Theories of discourse bring to realism new ideas about how knowledge develops and how representations of reality are influenced. We gain an understanding of the conceptual aspect of social life and the processes by which meaning is produced. This collection reflects the growing interest realist critics have shown towards forms of discourse theory and deconstruction. The diverse range of contributions address such issues as the work of Derrida and deconstruction, discourse theory, Eurocentrism and poststructuralism. What unites all of the contributions (...) is a sense that it is essential to provide a realist alternative to the hitherto dominance of social constructionism, hermeneutics and postmodernism, over many of the issues discussed. By developing a realist perspective the different authors attempt to embed discourse within the structured nature of the reality of the world. Realism can situate language, discourse and ideology within context specific, or 'causally efficacious' circumstances. Realism can help to uncover issues of power, representation, and subjectivity and how discursive and other social practices produce real effects. This can help us understand the manner in which social structures are reproduced through various forms of ideology and discourse. And by knowing this, we can start to address questions concerning human emancipation and how the world is to be transformed. (shrink)

1. Determinaciones universales, producción, pensamiento-lenguaje y ciencias -- v. 3. Política, derecho, e ideologias.

In the wake of the Scientific Revolution, the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries saw the complete demolition of traditional structures of authority, scientific thought, and belief by the new philosophy and the philosophes, including Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau. The Radical Enlightenment played a part in this revolutionary process, which effectively overthrew all justification for monarchy, aristocracy, and ecclesiastical power, as well as man's dominance over woman, theological dominance of education, and slavery. Despite the present day interest in the revolutions of (...) the eighteenth century, the origins and rise of the Radical Enlightenment have received limited scholarly attention. The greatest obstacle to the movement finding its proper place in modern historical writing is its international scope: the Racial Enlightenment was not French, British, German, Italian, Jewish or Dutch, but all of these at the same time. In this wide-ranging volume, Jonathan Israel offers a novel interpretation of the Radical Enlightenment down to La Mettie and Diderot, two of its key exponents. Particular emphasis is placed on the pivotal role of Spinoza and the widespread underground international philosophical movement known before 1750 as Spinozism. (shrink)

This book is available either individually, or as part of the specially-priced Arguments of the Philosphers Collection.

This book provides a clear, concise description of medical law; but it does more than that. It also provides an introduction to the ethical principles that can be used to challenge or support the law. It also provides a range of perspectives from which to analyse the law: feminist, religious and sociological perspectives are all used.

Liberalism without Perfection offers an introduction to the debate between liberal perfectionism and political liberalism. This book is a new account and defence of Rawlsian political liberalism, one of the most discussed, but widely misunderstood and criticized theories in contemporary political theory.

In this major new book, the internationally renowned thinker Jonathan Bennett offers a deeper understanding of what is going on in our own moral thoughts about human behavior. The Act Itself presents a conceptual analysis of descriptions of behavior on which we base our moral judgements, and shows that this analysis can be used as a means toward getting more control of our thoughts and thus of our lives.

This title presents a comprehensive guide to interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) which is an increasingly popular approach to qualitative inquiry taught to undergraduate and postgraduate students today.

La historia, buen referente para los tiempos de crisis, informa nuestro presente desde esta experiencia. Este libro trata, en primer lugar, de la conexión entre el taller del historiador y la explicación de la historia: cómo se construye este saber. En segundo lugar se identifica a los agentes de la historia (personas, colectivos y fuerzas sociales) se rastrea cómo la producen y se diseña su desarrollo, desde los tiempos del arco y la flecha hasta los de internet. En fin, la (...) tercera de sus claves es tomarle el pulso a la historiografía desde la Antigüedad a nuestros días, incidiéndose en la crisis de certidumbres que desde los años setenta del siglo XX ha afectado a las humanidades y ciencias sociales y ha diversificado y enriquecido los enfoques de la historia social. (shrink)

The fall of the Berlin Wall had enormous symbolic resonance, marking the collapse of Marxist politics and economics. Indeed, Marxist regimes have failed miserably, and with them, it seems, all reason to take the writings of Karl Marx seriously. Jonathan Wolff argues that if we detach Marx the critic of current society from Marx the prophet of some never-to-be-realized worker's paradise, he remains the most impressive critic we have of liberal, capitalist, bourgeois society. The author shows how Marx's main (...) ideas still shed light on wider concerns about culture and society and he guides the reader through Marx's notoriously difficult writings. Wolff also argues that the value of a great thinker does not depend on his or her views being true, but on other features such as originality, insight, and systematic vision. From this perspective, Marx still richly deserves to be read. Why Read Marx Today? reinstates Marx as an important critic of current society, and not just a figure of historical interest. (shrink)

" Here Jonathan Lear argues that irony is one of the tools we use to live seriously, to get the hang of becoming human.

