- Christian nonviolence : an interpretation / Theodore J. Koontz.

This paper discusses alternative measures of assortative matching and relates them to Sewall Wright’s F-statistic. It also explores applications of measures of assortativity to evolutionary dynamics. We generalize Wright’s statistic to allow the possibility that some types match more assortatively than others, and explore the possibility of identifying parameters of this more general model from the observed distribution of matches by the partners’ types.

Hippel, author of Die Lebensläufe nach aufsteigender Linie (1778-1781), has been widely recognized as one of the best German authors to write in the manner of Laurence Sterne. This study places Hippel in the context of the theory of the novel and historiography in the eighteenth century. It re-examines the relationship between Hippel and Sterne (as well as Diderot), with emphasis on the contrast in the authors' use of narrators and documents. Hippel's indebtedness to Kant is well known, but here (...) his borrowing from Kant's lecture notes is discussed in detail and its relevance to Hippel's theory of the novel shown. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Gilgamesh among Us: Modern Encounters with the Ancient Epic by Theodore ZiolkowskiJohannes HauboldTheodore Ziolkowski. Gilgamesh among Us: Modern Encounters with the Ancient Epic. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2011. xvi + 226 pp. 3 black-and-white ills. Cloth, $35.This book surveys modern receptions of the Gilgamesh Epic from the earliest lectures and publications of George Smith to recent reworkings of the epic in Western literature and art. The (...) argument is divided into five chapters. After an introduction which outlines the contents of the poem and tells the story of its rediscovery, chapter 1, “The Initial Reception (1884–1935),” takes us from Leonidas Le Cenci Hamilton’s Ishtar and Izdubar of 1884 via the “Babel and Bible” controversy of the early twentieth century to the predominantly German reception prior to World War II. Several major figures make an appearance here, including Freud, Jung, Rilke, Hesse, Mann, Döblin, Canetti, and Pannwitz. Chapter 2, “Representative Beginnings (1941–1958),” takes up the thread of German engagement with the towering achievements of Hermann Kasack’s Die Stadt hinter dem Strom (61–64) and, especially, Hans Henny Jahnn’s Fluß ohne Ufer (67–74), an enigmatic re-imagining of the Gilgamesh story on a scale that deserves a monograph study of its own. Elsewhere, the reception of Gilgamesh continues with “four poets in English” (Lucas and Bridson in Britain; Olson and Corso in the United States; 48–59) and with the first musical settings, among them Martinů’s oratorio The Epic of Gilgamesh (75–77). Chapter 3, “The Popularization of Gilgamesh (1959–1978),” surveys new translations into the major European languages (79–80), and with them a range of popular responses. Ziolkowski notes a surge in adaptations for children, as well as other initiatives aimed at a wider public (81–82). It is against this background, he argues, that we need to see more ambitious experiments in musical and literary reception, including Per Nørgård’s opera Gilgamesh (105–7); Louis Zukofsky’s “canto 23” (which forms part of his larger poetic cycle entitled “A,” 85–88); Stanisław Lem’s review of an imaginary Gilgamesh adaptation in his A Perfect Vacuum (Doskonała Próżnia, 97–99); and the “fictional exuberances” of John Gardner’s The Sunlight Dialogues, Philip Roth’s The Great American Novel, and Rhoda Lerman’s Call Me Ishtar (99–105). Ziolkowski also draws attention to what he argues was the first overtly gay reworking of Gilgamesh, in Guido Bachmann’s novel of the same name (91–94). Chapter 4, “The Contemporization of Gilgamesh (1979–1999),” continues the theme of popularization in a political key: Ziolkowski takes us on a whistle-stop tour of late twentieth-century preoccupations, from successive crises in the Near East (109) to post-colonialism (109–10); the spread of psychoanalysis, both in a Freudian and a Jungian key (112–19); deconstruction (118–19); the rise of ecologism [End Page 669] (110, 123–35); and minority politics in the USA (135–38). Chapter 5, “Gilgamesh in the Twenty-First Century (2000–2009),” sets out to show that “Gilgamesh, who was born and flourished in the mid-third millennium b.c.e., is alive and well” (154). Ziolkowski identifies “a new focus” (167) on cultural and religious conflict in the wake of Samuel Huntington and the events of 9/11, although it must be said that the responses of Schrott and Begrich (171–78) do not fit this framework particularly well, and in practice much of the chapter seems designed to tie up loose ends. The book is equipped with a timeline of works discussed (199–205), end notes (207–20), and an index (221–26), but no bibliography.In lucid and unpretentious prose, Ziolkowski sets out what he sees as the most significant “Western” responses to the epic of Gilgamesh. He leaves the Near and Far East to “appropriately qualified scholars” (x): one hopes that others will take up the invitation, and that they will make connections with the materials explored in this book. Ziolkowski also passes over Latin America and the Caribbean—perhaps he felt there was nothing to say (for a possible starting point, see C... (shrink)

