Traumatic experiences and post-traumatic stress are highly prevalent in people with psychosis, increasing symptom burden, decreasing quality of life and moderating treatment response. A range of post-traumatic sequelae have been found to mediate the relationship between trauma and psychotic experiences, including the “traditional” symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. The International Classification of Diseases-11th Edition recognizes a more complex post-traumatic presentation, complex PTSD, which captures both the characteristic symptoms of PTSD alongside more pervasive post-traumatic sequelae known as ‘disturbances in self-organization’. The (...) prevalence and impact of cPTSD and DSOs in psychosis remains to be explored. In the first study of this kind, 144 participants with psychosis recruited from North West United Kingdom mental health services completed measures assessing trauma, PTSD and cPTSD symptoms and symptoms of psychosis. Forty-percent of the sample met criteria for cPTSD, compared to 10% who met diagnostic criteria for PTSD. PTSD and DSOs mediated the relationship between trauma and positive symptoms, controlling for dataset membership. Both PTSD and DSOs mediated the relationship between trauma and affective symptoms but did not explain a significant proportion of variance in negative symptoms. Cognitive and excitative symptoms of psychosis did not correlate with trauma, PTSD or DSO scores. These findings indicate the possible value of adjunct therapies to manage cPTSD symptoms in people with psychosis, pending replication in larger epidemiological samples and longitudinal studies. (shrink)

In The Ethics of Food, Gregory E. Pence brings together a collection of voices who share the view that the ethics of genetically modified food is among the most pressing societal questions of our time. This comprehensive collection addresses a broad range of subjects, including the meaning of food, moral analyses of vegetarianism and starvation, the safety and environmental risks of genetically modified food, issues of global food politics and the food industry, and the relationships among food, evolution, and human (...) history. (shrink)

Next SectionAn attempt to resolve the controversy regarding the solution of the Sleeping Beauty Problem in the framework of the Many-Worlds Interpretation led to a new controversy regarding the Quantum Sleeping Beauty Problem. We apply the concept of a measure of existence of a world and reach the solution known as ‘thirder’ solution which differs from Peter Lewis’s ‘halfer’ assertion. We argue that this method provides a simple and powerful tool for analysing rational decision theory problems.

The challenge of pursuing sustainability in agriculture is often viewed as mainly or wholly technical in nature, requiring the reform of farming methods and the development and adoption of alternative technologies. Likewise, the purpose of sustainability is frequently cast in utilitarian terms, as a means of protecting a valuable resource (i.e., soil) and of satisfying market demands for healthy, tasty food. Paul B. Thompson has argued that the embrace of these views by many in the consumer/environmental movement enables easy co-optation (...) by agribusiness. It also reflects a critical weakness in this movement: a lack of commitment to philosophical principles that depart from the utilitarian premises of the industrial model of agriculture. This paper draws on the writings of Thomas Berry and Liberty Hyde Bailey to identify the philosophical principles of what we call planetary agrarianism. From the perspective of planetary agrarianism, the pursuit of sustainability is a broad and challenging moral, educational, and political task. Berry helps us see that it is fundamentally a project of worldview transition, which requires a new cultural narrative that must rival, in form and appeal, the mythic power of the utilitarian industrial vision. Liberty Hyde Bailey, author of The Holy Earth (1915) and a leader in the land-grant education and nature-study movements, took up the project of worldview transition in his life work. While in some ways dated and flawed, Bailey’s writings are a valuable source of guidance for developing and pursuing a viable philosophy of agriculture for the 21st century. (shrink)

