This work helps highlights how the innovations in Flathman's thought have shaped the field of political theory and will be of interest to students and scholars alike.

Reviews evidence which suggests that there may be little or no direct introspective access to higher order cognitive processes. Ss are sometimes unaware of the existence of a stimulus that importantly influenced a response, unaware of the existence of the response, and unaware that the stimulus has affected the response. It is proposed that when people attempt to report on their cognitive processes, that is, on the processes mediating the effects of a stimulus on a response, they do not do (...) so on the basis of any true introspection. Instead, their reports are based on a priori, implicit causal theories, or judgments about the extent to which a particular stimulus is a plausible cause of a given response. This suggests that though people may not be able to observe directly their cognitive processes, they will sometimes be able to report accurately about them. Accurate reports will occur when influential stimuli are salient and are plausible causes of the responses they produce, and will not occur when stimuli are not salient or are not plausible causes. (shrink)

On autobiographical memory tests (AMTs) using positive and negative cue words, research has consistently found that depressed individuals (relative to nondepressed controls) are more likely to recall overgeneral memories (OGMs) and are less likely to recall specific memories. A total of 56 undergraduates who scored high or low on a measure of depression were shown positive and negative word cues and event cues in a computerised AMT. Dysphoric college students made significantly fewer specific and more categoric (overgeneral) responses than controls, (...) but did not differ from controls in terms of extended responses. Results suggest that the difference in memory specificity between low and high dysphoric students generalises across word and event cues and that a computerised version of the AMT can be used as an alternative to interviews as a form of administration. (shrink)

Charles Foster and Jonathan Herring are to be congratulated on their useful presentation of the roles played by concepts of personhood and identity in English medical law. 1 However, I fear that the project they have undertaken here is misconceived. It is an interesting and important misconception, which is widely shared in the literature on medical law and ethics; but a misconception it remains. The problem is this. What we call ‘the Law’ is in fact a complex assemblage of institutions, (...) rules, accredited persons, practices and systems. What it is not is a self-sufficient, integrated and self-interpreting system of doctrine. As such it does not have a clear structure which we can excavate and the idea that we can find concepts which explain and unify that structure at some deep level is thus quixotic. To approach ‘the Law’ in that way is to pursue a chimaera. We should instead... (shrink)

In ‘Salvaging the Concept of Nudge’ Yashar Saghai performs an important clarificatory task which certainly advances our philosophical and ethical understanding of nudges in public policy, and in healthcare ethics in particular.1 In this brief commentary I identify some issues which could usefully be taken forward in subsequent discussions.A central difficulty with ethical discussions of nudging is that insufficient care is taken to distinguish two morally important features of nudges. The first, which Saghai very properly concentrates upon, is the mechanism (...) of nudging. Nudges rely on psychological properties of human decision-makers as the way in which their intended effects are brought about. Much of the ethical concern with nudges focuses on just this. Whatever the motive of the nudger, or the objective of the nudge, or the ex ante or ex post ratification of the nudge by the nudge, operating through influence, impulse or non-rational features of the nudgee's decision-making is wrong. The nature of this wrongness can be spelled out in different ways, and which one of these we choose has important implications for the precise ethical argument …. (shrink)

H.P. Grice is known principally for his influential contributions to the philosophy of language, but his work also includes treatises on the philosophy of mind, ethics, and metaphysics--much of which is unpublished to date. This collection of original essays by such philosophers as Nancy Cartwright, Donald Davidson, Gilbert Harman, and P.F. Strawson demonstrates the unified and powerful character of Grice's thoughts on being, mind, meaning, and morals. An introductory essay by the editors provides the first overview of Grice's work.

Can any of us ever really be free? Do we follow the rules our society gives us because we want to, or because we are forced to? Discipline, Freedom, Resistance challenges the received wisdom that discipline and freedom are opposite and mutually exclusive. Though it is typically argued that a well-ordered liberal society must discipline its more unruly citizens to maintain freedom for all, Flathman shows how resistance to rules can mean more than criminals breaking laws. Resistance can also mean (...) political protest and political dialogues about what the rules can be. Discipline, Freedom, Resistance draws on Foucault's theories of the self to describe the inner discipline it takes to resist authority-declaring that individuals must sometimes resist forces that wish to destroy freedom, to ensure freedom. (shrink)

Political argument and institutions in the UnitedKingdom have frequently been represented as the products of ablend of nationalistic conservatism, liberal individualism andsocialism, in which consensus has been prized over ideology. This situation changed, as the standard story has it, with therise of Thatcherism in the late 1970s, and again with the arrivalof Tony Blair's ``New Labour'' pragmatism in the late 1990s. Solidarity as an element of political discourse makes itsappearance in the UK late in the day. It has been most (...) stronglylinked to the Third Way debate, as framed most influentially inthe work of Prof. Anthony Giddens.In this paper we review the history and pre-history of the debateon solidarity in the UK, focussing mostly on its implications forwelfare state reform. In particular we discuss the proposals forthe long-term care of the Elderly issued by the Royal Commissionon long-term care in 1999. In this context we critically examinethe idea that solidarity is a new concept in British politicalculture, and that it is a concept which has real political ``bite''in the project of welfare reform. We examine this through aconsideration of Giddens's attempted synthesis of politicalargument and social theory. (shrink)

