When writing about cinema does Deleuze have a conception of cinema spectatorship? In New Philosophy for New Media, Mark Hansen argues that Deleuze does have a conception of cinema spectatorship but that the subjectivity central to that spectatorship is weak and impoverished. This article argues against Hansen's reductive interpretation of Deleuze. In doing so, it relies on the three syntheses of time developed in Difference and Repetition alongside an elaboration of Deleuze's notion of a ‘cinematographic Cogito’. In this way, the (...) article offers a way of understanding the processes of cinema spectatorship from a Deleuzian perspective. (shrink)

In formulating a notion of filmic reality, The Reality of Film offers a novel way of understanding our relationship to cinema. It argues that cinema need not be understood in terms of its capacities to refer to, reproduce or represent reality, but should be understood in terms of the kinds of realities it has the ability to create. The Reality of Film investigates filmic reality by way of six key film theorists: André Bazin, Christian Metz, Stanley Cavell, Gilles Deleuze, Slavoj (...) Zizek and Jacques Rancière. In doing so, it provides comprehensive introductions to each of these thinkers, while also debunking many myths and misconceptions about them. Along the way, a notion of filmic reality is formed that radically reconfigures our understanding of cinema. This book is essential reading for film scholars, students and philosophers of film, while it will also appeal to graduate students and specialists in other fields. (shrink)

This article contrasts the notion of a Deleuzian imaginary with that articulated by various film theorists during the 1970s and 1980s. Deleuze offers us, I argue, a way to conceive of the imaginary in the cinema in a positive way; that is, as something which opens up new expressions of the real. By contrast, for film theorists of the 1970s and 1980s, the imaginary was primarily conceived as a negative concept, as something which offered merely escapes or fraudulent distortions of (...) the real. A Deleuzian imaginary for the cinema can be articulated, I argue, by way of the films of Jean Renoir. (shrink)

This paper examines Stanley Cavell's theories from the perspective of a 'politics of cinema' and engages in a critical reading of Sofia Coppola's 2006 film, Marie Antoinette.

An examination of Gilles Deleuze's writings on film and film theory and how these writings relate to Max Ophuls's 1955 film, Lola Montès.

A selection of speeches and essays from the author's second decade as president of Yale University.

The renowned biologist and thinker Richard Dawkins presents his most expansive work yet: a comprehensive look at evolution, ranging from the latest developments in the field to his own provocative views. Loosely based on the form of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Dawkins's Tale takes us modern humans back through four billion years of life on our planet. As the pilgrimage progresses, we join with other organisms at the forty "rendezvous points" where we find a common ancestor. The band of pilgrims (...) swells into a vast crowd as we join first with other primates, then with other mammals, and so on back to the first primordial organism. Dawkins's brilliant, inventive approach allows us to view the connections between ourselves and all other life in a bracingly novel way. It also lets him shed bright new light on the most compelling aspects of evolutionary history and theory: sexual selection, speciation, convergent evolution, extinction, genetics, plate tectonics, geographical dispersal, and more. The Ancestor's Tale is at once a far-reaching survey of the latest, best thinking on biology and a fascinating history of life on Earth. Here Dawkins shows us how remarkable we are, how astonishing our history, and how intimate our relationship with the rest of the living world. (shrink)

The desirability of what actually occurs is often influenced by what could have been. Preferences based on such value dependencies between actual and counterfactual outcomes generate a class of problems for orthodox decision theory, the best-known perhaps being the so-called Allais Paradox. In this paper we solve these problems by extending Richard Jeffrey's decision theory to counterfactual prospects, using a multidimensional possible-world semantics for conditionals, and showing that preferences that are sensitive to counterfactual considerations can still be desirability maximising. (...) We end the paper by investigating the conditions necessary and sufficient for a desirability function to be an expected utility. It turns out that the additional conditions imply highly implausible epistemic principles. (shrink)

