Contemporary Perspectives in Critical and Social Philosophy brings together a range of essays concerning ways of conceptualising modernities, subjectivities, and recognition. It highlights recent developments in German critical and social philosophy and includes essays by Martin Seel, Christoph Menke, Max Pensky, Andrew Bowie, and Karl Ameriks, and critical discussions of the works of Manfred Frank, Theodor Adorno and Axel Honneth.

The concept of right (jus) as a moral power is traced in Leibniz's earliest to latest philosophical work.

From a moral point of view we think of ourselves as capable of responsible actions. From a scientific point of view we think of ourselves as animals whose behaviour, however highly evolved, conforms to natural scientific laws. Natural Agency argues that these different perspectives can be reconciled, despite the scepticism of many philosophers who have argued that 'free will' is impossible under 'scientific determinism'. This scepticism is best overcome, according to the author, by defending a causal theory of action, that (...) is by establishing that actions are constituted by behavourial events with the appropriate kind of mental causal history. He sets out a rich and subtle argument for such a theory and defends it against its critics. Thus the book demonstrates the importance of philosophical work in action theory for the central metaphysical task of understanding our place in nature. (shrink)

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(2013). Leibniz, Pufendorf, and the Possibility of Moral Self-Governance. British Journal for the History of Philosophy: Vol. 21, No. 2, pp. 281-301. doi: 10.1080/09608788.2012.693064.

Robert Gordon’s trip to the Mogok ruby mines in northern Burma, as reported in his testament to the Royal Geographical Society in 1888, represents one of the most blatant uses of travel as empire building in the Mekong Region. While European explorers and adventurers had been travelling to and along the region for centuries, most had been intent on mapping, surveying and categorizing its contents for purposes of their own profit, in one way or another. Gordon, while of course not (...) unmindful of his own career, represents the traveller aiming to be of service to the greater power. He was strongly motivated by the desire to bring the ruby mines of Mogok into the reach of the British Empire through the building of a railway and the necessary infrastructure to pacify the countryside and its people, thereby enabling the enclosure of another type of commons. (shrink)

This paper maintains that Hobbes grounds right and obligation in self-interest, and opposes a recent argument that for Hobbes obligation is grounded in the agent’s practical deliberation. In addition, it maintains that for Leibniz right and obligation are grounded in the moral-rational capacity of persons, but not in self-interest. It proceeds by distinguishing among the various senses of jus or “right,” and contrasting Hobbes’s and Leibniz’s understanding of the term—though both see it as a kind of freedom they differ fundamentally (...) as to its kind. The little explored treatment of “right” that appears in Leibniz’s New Method for the Learning and Teaching of Jurisprudence is discussed in the course of the article. In conclusion, the article finds that for Leibniz, obligations are grounded in one’s moral capacity. One ought not to harm others because one is a rational being among others who hold the same rights and obligations. For Hobbes, obligations are grounded in self-preservation and maintained by external coercion. For Leibniz, right is the possibility of doing what is just, maintaining the rights and obligations of others; while for Hobbes, right is a problem for doing what is just—a problem for self-interested agents that requires an external solution. (shrink)

Reflection is widely recognised as an invaluable tool in health care, providing fresh insights which enable practitioners to develop their own practice and improve the quality of their care. This book introduces the practitioner to the concept of 'Guided reflection', an innovative research process in which the practitioner is assisted by a mentor (or 'guide') in a process of self-enquiry, development, and learning through reflection, in order to become fully effective. Guided reflection is grounded in individual practice, and can provide (...) deeply meaningful insights into self-development and professional care. The process results in a relexive narrative, which highlights key issues for enhancing health care practice and professional care. This book uses a collection of such narratives from everyday clinical practice in nursing, health visiting and midwifery to demonstrate the theory and practicalities of guided reflection and narrative construction. These narratives portray the values inherent in caring, highlight key issues in clinical practice, reveal the factors that constrain the quest to realise practice, and examine the ways practitioners work towards overcoming these constraints. (shrink)

