Ludwig Feuerbach's work is often too easily dovetailed with the works of Hegel and Marx and therefore read teleologically as an intermediary step between the two “major” figures. By re-interpreting Feuerbach more as a system critic than as a system builder, this article attempts to elucidate his relationships to the other two. It will also point up the gendered articulation of his critiques of religion and philosophy. The article will show how Feuerbach's use of gender, though remaining fixed within a (...) predictably hierarchical binary, is more than simply symptomatic of its context and offers significant resources for critical re-readings of nineteenth-century German philosophy. (shrink)

This paper is part of a project to rescue fashion from the social sciences and restore it to philosophy. In Kawamura's Fashion-ology, power is understood solely as legal or institutional power. The work's strictly sociological approach means that, though the two are rightly distinguished, clothing continues to haunt the logic of fashion, and there is little reflection as to why the system of clothing and not some other commodity lends its name to cultural neomania in general. What is lacking is (...) an analysis of the specific nature of fashion's empowerment and disempowerment of subjectivity. For this we need to enlist Foucault's genealogy of power, which also has the advantage of explaining strategic resistance to institutional power. However, Foucault's account is itself unsatisfying, because it avoids offering a theory of power while nevertheless assuming one. Foucault's critique of power quietly assumes Nietzsche's metaphysic of power, the incessant, embodied movement of self-empowering and self-overpowering. The corporeal subject of this self-production is nothing but surface, one that extends to the surrounds of its world, and the ceaseless rhythm of its embodied self-presentation is fashion. Barthes insightfully observes that, were its rhythm to be disrupted by cultural developments, the intense jostling that resulted would be the beginning of a new history of fashion. Yet there is incoherence to this claim, for if the rhythm of fashion were to turn into the chaos of arrhythmia, then we might instead conclude that fashion was at an end. Barthes' uncertain prospect of a new beginning points to what I call, following Heidegger, the powerlessness of fashion. This is not intended as criticism, since this powerlessness is nothing negative but rather that which exceeds the limits of fashion while giving rise to it. But on questions concerning the historicality of its beginning and the finality of its self-understanding, the sociology of fashion can have nothing to say. (shrink)

It is common in metaethics today to draw a distinction between “naturalist” and “non-naturalist” versions of moral realism, where the former view maintains that moral properties are natural properties, while the latter view maintains that they are non-natural properties instead. The nature of the disagreement here can be understood in different ways, but the most common way is to understand it as a metaphysical disagreement. In particular, the disagreement here is about the reducibility of moral properties, where the “naturalists” maintain (...) that moral properties are in some way reducible to the lower-level natural properties on which they supervene, while the “non-naturalists” maintain that moral properties are sui generis and robustly irreducible. In this paper I present a novel version of realist ethical naturalism—a view that I call Emergentist Ethical Naturalism—that reveals this common way of understanding the distinction between naturalism and non-naturalism to be flawed by combining a commitment to ethical naturalism with a commitment to the sui generis and robustly irreducible nature of moral properties that typically defines non-naturalism. Then, after presenting the theory and addressing a few worries that one might have about it, I show how it offers some novel, emergence-based responses to the various supervenience challenges that plague moral realism and thereby gives the ethical naturalist a robustly non-reductive option for dealing with these challenges. (shrink)

What is a language? What do scientific grammars tell us about the structure of individual languages and human language in general? What kind of science is linguistics? These and other questions are the subject of Ryan M. Nefdt's Language, Science, and Structure. -/- Linguistics presents a unique and challenging subject matter for the philosophy of science. As a special science, its formalisation and naturalisation inspired what many consider to be a scientific revolution in the study of mind and language. (...) Yet radical internal theory change, multiple competing frameworks, and issues of modelling and realism have largely gone unaddressed in the field. Nefdt develops a structural realist perspective on the philosophy of linguistics which aims to confront the aforementioned topics in new ways while expanding the outlook toward new scientific connections and novel philosophical insights. On this view, languages are real patterns which emerge from complex biological systems. Nefdt's exploration of this novel view will be especially valuable to those working in formal and computational linguistics, cognitive science, and the philosophies of science, mathematics, and language. (shrink)

_Forest Family_ highlights the importance of old-growth forests to Australian art, community, culture, history, and politics. The volume will be of interest to general readers of environmental history, as well as scholars in critical plant studies and the environmental humanities.

