In this challenging book, Ted Benton takes recent debates about the moral status of animals as a basis for reviewing the discourse of “human rights.” Liberal-individualist views of human rights and advocates of animal rights tend to think of individuals, whether human or animals, in isolation from their social position. This makes them vulnerable to criticisms from the left which emphasize the importance of social relationships to individual well-being. Benton’s argument supports the important assumption, underpinning the cause for human rights, (...) that humans and other species of animal have much in common, both in the conditions for their well-being and their vulnerability to harm. Both liberal rights theory and its socialist critique fail adequately to theorize these aspects of human vulnerability. Nevertheless, it is argued that, enriched by feminist and ecological insights, a socialist view of rights has much to offer. Lucid and wide-ranging in its argument, Natural Relations enables the outline of an ecological socialist view of rights and justice to begin to take shape. (shrink)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961) has been hailed by many as the greatest French thinker of the twentieth century. As one of the founding members of the existentialist movement in the 1940s, he played a key role in introducing the work of Husserl and Heidegger into French thought and collaborated with Jean-Paul Sartre in the founding of Les Temps Modernes. His later work laid the foundation for the development of French thought in the direction of post-structuralism and post-modernism.

Merleau-Ponty: Critical (...) Assessments of Leading Philosophers gathers together the best critical writing on Merleau-Ponty’s work from the last half century. The collection includes early reviews of his work and the reactions of his contemporaries both during and after his life. Also covered are examinations of his relationship with Husserl, Sartre and the phenomenological tradition, investigations of key themes from his work on ontology, expression and politics, and the ongoing application of his thinking to such contemporary areas of interest as feminist theory, psychology and child development, environmental philosophy and cognitive science.

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Ted T. Aoki, the most prominent curriculum scholar of his generation in Canada, has influenced numerous scholars around the world. Curriculum in a New Key brings together his work, over a 30-year span, gathered here under the themes of reconceptualizing curriculum; language, culture, and curriculum; and narrative. Aoki's oeuvre is utterly unique--a complex interdisciplinary configuration of phenomenology, post-structuralism, and multiculturalism that is both theoretically and pedagogically sophisticated and speaks directly to teachers, practicing and prospective. Curriculum in a New Key: The (...) Collected Works of Ted T. Aoki is an invaluable resource for graduate students, professors, and researchers in curriculum studies, and for students, faculty, and scholars of education generally. (shrink)

North by Northwest -- Metaphor and the cultivation of intimacy -- Notes on metaphor -- What's special about photography? -- Sports and art -- Clay for contemplation -- There are no ties at first base -- A driving examination -- Objects of appreciation -- And what if they don't laugh? -- Liking what's good: why should we? -- Language games -- Ethics class -- Kings and salesmen -- One way to think about popular art -- Caring -- The idea of (...) absolute gin -- Playing by the rules -- Freedom from rules. (shrink)

Bernhard and Young (Journal of Academic Ethics, 7, 175-191, 2009) allege that a myth of confidentiality plagues research in North America because of the absence of statute-based legal protections and the requirements of some REBs to limit confidentiality to the extent permitted by law. In this commentary we describe statute-based protections for research confidentiality available in the United States, clarify the legal situation regarding research confidentiality in Canada, and explain that REBs that require confidentiality to be limited by law are (...) imposing a doctrine that is not required by the TCPS and may violate researchers’ academic freedom. The paper laments how excessive REB risk aversion and inaction by the granting agency Presidents has created a situation where some REBs are encouraging researchers to download research risks to research participants and forcing researchers to choose between exposing themselves to the prospect of going to jail to protect confidentiality, watering down their research objectives, or conducting vanilla research rather than engaging in controversial and/or sensitive areas of study. The paper urges the granting agency Presidents to seek legislative change to protect research participants who provide information that could cause them harm if their identity were to be revealed. (shrink)

Public theology is conceived in the church, reflected on critically in the academy and addressed to the world for the sake of the world. The development of a theology of nature is included in the public theologian’s list of tasks of nature that is scripturally based and heavily informed by the natural sciences. Astrotheology is one product. Astrotheology engages astrobiology and other space sciences, firstly, by critically exposing the extraterrestrial intelligence myth at the heart of science and secondly, by partnering (...) in thinking through public policy proposals with astroethicists.Contribution: The HTS collection on ‘Theology and Nature’ sparks theological discussion both within and beyond the church. By developing the fields of astrotheology and astroethics, this article contributes to a ‘Theology of Nature’ as an exercise in Public Theology. (shrink)

