In this article, we consider two independently appealing theories—the Growing-Block view and Humean Supervenience—and argue that at least one is false. The Growing-Block view is a theory about the nature of time. It says that past and present things exist, while future things do not, and the passage of time consists in new things coming into existence. Humean Supervenience is a theory about the nature of entities like laws, nomological possibility, counterfactuals, dispositions, causation, and chance. It says that none of (...) these entities are fundamental, since if they were, this would entail the existence of irreducible necessary connections between matters of fact. Instead, these entities supervene on a fundamental, non-nomological ‘Humean mosaic’ of property instances at spacetime points. We will further explain and motivate the Growing-Block view and Humean Supervenience in Sects. 2 and 3, but first, we turn to our master argument. (shrink)

Kevin M. Cahill reclaims one of Ludwig Wittgenstein's most passionately pursued endeavors: to reawaken a sense of wonder around human life and language and its mysterious place in the world. Following the philosopher's spiritual and cultural criticism and tying it more tightly to the overall evolution of his thought, Cahill frames an original interpretation of Wittgenstein's engagement with Western metaphysics and modernity, better contextualizing the force of his work. Cahill synthesizes several approaches to Wittgenstein's life and thought. He stresses (...) the nontheoretical aspirations of the philosopher's early and later writings, combining key elements from the so-called resolute readings of the _Tractatus_ with the "therapeutic" readings of _Philosophical Investigations_. Cahill shows how continuity in Wittgenstein's cultural and spiritual concerns informed if not guided his work between these texts, and in his reading of the _Tractatus_, Cahill identifies surprising affinities with Martin Heidegger's _Being and Time_--a text rarely associated with Wittgenstein's early formulations. In his effort to recapture wonder, Wittgenstein both avoided and undermined traditional philosophy's reliance on theory. As Cahill relates the steps of this bold endeavor, he forms his own innovative, analytical methods, joining historicist and contextualist approaches to text-based, immanent readings. The result is an original, sustained examination of Wittgenstein's thought. (shrink)

Kevin M. Graham argues that political philosophy cannot fully understand race-related injustice without shifting its focus away from distributive inequities between whites and nonwhites and toward white supremacy, the unfair power relationships that allow whites to dominate and oppress nonwhites. Graham's analysis of the racial politics of police violence and public education in Omaha, Nebraska, vividly illustrates why the pursuit of racial justice in the United States must move beyond redistribution.

Despite wide recognition of the importance of treating patients with respect and dignity, little is known about what constitutes treatment in this regard. The intensive care unit (ICU) is a unique setting that can pose specific threats to treatment with respect and dignity owing to the critical state of patients, stress and anxiety amongst patients and their family members, and the highly technical nature of the environment. In attempt to understand various stakeholders’ perspectives of treatment with respect and dignity, patients (...) and family members were interviewed, a wide range of health care professionals participated in focus groups, and third party observers took field notes of interactions in the ICU. This paper compares and contrasts the data that were generated using these different methods. Triangulating the data in this way contributes to a more complete and nuanced understanding of treatment with respect and dignity in the ICU. (shrink)

Heidegger's Being and Time is often interpreted as an important contribution to the canon of Existentialist philosophy. This popular interpretation is due largely to the theme of "authenticity" that is carefully developed in Division II. Here, Heidegger explains how we, as human beings, can temporarily sever ourselves from our bondage to a "fallen" public world by owning up to the anxious awareness of our inevitable death. It is in resolutely facing death that we can become individuals for the first time (...) and see through the illusions of stability and comfort that our roles in public life offer us. As "beings-towards-death" we can soberly come to grips with our finitude and bring this awareness back into our everyday lives, realizing and accepting that there is no security or permanence to our existence.But this existentialist interpretation fails to acknowledge the fundamental role that historicity plays in Heidegger's conception of authenticity. The experience of anxiety that can motivate us to authenticity and resoluteness is only initially an individuating experience. Our historicity determines the structure of our existence in such a way that the authentic human being is never an isolated individual . Human beings can never rebel against or overcome their own socio-cultural and historical world because they are always already interwoven to a specific historical situation. In this paper I will attempt to explain the relevance of historicist authenticity as a critical response to the common, existentialist interpretation. I will focus on the crucial role that one's historical background, in the sense of community and heritage, has on Heidegger's interpretation of authenticity. (shrink)

