In this paper, I distinguish between correspondence and deflationary conceptions of truth in terms of the modal status they attribute to the relation between a sentence and its truth conditions. And I distinguish between robust and minimalist correspondence conceptions on the basis of whether they provide a reductive analysis of the relation between a sentence and its truth conditions. I argue, contra deflationism, that a correspondence conception of truth is required in explanations of success by appealing to counterfactuals that such (...) explanations must support. But I argue, contra Field, that nothing stronger than a minimalist correspondence conception is required. (shrink)

In this report, the phenomenology of two blind users of a sensory substitution device – “The vOICe” – that converts visual images to auditory signals is described. The users both report detailed visual phenomenology that developed within months of immersive use and has continued to evolve over a period of years. This visual phenomenology, although triggered through use of The vOICe, is likely to depend not only on online visualization of the auditory signal but also on the users’ previous (albeit (...) distant) experience of veridical vision (e.g. knowledge of shapes and visual perspective). Once established, the sensory substitution mapping between the auditory and visual domains is not confined to when the device is worn and, thus, may constitute an example of acquired synaesthesia. (shrink)

One of the remarkable developments in the contemporary study of Paul is the dramatic interest in his thought amongst European philosophers. This collection of insights from leading scholars makes accessible a discussion often elusive to those not already conversant in the categories of European philosophy"--Publisher description.

This paper formulates and axiomatizes utility models for denumerable time streams that make no commitment in regard to discounting future outcomes. The models address decision under certainty and decision under risk. Independence assumptions in both contexts lead to additive or multiplicative utilities over time periods that allow unambiguous comparisons of the relative importance of different periods. The models accommodate all patterns of future valuation. This discount-neutral feature is attained by restricting preference comparisons to outcome streams or probability distributions on outcome (...) streams that differ in at most a finite number of periods. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Michael L. MarkPatrice Madura Ward-SteinmanI met Michael Mark at the first Philosophy of Music Education conference held at Indiana University in the summer of 1990. I was a doctoral student at IU then and had studied the writings of many of the conference presenters and so the experience of hearing and meeting them in person was a heady one, indeed. I will never forget those impressions of Phil (...) Alperson, Wayne Bowman, Allen Britton, David Elliott, Peter Kivy, Gerard Knieter, Thomas Regelski, Bennett Reimer, John Shepherd, Ann Stokes, Eleanor Stubley, Keith Swanwick, and many others.I was interested in meeting Michael after hearing his response to the presentation of one of my favorite IU professors of musicology, Austin Caswell. Caswell’s provocative paper, “How We Got into Canonicity and What it has Done to Us: An American Music Historian’s View of Music in Academia,” claimed that “the effect of canonicity on American musical life is destructive,” while Michael’s response was characterized by his style of writing that I came to recognize over the decades as distinct, calm, logical, methodical, and based in an extraordinarily wide and deep wealth of historical knowledge. While I greatly admired my rebellious and passionate professor’s views and temperament which were not unlike my own, I also appreciated hearing Michael’s measured and thoughtful response. Thus began my friendship with Michael, who, I learned, was not only a professor [End Page 92] and dean at Towson State University but also an avid big band woodwind doubler who showed interest in my doctoral research in the art of vocal jazz improvisation. That friendship lasted for almost twenty-eight years and we enjoyed memorable reunions at other conferences. For example, there was the ISPME conference held at UCLA where he invited me to dinner with his good friend and connoisseur of fine wines, Bennett Reimer, and the ISPME conference in Helsinki where, after I tripped and severely broke my ankle, requiring surgery, Michael, Estelle Jorgensen, Iris Yob, and two then-doctoral students (Kasia Bugaj and Leonard Tan) visited me in the Helsinki hospital.When I began teaching at the University of Southern California in 1995, it was fortuitous that Michael’s brother, Brian, lived in the Los Angeles area. His frequent visits allowed him to make several guest lectures to my graduate research methods classes, very welcome opportunities. After one of those lectures, I relayed the history of my family’s ballroom in the Chicago area that was open for business with big band music from 1929 until 1967. He asked if I had any artifacts from Madura’s Danceland, and when I mentioned my father’s stacks of dusty record books, newsletters, photos, and posters in our basement, he became very enthusiastic and told me that I had a “gold mine” of an archive with which to write a book about the place! As a trained quantitative researcher, I began to explore the record books to analyze trends in band pay over the Depression and World War II years.1 Over the next ten years, with help from Michael’s regular prodding and encouragement, I organized the large archive into the history of Madura’s Danceland.2 I owe this personally important accomplishment to Michael Mark.Michael invited me (in his endearing way which I could not refuse) to coauthor a music education textbook with him3 and our writing partnership went so smoothly that he invited me to co-author the 4th edition of his Contemporary Music Education.4 Although our writing styles and areas of expertise were very different, I learned much from his narrative approach which included illustrative scenarios, interviews, and the informal use of contractions, a style of writing that was not second nature for me. We wrote both books without meeting in person, except to celebrate the publication of the first at the Metropolitan Art Museum café in New York with our beloved spouses, Lois Mark and David Ward-Steinman.Dr. Michael L. Mark will long be remembered for his many books, chapters, and articles on the history of music education and his many symposium presentations; for his university teaching and administrative achievements; and for his... (shrink)

