Shors & Matzel's target article is a thought-provoking attempt to reconceptualise long-term potentiation as an attentional or arousal mechanism rather than a memory storage mechanism. This is incompatible with the facts of the neurobiology of attention and of the behavioural neurophysiological properties of hippocampal neurons.

A non-technical introduction to quantum mechanics, the Everett interpretation, and the emergence of spacetime.

It is commonplace in discussions of modern cosmology to assert that the early universe began in a special state. Conventionally, cosmologists characterize this fine-tuning in terms of the horizon and flatness problems. I argue that the fine-tuning is real, but these problems aren't the best way to think about it: causal disconnection of separated regions isn't the real problem, and flatness isn't a problem at all. Fine-tuning is better understood in terms of a measure on the space of trajectories: given (...) reasonable conditions in the late universe, the fraction of cosmological histories that were smooth at early times is incredibly tiny. This discussion helps clarify what is required by a complete theory of cosmological initial conditions. (shrink)

This paper sets out a predicative response to the Russell-Myhill paradox of propositions within the framework of Church’s intensional logic. A predicative response places restrictions on the full comprehension schema, which asserts that every formula determines a higher-order entity. In addition to motivating the restriction on the comprehension schema from intuitions about the stability of reference, this paper contains a consistency proof for the predicative response to the Russell-Myhill paradox. The models used to establish this consistency also model other axioms (...) of Church’s intensional logic that have been criticized by Parsons and Klement: this, it turns out, is due to resources which also permit an interpretation of a fragment of Gallin’s intensional logic. Finally, the relation between the predicative response to the Russell-Myhill paradox of propositions and the Russell paradox of sets is discussed, and it is shown that the predicative conception of set induced by this predicative intensional logic allows one to respond to the Wehmeier problem of many non-extensions. (shrink)

A number of authors have argued recently that the content of perceptual experience can, and even must, be characterized in conceptual terms. Their claim, more precisely, is that every perceptual experience is such that, of necessity, its content is constituted entirely by concepts possessed by the subject having the experience. This is a surprising result. For it seems reasonable to think that a subject’s experiences could be richer and more fine-grained than his conceptual repertoire; that a subject might be able, (...) for example, to discriminate in experience more shades of colors than he has color concepts. The key move in their argument, therefore, is to articulate the conceptual content of experience using demonstrative, instead of general, concepts. For instance, these authors argue that the content of my perceptual experience of a particular shade of green is properly characterized in terms of the concept expressed by the linguistic utterance “that shade”. Even if I don’t possess a general concept for the shade I’m seeing—a concept of the kind typically expressed using color names like ‘chartreuse’ or ‘lime’—nevertheless, these authors argue, the content of the experience can still be characterized conceptually using a demonstrative concept that I do possess. (shrink)

I begin by examining a recent debate between John McDowell and Christopher Peacocke over whether the content of perceptual experience is non-conceptual. Although I am sympathetic to Peacocke’s claim that perceptual content is non-conceptual, I suggest a number of ways in which his arguments fail to make that case. This failure stems from an over-emphasis on the "fine-grainedness" of perceptual content - a feature that is relatively unimportant to its non-conceptual structure. I go on to describe two other features of (...) perceptual experience that are more likely to be relevant to the claim that perceptual content is non-conceptual. These features are 1) the dependence of a perceived object on the perceptual context in which it is perceived and 2) the dependence of a perceived property on the object it is perceived to be a property of. (shrink)

In this study, we examined students' attitudes toward cheating and whether they would report instances of cheating they witnessed. Data were collected from three educational institutions in Singapore. A total of 518 students participated in the study. Findings suggest that students perceived cheating behaviors involving exam-related situations to be serious, whereas plagiarism was rated as less serious. Cheating in the form of not contributing one's fair share in a group project was also perceived as a serious form of academic misconduct, (...) although a majority of the students admitted having engaged in such behavior. With regard to the prevalence of academic cheating, our findings suggest that students are morally ambivalent about academic cheating and are rather tolerant of dishonesty among their peers. On the issue of whether cheating behaviors should be reported, our findings revealed that a majority of students chose to take the expedient measure of ignoring the problem rather than to blow the whistle on their peers. Implications of our findings are discussed. (shrink)

We provide a derivation of the Born Rule in the context of the Everett (Many-Worlds) approach to quantum mechanics. Our argument is based on the idea of self-locating uncertainty: in the period between the wave function branching via decoherence and an observer registering the outcome of the measurement, that observer can know the state of the universe precisely without knowing which branch they are on. We show that there is a uniquely rational way to apportion credence in such cases, which (...) leads directly to the Born Rule. Our analysis generalizes straightforwardly to cases of combined classical and quantum self-locating uncertainty, as in the cosmological multiverse. (shrink)

I ask whether what we know about the universe from modern physics and cosmology, including fine-tuning, provides compelling evidence for the existence of God, and answer largely in the negative.