Originally published in 1984, The Image of the Middle Ages in Romantic and Victorian Literature looks at the impact of medievalism in the 18th and 19th centuries and the importance of post-Enlightenment literary religious medievalism. The book suggests that religious medievalism was not a superficial cultural phenomenon and that the romantic spirit with which it was chronologically connected, was intimately associated with the metaphysical. The book suggests that this belief gave birth to the metaphysical yearning and cultural expression of the (...) eighteenth and nineteenth century. The book seeks to clarify the post-Enlightenment relationship between aesthetic culture and 'aesthetic' religion, romanticism, medievalism and religious trends. (shrink)

In recent years there has been a noticeable yet largely unacknowledged ‘pragmatic turn’ in the scientific realism debate, inspired in part by van Fraassen’s work on ‘epistemic stances’. Features of this new approach include: an ascent to the meta-level (the focus is not so much on whether scientific realism is true, but on the prior questions of the nature of the positions in this debate, how to decide whether to be a scientific realist, etc.); a reinterpretation of scientific realism and (...) anti-realism as (or as closely associated with) stances or frameworks, rather than theories or beliefs; a move away from the previously dominant empirical-explanatory (i.e. quasi-scientific or naturalistic) conception of scientific realism, anti-realism, and their justification; and a stress on the pragmatic and values-based elements in the debate. The traditional scientific realism debate is concerned with determining which position is true, or most epistemically justified. The new approach by contrast is concerned with determining which position best serves certain values, e.g. is most useful, fruitful, or otherwise prudentially preferable. In this paper we try to bring together the various strands in this new orientation, summarise its key features, contrast it with superficially similar but opposing views, and explore the similarities and differences among some of its adherents. Given we are advocates of the turn, we also offer a defence of the value and fruitfulness of this reconceptualization of the debate. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Latina/o Social Ethics: Moving beyond Eurocentric Moral Thinking, and: Racism and God-Talk: A Latino/a PerspectiveKevin N. York-SimmonsLatina/o Social Ethics: Moving beyond Eurocentric Moral Thinking Miguel A. de La Torre, Waco Tex.: Baylor University Press, 2010. 160 pp. $24.95.Racism and God-Talk: A Latino/a Perspective Rubén Rosario Rodríguez New York: New York University Press, 2008. 320 pp. $24.00Although Latina/o theologians have contributed much to Christian moral discourse in recent decades, (...) the impact of these contributions has too often remained limited to other Latina/os and those with particular interests in liberation theologies. Miguel de La Torre and Rubén Rosario Rodríguez build on the contributions of theologians before them while challenging the broader theological community to take notice of these rich and provocative works.In four concise chapters, Miguel de La Torre’s Latina/o Social Ethics delivers a forceful criticism of prominent thinkers in the field of Christian ethics and offers a creative reconstruction of ethics from a Latina/o perspective. De La Torre offers a critique of “Euroamerican” Christian ethicists whose works have greatly influenced contemporary Christian moral discourse. He addresses the writings of Walter Rauschenbusch, Reinhold Niebuhr, Stanley Hauerwas, Anthony Campolo, Ron Sider, and Jim Wallis. De La Torre faults these theologians for the ways in which their moral thinking participates in the oppression and marginalization of Latina/os, either through their silence or through their endorsement of specific polices. De La Torre concludes that the legacy of cultural and economic privilege and the oppression of Latinas/os are so [End Page 199] deeply embedded in the Eurocentric thinking that has dominated the field of Christian ethics that it cannot be the foundation for Latino social ethics.De La Torre’s aim is to “move beyond” Eurocentric modes of thinking rather than dwell on critique. This eagerness to move forward to the creative and constructive aspects of Latina/o ethics, however, limits the forcefulness of his critique of Euroamerican ethicists. De La Torre’s reading of Euroamerican ethics—and even the application of that term—is highly selective, both in terms of the thinkers chosen and the writings examined. While De La Torre’s criticisms of these thinkers are generally insightful and serve to illustrate his basic criticism of Eurocentric ethics, these criticisms are limited in their depth of analysis. De La Torre is less concerned with the broader historical and theological considerations at work in these Euroamerican ethicists than with their failures to adequately address issues of concern to Latinas/os.The second half of Latina/o Social Ethics moves to his constructive, or “reconstructive,” project. De La Torre reviews central concepts in the methodology of Latina/o social ethics, including lo cotidiano, nepantla, la lucha, en conjunto, and acompañamiento. De La Torre’s explanation of these terms is brief and accessible. Moving beyond these concepts, the fourth chapter of Latina/o Social Ethics offers a creative approach to a liberative ethics that draws on Christian tradition as well as broader Hispanic cultural resources, including folk characters and themes of the trickster found in Afro-Caribbean religious traditions. De La Torre addresses the concern for how to imagine a Christian ethics with a role for the trickster, including identifying trickster characters and themes in the Bible. His “disruptive ethics” challenges the preference for order over justice that has characterized Eurocentric ethics, for which he provides helpful examples. De La Torre is clearly concerned with imperialism, immigration, and free trade, yet it is unclear what justice means in those contexts. Perhaps due to the powerlessness of marginalized Latina/os, criticisms of injustice weigh far more heavily than visions of justice.The concise length of this book broadens its appeal. Academics unfamiliar with some of the concepts and methodologies of Latina/o theologians will find this short introduction a useful starting point. This provocative book would also be a welcome addition to the classroom, either in part or in its entirety.In contrast to De La Torre’s short work, Rubén Rosario Rodríguez sets a broader and more ambitious task in his Racism and God-Talk. His project... (shrink)

