This critique of nine service learning projects within schools of business is designed to encourage other educational institutions to add service learning requirements into business ethics and leadership courses. It champions the role of the faculty member teaching these courses while at the same time offering constructive analysis on pedagogy, a review of curriculum issues, identification of barriers to service learning, and guidelines for teaching service learning ventures. Challenges to all faculty involved in business ethics courses are made to better (...) manage their courses and careers from a broader context outside of university settings. (shrink)
One consequence of the later Wittgenstein's influential critique of epistemological foundationalism has been to convince many contemporary philosophers that the ideal of universal and necessary cognitive grounds for moral or political norms is illusory. Recent neo-Wittgensteinian accounts of practical reason attempt to formulate a conception of a post-foundational politics in which a political ethos can be legitimate, rational or just even if its informing practices and cognitive standards lack foundational justification. Against these appropriations of Wittgenstein, I argue that his account (...) challenges foundationalism only by generating epistemological relativism at both the first-order level of belief systems and at the second-order level of the comparative evaluation of first-order belief systems and their non-comparable forms of justification. The result is a polytheism of forms of reason which imperils the methodological ideal of a non-relativistic practice of moral-political criticism. (shrink)
This long-awaited two-volume set constitutes the definitive presentation of the system of classifying moral judgment built up by Lawrence Kohlberg and his associates over a period of twenty years. Researchers in child development and education around the world, many of whom have worked with interim versions of the system, indeed, all those seriously interested in understanding the problem of moral judgment, will find it an indispensable resource. Volume I reviews Kohlberg's stage theory, and the by-now large body of research on (...) the significance and utility of his moral stages. Issues of reliability and validity are addressed. The volume ends with detailed instructions for using the forms in Volume 2. Volume 2, in a specially-designed, user-friendly format, includes three alternative functionally-equivalent forms of the scoring system. (shrink)
Abstract An experiment is reported on the effect of a moral discussion programme taught in the schools by regular classroom teachers. Number of discussions and type of teacher preparation were varied. Students? moral judgment stage was assessed before and after the programme and teachers were observed throughout the course of the year. A substantial degree of moral judgment stage change was shown in some but not all of the classrooms. Three variables associated with likelihood of student moral judgment change were (...) number of discussions, range of pre?test moral judgment stage within the classroom, and teachers? skills in eliciting moral reasoning from students during the discussions. (shrink)
Abstract This paper argues that most school?based moral education programmes are limited by their exclusive focus on moral reflection and their neglect of moral habit, effect and commitment. In order to have a far?reaching impact on young people's moral conduct, schools must join with other institutions, including families, churches, youth programmes and other community organisations to provide a clear and coherent set of expectations for young people. The goals of this co?operation across institutions should be to promote the development of (...) responsible moral habits, mature moral reflection, a sense of self with moral concerns at the core and an integration of habit and reflection, morality and the self. (shrink)
The aim of this project was to explore the possibility of constructing a psychologic inference engine that might enhance introspective self-awareness by delivering inferences about a user based on what he said in interactive dialogues about his closest opposite-sex relation. To implement this aim, we developed a computer program (guru) with the capacity to simulate human conversation in colloquial natural language. The psychologic inferences offered represent the authors' simulations of their commonsense psychology responses to expected user-input expressions. The heuristics of (...) the natural language processor and its relation to output responses are described in enough detail for the operations of the implementation to be understood. Evaluation of this new cognitive agent presents, we hope, puzzles for artificial intelligence and cognitive science. (shrink)
In 2001, leaders with palliative care convened to discuss the standardization of palliative care and formed the National Consensus Project for Quality Palliative Care. In 2004, the National Consensus Project for Quality Palliative Care produced the first edition of Clinical Guidelines for Quality Palliative Care. The Guidelines were developed by leaders in the field who examined other national and international standards with the intent to promote consistent, accessible, comprehensive, optimal palliative care through the health care spectrum. Within the guidelines there (...) are eight domains to the provision of palliative care. This article focuses on the last, but very significant Domain 8—Ethical and Legal Aspects of Care. (shrink)
The punishment of social misconduct is a powerful mechanism for stabilizing high levels of cooperation among unrelated individuals. It is regularly assumed that humans have a universal disposition to punish social norm violators, which is sometimes labelled “universal structure of human morality” or “pure aversion to social betrayal”. Here we present evidence that, contrary to this hypothesis, the propensity to punish a moral norm violator varies among participants with different career trajectories. In anonymous real-life conditions, future teachers punished a talented (...) but immoral young violinist: they voted against her in an important music competition when they had been informed of her previous blatant misconduct toward fellow violin students. In contrast, future police officers and high school students did not punish. This variation among socio-professional categories indicates that the punishment of norm violators is not entirely explained by an aversion to social betrayal. We suggest that context specificity plays an important role in normative behaviour; people seem inclined to enforce social norms only in situations that are familiar, relevant for their social category, and possibly strategically advantageous. (shrink)
Though the work of René Girard has highlighted the interrelations between sacrifice and sacrality in the contemporary world, it has yet to engage the work of Walter Benjamin and his heir, Giorgio Agamben, whose project concerning the Homo Sacer has aroused interest in contemporary political thought. By focusing on Benjamin's early description of mimesis and its relation to language, a position can be elaborated that steers mimesis clear of its indebtedness to language and towards a ‘purer’ realm of gesture. Benjamin's (...) formulation of a more proper ‘divine’ language of gestures could then be said to coalesce with certain historical-religious proclamations, something that Agamben's work challenges us to consider as a viable, albeit ‘profane’, political and ethical option for humanity. (shrink)