Exploring reflection -- Writing self : the 1st dialogical movement -- Surfing the reflective spiral : the 2nd dialogical movement -- Framing insights -- The dance with Sophia : the 3rd dialogical movement -- Guiding reflection : the 4th dialogical movement -- Weaving narrative and performance : the 5th & 6th dialogical movements -- The reflective curriculum -- Reflections on touch and the environment -- Reflections on caring -- Life begins at 40 -- Balancing the wind or a lot of (...) hot air -- A reflective model of clinical practice -- Reflective leadership -- Teetering on the edge of chaos -- Ensuring quality (clinical standards and clinical audit) -- Clinical supervision -- Tales of clinical supervision -- Therapeutic journaling with patients -- The bully and the sheep : storyboard -- Reflective prose poems -- Through a glass darkly : the performance turn. (shrink)

Es ist weitgehend anerkannt, dass sich Leibniz' praktische Philosophie fest auf teleologische Prinzipien (Vollkommenheit, Glückseligkeit), affektive Faktoren (Freude, Liebe) wie auch intellektuelle Tugenden (Wissen, Weisheit) gründet. Tatsächlich definiert Leibniz Weisheit als „die Wissenschaft von der Glückseligkeit" und Gerechtigkeit letztlich als „die Liebe des Wissenden" (caritas sapientis). Jedoch argumentiere ich in dieser Arbeit, dass Leibniz' praktische Philosophie auf die deontologischen Kategorien von Recht (ius) und Verpflichtung (obligatio) gegründet ist. Diese Kategorien, eingeführt in einer der frühesten Arbeiten von Leibniz, den Nova Methodus (...) Discendae Docendaeque Jurisprudentiae (1667), bezeichnen die moralischen Qualitäten einer rationalen Substanz, d. h. die moralische Möglichkeit und Notwendigkeit einer Person, gerecht zu handeln. Von dieser a-priori-Begründung leitet Leibniz materielle und gesetzliche Rechte und Verpflichtungen, seine bekannten drei Regeln des Rechten wie auch das Wesen der „Allgemeinen Nützlichkeit" ab. Im Wesentlichen bezeichnen die deontologischen Kategorien die Selbst-Begrenzung der Freiheit einer Person, d. h. ihre innere Fähigkeit, ihre Ziele vereinbar mit und nutzbringend für alle anderen rationalen Wesen zu machen. Ich werde zeigen, dass Leibniz' viel spätere teleologische Prinzipien ohne diese, wenig beachtete deontische Begründung nicht richtig verstanden werden. (shrink)

Each day, nurse practitioners are faced with clinical situations and dilemmas that have no obvious right answers. This article sets out the process of ethical mapping as a reflective device to enable practitioners to reflect on dilemmas of practice in order to learn through the experience and inform future practice. Ethical mapping is illustrated around a single experience that an intensive care practitioner shared in an ongoing guided reflection relationship. Within this process the practitioner draws on ethical principles to inform (...) the particular situation, notably autonomy, doing harm, truth telling and advocacy. Through reflection, ethical principles are transcended and assimilated into knowing in practice, enabling the practitioner to become more ethically sensitive in responding to future situations. (shrink)

The Burford Nursing Development Unit Holistic Model offers a conceptually radical alternative to 'traditional' models, emphasizing the nurse-patient relationship, which is considered essential for therapeutic nursing. This has led to questions as to whether aspects of psychosocial care is adequately framed within the nursing process format or whether it can in fact be continued by 'other' nurses. Part One of this book describes the original philosophy behind this innovative model and how it was adapted for use. Part Two outlines the (...) practical use of the model in the form of case studies, using critical analysis to test its current validity. Its use is also compared against previous models. (shrink)