An Insurrectionist Manifesto contains four insurrectionary gospels based on Martin Heidegger's philosophical model of the fourfold: earth and sky, gods and mortals. Challenging religious dogma and dominant philosophical theories, they offer a cooperative, world-affirming political theology that promotes new life through not resurrection but insurrection. The insurrection in these gospels unfolds as a series of miraculous yet worldly practices of vital affirmation. Since these routines do not rely on fantasies of escape, they engender intimate transformations of the self along the (...) very coordinates from which they emerge. Enacting a comparative and contagious postsecular sensibility, these gospels draw on the work of Slavoj i ek, Giorgio Agamben, Catherine Malabou, François Laruelle, Peter Sloterdijk, and Gilles Deleuze yet rejuvenate scholarship in continental philosophy, critical race theory, the new materialisms, speculative realism, and nonphilosophy. They think beyond the sovereign force of the one to initiate a radical politics "after" God. (shrink)

James Martineau's revolt against sense-bound empiricism.--The conflict of the empirical and non-empirical in Andrew Pringle-Pattison's theism.--The halting empiricism in James Ward's theistic monadism.--William R. Sorley's moral argument for God.--Frederick Tennant's teleological argument for God.--An empirical view of the goodness of God.

One of the fundamental aims of nursing is to safeguard or promote patients' "quality of life." Perspectives on Quality of Life examines existing ways of defining the concept and argues that nurses need to adopt a fresh approach, which more accurately reflects patients' concerns and helps them to develop practical ways of promoting the well-being of people in their care. Part One provides an analysis of statistical approaches to quality of life, including social indicators, the Quality Adjusted Life Year (QALY), (...) and the medical outcomes literature. Part Two proposes an alternative, qualitative approach to organizing care, which respects the patients' choice and individuality. Part three presents the findings of new research into the quality of life of older people in hospital wards. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to evaluate agreement between nurses’ and physicians’ opinions regarding aggressiveness of treatment and to investigate and compare the rationales on which their opinions were based. Structured interviews regarding 714 patients were performed on seven general wards of a university hospital. The data gathered were then subjected to qualitative and quantitative analyses. There was 86% agreement between nurses’ and physicians’ opinions regarding full or limited treatment when the answers given as ‘uncertain’ were excluded. Agreement was (...) less (77%) for patients with a life expectancy of less than one year. Disagreements were not associated with professional status because the physicians considered limiting life-sustaining treatment as often as the nurses. A broad spectrum of rationales was given but the results focus mostly on those for full treatment. The nurses and the physicians had similar bases for their opinions. For the majority of the patients, medical rationales were used, but age and quality of life were also expressed as important determinants. When considering full treatment, nurses used quality-of-life rationales for significantly more patients than the physicians. Respect for patients’ wishes had a minor influence. (shrink)

