The world is becoming deeply interconnected, whereby actions in one part of the world can have profound repercussions elsewhere. In a world of overlapping communities of fate, there has been a renewed enthusiasm for thinking about what it is that human beings have in common, and to explore the ethical basis of this. This has led to a renewed interest in examining the normative principles that might underpin efforts to resolve global collective action problems and to ameliorate serious global risks. (...) This project can be referred to as the project of cosmopolitanism. In response to this renewed cosmopolitan enthusiasm, this volume has brought together 25 seminal essays in the development of cosmopolitan thought by some of the world's most distinguished cosmopolitan thinkers and critics. It is divided into six sections: classical cosmopolitanism, global justice, culture and cosmopolitanism, political cosmopolitanism, cosmopolitan global governance and critical examinations. This volume thus provides a thorough and extensive introduction to contemporary cosmopolitan thought and acts as a definitive source for those interested in cosmopolitan thinking and its critics. See also David Held's _Cosmopolitanism: Ideals and Realities_. (shrink)

In a new interpretation, Garrett Wallace Brown considers Kant's cosmopolitan thought as a form of international constitutional jurisprudence that requires minimal legal demands. He explores and defends topics such as cosmopolitan law, cosmopolitan right, the laws of hospitality, a Kantian federation of states, a cosmopolitan epistemology of culture and a possible normative basis for a Kantian form of global distributive justice.

This chapter outlines the basic elements that underwrite Kant's cosmopolitanism. In doing so, the chapter looks at the moral principles behind Kant's cosmopolitanism and the problem of Kant's cosmopolitan teleology, and develops a brief overview of Kant's more coherent principles of cosmopolitan law. It makes a connection between Kant's critical philosophy and the moral foundations of his cosmopolitanism. By framing Kant's overall cosmopolitan vision, this chapter further explores Kant's theory of history and suggests that it is based on a problematic (...) teleology. The chapter concludes by linking the various aspects of Kant's cosmopolitanism into a single coherent narrative that provides a basis for future developments. (shrink)

It is often argued that cosmopolitanism faces unique motivational constraints, asking more of individuals than they are able to give. This ‘motivational problem’ is held to pose a significant challenge to cosmopolitanism, as it appears unable to transform its moral demands into motivated political action. This article develops a novel response to the motivational problem facing cosmopolitanism, arguing that self-interest, alongside appeals to sentiment, can play a vital and neglected, transitional role in moving towards an expanded cosmopolitical condition. The article (...) explicates the ‘motivational problem’, analyses the relationship between self-interest and sentimental cosmopolitanism in addressing it, and develops a series of claims that self-interest can be one important component in what we label as ‘transitional cosmopolitanism’. In doing so, we argue that self-interested motivations can be compatible with sentiment-based approaches, rendering them more plausible. In addition, two expected critiques of self-interested ‘transitional cosmopolitanism’ are tackled: (A) That it cannot address feasibility constraints, and (B) That self-interested motivations cannot meet what an ‘authentic’ cosmopolitanism entails. We refute and challenge these critiques and outline three conditions in which self-interest can advance a transitional form of cosmopolitanism, while also being compatible with cosmopolitanism writ large. (shrink)

This volume explores Kant's cosmopolitanism and its implications for a Kantian-inspired cosmopolitics. The contributors provide a definitive source and specification of key new areas in the field of Kantian cosmopolitanism and how it is integral to current debates in political theory, political philosophy and international relations.

This book investigates the potential role that states can play in cosmopolitan thinking and how states could be agents for the advancement of cosmopolitan responsibilities.

The European Legacy, Volume 17, Issue 4, Page 539, July 2012.