For Derrida, the ‘‘as if’’, as a regulative principle directly appropriated and modified from its Kantian context, becomes the central lynchpin for understanding, not only Derrida's philosophical system as a whole, but also his numerous seemingly enigmatic references to his ‘‘jewishness’’. Through an analysis of the function of the ‘‘as if’’ within the history of thought, from Greek tragedy to the poetry of Wallace Stevens, I hope to show how Derrida can only appropriate his Judaic roots as an act of (...) mourning that seeks to render the lost object as present, ‘‘as if’’ it were incorporated by the subject for whom this act nevertheless remains an impossibility. As Derrida discerns within the poetry of Paul Celan, bringing a sense of presence/presentness to our experiences, and as a confirmation of the subject which the human being struggles to assert, is the poetic task par excellence. It is seemingly also, if Derrida is to be understood on this point, the only option left to a humanity wherein poetry comes to express what religious formulations can no longer justify. (shrink)
The twelve essays by Kendall Walton in this volume address a broad range of issues concerning the arts. Walton introduces an innovative account of aesthetic value, and explores relations between aesthetic value and values of other kinds. His classic 'Categories of Art' is included, as is 'Transparent Pictures', his controversial account of what is special about photographs. A new essay investigates the fact that still pictures are still, although some of them depict motion. New postscripts have been added to several (...) of the reprinted essays. (shrink)
Hume’s critique of religion in the first ’Enquiry’ is a unified whole. ’Of Miracles’ is not a free-standing critique of religion, but the first part of a two-stage argument. Hume follows Locke in subordinating evidence for miracles to natural theological arguments for the existence of God--without such supports miraculous claims are incredible (’disproven’ in his special sense). He differs from Locke in arguing, in ’Of a particular Providence’, that no such arguments are available. The decline of natural theology after Darwin (...) explains why ’Of Miracles’ is now mistaken for a free-standing argument. (shrink)
In 2001, leaders with palliative care convened to discuss the standardization of palliative care and formed the National Consensus Project for Quality Palliative Care. In 2004, the National Consensus Project for Quality Palliative Care produced the first edition of Clinical Guidelines for Quality Palliative Care. The Guidelines were developed by leaders in the field who examined other national and international standards with the intent to promote consistent, accessible, comprehensive, optimal palliative care through the health care spectrum. Within the guidelines there (...) are eight domains to the provision of palliative care. This article focuses on the last, but very significant Domain 8—Ethical and Legal Aspects of Care. (shrink)
The so-called "biometric-Mendelian controversy" has received much attention from science studies scholars. This paper focuses on one scientist involved in this debate, Arthur Dukinfield Darbishire, who performed a series of hybridization experiments with mice beginning in 1901. Previous historical work on Darbishire's experiments and his later attempt to reconcile Mendelian and biometric views describe Darbishire as eventually being "converted" to Mendelism. I provide a new analysis of this episode in the context of Darbishire's experimental results, his underlying epistemology, and his (...) influence on the broader debate surrounding the rediscovery and acceptance of Mendelism. I investigate various historiographical issues raised by this episode in order to reflect on the idea of "conversion" to a scientific theory. Darbishire was an influential figure who resisted strong forces compelling him to convert prematurely due to his requirements that the new theory account for particularly important anomalous facts and answer the most pressing questions in the field. (shrink)
The legacy of an antinomian messianism within a Jewish historical context -- Jacques Derrida and Giorgio Agamben on the processes of messianicity and canonicity -- Conclusions formulated on the basis of part I: recognizing the challenges of a "political theology of immanence" -- The radical hermeneutics of theology -- The "violence" of the canon: a contemporary context for the canonical form -- The necessity of hermeneutics.
Children have a spontaneous interest in the world around them - whether the workings of the earth, sun, and stars, the nature of number, time and space, or the functioning of the body. Yet what is there in children's minds that is the key to their knowledge? This book examines what children can and do know, based on extensive studies from a range of different cultures. Topics include 'theory of mind' - the knowledge that others may have beliefs that differ (...) from one's own and from reality, astronomy and geography, food, health and hygiene, processes of life and death, number and arithmetic, as well as autism and brain research on language and attention. -/- Since what children say and do may not really reflect the depth of their knowledge of the world around them, our goal should be to discover new methods to accurately test children's knowledge, instead of trying to understand the range of failing answers they might give on the many tests that have been devised to determine what they know. Contrary to earlier studies, it is now established that in many areas considerable knowledge is within the grasp of young children with benefits for their later development. For example, although certain number concepts - in particular, fractions, proportions, and infinity - can be difficult to grasp, children generally do not need to undergo a fundamental change in their thinking and reasoning to master these. What the author of this book proposes is that children often display a capacity for understanding that we simply overlook. -/- Written by a renowned developmental psychologist, this book presents a fascinating exploration of children minds, and how we can better understand them. -/- For more information and video clip, please visit: http://alacode.psico.units.it/index.html. (shrink)
This vital study offers a new interpretation of Hume's famous "Of Miracles," which notoriously argues against the possibility of miracles. By situating Hume's popular argument in the context of the 18th century debate on miracles, Earman shows Hume's argument to be largely unoriginal and chiefly without merit where it is original. Yet Earman constructively conceives how progress can be made on the issues that Hume's essay so provocatively posed about the ability of eyewitness testimony to establish the credibility of marvelous (...) and miraculous events. (shrink)
