Do humans have free Will? What distinguishes morally right from morally wrong action? Does God exist? Does life have meaning? What is the ultimate nature of reality? What are the limits of human knowledge? Philosophy through Film offers a stimulating new way to explore the basic questions of philosophy. Each chapter uses a popular film to examine one such topic- from free will and skepticism to personal identity and artificial intelligence- in an approachable yet philosophically rigorous manner. A wide range (...) of films is employed all of which are readily available through major video rental chains. This unique and engaging introduction provides an exciting new way to learn about philosophy, and connects complicated philosophical questions to the familiar settings of popular culture. (shrink)

Some of the world’s best-loved films can be used as springboards for examining enduring philosophical questions. _Philosophy Through Film_ provides guidance in how to watch films with an eye for their philosophical content, helping students become familiar with key topics in all of the major areas in Western philosophy, and helping them master the techniques of philosophical argumentation. The perfect size and scope for a first course in philosophy, _Philosophy Through Film_ assumes no prior knowledge of philosophy. It is an (...) excellent teaching resource and learning tool, introducing students to key topics and figures in philosophy through thematic chapters, each of which is linked to one or more "focus films" that illustrate a philosophical problem or topic. Revised and expanded, the Second Edition features a new chapter on political philosophy, an introductory chapter explaining how to watch films philosophically, an appendix with primary readings, and the addition of five new focus films. Films examined in depth include: _The Matrix_ _Vanilla Sky_ _Hilary and Jackie_ _Memento_ _I, Robot_ _Minority Report_ _Crimes and Misdemeanors_ _Antz_ _Equilibrium_ _The Seventh Seal_ _The Rapture_ _Leaving Las Vegas_. (shrink)

Any analysis of the concept of computation as it occurs in the context of a discussion of the computational model of the mind must be consonant with the philosophic burden traditionally carried by that concept as providing a bridge between a physical and a psychological description of an agent. With this analysis in hand, one may ask the question: are connectionist-based systems consistent with the computational model of the mind? The answer depends upon which of several versions of connectionism one (...) presupposes: non-learning connectionist-based systems as simulated on digital computers are consistent with the computational model of the mind, whereas connectionist-based systems (/dynamical systems) qua analog systems are not. (shrink)

Some of the world’s best-loved films can be used as springboards for examining enduring philosophical questions. Philosophy Through Film provides guidance on how to watch films with an eye for their philosophical content, helping students become familiar with key topics in all of the major areas in Western philosophy, and helping them to master the techniques of philosophical argumentation. -/- The perfect size and scope for a first course in philosophy, Philosophy Through Film assumes no prior knowledge of philosophy. It (...) is an excellent teaching resource and learning tool, introducing students to key topics and figures in philosophy through thematic chapters, each of which is linked to one or more “focus films” that illustrate a philosophical problem or topic. -/- This new edition features a new chapter on the mind-body problem. In addition, one new primary reading and nine new focus films have been added. Films examined in depth include: Arrival The Matrix Inception Memento Moon Live, Die, Repeat: Edge of Tomorrow Her Ex Machina Minority Report Beautiful Boy Crimes and Misdemeanors Gone Baby Gone Equilibrium Divergent A Serious Man Silence Ad Astra . (shrink)

What are the conditions under which one biological object is a part of another biological object? This paper answers this question by developing a general, systematic account of biological parthood. I specify two criteria for biological parthood. Substantial Spatial Inclusionrequires biological parts to be spatially located inside or in the region that the natural boundary of t he biological whole occupies. Compositional Relevance captures the fact that a biological part engages in a biological process that must make a necessary contribution (...) to a condition that is minimally sufficient to one or more of the characteristic behaviors of the biological whole. Instead of emphasizing the diversity of part-whole relations in the biological world, this paper asks what biological part-whole relations have in common and what constrains their existence, in general. After presenting the two criteria for biological parthood I discuss in how far my account can cope with hard cases (e.g., redundant parts) and I reveal the merits and limits of monism. (shrink)

