This book uses a theory of cyborg semiotics to explore the similarities between language and cyborgs in their formation, interpretation, and relationships. This intersectional theory provides a unique perspective on power and the human condition.

A growing literature testifies to the persistence of place as an incorrigible aspect of human experience, identity, and morality. Place is a common ground for thought and action, a community of experienced particulars that avoids solipsism and universalism. It draws us into the philosophy of the ordinary, into familiarity as a form of knowledge, into the wisdom of proximity. Each of these essays offers a philosophy of place, and reminds us that such philosophies ultimately decide how we make, use, and (...) understand places, whether as accidents, instruments, or fields of care. (shrink)

The assumption of materialism Howard Robinson believes is false.

No word is more central to the contemporary political imagination and action than ‘resistance'. In its various manifestations - from the armed guerrilla to Gandhian mass pacifist protest, from Wikileaks and the Arab Spring to the global eruption and violent repression of the Occupy movement - concepts of resistance are becoming ubiquitous and urgent. In this book, Howard Caygill conducts the first ever systematic analysis of ‘resistance': as a means of defying political oppression, in its relationship with military violence (...) and its cultural representation. Beginning with the militaristic doctrine of Clausewitz and the evolution of a new model of guerrilla warfare to resist the forces of Napoleonic France, On Resistance elucidates and critiques the contributions of seminal resistant thinkers from Marx and Nietzsche to Mao, Gandhi, Sartre and Fanon to identify continuities of resistance and rebellion from the Paris Commune to the Greenham Women's Peace Camp. Employing a threefold line of inquiry, Caygill exposes the persistent discourses through which resistance has been framed in terms of force, violence, consciousness and subjectivity to evolve a critique of resistance. Tracing the features of resistance, its strategies, character and habitual forms throughout modern world history Caygill identifies the typological consistencies which make up resistance. Finally, by teasing out the conceptual nuances of resistance and its affinities to concepts of repression, reform and revolution, Caygill reflects upon contemporary manifestations of resistance to identify whether the 21st century is evolving new understandings of protest and struggle. (shrink)

The late 20th century saw great movement in the philosophy of language, often critical of the fathers of the subject-Gottlieb Frege and Bertrand Russell-but sometimes supportive of (or even defensive about) the work of the fathers. Howard Wettstein's sympathies lie with the critics. But he says that they have often misconceived their critical project, treating it in ways that are technically focused and that miss the deeper implications of their revolutionary challenge. Wettstein argues that Wittgenstein-a figure with whom the (...) critics of Frege and Russell are typically unsympathetic-laid the foundation for much of what is really revolutionary in this late 20th century movement. The subject itself should be of great interest, since philosophy of language has functioned as a kind of foundation for much of 20th century philosophy. But in fact it remains a subject for specialists, since the ideas are difficult and the mode of presentation is often fairly technical. In this book, Wettstein brings the non-specialist into the conversation (especially in early chapters); he also reconceives the debate in a way that avoids technical formulation. The Magic Prism is intended for professional philosophers, graduate students, and upper division undergraduates. (shrink)

Although the physician’s use and misuse of power have been discussed in the social sciences and in literature, they have never been explored in medical ethics until now. In this book, Dr. Howard Brody argues that the central task is not to reduce the physician’s power, as others have suggested, but to develop guidelines for its use, so that the doctor shares with the patient both information and the responsibility for deciding on appropriate treatment. Dr. Brody first reviews literary (...) works dealing with medical power, from Dostoevsky’s “The Grand Inquisitor” to stories by William Carlos Williams, Vonda McIntyre, and Richard Selzer. These works, he shows, reveal the healers’ ambivalence over their own powers and patients’ fears of the abuse of power. Dr. Brody then points out important but neglected ethical issues that emerge from an analysis of power, such as the tension between care of individual patients and the pressures of the doctor’s workload; the rescue fantasy that impels some physicians to extraordinary lengths to save a life; and the economic system, which rewards surgeons and other specialists more than it does physicians who spend time talking with patients about their problems. He also shows how the perspective of shared power can shed new light on standard topics in medical ethics—from informed consent and confidentiality to resource allocation and cost containment. (shrink)

