In this article, the author describes his sense of synchronicity with Edgar Morin's concepts of complexity. Although Morin only briefly addresses Gaia per se, the implications of Morin's work may reveal the Gaia concept as an element of the general breakthroughs of complexity science. Morin demonstrates a phase transition that is gaining momentum right now, whereby the new, more benign science is overwhelming the old Cartesian world.

Know-how has a distinctive, non-instrumental value that a mere reliable ability lacks. Some, including Bengson and Moffett Knowing how, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 161–195, 2011) and Carter and Pritchard :799–816, 2015b) have cited a close relation between knowhow and cognitive achievement, and it is tempting to think that the value of know-how rests in that relation. That’s not so, however. The value of know-how lies in its relation to the fundamental value of autonomy.

Adamson and Ganeri present a lively introduction to one of the world's richest intellectual traditions: the philosophy of classical India. They guide us through such famous works as the Vedas and the Upaniṣads, and tell the stories of how Buddhism and Jainism developed. Anyone curious about South Asian philosophy can start here.

A collection of essays written by pupils, friends and colleagues of Professor Peter Dronke, to honour him on his retirement. The essays address the question of the relationship between poetry and philosophy in the Middle Ages. Contributors include Walter Berschin, Charles Burnett, Stephen Gersh, Michael Herren, Edouard Jeauneau, David Luscombe, Paul Gerhardt Schmidt, Joe Trapp, Jill Mann, Claudio Orlandi and John Marenbon. It is an important collection for both philosophical and literary specialists; scholars, graduate students and under-graduates in Medieval (...) Literature and in Medieval Philosophy. (shrink)

Among the artifacts produced by nineteenth-century Quellenforschung, few have exerted more influence or endured more censure than the lost Hellenistic epyllion which, as reconstructed by G. Knaack, told of the journey of Phaethon to the palace of the sun-god and his disastrous ride in the solar car. Relying chiefly upon the two versions of the story told by Ovid in his Metamorphoses and Nonnus in the Dionysiaca , and applying techniques comparable to the stemmatic method of textual criticism, Knaack traced (...) every shared feature of these two accounts to the inevitable lost Hellenistic ‘original’. Details from Lucian and Philostratus , who were also presumed to have read this lost poem, helped to fill in the blanks. Knaack's thesis illustrates the extremes of which source criticism was capable at a time when it was naively assumed that Roman poets were capable of little more than literal translation of their Greek models. In the early part of this century, a reaction set in against Knaack's method, when it was alleged that there was no common source for the two poets and that Nonnus derived his account of Phaethon directly from his reading of Ovid. The case was first made by J. Braune, who examined four episodes common to both works – Phaethon, Cadmus, Actaeon, and Daphne – and argued that correspondences between the two are due to imitation of Ovid by Nonnus. Braune's arguments did not win complete acceptance; it is noteworthy that even his supporters were not entirely convinced by three of his four test passages, for which abundant evidence survives of sources earlier than Ovid. (shrink)

In this compelling and timely treatise, cultural theorist and educator Peter Trifonas puts forth the first book-length study of Jacques Derrida's 'educational texts:' that is, those writings most explicitly concerned with the ethics and politics of the historico-philosophical structures constituting the scene of teaching. The text examines how deconstruction allows us to re-think the socio-historical and ethico-philosophical aspects of pedagogical practices and policies, including pedagogical theories that have had direct bearing on the ethical and cultural ideals forming the reason (...) of Western educational systems and the exclusion of its 'Others.'. (shrink)