A property, F, is maximal iff, roughly, large parts of an F are not themselves Fs.' Maximality makes trouble for a recent analysis of intrinsicality by Rae Langton and David Lewis.

Devoted to the rediscovery of Heidegger’s earliest thought leading up to his magnum opus of 1927, Being and Time.

According to the high-dimensional approach to quantum mechanics (a.k.a. wavefunction realism), the fundamental space of our world has an unfathomably large number of dimensions. This account is empirically adequate only if the three-dimensional manifest image can somehow be recovered from high-dimensional reality. A proper understanding of inter-level metaphysics (a.k.a. metaphysical explanation, grounding, etc.) shows that the manifest image can indeed be recovered, and answers the most concerning objections to high-dimensionalism. But it also shows that high-dimensionalism has disturbing consequences about the (...) objectivity of the manifest image. (shrink)

Examines the role that poets and the poetic word play in the formation of philosophical thinking in the modern German tradition. -/- Several of the most celebrated philosophers in the German tradition since Kant afford to poetry an all-but-unprecedented status in Western thought. Fichte, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Gadamer argue that the scope, limits, and possibilities of philosophy are intimately intertwined with those of poetry. For them, poetic thinking itself is understood as intrinsic to the kind of thinking that defines (...) philosophical inquiry and the philosophical life, and they developed their views through extensive and sustained considerations of specific poets, as well as specific poetic figures and images. This book offers essays by leading scholars that address each of the major figures of this tradition and the respective poets they engage, including Schiller, Archilochus, Pindar, Hölderlin, Eliot, and Celan, while also discussing the poets’ contemporary relevance to philosophy in the continental tradition. -/- Above all, the book explores an approach to language that rethinks its role as a mere tool for communication or for the dissemination of knowledge. Here language will be understood as an essential event that opens up the world in a primordial sense whereby poetry comes to have a deeply ethical significance for human beings. In this way, the volume positions ethics at the center of continental discourse, even as it engages philosophy itself as a discourse about language attuned to the rigor of what poetry ultimately expresses. (shrink)

This book, ten years in the making, is the first factual and conceptual history of Martin Heidegger's Being and Time (1927), a key twentieth-century text whose background until now has been conspicuously absent. Through painstaking investigation of European archives and private correspondence, Theodore Kisiel provides an unbroken account of the philosopher's early development and progress toward his masterwork. Beginning with Heidegger's 1915 dissertation, Kisiel explores the philosopher's religious conversion during the bleak war years, the hermeneutic breakthrough in the war-emergency (...) semester of 1919, the evolution of attitudes toward his phenomenological mentor, Edmund Husserl, and the shifting orientations of the three drafts of Being and Time. Discussing Heidegger's little-known reading of Aristotle, as well as his last-minute turn to Kant and to existentialist terminology, Kisiel offers a wealth of narrative detail and documentary evidence that will be an invaluable factual resource for years to come. A major event for philosophers and Heidegger specialists, the publication of Kisiel's book allows us to jettison the stale view of Being and Time as a great book "frozen in time" and instead to appreciate the erratic starts, finite high points, and tentative conclusions of what remains a challenging philosophical "path.". (shrink)

An unusual and thought-provoking history of humankind traces the evolution of emotions and personal relationships through the ages and among diverse cultures, discussing such varied topics as the art of conversation, inter-gender friendships, lifestyles, and cookery.

