This volume explores the use of higher-order logics in metaphysics. Seventeen original essays trace the development of higher-order metaphysics, discuss different ways in which higher-order languages and logics may be used, and consider their application to various central topics of metaphysics.

If culture is defined as variation acquired and maintained by social learning, then culture is common in nature. However, cumulative cultural evolution resulting in behaviors that no individual could invent on their own is limited to humans, song birds, and perhaps chimpanzees. Circumstantial evidence suggests that cumulative cultural evolution requires the capacity for observational learning. Here, we analyze two models the evolution of psychological capacities that allow cumulative cultural evolution. Both models suggest that the conditions which allow the evolution of (...) such capacities when rare are much more stringent than the conditions which allow the maintenance of the capacities when common. This result follows from the fact that the assumed benefit of the capacities, cumulative cultural adaptation, cannot occur when the capacities are rare. These results suggest why such capacities may be rare in nature. (shrink)

Earlier in this volume, Wesley Salmon has given a characteristically clear and trenchant critique of the account of non-demonstrative reasoning known by the slogan `Inference to the Best Explanation'. As a long-time fan of the idea that explanatory considerations are a guide to inference, I was delighted by the suggestion that Wes and I might work together on a discussion of the issues. In the event, this project has exceeded my high expectations, for in addition to the intellectual gain that (...) comes from the careful study of his essay, I have benefited enormously from the stream of illuminating emails and faxes that Wes has sent me during our collaboration. Doing philosophy together has been an education and a pleasure. Salmon's essay would place Inference to the Best Explanation beyond the pale of acceptable philosophical accounts of inference. According to Salmon, Inference to the Best Explanation has serious internal difficulties and compares very unfavourably with Bayesian approaches to these matters. My aim in the following remarks is irenic. I hope to show that a number of the claimed difficulties either are not really difficulties or are avoidable. In some cases, the avoidance will require a mild reinterpretation of the account that lies behind the slogan `Inference to the Best Explanation'; in others, it will require admitting limits to the scope of the account. For I accept at the outset that Inference to the Best Explanation cannot possibly be the whole story about the assessment of scientific hypotheses. For me, the interesting idea is simply that we sometimes decide how likely a hypothesis is to be correct in part by considering how good an explanation it would provide, if it were correct. This is the idea of explanatory considerations providing a guide to inference, and this is the idea that I will here promote. (shrink)

New developments in reproductive technology have made headlines since the birth of the world's first in vitro fertilization baby in 1978. But is embryo experimentation ethically acceptable? What is the moral status of the early human embryo? And how should a democratic society deal with so controversial an issue, where conflicting views are based on differing religious and philosophical positions? These controversial questions are the subject of this book, which, as a current compendium of ideas and arguments on the subject, (...) makes an original contribution of major importance to this debate. (shrink)

Peter Homans offers a new understanding of the origins of psychoanalysis and relates the psychoanalytic project as a whole to the sweep of Western culture, past and present. He argues that Freud's fundamental goal was the interpretation of culture and that, therefore, psychoanalysis is fundamentally a humanistic social science. To establish this claim, Homans looks back at Freud's self-analysis in light of the crucial years from 1906 to 1914 when the psychoanalytic movement was formed and shows how these experiences (...) culminated in Freud's cultural texts. By exploring the "culture of psychoanalysis," Homans seeks a better understanding of what a "psychoanalysis of culture" might be. Psychoanalysis, Homans shows, originated as a creative response to the withering away of traditional communities and their symbols in the aftermath of the industrial revolution. The loss of these attachments played a crucial role in the lives of the founders of psychoanalysis, especially Sigmund Freud but also Karl Abraham, Carl Jung, Otto Rank, and Ernest Jones. The personal, political, and religious losses that these figures experienced, the introspection that followed, and the psychological discovery that resulted are what Homans calls "the ability to mourn." Homans expands this historical analysis to construct a general model of psychological discovery: the loss of shared ideals and symbols can produce a deeper sense of self (psychological structure-building, or individuation) and can then lead to the creation of new forms of meaning and self-understanding. He shows how Freud, Jung, and other psychoanalysts began to extend their introspection outward, reinterpreting the meanings of Western art, history, and religion. In conclusion, Homans evaluates Freud's theory of culture and discusses the role that psychoanalysis might play in social and cultural criticism. Throughout the book, Homans makes use of the many histories, biographies, and psychobiographies that have been written about the origins of psychoanalysis, drawing them into a comprehensive sociocultural model. Rich in insights and highly original in approach, this work will interest psychoanalysts and students of Freud, sociologists concerned with modernity and psychoanalysis, and cultural critics in the fields of religion, anthropology, political science, and social history. (shrink)

