. This argument is still incomplete, but according to Woodin, some of the philosophical issues surrounding the Continuum Problem have been reduced to precise mathematical questions, questions that are, unlike Cantor’s hypothesis, solvable from our current theory of sets. (shrink)

Of the seven $1,000,000 Clay Millennium Prize Problems in mathematics, just one would immediately appeal to Leonard Euler. That is “Existence and Smoothness of the Navier-Stokes Equation” (Fefferman 2000). Euler gave the basic equation in the 1750s. The work to this day shows Euler’s intuitive, vividly physical sense of mathematics.

In this paper I explore how intellectual humility manifests in mathematical practices. To do this I employ accounts of this virtue as developed by virtue epistemologists in three case studies of mathematical activity. As a contribution to a Topical Collection on virtue theory of mathematical practices this paper explores in how far existing virtue-theoretic frameworks can be applied to a philosophical analysis of mathematical practices. I argue that the individual accounts of intellectual humility are successful at tracking some manifestations of (...) this virtue in mathematical practices and fail to track others. There are two upshots to this. First, the accounts of the intellectual virtues provided by virtue epistemologists are insightful for the development of a virtue theory of mathematical practices but require adjustments in some cases. Second, the case studies reveal dimensions of intellectual humility virtue epistemologists have thus far overlooked in their theoretical reflections. (shrink)

This paper offers an epistemic defense of empathy, drawing on John Locke's theory of ideas. Locke held that ideas of shape, unlike ideas of color, had a distinctive value: resembling qualities in their objects. I argue that the same is true of empathy, as when someone is pained by someone's pain. This means that empathy has the same epistemic value or objectivity that Locke and other early modern philosophers assigned to veridical perceptions of shape. For this to hold, pain and (...) pleasure must be a primary quality of the mind, just as shape is a primary quality of bodies. Though Locke did not make that claim, I argue that pain and pleasure satisfy his criteria for primary qualities. I consider several objections to the analogy between empathy and shape-perception and show how Locke's theory has resources for answering them. In addition, the claim that empathetic ideas are object-matching sidesteps Berkeley's influential objection to Locke's theory of resemblance. I conclude by briefly considering the prospects for a similar defense of empathy in contemporary terms. (shrink)

In this chapter I explore the reciprocal relationship between the metaphysical views mathematicians hold and their mathematical activity. I focus on the set-theoretic pluralism debate, in which set theorists disagree about the implications of their formal mathematical work. As a first case study, I discuss how Woodin’s monist argument for an Ultimate-L feeds on and is fed by mathematical results and metaphysical beliefs. In a second case study, I present Hamkins’ pluralist proposal and the mathematical research projects it endows with (...) relevance. These case studies support three claims: (1) the metaphysical views of mathematicians can shape what counts as relevant research; (2) mathematical results can shape the metaphysical beliefs of mathematicians; (3) metaphysical thought and mathematical activity develop in tandem in mathematical practices. This makes metaphysical thought an integral part of mathematical practices. (shrink)

Spinoza’s account of reason in the Short Treatise has been largely neglected. That account, I argue, has at least four features which distinguish it from that of the Ethics: in the Short Treatise, (1) reason is more sharply distinguished from the faculty of intuitive knowledge, (2) reason deals with things as though they were ‘outside’ us, (3) reason lacks clarity and distinctness, and (4) reason has no power over many types of passions. I argue that these differences have a unified (...) explanation, consisting of a principle that Spinoza accepts in both works and a central change in his views. The principle is that whatever we find in ourselves has more power over us than anything which comes from outside, and the change is in making the objects of reason common things or common notions. Understanding this, I claim, sheds important light on the psychological and epistemological motivations behind Spinoza's mature doctrines. (shrink)

In this response to the work of Michael Dummett, McGinn aims to vindicate the plausibility of a realist outlook. Realism claims that a sentence's truth is ‘epistemically unconstrained’ or ‘knowledge‐transcendent’, in the sense that the world is as it is independently of our knowing truths about it. Contra Dummett's arguments against the tenability of this realist conviction, McGinn's counter‐argument proceeds by showing, first, ‘that it is an empiricist dogma to suppose that we cannot acquire conceptions that transcend our experience,’ and (...) second, ‘that we can connect experience‐transcendent conceptions with linguistic use by making the observation that such conceptions are fit subjects for communicative speech acts’. (shrink)

Joyce and others have claimed that degrees of belief are estimates of truth-values and that the probability axioms are conditions of admissibility for these estimates with respect to a scoring rule penalizing inaccuracy. In this article, I argue that the claim that the rules of probability are truth-directed in this way depends on an assumption that is both implausible and lacks any supporting evidence, strongly suggesting that the probability axioms have nothing intrinsically to do with truth-directedness.