According to four dimensionalism, the material world is divided into momentary stages. In a four-dimensional world, which objects are the ordinary things, the things we normally name and quantify over? Aggregates of stages, according to most four-dimensionalists, but according to stage theorists (or exdurantists), ordinary objects are instead to be identified with the stages themselves. (A temporal counterpart theoretic account of de re temporal predication is then given.) This paper argues that a stage theorist is best positioned to accept David (...) Lewis's argument from temporary intrinsics for four-dimensionalism, since stage theorists are the only four-dimensionalists who attribute monadic temporary intrinsic properties to ordinary things. (shrink)

An historian and cultural critic explores the relationships between psychology, ecology, and new scientific insights into systems in nature. Drawing on our understanding of the evolutionary, self-organizing universe, Roszak discusses our rootedness in the greater web of life and explores the relationship between our own sanity and the larger-than-human world.

In the past fifteen years or so there has been a lot of attention paid to theories of “sparse” universals, particularly because of the work of D. M. Armstrong. These theories are of particular interest to those of us concerned with the distinction between natural and non-natural properties, since, as David Lewis has observed, it seems possible to analyze naturalness in terms of sparse universals. Moreover, Armstrong claims that we should conceive of universals as being “immanent” as opposed to “transcendent”, (...) and if universals are immanent then, as we will see, there is pressure to admit they are sparse as well. But I will argue that neither of these alleged reasons to accept a sparse conception of universals succeeds: the outlook for a fully general analysis of naturalness in terms of universals is not good, and the apparent advantages of immanence over transcendence are illusory. (shrink)

Can the existence of a social practice justify practical authority? A medieval debate between hierocrats and caesaropapists may help to illuminate this question. Focusing mainly on Marsilius of Padua, with reference to John of Paris, this article suggests that caesaropapists can be read as developing a 'practice conception' of the structure and scope of ecclesiastical authority. Because it brings the conflict over authority to a new battleground, the practice conception supplies caesaropapists with a source of dialectical leverage over hierocratic doctrine. (...) The paper explores the strengths and limitations of this methodological approach and links it to debates in contemporary political thought. (shrink)

According to Ross Cameron's version of the moving spotlight theory of time, (1) Past and future entities exist; (2) the properties and relations they have are those they have now; but nevertheless (3) there are no fundamental past- or future-tensed facts; instead, tensed facts are made true by fundamental facts about the possession of temporal distributional properties and facts about how old things are. I argue that the account isn't sufficiently distinct from the B-theory to fit the usual A-theorist's tastes (...) and arguments, since i) like the traditional spotlight it consists of a B-theoretic metaphysics with one small A-theoretic element tacked on, and since ii) in a sense it does not admit fundamental change. I also argue that the proposed grounding of tensed facts in tenseless facts does not work in certain cases. (shrink)

This dissertation reconstructs some aspects of the historical development of the concept of the electron from 1891, when the term "electron" was introduced, to 1925, when the notion of spin was put forward, in the light of the relevant historiographical and philosophical problems. The central historiographical tool employed is Karl Popper's notion of a problem situation. Furthermore, some of the historical episodes are reconstructed in terms of a "biographical" approach to theoretical entities that portrays them as active agents that participate (...) in the development of scientific knowledge. Their agency is due to the heuristic resources that they embody and to the resistance that they exhibit to manipulation. The historical analysis begins with a reconceptualization of the "discovery" of the electron and aims at situating the principal historical actors within the wider process which led to the acceptance of the electron as an element of the ontology of physics. I continue with a reconstruction of the discovery of the Zeeman effect in the light of recent work on the history and philosophy of experimental science. The next three chapters are devoted to a reading of the development of the old quantum theory of the atom , which aimed at understanding the behavior and distribution of electrons bound within the atom, from the perspective of the electron's biography. Furthermore, I discuss the chemists' representation of the electron and contrast it with its physical counterpart. The main philosophical problem examined concerns the implications of meaning change for scientific realism . I discuss in detail that issue and argue against the widespread view that meaning variance is incompatible with scientific realism. Thus, I provide a way out for the aspiring realist, without however committing myself to a realist position. Finally, I argue that the historical development of the concept of the electron from 1896 to 1925 is compatible with a realist construal of its ontological status. (shrink)