Luca Del Baldo's Visionary Academy of Ocular Mentality is an extraordinary testament in the recent history of visual studies. It brings together a group of outstanding scholars who have devoted their lives to art history, philosophy, history, ethnology, focussing predominantly on questions of human perception and imagination. Working from photographs provided by the scholars, Luca del Baldo painted his series of 96 portraits reproduced in this book. The portraits are accompanied by texts written by the persons portrayed, in (...) response to their portrayal, and as an exchange: the artist gifted the original painting to the portrayed person, and the portrayed gifted her or his response. "The result is a unique and profound conversation between image and text focussed on the enigma of the human face in all its mediations.". (shrink)

This paper analyses the American Constitution of 1787 and the Spanish Constitutions of 1812 and 1978. The objective is to analyse their structures and the changes they have undergone throughout history, to find differences that can be explained by the different cultural values that these two groups normally display. As will be seen, the cultural dimension of uncertainty avoidance, amongst others, is the one that has a greater presence in this study. The conclusions drawn from this study show that cultural (...) groups change throughout history, but the cultural roots that they inherit seem to be present through the times. (shrink)

Scientific inquiry possibly shares with people's ordinary understanding the same evolutionary determinants, and affect-laden intuitions that shape moral judgments also play a decisive role in decision-making, planning, and scientific reasoning. Therefore, if ordinary understanding does differ from scientific inquiry, the reason does not reside in the fact that the former (but not the latter) is endowed with moral considerations.

Timely and provocative essays on bioethical questions brought to the forefront by the bioterrorist threat.

An attention shift from a stationary to a changing object has to occur in feature space, in order to bind these stimuli into a unitary percept. This time-consuming shift leads to the perception of a changing stimulus further ahead along its trajectory. This attentional framework is able to accommodate the flash-lag effect in its multiple empirical manifestations.

The Hilbert space formalism is a powerful language to express many cognitive phenomena. Here, relevant concepts from signal detection theory are recast in that language, allowing an empirically testable extension of the quantum probability formalism to psychophysical measures, such as detectability and discriminability.

In this book Jonathan Adler offers a strengthened version of evidentialism, arguing that the ethics of belief should be rooted in the concept of belief--that...

Without respecting and nurturing ‘place’ we cannot achieve a state of ecological sustainability. Place-based organizations are not run on a purely materialistic basis. The non-materialistic features of a place, its aesthetics, cultural heritage, community feelings, transcendence, should be integrated into sustainability management. This far-reaching two-volume work breaks with the economic logic of efficiency and profit maximization, and suggests that organizations should inform their sustainability by encompassing feelings of identity with and attachment to place. According to this vision, the editors have (...) compiled scholarly contributions aimed to support the ecological transformation of humankind by exploring both theoretical and practical models that integrate the sense of the place, ethics and spirituality in new ways of organizing of economic and social life. This first volume sets the theoretical direction of the volumes, asking broad aesthetic questions around the ethical and spiritual foundations of sustainability. It will be of interest to scholars, practitioners and students of sustainability, business ethics and spirituality. (shrink)

Without respecting and nurturing ‘place’ we cannot achieve a state of ecological sustainability. Place-based organizations are not run on a purely materialistic basis. The non-materialistic features of a place, its aesthetics, cultural heritage, community feelings, transcendence, should be integrated into sustainability management. This far-reaching two-volume work breaks with the economic logic of efficiency and profit maximization, and suggests that organizations should inform their sustainability by encompassing feelings of identity with and attachment to place. According to this vision, the editors have (...) compiled scholarly contributions aimed to support the ecological transformation of humankind by exploring both theoretical and practical models that integrate the sense of the place, ethics and spirituality in new ways of organizing of economic and social life. This second volume takes the theoretical direction, established in the first model, and puts it into practice with cases from business and society. It will be of interest to scholars, practitioners and students of sustainability, business ethics and spirituality. (shrink)

