You know that George W. Bush is the U.S. president, but you know how to ride a bicycle. What's the difference? According to intellectualists, not much: either knowing how to do something is a matter of knowing that something is the case or, at the very least, know-how requires a prior bit of theoretical knowledge. Anti-intellectualists deny this order of priority: either knowing-how and knowing-that are independent or, at the very least, knowing that something is the case requires a prior (...) bit of know-how. Much of the dispute centers on the relationship between knowing how to do something and having an ability to do it. If having an ability is necessary and sufficient for knowing-how, this is thought to provide comfort for anti-intellectualists. This paper traces the place of ability in the know-how/know-that debate from Ryle's seminal statement of anti-intellectualism through Stanley and Williamson's more recent defense of intellectualism. (shrink)

I attended the NSIGHT Ethics and Policy Advisory Board's meeting on sequencing newborns as a research associate in a joint apprenticeship between the University of California, San Francisco, Institute for Human Genetics and the university's Program in Bioethics. But I also came to the meeting with a deeply personal perspective: I had spent nearly my entire childhood in search of a diagnosis and therefore was eager to hear the board's discussion on how to ethically include genomic sequencing early in life. (...) Genomic sequencing in the newborn period could have helped me avoid my diagnostic odyssey by revealing the cause of my condition shortly after birth. (shrink)

Much moral skepticism stems from the charge that moral facts do not figure in causal explanations. However, philosophers committed to normative epistemological discourse (by which I mean our practice of evaluating beliefs as justified or unjustified, and so forth) are in no position to demand that normative facts serve such a role, since epistemic facts are causally impotent as well. I argue instead that pragmatic reasons can justify our continued participation in practices which, like morality and epistemology, do not serve (...) the function of causal explanation. Finally, I defend this pragmatic justification of morality and epistemology against a number of objections, including the objection that it confuses practical and theoretical justification. (shrink)

Epicurus emphatically asserts the veracity of perception, including visual perception, yet most of the literature on Epicurus’ atomistic theory of vision pays scant attention to what Epicurus believed transpires outside the body that leads to it. The treatments by DeWitt, Everson, Hicks, and Rist are all very brief; Glidden focuses primarily on the processes occurring inside the perceiver; and while the discussions by Asmis and Bailey are more detailed, they hardly more than note in passing that the process is problematic.1 (...) In this paper I will critically examine Epicurus’ theory of vision, in particular his theory of the events occurring between perceived objects and the eye. I will argue that while certain common objections to Epicurus’ theory may be answerable, it nevertheless suffers from serious problems. These problems, in turn, occur on two levels. On the mechanical level, it demands that dissimilar atomic complexes behave in strikingly similar ways. And on the theoretical level, there is tension created by the need for the intermediary between objects and the observer to be both like objects and unlike them. (shrink)

Let F be the set of functions from an infinite set, S, to an ordered ring, R.

By the middle of the nineteenth century, it had become clear to mathematicians that the study of finite field extensions of the rational numbers is indispensable to number theory, even if one’s ultimate goal is to understand properties of diophantine expressions and equations in the ordinary integers. It can happen, however, that the “integers” in such extensions fail to satisfy unique factorization, a property that is central to reasoning about the ordinary integers. In 1844, Ernst Kummer observed that unique factorization (...) fails for the cyclotomic integers with exponent 23, i.e. the ring Z[ζ] of integers of the field Q(ζ), where ζ is a primitive twenty-third root of unity. In 1847, he published his theory of “ideal divisors” for cyclotomic integers with prime exponent. This was to remedy the situation by introducing, for each such ring of integers, an enlarged domain of divisors, and showing that each integer factors uniquely as a product of these. He did not actually construct these integers, but, rather, showed how one could characterize their behavior qua divisibility in terms of ordinary operations on the associated ring of integers. (shrink)

An enduring theme of Western philosophy is that we are all one another’s equals. Yet the principle of basic equality is woefully under-explored in modern moral and political philosophy. What does it mean to say we are all one another’s equals? Jeremy Waldron confronts this question fully and unflinchingly in a major new multifaceted account.

The Negation Problem states that expressivism has insufficient structure to account for the various ways in which a moral sentence can be negated. We argue that the Negation Problem does not arise for expressivist accounts of all normative language but arises only for the specific examples on which expressivists usually focus. In support of this claim, we argue for the following three theses: 1) a problem that is structurally identical to the Negation Problem arises in non-normative cases, and this problem (...) is solved once the hidden quantificational structure involved in such cases is uncovered; 2) the terms ‘required’, ‘permissible’, and ‘forbidden’ can also be analyzed in terms of hidden quantificational structure, and the Negation Problem disappears once this hidden structure is uncovered; 3) the Negation Problem does not arise for normative language that has no hidden quantificational structure. We conclude that the Negation Problem is not really a problem about expressivism at all but is rather a feature of the quantificational structure of the required, permitted, and forbidden. (shrink)

Foucault and Religion seeks to unearth a new dimension of Foucault scholarship. Renowned Foucault scholar Jeremy Carrette reveals not simply how Foucault's work can be applied to religion but how a religious question at the heart of Foucault's own work offers a radical challenge to religious ideas. Carrette argues that Foucault offers a twofold critique of Christianity by bringing the body and sexuality into religious practice and exploring a political spirituality of the self. This first major commentary on Foucault (...) and religion opens up the diverse religious questions the philosopher raises in his work, and sheds new light on how Foucault challenges religious thinking and transforms religious understanding. (shrink)

The word utiliarianism was coined by Jeremy Bentham in 1781 in a letter to friend in which he said: "A new religion would be an odd sort of thing without a name." While the doctrine never quite became a religion, its thesis, as expressed by Mill in the first essay in this volume-that the good and right are to be defined as that which promotes happiness-became the dominant naturalistic theory of the nineteenth century and provided the moral basis for (...) classical liberalism. (shrink)