Everyday Life and Cultural Theory provides a unique critical and historical introduction to theories of everyday life. Ben Highmore traces the development of conceptions of everyday life, from the Mass Observation project of the 1930s to contemporary theorists. Individual chapters examine: * Theories of the everyday * Fragments of everyday life * Surrealism: the marvelous in the everyday * Walter Benjamin's Trash Aesthetics * Mass Observation: the science of everyday life * Henri Lefebvre's Dialectics of Everyday Life * Michel de (...) Certeau's Poetics of Everyday Life * Everyday life and the future of cultural studies. (shrink)
Descartes’s proof of the existence of God in the third ’Meditation’ can be interpreted as a version of the argument from design. He cannot point to the marvels of nature, since all he has after the second ’Meditation’ is his ideas, but his idea of God serves as the brilliantly designed entity that he claims he cannot have authored on his own. Several passages in his replies to commentators support this interpretation, and when one considers what Descartes believed he had (...) deduced from this idea, it is understandable that he could consider it a wonderful idea. (shrink)
A month ago, I bought an iPhone. The iPhone has already taken over some of the central functions of my brain. It has replaced part of my memory, storing phone numbers and addresses that I once would have taxed my brain with. It harbors my desires: I call up a memo with the names of my favorite dishes when I need to order at a local restaurant. I use it to calculate, when I need to figure out bills and tips. (...) It is a tremendous resource in an argument, with Google ever present to help settle disputes. I make plans with it, using its calendar to help determine what I can and can’t do in the coming months. I even daydream on the iPhone, idly calling up words and images when my concentration slips. Friends joke that I should get the iPhone implanted into my brain. But if Andy Clark is right, all this would do is speed up the processing, and free up my hands. The iPhone is part of my mind already. Clark is a connoisseur of the myriad ways in which the mind relies on the world to get its work done. The first part of this marvelous book explores some of these ways: the extension of our bodies, the extension of our senses, and crucially, the use of language as a tool to extend our thought. The second part of the book defends the thesis that in at least some of these cases, the world is not serving as a mere instrument for the mind. Rather, the relevant parts of the world have become parts of my mind. My iPhone is not my tool, or at least it is not wholly my tool. Parts of it have become parts of me. This is the thesis of the extended mind: when parts of the environment are coupled to the brain in the right way, they become parts of the mind. The thesis has a long history: I am told that there are hints of it in Dewey, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein. But no-one has done as much to give life to the idea as Andy Clark. In a series of important books and articles—Being There, Natural-Born Cyborgs, “Magic words: How language augments human computation”, and many others—he has explored the many ways in which the boundaries between mind and world are far more flexible than one might have thought.. (shrink)
In Projecting a Camera, film theorist Edward Branigan offers a groundbreaking approach to understanding film theory. Why, for example, does a camera move? What does a camera "know"? (And when does it know it?) What is the camera's relation to the subject during long static shots? What happens when the screen is blank? Through a wide-ranging engagement with Wittgenstein and theorists of film, he offers one of the most fully developed understandings of the ways in which the camera operates in (...) film. With its thorough grounding in the philosophy of spectatorship and narrative, Projecting a Camera takes the study of film to a new level. With the care and precision that he brought to Narrative Comprehension and Film , Edward Branigan maps the ways in which we must understand the role of the camera, the meaning of the frame, the role of the spectator, and other key components of film-viewing. By analyzing how we think, discuss, and marvel about the films we see, Projecting a Camera, offers insights rich in implications for our understanding of film and film studies. (shrink)
In their marvelous book, Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior, Sober and Wilson identify two distinct problems of altruism.’ The problem of Evolutionary Altruism (EA) “is to show how behaviors that benefit others at the expense of self can evolve;” (17) group selection is the key to the solution of this problem. The problem of Psychological Altruism (PA) is to determine whether people “have altruistic desires that are psychologically ultimate.” (201) After carefully considering the arguments of both (...) psychologists and philosophers, Sober and Wilson render the verdict “not proven.” But just in the nick of time, evolutionary biology rides to the rescue; it succeeds where psychology and philosophy fail in vindicating our good nature. In this paper, I will discuss Sober and Wilson’s treatment of PA. (shrink)
Locke and Leibniz deny that there are any such beings as ‘monsters’ (anomalies, natural curiosities, wonders, and marvels), for two very different reasons. For Locke, monsters are not ‘natural kinds’: the word ‘monster’ does not individuate any specific class of beings ‘out there’ in the natural world. Monsters depend on our subjective viewpoint. For Leibniz, there are no monsters because we are all parts of the Great Chain of Being. Everything that happens, happens for a reason, including a monstrous birth. (...) But what about materialism? Well, beginning with the anatomical interest into ‘monstrous births’ in the French Académie des Sciences in the first three decades of the eighteenth century, there is a shift away from ‘imaginationist’ claims such as those of Malebranche, that if a woman gives birth to a monstrous child it is a consequence of something she imagined. Anatomists such as Lemery and Winslow try to formulate a strictly mechanical explanation for such events, rejecting moral and metaphysical explanations. Picking up on this work, materialist thinkers like Diderot are compelled to reject the very idea of monsters. We are all material beings produced according to the same mechanisms or laws, some of us are more ‘successful’ products than others, i.e. some live longer than others. In his late Eléments de physiologie he says “L’homme est un effet commun, le monstre un effet rare.” Ultimately he arrives at a materialist version of Leibniz’s position: there are no monsters, we are all monsters in each other’s eyes, at one time or another. This conclusion is a pregnant one in light of twentieth century interest in the problem of ‘the normal and the pathological’ (Canguilhem), and the broader question of how materialism relates to the biological world. (shrink)
John Hawthorne’s marvelous book contains a wealth of arguments and insights based on an impressive knowledge and understanding of contemporary discussion. We can address only a small aspect of the topic. In particular, we will offer our own answers to two questions about knowledge that he discusses.