This paper argues that disabled people can be healthy. I argue, first, following the well-known ‘social model of disability’, that we should prefer a usage of ‘disabled’ which does not imply any kind of impairment that is essentially inconsistent with health. This is because one can be disabled only because limited by false social perception of impairment and one can be, if impaired, disabled not because of the impairment but rather only because of the social response to it. Second, I (...) argue that it is often wrong to use the term ‘healthy’ in a way that makes health inconsistent with any degree whatsoever of health-relevant bodily dysfunction. Whether someone is ‘healthy’ properly-so-called depends on standards of health presupposed in conversational context. Sometimes, I argue, these standards are or ought to be lax enough to allow some people with some health deficits still to count as ‘healthy’ per se. Taking inspiration from David Lewis and Mary Kate Mcgowan, I go on to argue that denying that someone is ‘healthy’ in a context typically succeeds in shifting going presuppositions to require standards strict enough to make that denial acceptable. And this, I conclude by arguing, often constitutes an abuse of conversational power. (shrink)

This paper begins by exploring the anti-colonial work of Tunisian scholar Albert Memmi in his classic book The Colonizer and the Colonized and determining whether the characteristics of colonization that he names can be successfully applied to the current relationship between modern humans and the “natural world”. After considering what we found to be the five key characteristics: manufacturing the colonial, alienation and unknowability, violence, psychological strategies (bad faith), and language, history, and metaphor we draw clear parallels, through selected examples, (...) to the exploitative relationships enacted in many realms of the modern human/nature relationship. In so doing the paper posits that the beings that comprise the “natural world” are colonized. It then continues from that position to explore the possibility of cultivating practices of listening to the voices of these colonized others to inform anti-colonial ecopedagogy as allies. We employ the term “shut-up” as an anti-colonial gesture to remind ourselves as much as others of the importance of first listening to the colonized other before engaging in “post-colonial” theorizing about prospective relationships or liberatory solutions “for” them. Given the fast-paced and cacophonic urban life many humans increasingly inhabit, and the disciplined and reiterative practice(s) required to learn to listen to other voices, we suggest caution and care when importing postcolonial theory into “environmental” contexts and seek to instigate further discussion as to how we might enact solidarity with other beings as anti-colonial allies in education. To this end, we conclude the paper with some educational implications based on research at a place-based school and focus on the role history, language and metaphor play in manufacturing a colonial relationship, but also provide a potential means for changing relationships with the diverse beings with whom we share the planet. (shrink)

A diagonal version of the strong reflection principle is introduced, along with fragments of this principle associated with arbitrary forcing classes. The relationships between the resulting principles and related principles, such as the corresponding forcing axioms and the corresponding fragments of the strong reflection principle, are analyzed, and consequences are presented. Some of these consequences are “exact” versions of diagonal stationary reflection principles of sets of ordinals. We also separate some of these diagonal strong reflection principles from related axioms.

For Marx, work is the fundamental and central activity in human life and, potentially at least, a ful lling and liberating activity. Although this view is implicit throughout Marx’s work, there is little explicit explanation or defence of it. The fullest treatment is in the account of ‘estranged labour’ [entfremdete Arbeit] in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts;1 but, even there, Marx does not set out his philosophical assumptions at length. For an understanding of these, one must turn to Hegel. Marx (...) is quite explicit about his debt to Hegel in this respect. (shrink)

