Fine has recently proved the surprising result that satisfaction of the Bell inequality in a Clauser-Horne experiment implies the existence of joint probabilities for pairs of noncommuting observables in the experiment. In this paper we show that if probabilities are interpreted in the von Mises-Church sense of relative frequencies on random sequences, a proof of the Bell inequality is nonetheless possible in which such joint probabilities are assumed not to exist. We also argue that Fine's theorem and related results do (...) not impugn the common view that local realists are committed to the Bell inequality. (shrink)

My paper addresses a number of questions raised in the Statesman by the Eleatic Visitor’s identification of certain ontological conditions for the existence of art of due measure, and therefore of all the technai. My view is that evidence relevant to these questions can be found in the Philebus, and specifically, in an ontological doctrine presented at 23c–27c. What emerges from an examination of the Statesman and Philebus is a highly developed conception of technê, one that affords a place for (...) such ordinary human activities within the broader framework of Plato’s philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Plato's Utopia Recast: His Later Ethics and PoliticsGeorge HarveyChristopher Bobonich. Plato's Utopia Recast: His Later Ethics and Politics. Oxford: Clarendon Press of Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. xi + 643. Cloth, $49.95.In tracing developments in Plato's views between his middle- and late-period dialogues, Plato's Utopia Recast focuses on the differences between philosophers and non-philosophers with respect to their capacities to become genuinely virtuous. The central thesis of this (...) extensive work is that the Laws reveals a degree of optimism about the prospects for non-philosophers in attaining virtue and happiness not found in dialogues of the middle period. Specifically, Bobonich describes this development in terms of four claims that he thinks Plato denies in the Phaedo and Republic but later affirms in the Laws: first, that at least some non-philosophers are capable of being virtuous; second, that they can value virtue for its own sake; third, that they can value the virtue and happiness in others for its own sake; and fourth, that these non-philosophers are capable of living happy lives.Bobonich devotes most of the first chapter to describing Plato's pessimism about non-philosophers in the middle period. The cause for this pessimism is both epistemic and psychological. In the Phaedo, non-philosophers are incapable of knowing what is genuinely valuable. Failure to grasp non-sensible value properties means that in non-philosophers, reason simply takes over the ends defined by bodily impulses. The Republic is less pessimistic, but even here, Plato's tripartitioning of the soul makes clear that the rational part of the soul in non-philosophers fails to fulfill its proper ruling function. Bobonich's claim is that the more optimistic view presented in the Laws is indicative of developments not only in Plato's political theory, but also in the areas of psychology and epistemology.The central feature of the political theory advanced in the Laws is that the proper goal of legislation is not victory in war, but the cultivation of virtue in all citizens. More importantly for Bobonich, it suggests that all citizens, both philosophers and non-philosophers, are capable of attaining some degree of genuine virtue. For evidence of this, he points to the preludes that accompany each piece of legislation designed to provide a rational justification for what the laws command. In identifying virtue as the aim of legislation, Bobonich observes that the Laws endorses a dependency thesis about goods, making the value of a dependent good such as wealth, honor or military victory dependent upon its possessor being virtuous. His position is that Plato's endorsement of this dependency thesis in the Laws implies that ordinary citizens are capable of at least a partial grasp of what is genuinely valuable, making some degree of virtue and happiness attainable.Bobonich's view that this optimism about non-philosophers has implications for Plato's later epistemology and psychology is developed in the third and fourth chapters. He argues that the Republic's partitioning of the soul into three distinct, agent-like parts is abandoned in the later dialogues in favor of a more unified conception. This approach in the [End Page 334] middle period served to account for akratic action and the formation of non-rational desires, but Bobonich believes that Plato came to see this doctrine as ultimately flawed. By contrast, the Laws offers an account of akratic action and non-rational desire that maintains a unified subject and avoids the problems found in partitioning. In chapter four, Bobonich considers how the Laws' unified conception of the subject, supported by the Phaedrus, Philebus and Timaeus, reveals how all human aims and desires, both rational and non-rational, are structured and conceptualized through the soul's rational faculty. In this unified conception of the subject, Bobonich sees important implications for the role of non-rational elements in the ethical education of even ordinary human beings.In the fifth and final chapter, Bobonich returns to politics, and considers how Plato's conception of citizenship in the Laws reflects the more optimistic view of human nature. He examines how citizens in the Laws develop non-instrumental concerns for the happiness... (shrink)

Human clinical research has become a huge economic enterprise (Morin et al. 2002; Noah 2002). Because the human subject at the center can be so easily marginalized, many commentators recommend spec...

