How do words and images function hermeneutically? How does hermeneutic practice work? Answering these questions and more, Nicholas Davey develops the hermeneutical foundations of creative practice. In doing so, he not only uncovers the significance of philosophical hermeneutics for the arts and the humanities, but defends the humanities as a whole from the current scepticism inspired by deconstruction and post-structuralism. Taking Gadamer's language ontology as its cue, this pioneering volume not only addresses certain weaknesses that Davey observes in Gadamer's (...) thought but further takes Gadamerian thinking beyond Gadamer himself. In particular, Davey investigates the productive value of negativity that is central to hermeneutics and to wider spheres of creative learning. Advocating a renewed confidence in hermeneutics and the humanities, Negative Hermeneutics and the Question of Practice reveals how hermeneutical thinking provides a map of the dynamics within creative practice, eliminating the need for an externally imposed 'theory' of the arts. (shrink)

There is a debate about the possibility of mind-uploading – a process that purportedly transfers human minds and therefore human identities into computers. This paper bypasses the debate about the metaphysics of mind-uploading to address the rationality of submitting yourself to it. I argue that an ineliminable risk that mind-uploading will fail makes it prudentially irrational for humans to undergo it.

Preface Introduction Christopher J. Berry: Adam Smith: Outline of Life, Times, and Legacy Part One: Adam Smith: Heritage and Contemporaries 1: Nicholas Phillipson: Adam Smith: A Biographer's Reflections 2: Leonidas Montes: Newtonianism and Adam Smith 3: Dennis C. Rasmussen: Adam Smith and Rousseau: Enlightenment and counter-Enlightenment 4: Christopher J. Berry: Adam Smith and Early Modern Thought Part Two: Adam Smith on Language, Art and Culture 5: Catherine Labio: Adam Smith's Aesthetics 6: James Chandler: Adam Smith as Critic 7: Michael (...) C. Amrozowicz: Adam Smith: History and Poetics 8: C. Jan Swearingen: Adam Smith on Language and Rhetoric: The Ethics of Style, Character, and Propriety Part Three: Adam Smith and Moral Philosophy 9: Christel Fricke: Adam Smith: The Sympathetic Process and the Origin and Function of Conscience 10: Duncan Kelly: Adam Smith and the Limits of Sympathy 11: Ryan Patrick Hanley: Adam Smith and Virtue 12: Eugene Heath: Adam Smith and Self-Interest Part Four: Adam Smith and Economics 13: Tony Aspromourgos: Adam Smith on Labour and Capital 14: Nerio Naldi: Adam Smith on Value and Prices 15: Hugh Rockoff: Adam Smith on Money, Banking, and the Price Level 16: Maria Pia Paganelli: Commercial Relations: from Adam Smith to Field Experiments Part Five: Adam Smith on History and Politics 17: Spiros Tegos: Adam Smith: Theorist of Corruption 18: David M. Levy & Sandra J. Peart: Adam Smith and the State: Language and Reform 19: Fabrizio Simon: Adam Smith and the Law 20: Edwin van de Haar: Adam Smith on Empire and International Relations Part Six: Adam Smith on Social Relations 21: Richard Boyd: Adam Smith, Civility, and Civil Society 22: Gavin Kennedy: Adam Smith on Religion 23: Samuel Fleischacker: Adam Smith and Equality 24: Maureen Harkin: Adam Smith and Women Part Seven; Adam Smith: Legacy and Influence 25: Spencer J. Pack: Adam Smith and Marx 26: Craig Smith: Adam Smith and the New Right 27: Tom Campbell: Adam Smith: Methods, Morals and Markets 28: Amartya Sen: The Contemporary Relevance of Adam Smith. (shrink)

Na história da filosofia americana, há um filão de pensamento sobre os signos na natureza. Animais, insetos, árvores, flores, o clima, paisagens e a noite estrelada são todos encontrados expressivos de diversos significados. Além disso, esses fenômenos naturais são considerados por pensadores, como Ralph Waldo Emerson e Charles S. Peirce, como dotados de um caráter representativo no seu núcleo ontológico. A minha apresentação baseia-se nesta tradição, explorando a semiose da natureza em toda a sua extensão e no que diz respeito (...) ao seu ser fundamental. O seu objetivo é desvendar alguns fundamentos metafísicos que apoiariam a semiose universal, bem como defender a primazia de uma dimensão estética no centro da atividade semiótica. (shrink)

