Today’s bodies are akin to ‘walking sensor platforms’. Bodies either host, or are the subjects of, an array of sensing devices that act to convert bodily movements, actions and dynamics into circulative data. This article proposes the notions of ‘disembodied exhaust’ and ‘embodied exhaustion’ to conceptualise processes of bodily sensorisation and datafication. As the material body interfaces with networked sensor technologies and sensing infrastructures, it emits disembodied exhaust: gaseous flows of personal information that establish a representational data-proxy. It is this (...) networked actant that progressively structures how embodied subjects experience their daily lives. The significance of this symbiont medium in determining the outcome of interplays between networked individuals and audiences necessitates that it is carefully contrived. The article explores the nature and function of the data-proxy, and its impact on social relations. Drawing on examples that depict individuals engaging with their data-proxies, the article suggests that managing a virtual presence is analogous to a work relation, demanding diligence and investment. But it also shows how the data-proxy operates as a mode of affect that challenges conventional distinctions made between organic and inorganic bodies, agency and actancy, mortality and immortality, presence and absence. (shrink)

The publication of a further volume in Father Copleston’s single-handed History of Western Philosophy is as notable an event as the persevering industry of his nineteenth century subjects. In this stout tome he devotes some 500 pages of text, reinforced with 50 pages of bibliography and an index, to the traditional development of empiricism in British and American thinking and to its interplay with nineteenth century idealism. On this select principle five parts divide naturally: I expounds the evolution from the (...) original utilitarianism of Bentham to the systematic positivism of Spencer, linked by two capital chapters upon J S Mill; II and III examine the portentous development of idealism in Britain and the United States respectively; IV presents the movement of pragmatism from Peirce to Dewey, while V charts the revival of realism, in revolt against idealism, particularly in the works of Moore and Russell whose three culminating chapters usher in contemporary philosophy. Such a traditional classification fails to embrace all distinguished thinkers. An epilogue briefly considers the revolutionary concepts of the nature and scope of philosophy proposed by Wittgenstein, and an appendix expounds Cardinal Newman’s earlier philosophical defence of religious belief—with this characteristic conclusion. (shrink)

This concise handbook of quick reference “has a practical purpose, namely, to acquaint the casual reader with the meaning of the basic concepts germane to Judaism in its religious, historic and cultural aspects”. In accordance with the author’s personal selection, on the principle of particular significance to–day, some fifteen hundred key ideas, terms and personalities representing a wide range of Jewish religion, philosophy and literature are succinctly defined and sometimes explained, and enhanced with some sixty excellently chosen illustrations.

In a sense every practising philosopher is a revolutionary—the pressing problems and personal insights of his human condition urge him to correct traditional thought, while he feels both retrospectively wiser than his predecessors and naively exposed to the criticism of his successors. Thus some members of the dominant current of British philosophy present their interpretation of its antecedents, methods and achievements during the past, sharply formative forty years. Somnolent for a century under the biting scepticism of Hume and the disinterest (...) of clerical dons, university philosophy serenely developed after 1850 a psychological form of empiricism and a local form of German idealism. With the first World War came a sudden change. Philosophy became a lay subject for lay dons after 1920, with its faculty separated from psychology and classics, and with professional journals concentrating on the sheer technique of philosophy. It developed into a philosopher’s philosophy with occasional forays into admiring journalism, where smart criticism was valued more than sober prudence. In the giddy years before and after World War II the brash iconoclasm of an adolescent Logical Positivism won it un succés de scandale, which eventually drew upon British philosophy generally the charge of irresponsibility or futility as a way of life, since this in the last, serious analysis is the traditional role of a philosophy. (shrink)

Democracy may well be the primary virtue of political systems. Yet European politics is marked by a democracy deficit that will not disappear spontaneously. While legal and political theory on this issue is dominated by supporters of civic institutionalism and constitutional republicanism, liberal nationalists seem to be split. They justify the civic nationhood of member states, but they shrink away from the idea of a European people. This essay claims that a quasi-national conception of European identity can be conducive to (...) the rise of a democratic political union of Europe. It discusses the mechanisms and rules for Europeanization of the sense of equal dignity and solidarity. This approach to supranational identity is explicitly instrumental and orientated towards the long run. However, the main liberal objections against it can be countered. (shrink)

nature of personality and the structure of personality are distinguished, and the thesis that mainstream personality theories in psychology debate structure but not nature is illustrated with definitions. Mainstream theories assume that person ality is an inner determinant of behavior, but according to views in psychiatry, phenomenology and radical behaviorism the nature of personality is transactional. The theory of reinforcement schedules proposes general mechanisms of transac tions, and phenomenology gives particular transactions meaning. Interactionism, which locates personality in the person and (...) the situation, contributes measurement to transactionalism but its paradigmatic status is ambiguous because it implies an internal storage system for behavior. (shrink)

