In the course of a discussion about the future of philosophy teaching in Russian higher education, Mamardashvili explains his conception of philosophy and how it can be learned.

Education has recently been shaped by the cognitive science of memory. In turn, the science of memory has been infused by revolutionary ideas found in Wittgenstein’s works. However, the memory science presently applied to education draws mainly on traditional models that are quickly becoming outmoded; Wittgenstein’s insights have yet to be fruitfully applied, though they have helped to develop the science of memory. In this chapter, I examine three Wittgensteinian reforms in memory science as they pertain to education . First, (...) Wittgenstein has inspired a particular strain of enactive models of memory and cognition, with important implications for theories of situated learning in education. Second, researchers have begun modeling memory as public practice , which deeply informs, inter alia, fraught theoretical discussions of assessment. Third, a number of memory researchers have rejected models based on a stored trace, a fundamental, Wittgensteinian revision with broad implications for characterizations of learning. (shrink)

Animals, Equality and Democracy examines the structure of animal protection legislation and finds that it is deeply inequitable, with a tendency to favor those animals the community is most likely to see and engage with. Siobhan O'Sullivan argues that these inequities violate fundamental principle of justice and transparency.

Study of Umāsvātī's Tattvārthādhigamasūtra, 2nd century aphoristic work, with autocommentary, on the basic tenets of Jaina philosophy.

Counterfactual theories propose that people’s capacity for causal judgment depends on their ability to consider alternative possibilities: The lightning strike caused the forest fire because had it not struck, the forest fire would not have ensued. To accommodate a variety of psychological effects on causal judgment, a range of recent accounts have proposed that people probabilistically sample counterfactual alternatives from which they compute a graded measure of causal strength. While such models successfully describe the influence of the statistical normality (i.e., (...) the base rate) of the candidate and alternate causes on causal judgments, we show that they make further untested predictions about how normality influences people’s confidence in their causal judgments. In a large (N = 3,020) sample of participants in a causal judgment task, we found that normality indeed influences people’s confidence in their causal judgments and that these influences were predicted by a counterfactual sampling model in which people are more confident in a causal relationship when the effect of the cause is less variable among imagined counterfactual possibilities. (shrink)

Classicism in architecture and literature; Turkey; history.

Edmund Burke, long considered modern conservatism's founding father, is also widely believed to be an opponent of empire. However, Daniel O'Neill turns that latter belief on its head. This fresh and innovative book shows that Burke was a passionate supporter and staunch defender of the British Empire in the eighteenth century, whether in the New World, India, or Ireland. Moreover--and against a growing body of contemporary scholarship that rejects the very notion that Burke was an exemplar of conservatism--O'Neill demonstrates that (...) Burke's defense of empire was in fact ideologically consistent with his conservative opposition to the French Revolution. Burke's logic of empire relied on two opposing but complementary theoretical strategies: Ornamentalism, which stressed cultural similarities between "civilized" societies, as he understood them, and Orientalism, which stressed the putative cultural differences distinguishing "savage" societies from their "civilized" counterparts. This incisive book also shows that Burke's argument had lasting implications, as his development of these two justifications for empire prefigured later intellectual defenses of British imperialism"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

Many egalitarians believe that there is a pro tanto reason to remedy inequalities of opportunity in access to higher education. This consensus, I argue, masks practical disagreement among egalitarians: in many real-world choice contexts, egalitarians will disagree about which policies are to be endorsed, both from the point of view of equality and all things considered. I focus my discussion on a real-world case (the ‘big squeeze’ – so-called because the children of welloff families ‘squeeze out’ the children of less (...) well-off families from access to highly selective US universities) that has recently been discussed by Amy Gutmann. I argue that while (a) the ‘big squeeze’ is condemned by the ideal of equal opportunity, nevertheless (b) different egalitarians will favor different policies in response to the ‘big squeeze’, and (c) one intuitive, and apparently egalitarian, response lacks support from most plausible egalitarian views. (shrink)

In §1 I reply to Jairo’s objections to my account of truth and falsity showing that my account of falsity does not imply that false sentences refer to something. In §2 I argue that Jairo’s main objection to my account of propositions as abstract properties is based on a misunderstanding concerning the purpose of this account. In §3 I examine Jairo’s suggestion that contradictory sentences can be said to describe possible states of affairs.

The World abounds with infinite crimes, technogenic accidents, acts of nature, etc. And very often, speaking about infringement of laws, use a word "anarchy". In consciousness of one people this concept associates with fear, personifies something mad, uncontrollable, and not giving in to the control. In consciousness ofothers - it means permissiveness, impunity for any acts and even crimes. The philosopher, in my opinion, is the avocate of a historical value and validity. And consequently it is necessary to observe these (...) principles in relation to any concept or the theory. The philosophical, political doctrine of anarchism sets as the purpose clearing of the person of pressure of any authorities and any forms of economic, political and spiritual authority. Aspiration to anarchy as thementality, meets already at cinics and in early christianity, and also in chiliastic sects of the Middle Ages. Occurrence of the philosophical theory of anarchism connect with names of German thinker Max Shtirner (Caspar Shmidt's pseudonym, 1806–1856), French philosopher Pierre-Joseph Prudon (1809 – 1865) and the largest theorists of this doctrine of Michail Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin. Humanistic value as a red string passes through all political doctrine of anarchism and, in my opinion, should be presented fairly in order to prevent substitution of concepts and with the purpose of observance of historical honesty. (shrink)

Confucian classics studies in Vietnam and Eastern Asia; proceedings.

The Current Legal Problems lecture series and annual volume was established around sixty years ago at the Faculty of Laws, University College London and has long been recognized as a major reference point for legal scholarship. The continuing strength of Current Legal Problems is its representation of a broad range of legal scholarship opinion, theory, methodology, and subject matter, with an emphasis upon contemporary developments of law. Contributions to the 62nd volume in the series include a comparative analysis of UK (...) and US responses to terrorism, a discussion of the current legal solutions to the issue of cohabitation, an analysis of the broadening scope of risk regulation, and essays on subjects as diverse as media regulation, art and law, and abstraction and equality. (shrink)

In this volume a group of distinguished aestheticians consider the distinctive ways painting, sculpture, music, poetry and the cinema approach their subject matter and add to our aesthetic understanding. In addition these are discussions of artistic value and artistic truth, of the value of performance and of the problem of fakes, all of which contribute to a volume which will be of interest both to aestheticians and philosophers more generally.