In A Professor's Duties, distinguished philosopher Peter J. Markie adds to the expanding discussion of the ethics of college teaching. Part One concentrates on the obligations of individual professors, primarily with regard to issues about what and how to teach. Part Two expands Professor Markie's views by providing a selection of the most significant previously published writings on the ethics of college teaching.

Human social life is uniquely complex and diverse. Much of that complexity consists of culturally transmitted ideas and skills that underpin the operation of institutions that structure our social life. Considerable theoretical and empirical work has been devoted to the role of cultural evolutionary processes in the evolution of institutions. The most persistent controversy has been over the role of cultural group selection and gene-culture coevolution in early human populations the Pleistocene. We argue that cultural group selection and related cultural (...) evolutionary processes had an important role in shaping the innate components of our social psychology. By the Upper Paleolithic humans seem to have lived in societies structured by institutions, as do modern populations living in simple societies. The most ambitious attempts to test these ideas have been the use of experimental games in field settings to document human similarities and differences on theoretically interesting dimensions. These studies have documented a huge range of behavior cross-culturally, although no societies so far examined follow the expectations of selfish rationality. These data are at least consistent with operation of cultural group selection and gene-culture coevolution operating in the deep tribal past and with the contemporary importance of cultural evolution in the evolution of institutions and institutional diversity. (shrink)

The Collective Imagination explores the social foundations of the human imagination. A comprehensive audit of the creativity claims of the post-modern age - that finds them badly wanting and looks to the future - this book will appeal to sociologists and philosophers concerned with cultural theory, cultural and media studies and aesthetics.

Progress Unchained reinterprets the history of the idea of progress using parallels between evolutionary biology and changing views of human history. Early concepts of progress in both areas saw it as the ascent of a linear scale of development toward a final goal. The 'chain of being' defined a hierarchy of living things with humans at the head, while social thinkers interpreted history as a development toward a final paradise or utopia. Darwinism reconfigured biological progress as a 'tree of life' (...) with multiple lines of advance not necessarily leading to humans, each driven by the rare innovations that generate entirely new functions. Popular writers such as H. G. Wells used a similar model to depict human progress, with competing technological innovations producing ever-more rapid changes in society. Bowler shows that as the idea of progress has become open-ended and unpredictable, a variety of alternative futures have been imagined. (shrink)

This book is the first full length account of the significance of MacIntyre's work for the social sciences. MacIntyre's moral philosophy is shown to provide the resources for a powerful critique of liberalism. His discussion of the managerist and emotivist roots of modern culture is seen as the inspiration for a critical social science of Modernity.

In launching modern economics, Adam Smith paved the way for laissez-faire capitalism, Marxism, and contemporary social science. This book scrutinizes Smith's disparagement of politics and religion to illuminate the subtlety of his rhetoric, the depth of his thought, and the ultimate shortcomings of his project. The author analyzes Smith's ideas on government, justice, human psychology, and international relations, stressing Smith's efforts to elevate wealth at the expense of citizenship and to replace normative political philosophy with historical theorizing and empirical modeling (...) that emphasize economic causes. The book also provides the most comprehensive interpretation available of Smith's views on religion, examining the discrepancies between The Wealth of Nations and The Theory of Moral Sentiments. The concluding chapter appraises the demise of communism in light of the Marxian emancipation of economics from politics and religion. (shrink)

