Nursing theories are typically anthropocentric and emphasize caring for a person as a unitary whole. They maintain the dualisms of human–nonhuman, natural–social and material–ideal. Recent developments in nonhuman ontology question the utility of that approach. One important philosopher in this new materialism is political theorist Jane Bennett. In this paper, I explore Bennett's vital materialism and enchantment as two concepts arising from the nonhuman turn that should inform nursing philosophy. Vital materialism considers the lively power of matter to affect the (...) world and be affected in relations. Enchantment refers to a sense of wonder and captivation with matter. While summarizing her important contributions, I also describe common criticisms and responses. I consider the human as an assemblage of matter as well as the agency or “thing power” of matter external to humans. This has implications for nursing thought and practice, and it can inform a more capacious research methodology. I also discuss how compassion fatigue or burnout and other professional issues may be seen as a form of disenchantment with the material world. I argue that embracing these and other elements of Bennett's new materialist philosophy can help nurses and other health professionals enrich their theories and practice to advance their disciplines and improve care for persons and populations. (shrink)

We are no less directly acquainted with the temporal structure of the world than with its spatial structure. We hear one word succeeding another; feel two taps as simultaneous; or see the glow of a firework persisting, before it finally fizzles and fades. However, time is special, for we not only experience temporal properties; experience itself is structured in time. -/- Part One articulates a natural framework for thinking about experience in time. I claim (i) that experience in its experiential (...) aspect has a realistically conceived temporal structure; (ii) that our judgements about that structure always go via judgements about the temporal structure of the apparent objects of perception; and (iii) that a subject undergoing perceptual experience of a given experiential kind is always in a position to know that they are undergoing experience of that kind simply in virtue of so undergoing. On this basis, I argue that the temporal structure of experience cannot systematically come apart from the temporal structure of its objects. -/- Part Two treats four puzzles relating to our experience of time. The first is Dennett’s notorious discussion of masking and apparent motion phenomena. The second is the traditional debate regarding the very possibility of perceiving temporal properties. The third is Fara’s recent contention that standard explanations of our experience of slow changes preclude us from perceiving constant motion. A common reaction to these three puzzles is to reject some element of the naïve picture of temporal experience developed in Part One. I resolve them instead by showing how each arises from mistakenly thinking that experience is homoeomerous down to very short durations or instants. That is, thinking that we can analyse experience into a series of independent short slices, and explain the nature of the stream of consciousness in terms of those slices. The final chapter discusses a fourth puzzle about visual motion perception which I diagnose as driven by a rather different, but equally misguided way of thinking about vision. (shrink)

This paper traces the origins of the styles project, originally presented as ‘styles of scientific reasoning’. ‘Styles of scientific thinking & doing’ is a better label; the styles can also be called genres, or, ways of finding out. A. C. Crombie’s template of six fundamentally distinct ones was turned into a philosophical tool, but with a tinge of Paul Feyerabend’s anarchism. Ways of finding out are not defined by necessary and sufficient conditions, but can be recognized as distinct within a (...) sweeping, anthropological, vision of the European sciences. The approach is unabashedly whiggish. The emergence of these styles is part of what Reviel Netz calls cognitive history, and is to be understood in an ecological way. How did a species like ours, on an Earth like this, develop a few quite general strategies for finding out about, and altering, its world? At a more analytical level, the project invokes Bernard Williams’ notion of truthfulness to explicate the idea that these styles are ‘self-authenticating’ and without foundations. The paper concludes with open questions. What role have these few fundamentally distinct genres of inquiry played in the formation of the anomalous Western idea of Nature apart from Man? (shrink)

Critics have long complained that naive realism cannot adequately account for perceptual illusion. This complaint has a tendency to ally itself with the aspersion that naive realism is hopelessly out of touch with vision science. Here I offer a partial reply to both complaint and aspersion. I do so by showing how careful reflection on a simple, empirically grounded model of illusion reveals heterodox ways of thinking about familiar illusions which are quite congenial to the naive realist.

