D. J. Bartholomew Social law and human choice Samuel Johnson spoke for many in saying, 'Sir, we know our will is free, and there's an end on't. ...

These 17 essays covers all aspects of Bernard Stiegler's work, from poststructuralism, anthropology and psychoanalysis to his work on the politics of memory, 'libidinal economy', technoscience and aesthetics, keeping a focus on his key theory of technics throughout. Stiegler brings together key concepts from Plato, Freud, Derrida and Simondon to argue that the human is 'invented' through technics rather than a product of purely biological evolution. Stiegler is a thinker at the forefront of our contemporary concerns with consumerism, technology, inter-generational (...) division, political apathy and economic crisis. His ambitious project is to go beyond these sources of social distress to uncover and examine precisely 'what makes life worth living'. Contributors include: Stephen Barker, University of California Irvine and translator of Steigler; Richard Beardsworth, American University of Paris and translator of Stiegler; Miguel de Beistegui; University of Warwick; Marc Crepon, Ecole normale superieure and co-founder of Stiegler's think tank, Ars Industrialis and Daniel Ross, co-director of 'The Ister', the award-winning film on Heidegger, and translator of Stiegler. (shrink)

Individuals are a prominent part of the biological world. Although biologists and philosophers of biology draw freely on the concept of an individual in articulating both widely accepted and more controversial claims, there has been little explicit work devoted to the biological notion of an individual itself. How should we think about biological individuals? What are the roles that biological individuals play in processes such as natural selection (are genes and groups also units of selection?), speciation (are species individuals?), and (...) organismic development (do genomes code for organisms)? Much of our discussion here will focus on organisms as a central kind of biological individual, and that discussion will raise broader questions about the nature of the biological world, for example, about its complexity, its organization, and its relation to human thought. (shrink)

Now that mankind has created the capability of destroying itself through nuclear technology, is it still possible to think in terms of a "just war"? Johnson argues that it is, and in the context of specific case studies he offers moral guidelines for addressing such major contemporary problems as terrorist activity in a foreign country, an individual’s conscientious objection to military service, and an American defense policy that requires development of weapons that may be morally employed in case of (...) need. "Remarkable.... A thoughtful and even profound book, which can be warmly recommended."—Adam Roberts, _New Society_ __ "[A] wise, prudential, and moral thesis.... A most important book, one that all Americans who can should read."—George Armstrong Kelly, _Political Science Quarterly_ __ "At its heart, _Can Modern War be Just? _Is a challenge to the common assumption that any modern war must be total—an unrestrained, spasmodic release of one’s entire destructive capacity against the whole of the enemy’s population."—Richard Allen, _Journal of Religious Ethics_ __ "Johnson... seriously attempt[s] to balance principles and respect facts. For this he is to be praised."—Gary Jason, _Chronicles of Culture_ __ "Johnson’s application of just war doctrine to the hardest problems of contemporary warfare is both morally sensitive and intellectually bold. Readers will sometimes disagree with his arguments, but they will be forced to think hard, and they will learn what it is to work within a moral tradition."—Michael Walzer. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to determine after a one year program, the effects of Philosophy for Children on critical thinking skills of a select group of 22 second graders at Saginaw Elementary. These students have had no previous study in Philosophy for Children and met for 170 days, bi-weekly for at least 30-minutes with no more than three sessions missed. It was anticipated there would be a significant positive difference of critical thinking skills of second graders as observed (...) and noted by the teacher, in a recorded journal, prior, during and after the study. The teacher used Rebecca plus the teacher's manual for the basis of instruction. (shrink)

I argue that there exists a natural kind social bias that subsumes seemingly heterogenous cases of implicit bias and other forms of social cognition. I explore the implications of this explicated notion of bias for the organization of the mind, theories of consciousness, and the system-dependence of biases.