This book is the first interlinear bilingual edition of the core Inner Chapters of the book Zhuangzi, which must be counted among the most famous texts in Chinese intellectual and literary history. A special feature of this edition is that it follows the specific rhythm and rhyme of the text in the translation, making it possible to experience the particular style of this most exciting of the ancient Chinese philosophers. -/- An extensive introduction explains the history and the literary nature (...) of the text, and in particular it tells the story of how this text was appreciated and commented upon in China and translated into foreign languages through the ages. Extensive footnotes are provided to enable Western readers to read the text through the eyes of the enthusiastic Chinese commentators who have annotated the text over the centuries: traditional Chinese literary as well as philosophical commentaries are presented in detail in the original classical Chinese and in translation. -/- For the general reader this book will offer a rare opportunity to approach one of the most outrageously unconventional texts of world literature with the philosophical and philological perspectives of the greatest of its literate Chinese connoisseurs. For the student of Chinese this book will serve as a bilingual cornucopia of spirited classical Chinese discourse on a fiercely contested and always controversially discussed crucial text in the Daoist tradition of ancient China. (shrink)

Aristotle attaches particular significance to the homomyny of many of the central concepts in philosophy and science: that is, to the diversity of ways of being that are denoted by a single concept. Shields here investigates and evaluates Aristotle's approach to questions about homonymy, characterizing the metaphysical and semantic commitments necessary to establish the homonymy of a given concept. Then, in a series of case studies, he examines in detail some of Aristotle's principal applications of homonymy--to the body, sameness and (...) and oneness, life, goodness, and being. This first full-length study of a central aspect of Aristotle's thought will interest philosophers working in a number of areas. (shrink)

This paper seeks to highlight the importance of spatial cognition in Bergson’s Données immédiates by engaging with Robert Watt’s reconstruction of Bergson’s argument that every idea of number involves the idea of space. We focus on the second stage of Watt’s reconstruction, where Bergson argues that only space can provide the distinction required for our counting of otherwise identical items. Watt bases his reconstruction on a premise regarding the possibility that identical objects, in the absence of spatial distinction, might remain (...) identical across different “temporal locations”. Our paper raises the prospect that Bergson is committed to a stronger thesis, namely one implying that identical objects would necessarily remain indistinguishable without the intervention of space. The paper thus concludes by emphasizing the indispensability of space for knowledge according to Bergson. (shrink)

This book is a collection of secondary essays on America's most important philosophic thinkers—statesmen, judges, writers, educators, and activists—from the colonial period to the present. Each essay is a comprehensive introduction to the thought of a noted American on the fundamental meaning of the American regime.

Liberalism at the Crossroads provides a fair but lively introduction to key thinkers and schools of thought in the contemporary debate regarding liberal political theory.

This essay traces the complex constellation of ideas that informs Anders's turn to the generalizing expression ‘the human’ in his postwar work. It mobilizes the properties of radioactive material and digital data, which are both curiously imperceptible to our senses, to discuss Anders’s insistence on the universalizing pronoun `we' and assess its significance in the contemporary world. To do so, it aligns Anders's work with current debates about the Anthropocene and critiques of the use of the term ‘the human’ in (...) postcolonial settings. (shrink)

In this re-titled and substantially revised update of his _Classical Philosophy_, Christopher Shields expands his coverage to include the Hellenistic era, and now offers an introduction to more than 1,000 years of ancient philosophy. From Thales and other Pre-Socratics through Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, and on to Epicureanism, Stoicism, and Scepticism, _Ancient Philosophy_ traces the important connections between these periods and individuals without losing sight of the novelties and dynamics unique to each. The coverage of Plato and Aristotle also (...) has been expanded. It now includes, for example, updated coverage of Plato's allegories of the cave and the divided line and the metaphor of the sun as well as features of Plato's epistemology. Shields also adds new discussion on Aristotle's theory of virtue and his approach to the Socratic problem of _akrasia_, or weakness of will. In terms of its structure, _Ancient Philosophy_ is presented so that each philosophical position receives: a brief introduction, a sympathetic review of its principal motivations and primary supporting arguments, and a short assessment, inviting readers to evaluate its plausibility. The result is a book that brings the ancient arguments to life, making the introduction truly contemporary. It will serve as both a first stop and a well visited resource for any student of the subject. _Ancient Philosophy_ offers a vivid picture of the ideas that flourished at philosophy's long birth and considers their relevance, both to the historical development of the Western philosophical tradition, and to philosophy today. (shrink)