Je me propose d'examiner les paragraphes 18 et 19 de la deuxième partie des Prolégomènes. Bien que ces deux paragraphes ne constituent pas l'intégralité de la déduction transcendantale des Prolégomènes, ils ont une fonction essentielle dans la mesure où ils exposent l’argument entier in nuce. Ces deux sections établissent de façon claire que la doctrine de l'idéalisme critique, présentée dans la première partie des Prolégomènes comme un idéalisme qui ne supprime pas « l'existence de la chose qui apparaît », joue (...) un rôle indispensable dans la déduction transcendantale, qui est présentée dans la deuxième partie à partir de la distinction entre jugement de perception et jugement d'expérience. (shrink)

Mary Shepherd's An Essay upon the Relation of Cause and Effect, first published in 1824, was a pioneering work in metaphysics and epistemology. Together with her 1827 Essays on the Perception of an External Universe, they make her one of the most important philosophers of her era. Although widely neglected by the history of philosophy in the decades after her death, her works have recently begun to attract the attention and sustained study they deserve. In the course of her (...) writings, Shepherd offers trenchant and detailed rebuttals of the arguments and conclusions of many prominent predecessors-including George Berkeley, Thomas Reid, Dugald Stewart, Thomas Brown, William Lawrence, and especially David Hume-but she is no merely negative thinker. On the contrary, her critiques are always in the service of her own distinctive and highly original doctrines, which are of striking contemporary interest. Appearing two hundred years after its original publication, this is the first full modern edition of her first book, which presents and defends the theory of causation and scientific knowledge that constitutes the cornerstone of her entire philosophy. The edition includes an extensive introduction and scholarly notes throughout that provide historical and philosophical context while explaining the central ideas of the work. It also includes Shepherd's two essays published in 1828 and all of her known letters-all but one of them published here for the first time-which shed significant additional light on her philosophical ideas. (shrink)

Anger has potential epistemic value in the way that it can facilitate a process of our coming to have knowledge and understanding regarding the issue about which we are angry. The nature of anger, however, may nevertheless be such that it ultimately undermines this very process. Common non-philosophical complaints about anger, for instance, often target the angry person as being somehow irrational, where an unformulated assumption is that her anger undermines her capacity to rationally engage with the issue about which (...) she is angry. Call this assumption the charge of emotional irrationality regarding anger. Such a charge is pernicious when levelled at the anger of those in positions of marginalisation or oppression, where it can threaten to silence voices on the very issue of the injustices that they face. In this paper I thus provide a much-needed interrogation of this charge. Firstly, and drawing on empirical literature on the effects of anger on decision-making, I flesh out the charge and why it poses a threat to how the epistemic value of anger has been defended. Secondly, I argue that the charge of emotional irrationality regarding anger can nevertheless be unwarranted, at least within a common context of political anger. (shrink)

Agonistic Democracy explores how theoretical concepts from agonistic democracy can inform institutional design in order to mediate conflict in multicultural, pluralist societies. Drawing on the work of Foucault, Nietzsche, Schmitt, and Arendt, Marie Paxton outlines the importance of their themes of public contestation, contingency and necessary interdependency for contemporary agonistic thinkers. Paxton delineates three distinct approaches to agonistic democracy: David Owen's perfectionist agonism, Mouffe's adversarial agonism, and William Connolly and James Tully's inclusive agonism. Paxton demonstrates how each is fundamental to (...) enabling citizens to cultivate better virtues for themselves and society (Owen), motivating democratic engagement (Mouffe) and enhancing relations of respect and understanding between conflicting citizens (Connolly and Tully). Situated within the context of a deeply polarised post-Trump America and post-Brexit Britain, this book reveals the need to rethink our approach to conflict mediation through democratic institutions. Pulling together insights from experimental research with deliberative democratic innovations, Paxton explores how agonistic theory might be institutionalised further. Through discussing ways in which agonistic institutions might be developed to render democracy more virtuous, more engaging, and more inclusive, Agonistic Democracy provides a unique resource for students of contemporary political theory. (shrink)

In this book, Mary Midgely turns a spotlight on the fashionable view that we no longer need or use moral judgements. She shows how the question of whether or not we can make moral judgements must inevitably affect our attitudes to the law and its institutions, but also to events that occur in our daily lives.