Este é um conto sobre visão, pensamento e contradição, bem como sobre o papel que desempenham na primeira metade da Ciência da Lógica de Hegel. A Lógica começa com uma descida, nesse caso, uma queda do Ser ao Nada. Posteriormente, aproximadamente na metade de cada texto, há um certo paradoxo em que tudo está em jogo, a categoria da contradição. Nesse exato momento, o pensamento ao mesmo tempo falha e é renovado em um viés especulativo. Nessa seção, nos debruçamos sobre (...) algumas das interpretações influentes do uso hegeliano da contradição. Para isso, voltamo-nos a uma curiosa obra de arte, Pleiades, de James Turrell, como um exemplo estético dessa primeira queda. Progrediremos, então, através do texto com pensamento e visão como nosso duplo norteador em um passo relativamente rápido, sem desacelerar até encontrarmos a história de Hegel da contradição, onde mostro a natureza explosiva da contradição. Isso nos permitirá ver como Hegel invoca o poder da contradição para gerar a segunda metade da história da Ciência da Lógica. Eu começo com a descida do Ser ao Nada, o momento em que a escuridão emerge. (shrink)

For evolutionary biologists, the concept of chance has always played a significant role in the formation of evolutionary theory. As far back as Greek antiquity, chance and "luck" were key factors in understanding the natural world. Chance is not just an important concept; it is an entire way of thinking about nature. And as Curtis Johnson shows, it is also one of the key ideas that separates Charles Darwin from other systematic biologists of his time. Studying the concept of (...) chance in Darwin's writing reveals core ideas in his theory of evolution, as well as his reflections on design, purpose, and randomness in nature's progression over the course of history.In Darwin's Dice: The Idea of Chance in the Thought of Charles Darwin, Curtis Johnson examines Darwin's early notebooks, his collected correspondence, and most of his published writing to trace the evolution of his ideas about chance in evolution. This proved to be one of Darwin's most controversial ideas among his reading public, so much so that it drew hostile reactions even from Darwin's scientific friends, not to mention the more general reader. The firestorm of criticism forced Darwin to forge a retreat, not in terms of removing chance from his theory--his commitment to it was unshakable--but in terms of how he chose to present his theory. Briefly, by changing his wording and by introducing metaphors and images, Darwin succeeded in making his ideas seem less threatening than before without actually changing his views. Randomness remained a focal point for Darwin throughout his life. Through the lens of randomness, Johnson reveals implications of Darwin's views for religion, free will, and moral theory. Darwin's Dice presents a new way to look at Darwinist thought and the writings of Charles Darwin. (shrink)