Abstract According to Russellianism, the content of a Russellian thought, in which a person ascribes a monadic property to an object, can be represented as an ordered couple of the object and the property. A consequence of this is that it is not possible for a person to believe that a is F and not to believe b is F, when a=b. Many critics of Russellianism suppose that this is possible and thus that Russellianism is false. Several arguments for this (...) claim are criticized and it is argued that Russellians need not appeal to representational notions in order to defeat them. Contrary to popular opinion, the prospects for a pure Russellianism, a Russellianism without representations, are in fact very good. (shrink)

phenomenology and logical analysis. John Searle and Bert Dreyfus are for me two of the paradigm figures of contemporary philosophy, so I am extremely proud to have been offered the opportunity to engage with their work. The editors of The Harvard Review of Philosophy, it seems to me, have shown a keen sense of what is deep and important in our discipline by publishing extended interviews with these two influential thinkers. At the same time, writing this article meant entering into (...) a debate between Searle and Dreyfus about the priority of their respective philosophical methodologies, and this, I am afraid, is at best a no-win situation. My strategy, therefore, has been to try to engage as sympathetically as possible with the programs of each philosopher, and to draw from their work lessons that seem to me important for any philosophical account of intentionality and social reality. I have not shied away from criticism; indeed the whole paper is an extended series of criticisms of the work of both philosophers. But I hope they will recognize this for what it is: an engagement with the work of each that is based on the deepest respect and admiration. Before I jump into the fray, I should mention that I owe a personal debt of gratitude to Searle and Dreyfus as well. They were not only my two advisors in graduate school, but were the two main reasons I entered philosophy. Having become dissatisfied with the formal worlds of mathematics and computer science, their respective critiques of artificial intelligence and cognitivism showed me the rich possibilities of philosophy and struck me as a reason to become a philosopher. It is a difficult discipline, sometimes unforgiving; but I am glad I followed them into it. (shrink)

Prominent defenders of the Enlightenment, like Jürgen Habermas, are beginning to recognize that the characterization of human beings in entirely rational and secular terms leaves out something important. Religion, they admit, plays an important role in human existence. But the return to a traditional monotheistic religion seems sociologically difficult after the death of God. We argue that Homeric polytheism retains a phenomenologically rich account of the sacred, and a similarly rich understanding of human existence in its midst. By opening ourselves (...) up to the moods of wonder and gratitude at the root of Homer's sense of the sacred, we can re-appropriate a polytheistic understanding of the sacred that allows us to recover and revive the intensity and meaningfulness that Homer's polytheists enjoyed. (shrink)

This article focuses primarily on our research group’s year of preparation before the opening of a new K-7 publicly funded ecological ‘school’ for students aged 5–12. The article begins with a discussion of the reasons for seeking ways to change the values of a culture which fails to confront the consequences of its destructive practices, and for looking for a new approach to ecological education which sees the more-than-human world as an integral part of the learning situation. Five principles are (...) introduced and explained—principles that have grown out of the evolving experience of the research group, and then four ‘slogans’, which have served to guide the ongoing work of development, are described and illustrated. As part of the purpose of this project to change social and cultural values, the change of values within the research group during its ongoing work is also explored. (shrink)

This paper proposes that contained within Martin Buber's works one can find useful support for, and insights into, an educational philosophy that stretches across, and incorporates, both the human and non-human worlds. Through a re-examination of his seminal essay Education2, and with reference to specific incidents in his autobiography (e.g. the horse, his family, the theatre and the tree) and to central tenets of his theology (e.g. the shekina, the Eternal Thou and teshuvah) we shall present a more coherent understanding (...) of Buber's notion of relationship which is developmental in nature and posits intrinsic, necessary and unavoidable relational ties to both the human and non-human worlds. This understanding of Buber's view of relationship as a developmental process will add new meaning to his central ideas of 'bursting asunder' the educational relationship and the educator who is cast 'in imitatio Dei absconditi sed non ignoti'.3 Ultimately this paper wants to suggest that, for Buber, the infant is unable to become fully adult without being immersed in relationship and then coming to full awareness of it, and it is the educator who can play a pivotal role in supporting the development of this adult relationality through encounters with both individual humans and the larger non-human world. (shrink)

Political scientists' failure to pay careful attention to the content (as opposed to the operationalization) of their chosen definition of 'democracy' can make them liable to draw invalid inferences from their empirical research. With this problem in mind, we argue for the following proposition: if one wishes to conduct empirical research that contributes to an existing conversation about democracy, then one must choose a definition of 'democracy' that picks out the topic of that conversation as opposed to some other (perhaps (...) nearby) topic of conversation. We show that, as a practical matter, one of the most effective methods for preserving "topic continuity" is to choose a definition of `democracy' that concurs with prevailing judgments about how to classify particular regimes, emphasizing the superiority (in this regard) of judgments about stylized hypothetical scenarios as opposed to judgments about the actual regimes we observe in our datasets. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 63, Issue 2, pp 209 - 210 Aristotle says that it is in the nature of color to impart movement to transparent media. Typically this is interpreted as implying that these media must be transparent before color moves them. I argue that this is a mistake.