This is the first modern edition of the works of Lady Mary Shepherd, one of the most important women philosophers of the early modern period. Shepherd has been widely neglected in the history of philosophy, but her work engaged with the dominant philosophers of the time - among them Hume, Berkeley, and Reid. In particular, her 1827 volume Essays on the Perception of an External Universe outlines a theory of causation, perception, and knowledge which Shepherd presents as an alternative (...) to what she sees as the mistaken views of Berkeley and Hume. What she ultimately presents is an original and systematic metaphysics and epistemology. Shepherd's Essays consists of two parts. The first is a theory of perception and knowledge of the external world, which is designed to rebut idealism and skepticism about the external world and show that our ordinary beliefs are based on reason. The second is a collection of essays on topics in metaphysics and epistemology, including the immateriality and eternity of the mind, the relationship between mind and body, the possibility of miracles, the association of ideas, the relationship between physical and mathematical reasoning, and the epistemology of testimony. Antonia LoLordo's edition of Shepherd's Essays includes scholarly notes throughout the text that provide historical and philosophical context and expand on the major concepts of Shepherd's system. Her extensive introduction to Shepherd's life and works surveys some of the major points of Shepherd's system, points out directions for future research, and offers guidance for readers planning to teach her work in their courses. This volume is an invaluable primary resource for scholars, graduate students, and undergraduates interested in metaphysics, epistemology, and early modern philosophy. (shrink)

Inspired and in honor of the work of noted political theorist Mary P. Nichols, the essays in this volume explore political ideas and implications in a range of works of philosophy, literature, and film from classical antiquity to the present day, creating an interdisciplinary conversation across genres.

How do we act justly in the world? How can we ethically respond to social and economic crisis and the desperation caused by violence and atrocity? Justice and Love is a philosophical dialogue on how to imagine and act in a more just world by theologian Rowan Williams and philosopher Mary Zournazi. Drawing on examples from the European Migrant Crisis to Brexit, the authors reflect on justice as a condition of being rather than cold fact. Looking at different religious (...) and philosophical traditions to enrich our language of justice, this book explores the love and patience needed for social healing and the imagination required to experience the world in new ways. (shrink)

Few works have had the impact on contemporary philosophy exerted by Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Twentieth-century philosophers in France were bound together by a reading of Hyppolite's translation and commentary. Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Lacan, and Bataille were all shaped by Kojève's lectures on the book. Late twentieth-century philosophers such as Derrida, Lyotard, Deleuze, and Irigaray all operate against a Hegelian horizon. Similarly, in Germany Heidegger, Adorno, and Habermas developed their philosophies in large part through an engagement with Hegel. In the United (...) States the book has had a profound influence on feminism and gender studies. Thinkers as diverse as Butler, Benhabib, Mills, and Honig have developed political theories as well as theories of sexual difference by rereading Hegel's reading of Antigone. As Derrida suggests, this text must be read. It lays out the infrastructures and architectures of life in the modern nation state. It unfolds a grand narrative of the ways of thinking and acting that comprise human experience in "our time." The purpose of the text is to effect a transformation in readers, so that they cease to think of themselves as particular humans and come to know that their existence inheres in membership in a complex community-social, cultural, economic, religious, aesthetic, and political infrastructures that form the culture of possibilities in which self-consciousness emerges and is sustained. Rawlinson's reading reveals how Hegel's politics of the "we" is undermined both by his effacement of sexual difference and by his misappropriation of art as a "betrayal of substance." Both of these gestures discount specificity in favor of a generic subject and a mutual recognition in which the other is the same. She uses Hegel's own critique of abstraction against him to rethink the "we" as a community of difference, figured materially in the differentiated styles or signatures of art, and in so doing argues that that the task of phenomenology is never completed and that the abstract concepts of logic will always be dependent on phenomenology's productive or generative movement. In her reading Hegel is neither a metaphysician nor a subjective idealist. He is a phenomenologist, analyzing experience to articulate the ways in which humans generate narratives and material infrastructures to sustain the complexities of life. (shrink)