: We question the claim, common since Duhem, that sixteenth century astronomy, and especially the Wittenberg interpretation of Copernicus, was instrumentalistic rather than realistic. We identify a previously unrecognized Wittenberg astronomer, Edo Hildericus (Hilderich von Varel), who presents a detailed exposition of Copernicus's cosmology that is incompatible with instrumentalism. Quotations from other sixteenth century astronomers show that knowledge of the real configuration of the heavens was unattainable practically, rather than in principle. Astronomy was limited to quia demonstrations, although demonstration propter (...) quid remained the ideal. We suggest that Osiander's notorious preface to Copernicus expresses these sixteenth century commonplaces rather than twentieth century instrumentalism, and that neither `realism', nor `instrumentalism', in their modern meanings, apply to sixteenth century astronomy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 39.3 (2005) 44-57 [Access article in PDF] Literary Biography: The Cinderella of Literary Studies Michael Benton There are no prizes for guessing who are the two ugly sisters: Criticism, the elder one, dominated literary studies for the first half of the twentieth century; theory, her younger sister, flounced to the fore in the second half. Meanwhile, 'Cinders,' who had been doing the chores for (...) centuries, has been magically transformed in recent times, decked out in new clothes by Richard Holmes, Claire Tomalin, Juliet Barker, Peter Ackroyd et al., and, as the millennium approached, celebrated and admired on all sides. At the start of the new century, literary biography remains in vogue. The bibliography that carries it forward is rolling, and there is no sign of it turning into a pumpkin. Why is Cinderella so popular?One obvious if superficial answer might be that literary biography is where literary people go who find the contemporary preoccupation with theory to be personally undernourishing and critically unenlightening; they would rather stay with the literary works themselves and with the lives, the minds, and the times that produced them. Yet it is not only literary biography that is thriving; life writing in general is the fastest-growing area of mainstream publishing, evidence for which can be seen in Waterstone's flagship store in London's Piccadilly, which devotes its prime ground-floor site to thousands of biographies. This commercial high profile is responding to an evident, if unfocused, need to look at other lives and understand them. Individual reasons for the popularity of biography range from prurient interest and hero worship to a, perhaps unrecognized, search for coherence and purpose in an age that is often disinclined either to accept institutional values or to respect traditional authority. The motives for this search usually include the desire for recognizable success, to which end the invention of a convincing identity is essential. Biographies offer models of how others live, face challenges, and cope with change; they are prime sites for studying ourselves. Curiously, this justification for biography as providing [End Page 44] a model for living was felt most strongly when this literary genre first emerged in the eighteenth century. The difference today is that the model has changed: Biography as a moral exemplum based upon Christian principles has been replaced in today's celebrity culture by the demand for models of success provided by public personalities. Nonetheless, whatever the range of satisfactions readers seek in biography, life writing offers, in one form or another, detailed pictures of widely different ways of living and amid these, perhaps, some clues to how an individual sense of identity might be shaped.Literary biographies (i.e., biographies of writers, not biographies with a particular literary quality) are a significant and, in some respects, a unique subgenre since they purport to offer access to the creative imagination. They have a long and distinguished history from Johnson and Boswell to the present day; they are sometimes written by other novelists (Elizabeth Gaskell on Charlotte Bronte, Peter Ackroyd on Dickens); and autobiographical writing may take the form of poetry (Wordsworth) or fiction (Joyce).1 Furthermore recent writing in this field has increasingly introduced elements of metabiography in books by Adam Sisman2 and Lucasta Miller.3 It is evident, therefore, that literary biography offers a rich and varied area of study that raises issues about the relationships among biography, history, fiction, and poetry that are fundamental to aesthetic education.Yet despite this promise, it has become a truism to declare that biography has failed to establish any theoretical foundations upon which to build. Backscheider quotes Ira Nadel's remark on the absence of "a sustained theoretical discussion of biography incorporating some of the more probing and original speculations about language, structure, and discourse that have dominated post-structuralist thought."4 She goes on to lament the poverty of criticism; the absence of a cultivated readership; the failure to engage even with the practical questions of selection, organization, or presentation; and indicates that readers of biography are too easily... (shrink)

The “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard of proof, currently used in criminal trials, is notoriously vague and undermotivated. This paper discusses two popular strategies for justifying our choice of a particular precise interpretation of the standard: the “ratio-to-standard strategy” identifies a desired ratio of trial outcomes and then argues that a certain standard is the one that we can expect to produce our desired ratio, while the “utilities-to-standard strategy” identifies utilities for trial outcomes and then argues that a certain standard (...) maximizes expected utility. I argue that both strategies fail on their own terms, by requiring us to perform calculations that we simply cannot perform. No version of either strategy can be performed by jurors or legislators in our actual epistemic position, in which, since we do not know which of the defendants in our trial system are genuinely innocent and which are genuinely guilty, we cannot determine the extent to which our trial system tends to produce evidence that misleadingly incriminates the innocent or misleadingly exonerates the guilty. But we would need to determine this in order to perform the calculations required by any possible version of the ratio-to-standard or utilities-to-standard strategies. I then suggest some empirical reasons to be pessimistic about the evidence produced by our actual trial system. The upshot is that the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard lacks a clear interpretation and rationale, nor do we have a promising way to identify an alternative. This is the trouble with standards of proof. (shrink)

-British constitutional monarchy.-British statesmen.-The parliamentary system of government.-The government of the third French republic.-Blackstone on the British constitution.-Burke and his Bristol constituency.-Burke and the French revolution.-The community and the church.