“Busyness” like many concepts trades on contrast. The most obvious contrast is with “real work” and ‘really working.” “Busy work” is usually pretend work; we try to look as though we are achieving something but all we are doing is shuffling the paper on our desks, polishing the inlet manifold rather than diagnosing the fault about to destroy the engine, marching our soldiers up to the top of the hill and marching them down again rather than engaging the enemy. All (...) the same, being “busy” is often said to be a good thing: the Puritan hymn writer Isaac Watts celebrated “the little busy bee” for improving the shining hour. For creatures other than the bee, busy may be a good thing to be but not usually the best thing: a midfield soccer player who is “busy” is useful, but a player of equal skill who is “economical” is better. My theme is that our attitude to “real work” is deeply ambiguous; on the one side, work is a curse, the labour to which we are doomed as a result of the Fall; its side-effect of enforcing upon us a necessary discipline and self-discipline is small consolation. On the other side, work is the expression of distinctive human powers and aspirations; work brings imagination into the world as well as drudgery. We imagine a world that does not exist but might, and then we set about creating it. The Fall was a happy Fall, and the need to labour was the first step in teaching the human species how to make the most of its potentialities. (shrink)

These essays strike a judicious yet thought-provoking balance between theoretical and historical perspectives.

At Phaedo 74b–c an important argument is given for the non–identity of perceptible equals and equality. The argument is usually understood as an application of Leibniz’s Law in which the predicate appears unequal is affirmed of perceptible equals but not equality. But this reading requires explaining why the plural locution the equals themselves is initially used for equality, and why the additional predicate appears as inequality is denied of it. In this paper, an account of the equality premise is given (...) which allows for an initial grasp of equality as a plurality (suitably expressed by a plural locution), and introduces a generic predicate for appearance, appears its opposite (rightly denied of equality). The former ensures that the question of non–identity is not begged, while the latter secures a role for every element in the premise. So understood, the argument is both more robust and carefully formulated than is usually thought. (shrink)

In this paper, I address the issue of scientific modelling in contemporary linguistics, focusing on the generative tradition. In so doing, I identify two common varieties of linguistic idealisation, which I call determination and isolation respectively. I argue that these distinct types of idealisation can both be described within the remit of Weisberg’s :639–659, 2007) minimalist idealisation strategy in the sciences. Following a line set by Blutner :27–35, 2011), I propose this minimalist idealisation analysis for a broad construal of the (...) generative linguistic programme and thus cite examples from a wide range of linguistic frameworks including early generative syntax, Minimalism, the parallel architecture and optimality theory. Lastly, I claim that from a modelling perspective, the dynamic turn in syntax can be explained as a continuation, as opposed to a marked shift, of the generative modelling paradigm. Seen in this light, my proposal is an even broader construal of the generative tradition, along scientific modelling lines. Thus, I offer a lens through which to appreciate the scientific contribution of generative grammar, amid an increased resistance to some of its core theoretical posits, in terms of a brand of structural realism in the philosophy of science and specifically scientific modelling. (shrink)

This paper advances an interpretation of what Hume called ‘the general rules’: natural principles of belief-formation that nevertheless can be augmented via reflection. According to Hume, reflection is, in part, what separates the wise from the vulgar. In this paper, I argue that for Hume being wise must therefore be, to some degree, voluntary. Hume faced a significant problem in attempting to reconcile his epistemic normativity, i.e. his claims about what we ought to believe, with his largely involuntarist theory of (...) the mind. Reflection on the General Rules, and an interpretation of that reflection as voluntary, helps explain not only Hume's theory of belief, but also how he hoped to reconcile epistemic normativity with naturalism about the mental. (shrink)