Jason Peters : Wendell Berry: Life and Work Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s10806-010-9291-1 Authors Jacob Jones, Department of Religion, University of Florida, 107 Anderson Hall, P.O. Box 117410, Gainesville, FL 32611-7410, USA Journal Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics Online ISSN 1573-322X Print ISSN 1187-7863.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Prophetic Evangelicals: Envisioning a Just and Peaceable Kingdom ed. by Bruce Ellis Benson, Malinga Elizabeth Berry, and Peter Goodwin Heltzel, and: Bearing True Witness: Truthfulness in Christian Practice by Craig HoveyGuenther “Gene” HaasReview of Prophetic Evangelicals: Envisioning a Just and Peaceable Kingdom EDITED BY BRUCE ELLIS BENSON, MALINGA ELIZABETH BERRY, AND PETER GOODWIN HELTZEL Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2012. 225 pp. $35.00Review of Bearing (...) True Witness: Truthfulness in Christian Practice CRAIG HOVEY Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011. 258 pp. $27.00Christian thought and practice in North America—especially in the evangelical world—has undergone significant changes in recent years. Prophetic Evangelicals and Bearing True Witness deal with two areas where this is evident: first, the attention many evangelicals are now giving to social justice and peace and, second, their determination to witness to the truth about Christ in a manner consistent with the Christian gospel. Prophetic evangelicals is the name the editors apply to a new generation of evangelicals who believe that the gospel of Christ requires a commitment to proclaim and embody “the just and peaceable kingdom” (2). These evangelicals view Jesus as inaugurating “a new social order that is a radical alternative to the order of empire” (7).This trend among evangelicals to move beyond the preaching of the gospel in a narrow sense (over against the liberals’ emphasis on social justice) is the culmination of a trend that has been happening since the publication in 1947 of Carl Henry’s The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism. What is new about many younger evangelicals in recent decades is their embrace of the Anabaptist perspective on justice and peace. It is clear in the introductory and concluding chapters by the editors—with their appeals to John Howard Yoder and Stanley Hauerwas and their references to the “cultural captivity” of the church—that this is the trend they have in mind. One also reads hints of liberation theology in the editors’ references to the needs of the people being “holy” (12), to God’s being on the side of—and the gospel always being in favor of—the “least” (47), and to a critique of “the order of empire” (7). Of course, [End Page 221] non-Anabaptist evangelicals are also concerned with these themes as part of their commitment to justice and peace. But it is the distinctive emphasis of this book—with some exceptions among the contributors—that it highlights the ways Anabaptist evangelicals are prophetic.The chapters consist of expositions on the following biblical themes: creation, shalom, justice, kingdom, news, Mary, the cross, church, freedom, reconciliation, resurrection, and hope. The authors include a wide range of evangelicals: from a Kuyperian (Vincent Bacote on creation) to a committed Anabaptist (David Gushee on shalom), to postcolonial Christians (Gabriel Salguero on the cross, and Raymond Alfred on freedom). Although the term is slippery, the inclusion of two contributors raises the question about who the editors consider to be an “evangelical”: Helen Slessarov-Jamir (on justice) agrees with her students’ desire not to learn theology from “dead white men” (77) and embraces religious pluralism (85); Pamela Lightsey (on reconciliation) embraces liberalism and liberation theology and calls herself a “womanist theologian” (169).The chapters contain a diversity of contributions in length and quality. Some are good, short expositions of themes: creation (Bacote), kingdom (Christian Collins Winn), Mary—actually about suffering—(Ruth Padilla DeBorst), church (John Franke), and resurrection (Cherith Fee Nordling). Gushee’s chapter contains a good exposition of the Anabaptist view of shalom, along with typical sweeping statements about the “Constantinian compromise” and the evangelical compromise with the state (72). Two chapters deserve special recognition. Chris Boesel’s chapter, “News,” is an excellent account of the Christian call to justice as part of the full goodness of the gospel. He criticizes both liberal-progressive and evangelical-conservative assumptions about the church’s mission and calls for a “recovering evangelical faith” that pursues justice with repentance, humility, and a reliance on the Holy Spirit. Telford Work’s chapter, “Hope,” also articulates a perceptive critique of the activism of both the Christian Right and the Christian Left. Rejecting all alignments with worldly power, he calls on the... (shrink)

When do two sentences say the same thing, that is, express the same content? We defend two-component (2C) semantics: the view that propositional contents comprise (at least) two irreducibly distinct constituents, (1) truth-conditions, and (2) subject-matter. We contrast 2C with one-component (1C) semantics, focusing on the view that subject-matter is reducible to truth- conditions. We identify exponents of this view and argue in favor of 2C. An appendix proposes a general formal template for propositional 2C semantics.