The purpose of this article is to respond to Jacques Derrida’s reading of Immanuel Kant’s laws of hospitality and to offer a deeper exploration into Kant’s separation of a cosmopolitan right to visit ( Besuchsrecht) and the idea of a universal right to reside ( Gastrecht). Through this discussion, the various laws of hospitality will be examined, extrapolated and outlined, particularly in response to the tensions articulated by Derrida. By doing so, this article will offer a reinterpretation of the laws (...) of hospitality, arguing that hospitality is not meant to capture all the conditions necessary for cosmopolitan citizenship or for a thoroughgoing condition of cosmopolitan justice as Derrida assumes. This is because hospitality could be understood as the basic normative requirement necessary to establish an ethical condition for intersubjective communication at the global level, where discursive communication regarding the substance of a future condition of cosmopolitan justice is to be subjected to global public reason. (shrink)

The quantum theory of de Broglie and Bohm solves the measurement problem, but the hypothetical corpuscles play no role in the argument. The solution finds a more natural home in the Everett interpretation.

In most children’s hospitals, there are very few ethics consultations, even though there are many ethically complex cases. We hypothesize that the reason for this may be that hospitals develop different mechanisms to address ethical issues and that many of these mechanisms are closer in spirit to the goals of the pioneers of clinical ethics than is the mechanism of a formal ethics consultation. To show how this is true, we first review the history of collaboration between philosophers and physicians (...) about clinical dilemmas. Then, as a case-study, we describe the different venues that have developed at one children’s hospital to address ethical issues. At our hospital, there are nine different venues in which ethical issues are regularly and explicitly addressed. They are ethics committee meetings, Nursing Ethics Forum, ethics Brown Bag workshops, PICU ethics rounds, Grand Rounds, NICU Comprehensive Care Rounds, Palliative Care Team case conferences, multidisciplinary consults in Fetal Health Center, and ethics consultations. In our hospital, ethics consults account for only a tiny percentage of ethics discussions. We suspect that most hospitals have multiple and varied venues for ethics discussions. We hope this case study will stimulate research in other hospitals analyzing the various ways in which ethicists and ethics committees can build an ethical environment in hospitals. Such research might suggest that ethicists need to develop a different set of “core competencies” than the ones that are needed to do ethics consultations. Instead, they should focus on their skills in creating multiple “moral spaces” in which regular and ongoing discussion of ethical issues would take place. A successful ethicist would empower everyone in the hospital to speak up about the values that they believe are central to respectful, collaborative practice and patient care. Such a role is closer to what the first hospital philosophers set out to do than in the role of the typical hospital ethics consultant today. (shrink)

