This article introduces the concept of spiritual intelligence in terms of a natural human ability to take a different perspective on reality rather than an extraordinary ability to engage with a different/supernatural reality. From a cognitive perspective, spiritual intelligence entails a re‐balancing of the two main modes of human cognition, with a prioritization of the holistic‐intuitive mind over the conceptual one. From the psychological and phenomenological perspectives, it involves a different kind of engagement with information: slower, more participatory, less objectifying, (...) and not focused entirely on problem solving. The article ends with a reflection on the theological implications of the proposed model and how such an account of spiritual intelligence as knowing differently might relate to theological anthropology and the theology of the spirit and the spiritual. (shrink)

There is the world of ideas and the world of practice; the French are often for sup pressing the one and the English the other; but neither is to be suppressed. -Matthew Arnold The Function of Criticism at the Present Time From its inception, bioethics has confronted the need to reconcile theory and practice. At first the confrontation was purely intellectual, as writers on ethical theory (within phi losophy, theology, or other humanistic disciplines) turned their attention to topics from the (...) world of medical practice. Recently the confrontation has grown more intense. The ap pointment of clinical ethicists in hospitals and other health care settings is an accelerating trend in North America. Concomitantly, those institutions involved in training peo ple in clinical ethics have added organized exposure to the world of practice, in the form of placement requirements, to the normal academic course load. In common with other dis ciplines, bioethics has begun to see clinical training as a con dition of didactic theory and apprenticeship. (shrink)

We uncover a largely unnoticed and unaddressed problem in conservation research: arguments built within studies are sometimes defective in more fundamental and specific ways than appreciated, because they misrelate values and empirical matters. We call this the unraveled rope problem because just as strands of rope must be properly and intricately wound with each other so the rope supports its load, empirical aspects and value aspects of an argument must be related intricately and properly if the argument is to objectively (...) support its conclusion. By characterizing this problem with precision, our study differs from but complements existing studies of value issues in conservation science, in two ways. First, it focuses on key relationships between empirical issues and value issues, relations that have sometimes been obscured by focusing on these issues more independently of each other. Second, it focuses on these relationships within arguments and deploys a method of argument analysis and evaluation honed in other fields but under-utilized in conservation science. By combining our study's novel features, we detail six families of argument defect that exemplify the unraveled rope problem within existing literature. These defects sometimes manifest within basic research stages, rather than just in more applied downstream stages where roles for values are already obvious to many. As scientific reasoning and communication become increasingly important for addressing society's greatest environmental challenges, overcoming the unraveled rope problem will be essential to the success and integrity of conservation research. Therefore, we also outline potential solutions, preventative measures, and useful further work for conservation researchers. (shrink)

BackgroundAs Canadian global health researchers who conducted a qualitative study with adults with and without disabilities in Uganda, we obtained ethics approval from four institutional research ethics boards (two in Canada and two in Uganda). In Canada, research ethics boards and researchers follow the research ethics norms of the Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans (TCPS2), and the National Guidelines for Research Involving Humans as Research Participants of Uganda (NGRU) in Uganda. The preparation and implementation of this (...) qualitative research raised specific ethical issues related to research participant privacy and the importance of availability and management of financial resources.Main bodyOur field experience highlights three main issues for reflection. First, we demonstrate that, in a global health research context, methodological and logistic adjustments were necessary throughout the research implementation process to ensure the protection of study participants’ privacy, especially that of people with disabilities, despite having followed the prescribed Canadian and Ugandan ethics norms. Data collection and management plans were adapted iteratively based on local realities. Second, securing financial support as a key aspect of financial management was critical to ensure privacy through disability-sensitive data collection strategies. Without adequate funding, the recruitment of research participants based on disability type, sex, and region or the hiring of local sign language interpreters would not have been possible. Third, although the TCPS2 and NGRU underscore the significance of participants’ privacy, none of these normative documents clearly express this issue in the context of global health research and disability, nor broadly discuss the ethical issue related to financial availability and management.ConclusionsConducting research in resource limited settings and with study participants with different needs calls for a nuanced and respectful implementation of research ethics in a global health context. We recommend a greater integration in both the TCPS2 and NGRU of global health research, disability, and responsible conduct of research. This integration should also be accompanied by adequate training which can further guide researchers, be they senior, junior, or students, and funding agencies. (shrink)