Let us suppose that thematic roles, or something very much like them, are needed to describe lexical and semantic patterns in the behavior of verbal predicates. But what about nouns? Is there evidence independent of verbal constructions motivating a system of nominal thematic relations? We suggest that the general problem of argument selection does in fact motivate a set of quintessentially nominal thematic proto-roles which we call Proto- Part and Proto-Whole. These nominal proto-roles are parallel to but distinct from the (...) verbal proto-roles of Proto-Agent and Proto-Patient proposed by Dowty (1991) to account for argument selection in verbal predicates. The resulting theory of nominal argument selection is properly semantic, that is, it distinguishes between argument positions purely on the basis of the semantic entailments of the predicates involved. Furthermore, it is non-dynamic, that is, it describes static patterns of lexicalization without hypothesizing any productive grammatical process that maps semantic arguments to syntactic arguments during the derivation of a sentence. (shrink)

Članek ponovno odpira razpravo o recepciji dela Louisa Althusserja v teoriji in kritiki kulture v luči nedavnih angleških prevodov posthumnih del tega francoskega filozofa, vključno z nedokončanim Sur la reproduction, ki vsebuje tudi spis »Ideologija in ideološki aparati države«. Izmed marksističnih mislecev njegove generacije ni bil nihče v tolikšni meri tarča očitkov teoreticizma in političnega odpadništva kot prav Althusser, kar Rancière opisuje kot »althusserjansko zanikanje političnih učinkov«. Članek predstavi pregled zgodovinskih teženj in nasprotnih teženj, ki jih najdemo v Althusserjevih spisih (...) med »dolgimi šestdesetimi«, in trdi, da ne smemo podcenjevati vloge teorije in teoretikov v prid osvobajajočih praks maja 1968, ampak moramo Althusserjev domnevni teoreticizem misliti v kontekstu politično motiviranih teoretskih bojev in rivalstev, ki so določali »politiko njegovega časa«. V zaključku opažamo, da bi preusmeritev pozornosti k tem bojem lahko pripeljala do drugačnega pojmovanja vloge teorije po letu ‘68. (shrink)

Picking up the question of what FLaK might be, this editorial considers the relationship between openness and closure in feminist legal studies. How do we draw on feminist struggles for openness in common resources, from security to knowledge, as we inhabit a compromised space in commercial publishing? We think about this first in relation to the content of this issue: on image-based abuse continuums, asylum struggles, trials of protestors, customary justice, and not-so-timely reparations. Our thoughts take us through the different (...) ways that openness and closure work in struggles against violence, cruel welcomes, and re-arrangements of code and custom. Secondly, we share some reflections on methodological openness and closure as the roundtable conversation on asylum, and the interview with Riles, remind us of #FLaK2016 and its method of scattering sources as we think about how best to mix knowledges. Thirdly, prompted by the FLaK kitchen table conversations on openness, publishing and ‘getting the word out’, we respond to Kember’s call to ‘open up open access’. We explain the different current arrangements for opening up FLS content and how green open access, the sharedit initiative, author request and publisher discretion present alternatives to gold open access. Finally drawing on Franklin and Spade, we show how there are a range of ‘wench tactics’—adapting gifts, stalling and resting—which we deploy as academic editors who are trying to have an impact on the access, use and circulation of our journal, even though we do not own the journal we edit. These wench tactics are alternatives to the more obvious or reported tactic of resignation, or withdrawing academic labour from editing and reviewing altogether. They help us think about brewing editorial time, what ambivalence over our 25th birthday might mean, and how to inhabit painful places. In this, we respond in our own impure, compromised way to da Silva’s call not to forget the native and slave as we do FLaK, and repurpose shrapnel, in our common commitments. (shrink)

This paper falls into two parts. In the first part, I argue that consideration of general indicative conditionals, e.g., sentences like If a donkey brays it is beaten, provides a powerful argument that a pure material implication analysis of indicative if p, q is correct. In the second part I argue, opposing writers like Jackson, that a Gricean style theory of pragmatics can explain the manifest assertability conditions of if p, q in terms of its conventional content – assumed to (...) be merely (p⊃q) – and the conversational implicature contents which utterance of if p, q may gain in certain contexts. I also defend the pragmatic approach against a recent objection by Edgington that appeal to pragmatics cannot explain what we are inclined to say about the believability conditions, as opposed to the assertability conditions, of indicative if p, q. (shrink)