This research thesis explores the concept of attention as outlined and practised in the life of Simone Weil (1909-1943), a French woman variously described as a philosopher, mystic and activist yet someone who eludes categorisation or systematisation. It outlines the background to her life in a France between two world wars, and seeks to situate her within the context of the Christianity she claimed as her cultural backdrop. It explores the concept of attention as both a spiritual exercise and a (...) practice in the life of Weil, something that then evolved into a core principle of her thinking. The central question here is the age-old one, harking back to ancient philosophy, concerning the living of a good life, particularly within the context of a lifelong acquaintanceship with Weil‘s work. As this study examines Weil‘s ideas on reading, it also interrogates how she is read, particularly by poets today, with a view to assessing her influence. Weil was a writer who loved poetry and wrote some herself. Poetry and the recitation of prayers played an important role in her mystical experiences. The role of affliction in her mysticism and in her life is important and it will be seen how her stance in the face of affliction is something that marks her thinking. The concept of attention today incorporates issues around the commodification of the attention span, as well as its deficits. This study examines some of these issues and draws forth from the life and work of Simone Weil a more expanded, practical, and reflective understanding of the idea of attention. (shrink)

This paper approaches the question of Spinoza and education via the work of Louis Althusser. One important aim is to show how Spinoza’s description of the imagination underpins Althusser’s description of the ideological ‘infrastructure’ of educational practices and institutions. To achieve this, I begin by addressing Spinoza’s treatment of the physiological foundation of the imagination: by showing that the realm of ‘individual consciousness’ is more like the effect of an anonymous field, or process, Spinoza, we see, becomes a kind of (...) immanent cause for the Althusserian claim that ‘ideology has a material existence’. I go on to examine, in detail, Althusser’s description of ‘educational apparatuses’, locating these as the expressions of a Spinozistic ontology. However, Althusserian anti-humanism can also appear to negate transformative agency; and in the specific context of the classroom, Althusser suggests, apparently ‘heroic’ teachers seem almost doomed. Hence a ‘return’ to Spinoza, enacted, here—that is, an examination of Spinozistic potentialities, mainly adumbrated in the unfinished Political Treatise. My article concludes by suggesting that, in light of these, the foundational unit of pedagogical practice—the group, the class—might still be reconfigured as a collective subject, rather than the mere object of ideology. (shrink)

In the 'Critique of Pure Reason' Kant appears to characterize analytic judgments in four distinct ways: once in terms of “containment,” a second time in terms of “identity,” a third time in terms of the explicative–ampliative contrast, and a fourth time in terms of the notion of “cognizability in accordance with the principle of contradiction.” The paper asks: Which of these characterizations—or apparent characterizations—best captures Kant’s conception of analyticity in the first Critique? It suggests: “the second.” It argues, further, that (...) Kant’s distinction is intended to apply only to judgments of subject–predicate form, and that the fourth alleged characterization is not properly speaking a characterization at all. These theses are defended in the course of a more general investigation of the distinction’s meaning, its epistemology, and its tenability. (shrink)

Bringing together important writings not easily available elsewhere, this volume provides a convenient and stimulating overview of recent work in the philosophy of science. The contributors include Paul Feyerabend, Ian Hacking, T.S. Kuhn, Imre Lakatos, Laurens Laudan, Karl Popper, Hilary Putnam, and Dudley Shapere. In addition, Hacking provides an introductory essay and a selective bibliography.

Craig Callender attempts to overturn conventional wisdom within decision theory by contending that rational intertemporal choices need not always conform to an exponential discounting function. He argues that there are cases in which hyperbolic discounting is the height of rationality. This paper does not seek to undermine Callender’s conclusions, but instead raises two interrelated theoretical concerns with his way securing them. The first concern is with his dismissal of influential dual-system explanations of rationality. It is argued that Callender’s criticisms of (...) said explanations fail to assess them at anything like their full weight. It is then suggested that dual-systems approaches in cognitive science do have substantial theoretical problems, but that Callender fails to identify them. The second concern builds on the first and suggests that Callender’s arguments against consensus normative standards might motivate a more dramatically reimagined notion of rationality than the one he seems to embrace. (shrink)

An article explicating Wittgenstein's logical atomism and surveying the relevant secondary literature.

