Volume 20, Issue 7, July 2020, Page 147-150.

Our primary aim in this paper is to sketch a cognitive evolutionary approach for developing explanations of social change that is anchored on the psychological mechanisms underlying normative cognition and the transmission of social norms. We throw the relevant features of this approach into relief by comparing it with the self-fulfilling social expectations account developed by Bicchieri and colleagues. After describing both accounts, we argue that the two approaches are largely compatible, but that the cognitive evolutionary approach is well- suited (...) to encompass much of the social expectations view, whose focus on a narrow range of norms comes at the expense of the breadth the cognitive evolutionary approach can provide. (shrink)

Critically engaging the work of Immanuel Kant, Hannah Arendt, Martin Heidegger, and Jacques Derrida together with her own observations on contemporary politics, environmental degradation, and the pursuit of a just and sustainable world, Kelly Oliver lays the groundwork for a politics and ethics that embraces otherness without exploiting difference. Rooted firmly in human beings' relationship to the planet and to each other, Oliver shows peace is possible only if we maintain our ties to earth and world. Oliver begins with (...) Immanuel Kant and his vision of politics grounded on earth as a finite surface shared by humans. She then incorporates Hannah Arendt's belief in plural worlds constituted through human relationships; Martin Heidegger's warning that alienation from the Earth endangers not only politics but also the very essence of being human; and Jacques Derrida's meditations on the singular worlds individuals, human and otherwise, create and how they inform the reality we inhabit. Each of these theorists, Oliver argues, resists the easy idealism of world citizenship and globalism, yet they all think about the earth against the globe to advance a grounded ethics. They contribute to a philosophy that avoids globalization's totalizing and homogenizing impulses and instead help build a framework for living within and among the world's rich biodiversity. (shrink)

From a religious studies perspective, Atran & Norenzayan (A&N) succeed in arguing for the influence of evolved cognitive functions in religious phenomena. To develop their argument further, four suggestions are offered: (1) Look beyond the ordinary to the extraordinary; (2) culture matters more than ever; (3) theists need not despair, atheists ought not celebrate; and (4) dreaming is a primal wellspring of religion.

This book collects John Gardner's celebrated essays on the theory of private law, alongside two new essays. Together they range across the central puzzles in understanding the significance of outcomes, the role of justice in private law, strict liability, the reasonable person standard, and the role of public policy in tort law.

This 1945 “Preface” is intended to answer the question “What is phenomenology?” and to justify it as the methodology of the long work of philosophical psychology to follow. Merleau-Ponty approaches this task by first setting out the apparent paradoxes and contradictory claims that have been advanced by phenomenology, in a long and eloquent survey section that is built on a series of “X, but also Y” rhetorical devices. He then surveys four prominent themes of phenomenology. Just as he does in (...) the introductory section of the essay “The Philosopher and His Shadow,” Merleau-Ponty here presents himself as the chief interpreter and champion of Husserl's later philosophy. The first major theme considered is that phenomenology is a matter of describing the field of perception. This sets it in contrast to the prevalent explanatory methodologies of a) scientific empiricism and b) metaphysical idealism. Empirical science (such as mathematical physics) begins with observation, but then abstracts entirely from lived experience to consider idealized schematic cases (such as motion across a frictionless surface) that may reveal universal laws. Such a methodology is obviously fruitful in important respects, but is nonetheless naïve and dishonest in its renunciation of the specifics of observed events. The metaphysical idealism of Kant or Descartes likewise abstracts from the experienced particularity of perception to posit an “inner man” that constitutes the world according to 2 internal, transcendental principles. Merleau-Ponty's criticism is the same, whether these principles are “reason” of Rationalism, “the categories of understanding” of Critical Rationalism, or the rules governing the “association of ideas” posited by Empiricism. Phenomenology indicates that perception is not an act but a fact; the world is not an object but rather the unified setting of perception; and the inner man is a myth, along with his allegedly privileged access to univocal truth. The second theme is the technique of “phenomenological reduction,” the suspension of belief in the assemblage of everyday assumptions known as the “natural attitude.” Husserl's understanding of the reduction long led him to an idealist position: that all particular consciousnesses are united in a transcendental ego.. (shrink)

