Hegemony is one of the most widely diffused concepts in the contemporary social sciences and humanities internationally, interpreted in a variety of ways in different disciplinary and national contexts. However, its contemporary relevance and conceptual coherence has recently been challenged by various theories of ‘posthegemony’. This article offers a critical assessment of this theoretical initiative. In the first part of the article, I distinguish between three main versions of posthegemony – temporal, foundational and expansive – characterized by different understandings of (...) the temporal and logical implications of hegemony. I then offer a critical assessment of the shared presuppositions of these theories, including their ‘pre-Gramscianism’, their indebtedness to Laclau and Mouffe’s formulation of hegemony, and their characterization of hegemony in terms compatible with modern theories of sovereignty. I conclude by arguing that the contradictions and oversights of the debate on posthegemony encourage us to undertake a reassessment of the real historical complexity of hegemonic politics and its different traditions of conceptualization. (shrink)

Agues that Confucianism and other East Asian philosophical traditions can be resources for understanding and addressing current global challenges such as climate change and hunger.

Uses Buddhist philosophy to discuss diversity as a value, one that can contribute to equity in a globalizing world.

“Real knowledge,” as I use the term, is the most highly prized form of true belief sought by an epistemic agent. This paper argues that defeasible infinitism provides a good way to characterize real knowledge and it shows how real knowledge can arise from fallible justification. Then, I argue that there are two ways of interpreting Ernest Sosa's account of real knowledge as belief that is aptly formed and capable of being fully defended. On the one hand, if beliefs are (...) aptly formed only if they have a specific causal etiology, namely that they are efficiently caused fully or partially by virtuous characteristics of the epistemic agent, then Sosa's account falls prey to what I call the problem of the Hazard of Empirical Disconfirmation. The HED problem applies to all forms of causal accounts of real knowledge and is simply that as we gain more empirical knowledge about the causal origins of our true beliefs that are the most highly prized we will discover that they do not always satisfy the required efficient causal constraints. Bluntly put, having sufficiently good reasons for our beliefs might not require that the beliefs have the requisite efficient causal etiology. On the other hand, there is a way of interpreting Sosa's views that does not include an efficient causal prerequisite. That interpretation makes Sosa's account of real knowledge almost identical to defeasible infinitism but expressed in an alternate vocabulary. Such a view is not subject to the HED problem and it can solve the deep problem in epistemology, namely how to get epistemically certain knowledge from fallible justification. (shrink)

This paper considers Berkeley’s use of Plato in Siris. Berkeley’s engagement with ancient thinkers in Siris has been a source of puzzlement for many readers. In this paper I focus on Siris § 266. In particular, I consider why Berkeley says of the Platonists that they “distinguished the primary qualities in bodies from the secondary” and why, given his own well-known misgivings about the distinction, he characterizes this as part of a “notion of the true system of the world.” I (...) argue that in Siris Berkeley accepts a distinctive form of corpuscularianism, and that he thinks a distinction between primary and secondary qualities follows from this. I further argue that in § 266, and elsewhere in Siris, Berkeley engages in a careful reading of Plato’s Timaeus, which he uses to bolster his defense of the compatibility between corpuscularianism and his immaterialist idealism. (shrink)

This talk by Dr. Peter D. Hershock makes use of Buddhist conceptual resources to assess how the emerging global attention economy and the confluence of big data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence are reshaping the human experience. Like the Copernican revolution, which de-centered humanity in the cosmos, the intelligence revolution is dissolving once-foundational certainties and opening new realms of opportunity. The results are almost sure to be mixed. Smart cities will be more efficient and more livable; smart health care (...) can potentially reach and benefit the half of humanity that now lacks even basic health services. Yet, smart services and the algorithmic tailoring of individual experience have the potential to first supplement and eventually supplant intelligent human practices, rendering human intelligence superfluous. Focusing in particular on the karmic dimensions of these transformations, the talk will consider who we need to be present as in order to resist the allure of digital sirens and direct the intelligence revolution toward a truly equitable and ethical re-centering of the human. (shrink)

This website is a supplement to Peter D. McDonald’s book The Literature Police: Apartheid Censorship and its Cultural Consequences, which was first published by Oxford University Press in February 2009. It is intended for anyone curious to know more about the subject and for those interested in doing further research into the vast topic of apartheid censorship.