This concise overview of the perception of Islam in eight of the most important German thinkers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries allows a new and fascinating investigation of how these thinkers, within their own bodies of work, often espoused contradicting ideas about Islam and their nearest Muslim neighbors. Exploring a variety of 'neat compartmentalizations' at work in the representations of Islam, as well as distinct vocabularies employed by these key intellectuals, Ian Almond parses these vocabularies to examine the importance (...) of Islam in the very history of German thought. Almond further demonstrates the ways in which German philosophers such as Hegel, Kant, and Marx repeatedly ignored information about the Muslim world that did not harmonize with the particular landscapes they were trying to paint – a fact which in turn makes us reflect on what it means when a society possesses 'knowledge' of a foreign culture. (shrink)

What do we mean when we talk of an 'assemblage' in contemporary theory? Any and every thing, or more precisely, any and every kind of collection of things, could now be called an assemblage. The constant and seemingly limitless expansion of the term's range of applications begs the question, if any and every kind of collection of things is an assemblage, then what advantage is there is in using this term and not some other term, or indeed no term at (...) all? What makes an assemblage an assemblage, and not some other kind of collection of things? This book advances beyond this impasse and offers practical help in thinking about and using assemblage theory for contemporary cultural and social research, in order to: - Answer the question: what is assemblage theory? - Explain why assemblage theory is necessary - Provide clear instructions on how to use assemblage theory The first book of it's kind, Ian Buchanan's guide maps the beginnings of a brand new field within the humanities. (shrink)

Infinity is an intriguing topic, with connections to religion, philosophy, metaphysics, logic, and physics as well as mathematics. Its history goes back to ancient times, with especially important contributions from Euclid, Aristotle, Eudoxus, and Archimedes. The infinitely large is intimately related to the infinitely small. Cosmologists consider sweeping questions about whether space and time are infinite. Philosophers and mathematicians ranging from Zeno to Russell have posed numerous paradoxes about infinity and infinitesimals. Many vital areas of mathematics rest upon some version (...) of infinity. The most obvious, and the first context in which major new techniques depended on formulating infinite processes, is calculus. But there are many others, for example Fourier analysis and fractals.In this Very Short Introduction, Ian Stewart discusses infinity in mathematics while also drawing in the various other aspects of infinity and explaining some of the major problems and insights arising from this concept. He argues that working with infinity is not just an abstract, intellectual exercise but that it is instead a concept with important practical everyday applications, and considers how mathematicians use infinity and infinitesimals to answer questions or supply techniques that do not appear to involve the infinite.ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable. (shrink)

Within cultural history there is a widespread eschewal of speculative reasoning. This article notes the complicity of the general postmodern avoidance of metanarratives with Anglo-Saxon empiricism and locates the major problem facing cultural history in postmodernism's conflation of trajectories and teleologies. Any discussion of the directionality of history is imputed to be a full-blown teleology. Using previous discussions from different fields, the difference between a teleology and trajectory is defended and, after clarifying certain confusions, it is argued that trajectories, as (...) following the working of generative mechanisms, are necessary to theorize in order to make interesting progress within the field of cultural history. (shrink)

The topic of fundraising ethics has received remarkably little scholarly attention. In this paper, we review the circumstances that precipitated a major review of fundraising regulation in the UK in 2015 and describe the ethical codes that now underpin the advice and guidance available to fundraisers to guide them in their work. We focus particularly on the Code of Fundraising Practice. We then explore the purpose and rationale of similar codes and the process through which such codes are typically constructed. (...) We highlight potential weaknesses with the current approach adopted in fundraising and conclude by offering a series of normative perspectives on fundraising ethics that could be used to review and revise the current code and potentially improve the quality of future fundraising decision making. (shrink)