Bishop and Trout here present a unique and provocative new approach to epistemology. Their approach aims to liberate epistemology from the scholastic debates of standard analytic epistemology, and treat it as a branch of the philosophy of science. The approach is novel in its use of cost-benefit analysis to guide people facing real reasoning problems and in its framework for resolving normative disputes in psychology. Based on empirical data, Bishop and Trout show how people can improve their reasoning by relying (...) on Statistical Prediction Rules. They then develop and articulate the positive core of the book. Their view, Strategic Reliabilism, claims that epistemic excellence consists in the efficient allocation of cognitive resources to reliable reasoning strategies, applied to significant problems. The last third of the book develops the implications of this view for standard analytic epistemology; for resolving normative disputes in psychology; and for offering practical, concrete advice on how this theory can improve real people's reasoning. This is a truly distinctive and controversial work that spans many disciplines and will speak to an unusually diverse group, including people in epistemology, philosophy of science, decision theory, cognitive and clinical psychology, and ethics and public policy. (shrink)

Scientists and laypeople alike use the sense of understanding that an explanation conveys as a cue to good or correct explanation. Although the occurrence of this sense or feeling of understanding is neither necessary nor sufficient for good explanation, it does drive judgments of the plausibility and, ultimately, the acceptability, of an explanation. This paper presents evidence that the sense of understanding is in part the routine consequence of two well-documented biases in cognitive psychology: overconfidence and hindsight. In light of (...) the prevalence of counterfeit understanding in the history of science, I argue that many forms of cognitive achievement do not involve a sense of understanding, and that only the truth or accuracy of an explanation make the sense of understanding a valid cue to genuine understanding. (shrink)

Inferential statistical tests-such as analysis of variance, t-tests, chi-square and Wilcoxin signed ranks-now constitute a principal class of methods for the testing of scientific hypotheses. In this paper I will consider the role of one statistical concept (statistical power) and two statistical principles or assumptions (homogeneity of variance and the independence of random error), in the reliable application of selected statistical methods. I defend a tacit but widely-deployed naturalistic principle of explanation (E): Philosophers should not treat as inexplicable or basic (...) those correlational facts that scientists themselves do not treat as irreducible. In light of (E), I contend that the conformity of epistemically reliable statistical tests to these concepts and assumptions entails at least the following modest or austere realist commitment: (C) The populations under study have a stable theoretical or unobserved structure that metaphysically grounds the observed values; the objects therefore have a fixed value independent of our efforts to measure them. (C) provides the best explanation for the correlation between the joint use of statistical assumptions and statistical tests, on the one hand, and methodological success on the other. (shrink)

There is now a considerable literature on Michel Foucault but this is the first monograph which explicitly addresses his influence and impact upon education. Personal autonomy has been seen as a major aim, if not the aim of liberal education. But if Foucault is correct that personal autonomy and the notion of the autonomous person are myths, then the pursuit of such an aim by educationalists is misguided. The author develops this critique of personal autonomy and liberal education from the (...) writings of Foucault, and also considers Foucault's own educational practices. The author, James Marshall, who lives in New Zealand, has already written several articles for academic journals on Foucault. (shrink)

Defining terms -- The real world -- The news -- Reading as vacation -- Uses of culture -- The postmodern smirk -- The corporate gallery -- Icons and idols -- Man as Romanian -- Dowsing and science -- Origin myths -- Diplomatic memoir -- A syndrome of simile and metaphor -- Three dreams, one trip -- My obituaries -- Salt water -- My coronation -- Representations -- The pornographic dream -- Against art fairs -- Rescuing the subject from the picture (...) -- Branding the arts -- The end of the affair -- A defense of virtuosity -- Mere esthetics. (shrink)