According to QBism, quantum states, unitary evolutions, and measurement operators are all understood as personal judgments of the agent using the formalism. Meanwhile, quantum measurement outcomes are understood as the personal experiences of the same agent. Wigner’s conundrum of the friend, in which two agents ostensibly have different accounts of whether or not there is a measurement outcome, thus poses no paradox for QBism. Indeed the resolution of Wigner’s original thought experiment was central to the development of QBist thinking. The (...) focus of this paper concerns two very instructive modifications to Wigner’s puzzle: One, a recent no-go theorem by Frauchiger and Renner, and the other a thought experiment by Baumann and Brukner. We show that the paradoxical features emphasized in these works disappear once both friend and Wigner are understood as agents on an equal footing with regard to their individual uses of quantum theory. Wigner’s action on his friend then becomes, from the friend’s perspective, an action the friend takes on Wigner. Our analysis rests on a kind of quantum Copernican principle: When two agents take actions on each other, each agent has a dual role as a physical system for the other agent. No user of quantum theory is more privileged than any other. In contrast to the sentiment of Wigner’s original paper, neither agent should be considered as in “suspended animation.” In this light, QBism brings an entirely new perspective to understanding Wigner’s friend thought experiments. (shrink)

Peters is best known for ‘Ethics and Education’, (1966) an attempt, using analytical methods, to provide a universal canonical account of the nature of education. This corresponded closely with the prevailing conception of liberal education of the time. Despite the acclaim with which this work was received, Peters became increasingly dissatisfied with his early views of education and in a series of papers written between 1973 and 1982, he retreated slowly from the view that one could construct a universal canonical (...) account of education and even from the view that this could be possible for liberal education. As his views changed, his philosophical methods developed as well, moving from the Moorean essentialist analysis of 1966, through a more Strawsonian connective analysis in the mid 1970s to a position based on W.B. Gallie's account of essentially contested concepts in the early 1980s. Parallel to and connected with this changing philosophical methodology came a distinction between an overarching concept of education and particular conceptions of education related to different societies and their values. (shrink)

We address the question of whether it is possible to operate a time machine by manipulating matter and energy so as to manufacture closed timelike curves. This question has received a great deal of attention in the physics literature, with attempts to prove no-go theorems based on classical general relativity and various hybrid theories serving as steps along the way towards quantum gravity. Despite the effort put into these no-go theorems, there is no widely accepted definition of a time machine. (...) We explain the conundrum that must be faced in providing a satisfactory definition and propose a resolution. Roughly, we require that all extensions of the time machine region contain closed timelike curves; the actions of the time machine operator are then sufficiently “potent” to guarantee that closed timelike curves appear. We then review no-go theorems based on classical general relativity, semi-classical quantum gravity, quantum field theory on curved spacetime, and Euclidean quantum gravity. Our verdict on the question of our title is that no result of sufficient generality to underwrite a confident “yes” has been proven. Our review of the no-go results does, however, highlight several foundational problems at the intersection of general relativity and quantum physics that lend substance to the search for an answer. (shrink)

Memory for numbers improves with age. One source of this improvement may be learning linear spatial-numeric associations, but previous evidence for this hypothesis likely confounded memory span with quality of numerical magnitude representations and failed to distinguish spatial-numeric mappings from other numeric abilities, such as counting or number word-cardinality mapping. To obviate the influence of memory span on numerical memory, we examined 39 3- to 5-year-olds’ ability to recall one spontaneously produced number (1-20) after a delay, and the relation between (...) numeric recall (controlling for non-numeric recall) and quality of mapping between symbolic and non-symbolic quantities using number-line estimation, give-a-number estimation, and counting tasks. Consistent with previous reports, mapping of numerals to space, to discrete quantities, and to numbers in memory displayed a logarithmic-to-linear shift. Also, linearity of spatial-numeric mapping correlated strongly with multiple measures of numeric recall (percent correct and percent absolute error), even when controlling for age and non-numeric memory. Results suggest that linear spatial-numeric mappings may aid memory for number over and above children’s other numeric skills. (shrink)