In this volume of essays, Howard Wettstein explores the foundations of religious commitment. His orientation is broadly naturalistic, but not in the mode of reductionism or eliminativism. This collection explores questions of broad religious interest, but does so through a focus on the author's religious tradition, Judaism. Among the issues explored are the nature and role of awe, ritual, doctrine, religious experience; the distinction between belief and faith; problems of evil and suffering with special attention to the Book of (...) Job and to the Akedah, the biblical story of the binding of Isaac; the virtue of forgiveness. One of the book's highlights is its literary approach to theology that at the same time makes room for philosophical exploration of religion. Another is Wettstein's rejection of the usual picture that sees religious life as sitting atop a distinctive metaphysical foundation, one that stands in need of epistemological justification. (shrink)

Kendler addresses three basic and interrelated questions that face all psychologists: What is the subject matter of psychology? What are the criteria for understanding psychological events? What ethical principles underlie the use of psychological knowledge? "[The book's] structure.... only hints at the literate and responsible handling of these current issues.... [it] would be enjoyable to use in teaching." --Psychological Report.

This book is collection of published and unpublished essays on the philosophy of religion by Howard Wettstein.

"Now we can join Gandhi and Tolstoy and nameless others who encountered this vigorous and invigorating book. Welcome to a company of radicals who believed we could and should stop eating non-human animals. They brought vegetarianism out of history and into the here and now." -- from the introductionEthical vegetarianism is no recent development, as this unrivaled historical anthology dramatizes. When it was first published 120 years ago, countless people read and endorsed The Ethics of Diet. But then it became (...) a rare book, hard to find even in libraries. For countless more readers, it is at last available again. In this classic of vegetarian writing, Howard Williams presents a line of thought, a continuous thread, a tradition, a catena of protestation against living on "Butchery." What he finds striking is the variety of the witnesses, the prophets of "Reformed Dietetics" who have "shrunk from the rgime of blood," including Gautama Buddha, Pythagoras, Plato, Hesiod, Epicurus, Seneca, Ovid, Thomas More, Montaigne, Mandeville, Pope, Voltaire, Swedenborg, Wesley, Rousseau, Shelley, Byron, Lamar-tine, Michelet, Bentham, Sinclair, Schopenhauer, and Thoreau. Their words are accompanied by the vigorous narrative voice of Williams himself, who put to rest, once and for all, the idea that vegetarianism is a fad. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:RUSSELL AND WHITEHEAD ON THE PROCESS OF GROWTH IN EDUCATION1 HOWARD WOODHOUSE Educational Foundations / University of Saskatchewan Saskatoon, Sask., Canada S7N owo 1. RUSSELL, WHITEHEAD, AND PROCESS PHILOSOPHY W ere there no similarities between the philosophies of education of Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead, one would want to know why. Russell, after all, was Whitehead 's student as an undergraduate at Cambridge, his colleague and collaborator (...) for a dozen years working on the manuscript of Pri1!cipia Mathematica published in three volumes from 1910 to 1913, as well as his friend. Moreover, it was the sight of Whitehead's wife, Evelyn, in paroxysms of pain that prompted Russell's mystical experience in 1901, during which he tells us that he became a humanist, pacifist, and advocate of free schooling.2 In this paper, I consider the question of whether or not Russell's account of the process of growth in education is compatible with that of Whitehead. The question is important because it enables one to 1 Presented ar the annual meeting of rhe Association of Process Philosophy of Education, American Philosophical Association Central Division Meeting, Chicago, 25-7 April 1991. Brian Hendley was the respondent. I would like to thank the audience for its penetrating questions, as well as Don Cochrane, Brian Hendley, John McMurtry and Viola Safr for their comments on an earlier draft. 2 Auto., I: 149. For a psychoanalytic interpretation of Russell's "mystical illumination ", see Bennett and Nancy Simon, "The Pacifist Turn: an Episode of Mystic Illumination in Russell's Life", Russell, no. 13 (Spring 1974): Il-12, 17-24. Jo Vellacott believes that the term "pragmatic pacifist" more accurately desctibes Russell's ". Russell and Whitehead on the Process ofGrowth. 139 Whitehead the precise investigation of the natural world. Both the logical method and the precision of ideas that are learned in mathematics form the foundations of science and philosophy. Indeed, the structures of the physical world mirror those of mathematics, since they, too, are based upon relations among entities.1O The kind of understanding afforded by mathematics, therefore, is also the basis of philosophy, since it puts students in contact with long-lasting ideas having fundamental value, and enables them to gain a kind of liberation from the concerns of the everyday world. (2) Both Russell and Whitehead uphold the idea· that science is based on those kinds of sense-experience to which human beings have ready access (colours, sounds, smells, and observable objects, etc.).II The problem facing science at this point is to show how its generalizations are based upon these experiences. For Russell, induction fails because we can never prove the principle on the basis of experience without thereby begging the question.I:'- This is because the prin~iple of induction appeals to the future or to those unexperienced parts of the past or present with which we are not acquainted. As a result, Russell prefers to adopt a hypothetico-deductive method by which it is possible· to move from the sense-experience of everyday life to a systematic understanding of the structures of the universe. In this way, science is able to progress by means of "an application of mathematical probability to premisses arrived at independently of induction."I3 Whitehead also argues for the need for "careful scrutiny" in the manner in which we infer the existence of "the physical world [which] is, in some general sense of the term, a deduced concept."I4 In other words, like Russell, he prefers a more deductive kind of approach, suggesting that the theory of induction is the despair of philosophy.I5 10 Whitehead, The Aims ofEducation, pp. 82, 84, 89, 134, 155-7. Russell, PoM, pp. 448-9,471; PLA in LK, p. 207. II Russell, "The Relation of Sense-Data to Physics" in Mysticism and Logic, pp. 145-79. Whitehead, of course, also includes feelings as integrating features of sense experience that allow us to relate the diverse elements of such experience into a unitary whole; see Process and Reality (New York: Free P., 1969), p. 244 and Part III. 12 Russell, PP, Chap. 6. His argument is mirrored by Whitehead, op. cit., pp. 235-6. lJ Russell, HK, p... (shrink)