How do we judge whether we should be willing to follow the views of experts or whether we ought to try to come to our own, independent views? This book seeks the answer in medieval philosophical thought. In this engaging study into the history of philosophy and epistemology, Peter Adamson provides an answer to a question as relevant today as it was in the medieval period: how and when should we turn to the authoritative expertise of other people in (...) forming our own beliefs? He challenges us to reconsider our approach to this question through a constructive recovery of the intellectual and cultural traditions of the Islamic world, the Byzantine Empire, and Latin Christendom. Adamson begins by foregrounding the distinction in Islamic philosophy between taqlid, or the uncritical acceptance of authority, and ijtihad, or judgment based on independent effort, the latter of which was particularly prized in Islamic law, theology, and philosophy during the medieval period. He then demonstrates how the Islamic tradition paves the way for the development of what he calls a "justified taqlid," according to which one develops the skills necessary to critically and selectively follow an authority based on their reliability. The book proceeds to reconfigure our understanding of the relation between authority and independent thought in the medieval world by illuminating how women found spaces to assert their own intellectual authority, how medieval writers evaluated the authoritative status of Plato and Aristotle, and how independent reasoning was deployed to defend one Abrahamic faith against the other. This clear and eloquently written book will interest scholars in and enthusiasts of medieval philosophy, Islamic studies, Byzantine studies, and the history of thought"-- Back cover. (shrink)

It is often said that singular causal statements express a relationship between one event and another or between a fact and an event. This is a very strong view, which has the following simple corollary: singular causal statements whose cause-term purports to refer to an event and whose effect-term purports to refer to an event express a relationship between an event and an event.Thus, both Davidson and Kim would claim that the singular causal Statement Socrates’ drinking hemlock at dusk caused (...) his death expresses a relationship between two events, referred to, respectively, by the expressions “Socrates’ drinking hemlock at dusk” and “his death.” For Kim, but not for Davidson, an event is analyzable as a thing's having a property at or during a time. The event of Socrates’ drinking hemlock at dusk consists of Socrates’ at a certain time having the property of drinking hemlock at dusk. I shall not here try to choose between their respective theories of events but will only note that both theorists would say that expresses a relationship between events however the latter are to be construed. (shrink)

According to certain models of the musical work-performance relationship, musical works persist through time. Dodd and Thomasson argue that perdurantist accounts of musical persistence—according to which musical works persist by having temporal parts at every time they exist—are untenable, and Tillman argues that musical endurantism—according to which persisting works are wholly present at each time they exist—avoids Dodd’s worries. In this paper, I argue that both Dodd’s and Thomasson’s arguments—and Tillman’s response—rely on assumptions linking theories of persistence to common-sense views (...) about musical works and, moreover, that these assumptions are unwarranted. As a result, only an attitude of neutrality towards questions about the nature of musical persistence is warranted. (shrink)

Modern political conflict characteristically reflects and represents deep-seated but also unacknowledged and un-analyzed disagreements about what it means to be 'objective'. In defending this proposition, Peter J. Steinberger seeks to reaffirm the idea of rationalism in politics by examining important problems of public life explicitly in the light of established philosophical doctrine. The Politics of Objectivity invokes, thereby, an age-old, though now widely ignored, tradition of western thought according to which all political thinking is inevitably embedded in and underwritten (...) by larger structures of metaphysical inquiry. Building on earlier studies of the idea of the state, and focusing on highly contested practices of objectivity in judgement, this book suggests that political conflict is an essentially discursive enterprise deeply implicated in the rational pursuit of theories about how things in the world really are. (shrink)

In this account of his mature thinking, Peter Marshall develops a dynamic and organic philosophy for the coming millennium which he calls liberation ecology. Liberation ecology is holistic in viewing the world as a harmonious whole and all beings and things as interwoven threads in nature's web. It is intuitive in recognizing intuition as the main source of knowledge and the imagination as the great organ of morality. It is ecological in seeing human beings as fellow voyagers with other (...) species in the magnificent odyssey of evolution. Above all, it is libertarian in seeking to release humanity, society and nature from their existing burdens so that they can unfurl and realize together their full potential. Exploring our strengths and possibilities, this book presents the ideas and values needed to ride the winds of change at this crucial stage in our development and in the history of the world. It provides a new philosophy for a new era, an uplifting and inspired vision which combines ancient wisdom and modern insights, reason and feeling, science and poetry, myth and the marvellous. It offers a guide for the future on how to rive in the most fulfilling way and how to create a genuinely free and sustainable society in harmony with nature. (shrink)

