The pursuit of happiness is a long-enshrined tradition that has recently become the cornerstone of the American Positive Psychology movement. However, “happiness” is an over-worked and ambiguous word, which, it is argued, should be restricted and only used as the label for a brief emotional state that typically lasts a few seconds or minutes. The corollary proposal for positive psychology is that optimism is a preferable stance over pessimism or realism. Examples are presented both from psychology and economics that illustrate (...) the dangers of optimism, and in which better outcomes can occur with a pessimistic stance. A more sophisticated approach is then presented in which, in relation to well-being and quality of life, neither optimism nor pessimism is seen as inherently better than the other, but, rather, in which psychological flexibility may contribute optimally to health and well-being. (shrink)

Forensic archaeology, the application of archaeological methods in a criminal framework, has undergone a rapid process of acceptance and development. From the initial occasional involvement of archaeologists in the search for and recovery of murder victims in the late 1970s, to the general acceptance of archaeological methods, such as shallow level geophysics, this chapter provides a brief history of forensic archaeology in the United Kingdom and beyond. It outlines the ways in which an archaeologist’s understanding of formation processes and skills (...) in the interpretation of human behaviour from physical alterations to the landscape can be of benefit to different stages and types of investigation. Discussing the way in which the archaeologist can usefully contribute to the investigation of a crime, the chapter looks at the methods which have been successfully applied in a number of high-profile cases and the considerations which the forensic archaeologist must make which are not an issue for ‘traditional’ archaeology. In a discipline which has reached a critical point in its development with the acknowledgement that archaeological skills should regularly form an integral part of crime scene investigation and an increase in professional training, the authors explain how forensic archaeology is now moving to increased standardization and attempts at quality assurance. (shrink)

We use content analysis to show that the diagnosis of the financial crisis of 2007–2009 shifted significantly from a focus on the need for structural change in the banking industry to an emphasis on culture and reform at the organizational level. We consider four overlapping subsystems in which this shift in problem–solution clusters played out—political, regulatory, legal, and consulting—and show that the “structural reform agenda,” which was initially strong and publicly prominent in the political arena, lost attention. Over time it (...) was displaced by a neoliberal managerialist turn, which watered down or abandoned structural solutions and instead played up a new “culture and conduct reform agenda.” We explain this shift in terms of the marketization of regulation, which—following Mautner (_Language and the market society_, 1st ed. Routledge, 2010)’s model of interdiscursive alignment—we detect in the shifting language of financial-services reform across the four subsystems in scope. We argue that a neoliberal turn took place with a _discursive closure_ that made the structural reform alternative gradually unsayable and, in the end, unthinkable. At the same time, the discourse turned to embrace the neoliberal agenda, built on the myth of self-regulating actors and markets, manifest in the culture problematic. This managerialist turn was able to mobilise, and be operationalised by, an industry of consultants, whereas structural change came to be seen by regulators as too risky to implement. We claim that these dynamics reveal how a form of “collective strategic ignorance,” based on powerful institutional myths, was systematically oriented to ignore and reject structural sources of crisis. Finally, we suggest that the observed pattern of displacement—whereby initial calls for structural change become later displaced by managerial and procedural solutions—is common to other social issues, such as audit reform and corporate social responsibility. (shrink)

Numerous reports have noted decreasing numbers of antibiotic approvals. To determine the context for this decline, we examined all new molecule entities (NMEs) and new biologic licenses (NBLs) approved by the FDA from 1980–2009, and compared approval rates of the 61 approved antibiotics to trends in other drug classes. We also tracked withdrawals of approved drugs and found more withdrawals for antibiotics than other drug classes. After adjusting for drugs subsequently withdrawn, the record for antibiotic innovation is less dire than (...) previously reported. We also report problems with the quality of the approved antibiotics studied. Future policies providing incentives for new antibiotic development should not be based on simple numerical targets and key provisions should ensure appropriate quality as well as quantity of antibiotic drug innovation. (shrink)

Only by misconstruing the term performative are the authors able to argue that males surpass females in “performative applications” of language. Linguistic performatives are not costly displays of quality, and syntax cannot be explained as an outcome of behavioural competition between pubertal males. However, there is room for a model in which language co-evolves with the unique human life-history stage of adolescence.

