Kym Maclaren’s and David Morris’ edited volume Time, Memory, Institution: Merleau-Ponty’s New Ontology of Self is an excellent study of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s concepts of memory, temporality and institution. Its chapters examine these concepts in their relation to his indirect ontology, together revealing that selfhood is instituted via ontological disparity or divergence (écart). In this review, I explore what I take to be the most salient insights of the book’s authors, and suggest that the volume as a whole repositions phenomenology (...) towards a method that is implicated and operates in the movements of Being itself, and therefore calls for a critical phenomenology.Le volume Time, Memory, Institution: Merleau-Ponty’s New Ontology of Self dirigé par Kym Maclaren et David Morris présente une excellente étude des concepts de mémoire, temporalité et institution chez Merleau-Ponty. Ces concepts sont examinés en rapport avec l’ontologie indirecte de Merleau-Ponty, afin de révéler que le soi s’institue à travers un écart ontologique. Dans ce compte rendu, j’explore les intuitions des auteurs que je considère comme étant les plus significatives et je cherche à montrer comment l’ouvrage dans son ensemble vient replacer la phénoménologie dans la perspective d’une méthode qui opère dans les mouvements de l’Être lui-même, et appelle donc à une critique de la phénoménologie.Kym Maclaren e David Morris sono i curatori del volume Time, Memory, Institution: Merleau-Ponty’s New Ontology of Self che presenta un’eccellente analisi dei concetti di memoria, temporalità e istituzione nel pensiero del filosofo francese. Queste nozioni sono indagate in relazione all’ontologia indiretta di Merleau-Ponty, rivelando allo stesso tempo che il sé si istituisce a partire dalla disparità (écart) o dallo scarto ontologico. In questa recensione, mi concentro su quelli che ritengo essere gli apporti più significativi di questa opera collettiva, per mostrare come il volume nel suo insieme venga a riposizionare la fenomenologia nella prospettiva di un metodo che opera nei movimenti dell’Essere stesso e quindi implica una critica della fenomenologia. (shrink)

In an important departure from theories of causation, David Owens proposes that coincidences have no causes, and that a cause is something which ensures that its effects are no coincidence. In Causes and Coincidences, he elucidates the idea of a coincidence as an event which can be analysed into constituent events, the nomological antecedents of which are independent of each other. He also suggests that causal facts can be analysed in terms of non-causal facts, including relations of necessity. Thus, (...) causation is defined in terms of coincidence, and coincidence without reference to causation. David Owens challenges the ideas associated with Hume, Davidson and Lewis, constructing a theory which distinguishes nomological necessity and sufficiency from their logical counterparts. He is able to offer novel solutions to the major problems of causation, including the direction of causation, the logical form of causal statements, the distinction betwen causal connections and logical connections, and the relationship between psychological and physical causation. (shrink)

From the author of Wittgenstein's Poker and Would You Kill the Fat Man?, the story of an extraordinary group of philosophers during a dark chapter in Europe's history On June 22, 1936, the philosopher Moritz Schlick was on his way to deliver a lecture at the University of Vienna when Johann Nelböck, a deranged former student of Schlick's, shot him dead on the university steps. Some Austrian newspapers defended the madman, while Nelböck himself argued in court that his onetime teacher (...) had promoted a treacherous Jewish philosophy. David Edmonds traces the rise and fall of the Vienna Circle—an influential group of brilliant thinkers led by Schlick—and of a philosophical movement that sought to do away with metaphysics and pseudoscience in a city darkened by fascism, anti-Semitism, and unreason. The Vienna Circle's members included Otto Neurath, Rudolf Carnap, and the eccentric logician Kurt Gödel. On its fringes were two other philosophical titans of the twentieth century, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper. The Circle championed the philosophy of logical empiricism, which held that only two types of propositions have cognitive meaning, those that can be verified through experience and those that are analytically true. For a time, it was the most fashionable movement in philosophy. Yet by the outbreak of World War II, Schlick's group had disbanded and almost all its members had fled. Edmonds reveals why the Austro-fascists and the Nazis saw their philosophy as such a threat. The Murder of Professor Schlick paints an unforgettable portrait of the Vienna Circle and its members while weaving an enthralling narrative set against the backdrop of economic catastrophe and rising extremism in Hitler's Europe. (shrink)

