A familiar image from the Roman world is a Pompeian portrait of a man and woman sometimes identified as Terentius Neo and his wife. He has a papyrus roll under his chin, while she looks out with a writing tablet in one hand, a stylus held to her lips in the other. The message of the attributes presented would seem to be: ‘ We can and do read and write’. But how should the message be interpreted? To judge from the (...) houses in which this and similar portraits were found, the couple was not of the elite decurion class, but belonged to that difficult to define group of varying social, economic and cultural statuses recently described by Keith Hopkins as ‘sub-elites’. Does the display of book and pen then reflect the social reality of the sub-elite orders of Pompeian society, or is the self-representation rather an expression of social pretension, with the couple attempting to emulate the Roman elite? If the latter is the case, what does the image say about the habits of the Roman ruling class? This question has been raised in relation to the issue of literacy, particularly women's literacy, but the image invites another question. (shrink)

Theories of culture and action, especially after the cognitive turn, have developed more complex understandings of how unconscious, embodied, internalized culture motivates action. As our theories have become more sophisticated, our methods for capturing these internal processes have not kept up and we struggle to adjudicate among theories of how culture shapes action. This article discusses what I call “productive” methods: methods that observe people creating a cultural object. Productive methods, I argue, are well suited for drawing out moments of (...) shared automatic cognition and resonance. To demonstrate the value of productive methods, I describe my method of asking focus group participants to devise and draw AIDS campaign posters collectively. I then 1) show how this productive method made visible distinct moments of both automatic and deliberative cognition, 2) offer an operational definition of resonance and demonstrate how the process of drawing revealed moments of resonance, and 3) suggest how this method allowed me to investigate the relationship between cognition and resonance and their effect on action. To conclude, I discuss strategies for using productive methods and advocate for their use in measuring culture. (shrink)

This paper analyses Heidegger’s controversial advancement of Husserl’s idea of philosophy and phenomenological research towards ‘the Being-Question’ and its relation to ‘Dasein’. It concentrates on Heidegger’s elision of Dilthey and Husserl’s different concepts of ‘Descriptive Psychology’ in his 1925 Summer Semester lecture-course, with Husserl’s concept losing out in the competition, as background to the formulation of ‘the Being-Question’ in Being and Time (1927). It argues that Heidegger establishes his own position within phenomenology on the basis of a partial appropriation of (...) Dilthey’s hermeneutical manner of thinking, an appropriation that was later radically called into question by Levinas on Diltheyean-hermeneutical-philosophical grounds. (shrink)

_In _Evidence, Politics, and Education Policy_, political scientists Lorraine M. McDonnell and M. Stephen Weatherford provide an original analysis of evidence use in education policymaking to help scholars and advocates shape policy more effectively._ The book shows how multiple types of evidence are combined as elected officials and their staffs work with researchers, advocates, policy entrepreneurs, and intermediary organizations to develop, create, and implement education policies. _Evidence, Politics, and Education Policy_ offers an in-depth understanding of the political environment in (...) which evidence is solicited and used. Two key case studies inform the book’s findings. The primary case—a major, multimethod study—examines the development and early implementation of the Common Core State Standards at the national level and in four states: California, Indiana, Massachusetts, and Tennessee. A comparative case analyzes the evidence used in Congressional hearings over the twenty-year history of the Children’s Health Insurance Program. Together, the two cases illustrate the conditions under which different types of evidence are used and, in particular, how federalism, the complexity of the policy problem, and the policy’s maturity shape evidence use. McDonnell and Weatherford focus on three leverage points for strengthening the use of research evidence in education policy: integrating research findings with value-based policy ideas; designing policies with incentives for research use built into their rules and organizational structures; and training policy analysts to promote the use of research in policymaking venues. (shrink)

Causal exclusion arguments are taken to threaten the autonomy of the special sciences, and the causal efficacy of mental properties. A recent line of response to these arguments has appealed to “independently plausible” and “well grounded” theories of causation to rebut key premises. In this paper I consider two papers which proceed in this vein and show that they share a common feature: they both require causes to be proportional to their effects. I argue that this feature is a bug, (...) and one that generalises: any attempt to rescue the autonomy of the special sciences, or the efficacy of the mental, from exclusion worries had better not look to proportionality for help. (shrink)

McDonnell, Justin The psychologist wishes to balance man psychologically. The spiritual father aims at his divinisation... the psychologist employs the method of questioning and listening and tries to make man aware of his problem and to mature psychologically. The spiritual father, illumined by the grace of God, locates the problem-which is the darkness of the nous-and tries to lead man to the theoria of God by the means of the Orthodox method of purification and illumination. The psychologist acts anthropocentrically (...) using thoughts and ideas. The spiritual father acts in a theocentric way. He uses the therapeutic method, but also the mysteries through which the heart receives the grace of God. (shrink)