This article investigates relationships between countries' legal traditions and their quality of life as measured by a number of widely reported social indicators; in so doing it also offers a critique of a highly influential body of work which is widely cited in the literatures of corporate governance, economics and finance. That body of work has shown, inter alia, statistically significant relationships between legal traditions and various proxies for investor protection. We show statistically significant relationships between legal traditions and various (...) proxies for societal health. Our comparative evidence suggests that the interests of investors are not congruent with the interests of wider society, and that the criteria for judging the effectiveness of approaches to corporate governance should be broadened. (shrink)

In this paper I will defend the view that, according to Locke, secondary qualities are dispositions to produce sensations in us. Although this view is widely attributed to Locke, this interpretation needs defending for two reasons. First, commentators often assume that secondary qualities are dispositional properties because Locke calls them “powers” to produce sensations. However, primary qualities are also powers, so the powers locution is insufficient grounds for justifying the dispositionalist interpretation. Second, if secondary (...) qualities are dispositional properties then objects would retain secondary qualities while not being observed, but Locke says that colors “vanish” in the dark. Some commentators use this as evidence that Locke rejects the dispositionalist view of secondary qualities, and even those that are sympathetic to the traditional interpretation find these comments to be problematic. By contrast, I argue that even in these supposedly damning passages Locke shows an unwavering commitment to the view that the powers to produce sensations in us, i.e., the secondary qualities, remain in objects even when they are not being perceived. Thus the arguments against the traditional interpretation are unpersuasive, and we should conclude that Locke does indeed hold that secondary qualities are dispositions to cause sensations in us. (shrink)

Powers are popularly assumed to be distinct from, and dependent upon, inert qualities, mainly because it is believed that qualities have their nature independently of other properties while powers have their nature in virtue of a relation to distinct manifestation property. George Molnar and Alexander Bird, on the other hand, characterize powers as intrinsic and relational. The difficulties of reconciling the characteristics of being intrinsic and at the same time essentially related are illustrated in this (...) paper and it is argued that the reasons for thinking of powers as essentially relational are based on misguided epistemological consideration. Finally, I present a way of thinking of fundamental properties as primitive natures that we can only understand in virtue of what they do but which we should not think of as being ontologically constituted by these doings. According to this view, properties are both qualities and powers. (shrink)

This paper develops and defends a compound powerful qualities view of properties. According to this view, properties are essentially composed of distinct powerful and qualitative elements. First, I outline an argument for the compound powerful qualities view, based on the claim that it has the explanatory power of other views, without incurring their costs. Second, I argue that the view has the resources to explain how properties are individuated, by claiming that properties are partially individuated by their qualitative (...) elements, and partially by their powerful elements. Third, I distinguish two versions of the view, one of which says that the qualitative and powerful are parts of properties, the other of which says that they are aspects of properties. I argue that the parthood view is the more parsimonious because it can avoid postulating a novel metaphysical relation. Fourth, I argue that the relation between the powerful and qualitative elements of a property is necessary, and lay out various viable options concerning what the relation might be, including grounding and primitivism. (shrink)

There is no consensus on the most adequate conception of the fundamental properties of our world. The pure powers view and the identity theory of powerful qualities claim to be promising alternatives to categoricalism, the view that all fundamental properties essentially contribute to the qualitative make-up of things that have them. The pure powers view holds that fundamental properties essentially empower things that have them with a distinctive causal profile. On the identity theory, fundamental properties are dispositional (...) as well as qualitative, or powerful qualities. Despite the manifest difference, Taylor (2018) argues that pure powers and powerful qualities collapse into the same ontology. If this collapse objection were sound, the debate between the pure powers view and the identity theory of powerful qualities would be illusory: these views could claim the same advantages and would suffer the same problems. Here I defend an ontologically robust distinction between pure powers and powerful qualities. To accomplish this aim, I show that the collapse between pure powers and powerful qualities can be resisted. I conclude by drawing some positive implications of this result. (shrink)

The powerful qualities view of properties is currently enjoying a surge in popularity. Recently, I have argued that the standard version of the view is no different from a rival view: the pure powers position. I have also argued that the canonical version of the powerful qualities view faces the same problem as the pure powers view: the dreaded regress objection. Joaquim Giannotti disagrees. First, Giannotti thinks that the standard version of the powerful qualities view (...) can be differentiated from the pure powers view. Second, Giannotti argues that the powerful qualities view is not susceptible to the regress objection. Third, he argues that there is another reasonable version of the powerful qualities view available, which makes use of the notion of ‘aspects’. In this note, I respond to Giannotti. I argue that all three of Giannotti’s arguments are unsuccessful. (shrink)

The first step in education's long road to respectability lay in the ability of its proponents to demonstrate that it was worthy of collaborating with traditional disciplines in the syllabus of higher learning. The universities where the infant discipline of education was promoted benefited from scholars who engaged in teaching and research with enthusiasm and preached the gospel of scientific education. These schools-Teachers College/Columbia University, the University of Chicago, and Stanford University-gained a reputation as oases of pedagogical knowledge. Soon, public (...) and private colleges alike introduced professional academic programs for the preparation of teachers. Foremost among the subjects for these programs was education philosophy, with its long history and the impeccable credentials of its ancient and modern expositors. Although the principal focus of this study is the history of educational philosophy in colleges and universities, it also recognizes educational philosophy's antecedents. Chapters cover ancient roots, Christian educational theory, educational theory and the modern world, philosophy and education in early America, development of philosophies of education, disciplinary maturity for educational philosophy, and prospects. There is a bibliography and an index. (shrink)