This paper seeks to establish closer connections and spur dialogue between philosophers working on 4E cognition and aestheticians. In part, the aim is to offer a critical overview of the ways 4E research might inform our understandings of the arts. Yet it is also partly to flag some potential art-specific challenges to some of the theses found within the 4E literature. I start by examining the strongest extant claims regarding art and active externalism, and argue that it is hard to (...) see either how active externalism could square with our actual appreciative practices or that its explanatory value could be sufficient to pressure us to revise radically those practices. Furthermore, I argue, rejecting active externalism seems necessary to acknowledge adequately the important ways in which artistic creation often involves the application of embodied know-how or the execution of embodied skills. For this reason, I argue, embodied approaches to cognition are better positioned to complement and inform the humanistic methods traditionally employed in philosophical aesthetics and art theory. However, I conclude on a moderately sceptical note: the challenge still outstanding for these approaches is to yield new understandings of our artistic practices that have not been gleaned through traditional humanistic inquiry. (shrink)

Wretchedness and terrorism, and differences we make between them -- A theory of justice, an anarchism, and the obligation to obey the law -- The principle of humanity -- Our omissions and their terrorism -- On democratic terrorism -- Doctrines, commitments, and four conclusions about terrorism for humanity.

Reason and Explanation develops a new explanationist account of epistemic justification. Poston argues that the explanatory virtues provide a plausible account of necessary and sufficient conditions for justification. The justification of a subject's belief consists in the explanatory virtue of her entire beliefs compared with other sets of beliefs she could have. Poston's argument for coherentism involves a defense of the epistemic value of background beliefs, the development of a novel framework view of reasons, and the articulation of a mentalism (...) evidentialist account of coherentism. Poston argues against foundationalist views that ground justification in sense experience apart from supporting background beliefs. He extends the argument against foundationalism by examining a coherentist view of a priori knowledge. Finally, he articulates a compatiblist position regarding Bayesianism and inference to the best explanation. (shrink)

Hallucination: the perception of an impossible image. That which can never appear suddenly does so anyways - a private world that appears only to the eye of the one imagining it... until now. Ted Serios, psychic photographer, claimed he could project images directly from his mind onto photographic film. Under the sign of the psychic photograph, “Hallucinating Ted Serios” is a theorization of the dominant forms of uncertainty that persist in postmodern evaluations of representation, interpretation and identity. The central thesis (...) of this paper is that the imaginary and the real have collapsed into the spectral hallucination of one another, rendering impossible the rhetorical separation of hallucination from image. With the collapse of the boundary between the fictive and the real, the world of representation becomes intelligible only as an imaginary phenomenon; with the collapse between the object and the observer, interpretation is rendered deceptively magical; and, with the collapse between the self and its anonymous double, identity itself is relegated to a state of impossibility. Consequently, under the persisting signs of the imaginary, the magical and the impossible, “Hallucinating Ted Serios” asserts that in our contemporary world there no longer exists the possibility of failed performativity – psychic, imaginary or otherwise. (shrink)

The current dominant perspective on addiction as a brain disease has been challenged recently by Marc Lewis, who argued that the brain-changes related to addiction are similar to everyday changes of the brain. From this alternative perspective, addictions are bad habits that can be broken, provided that people are motivated to change. In that case, autonomous choice or “free will” can overcome bad influences from genes and or environments and brain-changes related to addiction. Even though we concur with Lewis that (...) there are issues with the brain disease perspective, we also argue that pointing to black swans can be important, that is: there can be severe cases where addiction indeed tips over into the category of brain disease, but obviously that does not prove that every case of addiction falls into the disease category, that all swans are black. We argue that, for example, people suffering from Korsakoff’s syndrome, can be described as having a brain disease, often caused by alcohol addiction. Moreover, the brain changes occurring with addiction are related to choice-behaviour, habit formation and insight, hence essential mental abilities to break the addiction. We argue for a more graded perspective, where both black swans and white swans are rare, and most cases of addiction come as geese in different shades of gray. (shrink)