The best empirically grounded theory of first-personal phenomenal consciousness is global workspace theory. This, combined with the success of the phenomenal-concept strategy, means that consciousness can be fully reductively explained in terms of globally broadcast representational content. So there are no qualia. As a result, the question of which other creatures besides ourselves are phenomenally conscious is of no importance, and doesn’t admit of a factual answer in most cases. What is real, and what does matter, is a multidimensional similarity (...) space of functionally organized minds. (shrink)

We present Birch and colleagues with a dilemma. On one interpretation, they aim to chart the distribution of a sort of minimal perceptual awareness across the animal kingdom, where that awareness can be fully characterized in third-person psychological terms. On this interpretation, the project is worthy but dull, since it doesn’t touch the question that has excited most people: whether other animals are phenomenally conscious. On an alternative interpretation, in contrast, they hope to resolve this latter question, arguing that phenomenal (...) consciousness is extremely widespread. But if this is their intention, then their argument begs the question. (shrink)

Peter Alward’s rigorous introductory text functions as a roadmap for students, laying out the key issues, positions, and arguments of academic philosophy. The book covers central topics in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and political philosophy. An introductory chapter presents the foundations of philosophical discourse and offers a primer on the basics of logic. Those argumentative tools are then employed to address classic philosophical issues such as the relationship between body and mind, skepticism, the possibility of free will, and the existence (...) of God. Later chapters engage issues of morality, justice, and liberty, as well as moral questions concerning abortion and the practice of punishment. Throughout, Alward aims for clarity, providing summaries, diagrams, and reflective questions to assist the student reader. (shrink)

In 1936, G. Birkhoff and J. v. Neumann published an article with the title The logic of quantum mechanics'. In this paper, the authors demonstrated that in quantum mechanics the most simple observables which correspond to yes-no propositions about a quantum physical system constitute an algebraic structure, the most important proper ties of which are given by an orthocomplemented and quasimodular lattice Lq. Furthermore, this lattice of quantum mechanical proposi tions has, from a formal point of view, many similarities with (...) a Boolean lattice L8 which is known to be the lattice of classical propositional logic. Therefore, one could conjecture that due to the algebraic structure of quantum mechanical observables a logical calculus Q of quantum mechanical propositions is established, which is slightly different from the calculus L of classical propositional logic but which is applicable to all quantum mechanical propositions. This calculus has sometimes been called 'quan tum logic'. However, the statement that propositions about quantum physical systems are governed by the laws of quantum logic, which differ from ordinary classical logic and which are based on the empirically well-established quantum theory, is exposed to two serious objec tions: Logic is a theory which deals with those relationships between various propositions that are valid independent of the content of the respective propositions. Thus, the validity of logical relationships is not restricted to a special type of proposition, e. g. to propositions about classical physical systems. (shrink)

The many gods of modernity -- The dynamics of relativization -- Relativism -- Fundamentalism -- Certainty and doubt -- The limits of doubt -- The politics of moderation.

ABSTRACT Tensism is the view that tense is not merely a property of language and the mind, but of the world itself. Perspectivalism extends this idea to all perspectival properties be they person or locational. One challenge that perspectivalism faces is the problem of expressing the contents of the beliefs and utterances of persons that are in other perspectival positions. One proposed solution to this problem is to allow for semantic theories that "realign" the expression of contents so that the (...) contents expressed by persons in other perspectival positions can be re-expressed from one's own perspectival position. In this paper I argue that a similar semantic realignment strategy could be deployed in helping perspectivalists generally come to grips with a puzzle raised by the Special Theory of Relativity. In short, the strategy is to realign the expression of contents in another inertial frame so that they are expressed from within your inertial frame. As we will see, the strategy is not puzzle free. (shrink)

Armstrong's Materialist Theory of Mind is one of a handful of texts that began the physicalist revolution in the philosophy of mind. In this collection, distinguished philosophers examine what we still owe to it, how to expand it, as well as looking back on how it came about.