Unnatural States is a radical critique of international theory, in particular, of the assumption of state agency--that states act in the world in their own right. Peter Lomas argues that since the universal states system is inequitable and rigid, and not all states are democracies anyway, this assumption is unreal, and to adopt it means reinforcing an unjust status quo. Looking at the concepts of state, nation, and agency, Lomas sees populations struggling to find an agreed model of the (...) state, owing to inherited material differences; and unsurprisingly, among theorists of the nation, only controversy and a great confusion of terms. Meanwhile, the functional incarnations of the state agent are caricatures: the mandarin state, the lawyer state, the landlord state, the heir-to-history state, and the patriot state. Yet recent developments in international theory (constructivism, scientific realism, postmodernism) sacrifice state agency only at the price of an unhelpful abstraction. The states system is dysfunctional and obsolete, Lomas contends, and international theory must be recast, with morality as central, to inspire and to guide historic change. He focuses in his conclusion on prescriptions for change, led by four moral concerns: human rights, weapons of mass destruction, relations between rich and poor societies, and the environment. "I begin this book," writes Lomas, "with the commonest commonplace of international theory, to expose it as a meaningless cliche. In the masterly hands of Hobbes, it was elaborated into a shock formula for organized society, a reading of history as civilization's failure. Kant sought to rescue morality from Hobbes and create the structures of modernity, but Kant's influence is coming to an end. In the Cold War, politicians disagreeing over another philosopher almost brought the world to an end. Hence the challenges of our time. These are primary and profound. Philosophers have done much to define the modern world. The point of international theory is to change it.". (shrink)

Between innocence and commitment: speculation and experience -- Reasonable commitment -- Some comparisons -- Commitment to reason and to scientific realism -- Humanist commitment -- Humanism and the cosmic agent -- Commitment to God -- Corollaries.

For a half-century or more, political theory has been characterized by a pronounced distrust of metaphysical or ontological speculation. Such a disposition has been sharply at odds with influential currents in post-war philosophy - both analytic and continental - where metaphysical issues have become a central preoccupation. The Idea of the State seeks to reaffirm the importance of systematic philosophical inquiry into the foundations of political life, and to show how such an approach can cast a new and highly instructive (...) light on a variety of controversial, seemingly intractable problems of tolerance, civil disobedience, democracy and consent. The author considers the problem of the state in light of recent developments in philosophy and social thought, and seeks to provide an account of what the state really is. In doing so he pursues a range of fundamental issues pertaining to the office, the authority and the internal organization of political society. (shrink)

This article offers an analysis of the argumentative method of two treatises by Alexander of Aphrodisias, On Fate and On Providence, the latter of which is preserved only in Arabic translation. It is argued that both texts use techniques from Aristotelian dialectic, albeit in different ways, with On Fate adhering to methods outlined in Aristotle's Topics whereas On Providence uses the ‘aporetic’ method familiar from texts such as MetaphysicsΒ‎. This represents a revision of a previous study of Alexander's method in (...) On Fate by Jaap Mansfeld, which emphasized parallels between that method and the techniques of ancient scepticism. It is, however, suggested that Alexander does reflect developments in epistemology during the Hellenistic period, especially in so far as he ‘upgrades’ the status of endoxa to play something like the role of common conceptions in the dogmatic Hellenistic schools. (shrink)