Using as a starting point recent and apparently incompatible conclusions by Saunders and Knox, I revisit the question of the correct spacetime setting for Newtonian physics. I argue that understood correctly, these two versions of Newtonian physics make the same claims both about the background geometry required to define the theory, and about the inertial structure of the theory. In doing so I illustrate and explore in detail the view—espoused by Knox, and also by Brown —that inertial structure is (...) defined by the dynamics governing subsystems of a larger system. This clarifies some interesting features of Newtonian physics, notably the distinction between using the theory to model subsystems of a larger whole and using it to model complete universes, and the scale-relativity of spacetime structure. _1_ Introduction _2_ Newtonian Mechanics and Galilean Spacetime _3_ Vector Relationism and Maxwellian Spacetime _4_ Recovering the Galilei Group: Dynamics of Subsystems _5_ Knox on Inertial Structure _6_ Connections on Maxwellian Spacetime _7_ Knox on Newtonian Gravity _8_ Vector Relationism and Newton–Cartan Theory _9_ Inertial Structure in Newton–Cartan Gravity _10_ Reconciling Knox and Saunders _11_ Conclusions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:504 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Earle's position, needless to say, is a radical one. If taken seriously it appears to commit him either to a private language doctrine or, more likely, to silence. If the concepts embodied in our language are public, intersubjective concepts, then either a minimal characterization of singular human existence is possible or Earle is stranded in a hopeless, speechless solipsism. I shall mention just one other (...) paper, Natanson's "Alienation and Social Role." Natanson distinguishes role-taking from the more basic activity which he refers to as the intentionality of role-taking or, as he terms it, "role-action." He attempts to give a phenomenological grounding to the notion of role-taking, thereby showing the relevance of phenomenology to problems in social philosophy and sociology. Though a difficult paper, "Alienation and Social Role" is a helpful study of various structures presupposed in social interaction. Natanson's analyses go a long way toward dispelling the view that a phenomenological starting point commits one to subjectivism. I might have mentioned other, equally instructive essays. These, however, give some indication of the diversity of concerns inherent in the American phenomenological tradition. Phenomenology in America documents these concerns well. STEPHEN A, ERICKSON Pomona College Heimkehr ins Eigentliche. By Walter Robert Corti. (Amriswil, Switzerland, Amriswiler BiichereL 1969. Pp. 152. n.p.) This collection of essays written between 1935 and 1966 gives a fine example of the changes in the concern for the meaning of human existence during these thirty years both in the mind and emotions of an individual philosopher and in Western culture generally. The essay from which the title is taken dates from 1958. It is a charming, poetic autobiography, describing the growth of philosophic and scientific wonder from the author's childhood, when he was thrilled by the wonders of biology and chemistry, to his more general wonder at being in and of the world of wonders, culminating in a self-conscious wonder about the implications of a wondering being in a wonderful world. The early essay of 1935, entitled Zu den Dingen is a vivid statement of a Heidegger-inspired existentialism, which analyses the difference between the attempt of Husserl to understand Sachen by his search for the essence of an object ;rod his formulation of phenomenology, and the very different appreciation of things in nature, which demands a non-verbal familiarity or "communion" with another natural being in existential terms, not in terms of the concept of "essence." The later essay of 1958 contains a critical history of the relations between the theories of explication, evolution, and development as cosmologies. After the historical survey it describes the physiological and mental restlessness of man. In this context, the problem of the meaning of existence is explored, not as a question to be answered, but as a significant form of human restlessness which has implications for a kind of restlessness in nature and in cosmic process. Beside these essays which are contributions to the history of recent philosophy, there are several other essays related to the varied and remarkable interests and BOOKS RECEIVED 505 achievements of Dr. Corti, partly in his activities as a distinguished Swiss public leader, partly in connection with his work as director of the Archly fiir genetische Philosophie in Winterthur. HERBERT W. SCHNEIDER Claremont, California BOOKS RECEIVED First Editions Adler, Mortimer. The Time of Our Lives: The Ethics of Common Sense. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, I970. Pp. xiii+361. $7.95. Allen, Gay Wilson. William lames. Pamphlets on American Writers, Number 88. Minneapolis : University of Minnesota, 1970. Pp. 48. $.95. Bahm, Archie. Directory o[ American Philosophers. V 1970-71. Alburquerque: Archie I. Bahm, I970. Pp. 436. $I4.95. Brown, Peter. Augustine of Hippo: A Biography. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969. Pp. 463. Paper. $2.95. A review of this book appeared in the Journal, ~ 4, Vol. 6. Cailliet, Emile. Journey Into Light. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1968. Pp. 117. $3.95. Cantore, Enrico. Atomic Order: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Microphysics. (~mbridge (Mass.): The MIT Press, 1969. Pp. xi+334. $12.50. Caponigri, A. Robert. Philosophy from the Renaissance to the Romantic Age. A History of... (shrink)

The Past Hypothesis defended by David Wallace in his 2011 account of macroscopic irreversibility is technically distinct from, but in the same spirit as, that of David Albert in his 2000 book Time and Chance. I am concerned in this essay with the role of objective probability in both accounts, which I find obscure. Most of the analysis will be devoted to the classical treatments by both authors, but a final section will question whether Wallace's quantum version involving (...) unitary dynamics removes this obscurity. (shrink)