A radically dualist view of the relationship between God and the universe is apt to make the problem of Divine intervention more difficult than under other metaphysical conceptions. We need to find a closer relationship than this if the causal picture is to work. We could try saying that God is realized by the universe, without being reducible to the universe. He has no further substance over and above that of the universe, but he is not simply identical to the (...) universe. I am not sure I know what this idea of realization comes to for the case of God and the universe, but it least it promises to make it feasible for God to be enmeshed in the natural causal order, without collapsing into it. It is not so much that God intervenes as supervenes, to use the jargon. On this picture, there is a mega- universe that includes both the physical universe and God, with the two locked somehow together. (shrink)

In The Age of Defeat, the third volume of the Outsider Cycle, Colin Wilson introduces his New Existentialism as the basis for the revolution in thought that we need to bring about; a revolt against insignificance and ordinariness. The New Existentialism is a practical and strong-willed philosophy that will renew the concept of Man as hero. It emphasises the extraordinary in us.The Age of Defeat examines the loss of the hero in Western culture and the implications of that loss (...) for humanity. When it was written in the middle of the 20th century, it was the idea of the hero that was endangered. Today it is Man, his identity and his masculinity, who is verging on extinction. The concept of Man is one of the most ambiguous and puzzling in our culture. It might be a good moment to remember what to be a Man used to imply. (shrink)

A number of authors make a seemingly compelling case for holding the victim of a wrong morally obliged to accept the genuine apology of the wrongdoer. This is a crucial issue in questions of reparative justice, since reparation typically requires not just the giving but also the acceptance of an apology. Yet it is a case that we should ultimately reject. If it is credible to think that the victim might suffer anew in exercising any duty of this kind, that (...) suffering must be factored into the moral reckoning from the outset. It is only if we can be sure that the victim will not suffer again by attending to, and ultimately accepting, the wrongdoer’s apology that it would be right to impose upon her any duty of this kind. Yet, in all non-trivial cases, the victim’s burden is unknowable in advance and has the potential to be considerable. In such situations, I argue, the victim has no duty to accept the wrongdoer’s apology. There are limits, too, to the utility of the bipartite victim-wrongdoer account of reparation on which such arguments are typically predicated. For the harm the wrongdoer causes is not exclusively suffered by the immediate victim but also by the community of all potential victims. Genuine reparative justice requires more than a recalibration of the relative moral standing of the wrongdoer and the victim through the giving and receiving of an apology. I consider how this might be achieved without imposing upon the victim a burden that fails to achieve the moral reckoning anticipated. (shrink)

Category theory has two unexpected links to constructivism: First, why is topos logic so close to intuitionistic logic? The paper argues that in part the resemblance is superficial, in part it is due to selective attention, and in part topos theory is objectively tied to the motives for later intuitionistic logic little related to Brouwer’s own stated motives. Second, why is so much of general category theory somehow constructive? The paper aims to synthesize three hypotheses on why it would be (...) so, with three that suggest it is not. (shrink)

Note is taken of the requirement (expressed in the British Educational Reform Act 1988 and other documents) that the curriculum should contribute to the spiritual development of pupils in the school and of society. Declining to reject the term as vacuous, the paper explores various suggested meanings: induction into a particular religion, consideration of fundamental questions, a sense of self, certain largely inexpressible states of mind, and pupils' non–material well–being. All of these, with the possible exception of the first in (...) the context of a multicultural public educational system, are shown to have some possible validity, subject to the need for further explication. Sincere concern with any profound notion of spiritual development is, however, held to be difficult to reconcile with current officially sanctioned conceptions of education. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Jacques Rancière does not propose a purely sensible conception of the aesthetic in his recent writings on art. Unlike many contemporary philosophies of art, Rancière’s aesthetics retains an important cognitive dimension. Here, I bring this aspect of Rancière’s aesthetics into view by comparing the conception of intelligence found in his earlier works with his more recent writings on art, showing that intelligence and sense are distributed in the same ways. The distinction between them is, (...) moreover, governed by the same politics. Rancière’s analysis of the sensible and the intellectual breaks down the distinction between them and establishes their equality. (shrink)

In this, his first philosophical publication, McGinn introduces a distinction between epistemic possibility and metaphysical possibility, in order to diagnose the reason for Mackie's misinterpretation of Kripke's essentialism about natural kinds. McGinn then argues—on behalf of Kripke and pace Mackie—that the secondary qualities of natural kind substances are rigidly identical to the underlying primary qualities.

This note describes Saunders Mac Lane as a philosopher, and indeed as a paragon naturalist philosopher. He approaches philosophy as a mathematician. But, more than that, he learned philosophy from David Hilbert’s lectures on it, and by discussing it with Hermann Weyl, as much as he did by studying it with the mathematically informed Göttingen Philosophy professor Moritz Geiger.

Nanotechnology thrives in the realm of the virtual. Throughout its history, the field has been shaped by futuristic visions of technological revolution, hyperbolic promises of scientific convergence at the molecular scale, and science fiction stories of the world rebuilt atom by atom. Even today, amid the welter of innovative nanomaterials that increasingly appear in everyday consumer products—the nanoparticles enhancing our sunscreens, the carbon nanotubes strengthening our tennis rackets, the antimicrobial nano-silver lining our socks, the nanofilms protecting our wrinkle-free trousers—the public (...) rhetoric of nanotechnology constantly reminds us that such precision-engineered materials merely represent a trace or a premonition of the amazing future still to come... (shrink)