The Higgs model was developed using purely formal analogies to models of superconductivity. This is in contrast to historical case studies such as the development of electromagnetism, which employed physical analogies. As a result, quantum case studies such as the development of the Higgs model carry new lessons for the scientific realism--anti-realism debate. I argue that, by breaking the connection between success and approximate truth, the use of purely formal analogies is a counterexample to two prominent versions of the 'No (...) Miracles' Argument for scientific realism, Psillos' refined explanationist defence of realism and the Argument from History of Science for structural realism. The NMA is undermined, but the success of the Higgs model is not miraculous because there is a naturalistically acceptable explanation for its success that does not invoke approximate truth. I also suggest some possible strategies for adapting to the counterexample for scientific realists who wish to hold on to the NMA in some form. (shrink)

The early David Lewis was a staunch critic of the Truthmaker Principle. To endorse the principle, he argued, is to accept that states of affairs are truthmakers for contingent predications. But states of affairs violate Hume's prohibition of necessary connections between distinct existences. So Lewis offered to replace the Truthmaker Principle with the weaker principle that ‘truth supervenes upon being’. This chapter argues that even this principle violates Hume's prohibition. Later Lewis came to ‘withdraw’ his doubts about the Truthmaker Principle, (...) invoking counterpart theory to show how it is possible to respect the principle whilst admitting only things that do not violate Hume's prohibition. What this really reveals is that the Truthmaker Principle is no explanatory advance on the supervenience principle. Extending Lewis's use of counterpart theory also allows us to explain away the necessary connections that threatened to undermine his earlier statements of supervenience. (shrink)

[opening paragraph]: The first issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies carried an interview with Francis Crick about his recent book, The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul. Both the book and the interview are a mixture of science and philosophy. Crick is interested in how visual processing in the brain leads to the experience of consciously `seeing' something. It is a good scientific question, and I agree with him that it is a timely one. The first two (...) parts of the book set the scene. Part one summarizes the psychology of perception, and part two presents comparable background about the physical brain. Crick does all this rather well, but there is nothing novel or remarkable in it. Then in part three comes the central question of what neuronal processes lead to conscious awareness. Here Crick is raising questions at the frontiers of current scientific understanding, and he takes us through what pointers he can find in recent scientific work. As he admits, he comes to no clear conclusions, though he makes a useful contribution to current scientific discussion. However, it is Crick's philosophy rather than his science that has attracted most attention, as I suspect he intended. Unfortunately, the philosophy is less competent than the science, and beset with imprecise and overly broad-brush positions. (shrink)

In this collection of essays, Camillo “Mac” Bica, Ph.D., a former Marine Corps Officer, Vietnam Veteran, and philosopher, provides a cogent analysis of why a veteran may not want to be thanked for his “service” in war. Mac’s experiential and theoretical perspective is both gut wrenching and concise. “The Philosopher speaks from the mind,” Mac writes, “the warrior from where it hurts.” With simplicity, poignancy, and power, this book, together with future installments of the War Legacy Series, works to dispel (...) the mythology of nobility and heroism by providing a window into the reality of war and its devastating effects upon all who experience its horrors. (shrink)

Following the experimental discovery of the Higgs boson, physicists explained the discovery to the public by appealing to analogies with condensed matter physics. The historical root of these analogies is the analogies to models of superconductivity that inspired the introduction of spontaneous symmetry breaking into particle physics in the early 1960s. We offer a historical and philosophical analysis of the analogies between the Higgs model of the electroweak interaction and the Ginsburg-Landau and Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer models of superconductivity, respectively. The conclusion of (...) our analysis is that both sets of analogies are purely formal in virtue of the fact that they are accompanied by substantial physical disanalogies. In particular, the formal analogies do not map the temporal, causal, or modal structures of SSB in superconductivity to temporal, causal, or modal structures in the Higgs model. These substantial physical disanalogies mean that analogies to models of superconductivity cannot supply the basis for the physical interpretation of EW SSB; however, an appreciation of the contrast between the physical interpretations of SSB in superconductivity and the Higgs model does help to clarify some foundational issues. Unlike SSB in superconductivity, SSB in the Higgs sector of the Standard Model is neither a temporal nor a causal process. We discuss the implications for the `eating' metaphor for mass gain in the Higgs model. Furthermore, the distinction between the phenomenological GL model and the dynamical BCS model does not carry over to EW models, which clarifies the desiderata for so-called `dynamical' models of EW SSB. Finally, the development of the Higgs model is an illuminating case study for philosophers of science because it illustrates how purely formal analogies can play a fruitful heuristic role in physics. (shrink)