This paper argues that a counterpart-theoretic treatment of events, combined with a counterfactual theory of causation, can help resolve three puzzles from the causation literature. First, CCT traces the apparent contextual shifts in our causal attributions to shifts in the counterpart relation which obtains in those contexts. Second, being sensitive to shifts in the counterpart relation can help diagnose what goes wrong in certain prominent examples where the transitivity of causation appears to fail. Third, CCT can help us resurrect the (...) much-maligned fragility response to the problems of late pre-emption by understanding fragility in counterpart-theoretic terms. Some reasons to prefer this CCT approach to rivals are discussed. (shrink)

It is commonly assumed that causation is transitive and in this paper I aim to reconcile this widely-held assumption with apparent evidence to the contrary. I will discuss a familiar approach to certain well-known counterexamples, before introducing a more resistant sort of case of my own. I will then offer a novel solution, based on Yablo’s proportionality principle, that succeeds in even these more resistant cases. There is a catch, however. Either proportionality is a constraint on which causal claims are (...) true, and the solution works, or it is not and causation is not transitive after all. I will argue that the first horn has unacceptable consequences and should be rejected, but that the second horn is less costly than it might initially appear. (shrink)

There are at least two different concepts that philosophers might target when analyzing causation: a pre-selective notion and a selective notion. This paper argues that these two distinct conceptions have been conflated to date, citing the puzzles of overdetermination, extensionality, and transitivity as evidence. The primary aim of the paper is to help reset the methodological scene concerning analyses of causation.

Le procédé de la détermination du Canon des Ecritures a été celui de l'identification par elle-même de la koinonia, même si le but immédiat était celui de la préservation de l'évangile. La koinonia, mode de participation à l'échange et la réciprocité de vie entre le Père, le Fils et le Saint-Esprit, de même que la relationalité ecclésiale entre les églises, bâties sur cette vie trinitaire rendue visible en Jésus-Christ par le pouvoir de l'Esprit, s'exprime dans la détermination du canon. Cette (...) expression historique se voit dans la perichoresis organique dans le vie de l'Eglise entre les critères pour inclusion dans le canon ; l'extension de l'apostolicité ecclésiale par une sorte de communicatio idiomatum des églises apostoliques aux églises non-apostoliques; la réciprocité et la mutualité entre canon et Eglise ; la participation et la relationalité des communions locales dans la communion des communions, à la fois par extension historique en arrière et extension géographique dans l'espace présent; l'exercice de la koinonia par l'activité synodale; le Saint-Esprit comme mémoire de l'Eglise. Comme la détermination du canon concerne toute la vie historique de l'Eglise, elle ne peut être ni défaite, ni refaite. (shrink)

Intuitively, an object is something that coheres internally and is largely independent of its environment. But what is the environment? Viewed at one scale, it surrounds and separates objects and differentiates them. Viewed at another scale, it is itself a collection of objects surrounded by environment. At all scales, we describe the world in terms of objects in an environment. I examine the nature of the environment and its role in mediating the object-subject relation. This dedicated analysis of the environment (...) provides a new perspective on the notion of objectivity. (shrink)

Are the objects and events that take place in Virtual Reality genuinely real? Those who answer this question in the affirmative are realists, and those who answer in the negative are irrealists. In this paper we argue against the realist position, as given by Chalmers (2017), and present our own preferred irrealist account of the virtual. We start by disambiguating two potential versions of the realist position—weak and strong— and then go on to argue that neither is plausible. We then (...) introduce a Waltonian variety of ictionalism about the virtual, arguing that this sort of irrealist approach avoids the problems of the realist positions, fits with a unifying theory of representational works, and offers a better account of the phenomenology of engaging in virtual experiences. (shrink)

Causal theories of action, perception and knowledge are each beset by problems of so-called ‘deviant’ causal chains. For each such theory, counterexamples are formed using odd or co-incidental causal chains to establish that the theory is committed to unpalatable claims about some intentional action, about a case of veridical perception or about the acquisition of genuine knowledge. In this paper I will argue that three well-known examples of a deviant causal chain have something in common: they each violate Yablos proportionality (...) constraint on causation. I will argue that this constraint provides the key to saving causal theories from deviant chains. (shrink)

A recent article has claimed that one of the significant benefits which people in the UK derive from the existence of the National Health Service must be lost if the Service adopts the QALY maximisation principle to allocate medical resources. The argument fails, partly because its author conflates two distinct benefits. The first is almost certainly important, but there is no reason to believe that it would be lost if the principle were introduced (while there is some reason to believe (...) that the benefit would actually be greater). The second, once it is isolated from others with which it may be confused, is much less obviously important; and in any case there is again no reason to believe that it would be lost. Moreover, to argue against the principle on the ground that the second benefit would disappear is really to beg the question against the principle. We could not justify our rejection of the principle on the ground that the principle's adoption would mean that we lost the second benefit. (shrink)