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

Aristotle's thesis in "Physics" I 8 is that a certain old and familiar problem about coming to be can only be solved with the help of the new account of the "principles" he has developed in "Physics" I 7. This is a strong thesis and the literature on the chapter does not quite do it justice; specifically, as things now stand we are left wondering why Aristotle should have found this problem so compelling in the first place. In this paper (...) I develop an interpretation which (I hope) will help to remedy this. I believe that Aristotle's problem about coming to be depends on a certain principle to the effect that "nothing can become what it already is" (it is this that is supposed to explain why τὸ ὄν cannot come to be ἐξ ὄντος -- cf. 191a30). The main innovation of the interpretation developed here is its suggestion that we understand this principle as a principle about kinds. So understood, the principle does not make the comparatively trivial point that nothing can become any individual it already is, but rather the more powerful and substantive point that nothing can become any kind of thing it already is. I argue that this is a point which Aristotle himself accepts and that this is why the problem about coming to be raises serious difficulties for him. I also discuss Aristotle's proposed solutions to this problem, explaining how each draws on his new account of the principles and why each is required for any full resolution of the difficulties the problem raises. In this way I hope to show how the interpretation developed here does justice to the very strong thesis with which Aristotle begins "Physics" I 8. I conclude briefly and somewhat speculatively with a suggestion as to why Aristotle might accept the principle on which I have suggested the problem turns. (shrink)

The production of scientific instruments in America was neither a postwar phenomenon nor dramatically different from that of several other developed countries. It did, however, undergo a step-change in direction, size and style during and after the war. The American scientific instrument industry after 1945 was intimately dependent on, and shaped by, prior American and European experience. This was true of the specific genres of instrument produced commercially; to links between industry and science; and, just as importantly, to manufacturing practices (...) and cultures. I will argue that, despite the new types of instrument commercialized after the war, this historical continuity of links with science and scientists guided and constrained the design and manufacture of these products. Nevertheless, new designers, manufacturers and customers gradually transformed the culture of scientific instruments in the second half of the century. -/- This chapter deals with a subset of the American instrument industry, namely the measuring and monitoring instruments manufactured for scientific use. Even with the specification of ‘scientific’ instruments, however, these borders are rather artificial and unclear: instrument making from the seventeenth through the twentieth century has generally involved the fabrication of both standard products and custom-made devices for scientific use.2 In this context of sales quantities, ‘scientific’ instruments have often been defined as low-volume, special-order or custom devices. In a similar vein, ‘scientific’ instruments were commonly distinguished from ‘production’ instruments by context of usage, namely their very absence from – and indeed irrelevance to – production environments. This demarcation according to customer and environment was mirrored in at least one furth er respect: the training of their users. The classification into ‘scientific’ and ‘engineering’ applications was as fluid as the relationship between American universities and technical industries themselves.Despite these complementary definitions, the notion of the ‘scientific instrument’ was beginning to prove inadequate even at the turn of the twentieth century, and dramatically so when discussing the post-Second World War period. Definitions altered qualitatively after the Second World War in at least three further ways: (a) new genres of device altered the scope of the scientific instrument; (b) the contribution of State and military sponsorship of new forms of instrument became significant; and, (c) the postwar demand for specialist instruments increased rapidly, owing to wartime innovation, new applications and new customers. I will explore the evolution of instrument manufacturing in this changing context of new technology, funding, development and markets. (shrink)

Aristotle introduces Physics I as an inquiry into principles; in this paper I ask where he argues for the position he reaches in I 7. Many hold that his definitive argument is found in the first half of I 7 itself; I argue that this view is mistaken: the considerations raised there do not form the basis of any self-standing argument for Aristotle's doctrine of principles, but rather play a subordinate role in a larger argument begun in earnest in I (...) 5. This larger argument stalls in I 6, which ends in aporta; I argue that the problem lies in the fact that Aristotle's reasoning in I 6 thoroughly undermines his reasoning in I 5 (on which I 6 is ostensibly supposed to build). I further argue that the materials necessary for resolving this problem, and thereby allowing the argument begun in I 5 to reach its proper conclusion, are supplied by the thesis that organizes the first half of I 7. Along the way I offer some remarks about Aristotle's doctrine of principles, arguing that it is about the principles of natural substance (as opposed to coming to be or change). I also offer some remarks about the thesis which organizes the first half of I 7.1 argue negatively that it is not anything like a preliminary statement of Aristotle's doctrine of principles. I argue positively that it reflects Aristotle's idea that there are two distinct kinds of effect change has upon things (one constructive, the other destructive). One of these effects lies behind Aristotle's reasoning in I 5, the other comes to the fore in 16; the achievement of the first half of I 7 is to reconcile these seemingly competing conceptions by finding a place for them both in a unified account of coming to be and its subjects. (shrink)