The most arresting aspect of the Scottish Enlightenment is its conception of commercial society as a distinct and distinctive social formation. Christopher Berry explains why Enlightenment thinkers considered commercial society to be wealthier and freer than earlier forms, and charts the contemporary debates and tensions between Enlightenment thinkers that this idea raised. The book analyses the full range of literature on the subject, from key works like Adam Smith's 'Wealth of Nations', David Hume's 'Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects' (...) and Adam Ferguson's 'Essay on the History of Civil Society' to lesser-known works such as Robert Wallace's 'Dissertation on Numbers of Mankind'. (shrink)

In management research, theory testing confronts a paradox described by Meehl in which designing studies with greater methodological rigor puts theories at less risk of falsification. This paradox exists because most management theories make predictions that are merely directional, such as stating that two variables will be positively or negatively related. As methodological rigor increases, the probability that an estimated effect will differ from zero likewise increases, and the likelihood of finding support for a directional prediction boils down to a (...) coin toss. This paradox can be resolved by developing theories with greater precision, such that their propositions predict something more meaningful than deviations from zero. This article evaluates the precision of theories in management research, offers guidelines for making theories more precise, and discusses ways to overcome barriers to the pursuit of theoretical precision. (shrink)

Berkeley’s likeness principle is the claim that “an idea can be like nothing but an idea”. The likeness principle is intended to undermine representationalism: the view (that Berkeley attributes to thinkers like Descartes and Locke) that all human knowledge is mediated by ideas in the mind which represent material objects. Yet, Berkeley appears to leave the likeness principle unargued for. This has led to several attempts to explain why Berkeley accepts it. In contrast to ‘metaphysical’ and ‘epistemological’ interpretations available in (...) the literature, in this paper I defend a ‘conceptual’ interpretation. I argue that Berkeley accepts the likeness principle on the basis of (i) his commitment to the transparency of ideas, and (ii) his account of resemblance which he sets out in his works on vision. Thus, I provide an explanation for Berkeley’s reasons for accepting the likeness principle which, appropriately, focuses on his views concerning ideas and likeness. (shrink)

Margaret Macdonald was at the institutional heart of analytic philosophy in Britain in the mid-twentieth century. Yet, her views on the nature of philosophical theories diverge quite considerably from those of many of her contemporaries. In this paper, I focus on her 1953 article ‘Linguistic Philosophy and Perception’, a provocative paper in which Macdonald argues that the value of philosophical theories is more akin to that of poetry or art than science or mathematics. I do so for two reasons. First, (...) because it reveals just how far Macdonald’s meta- philosophical views diverged from those of many of her contemporaries. Second, because the discussion in LPP pre-empts recent literature on the nature of philosophical inquiry and the efficacy of philosophical arguments. Indeed, Macdonald’s paper is just as likely to provoke discussion today as it was in the 1950s. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Pyrrhonian Revival in Montaigne and NietzscheJessica N. BerryMichel de Montaigne occupies a unique place in Nietzsche's history of ideas. He is one of a very few figures for whom Nietzsche expresses deep admiration and about whom he has virtually nothing critical to say. This is a rare enough mark of distinction; but contrary to what it might lead us to expect, the relationship between Montaigne and Nietzsche has (...) seldom been carefully examined. There has yet to be a book-length study devoted solely to Montaigne and Nietzsche,1 and article-length treatments of the relationship between their works and thought have been surprisingly scarce. What discussions there have been tend to locate the connections between Nietzsche and Montaigne mainly in matters of either literary or personal style,2 but studies that examine Montaigne's influence on Nietzsche with an eye toward philosophical rather than literary or stylistic issues have been almost non-existent.3 This dearth of treatments can be explained, at least in part, by the fact that, while Montaigne is rightly recognized for the literary merits of his work and for its subsequent influence on later prose stylists (and not only in French), his work on the whole has seldom been appreciated as having any philosophical value in its own right. Small wonder, then, that the connection between Montaigne and Nietzsche has [End Page 497] appeared more significant to commentators on Montaigne who are interested in tracing his influence on later thinkers than to scholars of Nietzsche—even those Nietzsche scholars who take an acute interest in his intellectual heritage. What I will argue here is that Montaigne makes a more concrete and philosophically more substantive contribution to Nietzsche's thought than has generally been appreciated; specifically, by giving impetus to the naturalism that develops in Human, All Too Human as an antidote to Schopenhauer's pessimistic metaphysics of will.In this essay, I present a two-fold thesis about Montaigne's influence on Nietzsche's early work. First, I will argue that the "naturalistic turn" in Human, All Too Human reflects Nietzsche's engagement with Montaigne during a crucial moment in the development of his thought. Second, I will demonstrate that the naturalism Nietzsche adopts from Montaigne has roots in the tradition of Pyrrhonian skepticism that Montaigne carries forward into the Renaissance. In the end, a better understanding of the skeptical ancestry of Nietzsche's naturalism should help us make better sense of Human, All Too Human and its immediate successors in Nietzsche's oeuvre, which cultivate what otherwise seems to be an uneasy partnership between naturalism and skepticism.I. It is by now widely accepted that Nietzsche's estimation of the value of the techniques and methods of the natural sciences undergoes radical revision in the period culminating in the first volume of Human, All Too Human (HAH),4 a book sometimes described as inaugurating a "positivist" phase in Nietzsche's work. From the first of its nine major sections, "Of First and Last Things," HAH narrates a struggle between science on the one hand and philosophy on the other. It is important to note the breadth of the extension of the term "science" (Wissenschaft), which includes not only what we think of as the "hard" or physical sciences (physics, chemistry, and the like) but also areas of inquiry we now consider "behavioral sciences" such as psychology and sociology—and, Nietzsche would say, philology as well. "Philosophy," by contrast is specified more narrowly. As Nietzsche uses the term throughout HAH, "philosophy" is usually shorthand for "metaphysical philosophy" and singles out for criticism the discourse of metaphysics that has dominated the philosophical landscape at least since Plato.In the sense in which Nietzsche worries about it "metaphysical philosophy" promotes speculation about such supra-sensible entities as Platonic forms, Descartes's "immaterial substances," and Kantian things-in-themselves. That its contributions include, for instance, theories about the existence and immortality of the soul accounts for Nietzsche's grouping "metaphysical philosophy" [End Page 498] together with religion and art as "arts of narcosis."5 Consciously or not they endeavor to comfort us by assuaging our fear of death, our existential anxieties about the purposelessness of... (shrink)