Although the concept of dignity is commonly invoked in clinical care, there is not widespread agreement—in either the academic literature or in everyday clinical conversations—about what dignity means. Without a framework for understanding dignity, it is difficult to determine what threatens patients’ dignity and, conversely, how to honor commitments to protect and promote it. This article aims to change that by offering the first conceptual model of dignity for patients in the intensive care unit. The conceptual model we present is (...) based on the notion that there are three sources of patients’ dignity—their shared humanity, personal narratives, and autonomy—each of which independently warrants respect. The article describes each source of dignity and draws on examples to illustrate how clinician attitudes, actions, and behaviors can either contribute to, or detract from, expressions of respect for patient dignity. (shrink)

The discussion of good and evil must not be confined to the sterile lecture halls of academics but related instead to ordinary human feelings, needs, and desires, says noted philosopher Richard Taylor. Efforts to understand morality by exploring human reason will always fail because we are creatures of desire as well. All morality arises from our intense and inescapable longing. The distinction between good and evil is always clouded by rationalists who convert the real problems of ethics into complex (...) philosophical puzzles. In the first part of Good and Evil, Taylor looks for a more meaningful conception by reexamining and rejecting the whole rationalistic tradition that dominates philosophical ethics. The second part provides an empirical explanation of good and evil, noting that one does not have to look too far to find prime examples of the failure of fixed moral rules. Including important commentary on Joseph Fletcher's groundbreaking situation ethics, and Aristotle's virtues (e.g., magnanimity and pride), Taylor rounds out the book by developing a philosophy of aspiration--personal worth as an ethical ideal--to replace the morality of duty. He offers a modified form of situation ethics to fit the contemporary problems we face. (shrink)

Orientalism and Religion offers us a timely discussion of the implications of contemporary post-colonial theory for the study of religion. Drawing on a variety of post-structuralist and post-colonial thinkers, including Foucault, Gadamer, Said, and Spivak, Richard King examines the way in which notions such as mysticism, religion, Hinduism and Buddhism are taken for granted, and shows us how religion needs to be redescribed along the lines of cultural studies.

The COVID-19 pandemic has inspired numerous opportunities for telehealth implementation to meet diverse healthcare needs, including the use of virtual communication platforms to facilitate the growth of and access to clinical ethics consultation (CEC) services across the globe. Here we discuss the conceptualization and implementation of two different virtual CEC services that arose during the COVID-19 pandemic: the Clinical Ethics Malaysia COVID-19 Consultation Service and the Johns Hopkins Hospital Ethics Committee and Consultation Service. A common strength experienced by both platforms (...) during virtual delivery included improved ability for local practitioners to address consultation needs for patient populations otherwise unable to access CEC services in their respective locations. Additionally, virtual platforms allowed for enhanced collaboration and sharing of expertise among ethics consultants. Both contexts encountered numerous challenges related to patient care delivery during the pandemic. The use of virtual technologies resulted in decreased personalization of patient-provider communication. We discuss these challenges with respect to contextual differences specific to each service and setting, including differences in CEC needs, sociocultural norms, resource availability, populations served, consultation service visibility, healthcare infrastructure, and funding disparities. Through lessons learned from a health system in the United States and a national service in Malaysia, we provide key recommendations for health practitioners and clinical ethics consultants to leverage virtual communication platforms to mitigate existing inequities in patient care delivery and increase capacity for CEC globally. (shrink)

This is the third edition of a classic book first published in 1960, which has sold thousands of copies in two paperback edition and has been translated into several foreign languages. Popkin's work ha generated innumerable citations, and remains a valuable stimulus to current historical research. In this updated version, he has revised and expanded throughout, and has added three new chapters, one on Savonarola, one on Henry More and Ralph Cudworth, and one on Pascal. This authoritative treatment of the (...) theme of scepticism and its historical impact will appeal to scholars and students of early modern history now as much as ever. (shrink)

Thinking through the body: educating for the humanities -- The body as background -- Self-knowledge and its discontents: from Socrates to somaesthetics -- Muscle memory and the somaesthetic pathologies of everyday life -- Somaesthetics in the philosophy classroom: a practical approach -- Somaesthetics and the limits of aesthetics -- Somaesthetics and Burke's sublime -- Pragmatism and cultural politics: from textualism to somaesthetics -- Body consciousness and performance -- Somaesthetics and architecture: a critical option -- Photography as performative process -- Asian (...) ars erotica and the question of sexual aesthetics -- Philosophy as awakened life : everyday aesthetics of embodiment in American transcendentalism and Japanese Zen practice -- Somatic style. (shrink)