Here is the problem. If the message is important, is it fair to write negatively concerning the format, let alone the messenger?In 1994 Peter Douglas Ward published The End of Evolution: On Mass Extinctions and the Preservation of Biodiversity. The paper trade edition carried the subtitle “A Journey in Search of Clues to the Third Mass Extinction Facing Planet Earth.”There are changes between The End of Evolution and Rivers in Time, but one has to search diligently to find (...) them and they are trivial. The photographs are larger but no more informative. One new chapter is mainly about collecting under difficult conditions. The final short chapter, more or less new, weakens the alleged reason for writing this book. The prinicpal change is in the title. To quote another's review of Ward's earlier book: “Though his thesis is clear—sometimes overwhelmingly so—interesting, if tangential, digressions occasionally mar the story's flow.” Some readers may characterize the style as appropriate for an “Indiana Jones” script. If the local library does not own The End of Evolution, probably it should purchase this work for the general reader. (shrink)

Sustaining soil fertility is essential to the prosperity of many households in the mid-hills of Nepal, but there are concerns that the breakdown of the traditional linkages between forest, livestock, and cropping systems is adversely affecting fertility. This study used triangulated data from surveys of households, discussion groups, and key informants in 16 wards in eastern and western Nepal to determine the existing practices for soil fertility management, the extent of such practices, and the perception of the direction of changes (...) in soil fertility. The two principal practices for maintaining soil fertility were the application of farmyard manure (FYM) and of chemical fertilizer (mainly urea and diammonium phosphate). Green manuring, in-situ manuring, slicing terrace risers, and burning plant residues are rarely practiced. FYM usage was variable with more generally applied to khet land (average 6053 kg fresh weight manure ha−1) than to bari land (average 4185 kg fresh weight manure ha−1) with manure from goats and poultry preferred above that from cows and buffaloes. Almost all households (98%) apply urea to khet land and 87% to bari land, with 45% applying diammonium phosphate to both types of land. Application rates and timings of applications varied considerably both within and between wards suggesting poor knowledge transfer between the research and farming communities. The benefits of chemical fertilizers in terms of ease of application and transportation in comparison with FYM, were perceived to outweigh the widely reported detrimental hardening of soil associated with their continued usage. Among key informants, FYM applied in conjunction with chemical fertilizer was the most popular amendment, with FYM alone preferred more than chemical fertilizer alone – probably because of the latter’s long-term detrimental effects. Key informant and householder surveys differed in their perception of fertility changes in the last decade probably because of differences in age and site-specific knowledge. All key informants felt that fertility had declined but among households, only about 40% perceived a decline with the remainder about evenly divided between no change and an increase. Householders with small landholdings (< 0.5 ha) were more likely to perceive increasing soil fertility while those with larger landholdings (> 2 ha) were more likely to perceive declining fertility. Perceived changes in soil fertility were not related to food self-sufficiency. The reasons for the slow spread of new technologies within wards and the poor understanding of optimal use of chemical fertilizers in conjunction with improved quality FYM may repay further investigation in terms of sustaining soil fertility in this region. (shrink)

This article contends that an adequate investigation of the role and effects of race in the history of philosophy requires an elucidation of the ways in which the history of philosophy functions as a “territorial” structure. This argument is developed through an extensive cross-examination of Peter Park's Africa, Asia and the History of Philosophy: Racism in the Formation of the Philosophical Canon 1780–1830 and Catherine König-Pralong's La colonie philosophique. Écrire l'histoire de la philosophie aux XVIIIe et XIXe siècles. I (...) show that although the two studies inquire into the fixation of the history of philosophy on Europe that took place in German and French philosophy at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, they do so via different explanatory frameworks, highlighting diverging critical strategies in the dismantling of Eurocentrism in the discipline. In the final part I contrast three broad critical strategies against the Eurocentric orientation of the historiography of philosophy based on opposite problematizations of the territoriality of the history of philosophy: the territory as jurisdiction, relational field, and space of address. (shrink)

For George Woodcock, the key to appreciating Colin Ward was first to understand the importance of Peter Kropotkin’s classic work Mutual Aid (1902). While images of the French Revolution and the Par...