1. The philosophical problem of what we see My topic revolves around what is apparently a very basic question. Stripped of all additions and in its leanest, most economical form, this is the question: "What do we see?" But in this most basic form the question admits of at least three different interpretations. In the first place, one might understand it to be an epistemological question, perhaps one with skeptical overtones. "What do we see?", on this reading, is short for (...) something like "What things in the world are we justified in believing we see, given the possibility of evil demon scenarios and all the other impedimenta to genuine sight that have become the working tools of epistemologists over the last 350 years?" I shall not be concerned with the question in this skeptical sense. I intend the parenthetical addition to the question, "What do we see (when we do)?", along with the bald-faced assumption that the condition so specified at least sometimes obtains, to rule out discussion along these sorts of epistemological lines, at least for the purposes of this paper. Whether or not this condition in fact obtains, of course, will not effect the position I’m defending. (shrink)

This article explores an important section of Jean-Paul Sartre’s famous early work, Being and Nothingness. In that section Sartre proposes that part of the human condition is to actively engage in a particular kind of self-deception he calls bad faith. Bad faith is recognized by the obvious inconsistency between the purported self-knowledge of an individual and ways of acting and being in the world that are demonstrably in defiance of that stated position. This article begins by exploring examples of this (...) self-deception in education along with a short query into the role pain avoidance might play in the development of this particular skill. The article then goes on to offer a series of manifestations of bad faith that Sartre identified along with possible examples of how each example, perhaps ‘excuse’, of bad faith might appear in education. (shrink)

The second half of the twentieth century offers distinct perspectives for the historian of science. The role of the State, the expansion of certain industries and the cultural engagement with science were all transformed. The foregrounding of certain strands of physical science in the public and administrative consciousness – nuclear physics and planetary science, for example – had a complement: the ‘backgrounding’ or institutional neglect of a number of other fields. My work in the history of the physical sciences has (...) focused on this little-noticed intellectual terrain, and could be categorised into several types of case study that share distinct research questions, conceptual understandings and historiographical ramifications. -/- My focus is physical sciences that have been identified as peripheral, if categorised at all, by a previous generation of historians of physics. By this I do not mean peripheral in the geographic sense, but marginal, interstitial or boundary-crossing in the context of occupations, disciplines and professions. The types of case study investigated include (i) scientific instruments; (ii) emergent professions or would-be professions; and, (iii) subject areas falling between academic science, industrial application and State interests. (shrink)

The concepts of identity and community have recently been the subject of a good deal of debate in social philosophy, much of it focused on the ideas of writers like MacIntyre, Taylor, Walzer. These philosophers are often referred to as `communitarians', though they do not constitute a united school and none of them identifies himself as such. Nevertheless, there are good reasons 1 for grouping them together, for they share some important elements of common ground. In their different ways, each (...) develops a critique of liberal and individualist social theory and formulates a philosophy which recognises the reality and value of community. (shrink)

In catechesis for adolescents seeking confirmation in the Roman Catholic Church, a dualistic bias unconsciously dichotomizes objective doctrine and subjective psychology. This is problematic because if a catechist does not communicate mind-independent truth, no seed of Catholic faith will have been planted in a student. At the same time, if a catechist does not affirm a student's subjectivity, the seed cannot find receptive soil. I believe the key to integrating these intellectual and affective elements – the head and the heart (...) – lies in the link between what Bernard Lonergan calls authentic subjectivity and objectivity. Catechists can appeal to this link by embracing the moral responsibility to ‘know our knowing,’ becoming aware of our dualistic bias and judging our faith experiences according to objective standards of knowledge. (shrink)