In 1956, when I was a callow sixteen-year-old sophomore early entrant to the University of Chicago, I read my first twentieth century philosophical book, A. J. Ayer’s Language, Truth, and Logic. While I had already gorged on the Russian novelists, read through the then obligatory Hemingway and Faulkner, consumed Freud and a raft of popular sociologists, and managed to get myself expelled from my tenth grade social science class for issuing disparaging quotes from Marx and Schopenhauer, I was only then (...) being introduced to classical philosophical and scientific texts through the marvelous and soon-to-be-by-stages-dismantled Robert Hutchins’ three year great books curriculum, in which the Natural Sciences sequence began with Aristotle’s Physics, Bk. II, continued with Galileo’s Dialogue, selections from Newton’s Principia, and on to papers by Laplace, Mach, Jeans and Einstein. Mathematics ABC was a simplified version of whole stretches of Principia Mathematica, the content of Russell’s great work having become common collegial culture for logicians and mathematicians.            I soon read some of the less technical works of Russell, whom Ayer cast as Hamlet to his own humble Horatio, and of David Hume, whose skeptical contentions Ayer claimed merely to update and cast into a linguistic vein. With the further help of Hume and Russell, I emended Rene Descartes’s insufficiently skeptical “I think, therefore I am†to the minimalist “There are experiencesâ€. I wryly chuckled in agreement with Russell’s saucy contention that the only materialists in the world were Russian commissars and American behavioral scientists. Common sense realism about physical objects leads to science, which inevitably refutes naïve realism.            Disaster and apostasy loomed in my first concerted encounter, at the graduate course level, with 20th century Anglo-American philosophy.. (shrink)
Scott Soames’s two volume work Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century1 won the American 2003 Award for Best Professional/Scholarly Book in Philosophy. It has been said to be ‘a marvellous introduction to analytic philosophy’, to deliver much ‘solid information on this dense and difficult subject’, and it has been predicted to become the standard history of twentieth-century analytic philosophy.2 Professor Soames writes clearly and candidly. At the beginning of each volume he delineates his objectives and leitmotivs. He is concerned with (...) the development of analytic philosophy from 1900 to 1975. He aims ‘to explain what the most important analytic philosophers thought and why they thought it’ (I, xi). His method is ‘to provide clear, focused and intense critical examinations of some of the most important and representative works of each major philosopher discussed. ... to provide enough detail to allow one to understand and properly evaluate the main philosophical developments of the period’ (I, xvii). A book with such laudable objectives, which holds out such high promises, and which is predicted to become the standard history of modern analytic philosophy merits careful study and considered judgement. The questions that I shall pose are dictated by the author’s aims and methods. (i) Does Soames provide an illuminating overview of analytic philosophy from 1900 to 1975? (ii) Does he correctly explain what the most important analytic philosophers thought and why they thought it? (iii) Does he select ‘some of the most important and representative works of each major philosopher discussed’? (iv) Does he properly evaluate the main developments of the period? II The broad picture Soames paints is as follows. Analytic philosophy commenced with Moore’s defence of common sense, and was continued by Russell, whose theory of descriptions, conception of analysis, logicism and logical atomism are recounted. He was followed by Wittgenstein, who argued in the Tractatus that philosophical problems arise solely from misunderstandings of language and defended the view that all necessary truths are a priori, analytic, and hence true in virtue of the meanings of words.. (shrink)
Good journalism is based—and to some extent thrives—on a diversity of perspectives from those who supply information and informed opinions to the public. New media journalism is a contemporary newsgathering and disseminating method with enormous communication potential because it is an online forum that can connect a great number of diverse contributors and audiences. Citizen journalism—performed on a global level through the Web—is a potential marvel because of its wide reach and range of diversity. This paper offers an examination and (...) philosophical analysis that shows which facets of new media information ethics and epistemology can be reconciled with universal ethical and epistemological principles and which, if any, cannot. To that end, we wish to provide groundwork for the description and critical evaluation of universal ethical and epistemic standards consistent with the phenomenon of new media journalism. (shrink)
Human beings are a marvel of evolved complexity. Such systems can be difficult to enhance. When we manipulate complex evolved systems which are poorly understood, our interventions often fail or backfire. It can appear as if there is a “wisdom of nature” which we ignore at our peril. Sometimes the belief in nature’s wisdom – and corresponding doubts about the prudence of tampering with nature, especially human nature – manifest as diffusely moral objections against enhancement. Such objections may be expressed (...) as intuitions about the superiority of the natural or the troublesomeness of hubris, or as an evaluative bias in favor of the status quo. This paper explores the extent to which such prudence‐derived anti‐enhancement sentiments are justified. We develop a heuristic, inspired by the field of evolutionary medicine, for identifying promising human enhancement interventions. The heuristic incorporates the grains of truth contained in “nature knows best” attitudes while providing criteria for the special cases where we have reason to believe that it is feasible for us to improve on nature. (shrink)
“The great field for new discoveries,” said a scientific friend to me the other day, “is always the Unclassified Residuum.” Round about the accredited and orderly facts of every science there ever floats a sort of dust-cloud of exceptional observations, of occurrences minute and irregular, and seldom met with, which it always proves less easy to attend to than to ignore. The ideal of every science is that of a closed and completed system of truth. The charm of most sciences (...) to their more passive disciples consists in their appearing, in fact, to wear just this ideal form. Each one of our various ologies seems to offer a definite head of classification for every possible phenomenon of the sort which it professes to cover; and, so far from free is most men’s fancy, that when a consistent and organized scheme of this sort has once been comprehended and assimilated, a different scheme is unimaginable. No alternative, whether to whole or parts, can any longer be conceived as possible. Phenomena unclassifiable within the system are therefore paradoxical absurdities, and must be held untrue. When, moreover, as so often happens, the reports of them are vague and indirect, when they come as mere marvels and oddities rather than as things of serious moment, one neglects or denies them with the best of scientific consciences. Only the born geniuses let themselves be worried and fascinated by these outstanding exceptions, and get no peace till they are brought within the fold. Your Galileos, Galvanis, Fresnels, Purkinjes, and Darwins are always getting confounded and troubled by insignificant things. Anyone will renovate his science who will steadily look after the irregular phenomena. And when the science is renewed, its new formulas often have more of the voice of the exceptions in them than of what were supposed to be the rules. (shrink)
thought and problem solving in persons lacking natural language altogether would be a decisive challenge, but there is no clear evidence of any abstract thinking capabilities similar to those evinced by the scientists. Pinker cites languageless persons rebuilding broken locks - this is evidence of perhaps visual imagery, but not mentalese (at least not without quite a bit more detail and argument than we are given). Spiders, e.g., build marvelous things, but no inference to spiderese appears to be warranted. There (...) simply is much we don. (shrink)
: Western "modernity" has often been identified with the "disenchantment of the world." But if this is true, how do we account for the millions of sober adults who nevertheless delight in Elvish grammar or Elvis sightings? Perhaps these are manifestations of the dialectic of Enlightenment, an alternate view that perceives modernity's faith in reason as itself a myth, and mass culture the exemplification of how the irrational has come to dominate everyday life. This essay, however, locates in mass culture (...) an attempt to reconcile the rational and secular tenets of modernity with the wonders and marvels that modernity was thought to supercede: a specifically modern enchantment. (shrink)
Timothy Williamson has a marvelously precise account of epistemic justification in terms of knowledge and probability. I argue that the account runs aground on certain cases involving the probability values 0 and 1.