Intellectualists about know-how tend to deny that knowing how to ϕ requires the corresponding ability to ϕ. So, it’s supposed to be an attractive feature of intellectualism that it can explain cases of knowing how without ability, while anti-intellectualism—roughly, the view that knowing how is a kind of ability—cannot. I show that intellectualism fails to explain the very cases that are supposed to showcase this feature of the view. Despite appearances, this does not amount to an objection to intellectualism per (...) se, but to the intellectualist’s rejection of ability entailment. It turns out that all parties to the debate about know-how should accept that knowing how entails ability. The upshot is that the central question of the debate should not be whether knowing how entails ability, but whether ability suffices for knowing how, as anti-intellectualists sometimes claim. (shrink)

One of the last major works of “French Theory,” Félix Guattari’s notoriously dense 1989 Schizoanalytic Cartographies has only recently been made available to English-speaking audiences by Andr...

This book is a philosophical inquiry into historical meaning and narrative understanding. Interpreting selected writings of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, and stories of Kafka, Rilke, Sartre, and Camus, the author defends the narrative coherence of life and the irreducibility of narrative understanding and truth. The island imagery uncovered in these authors provides the parameters for a contemporary philosophy of history properly mingling earth and sky as natality and mortality, remembering and forgetting, wandering and homecoming, waking and dreaming, wealth and poverty. (...) class='Hi'>Johnson has pushed the life-world theme of Husserl's phenomenology out toward the wild-flowering world where it seems to have been headed. (shrink)

: This paper offers my current view of a joint research project, with Bernard R. Goldstein, that examines Kepler's unification of physics and astronomy. As an organizing theme, I describe the extent to which the work of Kepler led to the appearance of the form of Copernicanism that we accept today. In the half century before Kepler's career began, the understanding of Copernicus and his work was significantly different from the modern one. In successive sections I consider the modern conception (...) of Kepler's contribution to Copernicanism, the most influential sixteenth century view of Copernicus's work and its sequel, Kepler's work from the viewpoint of this tradition, and finally the historical origins of the modern view of Copernicanism. (shrink)

A comprehensive theory ofeven if needs to account for consequent ‘entailing’even ifs and in particular those of theif-focused variety. This is where the theory ofeven if ceases to be neutral between conditional theories. I have argued thatif-focusedeven ifs,especially if andonly if can only be accounted for through the suppositional theory ofif. Furthermore, a particular interpretation of this theory — the conditional assertion theory — is needed to account foronly if and a type of metalinguistic negation ofQ if P. We therefore (...) have evidence that the currently accepted approaches to conditionals are basically wrong about the semantic forms they attribute toif P, Q.11. (shrink)

In Truth Without Paradox, David Johnson purports to solve several of the traditional problems of metaphysics, pertaining to truth, logic, similitude, morality, and God.

Concussion is a common, serious injury in youth ice hockey, affecting up to 25% of players per season by one estimate. • Bodychecking is a major cause of injury and concussion in hockey, yet some Canadian provinces allow players as young as nine years to engage in bodychecking. • Reducing rates of concussion requires eliminating bodychecking for all except elite hockey players aged 16 years and older, as per the recommendations of the Canadian Academy of Sports and Exercise Medicine.

"The only laws of matter are those which our minds must fabricate, and the only laws of mind are fabricated for it by matter." -- James Clerk Maxwell.

In an earlier paper I identified two desiderata of a theory of practical reasons which favour internalism, and then argued that forms of this doctrine which are currently on offer lose either one or the other in trying to avoid the conditional fallacy. Michael Brady, Mark van Roojen and Josh Gert have separately attempted to respond to my argument. I set out reasons why all fail.