Aristotle's thesis in Physics I 8 is that a certain old and familiar problem about coming to be can only be solved with the help of the new account of the "principles" he has developed in Physics I 7. This is a strong thesis and the literature on the chapter does not quite do it justice; specifically, as things now stand we are left wondering why Aristotle should have found this problem so compelling in the first place. In this paper (...) I develop an interpretation which will help to remedy this.I believe that Aristotle's problem about coming to be depends on a certain principle to the effect that "nothing can become what it already is" . The main innovation of the interpretation developed here is its suggestion that we understand this principle as a principle about kinds. So understood, the principle does not make the comparatively trivial point that nothing can become any individual it already is, but rather the more powerful and substantive point that nothing can become any kind of thing it already is. I argue that this is a point which Aristotle himself accepts and that this is why the problem about coming to be raises serious difficulties for him. I also discuss Aristotle's proposed solutions to this problem, explaining how each draws on his new account of the principles and why each is required for any full resolution of the difficulties the problem raises. In this way I hope to show how the interpretation developed here does justice to the very strong thesis with which Aristotle begins Physics I 8. I conclude brie fly and somewhat speculatively with a suggestion as to why Aristotle might accept the principle on which I have suggested the problem turns. (shrink)

The ideology of evidence-base medicine (EBM) has dramatically altered the way we think, conceptualize, philosophize and practice medicine. One of its major pillars is the appraisal and classification of evidence. Although important and beneficial, this process currently lacks detail and is in need of reform. In particular, it largely focuses on three key dimensions (design, [type I] alpha error and beta [type II] error) to grade the quality of evidence and often omits other crucial aspects of evidence such as biological (...) plausibility, reproducibility, generalizability, temporality, consistency and coherence. It also over-values the randomized trial and meta-analytical techniques, discounts the biasing effect of single centre execution and gives insufficient weight to large and detailed observational studies. Unless these aspects are progressively included into systems for grading, evaluating and classifying evidence and duly empirically assessed (according to the EBM paradigm), the EBM process and movement will remain open to criticism of being more evidence-biased than evidence-based. (shrink)

This article argues that sociologists have much to gain from a fuller engagement with dystopian literature. This is because (i) the speculation in dystopian literature tends to be more grounded in empirical social reality than in the case of utopian literature, and (ii) the literary conventions of the dystopia more readily illustrate the relationship between the inner life of the individual and the greater whole of social-historical reality. These conventional features mean dystopian literature is especially attuned to how historically-conditioned social (...) forces shape the inner life and personal experience of the individual, and how acts of individuals can, in turn, shape the social structures in which they are situated. In other words, dystopian literature is a potent exercise of what C. Wright Mills famously termed ‘the sociological imagination’. (shrink)

1. The philosophical problem of what we see My topic revolves around what is apparently a very basic question. Stripped of all additions and in its leanest, most economical form, this is the question: "What do we see?" But in this most basic form the question admits of at least three different interpretations. In the first place, one might understand it to be an epistemological question, perhaps one with skeptical overtones. "What do we see?", on this reading, is short for (...) something like "What things in the world are we justified in believing we see, given the possibility of evil demon scenarios and all the other impedimenta to genuine sight that have become the working tools of epistemologists over the last 350 years?" I shall not be concerned with the question in this skeptical sense. I intend the parenthetical addition to the question, "What do we see (when we do)?", along with the bald-faced assumption that the condition so specified at least sometimes obtains, to rule out discussion along these sorts of epistemological lines, at least for the purposes of this paper. Whether or not this condition in fact obtains, of course, will not effect the position I’m defending. (shrink)

In her essay, “After de Brosses” (2017), Rosalind C. Morris briefly considers the historical importance of the concept of the fetish on the relatively recent movements of new materialism, but she does not engage with Speculative Realism and Object-Oriented Ontology. This essay addresses this gap and focuses on the influence of the fetish on Speculative Realism and Object-Oriented Ontology by focusing on Graham Harman’s conception of objects and Quentin Meillassoux’s theory of arche-fossils. In short, I am offering a posthumanist theorization (...) of the fetish in order to argue that Object-Oriented Ontology can be considered, at points, to be a fetish-oriented ontology and that this notion of the fetish allows us to think about philosophical considerations of objects in a new light. (shrink)

The Supreme Court against the Criminal Jury critiques the Supreme Court’s decisions to allow reduced jury sizes and less than unanimous jury verdicts to determine guilt. John A. Murley and Sean D. Sutton challenges the Court’s decisions by examining its incomplete understanding of the purpose of trial by jury and evaluating its use of inaccurate and unreliable studies as support for its decisions.