Transformation is a memorable feature of some of the most iconic works of science fiction. These works feature characters who begin as humans and change into radically different kinds of being. This paper examines transformative change in the context of the Invasion of the Body Snatchers movies. I discuss how humans should approach the prospect of being body snatched. I argue that we shouldn’t welcome the transformation even if we are convinced that we will have very positive experiences as pod (...) aliens. When considering a transformative change, it is appropriate to give priority to your pre-transformation attitudes to potential future experiences and achievements over your predicted post-transformation attitudes. (shrink)

Russell Powell and Eric Scarffe1 are pluralists about disease. They offer their thickly normative account to meet the needs of doctors, but they allow that a different concept of disease might work better for zoologists. In this commentary, I grant that Powell and Scarffe’s thickly normative evaluation of biological dysfunction works well in many medicinal contexts. Powell and Scarffe respond effectively to eliminativists—we should retain the concept of disease. But the paper’s pluralism and focus on the specific needs of institutions (...) should permit us to eliminate the notion of disease from domains for which the historical grounding of their selected effects account of function are contrary to therapeutic goals. One such domain is mental health. I found Powell and Scarffe’s rejection of Boorse’s dispositional account of biological function persuasive—the selected effects account of function is a superior fit for biologists’ use of the term. But the historical nature of this concept is, at best, a distraction from the task of morally evaluating the many ways in which …. (shrink)

A Review of Lindsay Judson and Vassilis Karasmanis , Remembering Socrates: Philosophical Essays, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2006.

Jupiter, in his prophetic speech to Venus foretells that Aeneas will rule for three years in Italy, that Ascanius will complete the thirty years of rule at Lavinium, and that he will then found Alba, under whose kings' rule 300 years will elapse until the birth of Romulus. The sequence 3–30–300 is unmistakeable: tertia and temaque … triginta … ter centum ; no effort is required to see that the total of these numbers is 333 and the total is clearly (...) more significant than the antiquarian associations of the individual numbers. (shrink)

"Seienlil·ic theories are maps ol`lhc natural worlti." This metaphor is often used as part ot`a dellationary argument lor a weak but relatively global version ot` scienlitic realism. a version that recognizes the place olconventions, goals. and contingencies in seientilic rcpresentationsr while maintaining that they are typically true in a clear and literal sense. By examining. in a naturalistic wayt some relationships between maps and what they map. we question the scope and valttc oi` realist constrtials ol` maps and by extension (...) ot` scicntiiic representationse Dcllationary philosophy ol` science requires more variegatecl stances. (shrink)

This is a review of a lecture series by Gillian Rose on Frankfurt School critical theory, which was delivered at the University of Sussex in 1979 and is now published under the title Marxist Modernism, edited by James Gordon Finlayson and Robert Lucas Scott.

This paper addresses two examples of overconfident presentations of utilitarian moral conclusions. First, there is Peter Singer’s widely discussed claim that if the consequences of a medical experiment are sufficiently good to justify the use of animals, then we should be prepared to perform the experiment on human beings with equivalent mental capacities. Second, I consider defences of infanticide or after-birth abortion. I do not challenge the soundness of these arguments. Rather, I accuse those who seek to translate these conclusions (...) into moral advice of a dangerous overconfidence. This paper offers an insurance policy that protects against some of the costs of mistaken moral reasoning. An interest in moral insurance is motivated by the recognition that, in the event that overconfident ethicists have reasoned incorrectly, some actions recommended by their conclusions are not just bad, but very bad. We should reject suggestions that we conduct medical experiments on humans or kill newborns. (shrink)

This is a response given at the book launch for Christopher Insole’s Kant and the Divine: From Contemplation to the Moral Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), hosted jointly, in November 2020, by the Centre for Catholic Studies, Durham University, and the Australian Catholic University. The response considers the gap between the textual Kant (as set out by Insole), and the received Kant, and reflects on how theologians have been too quick either to condemn and dismiss (a poorly interpreted) Kant, (...) or to rehabilitate Kant for theological projects, which Kant would have been opposed to, given his deepest philosophical commitments. (shrink)

This handbook charts and explores recurring themes and approaches to this broad and complex topic, particularly with regard to Theology.