Advocates of “Mendelism” early on stressed the usefulness of Mendelian principles for breeders. Ever since, that usefulness—and the favourable opinion of Mendelism it supposedly engendered among breeders—has featured in explanations of the rapid rise of Mendelian genetics. An important counter-tradition of commentary, however, has emphasized the ways in which early Mendelian theory in fact fell short of breeders’ needs. Attention to intellectual property, narrowly and broadly construed, makes possible an approach that takes both the tradition and the counter-tradition seriously, by (...) enabling a more complete description of the theory-reality shortfall and a better understanding of how changing practices, on and off the Mendelians’ experimental farms, functioned to render that shortfall unproblematic. In the case of plant breeding in Britain, a perennial source of lost profits and disputes over ownership was the appearance of individual plants departing from their varietal types—so-called “rogues.” Mendelian plant varieties acquired a reputation for being rogue-free, and so for demonstrating the correctness of Mendelian principles , at a time when Mendelians were gradually taking control of the means for distributing their varieties. Mendelian breeders protected their products physically from rogue-inducing contamination in such a way that when rogues did appear, the default explanation—that contamination had somehow occurred—ensured that there was no threat to Mendelian principles. (shrink)

The way a rational agent changes her belief in certain propositions/hypotheses in the light of new evidence lies at the heart of Bayesian inference. The basic natural assumption, as summarized in van Fraassen's Reflection Principle, would be that in the absence of new evidence the belief should not change. Yet, there are examples that are claimed to violate this assumption. The apparent paradox presented by such examples, if not settled, would demonstrate the inconsistency and/or incompleteness of the Bayesian approach, and (...) without eliminating this inconsistency, the approach cannot be regarded as scientific. The Sleeping Beauty Problem is just such an example. The existing attempts to solve the problem fall into three categories. The first two share the view that new evidence is absent, but differ about the conclusion of whether Sleeping Beauty should change her belief or not, and why. The third category is characterized by the view that, after all, new evidence is involved. My solution is radically different and does not fall into either of these categories. I deflate the paradox by arguing that the two different degrees of belief presented in the Sleeping Beauty Problem are in fact beliefs in two different propositions, i.e., there is no need to explain the change of belief. The Sleeping Beauty Problem The Problem Deflated 2.1 From contradiction to consistency 2.2 The inanimate version 2.3 Back to SB Summary CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