Middle age, for many, marks a key period for a radical reappraisal of one's life and way of living. The sense of time running out, both from the perspective that one's life has ground to a halt, and from the point of view of the greater closeness of death, and the sense of loneliness engendered by the compromised and wasteful nature of life, become ever clearer in mid-life, and can lead to a period of dramatic self doubt.In this book, the (...) philosopher Christopher Hamilton explores the moods, emotions and experiences of middle age in the contemporary world, seeking to describe and analyze that period of life philosophically. Hamilton draws on his own personal experiences of turning 40 as well as a wide range of sources - from the philosophical writings of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Hegel, Heidegger to the literature of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Conrad and the films of Woody Allen - to offer us a philosophy of middle age.Some of the many fascinating themes explored include the strong sense of nostalgia experienced in mid-life, of loss for one's youth, and of regret, the sense that life has become boring, the recognition that one can never fully escape feelings of guilt, and - central to the experience of middle age - the question of what is the point of going on at all. In the light of the 'melancholy wisdom' of mid-life Hamilton suggests that pleasure becomes much more important than at previous stages of life and he shows that the enjoyment of pleasure can be something noble.Insightful, entertaining, and thought-provoking, "Middle Age" is fascinating reading and for anyone heading for a 'mid-life crisis' it is much cheaper than buying a sports car. (shrink)

Shamik Dasgupta has argued that realists about natural properties (and laws, grounding, etc.) cannot account for their epistemic value. For "properties are cheap": in addition to natural properties and any value the realist might attach to them, there are also "shmatural" properties (standing to natural properties like charge and mass as Goodman's grue and bleen stand to green and blue) and a corresponding "shmvalue" of theorizing in terms of them. Dasgupta's challenge is one of objectivity: the existence of the "shmamiked" (...) network of concepts threatens the objectivity of facts stated using the unshmamiked network. But the challenge can be repelled given a proper understanding of objectivity itself. (shrink)

Calls to hold artificial intelligence to account are intensifying. Activists and researchers alike warn of an “accountability gap” or even a “crisis of accountability” in AI. Meanwhile, several prominent scholars maintain that accountability holds the key to governing AI. But usage of the term varies widely in discussions of AI ethics and governance. This chapter begins by disambiguating some different senses and dimensions of accountability, distinguishing it from neighboring concepts, and identifying sources of confusion. It proceeds to explore the idea (...) that AI operates within an accountability gap arising from technical features of AI as well as the social context in which it is deployed. The chapter also evaluates various proposals for closing this gap. I conclude that the role of accountability in AI ethics and governance is vital but also more limited than some suggest. Accountability’s primary job description is to verify compliance with substantive normative principles—once those principles are settled. Theories of accountability cannot ultimately tell us what substantive standards to account for, especially when norms are contested or still emerging. Nonetheless, formal mechanisms of accountability provide a way of diagnosing and discouraging egregious wrongdoing even in the absence of normative agreement. Providing accounts can also be an important first step toward the development of more comprehensive regulatory standards for AI. (shrink)

I argue that we can accept modal normativism—a view that the function of modal claims is to express semantic rules—while also accepting possible worlds semantics. I argue that by keeping the metaphysical insights of normativism at the level of metasemantics—i.e., at the level of accounts of what metaphysically explains facts about the meaning of modal claims—it is open to the normativist to wholeheartedly accept possible worlds semantics.

Stephanie Morain and Emily Largent’s (2023) target article “Think Pragmatically: Investigators’ Obligations to Patient-Subjects When Research is Embedded in Care” identified a number of important c...