Discussion of the ethics of forgoing medically provided nutrition and hydration tends to focus on adults rather than infants and children. Many appellate court decisions address the legal propriety of forgoing medically provided nutritional support of adults, but only a few have ruled on pediatric cases that pose the same issue.The cessation of nutritional support is implemented most commonly for patients in a permanent vegetative state ). An estimated 4,000 to 10,000 American children are in the permanent vegetative state, compared (...) to 10,000 to 25,000 adults. Yet the dearth of literature, case reports, and court decisions suggests that physicians and families of pediatric patients stop medically provided nutrition or seek court orders much less frequently. (shrink)

Conditionalization is one of the central norms of Bayesian epistemology. But there are a number of competing formulations, and a number of arguments that purport to establish it. In this paper, I explore which formulations of the norm are supported by which arguments. In their standard formulations, each of the arguments I consider here depends on the same assumption, which I call Deterministic Updating. I will investigate whether it is possible to amend these arguments so that they no longer depend (...) on it. As I show, whether this is possible depends on the formulation of the norm under consideration. (shrink)

The book begins with an overview that introduces the Theorem and the issues surrounding it, and explores how the essays that follow contribute to our understanding of those issues.

The Desire-as-Belief thesis (DAB) states that any rational person desires a proposition exactly to the degree that she believes or expects the proposition to be good. Many people take David Lewis to have shown the thesis to be inconsistent with Bayesian decision theory. However, as we show, Lewis's argument was based on an Invariance condition that itself is inconsistent with the (standard formulation of the) version of Bayesian decision theory that he assumed in his arguments against DAB. The aim of (...) this paper is to explore what impact the rejection of Invariance has on the DAB thesis. Without assuming Invariance, we first refute all versions of DAB that entail that there are only two levels of goodness. We next consider two theses according to which rational desires are intimately connected to expectations of (multi-levelled) goodness, and show that these are consistent with Bayesian decision theory as long as we assume that the contents of 'value propositions' are not fixed. We explain why this conclusion is independently plausible, and show how to construct such propositions. (shrink)

Strangers, Gods and Monster is a fascinating look at how human identity is shaped by three powerful but enigmatic forces. Often overlooked in accounts of how we think about ourselves and others, Richard Kearney skillfully shows, with the help of vivid examples and illustrations, how the human outlook on the world is formed by the mysterious triumvirate of strangers, gods and monsters. Throughout, Richard Kearney shows how strangers, gods and monsters do not merely reside in myths or fantasies (...) but constitute a central part of our cultural unconscious. Above all, he argues that until we understand better that the Other resides deep within ourselves, we can have little hope of understanding how our most basic fears and desires manifest themselves in the external world and how we can learn to live with them. (shrink)

Hilbert’s program was an ambitious and wide-ranging project in the philosophy and foundations of mathematics. In order to “dispose of the foundational questions in mathematics once and for all,” Hilbert proposed a two-pronged approach in 1921: first, classical mathematics should be formalized in axiomatic systems; second, using only restricted, “finitary” means, one should give proofs of the consistency of these axiomatic systems. Although Gödel’s incompleteness theorems show that the program as originally conceived cannot be carried out, it had many partial (...) successes, and generated important advances in logical theory and metatheory, both at the time and since. The article discusses the historical background and development of Hilbert’s program, its philosophical underpinnings and consequences, and its subsequent development and influences since the 1930s. (shrink)

Most recent accounts of will-power have tried to explain it as reducible to the operation of beliefs and desires. In opposition to such accounts, this paper argues for a distinct faculty of will-power. Considerations from philosophy and from social psychology are used in support.