Background Psychedelic medicine is a rapidly growing area of research and policy change. Australia recently became the first country to legalize the prescription of psychedelics and serves as a case study of issues that may emerge in other jurisdictions. Despite their influence as a stakeholder group, there has been little empirical exploration of psychedelic researchers’ views on the development of psychedelic research and the ethical concerns. Methods We thematically analysed fourteen interviews with Australian psychedelic researchers. Results Three themes were constructed (...) from the data: 1) coming out of the shadow of the 1960s, 2) challenges and affordances in engaging stakeholders, and 3) growing pains in innovation and translation. Conclusion The results illustrated tensions arising from the rapid growth of psychedelic research from a small group of dedicated individuals with a similar worldview, to a multi-interest, regulated industry. Participants’ experiences and viewpoints were influenced by the history of psychedelic research, and this was met with an overarching concern for protecting the field from premature discontinuation, as well as maximizing potential positive impacts. Targets for stakeholder collaboration and initiatives to support responsible innovation in psychedelics include equitable access, sustainable industry involvement, productive research agendas, responsible reporting of evidence, and risk-taking within the relative safety of clinical trials. (shrink)

Students and teachers of Chinese history and philosophy will not want to miss Daniel Gardner's accessible translation of the teachings of Chu Hsi —a luminary of the Confucian tradition who dominated Chinese intellectual life for centuries. Homing in on a primary concern of our own time, Gardner focuses on Chu Hsi's passionate interest in education and its importance to individual development. For hundreds of years, every literate person in China was familiar with Chu Hsi's teachings. They informed the (...) curricula of private academies and public schools and became the basis of the state's prestigious civil service examinations. Nor was Chu's influence limited to China. In Korea and Japan as well, his teachings defined the terms of scholarly debate and served as the foundation for state ideology. Chu Hsi was convinced that through education anyone could learn to be fully moral and thus travel the road to sagehood. Throughout his life, he struggled with the philosophical questions underlying education: What should people learn? How should they go about learning? What enables them to learn? What are the aims and the effects of learning? Part One of _Learning to Be a Sage_ examines Chu Hsi's views on learning and how he arrived at them. Part Two presents a translation of the chapters devoted to learning in the _Conversations of Master Chu_. (shrink)

A fun, pocket-size book packed with inspiration from the galaxy's most cool and composed Jedi Master. Stay true to yourself with confidence and class. Is your new home more hive of villainy than sandy beach resort? Friends not the chosen ones you thought they were? Don't throw a tantrum - keep it classy and ask yourself, "What would Obi-Wan do?" Glide elegantly through anything life throws at you with pearls of wisdom from Obi-Wan Kenobi and fellow sages. Learn how to (...) face your fears and perfect your witty comebacks."--Amazon.com. (shrink)

Hume’s moral philosophy is a sentiment-based view. Moral judgment is a matter of the passions; certain traits of character count as virtues or vices because of the approval or disapproval they evoke in us, feelings that express concern we have about the social effects of these traits. A sentiment-based approach is attractive, since morality seems fundamentally to involve caring for other people. Sentiment-based views, however, face a real challenge. It is clear that our affections are often particular; we favor certain (...) persons over others. This poses a problem when it comes to determining the proper content of morality. The ties of sentiment would seem to be in tension with the aspirations of morality toward impartiality and universality. (shrink)

As a linguist, Julia Kristeva has pioneered a revolutionary theory of the sign in its relation to social and political emancipation; as a practicing psychoanalyst, she has produced work on the nature of the human subject and sexuality, and on the "new maladies" of today's neurotic. _The Portable Kristeva_ is the only fully comprehensive compilation of Kristeva's key writings. The second edition includes added material from Kristeva's most important works of the past five years, including _The Sense and Non-Sense of (...) Revolt_, _Intimate Revolt_, and _Hannah Arendt_. Editor Kelly Oliver has also added new material to the introduction, summarizing Kristeva's latest intellectual endeavors and updating the bibliography. (shrink)