One of the most innovative and brilliant philosophers of his generation, but largely neglected until he was brought to public attention by Gilles Deleuze, Gilbert Simondon presents a challenge to nearly every category and method of traditional philosophy. Psychic and Collective Individuation is undoubtedly Simondon's most important work and its influence, clearly felt in Stiegler and DeLanda, has continued to grow. David Scott provides the first full introduction to this work, which will inspire as well as instruct philosophers working (...) in Continental thought, philosophy of science, social theory and political philosophy. (shrink)

In this new textbook two Catholic ethicists with extensive teaching experience present a moral theology based on vision. David Matzko McCarthy and James M. Donohue draw widely from the Western philosophical tradition while integrating biblical and theological themes in order to explore such fundamental questions as What is good? The fourteen chapters in Moral Vision are short and thematic. Substantive study questions engage with primary texts and encourage students to apply theory to everyday life and common human experiences. The (...) book is accessibly written and flexible enough to fit into any undergraduate or seminary course on ethics. (shrink)

• If we always see b after a, we are justified in thinking b will follow a the next time we see a. • “A hundred instances or experiments on one side, and fifty on another, afford a doubtful expectation of any event; though a hundred uniform experiments, with only one that is contradictory, reasonably beget a pretty strong degree of assurance” (74).

This book uses different perspectives on argumentation to show how we create arguments, test them, attack and defend them, and deploy them effectively to justify beliefs and influence others. David Zarefsky uses a range of contemporary examples to show how arguments work and how they can be put together, beginning with simple individual arguments, and proceeding to the construction and analysis of complex cases incorporating different structures. Special attention is given to evaluating evidence and reasoning, the building blocks of (...) argumentation. Zarefsky provides clear guidelines and tests for different kinds of arguments, as well as exercises that show student readers how to apply theories to arguments in everyday and public life. His comprehensive and integrated approach toward argumentation theory and practice will help readers to become more adept at critically examining everyday arguments as well as constructing arguments that will convince others. (shrink)

In this groundbreaking book David Roberts sets out to demonstrate the centrality of the total work of art to European modernism since the French Revolution.

Whether children have rights is a debate that in recent years has spilled over into all areas of public life. It has never been more topical than now as the assumed rights of parents over their children is challenged on an almost daily basis. David Archard offers the first serious and sustained philosophical examination of children and their rights. Archard reviews arguments for and against according children rights. He concludes that every child has at least the right to the (...) best possible upbringing. Denying that parents have any significant rights over their children, he is able to challenge current thinking about the proper roles of state and family in rearing children. Crucially, he considers the problem of how to define and understand `child abuse'. (shrink)

Evolution is frequently concentrated in bursts of rapid morphological change and speciation followed by long‐term stasis. We propose that this pattern of punctuated equilibria results from an evolutionary tug‐of‐war between host genomes and transposable elements (TEs) mediated through the epigenome. According to this hypothesis, epigenetic regulatory mechanisms (RNA interference, DNA methylation and histone modifications) maintain stasis by suppressing TE mobilization. However, physiological stress, induced by climate change or invasion of new habitats, disrupts epigenetic regulation and unleashes TEs. With their capacity (...) to drive non‐adaptive host evolution, mobilized TEs can restructure the genome and displace populations from adaptive peaks, thus providing an escape from stasis and generating genetic innovations required for rapid diversification. This “epi‐transposon hypothesis” can not only explain macroevolutionary tempo and mode, but may also resolve other long‐standing controversies, such as Wright's shifting balance theory, Mayr's peripheral isolates model, and McClintock's view of genome restructuring as an adaptive response to challenge. (shrink)

Discovering high-level causal relations from low-level data is an important and challenging problem that comes up frequently in the natural and social sciences. In a series of papers, Chalupka etal. (2015, 2016a, 2016b, 2017) develop a procedure forcausal feature learning (CFL) in an effortto automate this task. We argue that CFL does not recommend coarsening in cases where pragmatic considerations rule in favor of it, and recommends coarsening in cases where pragmatic considerations rule against it. We propose a new technique, (...) pragmatic causal feature learning (PCFL), which extends the original CFL algorithm in useful and intuitive ways. We show that PCFL has the same attractive measure-theoretic properties as the original CFL algorithm. We compare the performance of both methods through theoretical analysis and experiments. (shrink)