What the Body Told is the second book of poetry from Rafael Campo, a practicing physician, a gay Cuban American, and winner of the National Poetry Series 1993 Open Competition. Exploring the themes began in his first book, The Other Man Was Me, Campo extends the search for identity into new realms of fantasy and physicality. He travels inwardly to the most intimate spaces of the imagination where sexuality and gender collide and where life crosses into death. Whether facing a (...) frenetic hospital emergency room to assess a patient critically ill with AIDS or breathing in the quiet of his mother's closet, Campo proposes with these poems an alternative means of healing and exposes the extent to which words themselves may be the most vital working parts of our bodies. The secret truths in What the Body Told, as the title implies, are already within each of us. In these vivid and provocative poems, Rafael Campo gives them a voice. (shrink)

This book is about the teaching profession and what it takes to become a successful teacher.

is an important principle, worthy of serious scrutiny. Its truth or falsity bears on the question of whether moral rightness, obligatoriness, etc., are a matter of factors “internal” to an agent, or whether “external” factors are relevant to determining the moral normative status of acts. Moreover, Access enjoys considerable intuitive support. If I destroy Greensboro in professor Sorensen’s example by pushing the wrong button, I seem to have a good excuse to give to anyone who would accuse me of wrongdoing: (...) “I had no way of knowing that this action would be wrong!” But if I have a good excuse, then pushing the button doesn’t seem wrong; and if that action isn’t wrong, then I had no obligation to refrain from pushing that button. A principle distinct from, but analogous to, Access also deserves our attention. (shrink)

Social Change in a Material Worldoffers a new, practice theoretical account of social change and its explanation. Extending the author's earlier account of social life, and drawing on general ideas about events, processes, and change, the book conceptualizes social changes as configurations of significant differences in bundles of practices and material arrangements. Illustrated with examples from the history of bourbon distillation and the formation and evolution of digitally-mediated associations in contemporary life, the book argues that chains of activity combine with (...) material events and processes to cause social changes. The book thereby stresses the significance of the material dimension of society for the constitution, determination, and explanation of social phenomena, as well as the types of space needed to understand them. The book also challenges the explanatory significance of such key phenomena as power, dependence, relations, mechanisms, and individual behavior. As such, it will appeal to sociologists, geographers, organization studies scholars, and others interested in social life and social change. As such, it will appeal to sociologists, geographers, organization studies scholars, and others interested in social life and social change. (shrink)

The kinds of real or natural kinds that support explanation and prediction in the social sciences are difficult to identify and track because they change through time, intersect with one another, and they do not always exhibit their properties when one encounters them. As a result, conceptual practices directed at these kinds will often refer in ways that are partial, equivocal, or redundant. To improve this epistemic situation, it is important to employ open-ended classificatory concepts, to understand when different research (...) programs are tracking the same real kind, and to maintain an ongoing commitment to interact causally with real kinds to focus reference on those kinds. A tempting view of these non-idealized epistemic conditions should be avoided: that they signal an ontological structure of the social world so plentiful that it would permit ameliorated classificatory schemes to achieve their normative aims regardless of whether they defer to real-kind classificatory schemes. To ground these discussions, the essay appeals to an overlooked convergence in the systematic naturalistic frameworks of Richard Boyd and Ruth Millikan. (shrink)

"An indispensable book for those who would relate Dreiser's philosophy to his fiction." --Antioch Review.

In this essay, the author contends that Schelling’s first publication, the Philosophical Letters on Dogmatism and Criticism, provides crucial insights into the wide spread philosophical interest in poetic art today. For Schelling, philosophical inquiry finds that its native resource, reason, requires the disclosive power of the poetic genera of tragic drama in order to remedy a crisis which inheres in its very nature and operations.

This essay describes how longstanding conceptions of professionalism in American medical care came under attack in the decades since the enactment of Medicare in 1965 and how the reform strategy and core provisions of the 2010 Affordable Care Act illustrate the weakening of those ideas and the institutional practices embodying them.The opening identifies the dominant role of physicians in American medical care in the two decades after World War II. By the time Medicare was enacted in 1965, associations of American (...) physicians were almost completely in charge of medical education, specialist certification, and the enforcement of professional norms on their members. Who could be a doctor, what education and training would be required, and what collegial oversight was operative was first a professional matter and only secondly implicated the state through malpractice or major corporations via the employment of physicians. (shrink)