Philosophy of Religion: The Basics offers a concise introduction to philosophy of religion, distilling key discussions and concepts of the subject to their succinct essence, providing a truly accessible entry into the subject. A truly accessible introduction to philosophy of religion for beginners Takes a topical approach, starting with the nature of religion and moving the reader through the major concepts, explaining how topics connect and point to one another Offers a thorough and full treatment of diverse conceptions of God, (...) the ontological argument, and divine attributes and dilemmas A genuinely concise introduction, this text can be used alongside other resources without overtaxing students Represents 30 years of experience teaching to undergraduates Includes a free downloadable file with key excerpts and additions to help students study. (shrink)

Husserl's marginal remarks in Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik clearly do not reflect the same intense effort to penetrate Heidegger's thought that we find in his marginal notes in Sein und Zeit. Merely in terms of length, Husserl's comments in the published German text occupy only one-third the number of pages.2 Pages 1-5, 43-121, and 125-1673 contain no reading marks at all-over half of the 236 pages of KPM. This suggests that Husserl either read these pages with no intention (...) of returning to the text or skipped large parts of the middle of the text altogether.4 His remarks often express frustration or a resigned recognition of the now unbridgeable, irrevocable gap between himself and Heidegger. (shrink)

The German volume Gadamer Lesebuch [A Gadamer Reader], selected and edited by Jean Grondin in consultation with Hans-Georg Gadamer himself, contains a set of essays that present a cross section of writings by one of the twentieth century's greatest philosophers. The volume begins with an autobiographical sketch and culminates in a conversation with Jean Grondin that looks back over a lifetime of productive philosophical work. The essays not already available in English have here been translated by Richard E. Palmer, (...) a respected translator of Gadamer's writings. The sixteen essays contained in the Lesebuch are augmented here by three other essays: Gadamer's last essay on Derrida, "Hermeneutics Tracking the Trace" and two essays on practical philosophy. The Gadamer Reader: A Bouquet of the Later Writings richly conveys the scope and depth of Gadamer's thought, covering the range of his work in hermeneutics, aesthetics, practical philosophy, and essays on Plato, Hegel, and Heidegger. In addition, Palmer offers introductory remarks before each essay that explain its importance in the context of Gadamer's writings and define its key terms. Throughout, in both his translation and commentary, his aim is to make this critically important philosopher as clear and accessible as possible to an English-speaking audience. (shrink)

Compared to truthful answers, deceptive responses to queries are expected to take longer to initiate. Yet attempts to detect lies through reaction time (RT) have met with limited success. We describe a new procedure that seems to increase the RT difference between truth-telling and lies. It relies on a Stroop-like procedure in which responses to the labels true and false are sometimes reversed. The utility of this method is assessed in a laboratory study involving both statements of fact and attitude. (...) Three different ethnic groups participated: Americans of European ancestry, East Asians, and native Arabic speakers. For all three groups, our technique allowed identification of prevarication reliably better than chance. (shrink)

In his early essay, "Truth by Convention," W.V.O. Quine scraps a programme for a conventionalistic account of logic on finding that the very logic which he wishes to stipulate by conventional truth assignments is presupposed in the stipulation of his conventions. Recently, however, Carlo Giannoni has offered us a variant of the Quine programme which, he maintains, avoids Quine's initial pitfall by shifting the emphasis from truth assignment to the conventional stipulation of inference rules. In the following essay I argue (...) that Quine and, hence, also Giannoni have misconceived the problem of conventionalism in their accounts and that the Giannoni reconstruction is consequently to no avail. The alternative account of Quine's initial difficulties which I offer is both incompatible with a classical conventionalism and Quine's own Duhemian conventionalism, while explaining these difficulties far more adequately than his account of them does. (shrink)

In the Critique of Fure Reason Kant distinguishes two sorts of conditions of knowledge. First, there are the space and time of pure intuition, introduced in the Transcendental Aesthetic. They are grounded in our dependence on a special sort of perceptual field for the location of objects. Second, there are pure concepts of the understanding, or categories, introduced in the Analytic. In one respect these are grounded in the logical function of the understanding in judgements, introduced in the first chapter (...) of the analytic of concepts: Clue to the Discovery of All Pure Concepts of the Understanding; in another respect, they are grounded in transcendental unity of apperception, which is introduced in the second chapter: Deduction of the Pure Concepts of the Understanding, or Transcendental Deduction. I shall be concerned with the latter and its contribution to the overall strategy of argument in the analytic. Within the Analytic, Kant distinguishes between an Analytic of Concepts and an Analytic of Principles. This corresponds to a traditional distinction between a doctrine of concepts and judgement. It is arguable that Kant's theory of concepts undermines this distinction. However, I shall not deal with that general issue, but with a more specific issue related to the first two chapters of the Analytic of Principles: the Schematism and the System of Principles. (shrink)

Certainly, it is beneficial when the roles of man and citizen coincide as far as possible; but this only occurs when the role of citizen presupposes so few special qualities that the man may be himself without any sacrifice.... Education is only to develop a man's faculties, without regard to giving human nature any special civic character.¹.