The last one hundred years has seen unimaginable technological progress transforming every aspect of human life. Yet we seem unable to shake a profound unease with the direction of modern technology and its ideological siblings, global capitalism and massive consumption. Philosophers such as Marcuse, Borgmann and especially Heidegger, have developed important analyses of technological society, however in this book David Lewin argues that their ideas have remained limited either by their secular context, or by the narrow conception of religion (...) that they do allow. This study guides the reader along the newly formed paths of the philosophy of technology, arguing that where those paths come to an abrupt end, a religious discourse is needed to articulate the ultimate concerns that drive technological action. It calls for a meditation on the central insight of many religious traditions that, in an ultimate sense, we 'know not what we do.' To acknowledge that we know not what we do is the first step towards a theology of technology that draws upon insights from the mystical theological tradition, as well as from recent developments in the continental philosophy of religion. (shrink)

The Addresses to the German Nation is one of Fichte's best-known works. It is also his most controversial work because of its nationalist elements. In this book, David James places this text and its nationalism within the context provided by Fichte's philosophical, educational and moral project of creating a community governed by pure practical reason, in which his own foundational philosophical science or Wissenschaftslehre could achieve general recognition. Rather than marking a break in Fichte's philosophy, the Addresses to the (...) German Nation and some lesser-known texts from the same period are shown to develop themes already present in his earlier writings. The themes discussed include the opposition between idealism and dogmatism, the role of Fichte's 'popular' lectures and writings in leading individuals to the standpoint of idealism, the view of history demanded by idealism and the role of the state in history. (shrink)

In this book, I offer an account of intentional action. The book has two main parts: in the first part, I discuss and criticize the currently prevailing account of intentional action—the Causal Theory of Action (CTA)—and, in the second part, I offer my alternative account. The CTA proposes essentially two conditions for something that you do to be an intentional action: (1) what you do is represented by your intention (or other mental attitudes), and (2) it is caused by your (...) intention. Against the CTA, I argue that, since it conceives of representation and causality as essentially separate conditions, it cannot explain why, when someone acts intentionally, it is not a mere accident that both conditions are jointly satisfied: i.e., that the intention causes the movement it represents. The CTA’s inability to rule out such accidentality is, as I argue further, the deeper source of the notorious problem of deviant causation. Given this diagnosis, I claim that the key for a satisfactory account of intentional action is to conceive of the essential unity of representation and causality in intentional action. Doing so, I suggest, requires understanding a distinctive sort of causality at work in intentional action. Following the work of G.E.M. Anscombe, I argue that what is distinctive of the sort of causal-explanatory connection captured in action explanations like “S is doing A because she intends to do B” is that it is essentially known by the acting subject. In the final sections of the book, I then develop and defend a conception of the sort of self-knowledge involved in intentional action. (shrink)

In “Freedom and Resentment,” P. F. Strawson argues that the “profound opposition” between the objective and reactive stances is quite compatible with our rationally retaining the latter as important elements in a recognizably human life. Unless he can establish this, he has no hope of establishing his version of compatibilism in the free will debate. But, because objectivity is associated so intimately with the rationally conducted explanation of action, it is not clear how the opposition of these stances is compatible (...) with the rationality of the reactive attitudes. More to the point, it is not clear how an intellectual activity like shifting from the reactive to the objective stance can dispel reactive attitudes without thereby also rationally disqualifying them. I solve this puzzle by drawing on the idea that one cognitive component of emotions is the rationally optional “shift of attention.” a feature which in turn helps to explain a lot about the role reactive emotions can play in the fixation of belief. (shrink)