The ontology of ‘powerful qualities’ is gaining an increasing amount of attention in the literature on properties. This is the view that the so-called categorical or qualitative properties are identical with ‘dispositional’ properties. The position is associated with C.B. Martin, John Heil, Galen Strawson and Jonathan Jacobs. Robert Schroer ( 2012 ) has recently mounted a number of criticisms against the powerful qualities view as conceived by these main adherents, and has also advanced his own (radically different) version (...) of the view. In this paper I have three main aims: firstly, I shall defend the ontology from his critique, arguing that his criticisms do not damage the position. Secondly, I shall argue that Schroer’s own version of the view is untenable. Thirdly, the paper shall serve to clear up some conceptual confusions that often bedevil the powerful qualities view. (shrink)

In bioethics, discussions of justice have tended to focus on questions of fairness in access to health care: is there a right to medical treatment, and how should priorities be set when medical resources are scarce. But health care is only one of many factors that determine the extent to which people live healthy lives, and fairness is not the only consideration in determining whether a health policy is just. In this pathbreaking book, senior bioethicists Powers and Faden confront (...) foundational issues about health and justice. How much inequality in health can a just society tolerate. The audience for the book is scholars and students of bioethics and moral and political philosophy, as well as anyone interested in public health and health policy. (shrink)

According to a well-known argument, originally due to David Armstrong, powers theory is objectionable, as it leads to a ‘Meinongian’ ontology on which some entities are real but do not actually exist. I argue here that the right conclusion to draw from this argument has thus far not been identified and that doing so has significant implications for powers theory. Specifically, I argue that the key consequence of the argument is that it provides substantial grounds for trope (...) class='Hi'>powers theorists, but not other powers theorists, to accept one version of the view that properties are powerful qualities. In particular, they have grounds to favour the view that powerful properties are properties with exclusively qualitative natures that ground modal facts. (shrink)

Lawrence Kohlberg's Approach to Moral Education presents what the late Lawrence Kohlberg regarded as the definitive statement of his educational theory. Addressing the sociology and social psychology of schooling, the authors propose that school culture become the center of moral education and research. They discuss how schools can develop as just and cohesive communities by involving students in democracy, and they focus on the moral decisions teachers and students face as they democratically resolve problems. As the authors put it: "...we (...) propose an educational renewal of our democratic society.... We have attempted to establish schools that do more than just teach about democratic citizenship, that are themselves democratic societies.". (shrink)

: The increasing reliance upon, and perhaps the growing public and professional skepticism about, the special expertise of bioethicists suggests the need to consider the limits of moral expertise. For all the talk about method in bioethics, we, bioethicists, are still rather far off the mark in understanding what we are doing, even when we may be going about what we are doing fairly well. Quite often, what is most fundamentally at stake, but equally often insufficiently acknowledged, are inherently political, (...) essentially contested visions of the most compelling and attractive forms of life for individuals and social organization. The current situation in bioethics parallels similar debates in eighteenth-century jurisprudence, especially Jeremy Bentham's withering critique of the prevalent forms of judicial argument and his own, equally unsuccessful, attempt to develop a decision-making procedure in ethics that would operate on a plane above politics. The risk, both then and now, is that we will fail to appreciate the wide range of reasonable disagreement that will remain past the point of extended reflection and discussion. (shrink)

The ontology of ‘powerful qualities’ is gaining an increasing amount of attention in the literature on properties. This is the view that the so-called categorical or qualitative properties are identical with ‘dispositional’ properties. The position is associated with C.B. Martin, John Heil, Galen Strawson and Jonathan Jacobs. Robert Schroer ( 2012 ) has recently mounted a number of criticisms against the powerful qualities view as conceived by these main adherents, and has also advanced his own (radically different) version (...) of the view. In this paper I have three main aims: firstly, I shall defend the ontology from his critique, arguing that his criticisms do not damage the position. Secondly, I shall argue that Schroer’s own version of the view is untenable. Thirdly, the paper shall serve to clear up some conceptual confusions that often bedevil the powerful qualities view. (shrink)

Discourse analysis is a relatively recent form of inquiry without a strict step‐by‐step method. The methodology of discourse analysis has a longer history in Continental Europe than in other countries.1 The complex theoretical assumptions, the goals and the target (discourse) have been explicated, but the methodology may be applied in different ways. This paper will describe discourse analysis and give examples of some of the possible variations. It is the claim of this paper that discourse analysis deserves consideration as a (...) methodology for nursing inquiry. (shrink)