Most individuals realise that we have a moral obligation to avoid the evils of war. But this realization raises a host of difficult questions when we, as responsible individuals, witness harrowing injustices such as ""ethnic cleansing"" in Bosnia or starvation in Somalia. With millions of lives at stake, is war ever justified? And, if so, for what purpose? In this book, Richard J. Regan confronts these controversial questions by first considering the basic principles of just-war theory and then applying (...) those principles to historical and ongoing conflicts. Part One presents two opposing viewpoints: first, that war is not subject to moral norms and, second, that war is never morally permissible. The author rejects both perspectives, and moves to define the principles of just-war theory. He evaluates the roles of the president, Congress and, most importantly, the UN Security Council in determining when long-term US military involvement is justified. The moral limits of war conduct and the moral problem of using, or threatening to use, nuclear weapons are also discussed. On the just cause to wage war, Regan argues that defense of nations and nationals - whether in self-defense or in defense of others - remains the ""only"" classical cause that in the modern world would justify resorting to war. With respect to military intervention in secessionist and revolutionary wars, he contends that such intervention might be justified, but that prudence dictates extreme caution. In considering acceptable war conduct, Regan elaborates the specific principle of discrimination and proportionality; he maintains that civilians uninvolved in the enemy's war should not be directly targeted and that the costs of military action must be proportionate to the anticipated benefits of destroying military targets. The second part of the book presents case studies of eight historical wars - World War I, the Vietnam War, the Falklands War, the revolution and civil war in Nicaragua, the civil war in El Salvador, the Gulf War, the intervention in Somalia, and the Bosnian War - and poses several provocative questions about each. It invites readers and students to apply just-war principles to complex war-related situations and to understand the factual contingencies involved in moral judgements about war decisions. The book should be of particular interest to students of the moral issues of international relations and to readers interested more generally in philosophy, theology and political science. (shrink)

This book gives a descriptive analysis of specific Madhyamika texts. It compares the ideology of Kumarajiva (a translator of the four Madhyamika treatises 400 A.D.) with the ideologies of the three Chinese contemporaries - HuiYuan, Seng-Jui and Seng-Chao. It envisages an intercultural transmission of religious and philosophical ideas from India to China.

If aesthetics is both surface and depth, impassioned immediacy yet also critical distance of judgment, how can this doubleness be held together in one ...

In “Theories of Justification,” Richard Fumerton begins an overview of several prominent positions on the nature of justification by isolating epistemic justification from nonepistemic justification. He also distinguishes between “having justification for a belief” and “having a justified belief,” arguing that the former is conceptually more fundamental. Fumerton then addresses the possibility that justification is a normative matter, suggesting that this possibility has little to offer as a concept of epistemic justification. He also critically examines more specific attempts to (...) capture the structure and content of epistemic justification. These include traditional foundationalism and variants thereof, externalist versions of foundationalism, contextualism, coherentism, and “mixed” theories which combine aspects of coherentism and foundationalism. (shrink)

Logical Forms explains both the detailed problems involved in finding logical forms and also the theoretical underpinnings of philosophical logic. In this revised edition, exercises are integrated throughout the book. The result is a genuinely interactive introduction which engages the reader in developing the argument. Each chapter concludes with updated notes to guide further reading.

A comprehensive exploration of the philosophical issues raised by mysticism. This work is a comprehensive study of the philosophical issues raised by mysticism. Mystics claim to experience reality in a way not available in normal life, a claim which makes this phenomenon interesting from a philosophical perspective. Richard H. Jones’s inquiry focuses on the skeleton of beliefs and values of mysticism: knowledge claims made about the nature of reality and of human beings; value claims about what is significant and (...) what is ethical; and mystical goals and ways of life. Jones engages language, epistemology, metaphysics, science, and the philosophy of mind. Methodological issues in the study of mysticism are also addressed. Examples of mystical experience are drawn chiefly from Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta, but also from Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Daoism. “This is a significant extension of the seminal work by Walter Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy. That work has stimulated much literature, all of which Jones manages to review here. He critically extends Stace’s universal core and embeds it in a sophisticated discussion of the extent, range, and metaphysical implications of mysticism.” — Ralph W. Hood, Jr., coauthor of The Psychology of Religion: An Empirical Approach. (shrink)