Given the many marvelous things animals can do and moreover the success we have in employing the intentional stance towards animals, it seems to be almost unthinkable to say that animals could not act at all. Nonetheless, this is exactly what I argue for. I claim that strictly speaking there is no animal action, only behaviour. I defend this claim in three steps. Firstly, I recapitulate some of the weighty grounds that speak in favour of animal agency. Secondly, I explain (...) why I still doubt that animals act. The argument is that the account of agency that I take to be the most attractive one entails that animals can't act. Since this account of agency is non-standard, I spend the bulk of the paper with providing a sketch of what, according to it, actions are. Finally, I explain why it is still so natural and promising to regard animals as agents, although in fact they aren't. As one might put it: of course they act, only strictly speaking they don't. (shrink)
To william james, conscious life was a stream; to Edmund Husserl, a flow. These metaphors point to the marvelous continuity of experience as it weaves through the world of thought and things. We might similarly talk about the flow of the body, as I reach for my cup of coffee. A physiologist could decompose the action, isolating the contribution of each muscle and joint to the whole. This functional analysis would constitute one form of explanation of the movement. As we (...) replace "I grab the cup" with the physiologist's account, there is a shift in level of description and a turn toward underlying processes, but the physiologist has added nothing to nature. Explanation of this sort, functional reduction, is simply a .. (shrink)
It is one thing to lament the financial pressures put on universities, quite another to face up to the poverty of resources for thinking about what universities should do when they purport to offer a liberal education. In Powers of the Mind, former University of Chicago dean Donald N. Levine enriches those resources by proposing fresh ways to think about liberal learning with ideas more suited to our times. He does so by defining basic values of modernity and then considering (...) curricular principles pertinent to them. The principles he favors are powers of the mind—disciplines understood as fields of study defined not by subject matter but by their embodiment of distinct intellectual capacities. To illustrate, Levine draws on his own lifetime of teaching and educational leadership, while providing a marvelous summary of exemplary educational thinkers at the University of Chicago who continue to inspire. Out of this vital tradition, Powers of the Mind constructs a paradigm for liberal arts today, inclusive of all perspectives and applicable to all settings in the modern world. (shrink)
David Hull has demonstrated a marvelous ability to annoy everyone who caresabout science (or should), by forcing us to confront deep truths about howscience works. Credit, priority, precularities, and process weave together tomake the very fabric of science. As Hull's studies reveal, the story is bothmessier and more irritating than those limited by a single disciplinaryperspective generally admit. By itself history is interesting enough, andphilosophy valuable enough. But taken together, they do so much in tellingus about science and by puncturing (...) the comfortable popular illusion abouthow science works. Ultimately, David Hull shows by his example thathistory and philosophy of science can make science better. I agree, and withits focus on the history of science in particular, this paper explores why. (shrink)
No one realized that the book and the labyrinth were one and the same.道可道[也]，非常[恆]道名可名[也]，非常[恆]名无名，天地[萬物]之始有名，萬物之母 故常[恆]無欲，以觀其眇常[恆]有欲，以觀其徼[噭]此兩者同出而異名同謂之玄，玄之又玄，眾眇之門。The dao that can be spoken of is not the constant DaoThe name that can be named is not the constant name;Nameless, it is the beginning of heaven and earth [the myriad things]Named, it is the mother of the myriad things. Therefore,Constantly without desire, observe its marvels;Constantly with desire, observe its manifestationsThese two are the same, when emerged they are named differently.When merged, this is called mystery, (...) mystery upon mystery, the gateway to the numerous marvels. (Daodejing 1)1The paradoxical opening lines of the Daodejing have .. (shrink)
I am one of your possible futures. One day, I hope, you will become me. Should fortune grant this wish, then I am not just a possible future of yours, but your actual future: a coming phase of you, like the full moon that follows a waxing crescent, or like the flower that follows a seed. I am writing to tell you about my life – how marvelous it is – that you may choose it for yourself.