In this article, I re-examine the relationship between the thoughts of contemporaneous and associated late twentieth-century French philosophers Michel Foucault and Louis Althusser, through the prism of the notion of the problem. I discuss the philology of the use of the noun “problematic” in French philosophy in relation to Foucault and Althusser’s use of it, concluding that while Althusser makes this a term of art in his thought, Foucault does not make any particular use of this concept. I nonetheless consider (...) the possibility of the existence of a similar notion under a different name, episteme, in Foucault’s thought, but conclude that this is a distinct notion from Althusser’s “problematic.” I then consider Foucault’s later, idiosyncratic notion of problematization and its possible relation to Althusser’s conceptual framework. I conclude that, despite divergent vocabularies, Althusser and Foucault do have a common problematic and approach to problematization, though Foucault also problematizes aspects of Althusser’s problematic, effectively taking problematization a step further. (shrink)

In this response, while agreeing with Balibar’s substantive positive position, I take issue with the way he situates it. Specifically, he casts it as a via negativa in relation to all previously existing thought. I suggest that it would be more accurate to say he is positioning the notion of the transindividual as a via media between two alleged extremes, individualism and organicism. I argue that the idea that there is an opposite and equal error to individualism is mistaken, and (...) that in actuality Balibar’s concept of the transindividual is not a radical departure from a long history of anti-individualism. (shrink)

Time travel and its associated paradoxes are a topic of academic discussion that has historically been of interest only in physics and philosophy. This paper presents a new paradox of time travel that puts psychological issues at the forefront. The new time traveller faces conflicts between agency and agency awareness that are not addressed in other paradoxes. Further, in considering these other paradoxes it is seen how concerns about the time traveller's psychological state can lead to new challenges to the (...) accepted deterministic paradox resolutions. (shrink)

In Political Theology on Edge, the discourse of political theology is seen as situated on an edge—that is, on the edge of a world that is grappling with global warming, a brutal form of neoliberal capitalism, protests against racism and police brutality, and the COVID-19 pandemic. This edge is also a form of eschatology that forces us to imagine new ways of being religious and political in our cohabitation of a fragile and shared planet. Each of the essays in this (...) volume attends to how climate change and our ecological crises intersect and interact with more traditional themes of political theology. While the tradition of political theology is often associated with philosophical responses to the work of Carl Schmitt—and the critical attempts to disengage religion from his rightwing politics—the contributors to this volume are informed by Schmitt but not limited to his perspectives. They engage and transform political theology from the standpoint of climate change, the politics of race, and non-Christian political theologies including Islam and Sikhism. Important themes include the Anthropocene, ecology, capitalism, sovereignty, Black Lives Matter, affect theory, continental philosophy, destruction, and suicide. This book features world renowned scholars and emerging voices that together open up the tradition of political theology to new ideas and new ways of thinking. Contributors: Gil Anidjar, Balbinder Singh Bhogal, J. Kameron Carter, William E. Connolly, Kelly Brown Douglas, Seth Gaiters, Lisa Gasson-Gardner, Winfred Goodwin, Lawrence Hillis, Mehmet Karabela, Michael Northcott, Austin Roberts, Noëlle Vahanian, Larry L. Welborn. (shrink)

Peter Gardner; Personal Autonomy and Religious Upbringing: the ‘problem’, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 25, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 69–81, http.

The primary concern in this paper is to examine the nature of Śiva’s aruḷ—his generative and salvific energy—as portrayed in Tiruvācakam, Māṇikkavācakar’s important but understudied text of medieval bhakti poems. Close attention is paid to the poet’s description of Śiva’s aruḷ as inducing seemingly incongruous ontological states of being—one of ecstatic possession that results in rapturous dance and one of spiritual bondage. In doing so, this paper posits that Māṇikkavācakar is using aruḷ as śakti is used in the philosophy of (...) the Sanskrit Śaiva Siddhānta tradition and argues that this is an early attempt to localize the Śaiva Siddhānta in a Tamil milieu, as Tiruvācakam appears several centuries prior to the initial Tamil Śaiva Siddhānta text. In doing so, this paper also highlights the ways in which poetic narratives can embody a broader philosophical debate rather than serving merely as a vehicle for philosophical ideas. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Simone de Beauvoir Luce Irigaray Colette Guillaumin Hélène Cixous Julia Kristeva Monique Wittig Sarah Kofman Michèle Le Doeuff Christine Delphy Conclusion.