This paper advances the claim that skilful reflection is a master virtue in that skilful reflection shapes and corrects the other epistemic and intellectual virtues. We make the case that skilful reflection does this with both competence-based epistemic virtues and character-based intellectual virtues. In making the case that skilful reflection is a master virtue, we identify the roots of ideas central to our thesis in Confucian philosophy. In particular, we discuss the Confucian conception of reflection, as well as different levels (...) of epistemic virtue. Next we set out the Dual Process Hypothesis of Reflection, which provides an explanation of the workings of reflection in relation to Type 1 and Type 2 cognitive processes. In particular, we flag how repetition of Type 2 processes may eventually shape Type 1 processes and produce what we call downstream reflection. We distinguish competence-based epistemic virtues from character-based intellectual virtues. We also explain how our metacognition account of reflection, drawing on a Confucian conception of reflection and the Dual Process Hypothesis of Reflection, explains skilful reflection as a master virtue. Finally we outline an application of our metacognition account of reflection to a current debate in epistemology. (shrink)

Shareholder activism has become a dynamic institutional force, and its associated, rapidly increasing body of scholarly literature affects numerous disciplineswithin the organizational science academy. Despite growing shareholder empowerment, the impact of shareholder activism on corporate outcomes remains equivocal. The heterogeneity of factors in shareholder activism, such as environmental, firm, proponent, and issue characteristics; the variety of activism methods and processes; and varying outcomes provides a plethora of theoretical and methodological challenges for activism researchers. Furthermore, the separation of prior research on (...) financial and social activism has left unanswered questions critical for both the scholarly discourse on shareholder activism and the normative debate on shareholder empowerment. Our multidisciplinary review integrates both the financial and social activism streams and explores shareholder activism controversies, seeking to provide an impetus for more cohesive conceptual and empirical work in the field. (shrink)

Volume 15, Issue 3, September 2024, Page 387-397.

Conscientious objection among physicians is a perennial hot topic on both sides of the Atlantic. Sven Nordstrand's survey of Norwegian medical students adds fresh data to this ongoing debate.1Their starting point, whether doctors should be allowed to refuse any procedure to which they object on cultural, moral or religious grounds, is truly at the heart of the debate. Their finding that only 20.8% of students endorse this position is striking as it is less than half the number reported by Sophie (...) Strickland in her survey of medical students in the UK.2 It also suggests much less support for conscientious objection than was found among USA primary care physicians, where 78% agreed that “A physician should never do what he or she believes is morally wrong, no matter what experts say.”3These data invite speculation about why there is such dramatic variation between countries. Much can be made of Nordstrand's comments that in Norway “each citizen is assigned a particular general practitioner” and “In the Norwegian healthcare system the general practitioner has a crucial role as …. (shrink)

Deception, cheating, and loopholes within the IRB approval process have received significant attention in the past several years. Surveys of clinical researchers indicate common deception ranging from omitting information to outright lying, and controversy surrounding the FDA's decision not to ban “IRB shopping” has raised legitimate concerns about the integrity of the IRB process. One author has described a multicenter trial as being withdrawn from consideration at one institution when rejection was imminent, in order to avoid informing other IRBs reviewing (...) the protocol of the study's rejection. This practice and IRB shopping seem at odds with the spirit, if not the “letter,” of the regulations. While at first blush these practices seem to cast aspersions on the integrity of clinical researchers, the moral issues raised go deeper than the ethics of cheating. (shrink)

"Responding to the unprecedented violence of our times, and the corresponding interest in nonviolent solutions, this book takes up the heart of pacifism: its critique of what pacifists have termed the war system. Pacifism as War Abolitionism provides an account of the war system that draws on contemporary sociology, history, and political philosophy. The core of its critique of that system is that war begets war, and hence war will not be ended--or even constrained--by finding more principled ways to fight (...) war, as many imagine. War can only be ended by ending the war system, which can only be done nonviolently. This has been the message of pacifism's great voices like Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Dorothy Day. It is the principal message of this book. Key Features: Draws extensively on the sociological and historical research on war to expand the usual philosophical discussion beyond hypothetical accounts ; Expands the dialogues on the ethics of war beyond just war theory to its principal alternative: pacifism ; Engages discussion of empire and imperialism in relation to the logic and development of the war system ; Presents pacifism's response to the reality of war today, including the idea of 'never-ending war"--. (shrink)