Après une agrégation de philosophie (1983), Marie-Dominique Couzinet s'est formée à la recherche en Italie, à l'Institut Universitaire Européen de Florence, et en France, au CNRS. Maître de conférences (1996) habilitée à diriger les recherches (2009), elle enseigne l'histoire de la philosophie de la Renaissance à l'Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (UFR de philosophie ; Centre d'Histoire des Systèmes de Pensée Moderne : EA 1451). Ses travaux portent sur la philosophie de la Renaissance au XVIe siècle en France et en Italie, (...) l'histoire et la transmission des savoirs dans la culture humaniste européenne et l'historiographie consacrée à la Renaissance. Elle est l'auteur de Méthode et histoire à la Renaissance. Une lecture de la Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem de Jean Bodin (Paris, Vrin, 1996) ; Bibliographie des écrivains français : Jean Bodin, Paris- Rome (Éditions Memini, 2001), et Sub specie hominis. Études sur le savoir humain au XVIe siècle (Paris, Vrin, 2007). / This study analyzes the links between philosophy, humanism and scholarly culture according to Ramus, the great 16th-century pedagogue – a prime target of the so-called "critique of pedantry", which asserted that one had to choose between teaching and thinking. It offers new critical tools to approach his oeuvre. (shrink)

In Vodou Cosmology and the Haitian Revolution in the Enlightenment Ideals of Kant and Hegel, Vivaldi Jean-Marie begins with an interpretation of the rise of Vodou practices in Saint-Domingue which is sensitive to the social, spiritual and cultural challenges of the slaves communities in Saint-Domingue, later Haiti. He shows effectively that Vodou cosmology emerged as a spiritual, social and cultural technology for the enslaved to overcome the dissonance and brutality of slavery in Saint-Domingue. Vodou Cosmology thus assumes the tripartite role (...) of spiritual, social and cultural compass for slaves who, concurrently with the development of Vodou, managed to establish a common ethos. Furthermore, to situate the rise of Vodou cosmology within the larger discourse of the Enlightenment and argue that it heralded a radical Enlightenment in the African diaspora, Jean-Marie compares and contrasts some aspects of the philosophies of Kant and Hegel with the social, spiritual and cultural experience of the enslaved communities of Saint-Domingue. This comparison shows that Kant and Hegel's depiction of African Negroes' mores and their religious practices in the colonies fails to capture that Vodou cosmology was both a mechanism of resistance and the medium to restore their social, spiritual, and cultural identity against the backdrop of the Atlantic slave trade. Also, he elaborates the Enlightenment's conception of African Negroes as commercial currency and specifically Hegel's view of slavery in the colonies as the manifestation of divine providence. He concludes that the significance of the Haitian Revolution lies in the fact that it ascribed freedom to people of African descent in the diaspora and is thus implicit in later themes of black freedom. The Haitian Revolution ties blackness with freedom and mapped out a radical enlightenment in the European colonies. (shrink)

Le catalogue d'une exposition s'inscrivant dans la suite de Design et merveilleux (MAMC Saint-Etienne, 2018) et la Fabrique du vivant (Centre Pompidou Paris, 2019). Elle présente le lien du biomorphisme du design moderniste au biomimétisme contemporain ainsi qu'à la biofabrication et à la recréation du vivant par le design numérique.--Exhibition: Centre Pompidou-Metz, France (11.06.2022-06.02.2023).