Following its welcome revival in the late twentieth century, metaphysics in the analytic tradition has succumbed to decadence, with an astonishing variety of outlandish and extreme positions or “metaphysical follies” being taken seriously. This has caused an inevitable backlash among more scientifically-minded philosophers and incurred the scorn of scientists. Much of the reason for this is the blithe ignoring of empirical science by armchair metaphysicians. The roles of empirical knowledge in good, scientific metaphysics are however unclear. In virtue of its (...) maximal generality, metaphysics is remote from straightforward empirical checks. This article explores, with historical and contemporary examples, the ways in which empirical information may inform and be fed back into metaphysics, the disputed role of common sense, and the delicate balance to be maintained, within a fallibilist, scientific metaphysics, between speculative, categorial and empirical elements. (shrink)

Scientist, mathematician, thinker, the father of pragmatism, the inspiration for William James and John Dewey, Charles Peirce has remained until recently a philosopher's philosopher. Peirce trod a fine line between the extremes of nominalism and realism, tough-minded pragmatism and metaphysical speculation. As Peter Skagestad makes clear, Peirce's system of thought was fragmented, incomplete, and sometimes inconsistent. But one overriding concern gives unity to the whole: the road of inquiry must never be blocked.

Peter Homans offers a new understanding of the origins of psychoanalysis and relates the psychoanalytic project as a whole to the sweep of Western culture, past and present. He argues that Freud's fundamental goal was the interpretation of culture and that, therefore, psychoanalysis is fundamentally a humanistic social science. To establish this claim, Homans looks back at Freud's self-analysis in light of the crucial years from 1906 to 1914 when the psychoanalytic movement was formed and shows how these experiences (...) culminated in Freud's cultural texts. By exploring the "culture of psychoanalysis," Homans seeks a better understanding of what a "psychoanalysis of culture" might be. Psychoanalysis, Homans shows, originated as a creative response to the withering away of traditional communities and their symbols in the aftermath of the industrial revolution. The loss of these attachments played a crucial role in the lives of the founders of psychoanalysis, especially Sigmund Freud but also Karl Abraham, Carl Jung, Otto Rank, and Ernest Jones. The personal, political, and religious losses that these figures experienced, the introspection that followed, and the psychological discovery that resulted are what Homans calls "the ability to mourn." Homans expands this historical analysis to construct a general model of psychological discovery: the loss of shared ideals and symbols can produce a deeper sense of self (psychological structure-building, or individuation) and can then lead to the creation of new forms of meaning and self-understanding. He shows how Freud, Jung, and other psychoanalysts began to extend their introspection outward, reinterpreting the meanings of Western art, history, and religion. In conclusion, Homans evaluates Freud's theory of culture and discusses the role that psychoanalysis might play in social and cultural criticism. Throughout the book, Homans makes use of the many histories, biographies, and psychobiographies that have been written about the origins of psychoanalysis, drawing them into a comprehensive sociocultural model. Rich in insights and highly original in approach, this work will interest psychoanalysts and students of Freud, sociologists concerned with modernity and psychoanalysis, and cultural critics in the fields of religion, anthropology, political science, and social history. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger is widely regarded as one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth-century, and his seminal text Being and Time is considered one of the most significant texts in contemporary philosophy. Yet his name has also been mired in controversy because of his affiliations with the Nazi regime, his failure to criticize its genocidal politics and his subsequent silence about the holocaust. Now, according to Heidegger's wishes, and to complete the publication of his multi-volume Complete Works, his highly (...) controversial and secret 'Black Notebooks' have been released to the public. These notebooks reveal the extent to which Heidegger's 'personal Nazism' was neither incidental nor opportunistic, but part of his philosophical ethos. So, why would Heidegger, far from destroying them, allow these notebooks, which contain examples of this extreme thinking, to be published? In this revealing new book, Peter Trawny, editor of Heidegger's complete works in German, confronts these questions and, by way of a compelling study of his theoretical work, shows that Heidegger was committed to a conception of freedom that is only beholden to the judgement of the history of being; that is, that to be free means to be free from the prejudices, norms, or mores of one's time. Whoever thinks the truth of being freely exposes themselves to the danger of epochal errancy. For this reason, Heidegger's decision to publish his notebooks, including their anti-Jewish passages, was an exercise of this anarchical freedom. In the course of a wide-ranging discussion of Heidegger's views on truth, ethics, the truth of being, tragedy and his relationship to other figures such as Nietzsche and Schmitt, Trawny provides a compelling argument for why Heidegger wanted the explosive material in his Black Notebooks to be published, whilst also offering an original and provocative interpretation of Heidegger's work. (shrink)