Symbolic logic is a marvelous thing. It allows for an explicit expression of existence, viz. by means of the existential quantifier, and by it only. This is the true gist in Quine’s slogan “to be is to be a value of a bound variable.” Accordingly, one can also formulate explicitly the thesis of nominalism in terms of such logic. What this thesis says is that all the values of existential quantifiers we need in our language are particular objects, not higher-order (...) objects such as properties, relations, functions and sets. This requirement is satisfied by the first-order languages using the received first-order logic. The commonly used basic logic is therefore nominalistic. But this result does not tell anything, for the received first-order logic is far too weak to capture all we need in mathematics or science. According to conventional wisdom, we need for this purpose either higher-order logic or set theory. Now both of them deal with higher-order entities and hence violate the canons of nominalism. This does not refute nominalism, however. For I will show that both set theory and higher-order logic can be made dispensable by developing a more powerful first-order logic that can do the same job as they do. Moreover, there are very serious problems connected with both of them. This constitutes an additional reason for dispensing with them in the foundations of mathematics. I will show how we can do just that. But we obviously need a better first-order logic for the purpose. Hence my first task is to develop one. But is this a viable construal of the problem of nominalism? The very distinction between particular and higher-order entities might perhaps seem to be hard to capture in logical terms — harder than has been indicated so far. Logicians like Jouko Väänänen (2001) have emphasized the complexities involved in trying to distinguish first-order logic from higher-order logic.. (shrink)
Dreaming can provide a marvelous opportunity for the “playful” exploration of dramatic events. But the chance to learn to deal with danger is only a small part of it. More important is the chance to discover what it is like to be the subject of strange but humanly significant mental states. [Revonsuo].
Doctor, just one more thing.” I marvel every time I hear this, nearly always as I reach for the door. It is as though all patients receive copies of the same instructions, perhaps posted somewhere in the waiting room: Wait until your appointment has run over time. Watch until your doctor stands to leave. Ask a question of grave importance that cannot possibly be answered quickly. I released the doorknob. “Yes, sir?” “I was wondering if you had any advice for (...) me on preparing to die. You see, I got a copy of the pathology report and even though my oncologist didn’t tell me the prognosis was bad, I did a little of my own research. I learned that ‘high grade’ and ‘poorly .. (shrink)
The leading accounts of respect for others usually assume that persons have a rational nature, which is a marvelous thing, so they should be respected like other objects of ‘awesome’ value. Kant's views about the ‘value’ of humanity, which have inspired contemporary discussions of respect, have been interpreted in this way. I propose an alternative interpretation in which Kant proceeds from our own rational self-regard, through our willingness to reciprocate with others, to duties of respect for others. This strategy, which (...) shares some similarities with moral contractualism, offers a way to justify other-regarding moral requirements from self-regarding rational dispositions. (shrink)
An approach that allows us to see more clearly what Chan Buddhists mean by the inadequacy of language is based on three principles of liminology of language: (1) the radical problematization of any absolute, immobilized limit of language; (2) insight into the mutual connection and transition between two sides of language--speaking and non-speaking; and (3) linguistic twisting as the strategy of play at the limit of language. It helps us to rediscover how Chan masters perceived a dynamic, mutually involving relation (...) between two sides of the limit of language, and how they demonstrated a marvelous interplay between speech and silence, a skillful performance of various novel linguistic strategies, et cetera, in order to negotiate the limit of language. (shrink)
Aristotle was wont to say that most of those who heard Plato's Discourse on the Good had the following experience. Each came thinking he would be told something about one of the recognised human goods, such as Wealth, Health or Strength, or, in sum, some marvellous Happiness. But when it appeared that Plato was to talk on Mathematics and Numbers and Geometry and Astronomy, leading up to the statement that the Good was Unity, they were overwhelmed by the paradox of (...) the whole matter. Some then pooh-poohed the whole thing and others were outraged by it.1. (shrink)
In a "parenthesis of fascinated horror" before "the complete discovery and subjection of the body to science", Renaissance anatomists and poets shared peculiar emotions of dread and desire towards the bodies they dissected and described. Jonathan Sawday's ambitious project is to evoke the common taboos, resistances, and fears which the human body provoked in its various early modern investigators, while telling "stories of terrible cruelty, which are tinged by a form of dark eroticism". He is justifiably proud of the historical (...) range of his study, across medicine, cartography, literature, the law, myth, art, theology, social history, and philosophy. But he seeks more than a synthesis of these disparate domains, hoping also both to sketch a new grand narrative about conceptual, practical, and phenomenological changes regarding the body, and further "if not to dispel, then at least to explain" our own multiple, ambiguous feelings about our innards. Thus he marvellously maintains simultaneous attention to culture and psychology, combining high theory with historical precision in rare and risky fashion. (shrink)
In this pathbreaking study, Micaela di Leonardo reveals the face of power within the mask of cultural difference. From the 1893 World's Fair to Body Shop advertisements, di Leonardo focuses on the intimate and shifting relations between popular portrayals of exotic Others and the practice of anthropology. In so doing, she casts new light on gender, race, and the public sphere in America's past and present. "An impressive work of scholarship that is mordantly witty, passionately argued, and takes no prisoners."--Lesley (...) Gill, News Politics "[Micaela] di Leonardo eloquently argues for the importance of empirical, interdisciplinary social science in addressing the tragedy that is urban America at the end of the century."--Jonathan Spencer, Times Literary Supplement "In her quirky new contribution to the American culture brawl, feminist anthropologist Micaela di Leonardo explains how anthropologists, 'technicians of the sacred,' have distorted American popular debate and social life."--Rachel Mattson, Voice Literary Supplement "At the end of di Leonardo's analyses one is struck by her rare combination of rigor and passion. Simply, [she] is a marvelous iconoclast."--Matthew T. McGuire, Boston Book Review. (shrink)