PETER GARDENFORS, Knowledge in flux: modeling the dynamics of epistemic states. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1988. viii + 262 pp. £24.75.

I argue that theological doctrine, the output of philosophical theology, is not a natural tool for thinking about biblical/rabbinic Judaism. Fundamental to my argument is the claim that there is a tension between constellations of theological doctrine of medieval vintage and the primary religious literature---the Hebrew Bible as understood through, and supplemented by, the Rabbis of the Talmud. This tension is a product of the genesis of philosophical theology, the application of Greek philosophical thought to a very different tradition, one (...) that emerged from a very different world. (shrink)

Both Hobbes and Kant tackle the issue of natural right in a radical and controversial way. They both present systematic, secular theories of natural law in a highly religious age. Whereas Hobbes transforms natural right by placing the rational individual bent on self-preservation at the centre of political philosophy, Kant transforms natural right by putting the metaphysical presuppositions of his critical philosophy at the heart of his reasoning on politics. Neither attempts to provide an orthodox view of natural right as (...) directly or indirectly derived from God's commands, although subsequent to their philosophical deduction as natural rights or laws both do not entirely repudiate the idea that these rights or laws can be portrayed as having divine support. (shrink)

Recently, as I have become more computer-literate, I have noticed some interesting parallels between computer mechanisms and Aquinas’ metaphysics of angelic faculties. The present essay expands on some of the analogies which Aquinas himself, though no proponent of AI theory, might have found interesting.

A reexamination of democracy, which during the eighteenthcentury Enlightenment seemed to offer a much-desired escape from arbitrary class structures and oppressive governments, but has not proven to be a sure formula or a simple solution. An awareness of the true complexities of democracy requires an understanding of a perennial dialectic residing at the heart of democracy, and manifesting itself in specific dialectical relationships: between elitism and populism, liberty and equality, smallness and bigness, religion and secular life, politics and economics, etc. (...) This book argues that such dialectical relationships, originally most explicit in particular nations, are also manifest in international relations. (shrink)