The Collective Imagination explores the social foundations of the human imagination. A comprehensive audit of the creativity claims of the post-modern age - that finds them badly wanting and looks to the future - this book will appeal to sociologists and philosophers concerned with cultural theory, cultural and media studies and aesthetics.

In A Professor's Duties, distinguished philosopher Peter J. Markie adds to the expanding discussion of the ethics of college teaching. Part One concentrates on the obligations of individual professors, primarily with regard to issues about what and how to teach. Part Two expands Professor Markie's views by providing a selection of the most significant previously published writings on the ethics of college teaching.

In this compelling and timely treatise, cultural theorist and educator Peter Trifonas puts forth the first book-length study of Jacques Derrida's 'educational texts:' that is, those writings most explicitly concerned with the ethics and politics of the historico-philosophical structures constituting the scene of teaching. The text examines how deconstruction allows us to re-think the socio-historical and ethico-philosophical aspects of pedagogical practices and policies, including pedagogical theories that have had direct bearing on the ethical and cultural ideals forming the reason (...) of Western educational systems and the exclusion of its 'Others.'. (shrink)

Mainstream neoclassical economics, as well as heterodox schools, should be regarded as different kinds of 'political economics'. There is no value-free economics. We therefore need to bring democracy into economics. The present challenge of sustainable development suggests that a new conceptual framework in economics is needed. In this essay, a political and democratic view of individuals, organisations, decision-making, markets, assessment of investment projects and policy options is proposed. The imperative of democracy also implies that the close-to-monopoly position of neoclassical theory (...) and method at university departments of economics has to be replaced by pluralism. There is a continued role for neoclassical theory and method, considering the fact that millions of professionals globally have been indoctrinated in this particular way of understanding efficiency and governance, but the idea that neoclassical theory is best for all purposes has to be abandoned. (shrink)

I develop and defend a novel answer to Peter van Inwagen’s ‘Special Composition Question,’ (SCQ) namely, under what conditions do some things compose and object? My answer is that things will compose an object when and only when they exist simultaneously relative to a reference frame (I call this ‘Temporally Restricted Composition’ or TREC). I then show how this view wards off objections given to ‘Unrestricted Mereology’ (UM). TREC, unlike other theories of Restricted Composition, does not fall prey to (...) worries about vagueness, anthropocentrism, or arbitrariness. TREC also has advantages over all the other answers to the SCQ. TREC is an account an A-theorist anti-Eternalist who wants an unrestricted mereology should accept. I also engage in some conceptual hygiene by showing how UM, as it should be used, should not, in itself, entail or contain a commitment to either Eternalism or Four-Dimensionalism. (shrink)