The paper is written in response to those who fail to recognize the relation between a patient's mental competency and her state of pain. Some clinicians claim that a proper diagnosis can only be made in the absent of analgesia. Rather, the patient's state of pain directly affects her mental competency and thus her ability to give valid consent. Clinicians should rethink their approach to diagnosis when the patient is in pain.

This paper approaches the Critias straightforwardly as a work of political philosophy but gives greater attention to Athens’ opponent, Atlantis, whose founding, political organization, and eventual decline each offer important lessons about the aims of legislation and political life. I begin by comparing the foundation of the two cities as presented in Critias’ myth, with a special focus on the role of divine persuasion (I). I then describe the political organization of Athens and Atlantis, showing how they reflect the different (...) ways in which their founding gods exercised divine persuasion (II). Next, I focus on the decline of Atlantis and the causes behind it (III). Finally (IV), I discuss the lessons that I think can be gathered from the foregoing sections and show how the themes that emerge from the comparison of the two cities anticipate their more extensive exploration in the Laws. (shrink)

Liberty and freedom are frequently invoked to justify political action. Presidents as diverse as Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush have built their policies on some version of these noble values. Yet in practice, idealist agendas often turn sour as they confront specific circumstances on the ground. Demonstrated by incidents at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay, the pursuit of liberty and freedom can lead to violence and repression, undermining our trust in (...) universal theories of liberalism, neoliberalism, and cosmopolitanism. Combining his passions for politics and geography, David Harvey charts a cosmopolitan order more appropriate to an emancipatory form of global governance. Political agendas tend to fail, he argues, because they ignore the complexities of geography. Incorporating geographical knowledge into the formation of social and political policy is therefore a necessary condition for genuine democracy. Harvey begins with an insightful critique of the political uses of freedom and liberty, especially during the George W. Bush administration. Then, through an ontological investigation into geography's foundational concepts—space, place, and environment—he radically reframes geographical knowledge as a basis for social theory and political action. As Harvey makes clear, the cosmopolitanism that emerges is rooted in human experience rather than illusory ideals and brings us closer to achieving the liberation we seek. (shrink)

Continues the ongoing dialogue between religion and science. In this volume, the author has focused on scientific or science-based technology rather than just the significance of 'pure science'. This complex focus covers a number of issues including scientific theory, public policy, ethical consideration, cosmology, theological conundrums and the age-old issues of the meaning of human life and its fulfillment.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 61.4 (2000) 577-593 [Access article in PDF] Machina Ex Deo: William Harvey and the Meaning of Instrument Don Bates Introduction Since our clocks do consistently disclose each hour of the day and night--do they not seem to partake of another body (beyond the elements), and that more divine? But if, under the dominion and management of [our human] Art, such splendid things (...) are daily achieved beyond the powers of the objects themselves,... And if, in serving men they carry out such things as are to be marvelled at, what I ask, may we expect from them when they be instruments in the hand of God? These words come near the end of William Harvey's De generatione animalium. 1 As he does often in this work, he is arguing that it is possible for a material object to behave supra vires elementorum, i.e., in a manner that exceeds what can be explained merely from the qualities of the elements from which it is made. In fact, just before this, he argues that human craftsmanship enables the elements of air and water to make ships sail in opposite directions, fire to do one sort of thing in the kitchen, another in the shops of metal-workers, including the production of iron, which in its turn peacefully tills the soil or besieges the town in war. So if even human Art is capable of making something as wonderful as a clock out of the elements, how much more might God be able to do with them? [End Page 577]Not only is it entirely conceivable that the (divinely) artful manipulation of these same elements can account for the wonders of God's nature--such as the generation of a chick out of an egg--there is also no need to infer the existence of additional entities such as faculties, qualities, agents, and the like. All that is needed is the concept of "instrument." Today such things as his appeal to a clock, his reference to "art," and the word "instrument" itself, are liable to arouse in our minds a fairly mechanical sort of image. Therefore, we need to put this idea in its intellectual context, by looking at where Harvey's notion of instrument is coming from.First, our much more mechanical world view was just coming into being as Harvey (1578-1657) wrote these words. Although the philosophy of his younger contemporary, René Descartes (1596-1650) was not yet in full bloom (he died a year before Harvey's book appeared), Cartesianism was certainly on the explanatory horizon, 2 as was the work of another contemporary and contributor to the "new philosophy," Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655). 3 And, of course, Harvey had certainly known Francis Bacon (1561-1626). 4 Nevertheless, Harvey was a devout Aristotelian who was adamantly opposed to the efforts of these contemporaries to replace Aristotle. 5 Moreover, it was from the Aristotelian tradition, not from the new mechanics, that Harvey had derived the concept of instrument.If, broadly speaking, the "new philosophy" was about a universe that was built like a clock, then the "old" natural philosophies, whether dominated by Platonism, Aristotelianism, Christian theology, or some combination, were about a universe that was socially constructed. 6 Not only was man at the center, to a large extent the workings of the universe were envisioned in terms of social experience. The regularity, predictability, harmony, and wonder of natural phenomena seemed best explained in the language of reason, moral values, motives, responsibilities, hierarchies, laws (in the social sense), and the like, explanatory resources that, in the late ancient and medieval intellectual cultures of Europe, far outweighed either those that appealed to the passively material and the mechanical, or to the random and the chance.But very central to that social model of nature was the concept of instrument, which gave to it something of a mechanical twist. To see how this was so, we need to go back temporarily to the works of Aristotle, the influence of... (shrink)