Are there illusions of duration? Certainly, many experiences of an event’s duration differ from its measure in clock duration, the measure of that event in seconds, minutes, hours, and so forth. However, I argue that an illusory duration requires more than difference from a real duration; it requires difference from a duration that is relevant to experience. It is plausible to hold that there are many kinds of real duration and reason to question the relevance of all of them. In (...) particular, the interpretation of experienced duration as illusory is typically because it is compared to clock time; the experience of duration goes wrong by being different from a clock measurement of duration. -/- However, I argue that clock duration is not obviously relevant to evaluating the experience of duration. One might hold that it is plausible to evaluate experience by clock duration because clocks more closely match reality than experiences do; on the scale of experience, clock time is no different to real duration. It is not that experienced duration is an illusion because it is merely different from clock duration; it is an illusion because it is different from real duration and we know this because of its difference from clock duration. It is like illusions of size: some object seems to be a size it is not, and we know this by comparing it to an object we can otherwise accurately measure by meters. -/- However, unlike size illusions, it is not clear what the ‘real duration’ is against which we should evaluate apparent duration. What is meant by ‘real duration’ involves either (a) an appeal to the duration of substantial absolute time or (b) some kind of duration in things, e.g., duration which is the measure of change in some kind of process. (a) is an irrelevant duration; few positions hold that we experience absolute time. As for (b), if real duration is a measure of change, then, for experienced duration to match clock duration, they must both agree on the relevant change. If there is a difference in what is treated as the real duration, then neither experience nor clocks can be treated as evaluable in terms of the other. -/- Finally, we may have an illusory duration because there are cases of variation between experiences of the same duration. Yet, even here, we may be misled; we may not be directly comparing experiences. We compare the experienced durations through first measuring each in terms of clock duration. If there is a variability in the relationship between clock standard and some relevant standard for experience, then one expects anything accurately meeting one standard to differ from anything accurately meeting the other. The error is holding there is a stable relationship between the standards. This error is not a matter of our experience of duration, and so is not an illusion of duration. (shrink)

The question of ontological commitment in Plato’s Hippias Major has been important in disputes over the dialogue’s place in the corpus, its meaning, and its authenticity. But this question seems to have been settled—the Hippias Major is not committed to the ‘forms.’ Such an ontological conclusion has been vigorously defended, but its defenses rest on a problematic meta-ontological framework. This paper suggests a more adequate framework and brings more evidence to the evaluation of the question of ontological commitment in the (...) Hippias Major. It concludes that the dialogue is indeed committed to some kind of form. (shrink)

To examine the influence of hypnotic suggestibility testing as a source of individual differences in hypnotic responsiveness, we compared behavioral and subjective responses on three scales of hypnotic suggestibility: The Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility, Form A . Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility. Berlin: Consulting Psychologists Press); the Carleton University Responsiveness to Suggestion Scale . The Carleton University Responsiveness to Suggestion Scale: Normative data and psychometric properties. Psychological Reports, 53, 523–535); and the Group Scale of Hypnotic Ability . (...) The Group Scale of Hypnotic Ability and response booklet. Australian Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 27, 20–31). Behavioral and subjective responses to the CURSS were significantly different than those on the HGSHS: A and GSHA. More participants were classified as “low suggestible” on the CURSS and they reported subjective experiences more similar to everyday mentation. Attitudes and expectancies of participants who received the GSHA were less predictive of responding, but rates of responding and subjective experiences were similar on the GSHA and the HGSHS: A. Discussion focuses on implications for the use of group hypnotic suggestibility scales. (shrink)

This essay is written in two sections. The first, following a short introduction, is made up of three scenarios drawn from the life and work of Martin Buber. As well as demonstrating his obvious interest in human relationships with the other-than-human, each scenario describes an encounter between either Buber himself or a stand-in character and a member of the other-than-human world. Together, these scenes not only suggest that I/Thou encounters are possible with the other-than-human, and that they are important for (...) the development of the human I, but also outline characteristics that make such encounters possible. The second section focuses on Buber's description of the “great actor” in order to offer a way teachers might engage their own students with the other-than-human world. Just as the actor embodies both the character and his or her own person in a dramatic role, so the teacher might embody the I/Thou relationship with the natural world, becoming Teacher/Tree, and exemplifying that relationship with the students. (shrink)