This paper provides a philosophical evaluation of the concept of handedness prevalent but largely unspoken in the scientific literature. This literature defines handedness as the preference or ability to use one hand rather than the other across a range of common activities. Using the philosophical discipline of phenomenology, I articulate and critique this conceptualization of handedness. Phenomenology shows defining a concept of handedness by focusing on hand use leads to a right hand biased concept. I argue further that a phenomenological (...) model based in spatial orientation rather than hand use provides a more inclusive concept of handedness. (shrink)

Since its original publication in 1975, this groundbreaking work has awakened millions of people to the existence of "speciesism"—our systematic disregard of nonhuman animals—inspiring a worldwide movement to transform our attitudes to animals and eliminate the cruelty we inflict on them. In Animal Liberation, author Peter Singer exposes the chilling realities of today’s "factory farms" and product-testing procedures—destroying the spurious justifications behind them, and offering alternatives to what has become a profound environmental and social as well as moral issue. (...) An important and persuasive appeal to conscience, fairness, decency, and justice, it is essential reading for the supporter and the skeptic alike. (shrink)

The impact of Nietzsche's engagement with the Greek skeptics has never before been systematically explored in a book-length work - an inattention that belies the interpretive weight scholars otherwise attribute to his early career as a professor of classical philology and to the fascination with Greek literature and culture that persisted throughout his productive academic life. Jessica N. Berry fills this gap in the literature on Nietzsche by demonstrating how an understanding of the Pyrrhonian skeptical tradition illuminates Nietzsche's own (...) reflections on truth, knowledge, and ultimately, the nature and value of philosophic inquiry. This entirely new reading of Nietzsche's epistemological and ethical views promises to make clear and render coherent his provocative but often opaque remarks on the topics of truth and knowledge and to grant us further insight into his ethics-since the Greek skeptics, like Nietzsche, take up the position they do as a means of promoting well-being and psychological health. In addition, it allows us to recover a portrait of Nietzsche as a philologist and philosophical psychologist that has been too often obscured by commentaries on his thought. "The book addresses a number of central issues in Nietzsche's philosophy, including perspectivism and his conception of truth. The idea that his views in these areas owe much to the ancient Pyrrhonists casts them in an important new light, and is well supported by the texts. A lot of people from a lot of different areas in philosophy will have good reason to take notice." - Richard Bett, Johns Hopkins University. (shrink)

It is argued that causal understanding originates in experiences of acting on objects. Such experiences have consistent features that can be used as clues to causal identification and judgment. These are singular clues, meaning that they can be detected in single instances. A catalog of 14 singular clues is proposed. The clues function as heuristics for generating causal judgments under uncertainty and are a pervasive source of bias in causal judgment. More sophisticated clues such as mechanism clues and repeated interventions (...) are derived from the 14. Research on the use of empirical information and conditional probabilities to identify causes has used scenarios in which several of the clues are present, and the use of empirical association information for causal judgment depends on the presence of singular clues. It is the singular clues and their origin that are basic to causal understanding, not multiple instance clues such as empirical association, contingency, and conditional probabilities. (shrink)

In this important new book in the IPPP series, a group of leading thinkers in psychiatry, psychology, and philosophy offer alternative perspectives that address both the scientific and clinical aspects of psychiatric validation, emphasizing throughout their philosophical and historical considerations.

Prospect Theory: For Risk and Ambiguity, provides a comprehensive and accessible textbook treatment of the way decisions are made both when we have the statistical probabilities associated with uncertain future events and when we lack them. The book presents models, primarily prospect theory, that are both tractable and psychologically realistic. A method of presentation is chosen that makes the empirical meaning of each theoretical model completely transparent. Prospect theory has many applications in a wide variety of disciplines. The material in (...) the book has been carefully organized to allow readers to select pathways through the book relevant to their own interests. With numerous exercises and worked examples, the book is ideally suited to the needs of students taking courses in decision theory in economics, mathematics, finance, psychology, management science, health, computer science, Bayesian statistics, and engineering. (shrink)

In the philosophy of science there has traditionally been a tendency to regard physics as the incarnation of science per se. Accordingly, the status of other disciplines is evaluated then with respect to their ability to produce laws resembling those of physics. This view has yielded a considerable bias in the discussion of historical laws. Philosophers as well as historians have tended to discuss such laws mostly with reference to the situation in physics; this often led to either one of (...) two conclusions, namely that history is epistemologically completely separated from natural science, because it does not have universal laws, or that the ultimate goal of the study of history must be the formulation of such universal laws. I would maintain that neither conclusion is necessary. To substantiate this position, aspects of laws in nature are discussed. One aspect being often neglected is the fact that there are many cases of statistical laws in nature; there is no close link between laws and determinism. Moreover, there are natural systems which have a history, i.e. systems which are, like human history, shaped by irreversible, singular events. One important case is biological evolution and accordingly I discuss the relation between evolutionary theory and historiography. However, since we are part of the living world, one could also ask whether the laws of evolution are of direct relevance for understanding our history, in addition to the methodological similarities between the two fields. This issue of history as evolution is being investigated in detail in the final section of the paper. (shrink)