Magical ersatzism is the view that possible worlds are primitive abstract entities. In On the Plurality of Worlds, David Lewis presented what appeared to many to be a devastating argument against magical ersatzism. In this paper, I show that Lewis’ central argument does not succeed. Magical ersatzism remains a viable theory of possible worlds.

The instrumental classification of depression made possible by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual and the widespread pharmacological approach to treatment in mainstream biopsychiatry has generated a cottage industry of criticism. This paper explores the potential shortcomings of the DSM/bio-psychiatric model and introduces the value of philosophical counseling—specifically by means of integrating the insights of Existentialism and Buddhism—as a way to overcome a number of diagnostic and methodological problems. Philosophical counseling, in this regard, is not overly concerned with the objective question (...) of “What we are?” as biophysical beingswith overt behaviors but with a more fundamental question, namely, “How we are?” that is, how do we experience our existence as finite, impermanent beings, how does this experience shape and determine depressive episodes, and how can we come to accept our own finitude and impermanence? (shrink)

One of the traditional metaphysical assumptions that Heidegger's Being and Time challenges is that the disembodied 'theoretical' standpoint has priority over the embodied 'practical' standpoint. Heidegger argues that any act of theoretical reflection is derivative of pre-reflective social practices that we are "always already" familiar with. Some contemporary critics insist they are continuing this project by exploring aspects of our concrete practices that Heidegger's analysis allegedly overlooks, particularly by focusing on the role that the body plays in everyday life. In (...) this dissertation, I address these criticisms and suggest that they contribute to Heidegger's project only on the ontic level and in no way diminish the original contribution of his philosophy. Heidegger is not overly concerned with regional investigations into the various ways that human beings meaningfully encounter things in the world. Heidegger is concerned with the being of beings , with fundamental ontology, which asks the question: "How come meaning?" Or, put in another way, "What are the conditions for the possibility of any meaning, any intelligibility whatsoever?" ;For Heidegger, human existence as Dasein is, ultimately, neither a body-subject with emotions, perceptions, instincts, or social habits nor a self-enclosed mind. Rather, Dasein is more like a 'mass' term, referring to a shared, unfolding background of cultural relations: norms, customs, institutions, historical events, and equipment. This public background is already "there," prior to the appearance of the body, and it is structured temporally, constituting a horizon, "clearing" , or "space of free play" in terms of which things can show up as meaning something to me. I argue that it is only by means of this prior clearing of intelligibility that I can make sense of my embodied practices and that bodies can initially emerge-into-presence as the kind of things that they are. (shrink)

Essential reading for students and researchers of existentialism and phenomenology, and also of interest to those studying ethics, philosophy and gender, philosophy of race, the emotions and philosophical issues in health and illness as well as related disciplines such as Literature, Sociology, and Political Theory.

Nine essays based on a series of public talks held in Melbourne in 1988. The contributors and the editor are academics and writers. They look at the work of such people as Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault in terms of writing, reading and social context. Includes a symposium on uses of recent French theory and an index.

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The Shipwreck of the Richmond and the Duty to Rescue The Ethics of Global Access to Essential Medicines Conclusion References.

