This essay examines two articles by Rex Stem about Cicero and Cato: ‘The First Eloquent Stoic and Cato the Younger’ and ‘Cicero as Orator and Political Philosopher: The Value of the Pro Murena for Ciceronian Political Thought’. It places these articles in dialogue and draws upon them to present an overarching argument about Cicero’s critique of Cato’s Stoicism. It also assesses their respective defenses of Roman republicanism, offering counterarguments to Cicero’s critique of Cato and underlining the ways in which the (...) two men were allies. (shrink)

Abstract Differing interpretations of the political thought of David Hume have tended to emphasize either conservative, gradualist elements similar to Burke or rationalist aspects similar to Hobbes. The concept of indirect utility as used by Hume reconciles these two approaches. Indirect utility is best illustrated by Hume's conception of justice, in contrast to his conception of benevolence, which yields direct benefits. This understanding of Hume's consequentialism also helps underscore certain egalitarian aspects of Hume's thought.

This book offers a systematic framework for thinking about the relationship between language and technology and an argument for interweaving thinking about technology with thinking about language. The main claim of philosophy of technology—that technologies are not mere tools and artefacts not mere things, but crucially and significantly shape what we perceive, do, and are—is re-thought in a way that accounts for the role of language in human technological experiences and practices. Engaging with work by Wittgenstein, Heidegger, McLuhan, Searle, Ihde, (...) Latour, Ricoeur, and many others, the author critically responds to, and constructs a synthesis of, three "extreme", idealtype, untenable positions: only humans speak and neither language nor technologies speak, only language speaks and neither humans nor technologies speak, and only technology speaks and neither humans nor language speak. The construction of this synthesis goes hand in hand with a narrative about subjects and objects that become entangled and constitute one another. Using Words and Things thus draws in central discussions from other subdisciplines in philosophy, such as philosophy of language, epistemology, and metaphysics, to offer an original theory of the relationship between language and technology centered on use, performance, and narrative, and taking a transcendental turn. (shrink)

Preface: help! my brainchild's been kidnapped! -- Intellectual misconduct: backwards, forward, and sideways -- The world of scholarship: rituals and rewards, norms and departures -- Structural and organizational causes of scholarly misconduct -- Cultural causes of scholarly misconduct -- Individual and situational causes of scholarly misconduct -- Scholarly misconduct as crime -- Criminological theory and scholarly crime -- Implications for theory and research -- Preventing and controlling scholarly crime -- Afterword: against all odds, a code is born.

In this paper, I deploy an argument that I have developed in a number of recent papers in the service of three projects. First, I show that the most influential version of legal positivism – that associated with H.L.A. Hart – fails. The argument’s engine is a requirement that a constitutive account of legal facts must meet. According to this rational-relation requirement, it is not enough for a constitutive account of legal facts to specify non-legal facts that modally determine the (...) legal facts. The constitutive determinants of legal facts must provide reasons for the obtaining of the legal facts (in a sense of “reason” that I develop). I show that the Hartian account is unable to meet this requirement. That officials accept a rule of recognition does not by itself constitute a reason why the standards specified in that rule are part of the law of the community. I argue that it is false that understanding the explanatory significance of officials’ acceptance of a rule is part of our reflective understanding of the nature of law. The second project of the paper is to respond to a family of objections that challenge me to explain why normative facts and descriptive facts together are better placed to provide reasons for legal facts than descriptive facts alone. A unifying theme of the objections is that explanations have to stop somewhere; descriptive facts, it is suggested, are no worse a stopping place than normative facts. Third, the paper spells out a consequence of the rational-relation requirement: if an account of what, at the most basic level, determines legal facts is true in any possible legal system, it is true in all possible legal systems. For example, if a Hartian account of legal facts is true in any possible legal system, it is true in all possible legal systems. I use this all-or-nothing result in my critique of a Hartian account, but the result is of interest in its own right. (shrink)

Lately, philosophers of mathematics have been exploring the notion of mathematical explanation within mathematics. This project is supposed to be analogous to the search for the correct analysis of scientific explanation. I argue here that given the way philosophers have been using “ explanation,” the term is not applicable to mathematics as it is in science.

Nursing has a considerable history of theory development but has consistently struggled to reconcile theoretical reality and practice realities. Many authors have attempted to reconcile what has been called the “theory–practice gap,” but the space where these two realities enmesh has remained problematic and contentious (Aimei, Macau Journal of Nursing, 14, 2015, 13; Factor, Matienzo, & de Guzman, Nurse Education Today, 57, 2017, 82). The idea of the theory–practice gap has a significant history in nursing, but also continues to have (...) a significant presence within nursing literature and mythology up to the present (Aimei, Macau Journal of Nursing, 14, 2015, 13). In this paper, the space between theoretic reality and practice reality, as evidenced by the theory–practice gap, will be examined. A Heideggerian perspective of “dwelling” (Heidegger, 1971, Poetry, language, thought, New York, NY: Harper Colophon) will be used as a guiding discourse to move nursing away from this classic tension between theory and practice, towards a perspective where theory and practice are woven together as part of one reality. (shrink)

The human spark -- Catch a fire -- The idea of you -- The idea of I -- Forbidden ideas -- Artful ideas -- Vast ideas -- Tight ideas -- Recurring ideas -- Future ideas.