The matter with Pantheism -- Panic -- Pan -- Panterruption -- Hyle -- Panfusion -- Cosmos -- Pancarnation -- Theos -- Pandemonium.

This collection is the first comprehensive history of Fichte's reception in America, highlighting the existence of a long and strong tradition of Fichtean studies throughout the continent and demonstrating the centrality of Fichtean ideas in contemporary discussions of issues such as feminism, social criticism, and decolonial thought. Read and reinterpreted in the highly diverse circumstances across the American continent, Fichte's ideas are presented in a radically new light, uncovering the Fichtean spirit of self-activity and autonomous thought in an American context.

Na een algemene beschouwing en een overzicht van de hedendaagse theorieën komen ethische vraagstukken zoals agressie, revolutie in oorlog, kernonderzoek en milieubeheer, seksualiteit en huwelijk, abortus en euthanasie ter sprake.

Evo-devo is a multidisciplinary field that investigates the interplay between evolutionary and developmental processes and brings together different kinds of explanatory strategies. This chapter examines the structure of paradigmatic explanations in evo-devo (e.g., the explanation of the origin of an evolutionary novelty) and raises philosophical questions about explanation in evo-devo. Much research in evo-devo is concerned with studying the developmental mechanisms that constrain and facilitate phenotypic evolution, which suggests that a distinctive feature of evo-devo is that it constructs mechanistic explanations. (...) In this chapter, I discuss three major challenges for thinking about evo-devo as providing mechanistic explanations. First, an explanation of an evolutionary novelty consists of several mechanistic explanations, rather than being a single one. Second, developmental mechanisms are ontogenetically and phylogenetically dynamic and thus difficult to individuate. Third, an explanation of an evolutionary novelty also has a non-mechanistic, historical part. Finally, I discuss whether evo-devo’s emphasis on mechanistic explanation promotes explanatory integration or results in a reductionist view of evolution. (shrink)

This book explores the “new normal” for teaching, learning, and leadership in higher education. Emphasis is placed on welcoming growth and change and being curious to the transformative opportunities that exist for today’s students so that the next generation is prepared to solve the world’s most pressing issues.

"After observing the trial of Adolf Eichmann, Hannah Arendt articulated her controversial concept of the "banality of evil", thereby one of the most chilling and divisive moral questions of the twentieth century: How can genocidal acts be carried out by non-psychopathic people? By revealing the full complexity of the trial with reasoning that defied prevailing attitudes, Arendt became the object of severe and often slanderous criticism... [This book] explores the ways in which [Arendt] "unlearned" recognized trends and patterns - both (...) philosophical and cultural - to establish a theoretical praxis all her own. Through an analysis of the social context and intellectual influences - Karl Jaspers, Walter Benjamin, and Martin Heidegger - that helped shape Arendt's process, Knott has formed a historically engaged and incisive contribution to Arendt's legacy."--Jacket. (shrink)

1. Signification de la métaphysique.--2. Significations de l'être.

This article argues that the academic values associated with intellectual freedom are incommensurable with those of industry which permeate recent related government initiatives associated with enterprise education and quality audit and assessment. It concludes that if industrial values are implanted in universities, they will destroy the academic values on which open intellectual enquiry and the disinterested pursuit of knowledge depend.

We all know that speech can be harmful. But how? Mary Kate McGowan argues that speech constitutes harm when it enacts a norm that prescribes that harm. She investigates such harms as oppression, subordination, and discrimination in such forms of speech as sexist remarks, racist hate speech, pornography, verbal triggers, and micro-aggressions.

The Supreme Court seems poised to overrule Roe v. Wade and hold that there is no constitutional right to choose abortion. The reversal of Roe seems to run counter to public opinion in the United St...