There are many things that could be wrong with foundationalism. For example, some have claimed that a so‐called basic belief cannot be both 1) a reason for non‐basic beliefs and 2) such that it cannot be provided with at least prima facie justification.1 If something is a reason, they say, then that something has to be a proposition (or sufficiently proposition‐like) and if it is a proposition (or sufficiently proposition‐like), then it is the kind of thing that requires a reason (...) in order to be even prima facie justified.2 Another reason that some give for rejecting normative foundationalism is that it leads directly to skepticism.3 There is no way, they claim, to move from so‐called basic propositions (typically given as first person introspective reports) to “external world” propositions by employing normatively acceptable principles of reasoning.4 Still others have thought that the invention of a nonrea‐soned reason was as ad hoc as the invention of an unmoved mover.5. (shrink)

Translated and edited by Peter D. Arnott, this classic and highly popular edition contains two essential plays in the development of Greek tragedy-_Oedipus the King and Antigone_-for performance and study. The editor's introduction contains a brief biography of the playwright and a description of Greek theater. Also included are a list of principal dates in the life of Sophocles and a bibliography.

Over the last century, the world's urban population increased from 224 million to over 3.5 billion, and advances in manufacturing, transportation, and communication technologies brought virtually limitless lifestyle and identity options, as well as the greatest inequalities of wealth, risk, and opportunity in history. Yet, as momentous as these changes are, they are dwarfed by the fact that human activity is now affecting planetary processes like climate. Justice concerns about future generations are no longer academic curiosities; they are global ethical (...) imperatives. This talk by Dr. Peter D. Hershock builds on recent efforts to craft an ethics of global justice around the "social emotion" of compassion, making use of Buddhist conceptual resources to de-link justice from fictions of equality and conceive it, instead, as a dynamic function of relationally-achieved equity and diversity. (shrink)

The Experiential Therapist steps outside of the medical model to explore alternative ways of thinking about mental health disorders. Peter D. Ladd argues that successful treatment results from an informed understanding of a patient’s experience, not an ability to name and categorize difficult experiences as classical disorders.

Much of our understanding of human thinking is based on probabilistic models. This innovative book by Jerome R. Busemeyer and Peter D. Bruza argues that, actually, the underlying mathematical structures from quantum theory provide a much better account of human thinking than traditional models. They introduce the foundations for modelling probabilistic-dynamic systems using two aspects of quantum theory. The first, 'contextuality', is a way to understand interference effects found with inferences and decisions under conditions of uncertainty. The second, 'quantum (...) entanglement', allows cognitive phenomena to be modeled in non-reductionist ways. Employing these principles drawn from quantum theory allows us to view human cognition and decision in a totally new light. Introducing the basic principles in an easy-to-follow way, this book does not assume a physics background or a quantum brain and comes complete with a tutorial and fully worked-out applications in important areas of cognition and decision. (shrink)

The approach the majority of neuroscientists take to the question of how consciousness is generated, it is probably fair to say, is to ignore it. Although there are active research programs looking at correlates of consciousness, and explorations of informational properties of what might be relevant neural ensembles, the tacitly implied mechanism of consciousness in these approaches is that it somehow just happens. This reliance on a “magical emergence” of consciousness does not address the “objectively unreasonable” proposition that elements that (...) have no attributes or properties that can be said to relate to consciousness somehow aggregate to produce it. Neuroscience has furnished evidence that neurons are fundamental to consciousness; at the fine and gross scale, aspects of our conscious experience depend on specific patterns of neural activity – in some way, the connectivity of neurons computes the features of our experience. So how do we get from knowing that some specific configurations of cells produce consciousness to understanding why this would be the case? Behind the voltages and currents electrophysiologists measure is a staggeringly complex system of electromagnetic fields – these are the fundamental physics of neurons and glia in the brain. The brain is entirely made of electromagnetism phenomena from the level of the atoms up. The EM field literally manifests the computations, or signaling, or information processing/activities performed by connected cellular ensembles that generate a 1st-person perspective. An investigation into the EM field at the cellular scale provides the possibility of identifying the outward signs of a mechanism in fundamental terms, as opposed to merely describing the correlates of our mental abstractions of it. (shrink)

The issues involved in decision making about the aggressiveness of future medical care for older persons are explored. They are related to population trends, the heterogeneity of older persons and a variety of factors involved in individual preferences. Case studies are presented to illustrate these points, as well as a review of pertinent literature. The argument is offered that, considering these many factors, a system of flexible, individualized care by informed patient preference, is more rational than the rationing of technological (...) services by age. (shrink)