The great mathematician, physicist, and philosopher, Hermann Weyl, once called mathematics the “science of the infinite.” This is a fitting title: contemporary mathematics—especially Cantorian set theory—provides us with marvelous ways of taming and clarifying the infinite. Nonetheless, I believe that the epistemic significance of mathematical infinity remains poorly understood. This dissertation investigates the role of the infinite in three diverse areas of study: number theory, cosmology, and probability theory. A discovery that emerges from my work is that the epistemic role (...) of the infinite varies, often in surprising ways, across different domains of knowledge. -/- My first chapter examines the role of mathematical infinity in number theory. It is reasonable to think that theorems concerning finite patterns and structures in the natural numbers are particularly “simple” or “elementary.” Indeed, such statements are comprehensible to a wide range of investigators, regardless of their mathematical training. One might then expect proofs of these theorems to be similarly comprehensible. However, many proofs, especially those that utilize only finitary methods, are exceedingly difficult to understand. Consequently, one finds that finitary theorems are often re-proved using infinitary techniques. My claim is that this is because infinitary proofs are often explanatory, while finitary proofs are not. This chapter analyzes why this is the case. Along the way, I investigate other questions of long-standing interest in the philosophy of mathematics, e.g., the role of purity/impurity ascriptions and the nature of the content of a theorem. In particular, I diagnose the explanatory potential of the infinite by articulating a new construal of content. This new construal both saves intuitive epistemic ascriptions made in mathematical practice and explains the unexpected role of the infinite in providing explanatory proofs of finitary statements. Thus, in number theory, my claim is that the infinite often plays an explanatory role. -/- My second chapter turns to the role of the infinite in cosmology. It investigates a question much discussed by philosophers and physicists alike: is the spatial extent of the universe finite or infinite? Contemporary cosmological research has indicated that one of the essential determinants of the extent of the universe is the topology we ascribe to space. Topology is a global property, which may suggest that it is not testable through local observation. Nonetheless, some cosmologists have indicated that it may be empirically detected, thereby providing an answer to the question of spatial extent. I argue that, in fact, the epistemic status of the topology of space is extremely subtle and not well captured by any of the categories commonly employed by philosophers of science. In particular, I argue that topological properties are neither empirical nor a priori (even in suitably weakened senses). Furthermore, I claim that we should prefer topological properties that generate finite universe models (consistent with our best data) in order to avoid extremely thorny issues concerning the physics of an infinite universe. I argue for such a preference on the grounds of the simplicity and explanatory power of finite universe models. Thus, in cosmology, my claim is that the finite often plays an explanatory and simplifying role. -/- My third chapter investigates several paradoxes that arise in the foundations of infinitary probability theory: the Label Invariance Paradox, God’s Lottery, and Bertrand’s Paradox. I argue that these have been poorly understood because they do not expressly concern probability theory, but rather our intuitions about—and formal techniques for dealing with— infinite sets. The paradoxes in question are, in fact, symptoms of our complete reliance upon Cantorian cardinality and its associated criterion of sameness of “size.” That is, two sets have the same cardinality if and only if the elements of the sets can be placed in 1-1 correspondence. When applied to infinite sets, this criterion produces counterintuitive verdicts. For instance, given a fair lottery on the natural numbers, we expect that the probability of drawing an even number is 1/2, and likewise for drawing an odd number. However, one can construct “relabellings” of the naturals such that the probability of drawing an even number remains 1/2, while the probability for drawing an odd number becomes 1/4. I argue that, ultimately, it is the coarseness of Cantorian cardinality that generates the probabilistic paradoxes. I then propose that finer-grained measures of infinite sets from mathematical logic and number theory can help to dissolve the paradoxes in question. Thus, in probability theory, we find that particular kinds of infinitary techniques effectively systematize our theory, while others lead to paradox. (shrink)