Giorgio Agamben’s discourse on Franciscan monasticism is generally received in accordance with his presentation of it: as a genealogy or archaeology of the way in which the Franciscans were the first to embody an exemplary form of life. This paper offers a different view, arguing that Agamben’s account of the Franciscans is actually an allegory whose underlying structure and meaning is supplied by Heideggerian metaphysics. One of the striking features of Agamben’s discourse is that it treats actual historical events as (...) allegorical symbols or ‘paradigms’ of a hidden metaphysical reality whose decipherment both clarifies the past and reveals the future. It is shown that this exemplary way of viewing historical events is embedded in a specialized spiritual exercise. Here, allegorical writing and reading act as practices of self-transformation that promise exalted insight into the hidden meaning of historical ‘paradigms’ regardless of historical scholarship. (shrink)

I have rewritten—often several times—every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.A pen is a machine to think with.The writer engages the world not only by living in and reflecting it but also by two dynamic processes, one sensory/motor, the other social. The former involves cycles of writing, reading what has been written, responding to it, and writing again; the latter involves writing, reading to an audience, responding to their reactions, and writing again. Dynamic processes involving brain (...) and world, via perception and behavior, have been of great interest to philosophers of mind and cognitive scientists in recent decades. In contrast to classical cognitive science, enactivism proposes... (shrink)

Exploring what theologians at the University of Paris in the thirteenth century understood about the boundary between humans and animals, this book demonstrates the great variety of ways in which they held similarity and difference in productive tension. Analysing key theological works, Ian P. Wei presents extended close readings of William of Auvergne, the Summa Halensis, Bonaventure, Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas. These scholars found it useful to consider animals and humans together, especially with regard to animal knowledge and (...) behaviour, when discussing issues including creation, the fall, divine providence, the heavens, angels and demons, virtues and passions. While they frequently stressed that animals had been created for use by humans, and sometimes treated them as tools employed by God to shape human behaviour, animals were also analytical tools for the theologians themselves. This study thus reveals how animals became a crucial resource for generating knowledge of God and the whole of creation. (shrink)

The traditional absolutist-relationist controversy about space and time conflates four distinct issues: existence, abstraction, relationality and relativity. Terms which are relational, relative or abstract may denote items which possess contingent properties. Possession of such properties, including topological and geometrical properties, is therefore no indication of logical type. To fail to recognise the possibility of spaces, times and space-times of various logical types is to risk conflating two distinct ontological issues: a metaphysical issue concerning the existence of abstract objects and a (...) question of physics concerning the existence of causally efficacious substrata which may or may not be needed to explain the contingent properties of the abstract objects. (shrink)

Book Information Hegel's Idea of Freedom. Hegel's Idea of Freedom Alan Patten Oxford University Press 1999 xiii + 216 Hardback £30 By Alan Patten. Oxford University Press. Pp. xiii + 216. Hardback:£30.