'Review from previous edition 'the arguments for free will and determinism are lucidly laid out... A primer that is serviceable, enjoyable and rather mischievous.'' - The Observer 1993 ''refreshing, provocative and original work'' - Times Literary Supplement 1994 ''a readable and engaging introduction to the determinism controversy... Honderich's book is well worth reading... the view he presents is provocative and he has written a very challenging and enlightening introduction to 'the determinism problem' that should be widely read.'' - Times Educational (...) Supplement 1994 ''If you feel strong enough read this book; if not be glad that it has been written; this is main stream philosophy and its conclusions are encouraging.'' -New Directions July 2002This second edition of the best-known and most translated introduction to the great philosophical problem of determinism and freedom has been fully revised and enlarged to take account of debates emerging since the first edition was published. In the first edition Ted Honderich went beyond two traditions of philosophical thought, whilst in this edition he indicates that the nature of the debate must change. (shrink)

Three experiments investigating children's understanding of inference as a source of knowledge and beliefs were used to determine whether children use a theory in understanding the mind. A child watched while a sweet was placed in a box whereas a doll was merely given a message about which sweet had been transferred. Children were asked to judge whether the doll knew the colour of the sweet in the box and what colour the do6 would think the sweet was. The main (...) finding was that children tended to say the doll would hold a false belief about the colour of the sweet whenever the doll had not looked in the box. This result is easily reconciled with the theory view as a drive for coherence within the different aspects (knowledge and belier predictions) of the child's theory of mind. The result is contrary to the simulation view because children were generally good at‘inputting’or taking account of the relevant information (i.e. the doll's knowledge of the sweets’colours and the message to the doll), because children assessed their own beliefs quite differently from the doll's beliefs, and because contrary to the default assumptions set out by Harris (1991) children found it easier to assign a false belief to the doll than to assign a true belief. (shrink)

What is it for you to be conscious? There is no consensus in philosophy or science: it has remained a mystery. Ted Honderich develops a brand new theory of consciousness, according to which perceptual consciousness is external to the perceiver. It exists in a subjective physical world dependent on both you and the objective physical world.

I want to suggest a point in metaphor which is independent of the question of its cognitivity and which has nothing to do with its aesthetical character. I think of this point as the achievement of intimacy. There is a unique way in which the maker and the appreciator of a metaphor are drawn closer to one another. Three aspects are involved: the speaker issues a kind of concealed invitation; the hearer expends a special effort to accept the invitation; and (...) this transaction constitutes the acknowledgement of a community. All three are involved in any communication, but in ordinary literal discourse their involvement is so persuasive and routine that they go unremarked. The use of metaphor throws them into relief, and there is a point in that. An appreciator of a metaphor must do two things: he must realize that the expression is a metaphor, and he must figure out the point of the expression. His former accomplishment induces him to undertake the latter. Realizing the metaphorical character of an expression is often easy enough; it requires only the assumption that the speaker is not simply speaking absurdly or uttering a patent falsehood. But it can be a more formidable task: not every figurative expression which can survive a literal reading is a mere play on words. Ted Cohen is chairman of the department of philosophy at the University of Chicago. He has written on language, aesthetics, and taste and has coedited a collection entitled Essays on Kant's Aesthetics. His contribution to Critical Inquiry, "Reflexions on Las Meninas: Paradox Lost", was written with Joel Snyder in the Winter 1980 issue. (shrink)

Jason Stanley and Timothy Williamson's influential article "Knowing How" argues that knowledge-how is a species of knowledge-that. One objection to their view is that knowledge-how is significantly different than knowledge-that because Gettier cases afflict the latter but not the former. Stanley and Williamson argue that this objection fails. Their response, however, is not adequate. Moreover, I sketch a plausible argument that knowledge-how is not susceptible to Gettier cases. This suggests a significant distinction between knowledge-that and knowledge-how.

The worldwide transhumanist movement upgrades technological hopes and expectations to a level of religious fervor. When looking through the eyes of the public theologian, we see in H+ a disguised religion replete with faith in techno-salvation and even immortality. This is unrealistic. Apologetic theologians can offer the wider public a more realistic assessment of technology's potential while providing genuine hope in a future vision based on divine promise.

One of the most significant studies of Descartes in recent times. It concentrates on the _Meditations_ to show Descartes' philosophy in the context of his overall scientific objectives, not all of them fully explicit in the texts.

The Memory of the World argues for a new philosophy of time that takes seriously the multiple, pleated, and entangled temporal events spanning cosmic, geological, evolutionary, and human durations. Ted Toadvine contends that our obsession with the world's precarity relies on a flawed understanding of time that neglects the past and present with the goal of managing the future, misleading sustainability efforts and diminishing our encounters with the world and with human and nonhuman others.