What is it for an event not to occur? This is an urgent, yet under explored, question for counterfactual analyses of causation quite generally. In this paper I take a lead from Lewis in identifying two different possible standards of non-occurrence that we might adopt and I argue that we need to apply them asymmetrically: one standard for the cause, another for the effect. This is a surprising result. I then offer a contextualist refinement of the Lewis approach in light (...) of initial problems, and discuss how the asymmetry remained hidden until now. I then relate the non-occurrence problem to issues of transitivity and proportionality in causation, before showing that a parallel problem exists for contrastivist and interventionist approaches to causation too. (shrink)

How can you steal something that doesn’t exist? This question confronts those of us who take an irrealist view of virtual objects and agree with the Supreme Court of the Netherlands that robbery took place when two boys used non-virtual violence to coerce a third boy into relinquishing his virtual amulet and mask. Here we outline this Puzzle of Virtual Theft, along with the closely related Puzzle of Virtual Value. After demonstrating how these puzzles are deeply problematic for the irrealist, (...) we go on to sketch a solution that not only circumscribes the puzzles but also offers a framework by which legal scholars can make sense within existing legal codes of the new phenomenon of virtual theft. (shrink)

This collection of essays presents a thorough explication of one of Deleuze's most difficult works, 'The Fold.'.

This paper offers two novel conceptual tools: one concerning the semantics of counterfactuals and what should be held fixed when assessing them (the modal moat), and the other concerning the pragmatics of counterfactual assertions and how to avoid the potential pitfalls of meaning more than we say (antecedent gluttony). These allow us to address existing issues with the assessment of backwards counterfactuals within a framework that applies equally to forwards cases. In addition to solving a thorny problem from the time (...) travel literature, what we learn teaches us something quite general about our evaluation of counterfactuals. (shrink)

ABSTRACTOn 28 October 2012, Savita Halappanavar, an Indian woman living in Ireland, died in hospital while under medical care for a miscarrying pregnancy. According to her husband, her repeated requests for an abortion were ignored because of the presence of a foetal heartbeat. Ms Halappanavar’s death was a critical event in the process leading to a referendum on 25 May 2018, when the Irish electorate voted to repeal the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution, removing the constitutional ban on abortion. The (...) name Savita has become indelibly linked to the changing course of abortion politics, so it is timely to reassess the role of the media in shaping the parameters of the debate about the impact of her death on the issue. This study presents a frame analysis of Irish newspapers in the weeks following her death, mapping the political, medical, legal and socio-ethical discourses, as well as the related contemporaneous events that set the agenda for the type of debate that was to follow. It identifies four media frames: Public Tragedy, Political Opportunity, Abortion Legacy and Maternal Health. Our central argument is that the overall effect of media framing provided much face-saving for politicians in the way that the legislative issue was viewed through a conservative party-political lens, despite public outrage. (shrink)

Deux assomptions ont été faites au sujet du refus du Pape Pie XII à aller au-delà de condamnations génériques de l'Holocauste Nazi. 1. La politique était dictée par peur de représailles contre les Catholiques et les Juifs. 2. La peur de représailles contre les Juifs était essentiellement une excuse pour ne rien faire ou rester au niveau de condamnations génériques. Mais les organisations juives elles-mêmes ont souvent cité la peur de représailles contre les Juifs comme la raison d'une restrainte dans (...) les déclarations publiques. Bien que la peur des représailles fut un élément formatif de la politique diplomatique du Vatican, la politique n'est pas venue de la peur, comme on peut le voir de l'histoire de condamnations génériques en d'autres contextes de guerre où les atrocités furent en jeu, entre autres en Arménie sous Benoît XV, en Espagne et Abyssinie sous Pie XI, de même qu'en Pologne et en Russie sous Pie XII. Deux fois Benoît XV fit un appel direct au Sultan de Turquie, mentionnant les Arménians spécifiquement trois fois, parlant de «souffrances indicibles», mais sans mentionner des noms personnels, des noms de lieu, des dates, des batailles. Bien que la condamnation resta générique, Benoît XV est considéré un héro national Arménien. Pendant la guerre civile en Espagne les républicains «incontrôlables» ont assassiné plus de cinq mille prêtres, moines et séminaristes pendant les trois premiers mois de la guerre et à la fin de. (shrink)

It is argued that mathematics is unreasonably effective in fundamental physics, that this is genuinely mysterious, and that it is best explained by a version of Pythagorean metaphysics. It is shown how this can be reconciled with the fact that mathematics is not always effective in real world applications. The thesis is that physical structure approaches isomorphism with a highly symmetric mathematical structure at very high energy levels, such as would have existed in the early universe. As the universe cooled, (...) its underlying symmetry was broken in a sequence of stages. At each stage, more forces and particles were differentiated, leading to the complexity of the observed world. Remnant structure makes mathematics effective in some real world applications, but not all. (shrink)