I focus on Garrett’s account of Hume’s theory of moral evaluation, which Garrett calls “a cognitive history.” Before turning to his account, however, I briefly outline my own alternative reading of Hume’s theory of moral evaluation. One way in which my account differs from Garrett’s is that I follow Árdal, among others, in thinking that Hume takes the moral sentiments to be calm forms of love and hatred. Thus Hume says that approval and disapproval are “nothing but (...) a fainter and more imperceptible love or hatred.” Morality, for Hume, is about what we love or hate, praise or blame, in people. (shrink)

© 2017. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.We present new observations of the low-mass companion to HD 984 taken with the Gemini Planet Imager as a part of the GPI Exoplanet Survey campaign. Images of HD 984 B were obtained in the J and H bands. Combined with archival epochs from 2012 and 2014, we fit the first orbit to the companion to find an 18 au orbit with a 68% confidence interval between 14 and 28 au, an eccentricity (...) of 0.18 with a 68% confidence interval between 0.05 and 0.47, and an inclination of 119°with a 68% confidence interval between 114°and 125°. To address the considerable spectral covariance in both spectra, we present a method of splitting the spectra into low and high frequencies to analyze the spectral structure at different spatial frequencies with the proper spectral noise correlation. Using the split spectra, we compare them to known spectral types using field brown dwarf and low-mass star spectra and find a best-fit match of a field gravity M6.5 ±1.5 spectral type with a corresponding temperature of K. Photometry of the companion yields a luminosity of log=2.88 ± 0.07 dex with DUSTY models. Mass estimates, again from DUSTY models, find an age-dependent mass of 34 ±1 to 95 ±4 M Jup. These results are consistent with previous measurements of the object. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:504 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Earle's position, needless to say, is a radical one. If taken seriously it appears to commit him either to a private language doctrine or, more likely, to silence. If the concepts embodied in our language are public, intersubjective concepts, then either a minimal characterization of singular human existence is possible or Earle is stranded in a hopeless, speechless solipsism. I shall mention just one other (...) paper, Natanson's "Alienation and Social Role." Natanson distinguishes role-taking from the more basic activity which he refers to as the intentionality of role-taking or, as he terms it, "role-action." He attempts to give a phenomenological grounding to the notion of role-taking, thereby showing the relevance of phenomenology to problems in social philosophy and sociology. Though a difficult paper, "Alienation and Social Role" is a helpful study of various structures presupposed in social interaction. Natanson's analyses go a long way toward dispelling the view that a phenomenological starting point commits one to subjectivism. I might have mentioned other, equally instructive essays. These, however, give some indication of the diversity of concerns inherent in the American phenomenological tradition. Phenomenology in America documents these concerns well. STEPHEN A, ERICKSON Pomona College Heimkehr ins Eigentliche. By Walter Robert Corti. (Amriswil, Switzerland, Amriswiler BiichereL 1969. Pp. 152. n.p.) This collection of essays written between 1935 and 1966 gives a fine example of the changes in the concern for the meaning of human existence during these thirty years both in the mind and emotions of an individual philosopher and in Western culture generally. The essay from which the title is taken dates from 1958. It is a charming, poetic autobiography, describing the growth of philosophic and scientific wonder from the author's childhood, when he was thrilled by the wonders of biology and chemistry, to his more general wonder at being in and of the world of wonders, culminating in a self-conscious wonder about the implications of a wondering being in a wonderful world. The early essay of 1935, entitled Zu den Dingen is a vivid statement of a Heidegger-inspired existentialism, which analyses the difference between the attempt of Husserl to understand Sachen by his search for the essence of an object ;rod his formulation of phenomenology, and the very different appreciation of things in nature, which demands a non-verbal familiarity or "communion" with another natural being in existential terms, not in terms of the concept of "essence." The later essay of 1958 contains a critical history of the relations between the theories of explication, evolution, and development as cosmologies. After the historical survey it describes the physiological and mental restlessness of man. In this context, the problem of the meaning of existence is explored, not as a question to be answered, but as a significant form of human restlessness which has implications for a kind of restlessness in nature and in cosmic process. Beside these essays which are contributions to the history of recent philosophy, there are several other essays related to the varied and remarkable interests and BOOKS RECEIVED 505 achievements of Dr. Corti, partly in his activities as a distinguished Swiss public leader, partly in connection with his work as director of the Archly fiir genetische Philosophie in Winterthur. HERBERT W. SCHNEIDER Claremont, California BOOKS RECEIVED First Editions Adler, Mortimer. The Time of Our Lives: The Ethics of Common Sense. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, I970. Pp. xiii+361. $7.95. Allen, Gay Wilson. William lames. Pamphlets on American Writers, Number 88. Minneapolis : University of Minnesota, 1970. Pp. 48. $.95. Bahm, Archie. Directory o[ American Philosophers. V 1970-71. Alburquerque: Archie I. Bahm, I970. Pp. 436. $I4.95. Brown, Peter. Augustine of Hippo: A Biography. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969. Pp. 463. Paper. $2.95. A review of this book appeared in the Journal, ~ 4, Vol. 6. Cailliet, Emile. Journey Into Light. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1968. Pp. 117. $3.95. Cantore, Enrico. Atomic Order: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Microphysics. (~mbridge (Mass.): The MIT Press, 1969. Pp. xi+334. $12.50. Caponigri, A. Robert. Philosophy from the Renaissance to the Romantic Age. A History of... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:276 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY The Elements of Moral Science. By Francis Wayland. Edited by Joseph L. B1au. (Cambridge : Harvard University Press, 1963. Pp. 1 + 413. $7.50.) We are indebted to Professor Blau of Columbia University and to the series of John tIarvard Books of the Harvard University Press for this attractive edition of a genuine American antique. Of this college text 100,000 copies were sold. Editions were (...) published in 1835, 1837, and 1865; also an abridged edition for secondary schools and translations into several languages. The present edition reproduces the 1837 text and gives the variations of 1835 and 1865 in the form of appendices. Especially noteworthy are Appendix (H), in which the author's denunciation of slavery is expanded in 1865 into a vigorous abolition appeal, and Appendix (N) against the supposed right of rebellion against "civil society." The Editor's fine, fifty-page Introduction gives us both a sketch of Wayland's distinguished career and an account of the writing, revising, and use of this book. The textbook is a product of Wayland's teaching of Ethics during his Presidency of Brown University. It was quickly adopted by many colleges and remained for two generations a favorite exposition of "Christian ethics" both for colleges throughout the United States and for the mission fields abroad. Among Baptists it was especially popular, but it was not sectarian either by intention or by influence. Wayland began his instruction in moral science by using as a text William Paley's Principles o[ Moral and Political Philosophy (1785). Finding himself in disagreement with Paley on many points, he introduced his own lectures increasingly until finally Paley was completely displaced by Wayland's own lectures and textbook. Both Paley and Wayland agreed in teaching that "the will of God" is the ultimate and absolute ground of moral obligation, but both also agreed with Dr. Johnson, when he said that "religion will appear to be the voice of reason and morality the will of God." There could be no conflict between the principles of eternal happiness and the obligation to obey a benevolent God. What turned Wayland against Paley's text was the preference shown to "natural theology" over "the moral sense" or conscience, and in Bishop Joseph Butler's Sermons he found a justification for the reliability of conscience as an innate, instinctive faculty of correct moral judgment. This confession on Wayland's part seems to indicate that he repudiated "theological utilitarianism," as Paley's system was called, along with Paley's Natural Theology and Evidences of Christianity, and embraced the Scottish "moral sense" philosophy. However, anyone who reads both Paley's and Wayland's texts will be struck by the ways in which Wayland's "moral science" shows the influence of Paley's philosophy and Principles. In the interest of the history of philosophy it may be appropriate to devote the remainder of the review to pointing out how Wayland followed Paley more than Butler. What seems to have annoyed Wayland in Paley's text was not so much the theoretical philosophy and theology as the practical application of obligations to British society. Wayland was a conservative Jeffersonian Republican in his political ideas, whereas Paley was a latitudinarian Anglican, critical of the society in which he lived. One illustration of this difference is striking: Paley begins his treatment of Practical Ethics (which is by far the larger part in each text) as follows: If you should see a flock of pigeons in a field of corn; and if (instead of each picking where and what it liked, taking just as much as it wanted, and no more) you should see ninety-nineof them gathering all they got into a heap; reserving nothing for themselves but the chaff and the refuse; keeping this heap for one, and that the weakest perhaps, the worst pigeon of the flock; sitting around and looking on all the winter, whilst this one was devouring, throwing about, and wasting it; and if a pigeon, more hardy or hungry than the rest, touched the grain of the hoard, all the others instantly flying about it, and tearing it to pieces: If you should see this, you would see... (shrink)