As the problem of debt grows more and more urgent in light of the central role it plays in neoliberal capitalism, scholars have analyzed debt using numerous approaches: historical analysis, legal arguments, psychoanalytic readings, claims for reparations in postcolonial debates, and more. Contributors to this special issue of _difference_s argue that these diverse approaches presuppose a fundamental connection between indebtedness and narrative. They see debt as a promise that refers to the future—deferred repayment that purports to make good on a (...) past deficit—which implies a narrative in a way that other forms of exchange may not. The authors approach this intertwining of debt and narration from the perspectives of continental philosophy, international law, the history of slavery, comparative literature, feminist critique, and more. Contributors. Arjun Appadurai, Anthony Bogues, Emmanuel Bouju, Silvia Federici, Mikkel Krause Frantzen, Raphaelle Guidée, Odette Lienau, Catherine Malabou, Vincent Message, Laura Odello, Peter Szendy, Frederik Tygstrup. (shrink)

An introduction to the life and work of the philosopher Jacques Derrida.

MONTAIGNE criou um novo gênero literário – o ensaio -, seus próprios Ensaios tiveram uma vasta influência sobre o pensamento e a literatura do Renascimento e dos séculos posteriores. Observador sereno e irônico da comédia humana, era notavelmente muito consciente do etnocentrismo de outros povos. Atraído pela diversidade humana, estava preparado para tomar a vida privada tão seriamente quanto a vida pública. MONTAIGNE tem sido muito freqüentemente tratado como um “moderno” nascido fora de sua época. Peter Burke apresenta-o como (...) um cavalheiro do campo, um homem do Renascimento e um membro da geração dos anos 1530 que floresceu numa sociedade dividida pela guerra civil, descreve as reações da posteridade aos Ensaios e pergunta se MONTAIGNE pode, em algum sentido, ser considerado nosso contemporâneo. (shrink)

This book explores the political, economic, social, and environmental health relations and politics of the global tech and electronics industry. Peter Little argues that, in the digital age, we need greater synthesis of political ecology, ethnography, and technocapital critique.

Bears comprise a subculture of gay men who valorize the larger, hirsute body. This research interrogates Bear culture as a gendered strategy for repudiating effeminacy that simultaneously challenges and reproduces norms of hegemonic masculinity. In this research, the author situates his ethnographic study of a major metropolitan Bear community in its social and historical context to illuminate this paradox, with special emphasis on the embodiment of Bear masculinity and its effect on sexual practice. The author concludes that through a process (...) of embodied agency, Bear culture yields a number of sexually innovative practices that disperse pleasure across the body and disrupt genitally centered, phallusandreceptacle interpretations of sex. However, the subversive potential of these practices is significantly undermined by an attendant set of practices that reflect heteronormative and hegemonically masculine interpretations of sex. (shrink)

While well-known for his longer book-length work, philosopher Peter Unger's shorter articles have, until now, been less accessible. Collected in two volumes, Philosophical Papers includes articles spanning over 40 years of Unger's long and fruitful career. Volume two focuses on Unger's important work in metaphysics.

In The Political Limits of Environmental Regulation: Tracking the Unicorn, Bruce Yandle identifies some of the key weaknesses of federal environmental regulation, including its regressive effects, its tendency to better serve selected political interests than the cause of environmental protection, and the EPA's failure to follow sensible priorities. Additional problems may also be cited, including the tendency to exclude citizens? voices from deliberations regarding the degree of pollution control. But Yandle's conclusion regarding the likely superiority of decentralized and market?sensitive alternatives (...) to centralized regulation is overstated. Any such alternatives necessarily will continue to be grounded in relatively uniform national standards. Moreover, in the context of American political economy, market?based controls would continue to deny many citizens real voice and choice. The quest continues to be for the combination of controls that best preserves both the environment and liberty. (shrink)