This paper investigates links between social capital and symbolic capital and responsible entrepreneurship in the context of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The source of the primary data was 144 ‘Business Profiles’, written by the owner-managers of small businesses in application for a Small Business Awards competition in 2005. Included in each of these narratives were claims relating to the firms’ contributions to wider society, relationships with customers, employees and stakeholders. These narratives were coded and classified in a framework drawn (...) from Nahapiet and Ghoshal’s (1998, Academy of Management Review 23(2), 242–266) categorisation of social capital. The analysis revealed a range of strategic orientations towards the development of social and symbolic capital, along a conceptual continuum ranging from being responsible for oneself to being responsible for others. Overall, the evidence demonstrates the significance of the power inherent in the social relations of SMEs as a force for ethical behaviour, and suggests that normative theories of the development of social capital may provide ‘competitive advantage’ through responsible behaviour for small business in the global economy. (shrink)

Bas van Fraassen has argued that explanatory reasoning does not provide confirmation for explanatory hypotheses because explanatory reasoning increases information and increasing information does not provide confirmation. We compare this argument with a skeptical argument that one should never add any beliefs because adding beliefs increases information and increasing information does not provide confirmation. We discuss the similarities between these two arguments and identify several problems with van Fraassen’s argument.

Mental fictionalism holds that folk psychology should be regarded as a kind of fiction. The present version gives a Lewisian prefix semantics for mentalistic discourse, where roughly, a mentalistic sentence “p” is true iff “p” is deducible from the folk psychological fiction. An eliminativist version of the view can seem self-refuting, but this charge is neutralized. Yet a different kind of “self-effacing” emerges: Mental fictionalism appears to be a mere “parasite” on a future science of cognition, without contributing anything substantial. (...) The paper then rebuts the objection, illustrating that prefix semantics resolves a lingering problem for eliminativism from Boghossian. The problem is that eliminativists seem unable to adopt realism about neuroscience, for such realism implies that neuroscientific statements *represent* reality accurately. However, a deflationary version of prefix semantics allows the eliminativist to draw an ontologically relevant distinction (roughly) between truths that have a story-telling prefix and those that do not. (Deflationism means there is no implication that the unprefixed sentences robustly represent reality.) The overarching lesson is that eliminativists need to approach to ontology carefully so to avoid self-refutation; however, prefix semantical mental fictionalism provides the resources for them to do so. (shrink)

An event is something in space and time, just some of it, and so it is rightly said to be something that occurs or happens. For at least these reasons it is not a number or a proposition, or any abstract object. There are finer conceptions of an event, of course, one being a thing having a general property for a time, another being exactly an individual property of a thing -- say my computer monitor's weight (19 kg) as against (...) yours (also 19 kg). None of these finer conceptions can put in doubt that events are individuals in a stretch of time and space. (shrink)

In this book, Ted Peters explores the fallacies of the "gene myth" and presents a resounding array of arguments against this kind of all-encompassing genetic determinism. On the scientific side, he correctly points out that genetic influences on behavior are in most instances relatively modest. Does anyone deny that identical twins are still able to practice individual free will? After dispatching some of the sweepingly deterministic conclusions of the "science" of evolutionary psychology with a particularly effective set of rebuttals, Peters (...) arrives at the conclusion that the nature of humanness is an interaction of three things- not one, not two, but three: genetics, environment, and free will. Neglecting any one of these three leads down a path of fuzzy thinking and dangerous consequences. (shrink)

This essay offers an account of the relationship between screenplay and film, and it does so by comparing this relationship to the relationships that hold between other sets of instructions and artworks: score and musical work, theatrical script and theatrical work, architectural plan and architectural work. I argue that musical scores and theatrical scripts are work-determinative documents—manuscripts whose existence entails the existence of musical works and theatrical works, respectively, and which determine the facts about what those works are like. On (...) the contrary, I argue that architectural plans and screenplays are not work-determinative because they alone do not entail the existence of any architectural work or film. Nevertheless, I conclude that this difference has no bearing upon art status: theatrical scripts are almost always artworks in their own right, musical scores almost never are, and architectural plans are in certain cases. This conclusion suggests that although the relationship between theatrical script and theatrical work is quite different from that between screenplay and film, there is no reason to think that screenplays cannot be literary artworks in their own right. (shrink)

Aesthetic Evaluation and Film KlevanAndrew. Manchester University Press. 2018. pp. 256. £16.99.