Peter Gardner; On Some Paradoxes in Moral Education, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 15, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 65–76, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.

Neste artigo, meu objetivo é analisar de que maneira o cientista, no âmbito das Ciências Naturais, é educado para assimilar, aplicar e articular um determinado paradigma na solução dos problemas de ciência normal, sem colocá-lo (o paradigma) criticamente em questão, assim qualquer erro que venha a ocorrer na pesquisa é atribuído ao cientista e não ao paradigma. Pretendo também, mostrar que o caráter dogmático do paradigma não permite que o cientista desenvolva pesquisas visando novas descobertas que não se enquadrem nos (...) parâmetros ditados pelo mesmo, tal atitude exige total aceitação e comprometimento da comunidade científica para com o paradigma aceito, gerando assim, uma espécie de profissão de fé na capacidade do paradigma em resolver os quebra-cabeças que se apresentam na prática da ciência normal. (shrink)

What would we say about the losses associated with war if we did not describe them as sacrifices? What would we say about Jesus’ life and death if we did not associate the Gospel narratives with a cosmic framework of sacrificial self giving? This article first explores and exposes the interpenetration of the ethos, institutions and culture of militarism in the United States’ culture at large. The somewhat heightened awareness regarding US ‘war-culture’ leads to questions regarding its supporting pillars and (...) dynamics. Thus, second, the article investigates the rhetoric and practices of sacrifice that act as an electrical current running between war-culture and popular understandings and practices of Christianity in the United States of America. Frameworks of sacrifice both animate war-culture and simultaneously mask its operations with a sacred canopy. Consequently, we must face the difficult but all-important question: is there any way to rehabilitate understandings of sacrifice for Christianity without at the same time aiding and abetting war-culture? (shrink)

Values are numerous, interrelated and hard to discern in professional practice. This article reports on key findings from research into locating professional values within health social work practice in Aotearoa New Zealand. The research explores how 15 health social workers experience and negotiate value demands when working with newborn infants. A staged methodology underpinned by constructivist grounded theory was utilised to generate theoretical knowledge through two phases of semi-structured individual interviews. The research firmly located health social workers practice in the (...) middle ground of a complex, tension-ridden practice environment with health social workers courageously striving to balance competing requirements. Within a health model influenced by neoliberal policy, key tensions related to challenges faced due to professionals oversimplifying social circumstances in risk-laden situations. This resulted in issues of judgements, bias and racism being a central concern for the participants’ social work practice. Despite these tensions, the place of social justice as a primary organising value was affirmed by the research. A stronger focus on the profession’s values would strengthen the collective voice of health social workers and their identity, in order to better address the systemic drivers of health inequities. (shrink)

Research on civic development in schools has identified a number of promising practices for increasing civic knowledge and interest among youth. This study examines the relationship between the most promising practices and increased political engagement as a young adult, using the likelihood of voting as a proxy. By assessing nationally representative survey data using a linear probability model, I explore whether youth who take civics in high school are more likely to vote as young adults. Results show a significant positive (...) association between taking a civics course and extracurricular participation in high school, and likelihood of voting as a young adult, even after adjusting for other determinants of civics education and voter turnout. This paper explains the significance of these findings and makes the case for the importance of high school civic education and for further exploration of the factors involved in the process. (shrink)

The Correctional Service of Canada is currently re-instituting animal-based agribusiness programs in two federal penitentiaries. To situate the contemporary function of such programs, I provide a historical overview of prison agriculture in relation to Canadian nation-making. I argue that penitentiary farms have functioned as a means of prison expansion and settler territorialisation. While support for agricultural programming is rooted in its perceived facilitation of rehabilitation and vocational training, I show that these justifications are untenable. Rather the prison farm ought to (...) be viewed as an institution made possible by and that reproduces, settler colonial power relations to animals, labour, and territory. Prison agribusiness is then an expression of colonial, agricultural, and carceral powers. (shrink)