Like Henry Harris, I began doing intensive research on Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit in the mid-sixties. I recall going through all the chapters as a graduate student during one academic year, and looking around for commentaries. The only English-language commentary available was Loewenberg's Hegel's Phenomenology: Dialogues in the Life of Mind, which was suggestive of the dialectic taking place in the book, but not much help in getting over the “rough spots”. This gave me an incentive to work through Jean (...) Hyppolite's commentary, not yet translated into English, with my basic reading-knowledge of French. My 1976 Hegel's Phenomenology, Part I: Analysis and Commentary was one of the first in a long line of Anglophone commentaries. Harris in his introduction to Vol. I. mentions this effort at “analysis”, along with Findlay's “analysis” accompanying the 1977 Miller translation of the Phenomenology, as incentives for the inclusion of his own improved running analysis in the present commentary. I have included discussions of numerous partial or complete commentaries on Hegel's Phenomenology in review articles published in 1971 in the American Philosophical Quarterly and Teorema, in 1979 in the American Philosophical Quarterly, and in 1981 in Hegel-Studien. Harris has the advantage of producing the most recent of all these commentaries, and in a way offers us a compendium of everything that has been done on the Phenomenology. His analysis and commentary includes a survey of the literature, in which almost all previous laborers in the field can find themselves commended or criticized in the endnotes. Thus I find comments like “Kainz has completely misunderstood the argument here”, “This is a point which Kainz has grasped more definitely than most commentators”, “[Kainz] does not deserve the brickbat Flay hurls at him”, and so forth. Other commentators, living and dead – Flay, Pöggeler, Navickas, Kenneth and Merold Westphal, Heidegger, Lauer, Werner Becker, Kojève, Wahl, Hyppolite, Labarrière, Bonsiepen, Forster, Shklar, Solomon, Werner Marx, and Robert Williams — are similarly discussed and critiqued. For some of us Anglophone commentators, such remarks may seem like red marks on essays from a patient professor. But certainly no one will mind, since Harris has spent more time and energy on this very specialized project than any of us. In fact, some former commentators almost have a “conflict of interest” in reviewing Harris' work, since so many of us have benefited at various points in our research from Harris' personal support and criticism. But in academics, as in life, mentors cannot always be assured of loyalty. (shrink)

Her importance seems to hinge on the fact that she is both a symbol and a historical reality.

Listening for God proceeds from the author's belief that, across a wide spectrum of outlooks, people are attracted to religion, yet wary of it.

Preparative and analytical methods developed by separation scientists have played an important role in the history of molecular biology. One such early method is gel electrophoresis, a technique that uses various types of gel as its supporting medium to separate charged molecules based on size and other properties. Historians of science, however, have only recently begun to pay closer attention to this material epistemological dimension of biomolecular science. This paper substantiates the historiographical thread that explores the relationship between modern laboratory (...) practice and the production of scientific knowledge. It traces the historical development of gel electrophoresis from the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s, with careful attention to the interplay between technical developments and disciplinary shifts, especially the rise of molecular biology in this time-frame. Claiming that the early 1950s marked a decisive shift in the evolution of electrophoretic methods from moving boundary to zone electrophoresis, I reconstruct various trajectories in which scientists such as Oliver Smithies sought out the most desirable solid supporting medium for electrophoretic instrumentation. Biomolecular knowledge, I argue, emerged in part from this process of seeking the most appropriate supporting medium that allowed for discrete molecular separation and visualization. The early 1950s, therefore, marked not only an important turning point in the history of separation science, but also a transformative moment in the history of the life sciences as the growth of molecular biology depended in part on the epistemological access to the molecular realm available through these evolving technologies. (shrink)

Journal Name: Apeiron Issue: Ahead of print.

The Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee is entrusted with assessing the ethics of proposed projects prior to approval of animal research. The role of the IACUC is detailed in legislation and binding rules, which are in turn inspired by the Three Rs: the principles of Replacement, Reduction, and Refinement. However, these principles are poorly defined. Although this provides the IACUC leeway in assessing a proposed project, it also affords little guidance. Our goal is to provide procedural and philosophical clarity (...) to the IACUC without mandating a particular outcome. To do this, we analyze the underlying logic of the Three Rs and conclude that the Three Rs accord animals moral standing, though not necessarily “rights” in the philosophical sense. We suggest that the Rs are hierarchical, such that Replacement, which can totally eliminate harm, should be considered prior to Reduction, which decreases the number of animals harmed, with Refinement being considered last. We also identify the need for a hitherto implicit fourth R: Reject, which allows the IACUC to refuse permission for a project which does not promise sufficient benefit to offset the pain and distress likely to be caused by the proposed research. (shrink)

In I 7 Aristotle lays down criteria for what is to count as human happiness. Happiness for man is self-sufficient , complete without qualification , peculiar to humans , excellent , and best and most complete . Many interpreters agree that in X 6–8 Aristotle uses these along with other criteria to disqualify the life of amusement and rank one happy life above another.