The Oxford Translation of Aristotle was originally published in 12 volumes between 1912 and 1954. It is universally recognized as the standard English version of Aristotle. This revised edition contains the substance of the original Translation, slightly emended in light of recent scholarship three of the original versions have been replaced by new translations and a new and enlarged selection of Fragments has been added. The aim of the translation remains the same: to make the surviving works of Aristotle readily (...) accessible to English speaking readers. (shrink)

In the newly-discovered “On Principles and Matter”—we can definitely ascertain by Porphyry—the author concludes that there must be two principles responsible for all beings, or at least all sensible beings: God (the active cause) and matter (the passive cause). In large part this agrees with Atticus’ position, which the text also quotes, and which we also know Porphyry engaged with vigorously, from Proclus’ Timaeus Commentary. However there is a something odd about this text’s Porphyry: we seem to have a positive (...) argument for much of Antiochus’ framework of two principles, while in Proclus’ testimony we have a negative argument for the very same position. In this paper I analyze in detail the positive argument for the two principles given in “On Principles”, and I consider the degree to which Porphyry may be supplying a dialectical argument at this point in the text, before eventually criticizing the same view elsewhere (as in Proclus’ testimony). I also consider other points of contact for the text’s two-principles framework with Porphyry’s other extant works and show some consequences for Porphyry’s overall position. (shrink)

Epistemology has for a long time focused on the concept of knowledge and tried to answer questions such as whether knowledge is possible and how much of it there is. Often missing from this inquiry, however, is a discussion on the value of knowledge. In The Value of Knowledge and the Pursuit of Understanding Jonathan Kvanvig argues that epistemology properly conceived cannot ignore the question of the value of knowledge. He also questions one of the most fundamental assumptions in (...) epistemology, namely that knowledge is always more valuable than the value of its subparts. Taking Platos' Meno as a starting point of his discussion, Kvanvig tackles the different arguments about the value of knowledge and comes to the conclusion that knowledge is less valuable than generally assumed. Clearly written and well argued, this 2003 book will appeal to students and professionals in epistemology. (shrink)

This article gives an overview of some recent debates about the relationship between reasons and rational requirements of coherence - e.g. the requirements to be consistent in our beliefs and intentions, and to intend what we take to be the necessary means to our ends.

Evidentialism is the thesis that all reasons to believe p are evidence for p. Pragmatists hold that pragmatic considerations – incentives for believing – can also be reasons to believe. Nishi Shah, Thomas Kelly and others have argued for evidentialism on the grounds that incentives for belief fail a ‘reasoning constraint’ on reasons: roughly, reasons must be considerations we can reason from, but we cannot reason from incentives to belief. In the first half of the paper, I show that this (...) argument fails: the claim that we cannot reason from incentives is either false or does not combine with the reasoning constraint to support evidentialism. However, the failure of this argument suggests an alternative route to evidentialism. Roughly, reasons must be premises of good reasoning, but it is not good reasoning to reason from incentives to belief. The second half of the paper develops and defends this argument for evidentialism. (shrink)

This anthology looks at the early sages of Western philosophy and science who paved the way for Plato and Aristotle and their successors. Democritus's atomic theory of matter, Zeno's dazzling "proofs" that motion is impossible, Pythagorean insights into mathematics, Heraclitus's haunting and enigmatic epigrams-all form part of a revolution in human thought that relied on reasoning, forged the first scientific vocabulary, and laid the foundations of Western philosophy. Jonathan Barnes has painstakingly brought together the surviving Presocratic fragments in their (...) original contexts, utilizing the latest research and a major new papyrus of Empedocles. Translated and edited by Jonathan Barnes. (shrink)

Causal claims are context sensitive. According to the old orthodoxy (Mackie 1974, Lewis 1986, inter alia), the context sensitivity of causal claims is all due to conversational pragmatics. According to the new contextualists (Hitchcock 1996, Woodward 2003, Maslen 2004, Menzies 2004, Schaffer 2005, and Hall ms), at least some of the context sensitivity of causal claims is semantic in nature. I want to discuss the prospects for causal contextualism, by asking why causal claims are context sensitive, what they are sensitive (...) to, and where they are sensitive to it. (shrink)