William Molyneux was born in Dublin, studied in Trinity College Dublin, and was a founding member of the Dublin Philosophical Society (DPS), Ireland’s counterpart to the Royal Society in London. He was a central figure in the Irish intellectual milieu during the Early Modern period and – along with George Berkeley and Edmund Burke – is one of the best-known thinkers to have come out of that context and out of Irish thought more generally. In 1688, when Molyneux wrote the (...) letter to Locke in which he posed the now famous question about a man born blind made to see, he was an active member of the DPS and was on familiar terms with several other key figures in Irish philosophy at the time. For the most part, Irish thinkers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries answered “no” to Molyneux’s question of whether a blind man made to see could distinguish, by sight alone, between a cube and a sphere. (shrink)

This book examines the complex and varied ways in which fictions relate to the real world, and offers a precise account of how imaginative works of literature can use fictional content to explore matters of universal human interest. While rejecting the traditional view that literature is important for the truths that it imparts, the authors also reject attempts to cut literature off altogether from real human concerns. Their detailed account of fictionality, mimesis, and cognitive value, founded on the methods of (...) analytical philosophy, restores to literature its distinctive status among cultural practices. The authors also explore metaphysical and skeptical views, prevalent in modern thought, according to which the world itself is a kind of fiction, and truth no more than a social construct. They identify different conceptions of fiction in science, logic, epistemology, and make-believe, and thereby challenge the idea that discourse per se is fictional and that different modes of discourse are at root indistinguishable. They offer rigorous analyses of the roles of narrative, imagination, metaphor, and "making" in human thought processes. Both in their methods and in their conclusions, Lamarque and Olsen aim to restore rigor and clarity to debates about the values of literature, and to provide new, philosophically sound foundations for a genuine change of direction in literary theorizing. (shrink)

In Science as a Profession and Vocation, Max Weber presents a clear task to scientists: he claims that they have the responsibility to present uncomfortable knowledge to politicians, students and o...

There are many touch points between the work of Jacques Derrida and René Girard. To me, as a student of literature, these two writers particularly stand out as great readers or great exegetes.1 The way they handle and combine texts, the way they dare to break with reading conventions, has proved to be really fruitful.Some time ago I watched a documentary about Derrida, made by Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering Kofman, published in 2002, carrying the simple title Derrida.2 I found (...) that this experimental documentary at the same time reflected Derrida’s many reservations, not to say his skepticism, as to the possibility of making portraits—and—proved to be far more revealing, even intimate, than a conventional documentary... (shrink)

P.F. Strawson's essay traces some formal characteristics of logic and grammar to their roots in general features of thought and experience.

In September 2008, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) scientists successfully switched on the historic biggest physics device, the Large ...

In my contribution to this Concise Collection on Margaret Cavendish, I focus on teaching Cavendish’s work in the context of philosophy (and, more specifically, Early Modern Philosophy). I have three aims. First, to explain why teaching women from philosophy’s history is crucially important to the discipline. Second, to outline my own reflections on teaching Cavendish’s philosophy. Third, to defend a specific claim about the benefits of teaching Cavendish to philosophy students; namely, that introducing biographical detail alongside philosophical ideas enriches the (...) learning experience. (shrink)

Dirty hands cases are often seen as a crucial challenge for political ethics. Michael Walzer’s analysis of dirty hands cases has been especially influential. On closer inspection, however, Walzer’s analysis contains some serious flaws. This article examines how and to what extent the political ethics of Paul Ricoeur can remedy the problems in Walzer’s approach. It is shown that Ricoeur’s approach can offer a better understanding of what is at stake in dilemmas in political action and that it can provide (...) guidance for dealing with such issues. Ricoeur’s analysis, furthermore, provides the foundation for a more critical political ethics than Walzer can offer. (shrink)