I focus on Garrett’s account of Hume’s theory of moral evaluation, which Garrett calls “a cognitive history.” Before turning to his account, however, I briefly outline my own alternative reading of Hume’s theory of moral evaluation. One way in which my account differs from Garrett’s is that I follow Árdal, among others, in thinking that Hume takes the moral sentiments to be calm forms of love and hatred. Thus Hume says that approval and disapproval are “nothing but (...) a fainter and more imperceptible love or hatred.” Morality, for Hume, is about what we love or hate, praise or blame, in people. (shrink)

Garrett W. Brown has argued that donor voting caucuses produce a deliberative deficit between donor and non-donor members in the Global Fund International Board. Although we agree with this assessment, in our research on low-transaction cost alternatives to cope with consistent deliberative conditions we have found that deliberation and interest-based preference maximisation are not necessarily mutually exclusive, as long as we manage to stop donor members from behaving like monopolists. To this end, we have to open up the (...) Board from its present state of non-transparency, so that new input can be obtained from new constituents. This will also soften the current principal-agent structure that links members to their donors, easing the transition to market-driven governance rules that provide for the replacement of Board members if they do not fulfil the new constituents' expectations. (shrink)

What is called ``orthodox'' quantum mechanics, as presented in standard foundational discussions, relies on two substantive assumptions --- the projection postulate and the eigenvalue-eigenvector link --- that do not in fact play any part in practical applications of quantum mechanics. I argue for this conclusion on a number of grounds, but primarily on the grounds that the projection postulate fails correctly to account for repeated, continuous and unsharp measurements and that the eigenvalue-eigenvector link implies that virtually all interesting properties are (...) maximally indefinite pretty much always. I present an alternative way of conceptualising quantum mechanics that does a better job of representing quantum mechanics as it is actually used, and in particular that eliminates use of either the projection postulate or the eigenvalue-eigenvector link, and I reformulate the measurement problem within this new presentation of orthodoxy. (shrink)

Some claim that Composition as Identity (CI) entails Mereological Essentialism (ME). If this is right, then we have an effective modus tollens against CI: ME is clearly false, so CI is, too. Rather than deny the conditional, I will argue that a CI theorist should embrace ME. I endorse a theory of modal parts such that ordinary objects are spatially, temporally, and modally extended. Accepting modal parts is certainly beneficial to CI theorists, but it also provides elegant solutions to the (...) traditional puzzles of constitution, making it a competitive move in its own right. (shrink)

At the end of a thoughtful article on the future of nuclear war, Wiesner and York concluded that: "Both sides in the arms race are... confronted by the dilemma of steadily increasing military power and steadily decreasing national security. It is our considered professional judgment that this dilemma has no technical solution. If the great powers continue to look for solutions in the area of science and technology only, the result will be to worsen the situation.".

This work offers a comprehensive picture of the dynamic natures of language and consciousness that will interest linguists, psychologists, literary scholars,...

