This textbook presents a clear exploration of the historical developments and ideas that give modern thinking its distinctive shape. It guides students through the rival standpoints on jurisprudence from the origins of Western jurisprudential thought and the classical tradition to the emergence of 'modern' political thought. Chapters on Hart, Fuller, Rawls, Dworkin and Finnis lead the reader systematically through the terrain of modern legal philosophy, tracing the issues back to fundamental questions of philosophy, and indicating lines of criticism that result (...) in a fresh and original perspective on the subject. The third edition includes a new chapter on feminist legal scholarship and non-Western approaches. Praise for the previous editions: 'An ideal starting place for anyone interested in, or studying, legal philosophy... Its simple but ambitious aim to provide a concise and accessible guide is easily achieved.' (Student Law Journal) 'A decent choice for an introductory course on jurisprudence, or for a serious student who wishes to study on his or her own.' (Canadian Law Library). (shrink)

The modern lawyer operates within a conception of law as a body of rules. To confront the law of contract, of torts, or of property, is to familiarize oneself with an intricate set of rules. Such familiarity is not yet legal scholarship, much less legal practice. For in order to use the rules as lawyers use them, the rules must be contemplated and considered, and the relationship between the different rules must be understood. Because the intellectual processes involved in handling (...) the rules exhibit a high degree of sophistication, those intellectual processes may themselves become the subject matter of philosophical argument. Thus we may regard jurisprudential theories as embodying differing understandings of the processes of handling legal rules; and we may conceive of legal theory as the attempt to grasp the moral significance of rules as a foundation for social order. This essay shall offer some thoughts on the relationship between the rule of law, considered as a moral ideal, and the notion of rules as the principal means by which legal order is manifested. (shrink)

Understandings of law and politics are intrinsically bound up with broader visions of the human condition. Sean Coyle argues for a renewed engagement with the juridical and political philosophies of the Western intellectual tradition, and takes up questions pondered by Aristotle, Plato, Augustine, Aquinas and Hobbes in seeking a deeper understanding of law, politics, freedom, justice and order. Criticising modern theories for their failure to engage with fundamental questions, he explores the profound connections between justice and order and (...) raises the neglected question of whether human beings in all their imperfection can ever achieve truly just order in this life. Above all, he confronts the question of whether the open society is the natural home of liberals who have given up faith in human progress, or whether liberal political order is itself the ideal society? (shrink)

The essay considers whether there are necessary truths about rights. The existence of rights is contingent, but our practices involving rights rest upon fundamental conceptual assumptions necessary to their coherence. Hohfeld's analysis is proffered as the embodiment of those assumptions. An examination of the concept of necessity shows how those assumptions can be necessary truths about rights without being logically necessary.

An underpinning assumption of modern legal positivism is that the question of how legal standards differ from normative standards in other spheres of human thought is resolved via the concept of a legal system and the notion of internal logic, through use of contextual definition. This approach is seen to lead to an untenable form of structuralism altogether at odds with the positivist's intentions. An alternative strategy is offered which allows the positivists to retain their deepest insights, though at a (...) price. (shrink)

An underpinning assumption of modern legal positivism isthat the question of how legal standards differ fromnormative standards in other spheres of human thoughtis resolved via the concept of a legal system and thenotion of internal logic, through use of contextualdefinition. This approach is seen to lead to anuntenable form of structuralism altogether atodds with the positivist's intentions. An alternativestrategy is offered which allows the positivists toretain their deepest insights, though at a price.

In a series of new essays the authors attempt to answer important questions about the nature of jurisprudential thinking.

This article considers the relationship between the philosophies of Thomas Aquinas and Francisco Suarez. It has been said that Suarez made significant departures from the natural law theory of Aquinas, by putting greater emphasis on divine command as the source of natural law precepts, and by replacing Aquinas’s focus on good and bad with a focus on right and wrong. Hence, Suarez appears to replace Aquinas’s eudaimonist account of ethics with one based in deontology. The article argues that the differences (...) separating Aquinas and Suarez are minimal, and that Suarez can be seen as upholding the central tenets of Aquinas’s doctrine of natural law. This has ramifications for our understanding not only of Suarez, but also of Aquinas himself. (shrink)

To modern writers, the distinctive achievement of twentieth-century jurisprudence can be viewed as its emancipation from the narrow confines of English utilitarianism, and the subsequent development of perspectives rooted in the fundamental values of justice and rights. The central jurisprudential task of the new century is thus the exploration of a deeper, more elusive moral standpoint, the most profound intellectual commitments of which are yet to be fully digested and understood. My aim in this essay is to reveal something of (...) the character of those commitments by considering the relationship of our present thinking about law and morality to its historical development. (shrink)