Propositions are (generally taken to be) the semantic values of declarative sentences in context. There is a long history of thinking that an important reason for taking propositions to be structured stems from the fact that the semantic values of such sentences are (typically) compositionally determined. In this paper, I argue that compositionality does not entail, nor provide good evidence for, the claim that propositions are structured. I go on to argue that there is no additional feature of declarative sentences—for (...) example, that they are true or false—that, in conjunction with compositionality, entails or provides good evidence for the claim that the semantic values of those sentences are complex. (shrink)

In the Anglo-American cultural sphere, the growing awareness of global warming and ecocide has coincided with the proliferation of a much discussed, post-apocalyptic imaginary that transports us to uninhabitable planetary futures. These “fictions,” as E. Ann Kaplan notes in a discussion of their mobilising potential, act as “memories for the future” which make us “identify with future selves struggling to survive.” This article turns to Günther Anders’s notion of “apocalypse-blindness” (1956) and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road to set out an alternative (...) way of understanding the powerfully sentimental force such images of doom convey. While seemingly turning our gaze to the future and onto the devastating impact of consumerist lifestyles, I argue that this doom-ridden imaginary also entails a sentimentalisation of our own “inability to feel” and be sufficiently affected by the reality we know ourselves to be contributing to. As such, it bears witness to the trauma of “not being able to adequately feel” what one already knows. By revisiting The Road, a text that occupies a central role in discussions of the potentials and cathartic pitfalls of post-apocalyptic fiction, I suggest that its political potential lies in this confrontation with the limits of feeling. And the politics it opens onto does not hinge on images on ruin, but on a yearning for a socially sanctioned right to feel and express the fear representations only seem able to convey in an inadequate, anaesthetic manner. (shrink)

Erving Goffman’s “Asylums” is a key text in the development of contemporary, community-orientated mental health practice. It has survived as a trenchant critique of the asylum as total institution, and its publication in 1961 in book form marked a further stage in the discrediting of the asylum model of mental health care. In this paper, some responses from a range of disciplines to this text, 50 years on, are presented. A consultant psychiatrist with a special interest in cultural psychiatry and (...) mental health legislation, two collaborating psychotherapists in adult and forensic mental health, a philosopher, and a recent medical graduate, present their varying responses to the text. The editors present these with the hope of encouraging further dialogue and debate from service users, carers, clinicians, and academics and researchers across a range of disciplines. (shrink)

Virtue epistemology is one of the most flourishing research programmes in contemporary epistemology. Its defining thesis is that properties of agents and groups are the primary focus of epistemic theorising. Within virtue epistemology two key strands can be distinguished: virtue reliabilism, which focuses on agent properties that are strongly truth-conducive, such as perceptual and inferential abilities of agents; and virtue responsibilism, which focuses on intellectual virtues in the sense of character traits of agents, such as open-mindedness and intellectual courage. This (...) volume brings together ten new essays on virtue epistemology, with contributions to both of its key strands, written by leading authors in the field. It will advance the state of the art and provide readers with a valuable overview of what virtue epistemology has achieved. (shrink)

Human neural and behavioral activities have been reported to exhibit fractal dynamics known as 1/f noise, which is more aptly named 1/f scaling. Some argue that 1/f scaling is a general and pervasive property of the dynamical substrate from which cognitive functions are formed. Others argue that it is an idiosyncratic property of domain‐specific processes. An experiment was conducted to investigate whether 1/f scaling pervades the intrinsic fluctuations of a spoken word. Ten participants each repeated the word bucket over 1,000 (...) times, and fluctuations in acoustic measurements across repetitions generally followed the 1/f scaling relation, including numerous parallel yet distinct series of 1/f fluctuations. On the basis of work showing that 1/f scaling is a universal earmark of metastability, it is proposed that the observed pervasiveness of 1/f fluctuations in speech reflects the fact that cognitive functions are formed as metastable patterns of activity in brain, body, and environment. (shrink)