This paper articulates and responds to a challenge to contemporary compatibilist views of free will. Despite the popularity and appeal of compatibilist theories, many are left with lingering doubts about compatibilism. This paper explains this doubt in terms of the absurdity challenge: because a compatibilist accepts that they do not have causal access to all the actual sufficient causal sources of their own agency, the compatibilist can find their own agency absurd. By taking a cue from political philosophy, this paper (...) argues that a non-ideal construction of the problem of free will allows compatibilists to overcome this existential-metaphysical challenge, and by doing so, perhaps adopt a metaphysically progressive picture of human agency. (shrink)

For those of us who went to graduate school during the 1970s and 1980s, our understanding of early-modern rhetoric was shaped in large part by a preoccupation with clarifying the relationship between rhetoric and philosophy. The curriculum at that time usually included a heavy dose of secondary literature by scholars in the tradition of Wilbur Samuel Howell, Karl Wallace, Douglas Ehninger, Vincent Bevilacqua, and Lloyd Bitzer. A common theme in those readings was an investment in mapping the primary texts (...) of modern rhetorical theory against the background of metaphysics and epistemology. Occasionally, we read an essay like Walter Ong's "Ramist Method and the Commercial Mind," which suggested a different approach to... (shrink)

Bridging the gap between the world of science and the realm of the spiritual, B. Alan Wallace introduces a natural theory of human consciousness that has its roots in contemporary physics and Buddhism. Wallace's "special theory of ontological relativity" suggests that mental phenomena are _conditioned_ by the brain, but do not _emerge_ from it. Rather, the entire natural world of mind and matter, subjects and objects, arises from a unitary dimension of reality that is more fundamental than these (...) dualities, as proposed by Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung. To test his hypothesis, Wallace employs the Buddhist meditative practice of _samatha_, refining one's attention and metacognition, to create a kind of telescope to examine the space of the mind. Drawing on the work of the physicist John Wheeler, he then proposes a more general theory in which the participatory nature of reality is envisioned as a self-excited circuit. In comparing these ideas to the Buddhist theory known as the Middle Way philosophy, Wallace explores further aspects of his "general theory of ontological relativity," which can be investigated by means of _vipasyana_, or insight, meditation. Wallace then focuses on the theme of symmetry in reference to quantum cosmology and the "problem of frozen time," relating these issues to the theory and practices of the Great Perfection school of Tibetan Buddhism. He concludes with a discussion of the general theme of complementarity as it relates to science and religion. The theories of relativity and quantum mechanics were major achievements in the physical sciences, and the theory of evolution has had an equally deep impact on the life sciences. However, rigorous scientific methods do not yet exist to observe mental phenomena, and naturalism has its limits for shedding light on the workings of the mind. A pioneer of modern consciousness research, Wallace offers a practical and revolutionary method for exploring the mind that combines the keenest insights of contemporary physicists and philosophers with the time-honored meditative traditions of Buddhism. (shrink)

Weak particularism about reasons is the view that the normative valency of some descriptive considerations varies, while others have an invariant normative valency. A defence of this view needs to respond to arguments that a consideration cannot count in favour of any action unless it counts in favour of every action. But it cannot resort to a global holism about reasons, if it claims that there are some examples of invariant valency. This paper argues for weak particularism, and presents a (...) framework for understanding the relationships between practical reasons. A central part of this framework is the idea that there is an important kind of reason-a 'presumptive reason'-which need not be conclusive, but which is neither pro tanto nor prima facie. (shrink)

Scepticism about ought simpliciter is the view that there is no such thing as what one ought simpliciter to do. Instead, practical deliberation is governed by a plurality of normative standpoints, each authoritative from their own perspective but none authoritative simpliciter. This paper aims to resist such scepticism. After setting out the challenge in general terms, I argue that scepticism can be resisted by rejecting a key assumption in the sceptic’s argument. This is the assumption that standpoint-relative ought judgments bring (...) with them a commitment to act in accordance with those judgments. Instead, I propose an alternative account of our normative concepts according to which only ought simpliciter judgments commit one to acting in accordance with those judgments. In addition to answering the sceptical challenge, the proposal offers an independently motivated account of what makes a concept normatively authoritative. (shrink)