Both of the books under review offer a challenge to the dominant jurisprudential tradition of legal positivism. Underlying this superficial similarity in aims is a sharp divergence in philosophical outlook. Whereas Dworkin's arguments operate within a body of background assumptions that he shares with his opponents, and which he has done much to shape, Simmonds sees his task as challenging those assumptions. This is particularly evident in the moral philosophies at the heart of each book: Dworkin can be seen as (...) offering a Protestant-voluntarist-atheist philosophy; whereas Simmonds resembles a Catholic-conservative-Aristotelian. (shrink)

If deontic logic is to cast light on any of the normative sciences, such as legal reasoning, then certain problems regarding its logical constants must be faced. Recent studies in the area of deontic logic have tended to assume that it is our responses to the “paradoxes” of deontic implication which are fundamental to resolving problems with the use of deontic logic to investigate various branches of normative reasoning. In this paper I wish to show that the paradoxes are of (...) secondary importance; that they are merely by‐products of the central issue, namely the ability of certain syntactic forms to embody natural language structures used in reasoning about norms. An investigation of modal syntax is proffered as the best starting‐point from which to tackle the questions that still dog the legitimacy of deontic logic. Part I provides some philosophical background to the discussion of deontic logical constants. Part II addresses in greater detail issues concerning the representation of normative concepts; and Part III offers a few remarks on the general issue of deontic logic's fruitfulness as an analytical tool. (shrink)

This book challenges the accepted view by arguing that environmental law must be seen not as a mere instrument of social policy, but as a historical product of ...

A recent series of papers, sparked off by a note by Robert Walter (1996), has rekindled the debate over the possibility of creating a logic of normative concepts. The debate correctly centres on ways in which Jørgensen’s dilemma might be resolved (Jørgensen 1937–8), since a means of resolving that dilemma is the only apparently available way in which to establish that a logic of norms is possible. Two separate questions require answers: (i) what is the correct way in which to (...) regard Jørgensen’s dilemma; and (ii) how should one face that dilemma? I shall argue that traditional responses to the first question are inadequate, and I shall then try to expose as flawed two recent attempts to resolve the dilemma. Finally, I shall relate my conclusions in the earlier part of the paper to the wider question of whether a logic of normative concepts is, after all, a possibility. (shrink)

This important and intellectually rich collection is a welcome addition to the literature, both on natural law and human rights. Its opening pages, in a reversal of its title, begin with a series o...

This paper defends the “minimalist” solution to Jørgensen’s dilemma against the objections raised by Coyle (2002). As most of these objections stem from a misconstrual of the account of truth that underlies the minimalist solution, the paper is largely an attempt to provide a clearer statement of the “minimal theory of truth,” a sharper characterization of the features that distinguish it from other deflationary views, and a careful presentation of the minimalist account of the logical role of truth–ascriptions. The (...) rejoinder includes also a brief discussion of what one may reasonably expect from a successful solution of Jørgensen’s dilemma. (shrink)

Most historical accounts of "the West" take it for granted that the guiding principles of the Western tradition—reason, progress, and freedom—have been passed down directly from ancient Greece to modern Europe, evolving in isolation from all non-Western cultures. Today, many political analysts and cultural critics maintain that the Western tradition is fast approaching its end, for better or worse, as it becomes more and more integrated with non-Western cultures in an increasingly globalized world. But what if we are witnessing something (...) else entirely—not the "end" of the West but rather another historical mutation of the idea of the West itself? This groundbreaking work shows that whether the West is hailed as the source of all historical progress or scorned as the root of all cultural imperialism, it remains a deeply problematic concept that is intrinsically connected to an ethnocentric view of the world. In a critical reading of the continental philosophers Husserl, Heidegger, Levinas, and Derrida as well as the postcolonial thinkers Said, Mohanty, Bhabha, and Trinh, Sean Meighoo strikes at the intellectual foundations of Western exceptionalism until its ideological supports show through. Deconstructing the concept of the West in his provocative interpretations of Martin Bernal's controversial publication Black Athena and the Beatles' second film Help!, Meighoo poses a formidable question to philosophers, writers, political analysts, and cultural critics alike: Can we mount an effective critique of Western ethnocentrism without reinforcing the very idea of the West? (shrink)

Graduate-level textbook in general relativity.

RésuméJe me demande ici si les conceptions pragmatiques de la vérité peuvent être réconciliées avec les intuitions ordinaires quant à la portée de la bivalence. Je soutiens que les pragmatistes sont conduits à accepter une distinction du genre «type / occurrence» entre les formes d'une investigation et ses instanciations particulières, sous peine de banaliser leur vérificationnisme. Néanmoins, même la conception révisée que j'examine échoue à sauver les approches épistémiques de la vérité de certaines conséquences peu plausibles.