The importance of history for religious ethics lies in the fact that, in religious communities existing over time, values are encountered in history, given forms dependent on the historical experience of the believing community, and recalled by the individual moral agent through memory in the context of participation in that community. This paper has to do with the nature of that memory and its implications for moral identity. Specifically, I utilize the concept of "significant history," derived from Gordon Kaufman's notion (...) of the "living past," arguing that moral identity is defined by memory of such history, present to the self in two aspects, individual and communal. The historical task of the religious ethicist, on this view, is to render faithfully both his own significant history and that of his community of faith. With the problem thus defined, I analyze several attempts to solve it, attempting to show how a religious ethical tradition ought to be treated as normative for contemporary analysis and decision-making. (shrink)

Scientists have long believed that constructing memories is like playing with neurological Tinkertoys. Exposed to a barrage of sensations from the outside world, we snap together brain cells to form new circuitry-patterns of electrical connections that stand for images, smells, touches and sounds.

In spite of the seeming heterogeneity of topics in its title - Revolutions, Systems, and Theories - this volume purports to be something more than a random collection of Essays in Political Philosophy. The Colloquium of the Philosophy Department of the University of Western Ontario (29-31 Octo­ ber, 1971) at which initial versions of the first eight papers were delivered was entitled 'Political Theory'; and while the organizers anticipated and indeed welcomed topicality in the issues accorded priority arid in the (...) empirical evidence invoked, they were also hoping for a reasonably comprehensive explorat ion of some of the central issues of political philosophy. For this reason it was quickly decided that in such a field a philosophical focus on clarification of ordering concepts required the suppIement - and test - of researches into more particular subject maUers by social scientists. Thus, to speak in general terms (where the specializatlons and their taxonomies multi­ ply fissiparously!), contributors include political scientists, economists and sociologists (Barnard, Baston, Tullock, Rapoport) as well as philosophers (Scriven, Morgenbesser, Braybrooke, TayIor), and juxtaposed as proponents and commentators ·to generate exchanges across disciplinary frontiers. While the five additional invited papers are alI by professional philosophers, they extend the original Colloquium either by continuing controversy on its funda­ mental issues (e. g., Rubinoff, Nielsen, Roy) or by their continued explorations in what are acknowledged to be boundary areas (e. g., Schick, Wartofsky). The greatest topical emphasis is that on revolution. (shrink)

While many recognize that rigid historical and compositional goals are inadequate in a world where climate and other global systems are undergoing unprecedented changes, others contend that promoting ecosystem services and functions encourages practices that can ultimately lower the bar of ecological management. These worries are foregrounded in discussions about Novel Ecosystems (NEs); where some researchers and conservationists claim that NEs provide a license to trash nature as long as some ecosystem services are provided. This criticism arises from what we (...) call the " anything goes " problem created by the release of historical conditions. After explaining the notion of NE, we identify numerous substantive motivations for worrying about the anything-goes-problem and then go on to show the problem can be solved by correcting two mistaken assumptions. In short, we argue that the problem is a product of adopting an overly sparse functional perspective and one that assumes an unrealistically high degree of convergence in the trajectories of natural processes. Our analysis illuminates why such assumptions are unwarranted. Finally, we further argue that adopting an appropriate ethical framework is essential to overcoming the anything-goes-problem and suggest that a certain virtue ethics conception of ecological management provides useful resources for framing and resolving the problem. (shrink)

This essay explores the convergence of theoretical or foundational, historical, and comparative concerns in religious ethics through the examination of two religiously informed traditions on statecraft, that shaped by Augustine's idea of the civitas dei and that shaped by classical Islamic juristic thought on the dar alislam. Three issues are examined for each tradition: the concept of normative political order, the nature of justified use of force, and the implications of their rival claims to universality. The essay shows how the (...) normative logic and implications of each tradition can be properly understood only by attention to its historical development. It further argues that possibilities for conversation between these traditions, difficult or even nonexistent in terms of the original statements of the Augustinian and juristic ideals, may be identified by attention to the historical working out of these ideals in the practice of statecraft within the two cultures. (shrink)