What is the relation between the intentionality of states and attitudes which can miss their mark, such as belief and desire, and the intentionality of acts, states and attitudes which cannot miss their mark, such as the different types of knowledge and simple seeing? Two theories of the first type of intentionality, the theory of correctness conditions and the theory of satisfaction conditions, are compared. It is argued that knowledge always involves knowledge of formal objects such as facts and values, (...) that emotions are reactions to (apparently) known values and that beliefs are reactions to known or apparently known facts or to the objects of relational states. (shrink)

Postmodern view of Australian multiculturalism. Discusses the ways in which identity and imagery merge and interact in a multicultural society, within a postmodern theoretical framework, and examines topics such as liberalism and multiculturalism, and cultural postmodernity. Includes chapter notes, a bibliography and an index. Clark is director of the Institute of Ethics and Public Policy at Monash University, Forbes is professor of geography at Flinders University of South Australia, and Francis is a postgraduate student at Monash University. The contributors (...) include sociologists, literary theorists, geographers and a philosopher. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 7, July 2020, Page 177-180.

This book examines the most significant metaphors of modern political philosophy: the state of nature and the social contract. Each of the main chapters is dedicated to the political theory of the different social contract thinkers and the ways they articulated the uniquely liberal view of equality and freedom. The last chapter, unique to most books that explore the social contract, highlights the recent challenges to these views. It is this balance between accepted contractarian ideas and their critiques that makes (...) it a unique contribution to the field of political philosophy. (shrink)

We see no grounds for insisting that, because the concept natural number is abstract, its foundations must be innate. It is possible to specify domain general learning processes that feed into more abstract concepts of numerical infinity. By neglecting the messiness of children's slow acquisition of arithmetical concepts, Rips et al. present an idealized, unnecessarily insular, view of number development.

Through most of the history of economics, the most influential commentators on methodology were also eminent practitioners of economics. And even not so long ago, it was so. Milton Friedman, Paul Samuelson, Trygve Haavelmo, and Tjalling Koopmans were awarded Nobel prizes for their substantive contributions to economics, and were each important contributors to methodological thought. But the fashion has changed. Specialization has increased. Not only has methodology become its own field, but many practitioners have come to agree with Frank Hahn's (...) (1992) view that methodology is a distraction to the practitioner, best left to the professional methodologists and philosophers, and of little practical import even when delivered from their pens. John Sutton's lectures, Marshall's Tendencies: What Economists Can Know, is a welcome return to the older fashion, for Sutton is an eminent practitioner of game theory and industrial organization. One of the main themes of these rich and nuanced lectures is the relationship of economic theory to econometric evidence. Sutton's reflections on econometrics appear to arise from the darker recesses of his practitioner's soul. While he affects a sunny disposition and ends on a hopeful note, his analysis articulates the lurking fear that econometrics is a hopeless project and that economics has little to learn from the interaction of theory and econometrics. Sutton's book is like a play in which virtue triumphs, but the villain gets all the good lines. (shrink)

Jean-Luc Nancy identifies Rousseau as the first to conceive community as a lost state of immediacy and transparency. Rousseau’s conception has allegedly shaped the western ideal of an immanent community. Nancy deconstructs that ideal, arguing that immanence would suppress community; its oneness would block the being-with which enables our ontological being-in-common. This article argues that Rousseau never posits a lost community but actually explores, like Nancy, the political closure of immanence. Man’s distinguishing trait of perfectibility, which renders him finite, always (...) open to change for better or worse, rejects the self-enclosure of immanence as does the constant willing of the general will which defines a community’s political life. If citizens could form an immanent whole, they would have nothing left to will, reaching an inhuman situation without liberty, reflection and responsibility. A community’s vitality, as Rousseau’s discussion of Poland suggests, does not come from closure to th.. (shrink)

A timely book that uses science fiction to provoke reflection and discussion on philosophical issues From the nature of mind to the ethics of AI and neural enhancement, science fiction thought experiments fire the philosophical imagination, encouraging us to think outside of the box about classic philosophical problems and even to envision new ones. Science Fiction and Philosophy explores puzzles about virtual reality, transhumanism, whether time travel is possible, the nature of artificial intelligence, and topics in neuroethics, among other timely (...) issues. This thought-provoking volume is suitable for students and general readers but also examines new and more advanced topics of interest to seasoned philosophers and scientists. Susan Schneider is Assistant Professor in the department of philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania and an Affiliated Faculty Member at the Institutes for Research in Cognitive Science and Center for Cognitive Neuroscience. (shrink)