All three corporate governance systems in North America are currently embroiled in fundamental transformations. Most of Mexico’s corporations are run by a small group of controlling shareholders and operate in an economic system rife with corruption. Recent political reforms and a desire to tap global equity markets have heightened their interest in improving corporate governance structures. United States corporations face a dispersed ownership base that has tended toward inattentiveness, allowing such infamous scandals as Enron to rock the global investing community. (...) A backlash against the ensuing, restrictive Sarbanes-Oxley legislation is now underway. Like Mexico’s, Canada’s major corporations are led by a handful of controlling shareholders, but corruption is uncommon. New corporate governance guidelines are under debate, and the Ontario Securities Commission is wresting control from the Toronto Stock Exchange. Although these three corporate governance systems vary in terms of ownership dispersion, level of corruption, and legislative intervention, they currently share a common focus on fundamental reform. (shrink)

The Ethical Responsibilities of Journalism Vis-à-Vis the Economics of News Earlier this year, Dr. Ryan Thomas reached out to me about a potential topic for the Trends section of the journal. He had...

Von Hippel & Trivers (VH&T) propose that self-deception has evolved to facilitate the deception of others. However, they ignore the subjective moral costs of deception and the crucial issue of credibility in self-deceptive speech. A self-signaling interpretation can account for the ritualistic quality of some self-deceptive affirmations and for the often-noted gap between what self-deceivers say and what they truly believe.

How does anthoethnography contribute to the development of understandings of aesthetic experiences of wild plants and wildflower tourism? As exemplified by the quintessentially aesthetic industry of wildflower tourism, the culture of flora represents diverse engagements between people and plants. Such complex engagements offer further avenues for research. The critical methodology of anthoethnography has been one such approach to circumscribing the values, practices and rhetoric of wildflower tourism. Interviews have revealed perceptual phenomena such as the orchid and everlasting effects as two (...) counterpoised examples of the differences between visual aesthetic values occurring in the region. For appreciators such as Tinker, botanical science substantiates visual experience by showing the functional role of plants within habitats. However, the taxonomic eye is not the only judge of the value and significance of flowering plants. As underscored by Nannup, Aboriginal perspectives offer complex cultural modes of engagement and rich directions for wildflower tourism based in bodily experience. An anthoethnographic approach produces accounts of the spectrum of human perceptions of wildflowers in order to proffer potential directions for wildflower tourism of the future. Through a participatory aesthetics of flora in contemporary Australian landscapes, appreciative interactions with plants will occur not only through visual values, but also through the smell, taste, sound, or feel of plants and how one moves through communities of flora. Scientific knowledge can amplify visual and embodied modes. However, as an anthoethnographic lens has shown, wildflower tourism in the Southwest is weighted towards visual experience. Indeed, the history and contemporary practices of wildflower tourism encode ocular values that can posit a separation between post‐colonial cultures and native flora. A promising direction is towards participatory relationships beyond the aestheticisation of the surface qualities of flora and beyond the ‘conquest of the world as picture’. In an era of rapid species loss, wildflower tourism will increasingly embrace concepts of conservation, Aboriginal knowledges and the recognition of spiritual heritages, and the appreciation of plants beyond their visual impact. The expression of human sensory capacities for plants joined to an ethos of botanical conservation, drawing from scientific thought, can better ensure the longevity of flowers through the evolution of the culture of flora in the region. (shrink)

pt. 1. Actus Del.--pt. 2. A finite universe.

The essay provides a short outline of Berlin's career and an assessment of his contribution to pluralist and liberal thought. He was a British academic with a Russian cast of mind, and an inhabitant of the ivory tower who was very much at home in the diplomatic and political world. Similarly, he was neither a historian of ideas nor a political philosopher in the narrow sense usually understood in the modern academy. Rather, he engaged in a trans-historical conversation about the (...) human condition with such figures as Machiavelli, Herzen, Vico, and Herder. The Russian liberal understanding of the historical and cultural setting was, in his view, much superior to that of familiar figures such as John Stuart Mill, just as the nonliberal Machiavelli cast a particularly vivid light on the problems of a pluralist world view. (shrink)