Public health is concerned with how to improve the population’s health. At times, though, actions to improve the community’s health may collide with individual civil rights. For example, a public health response to a bioterrorism attack, such as smallpox, may require relaxing an individual’s due process protections to prevent the smallpox from spreading. This tension lies at the heart of public health policy. It also must be considered in discussing the concept of human rights in health.Proponents of incorporating the concept (...) of human rights in health emphasize the importance of both individual rights and collective rights. They argue that observing human rights is not only consistent with broad public health goals, but necessary to their attainment. To many human rights advocates, the concept is not limited to protecting against governmental intrusion. Accordingly, they emphasize the government’s obligation to promote attainment of human rights by, for instance, providing adequate health care. (shrink)

This article explores the ways in which Gramsci’s engagement with Machiavelli and The Prince in particular result in three significant developments in the Prison Notebooks. First, I analyse how the ‘heroic fury’ of Gramsci’s lifelong interest in Machiavelli’s thought develops, during the composition of his carceral writings, into a novel approach to the reading of The Prince, giving rise to the famous notion of the ‘modern Prince’. Second, I argue that the modern Prince should not be regarded merely as a (...) distinctive (individual or collective) figure, but rather should be understood as a dramatic development that unfolds throughout ‘the discourse itself’ of the Prison Notebooks, particularly in the crucial phase of reorganisation in the ‘special notebooks’ composed from 1932 onwards. Third and finally, I suggest that the combination of the two preceding themes is decisive for understanding the modern Prince as a distinctive form of political organisation. Rather than equated with a generic conception of the ‘(communist) political party’, this notion was developed as a part of Gramsci’s larger argument regarding the necessity for anti-Fascist political forces in Italy in the early 1930s to grow into an antagonistic collective body guided by principles of ‘living philology’. (shrink)

The subaltern has frequently been understood as a figure of exclusion ever since it was first highlighted by the early Subaltern Studies collective’s creative reading of Antonio Gramsci’s carceral writings. In this article, I argue that a contextualist and diachronic study of the development of the notion of subaltern classes throughout Gramsci’s full Prison Notebooks reveals new resources for “refiguring” the subaltern. I propose three alternative figures to comprehend specific dimensions of Gramsci’s theorizations: the “irrepressible subaltern,” the “hegemonic subaltern,” and (...) the “citizen-subaltern.” Far from being exhausted by the eclipse of the conditions it was initially called upon to theorize in Subaltern Studies, such a refigured notion of the subaltern has the potential to cast light both on the contradictory development of political modernity and on contemporary political processes. (shrink)

Speech act theory has taught us 'how to do things with words'. Arresting Language turns its attention in the opposite direction - toward the surprising things that language can undo and leave undone. In the eight essays of this volume, arresting language is seen as language at rest, words no longer in service to the project of establishing conventions or instituting legal regimes. Concentrating on both widely-known and seldom-read texts from a variety of philosophers, writers, and critics - from Leibniz (...) and Mendelssohn, through Kleist and Hebel, to Benjamin and Irigaray - the book analyzes the genesis and structure of interruption, a topic of growing interest to contemporary literary studies, continental philosophy, legal studies, and theological reflection. Arresting Language identifies critical moments in philosophical and literary texts during which language itself - without any identifiable speaker - arrests otherwise continuous processes and procedures, including the process of representation and procedures for its legitimization. (shrink)

Publisher: Philosophical Library Publication date: 1960 Subjects: Truth Philosophy / General Philosophy / Epistemology Philosophy / Logic Philosophy / Metaphysics Philosophy / History.

An ongoing debate among legal scholars and public health advocates is the role of litigation in shaping public policy. For the most part, the debate has been waged at a conceptual level, with opponents and proponents arguing within fairly well-defined boundaries. The debate has been based either on speculation of what litigation could achieve or on ideological grounds as to why litigation should or should not be used this way. With the exception of Rosenberg's study of how litigation shaped policy (...) in civil rights, abortion, and environmental matters, there is almost no empirical support for either position.In recent years, the most ardent proponents of litigation as public policy have been public health advocates. Perhaps out of frustration with the inability to achieve desired public health goals through the legislative branch of government, public health advocates have pursued litigation as an alternative strategy. Beginning with tobacco class action litigation in the early 1990s and continuing with litigation against gun manufacturers at the end of that decade, public health advocates have waged a veritable litigation assault aimed at changing how public health policy is formed. (shrink)