Moritz Schlick, Rudolf Carnap and Herbert Feig are the most prominent of the positivists to formulate views on the mind-body problem (aside from Hempel’s one-off treatment in 1935). While their views differed from each other and changed over time they were all committed to some form of scientific physicalism, though a linguistic or conceptual rather than ontological form of it. In focus here are their views during the heyday of logical positivism and its immediate aftermath, though some initial scene-setting of (...) Schlick’s and Carnap’s pre-positivist views will help to understand the final opposing positions of Carnap and Feigl. (shrink)

An overview and descriptions of the auditory commitments of ancient Greek song, drama, and acoustic theory from the time of Homer to the death of Euripides, this is the first complete study of the cultural system of sound in Greece.

This chapter offers a general outline of Schopenhauer’s peculiarly named concept of the 'acquired character’ and explains its basic function in his ethical thought. For Schopenhauer, a person of acquired character is someone who knows the ways of acting (Handlungsweise) that are most expressive of their individuality and who allows that self-knowledge to structure their practical and emotional life. In keeping with certain elements of his psychological determinism, acquired character is not the acquisition of a ‘new’ character; rather, it is (...) the acquisition of self-knowledge of one’s essentially fixed empirical character. It is part of the argument of this chapter that by introducing the acquired character into his reflections on human action and agency Schopenhauer weaves a certain view of individual flourishing (eudaimonia) into his ethics. There are two central ingredients of Schopenhauer’s conception of eudaimonia, and both are linked to the acquired character. The first is self-knowledge; the second is a sense of personal autonomy that follows in the wake of the first. The chapter ends with a brief attempt to connect Schopenhauer’s concept of acquired character to contemporary debates in ethics concerning autonomy, practical identity, and what some call the ‘normative significance of self’. (shrink)

It is commonplace in discussions of modern cosmology to assert that the early universe began in a special state. Conventionally, cosmologists characterize this fine-tuning in terms of the horizon and flatness problems. I argue that the fine-tuning is real, but these problems aren't the best way to think about it: causal disconnection of separated regions isn't the real problem, and flatness isn't a problem at all. Fine-tuning is better understood in terms of a measure on the space of trajectories: given (...) reasonable conditions in the late universe, the fraction of cosmological histories that were smooth at early times is incredibly tiny. This discussion helps clarify what is required by a complete theory of cosmological initial conditions. (shrink)

Effective palliative care that rests on a sound ethical foundation requires ongoing discussions about patient and family values and preferences. This is especially important when addressing care at end-of-life including artificial nutrition and hydration, withdrawal of life-sustaining therapies and palliative sedation as well as requests for assistance in hastening death. The eighth volume in the HPNA Palliative Nursing Manuals series, Legal and Ethical Aspects of Palliative Care, provides an overview of critical communication skills and formal organizational mechanisms, such as ethics (...) committees and interdisciplinary rounds, required for decisions in ethical dilemmas which respect diversity in the views of colleagues, as well as patients. The content of the concise, clinically focused volumes in the HPNA Palliative Nursing Manuals series is one resource for nurses preparing for specialty certification exams and provides a quick-reference in daily practice. (shrink)

Abstract According to Russellianism, the content of a Russellian thought, in which a person ascribes a monadic property to an object, can be represented as an ordered couple of the object and the property. A consequence of this is that it is not possible for a person to believe that a is F and not to believe b is F, when a=b. Many critics of Russellianism suppose that this is possible and thus that Russellianism is false. Several arguments for this (...) claim are criticized and it is argued that Russellians need not appeal to representational notions in order to defeat them. Contrary to popular opinion, the prospects for a pure Russellianism, a Russellianism without representations, are in fact very good. (shrink)

Everything you need to know about Learning Theories in Early Childhood practice. This book explores the key theorists and theories that form the foundation of learning and development in early childhood. Building your own understanding and knowledge of children's learning, it then helps you develop the skills of translating theory into practice. How does this book support you? · The structure of the book mirrors your student learning journey, to compliment your course and seminar reading. · Parts 1 and 2 (...) help you develop your reflective and analytical skills through critical questions, photographs and discussion points. · Part 3 gives real life case studies to help you understand how the theories can be practically applied in settings to improve your own practice. (shrink)

This is both a book about ourselves, our world, and education. What made an education successful is too often left behind when we focus too closely on what we think should be in the spotlight. Re-looking at how these things interact and intersect will be pertinent to their and our success.

This chapter contains sections titled: Notes.

In The Logic of Sense, Deleuze effectively argues that two types of relation between events govern their ‘evental’ or ‘ideal play’, and ultimately underlie determined substances, that is, worldly individuals and persons. Leibniz calls these relations ‘compossibility’ and ‘incompossibility’. Deleuze calls them ‘convergence’ and ‘divergence’. This paper explores how Deleuze appropriates and extends a number of Leibnizian concepts in order to ground the idea that events have ontological priority over substances ‘all the way down’.