How do we challenge the structures of late capitalism if all possible media through which to do do is inescapably capitalist? This urgent political question is at the heart of Peter Trawny's major new work. With searing precision Trawny demonstrates how our world has become wholly determined by technology, capital, and the medium. In this world of the 'TCM', we universal subjects remain in a state of apathy that is temporarily punctuated, but also reinforced, by the phantasmatic dream of (...) difference offered us by the 'Hollywood machine.' Our sole motivation is to gain money and the power it brings. The only meaningful difference in the world of the TCM universal is the difference between wealth and poverty. Freedom here is then the freedom to dispose of things (particularly technological objects) and to gain pleasure. It makes our relation to our surroundings essentially 'touristic,' and our relation to the earth an essentially exploitative one. The notion of personal or societal freedom has never been more controversial or, seemingly, more far from our grasp. While exploring in details the difficulties we face in our attempts to be free, Trawny builds an almost Utopian vision of how to break out of the mediums in which we operate and experience a new kind of freedom – both one of intimacy, and one through philosophy. An ambitious and lively yet completely rigorous work, this book offers a fascinating vision of how to live and live well. (shrink)

For Frege’s general views about truth the standard reference is the first couple of pages of ‘The Thought’. Less attention has been paid to a short passage in ‘On Sense and Reference’ -- in, fact, only one paragraph long -- where Frege argues indirectly for the view that the relation between the thought and the True is an instance of the relation between sense and reference. He argues for this by discrediting the alternative view that it is an instance of (...) the relation between “subject and predicate”. Here is the paragraph: One might be tempted to regard the relation of the thought to the True not as that of sense to reference, but rather as that of subject to predicate. One can, indeed, say: ‘The thought, that 5 is a prime number, is true’. But closer examination shows that nothing more has been said than in the simple sentence ‘5 is a prime number’. The truth claim arises in each case from the form of the declarative sentence, and when the latter lacks its usual force, e.g. in the mouth of an actor upon stage, even the sentence ‘The thought that 5 is a prime number is true’ contains only a thought, and indeed the same thought as the simple ‘5 is a prime number’. It follows that the relation of the thought to the True may not be compared with that of subject and predicate. Subject and predicate (understood in the logical sense) are indeed elements of thoughts; they stand on the same level for knowledge. By combining subject and predicate, one reaches only a thought, never passes from sense to reference, never from thought to its truth value. One moves at the same level but never advances from one level to the next. A truth value cannot be part of a thought, any more than, say, the Sun can, for it is not a sense but an object. (Frege 1892, pp 34-35). Two subordinate, but still major, positive ideas are expressed in this passage. (shrink)

Peter Spirtes. Calculating TETRAD Constraints Implied by Directed Acyclic Graphs.

School leaders are optimally positioned to identify teachers who would make strong and inspiring administrators. Today's Teachers, Tomorrow's Leaders: A Guide to Identifying and Developing Future Administrators by Peter Marshall guides leaders on how to spot teachers with the potential to lead and how to model the skills and behaviors that will make them successful. Marshall describes ten Ways of Being of the impactful school leader and presents his Situational Leadership Model to help leaders identify teachers who exhibit strong (...) leadership qualities and to inspire them to take the leap. Thoroughly researched with real-life applications, Today's Teachers, Tomorrow's Leaders is a practical guide full of sample meeting planners, planning pages, and other useful resources to streamline the selection process. (shrink)

The material in this book is philosophically (as opposed to theologically or religiously) oriented, stressing the problem of God as a logical and philosophical problem. The perspective is critically analytic in the Naturalistic-Humanistic tradition. The basic approach is an issues or problems approach, but this is set in a historical context with quotations from Greek philosophy, the Church Fathers, the Medieval period, and from modern philosophers. The aim is to enable students to see what is being said and has been (...) said about God and thereby fits this into a better framework in the light of present knowledge and society. It is hoped that students will develop an awareness and appreciation of the philosophical problems in the concept of God, that they will acquire the ability to engage in intelligent evaluation and exchange of ideas, and that they will display these qualities in their everyday thought. This volume is by no means exhaustive of all the themes in the Philosophy of Religion. The most fundamental ones about God's existence are covered thoroughly. The book is a starting point for more intensive work in the subject. It lays down the basic groundwork for an easy transition to other topics and to more sophisticated thought-patterns. The writing has been kept as concise and elementary as possible with short sections on a variety of topics. (shrink)