The article takes up diverse strands of psychoanalytic thinking to investigate how desire is manifested in male team sporting environments. In particular, it is posited that sporting desire shares a remarkable structural similarity to the joking relationship in that they both work through the overcoming of obstacles. In doing so unconscious desires are long-circuited and only emerge in radically altered form, upending traditional gender and sexual subjectivities in the process. The paper explores the concept of desire from perspectives that are (...) either straightforwardly psychoanalytic or heavily influenced by psychoanalytic thought. Initially, I examine desire from a Freudian viewpoint before looking at how Jacques Lacan extended Freudian analysis through a linguistic lens. I then explore desire in terms developed by Gilles Deleuze before turning, in the second part of the paper, to an examination of the work of George Bataille to consider the desire of sport through the mechanism of the joke to trace the complex routing that it often takes. (shrink)

In this contribution, I plumb the depths of Georges Didi-Huberman’s abiding notion of the “eye of history” and, in particular, I explore to which responsible acts this notion might hold us. Does a reader of texts or viewer of an image have a right to claim a certain status as witness if the experience of being present at the crime is “merely” by the proxy of a text or an image? This is a fundamental ethical question and, consequently, a profoundly (...) political one that Didi-Huberman’s abiding exploration of the “eye of history” asks. I attempt to answer it by reading a variety of texts by the prolific author. In particular, however, I test what Didi-Huberman speculates in Images in Spite of All about what went through the mind of Alex, the Sonderkommando who took four furtive shots from an Auschwitz gas chamber, against what I’ve learned recently after having discovered the Hiroshima photographs made on 6 August 1945 by hibakusha Yoshito Matsushige. (shrink)

For Plato and Aristotle, arete (traditionally translated as "virtue") was the essential object of human admiration and striving, and even the key to happiness. Their work continues to inspire reflection on fundamental questions of ethics and politics today, as the fourteen new essays collected here demonstrate. -/- Contributors: Lidia Palumbo, Eva Anagnostou-Laoutides, Ryan M. Brown, Jay R. Elliott, Guilherme Domingues da Motta, Federico Casella, Jonathan A. Buttaci, George Harvey, Mark Ralkowski, Gary S. Beck, Paula Gottlieb, Giulio di Basilio, (...) Audrey L. Anton, and Elena Bartolini. (shrink)

From a celebrated scholar on race, a book on ways of seeing, and seeing through, whiteness.

Reflections by leading Latin American and African American philosophers on their identity within the field of philosophy.

In works of literary fiction, it is a part of the fiction that the words of the text are being recounted by some work-internal 'voice': the literary narrator. One can ask similarly whether the story in movies is told in sights and sounds by a work-internal subjectivity that orchestrates them: a cinematic narrator. George M. Wilson argues that movies do involve a fictional recounting (an audio-visual narration ) in terms of the movie's sound and image track. Viewers are usually (...) prompted to imagine seeing the items and events in the movie's fictional world and to imagine hearing the associated fictional sounds. However, it is much less clear that the cinematic narration must be imagined as the product of some kind of 'narrator' - of a work-internal agent of the narration. Wilson goes on to examine the further question whether viewers imagine seeing the fictional world face-to-face or whether they imagine seeing it through some kind of work-internal mediation . It is a key contention of this book that only the second of these alternatives allows one to give a coherent account of what we do and do not imagine about what we are seeing on the screen. Having provided a partial account of the foundations of film narration, the final chapters explore the ways in which certain complex strategies of cinematic narration are executed in three exemplary films: David Fincher's Fight Club , von Sternberg's The Scarlet Empress , and the Coen brothers' The Man Who Wasn't There. (shrink)