Some modern cosmological models predict the appearance of Boltzmann Brains: observers who randomly fluctuate out of a thermal bath rather than naturally evolving from a low-entropy Big Bang. A theory in which most observers are of the Boltzmann Brain type is generally thought to be unacceptable, although opinions differ. I argue that such theories are indeed unacceptable: the real problem is with fluctuations into observers who are locally identical to ordinary observers, and their existence cannot be swept under the rug (...) by a choice of probability distributions over observers. The issue is not that the existence of such observers is ruled out by data, but that the theories that predict them are cognitively unstable: they cannot simultaneously be true and justifiably believed. (shrink)

Following Snyderman and Rothman, we surveyed expert opinions on the current state of intelligence research. This report examines expert opinions on causes of international differences in student assessment and psychometric IQ test results. Experts were surveyed about the importance of culture, genes, education, wealth, health, geography, climate, politics, modernization, sampling error, test knowledge, discrimination, test bias, and migration. The importance of these factors was evaluated for diverse countries, regions, and groups including Finland, East Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, Southern Europe, the Arabian-Muslim (...) world, Latin America, Israel, Jews in the West, Roma, and Muslim immigrants. Education was rated by N = 71 experts as the most important cause of international ability differences. Genes were rated as the second most relevant factor but also had the highest variability in ratings. Culture, health, wealth, modernization, and politics were the next most important factors, whereas other factors such as geography, climate, test bias, and sampling error were less important. The paper concludes with a discussion of limitations of the survey. (shrink)

A non-technical introduction to quantum mechanics, the Everett interpretation, and the emergence of spacetime.

This book examines Cornelius Castoriadis's elucidation of the social imaginary within human societies, assessing how strict dichotomisation between autonomous and heternomous modes of institution hinders further insights into the creative capacities of social imaginary, while also imposing limits on Castoriadis's own assessment of the "partially" autonomous situation of modern societies.

Teacher Education and the Pursuit of Wisdom takes its readers into the deep waters of investigating teaching not simply as a profession but as a precious "way of life." The author begins by investigating the nature of teaching as both an "active" and a "contemplative" endeavor and inquires into the resonance between the nature of teaching on the one hand and what has been said classically about genuine philosophizing on the other hand. Having laid the groundwork for students to be (...) able to recognize this intimate connection, readers are next challenged to take up the notion of teaching as a "way of life" in the pursuit of wisdom experimentally and to record their observations in a personalized journal format. Thorough explanations are provided concerning the value of journaling for self-knowledge, and exemplar texts by master journal writers are discussed. This book is designed for use as a primary textbook in philosophy of education courses. Instructors will find it helpful as a means to organize engaging classes at both the undergraduate and graduate levels for genuine philosophic practices and inquiry. It contains a well-defined program of work that is modelled upon the latest research concerning "authentic task design." Its rich experimental approach is replete with a broad array of learning tasks, assessment tools, and practices that are aligned with the competencies-based approach taken in most professional certification and BEd Programs. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Notes.

We have a much better understanding of physics than we do of consciousness. I consider ways in which intrinsically mental aspects of fundamental ontology might induce modifications of the known laws of physics, or whether they could be relevant to accounting for consciousness if no such modifications exist. I suggest that our current knowledge of physics should make us skeptical of hypothetical modifications of the known rules, and that without such modifications it’s hard to imagine how intrinsically mental aspects could (...) play a useful explanatory role. Draft version of a paper submitted to Journal of Consciousness Studies, special issue responding to Philip Goff’s Galileo’s Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness. (shrink)

Celebrated yoga teacher and activist Seane Corn shares pivotal accounts of her life with raw honesty—enriched with in-depth spiritual teachings—to help us heal, evolve, and change the world “My first lessons in spirituality and yoga had nothing to do with a mat, but everything to do with waking up. They included angels, seeing God, and being in Heaven. But, believe me, not the way you might think.” So begins Revolution of the Soul. What comes next reads like a riveting memoir (...) filled with uncensored moments of joy, pain, wonder, and humor. Except, this book is so much more than that. Seane's real purpose is to guide us into a deep, gut-level understanding of our highest Self through yoga philosophy and other tools for emotional healing—not just as abstract ideas but as embodied, fully felt wisdom. Why? To spark a "revolution of the soul" in each of us, so we can awaken to our purpose and become true agents of change. Just a few of the stops along the way include: The everyday "angels" Seane finds in the gritty corners of New York's 1980s East Village; her early struggles as a total yoga-class misfit; the profound shadow work and body-based practices that helped her to heal childhood trauma, OCD, unhealthy behaviors, and relationship wounding; hard-earned lessons from some of the most heartbreaking places on the planet; and many other unforgettable teaching stories. (shrink)

A short core model induction proof of $\mathsf {AD}^{L(\mathbb {R})}$ from $\mathsf {TD} + \mathsf {DC}_{\mathbb {R}}$.