The concept of minimal risk has been used to regulate and limit participation by adolescents in clinical trials. It can be understood as setting an absolute standard of what risks are considered minimal or it can be interpreted as relative to the actual risks faced by members of the host community for the trial. While commentators have almost universally opposed a relative interpretation of the environmental risks faced by potential adolescent trial participants, we argue that the ethical concerns against the (...) relative standard may not be as convincing as these commentators believe. Our aim is to present the case for a relative standard of environmental risk in order to open a debate on this subject. We conclude by discussing how a relative standard of environmental risk could be defended in the specific case of an HIV vaccine trial among adolescents in South Africa. (shrink)

The building of the transcontinental railroad in the US Central West in the late 1860s greatly improved access to this region and led to the expansion of scientific field work. The relationships between science and the railroad spanned a diverse spectrum, ranging from its practical advantages to more complex interactions such as the transformation of nature along railway corridors and the reciprocal exchange of favours between scientists and railway companies. The dominance of science along the railroad in the second half (...) of the nineteenth century continued into the early twentieth century, with a gradual shift to automobile travel beginning in the 1910s. By stimulating and shaping field research both on and off the railway corridor, the laying of iron tracks across the continent helped guide US science, just as it influenced so many other aspects of US life. (shrink)

Mathematicians use the word ‘deep’ to convey a high appreciation of a concept, theorem, or proof. This paper investigates the extent to which the term can be said to have an objective character by examining its first use in mathematics. It was a consequence of Gauss's work on number theory and the agreement among his successors that specific parts of Gauss's work were deep, on grounds that indicate that depth was a structural feature of mathematics for them. In contrast, French (...) mathematicians had a less structural, more problem-oriented approach to mathematics and did not speak of depth so readily. (shrink)

In recent years there has been growing interest in the contrast between Humean theories of property, on the one hand, and Lockean and Rousseauian theories, on the other. The contrast is a broad and abstract one, along the following lines.

Les sociétés démocratiques sont confrontées à l'émergence d'enjeux environnementaux décisifs qui concernent tant les modes de production, d'échange et de consommation que l'habitat, les transports, l'agriculture, l'industrie et même nos modes de vie. La prise en charge de ces enjeux ne saurait s'opérer simplement par des mesures ponctuelles ou locales. Elle doit aujourd'hui être repensée la temporalité de l'action politique, confrontée à une urgence qui ne cessera de s'accroître dans les prochaines années.

Four classes of naturally rare vascular plant species are described and classified, based on parameters of spatial distribution and longevity. Properties intrinsic to these time/space parameters are explored and an importance hierarchy of causes of rarity is proposed for each class. These hierarchies serve as the basis for a predictive classification. Human causes of rarity such as habitat destruction and taxonomic difficulties are not considered in detail here but are discussed as confounding factors in the elucidation of rarity in vascular (...) plants. Several examples are provided to illustrate this classification and provide testable hypotheses concerning the origins of natural rarity in plant species. (shrink)

This biography illuminates the life and thought of Baroness Mary Warnock, whose active years spanned the second half of the twentieth century, a period during which opportunities for middle-class women rapidly and vastly improved.

Nineteen teachers took part in a brief, one session, in?service course in which they were trained in behavioural techniques with the main aim of helping them increase their rates of approval contingent upon required behaviours from their pupils and to decrease their rates of disapproval. Subsidiary aims were that the teachers would be enabled to alter the balance of approval/disapproval given to academic and social behaviours, to increase the rate of approval given to group behaviours, to increase the rate of (...) description given to behaviours approved/disapproved, to use pupils' names more frequently and increase redirections given to behaviours following disapproval. From observations taken before and after training, it was seen that the main aim was achieved, with teachers showing increased levels of approval contingent upon required behaviour and decreased levels of disapproval, these changes being accompanied by increased pupil on?task behaviour. For the subsidiary aims, the data showed an encouraging shift in the balance of the teachers' verbal behaviour towards social and academic behaviours but the results were rather mixed for the other subsidiary aims. (shrink)

Discussions of conservatism in epistemology often fail to demonstrate that the principle of conservatism is supported by epistemic considerations. In this paper, I hope to show two things. First, there is a defensible version of the principle of conservatism, a version that applies only to what I will call our basic beliefs. Those who deny that conservatism is supported by epistemic considerations do so because they fail to take into account the necessarily social, diachronic and self-correcting nature of our epistemic (...) practice. Second, I will attempt to show how our basic beliefs are justified via this principle of conservatism. (shrink)

This essay, which was originally the opening presentation for the 2005 conference of the Venerable John Henry Newman Association on “Newman and the Laity” at Villanova University, discusses four areas where Newman’s ideas about the voice of the laity have lessons for American Catholic life today: his non-clericalized view of the Church, the lack of appreciation for the laity, his vision of an educated laity, and the need for consulting the laity about doctrinal matters.

French thinkers have revolutionized European thought about knowledge, religion, politics, and society. Delivering a comprehensive history of thought in France from the Middle Ages to the present, this book follows themes and developments of thought across the centuries. It provides readers with studies of both systematic thinkers and those who operate less systematically, through essays or fragments, and places them all in their many contexts. Informed by up-to-date research, these accessible chapters are written by prominent experts in their fields who (...) investigate key concepts in non-technical language. Chapters feature treatments of specific thinkers as individuals including Voltaire, Rousseau, Descartes and Derrida, but also more general movements and schools of thought from humanism to liberalism, via the Enlightenment, Romanticism, Marxism, and feminism. Furthermore, the influence of gender, race, empire and slavery are investigated to offer a broad and fulfilling account of French thought throughout the ages. (shrink)