by Alonzo L Hamby Noam Chomsky The Guardian, March 8, 1996 Harry Truman is a marvellous subject for a serious biography and after decades of 'scholarly engagement' with the subject, Alonzo Hamby is well qualified to write one. As he says, Truman was a 'man of the people,' whose life 'exemplifies' many aspects of 'the American experience'. In April 1945, 'knowing little more about diplomatic arrangements and military progress than what one would read in a good newspaper, he suddenly found (...) himself responsible for overseeing the end of the war and the establishment of a new global order'. 'You, more than any other man, have saved western civilisation,' Churchill informed him. It was a 'nearvisionary achievement,' in Hamby's judgment. (shrink)
"Clare O'Farrell is to be congratulated on producing a truly magnificent book on the work of Michel Foucault. There are details, insights and observations that will engage the specialist and there is an extensive documentation of Foucault's output. If there is a more comprehensive book on Foucault's work I have yet to see it. I anticipate those teaching and taking courses on Foucault's work will find Clare O'Farrell's book to be an invaluable resource'" - Barry Smart, University of Portsmouth "Dr. (...) Clare O'Farrell has written a marvelous introduction to this Foucault for that ever growing number of readers who are working in what has come to be designated as cultural studies. This volume captures the penetrating interdisciplinary concerns that have made Foucault a guide to so many beyond the frontiers of philosophy and history, beyond the borders of the academic community itself. O'Farrell is an excellent guide to Foucault's exploration of culture, highlighting, as she does, the characteristic insights of his learning: the instability of cultural forms of order, the subversive potential of historical analyses, the variety of true discourses within history, and his commitment to social justice. O'Farrell reveals Foucault as he is: the engaged moralist who survived the twentieth century's systems of total explanation. This is an excellent introduction for the general reader to a passionate mind that continues to spread its influence'" - James Bernauer, Boston College Michel Foucault's work is one of the most influential sources of ideas in the humanities and social sciences today. Clare O'Farrell offers a comprehensive and accessible introduction to Foucault's enormous, diverse and challenging output. Her book provides a range of practical tools and a reference work for readers who wish to understand and apply his ideas at both introductory and advanced levels. This volume includes: - a discussion of Foucault's situation in the contemporary context exploring his role as an iconic thinker, with clear explanations as to why his work is so difficult to come to grips with, and also importantly, why it is of interest to so many people. - the location of Foucault's work within its own historical, social and political setting. - brief summaries in chronological order of all of Foucault's major works, including the more recently published volumes of lectures. - the organization of Foucault's work around five distinct but interrelated series of assumptions which underpin his world view: namely order, history, truth, power and ethics. Ideas for which he is well-known, such as archaeology, genealogy, discourse, discipline, governmentality, the subject and others are defined and discussed within the framework of these five assumptions. - a chronology of Foucault's life, work and times. - a very extensive list of key concepts in Foucault's work with detailed references pointing to where the relevant material can be found in his writings. - a wide-ranging list of resources and a bibliography of Foucault's work for easy consultation. (shrink)
Sartre’s “transcendence of the ego” means that consciousness is outside of the ego, that the ego is the “ego of the other”, and that the other is neither in consciousness nor in the ego. Sartre viewed “reflection” as a pure mood rather than as the substantial carrier of mood. The strangeness and absurdity of the world emerge from this reflection. Sartre’s “imagination of the evil” has two aspects. On the one hand, “evil” corresponds to the concept of the other, transcending (...) the capacity for domination of the ego; on the other hand, imagination is related to the other in a broad sense, with the ability to transform “philistinism” and “evil” into marvels. (shrink)
Famously, Pascal described human beings as ‘thinking reeds’, weak in flesh but magnificent in mind. While it is a poetic image, it is also an ambivalent one and may suggest an inappropriately dualist view of human nature. It is important to realise that not only are we thinking reeds but that we are thinking because we are reeds. In fact – while being every bit the marvel that Pascal wondered at – rationality is reed-like itself, very much of a kind (...) with the rest of human nature. (shrink)
Apparently, the wall was something of an engineering miracle even prior to the events that exposed it to the light of day. People used to go down to the basement where part of it was visible, and marvel at its ability to resist 3500 pounds per square inch of pressure over 3300 feet. When it was called upon to bear even more it rose to the challenge, anthropomorphically speaking . Now it is being compared to the Liberty Bell,1 a (...) physical object that symbolizes a signature and defining (albeit vastly different) event. This wall, built to hold back the Hudson River from flooding the basement of the World Trade Center, was once the foundation and physical site of a place, but has now itself become a place. It has transformed from site to situation. It is being written retrospectively as a humble and unglamorous object (the “bathtub”) that rose to be a noble, even heroic place, one which because of the “miracle” of superior engineering stood when everything else fell. This object which newly defines a place has become the classic American story of triumph over insurmountable odds. It has become personified, narrativized, and valorized - it “held” against the onslaught like a defender protecting a city, saving the lives of people who were rushing out of the building. It is a place of memory, although precisely what is being remembered depends on who faces the wall. It is the Wailing Wall. It is being incorporated into the new design for the site by the architects and the memorial planners, an unlikely remembrance to and representation of horrific events. It is the hypostatization of a narrative of siege, another quintessentially American story about the triumph (if only moral) of the inside over the outside. It is the Alamo, it is Independence Day, it is homeland security. Less literally but no less viscerally than Maya Ying Lin’s Vietnam.. (shrink)
persusasions are in addition impressed by its remarkable conciseness, and by the rigorous consistency with which it deploys its semi-formalized metalanguage, a grammatically and lexically regimented form of Sanskrit. Empiricists like Bloomfield also admired it for another, more specific reason, namely that it is based on nothing but very general principles such as simplicity, without prior commitments to any scheme of “universal grammar”, or so it seems, and proceeds from a strictly synchronic perspective. Generative linguists for their part have marveled (...) especially at its ingenious technical devices, and at intricate system of conventions governing rule application and rule interaction that it presupposes, which seem to uncannily anticipate ideas of modern linguistic theory (if only because many of them were originally borrowed from P¯. (shrink)