Unruly Practices brings together a series of widely discussed essays in feminism and social theory. Read together, they constitute a sustained critical encounter with leading European and American approaches to social theory. In addition, Nancy Fraser develops a new and original socialist-feminist critical theory that overcomes many of the limitations of current alternatives. First, in a series of critical essays, she deploys philosophical and literary techniques to assess the work of Michael Foucault, the French deconstructionists, Richard Rorty, and Jürgen (...) Habermas. Then, in a group of constructive essays, she incorporates their respective strengths in a new critical theory of late-capitalist political culture. Fraser breaks new ground methodologically by integrating the previously divergent insights of poststructuralism, critical social theory, feminist theory, and pragmatism. Thematically, she deals with varied forms of dominance and subordination in modern, industrial, late-capitalist societies. These themes are integrated in an original theory of 'the politics of need interpretation.' This concept becomes the linchpin of the socialist-feminist critical theory. (shrink)

Nancy Fraser’s powerful new book documents the “movements of feminism” and the shifts in the feminist imaginary since the 1970s. Fraser follows the history of feminism from the ferment of the New Left, during which “Second Wave” feminism emerged as a struggle for women’s liberation alongside other social movements, to its emersion in identity politics following the decline of its initial utopian energies. Alongside this detailed history, Fraser recognizes the need for a reinvigorated feminist radicalism to respond (...) to the crisis in neoliberalism. She argues for a feminism that could join other egalitarian movements in struggles aimed at subjecting capitalism to democratic control, while retrieving the core utopian insights of feminism’s earlier phases. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.

The Mòzǐ is among the founding texts of the Chinese philosophical tradition, presenting China's earliest ethical, political, and logical theories. The collected works introduce concepts, assumptions, and issues that had a profound, lasting influence throughout the classical and early imperial eras. Mòzǐ and his followers developed the world's first ethical theory, and presented China's first account of the origin of political authority from a state of nature. They were prominent social activists whose moral and political reform movement sought to improve (...) the welfare of the common people and eliminate elite extravagance and misuse of power. -/- In this new translation, Chris Fraser focuses on the philosophical aspects of the writing and allows readers to truly enter the Mohists' world of thought. This abridged edition includes the essential political and social topics of concern to this vital movement. Informed by traditional and recent scholarship, the translation presents the Mohists' ideas and arguments clearly, precisely, and coherently, while accurately reflecting the meaning, terminology, and style of the original. (shrink)

In this paper I provide a state of the art survey and assessment of the contemporary debate about relations. After (1) distinguishing different varieties of relations, symmetric from non-symmetric, internal from external relations etc. and relations from their set-theoretic models or sequences, I proceed (2) to consider Bradley’s regress and whether relations can be eliminated altogether. Next I turn (3) to the question whether relations can be reduced, bringing to bear considerations from the philosophy of physics as well as metaphysics. (...) Finally, (3) I consider in what sense relations have order, and whether to make sense of this we are required to conceive of relations as having direction or argument positions. (shrink)

Se analizan fragmentos de Diodoro Sículo donde se manifiestan algunos de los mecanismos de dominación de los amos sobre los esclavos. Observamos larepresentación que se hace desde el discurso dominante del ejercicio del control social y el ocultamiento de las prácticas violentas propias de la relación esclavista. Se trata de fragmentos en donde aparecen referidas situaciones concretas, ocurridas tanto en el ámbito doméstico como en los espacios productivos. La teoría de la dominación social de O. Patterson y los conceptos del (...) análisis del discurso son fundamentos sobre los que se elabora nuestra perspectiva metodológica. (shrink)

Om ett värdeobjektivistiskt inslag i Hägerströms moralfilosofiska teorier.--Till försvar för Zenon från Elea.--Den speciella relativitetsteoriens förhållande til de newtonianska föreställningarna om rum och tid.