This article offers a new interpretation of Aristotle’s ambiguous and much-discussed claim that pleasure perfects activity. This interpretation provides an alternative to the two main competing readings of this claim in the scholarship: the addition-view, which envisages the perfection conferred by pleasure as an extra perfection beyond the perfection of activity itself; and the identity-view, according to which pleasure just is the perfect activity itself. The proposed interpretation departs from both these views in rejecting their assumption that pleasure cannot perfect (...) the activity itself, and argues that pleasure makes activity perfect by optimising the exercise of one’s capacities for that activity. Those who build or play music with pleasure do so better than those who do not delight in these activities. The basis of this interpretation is Aristotle’s little-read remarks from the following chapter, i. e. NE x.5, about how pleasure “increases” the activity. (shrink)

PurposeThis purpose of this paper is to identify principal stakeholders and needs in e‐inclusion, with particular reference to senior citizens, determining to what extent those needs are being met or could be met by other stakeholders. It considers inclusive stakeholder organisational structures that could address unmet needs.Design/methodology/approachAlthough the European Commission, Member States, local authorities, industry, and researchers have called for greater collaboration and partnerships among stakeholders to overcome the so‐called digital divides, little attention has been giv]en to the form of (...) collaboration. Reviewing various policy‐oriented documents, this paper compiles a list of principal stakeholders and their e‐inclusion needs, reviews existing multi‐stakeholder undertakings and partnership structures as candidates for addressing needs not already met.FindingsMany important e‐inclusion needs are not addressed by any multi‐stakeholder undertaking. Some structured collaboration or partnership should address those needs. A new structure should not merely represent all interested stakeholders, but involve them in decision‐making processes.Research limitations/implicationsThis is a conceptual paper, constrained by length from producing a detailed list of needs. Similarly, although the paper identifies 12 different stakeholder categories, some could be further segmented.Practical implicationsFurther research and analysis could be undertaken sourcing each identified need, perhaps adding others and further segmenting stakeholder categories.Originality/valueThe paper is of value to stakeholders involved or interested in e‐inclusion efforts. It uses a novel, straight‐forward, approach for identifying stakeholders and needs, who can meet those needs and who is addressing those needs. (shrink)

The Varnished Truth gives us a careful, spirited, and fresh look at the multi-layered subject of deception and truth-telling in everyday life.

Originally published in 1989, The Deconstruction of Time was the first to examine what has become the fundamental, even defining, project in continental ...

Recent decades have seen a significant increase in physicians participating in international short-term missions to regions with limited or no access to health care by virtue of natural disaster or lack of resources. Recent publications in the ethics literature have explored the potential of these missions for unintentional harm to the intended beneficiaries. Less has been discussed about how to respond when harm actually occurs. The authors review the ethical issues raised by short-term medical and humanitarian missions and the literature (...) on responding to unintended error to provide guidelines for avoiding harm to the intended beneficiaries of missions and an appropriate response when harm occurs. Two cases demonstrating an analysis and response to unintended harm are presented. (shrink)

In birds and frogs, species pairs retain the capacity to produce viable hybrids for tens of millions of years, an order of magnitude longer than mammals. What accounts for these differences in relative rates of pre- and postzygotic isolation? We propose that reproductive mode is a critically important but previously overlooked factor in the speciation process. Viviparity creates a post-fertilization arena for genomic conflicts absent in egg-laying species. With viviparity, conflict can arise between: mothers and embryos; sibling embryos in the (...) womb, and maternal and paternal genomes within individual embryos. Such intra- and intergenomic conflicts result in perpetual antagonistic coevolution, thereby accelerating interpopulation postzygotic isolation. In addition, by generating intrapopulation genetic incompatibility, viviparity-driven conflict favors polyandry and limits the potential for precopulatory divergence. Mammalian diversification is characterized by rapid evolution of incompatible feto-maternal interactions, asymmetrical postzygotic isolation, disproportionate effects of genomically-imprinted genes, and “F2 hybrid enhancement.” The viviparity-driven conflict hypothesis provides a parsimonious explanation for these patterns in mammalian evolution. BioEssays 22:938–946, 2000. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