Sentience is the capacity to have feelings, such as feelings of pain, pleasure, hunger, thirst, warmth, joy, comfort and excitement. It is not simply the capacity to feel pain, but feelings of pain, distress or harm, broadly understood, have a special significance for animal welfare law. Drawing on over 300 scientific studies, we evaluate the evidence of sentience in two groups of invertebrate animals: the cephalopod molluscs or, for short, cephalopods (including octopods, squid and cuttlefish) and the decapod crustaceans or, (...) for short, decapods (including crabs, lobsters and crayfish). We also evaluate the potential welfare implications of current commercial practices involving these animals. (shrink)

From mitochondria to meerkats, the natural world is full of spectacular examples of social behaviour. In the early 1960s W. D. Hamilton changed the way we think about how such behaviour evolves. He introduced three key innovations - now known as Hamilton's rule, kin selection, and inclusive fitness - and his pioneering work kick-started a research program now known as social evolution theory. This is a book about the philosophical foundations and future prospects of that program. [Note: only the Introduction (...) is available to download.]. (shrink)

This paper reconstructs Margaret Cavendish’s theory of the metaphysics of artifacts. It situates her anti-mechanist account of artifactual production and the art-nature distinction against a background of Aristotelian, Scholastic, and mechanist theories. Within this broad context, it considers what Cavendish thinks artisans can actually do, grounding her terminological stipulation that there is no genuine generation in nature in a commitment to natural and artistic production as the mere rearrangement of bodies. Bodies themselves are identified, in a conceptually Ockhamist manner, with (...) their figures, so that the resulting theory of mere rearrangement is Scholastically respectable. The paper also offers literal interpretations, focused narrowly on the philosophical content of her theories of art and artifacts, of her claims that art concerns only “nature’s sporting or playing actions”, that its products are “deformed and defective”, and that they are “at best …mixt or hermaphroditical.". (shrink)

But if, with Jonathan Lear, we scrutinize these thinkers' attempts to explain human behavior in terms of a higher principle--whether happiness or death--the ...

In debates about animal sentience, the precautionary principle is often invoked. The idea is that when the evidence of sentience is inconclusive, we should “give the animal the benefit of the doubt” or “err on the side of caution” in formulating animal protection legislation. Yet there remains confusion as to whether it is appropriate to apply the precautionary principle in this context, and, if so, what “applying the precautionary principle” means in practice regarding the burden of proof for animal sentience. (...) Here I construct a version of the precautionary principle tailored to the question of animal sentience together with a practical framework for implementing it. I explain and defend the key features of this framework, argue that it is well-aligned with current practice in animal welfare science, and consider and reject a number of influential counterarguments to the use of precautionary reasoning in this area. (shrink)

Practical Reality is a lucid original study of the relation between the reasons why we do things and the reasons why we should. Jonathan Dancy maintains that current philosophical orthodoxy bowdlerizes this relation, making it impossible to understand how anyone can act for a good reason. By giving a fresh account of values and reasons, he finds a place for normativity in philosophy of mind and action, and strengthens the connection between these areas and ethics.

In a 1997 paper, Salvatore Lilla pinpointed multiple textual parallels between Damascius and the Pseudo-Dionysius, showing certain conceptual parallels. For instance, both Ps.-Dionysius and Damascius speak of the first cause, or God, as being all things, i.e. as “encompassing” (περιληπτική) or as “anticipating” (προληπτική) all things, at the same time that God transcends all things. In my chapter I expand on Lilla’s findings by showing how Ps.-Dionysius’ conception of God fits more closely with Damascius’ framework for the One, especially Damascius' (...) description of the triad of principles (i.e. the One-All, All-One, and Unified) at the One’s level which closely parallels Ps.-Dionysius’ description of the Christian Trinitarian persons (i.e. the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit). The chapter also shows striking parallels between Damascius and Ps.-Dionysius elevating divine revelation as a primary means of communicating knowledge about the first cause’s mode of being (correcting certain claims of Lilla), while it also shows how the parallels drawn between Proclus’ henadology and Ps.-Dionysius make more sense when looking at Damascius’ own adaptation of Proclus’ henadology with his conception of the One’s triad of principles. (shrink)