Simone Weil wrote in her notebooks that “Friendship, like beauty, is a miracle.” This paper investigates her discussions of friendship in the larger context of her understanding of the mediation of opposites, modeled on the Pythagorean and Platonic models of mathematics. For Weil, friendship was not only miraculous, butalso a key to understanding the relationship of the divine to the human. Convinced that friendship and love create equality between parties where none exists naturally, Weil concluded that friendship “is full of (...) marvelous meanings with regard to God, with regard to the communion of God and man, and with regard to men.”. (shrink)
This book was written to try to integrate various strands of concern about communication, language, and thinking. There are two related questions that have served to initiate the enquiries that resulted in this book: Why do people hold false beliefs? And why do they accept and use inadequate arguments in support of their beliefs? The author has provided a clear conceptual framework to address these issues and in doing so he folds into the arguements the marvelous richness of language as (...) a vehicle of communication. (shrink)
e live on a wonderful planet that not only teems with life but shows a marvellous exuberance of form and variety. In comparison with the size of the Earth its living skin (the so-called biosphere) may be thin, but it is by no means negligible. From high in the atmosphere, where ballooning spiders wafted aloft on their silk-strings have been trapped at heights of more than 4500 m and birds such as condors cross tropical storms at altitudes well above 6000 (...) in, via the oceans and the green continents, to deep within the Earth's crust where bacteria are known to live at depths of at least several kilometres, life is pervasive. (shrink)
In protreptic passages in three Aristotelian texts (Nicomachean Ethics I.7, Parts of Animals I.5 and Metaphysics A.1–2), there is a close relationship betweenthe use of the language of thaumaston (marvelous or admirable) and that of timion (honorable). These texts exhibit a progressive opening of Aristotle’s students to further horizons of philosophical awareness, within which is embedded a global transformation of the meanings of thaumaston. They mark the itinerary of a spiritual formation in which a new relationship through language to phenomena (...) and to others liberates the student from a psychology of emulation into a discipline of radically free inquiry. (shrink)
Political philosophy, perhaps even more than other branches of philosophy, calls for constant renewal to reflect not just re-readings of the tradition but also the demands of current events. In this lively and readable survey, Jean Hampton has created a text for our time that does justice both to the great traditions of the field and to the newest developments. In a marvelous feat of synthesis, she links the classical tradition, the giants of the modern period, the dominant topics of (...) the twentieth century, and the new questions and concerns that are just beginning to rewrite contemporary political philosophy.Hampton presents these traditions in an engaging and accessible manner, adding to them her own views and encouraging readers to critically examine a range of ideas and to reach their own conclusions. Of particular interest are the discussions of the contemporary liberalism-communitarianism debates, the revival of interest in issues of citizenship and nationality, and the way in which feminist concerns are integrated into all these discussions. Political Philosophy is the most modern text on the topic now available, the ideal guide to what is going on in the field. It will be welcomed by scholars and students in philosophy and political science, and it will serve as an introduction for readers from outside these fields. (shrink)
Engineers’ love of technology often gets in the way of their being useful. Consider Post-it Notes or, better yet, plain paper notepads. These probably seemed like trivial ideas, but they turned out to be terribly useful. Why? Because the marvel that is the human brain has a horrible short-term memory, which means that dumb-as-dirt memory aids can make people substantially smarter.
When Henry Adams became one of the forty million marveling at the eighty thousand exhibits of the 1900 Paris Exhibition – a Disneyland of engineering – he came to believe that, as the Virgin Mary had once inspired the great leap forward represented by Mont St Michel and Chartres, so technology would transform modern civilization, and so it has.
Many experiences in life appear to us as very good when we remember oranticipate them, but quite ordinary or downright bad in the moment. Most people will cite parenting as a marvellous, transcendent life adventure. But most of the day-to-day tasks of childrearing are mundane at best, disgusting at worst: changing diapers, wiping up spills, shuttling little ones from activity to activity, and bailing them out of jail.
Atheists are frequently demonized as arrogant intellectuals, antagonistic to religion, devoid of moral sentiments, advocates of an "anything goes" lifestyle. Now, in this revealing volume, nineteen leading philosophers open a window on the inner life of atheism, shattering these common stereotypes as they reveal how they came to turn away from religious belief. These highly engaging personal essays capture the marvelous diversity to be found among atheists, providing a portrait that will surprise most readers. Many of the authors, for example, (...) express great affection for particular religious traditions, even as they explain why they cannot, in good conscience, embrace them. None of the contributors dismiss religious belief as stupid or primitive, and several even express regret that they cannot, or can no longer, believe. Perhaps more important, in these reflective pieces, they offer fresh insight into some of the oldest and most difficult problems facing the human mind and spirit. For instance, if God is dead, is everything permitted? Philosophers without Gods demonstrates convincingly, with arguments that date back to Plato, that morality is independent of the existence of God. Indeed, every writer in this volume adamantly affirms the objectivity of right and wrong. Moreover, they contend that secular life can provide rewards as great and as rich as religious life. A naturalistic understanding of the human condition presents a set of challenges--to pursue our goals without illusions, to act morally without hope of reward--challenges that can impart a lasting value to finite and fragile human lives. Collectively, these essays highlight the richness of atheistic belief--not only as a valid alternative to religion, but as a profoundly fulfilling and moral way of life. -/- "This Atheists R Us compilation differs markedly in tone from Hitchens and Dawkins. Excellent fare for Christian small groups whose members are genuinely interested in the arguments raised by atheists." --Christianity Today -/- "Readable, personal, and provocative.... Contrary to the popular image, atheism isn't all rebellious trumpets and defiant drums.... Here we have all the varieties of unreligious experience, a full symphony of unbelief." --Free Inquiry -/- "Compelling and sophisticated arguments that religious people ought to confront." --Tikkun. (shrink)