One of the curious things about this challenging book is that its ostensible subject— the Saxon medical and political scientist Hermann Conring (1606–1681)— is not mentioned in the title. Constantin Fasolt argues that we cannot know what Conring really thought or meant in his writings, which means that his topic cannot be Conring as such and must instead be that which occludes our knowledge of him, the titular limits of history. Given that we do in fact learn a good deal (...) about Conring from Fasolt’s book, we can only hope that the decapitation of its subject will be rectified in a subsequent edition, or perhaps by the restorative work of librarians putting together subject headings. And yet Fasolt’s decision is understandable, for Conring is indeed a stalking-horse for a much bigger quarry: historiography and the historical consciousness. By “history” Fasolt understands a way of imposing intelligibility on the world, which is founded on the twin assumptions that the past is gone and unchangeable, and that the meaning of texts can be determined by placing them in their historical contexts (ix). In challenging this mode of intelligibility, Fasolt is not attempting to improve professiona history—it’s already as good as it can be—but to displace it. He regards his work as a declaration of “independence from historical consciousness” (32). At the same time, Fasolt insists that he is not simply jumping from historiography to philosophy, or attempting to preempt history with ontology (37-39). That has been tried by Nietzsche and Heidegger, who have been tainted by Nazism (Fasolt thinks unfairly). It has also been attempted by modern philosophers from Gadamer to Foucault and Charles Taylor who, in failing to address the “violence” that its mode of intelligibility does to the world, have not succeeded in outflanking history. Perhaps, Fasolt wonders, it is only the personal experience of those who have been subject to this violence—the experience of those who have been subject to historical examination—that can break the spell of history. Fasolt’s disclaimer notwithstanding, in the course of these remarks I shall argue that he is indeed jumping from history to philosophy, or attempting to outflank history by subjecting it to a particular metaphysical understanding. I shall do so in part by sketching the recent intellectual history of this move—a historical examination that I hope inflicts as little violence as possible on Fasolt’s argument. (shrink)

This paper presents a framework for understanding the value systems inherent in landscape architectural practice. It is based upon a close analytical reading of the academic and professional literature, supported by a series of in-depth interviews with mid- and late-career British landscape architects. The empirical results of these interviews will be presented in a future paper. A tripartite classification of values is suggested, based upon the categories of the aesthetic, the social and the environmental, each of which is internally complex. (...) This framework is offered as a tool for future landscape architectural criticism. The relationships between values both within and between these value areas are discussed. The conclusion reached is that there is no overarching value which can be used to arbitrate between conflicting values. However, while it is possible to identify areas where values conflict, there can also be significant convergence between aesthetic, social and ecological values, and the paper suggests that it is possible to create landscapes which have positive value in all three areas. (shrink)

An exploration of the possible place and purpose of a postmodernizing planning, in the pursuit of ecological wisdom - defined, in Ken Wilber's terms, as how to get people to agree on how to live in accord with nature. Placemaking - conceived as a form of applied Integral Ecology - is hypothesized as an appropriate planning response, driven by a more explicit "spirit-friendly" outlook, with an associated critique of contemporary conventional notions of growth and sustainability. Place and placemaking are viewed (...) as furnishing the rich relief of an ecologically wise planning. (shrink)

This paper is about the relevance, to the definition of freedom, of values or goods other than freedom. In this respect,its subject matter is not at all new. However, I do believe that new light can be thrown on the nature of this relationship by paying more attention to another relationship – one which exists within the concept of freedom itself. There are two senses in which we can be said to possess freedom. Firstly, there is the sense in which (...) we can be said to be free to do a certain particular thing. Secondly,there is the sense in which we can be said to possess a certain ‘amount’,‘degree’ or ‘quantity’ of freedom, in some overall sense.1 I believe that most recent accounts of the relationship between freedom and other goods are inconsistent, because they see those other goods as affecting the truth value of claims about freedom in the second sense, but not in the first. (shrink)

There is a growing literature that attempts to define the substantive rights of employees in the workplace, a.k.a. the duties of employers toward their employees. Following Nozick, this article argues that — so long as there is a competitive labor market — to set up a class of moral rights in the workplace invades workers' rights to freely choose the terms and conditions of employment they judge best.

This highly original book develops a systematic zero-net-profit comparative statics theory of the firm that challenges many widely held views in microeconomics. It builds a bridge between the marginalist long-run theory of the firm and Sraffian theory to create a unified theoretical framework that explains how firms react to exogenous shocks resulting in new equilibrium positions of the whole economy. The central message of the book is that too often economists expect more from the microeconomic laws of input demand and (...) output supply than they can really give. The authors show that the zero-net-profit condition requires a more articulated analysis that sometimes yields qualitative results contrary to those of familiar economic laws. Written for academic researchers and graduate students, the book will be of particular interest to those working on the microeconomics of industry equilibrium, comparative statics and Sraffian economics. (shrink)