Despite significant progress in real-world (nonideal) political philosophy focused on overcoming injustice and inequality, there has not been concomitant attention paid to _who_ will take up these projects. Agents tend to be treated in this literature, if at all, as epiphenomenal to substantive normative theorising on social change. To rectify this, Ben Laurence has made perhaps the most systematic case so far for philosophers to identify agents of change as an integral part of their work, with sensitivity to levels of (...) motivation and feasibility. However, his account risks mirroring the status quo biases of an unjust world. Normative theory must retain a commitment to the possibilities for _generating_ potential agents of change in the face of injustice. In response, I propose an approach that is at once universal and pluralistic, grounded in the complexity of agents as they are and yet morally ambitious about what they can become. This incorporates three neglected aspects of change-making agency. First, the ordinary person as a citizen. Second, the ‘black box’ of group agents and how individual agency operates inside structures such as states, firms, or civil society. Third, the indiscernible contributions in the build-up to rapid, visible change. I call these neglected forms of change-making agency, respectively, ‘agency from below’, ‘agency inside agents’, and ‘concealed agency’. Together, they comprise the building blocks for a new theory of agency. (shrink)

There is an abiding scepticism in normative theory that individual responsibility for global injustice lies outside commonsense moral thought because it is not grounded in an intuitive conception of human agency. Despite the grim realities of injustice in an interconnected world, this scepticism holds that human beings cannot properly internalise a nonrestrictive view of responsibility because it cuts against their experience of agency in the world. Against this view, this article argues that individual responsibility for the realisation of global justice (...) is supported by a pervasive, and socio-politically influenced, feature of the phenomenology of agency: moral imagination. Moral imagination connects actions which are within the domain of an ordinary life to larger projects of social and political change. Since there is no compelling reason for the scope of those projects to be restricted, there is an accessible understanding and experience of the phenomenology of agency which grounds individual global responsibility in the real world. I call this a dynamic phenomenology of agency. (shrink)

Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʼ ; Islamic philosophy ; Islam -- Doctrines.

This paper investigates the significance of T-duality in string theory: the indistinguisha- bility with respect to all observables, of models attributing radically different radii to space – larger than the observable universe, or far smaller than the Planck length, say. Two interpretational branch points are identified and discussed. First, whether duals are physically equivalent or not: by considering a duality of the familiar simple harmonic oscillator, I argue that they are. Unlike the oscillator, there are no measurements ‘outside’ string theory (...) that could distinguish the duals. Second, whether duals agree or disagree on the radius of ‘target space’, the space in which strings evolve according to string theory. I argue for the latter position, because the alternative leaves it unknown what the radius is. Since duals are physically equivalent yet disagree on the radius of target space, it follows that the radius is indeterminate between them. Using an analysis of Brandenberger and Vafa (1989), I explain why – even so – space is observed to have a determinate, large radius. The conclusion is that observed, ‘phenomenal’ space is not target space, since a space cannot have both a determinate and indeterminate radius: instead phenomenal space must be a higher-level phenomenon, not fundamental. (shrink)

For the few scientists that earn a Nobel prize, the im-, D.J. Scalapino, G. Parisi, pact and relevance of their research work is unquestion- S.G. Louie, R. Jackiw, F. Wilczek able. Among the rest of us, how does one quantify the, C. Vafa, M.B. Maple, D.J. cumulative impact and relevance of an individual’s sci- Gross, M.S. Dresselhaus, S.W. Hawkentific research output? In a world of not unlimited reing. sources such quantification (even if potentially distaste- I argue that h is (...) preferable to other single-number cri-. (shrink)