Whether there exist causal relations between guns firing and people dying, between pedals pressed and cars accelerating, or between carbon dioxide emissions and global warming, is typically taken to be a mind-independent, objective, matter of fact. However, recent contributions to the literature on causation, in particular theories of contrastive causation and causal modelling, have undermined this central causal platitude by relativising causal facts to models or to interests. This thesis flies against the prevailing wind by arguing that we must pay (...) greater attention to which elements of our causal talk vary with context and which elements track genuine features of the world around us. I will argue that once these elements are teased apart we will be in a position to better understand some of the most persistent problems in the philosophy of causation: pre-emption cases, absence causation, failures of transitivity and overdetermination. The result is a naturalist account of causation, concordant with the contextual variability we find in our ordinary causal talk, and parsimonious with respect to the theoretical entities posited. (shrink)

This book explores the persistence of Pythagorean ideas in theoretical physics. It shows that the Pythagorean position is both philosophically deep and scientifically interesting. However, it does not endorse pure Pythagoreanism; rather, it defends the thesis that mind and mathematical structure are the grounds of reality. The book begins by examining Wigner's paper on the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences. It argues that, whilst many issues surrounding the applicability of mathematics disappear upon examination, there are some core (...) issues to do with the effectiveness of mathematics in fundamental physics which remain. The core issues are the existence of the laws of nature and our minds ability to fathom them, the use of formal mathematics in discovering things about the quantum world, the fact that deep mathematics is needed to describe fundamental physics, and the asymptotic nature of the quest for knowledge. These issues are the focus of the book. The author seeks to explain them within a metaphysical framework that takes mind and mathematical structure as its fundamental principles. The framework - called quantum monadology - combines ideas from Leibnizian monadology, set theory, and consistent histories quantum theory. (shrink)

Although the prevalence of facial recognition-based COVID-19 surveillance tools and techniques, China does not have a facial recognition law to protect its residents’ facial data. Oftentimes, neither the public nor the government knows where people’s facial images are stored, how they have been used, who might use or misuse them, and to what extent. This reality is alarming, particularly factoring in the wide range of unintended consequences already caused by good-intentioned measures and mandates amid the pandemic. Biometric data are matters (...) of personal rights and national security. In light of worrisome technologies such as deep-fake pornography, the protection of biometric data is also central to the protection of the dignity of the citizens and the government, if not the industry as well. This paper discusses the urgent need for the Chinese government to establish rigorous and timely facial recognition laws to protect the public’s privacy, security, and dignity amid COVID-19 and beyond. (shrink)

Talk at the Philosophy [in:of:for:and] Digital Knowledge Infrastructures online workshop (08/09/2022).

La discussion sur la doctrine trinitaire d'Origène entraîne nécessairement des questions sur sa pneumatologie. Comme en ce qui concerne le Fils, Origène considère l'Esprit à partir de l'invisible Déité. Il s'appuie sur une logique du Logos : la théologie du Fils est normative pour celle de l'Esprit. Comme l'Eglise pré-nicéenne en général, Origène a un vocabulaire hérétique qui subordonne les trois personnes de la Trinité mais les textes en question sont davantage économiques qu'ontologiques. Selon lui, l'Esprit a-t-il un rôle inférieur (...) au Logos ? Sa pneumatologie est-elle trinitaire ? L'article tente une réponse à ces questions. (shrink)

This paper draws on insights from Jacques Rancière's writing on politics and aesthetics to offer new perspectives on debates in education and the arts. The paper addresses three debates in turn; the place of contemporary art in schools and gallery education, the role of art in democratic education and the blurring of boundaries between participatory art and community education. I argue that Rancière's work helps to illuminate some essentialist assumptions behind dichotomous arguments about contemporary art in the classroom—both over-hyped claims (...) about its value, and exaggerated fears about its threat to educational values alike. On democratic education I argue that his work highlights the importance of the aesthetic dimensions of democratic learning and, on art and community education, I issue caution against readings of Rancière's work that frame his contribution as a ‘rehabilitation‘ of the aesthetic. Although each debate is tackled discretely, the paper advances the overall argument that attention to equality in Rancière's work—both aesthetic and political—is vital when applying his philosophy to debates that occupy the boundaries of education, politics and art. (shrink)

This paper is about the relationship between actuality and potentiality. Two paradigms are considered: Leibnizian possible worlds, which is rooted in classical physics; and the consistent histories quantum theory of Griffiths, Gell-Mann, Hartle, and Omnès. I explore an interesting connection between these two paradigms. The analysis goes beyond a comparison of classical and quantum physics to consider how modern physics might be integrated into a more comprehensive view of the world, in the spirit of Leibniz’s own philosophy.