More than two hundred years after his birth, and 150 years after the publication of his most famous essay On Liberty, John Stuart Mill remains one of the towering intellectual figures of the Western tradition. This book combines an up-to-date assessment of the philosophical legacy of Millâes arguments, his complex version of liberalism and his account of the relationship between character and ethical and political commitment. Bringing together key international and interdisciplinary scholars, including Martha Nussbaum and Peter Singer, this book (...) combines the latest insights of Mill scholarship with a long-term appraisal of the ways in which Millâes work has been received and interpreted from the time of his death in 1873 to today. The book offers compelling insights into Millâes posthumous fate and reputation; his youthful political and intellectual activism; his views on the formation of character; the development of his thought on logic; his differences from his father and Bentham; his astonishingly prescient, environmentally sensitive and âe~greenâe thought; his relation to virtue ethics; his conception of higher pleasures and its relation to his understanding of justice; his feminist thought and its place in contemporary debates and feminist discourses; his defence of free speech and its fundamental significance for his liberalism; and his continued contemporary relevance on a number of major issues. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of Politics, Political Theory, Philosophy, History, English, Psychology, and also Cultural Studies, Empire studies, nationalism and ethnicity studies. (shrink)

In this chapter, Kelly Oliver argues that while risk-benefit analysis may be necessary in a crisis situation such as the Covid-19 pandemic, that does not make it ethical. To the contrary, risk-benefit analysis is antithetical to ethics defined as responsibility to the singularity of each living being. Triage medicine, developed for the battlefield during wartime, relies on risk-benefit calculations. For example, calculations about which patient has the best chance for survival, or which patient has the best chance of quality (...) of life or continued longevity. In the current pandemic, these calculations were based on population categories of health such as diabetes, coronary disease, obesity, and age, along with assessments of the individual patient’s condition. While such assessments may meet practical policy demands, ultimately, they are not ethical. In the end, she argues for what she calls “response ethics” as an alternative to utilitarian risk-benefit analysis. (shrink)

The question of public aid for non-public schools deserves thorough and objective discussion. Here is a study of policy and practice and a pro-aid evaluation.

In this paper I wish to offer some reflections on a possible solution to the perennial problem of materialism and idealism as mutually exclusive worldviews. The problem will be set in the context of the recent work of David Bohm and Edgar Morin, two leading representatives of the new science.

Over the past two or three decades there has arisen a fairly widespread dissatisfaction with the usefulness of the formal logical techniques of Frege and Russell for teaching the evaluation of reasoning in natural language. The problem with these formal methods, I argue, lies in certain questionable presuppositions that underlie these methods. ;My own case will rest mainly on the following three claims: first, that the millennia old belief that there are two fundamentally different types of argument, viz., induction and (...) deduction, is crucially mistaken and hampers rather than helps our understanding and evaluating of reasoning; second, that the belief that only formally valid arguments are deductively valid is a false dogma, one that is pernicious not only in its own right, but also because it has lent support to the other dogmas we must set aside if we are to have any radical progress in our understanding of and instruction in reasoning in natural language; and third, that logic is better seen not as a body of knowledge, but as a practice or art; and, as with any art, we come to perform it better not through the learning of a system of propositional knowledge but through appropriate training. In addition, I shall outline what I take the appropriate training to be, one that makes use of the imaginative search for counterexamples, and which makes logical training a more practical enterprise. (shrink)

The approach to scientific methodology developed in my recent book The Logic of Reliable Inquiry (LRI) shares many general features with that summarized in Larry Laudan’s concurrently published collection of papers Beyond Positivism and Relativism (BPR). Nonetheless, this fact might not be apparent, as my own work emphasizes mathematical theorems, whereas Laudan’s draws primarily upon historiography. It is, therefore, of some interest to discuss the extent of the agreement and the significance of the differences. More generally, the discussion will (I) (...) provide a logical analysis of the instrumental significance of empirical meta-methodology and (II) redefine the role of logic in a post-positivistic, naturalized approach to epistemology and scientific method. (shrink)