Until recently, struggles for justice proceeded against the background of a taken-for-granted frame: the bounded territorial state. With that "Westphalian" picture of political space assumed by default, the scope of justice was rarely subject to open dispute. Today, however, human-rights activists and international feminists join critics of structural adjustment and the World Trade Organization in challenging the view that justice can only be a domestic relation among fellow citizens. Targeting injustices that cut across borders, they are making the scale of (...) justice an object of explicit struggle. Inspired by these efforts, Nancy Fraser asks: What is the proper frame for theorizing justice? Faced with a plurality of competing scales, how do we know which one is truly just? In exploring these questions, Fraser revises her widely discussed theory of redistribution and recognition. She introduces a third, "political" dimension of justice—representation—and elaborates a new, reflexive type of critical theory that foregrounds injustices of "misframing." Engaging with thinkers such as Jürgen Habermas, John Rawls, Michel Foucault, and Hannah Arendt, she envisions a "postwestphalian" mapping of political space that accommodates transnational solidarity, transborder publicity, and democratic frame-setting, as well as emancipatory projects that cross borders. The result is a sustained reflection on who should count with respect to what in a globalizing world. (shrink)

According to the species of neo-logicism advanced by Hale and Wright, mathematical knowledge is essentially logical knowledge. Their view is found to be best understood as a set of related though independent theses: (1) neo-fregeanism-a general conception of the relation between language and reality; (2) the method of abstraction-a particular method for introducing concepts into language; (3) the scope of logic-second-order logic is logic. The criticisms of Boolos, Dummett, Field and Quine (amongst others) of these theses are explicated and assessed. (...) The issues discussed include reductionism, rejectionism, the Julius Caesar problem, the Bad Company objections, and the charge that second-order logic is set theory in disguise. (shrink)

A vibrant portrait of four college friends-Iris Murdoch, Philippa Foot, Elizabeth Anscombe, and Mary Midgley-who formed a new philosophical tradition while Oxford's men were away at war.

Increasingly, metaphors are the target of political critique: Jewish groups condemn Holocaust imagery; mental health organizations, the metaphorical exploitation of psychosis; and feminists, “rape metaphors.” I develop a novel model for making sense of such critiques of metaphor.

Do non‐symmetric relations apply to the objects they relate in an order? According to the standard view of relations, the difference between aRb and bRa obtaining, where R is non‐symmetric, corresponds to a difference in the order in which the non‐symmetric relation R applies to a and b. Recently Kit Fine has challenged the standard view in his important paper ‘Neutral Relations’ arguing that non‐symmetric relations are neutral, lacking direction or order. In this paper I argue that Fine cannot account (...) for the application of non‐symmetric relations to their relata; so far from being neutral, these relations are inherently directional. (shrink)

When Sartre arrives late to meet Pierre at a local establishment, he discovers not merely that Pierre is absent, but Pierre’s absence, where this depends, or so Sartre notoriously supposes, on a frustrated expectation that Pierre would be seen at that place. Many philosophers have railed against this view, taking it to entail a treatment of the ontology of absence that Richard Gale describes as ‘attitudinal’ – one whereby absences are thought to ontologically depend on psychological attitudes. In this paper, (...) I aim to make Sartre’s intuition respectable. What Sartre perceives is an absential location, only the boundaries of which are circumscribed by what Sartre is doing at that place: meeting Pierre. I explain how this Sartrean view, though not specifically attributable to Sartre, nonetheless honours some of the phenomenological data described, if a little opaquely, in Being and Nothingness. (shrink)

I ask whether figure-ground structure can be realized in touch, and, if so, how. Drawing on the taxonomy of touch sketched in Katz's 1925 The World of Touch, I argue that the form of touch that is relevant to such consideration is a species of immersed touch. I consider whether we can feel the space we are immersed in and, more specifically, the empty space against which the surfaces of objects, as I shall urge, “stand out.” Harnessing M. G. F. (...) Martin's account of bodily awareness and touch, I defend a positive thesis, pace Graham Nerlich on whose The Shape of Space I otherwise rely, both to defend the supposition that empty space can in principle be felt and to argue that touching empty space is not a mere species of absence perception. Along the way, I defuse a causal worry that might be thought to arise in the case of touching empty space. (shrink)

This article describes some key features of the distinctive approach to issues in science and religion of the Epiphany Philosophers (EPs), and introduces a set of articles from a recent meeting. The objective of the EPs is not merely to establish harmonious coexistence between science and religion. Rather, they are dissatisfied with both, and have a reformist agenda. They see science as unduly constrained by arbitrary metaphysical assumptions, predominantly of an atheist kind, and wish to see it liberated from such (...) constraints. They are also interested in the potential contribution of contemplative enquiry to scientific research. They see no reason why science should not engage with the transcendent, but they do not support any simplistic argument from scientific research to religious belief. They wish to see an approach to religion that is rooted more firmly in the contemplative path. (shrink)