For vocal animals, recognizing species-specific vocalizations is important for survival and social interactions. In humans, a voice region has been identified that is sensitive to human voices and vocalizations. As this region also strongly responds to speech, it is unclear whether it is tightly associated with linguistic processing and is thus unique to humans. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging of macaque monkeys (Old World primates, Macaca mulatta) we discovered a high-level auditory region that prefers species-specific vocalizations over other vocalizations and (...) sounds. This region not only showed sensitivity to the ‘voice’ of the species, but also to the vocal identify of conspecific individuals. The monkey voice region is located on the superior-temporal plane and belongs to an anterior auditory ‘what’ pathway. These results establish functional relationships with the human voice region and support the notion that, for different primate species, the anterior temporal regions of the brain are adapted for.. (shrink)

Tools are needed to benchmark carbon emissions and pledges against criteria of equity and fairness. However, standard economic approaches, which use a transparent optimization framework, ignore equity. Models that do include equity benchmarks exist, but often use opaque methodologies. Here we propose a utilitarian benchmark computed in a transparent optimization framework, which could usefully inform the equity benchmark debate. Implementing the utilitarian benchmark, which we see as ethically minimal and conceptually parsimonious, in two leading climate–economy models allows for calculation of (...) the optimal allocation of future emissions. We compare this optimum with historical emissions and initial nationally determined contributions. Compared with cost minimization, utilitarian optimization features better outcomes for human development, equity and the climate. Peak temperature is lower under utilitarianism because it reduces the human development cost of global mitigation. Utilitarianism therefore is a promising inclusion to a set of benchmarks for future explorations of climate equity. (shrink)

In this article, I discuss an argument that purports to prove that probability theory is the only sensible means of dealing with uncertainty. I show that this argument can succeed only if some rather controversial assumptions about the nature of uncertainty are accepted. I discuss these assumptions and provide reasons for rejecting them. I also present examples of what I take to..

Justice is a virtue that speaks to our time and has been sought and celebrated since it was conceptualized in ancient Greece. Foregrounding new and fascinating research in philosophy and psychology, as well as other empirical fields of study, the essays in this volume explore the breadth and significance of current understandings of justice, with an emphasis on justice as a virtue that individuals can cultivate in themselves and others.

It has been argued in the conservation literature that giving conservation absolute priority over competing interests would best protect the environment. Attributing infinite value to the environment or claiming it is ‘priceless’ are two ways of ensuring this priority (e.g. Hargrove 1989; Bulte and van Kooten 2000; Ackerman and Heinzerling 2002; McCauley 2006; Halsing and Moore 2008). But such proposals would paralyse conservation efforts. We describe the serious problems with these proposals and what they mean for practical applications, and we (...) diagnose and resolve some conceptual confusions permeating the literature on this topic. (shrink)

First published in 1991. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

One recent attempt to capture the content of physicalism involves characterising it negatively in terms of the non-mental. This thesis is criticised on the grounds that it fails to provide a sufficient condition for an adequate characterisation of physicalism, since, from a global physicalist perspective, it has both nothing to say about other so-called non-physical entities and fails to exclude them from the fundamental entities that such an account must posit. This latter problem is also faced by a more local (...) form of physicalism – one that restricts itself to just the mental domain. Some possible responses from the physicalist are briefly discussed and dismissed, and it is suggested that the physicalist must have some implicit idea of what she means by ‘the physical’, an idea which must amount to more than simply ‘the non-mental’. (shrink)

Introduction -- Algorithms, programs, procedures, and abstract automata -- Functioning of algorithms and automata, computation, and operations with algorithms and automata -- Basic postulates and axioms for algorithms -- Power of algorithms and classes of algorithms: comparison and evaluation -- Computing, accepting, and deciding modes of algorithms and programs -- Problems that people solve and related properties of algorithms -- Boundaries for algorithms and computation -- Software and hardware verification and testing -- Conclusion.

This chapter addresses some basic ethical questions about psychological operations. It defines PSYOP, then compares and contrasts it with both conventional military activities and contemporary information warfare. Then it briefly clarifies emerging public policy problems, outlines relevant legal particularities, and offers general policy considerations with regard to ethical considerations in its employment.

Beginning in the nineteenth century, mathematics' traditional domains of 'number and figure' became vigorously displaced by altered settings in which former verities became discarded as no longer sacrosanct. And these innovative recastings appeared everywhere, not merely within the familiar realm of the non-Euclidean geometries. How can mathematics retain its traditional status as a repository of necessary truth in the light of these revisions? The purpose of this Element is to provide a sketch of this developmental history.

This book scrutinizes recent work in phonological theory from the perspective of Chomskyan generative linguistics and argues that progress in the field depends on taking seriously the idea that phonology is best studied as a mental computational system derived from an innate base, phonological Universal Grammar. Two simple problems of phonological analysis provide a frame for a variety of topics throughout the book. The competence-performance distinction and markedness theory are both addressed in some detail, especially with reference to phonological acquisition. (...) Several aspects of Optimality Theory, including the use of Output-Output Correspondence, functionalist argumentation and dependence on typological justification are critiqued. The authors draw on their expertise in historical linguistics to argue that diachronic evidence is often mis-used to bolster phonological arguments, and they present a vision of the proper use of such evidence. Issues of general interest for cognitive scientists, such as whether categories are discrete and whether mental computation is probabilistic are also addressed. The book ends with concrete proposals to guide future phonological research.The breadth and depth of the discussion, ranging from details of current analyses to the philosophical underpinnings of linguistic science, is presented in a direct style with as little recourse to technical language as possible. (shrink)