The model of clinical ethics consultation (CEC) defended in the ASBH Core Competencies report has gained significant traction among scholars and healthcare providers. On this model, the aim of CEC is to facilitate deliberative reflection and thereby resolve conflicts and clarify value uncertainty by invoking and pursuing a process of consensus building. It is central to the model that the facilitated consensus falls within a range of allowable options, defined by societal values: prevailing legal requirements, widely endorsed organizational policies, and (...) professional standards of practice and codes of conduct. Moreover, the model stipulates that ethics consultants must refrain from giving substantive recommendations regarding how parties to a moral disagreement in the clinic should evaluate their options. We argue that this model of CEC is incomplete, because it wrongly assumes that what counts as the proper set of allowable options among which the parties are to deliberate will itself always be clearly discernible. We illustrate this problem with a recent case on which one of us consulted—a neonate born with trisomy 18 (T18). We try to show that law, policy, and standards of practice reveal no clear answer to the question posed by the case: namely, whether forgoing gastrostomy tube feedings for a baby with T18 is allowable. We suggest there may be other kinds of cases in which it may simply be unsettled whether a given choice falls within the set of allowable options within which consensus is to be facilitated. What should an ethicist do when confronting such unsettled cases? We agree with the facilitation model that an ethicist should remain neutral among the allowable options, when it is clear what the allowable options are. But, in unsettled cases, the role of a consultant should be expanded to include a process of moral inquiry into what the allowable options should be. We end by raising the issue of whether this means an ethicist should share his or her own conclusions or views about the allowability of a given clinical option. (shrink)

This provocative text considers whether evolutionary explanations can be used to clarify some of life’s biggest questions. Examines topics of race, sex, gender, the nature of language, religion, ethics, knowledge, consciousness and ultimately, the meaning of life Each chapter presents a main topic, together with discussion of related ideas and arguments from various perspectives Addresses questions such as: Did evolution make men and women fundamentally different? Is the concept of race merely a social construction? Is morality, including universal human rights, (...) a mass delusion? Can religion and evolution really be harmonized? Does evolution render life meaningless? Written in a clear and informative style, with helpful references for further reading and research. (shrink)

David Berlinski, a senior fellow at Discovery Institute, writes about three profound mysteries: the existence of the human mind, the existence and diversity of living creatures, and the existence of matter. His other books include: The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions, Newton's Gift, and A Tour of the Calculus.

We usually withhold attributions of moral responsibility when a person acts on preferences that are induced without her consent by other people by means of conditioning, post-hypnotic suggestion, neurological fiddling and similar techniques. However, this is not generally the case when a person induces preferences in herself by the process of character building. However, the distinction between non-responsibility and responsibility for preferences does not map neatly onto the distinction between psychological induction by other and by self. Sometimes responsibility-grounding freedom of (...) action and autonomy of will re compromised when a person induces preferences in herself by adaptive preference-formation, the mechanism that sets up the cry of “sour grapes.” They can also be compromised when a person intentionally undertakes a strategy of self-abnegating resignation to oppressive necessity. It remains unclear, nonetheless, how the unfreedom and heteronomy of preferences calibrated to the merely feasible contrasts with the freedom and autonomy of planned preferences-changes guided by the person’s own values in projects of character building. (shrink)

This forward-thinking, non-traditional reference work uniquely maps out how new developments in 21st century philosophy are entering into dialogue with the study of literature. Going beyond the familiar methods of analytic philosophy, and with a breadth greater than traditional literary theory, this collection looks at the profound consequences of the interaction between philosophy and literature for questions of ethics, politics, subjectivity, materiality, reality and the nature of the contemporary itself.

I am becoming increasingly disturbed by the lack of under standing of science revealed by politicians, industrialists and the general public. I am also concerned about the widespread mis use of the word "scientific" which is more and more being used in situations where it is quite inappropriate. As a result, in some circumstances gross overestimates are made as to what science can do. In other circumstances the real power of science is foolishly underestimated and the contributions which it can (...) make are squandered. Science is God is an attempt to explain just what is meant by the scientific approach and to define more closoJ. y what the word "scientific" indicates. It is deliberately brief and controversial because I want it to be read. In fact, the material dealt with in each single chapter really deserves a whole book to itself. In the future I hope that I may be able to give to each subject such full treatment. Meanwhile I hope that this book will stimulate discussion about science and will increase understanding of it. DAVID F. (shrink)