Can computer systems ever be considered moral agents? This paper considers two factors that are explored in the recent philosophical literature. First, there are the important domains in which computers are allowed to act, made possible by their greater functional capacities. Second, there is the claim that these functional capacities appear to embody relevant human abilities, such as autonomy and responsibility. I argue that neither the first (Domain-Function) factor nor the second (Simulacrum) factor gets at the central issue in the (...) case for computer moral agency: whether they can have the kinds of intentional states that cause their decisions and actions. I give an account that builds on traditional action theory and allows us to conceive of computers as genuine moral agents in virtue of their own causally efficacious intentional states. These states can cause harm or benefit to moral patients, but do not depend on computer consciousness or intelligence. (shrink)

As a growing area of research, the philosophy of time is increasingly relevant to different areas of philosophy and even other disciplines. This book describes and evaluates the most important debates in philosophy of time, under several subject areas: metaphysics, epistemology, physics, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, cognitive science, rationality, and art. -/- Questions this book investigates include: Can we know what time really is? Is time possible, especially given modern physics? Must there be time because we cannot think (...) without it? What do we experience of time? How might philosophy of time be relevant to understanding the mind-body relationship or evidence in cognitive science? Can the philosophy of time help us understand biases toward the future and the fear of death? How is time relevant to art – and is art relevant to philosophical debates about time? Finally, what exactly could time travel be? And could time travel satisfy emotions such as nostalgia and regret? -/- Through asking such questions, and showing how they might be best answered, the book demonstrates the importance philosophy of time has in contemporary thought. Each of the book’s 10 chapters begins with a helpful introduction and ends with study questions and an annotated list of further readings. This and a comprehensive bibliography at the end of the book prepare the reader to go further in their study of the philosophy of time. (shrink)

This book features papers from CEPE-IACAP 2015, a joint international conference focused on the philosophy of computing. Inside, readers will discover essays that explore current issues in epistemology, philosophy of mind, logic, and philosophy of science from the lens of computation. Coverage also examines applied issues related to ethical, social, and political interest. -/- The contributors first explore how computation has changed philosophical inquiry. Computers are now capable of joining humans in exploring foundational issues. Thus, we can ponder machine-generated explanation, (...) thought, agency, and other quite fascinating concepts. The papers are also concerned with normative aspects of the computer and information technology revolution. They examine technology-specific analyses of key challenges, from Big Data to autonomous robots to expert systems for infrastructure control and financial services. -/- The virtue of a collection that ranges over philosophical questions, such as this one does, lies in the prospects for a more integrated understanding of issues. These are early days in the partnership between philosophy and information technology. Philosophers and researchers are still sorting out many foundational issues. They will need to deploy all of the tools of philosophy to establish this foundation. This volume admirably showcases those tools in the hands of some excellent scholars. -/- . (shrink)

We seem to directly perceive external things. But can we? According to the time‐lag argument, we cannot. What we directly perceive happens now. There is a time‐lag between our perceptions and the external things we seem to directly perceive; these external things happen in the past; thus, what we directly perceive must be something else, for example, sense‐data, and we can only at best indirectly perceive other things. This paper examines the time‐lag argument given contemporary metaphysics. I argue that this (...) argument is not as compelling as it may initially seem. First, it denies that what we directly perceive can ever be what it seems to be; second, it conflicts with the current physical conception of time, relativity theory. This latter point leads to a more general one: the argument's force depends on a particular metaphysical conception on time, presentism, which is controversial in contemporary metaphysics of time. Given the alternative conception, eternalism, the argument is much less compelling. The overall argument of this paper, then, is that, if one wishes to hold that we directly perceive external things, we should subscribe to the latter view of time, i.e., eternalism. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 6, Page 65-66, June 2011.

One prominent criticism of Newtonianism held that gravitational attraction is an occult quality. The charge, pressed most forcefully by Leibniz, claims that Newton had abandoned the intelligibility of mechanism and allowed for an unexplained and inexplicable force in nature. This paper focuses on one of Newton’s replies to this accusation: his claim that gravitation is no more mysterious than phenomena like inertia and impenetrability. I argue that we can understand and motivate this Newtonian position by looking at the account of (...) material substance developed in Newton’s early manuscript essay De gravitatione. This account makes clear Newton’s sensitivity to the explanatory limits of mechanism. Newton was perceptive in noting that while the mechanical philosophy sought to provide explanations in terms of matter and motion, it failed to explain matter and motion themselves. This sheds light on the motivations behind the theory of bodies in De gravitatione. And it helps to explain why he was so unmoved by what many saw as a serious challenge to his theory of gravity. (shrink)

The doctrine of the specious present, that we perceive or, at least, seem to perceive a period of time is often taken to be an obvious claim about perception. Yet, it also seems just as commonly rejected as being incoherent. In this paper, following a distinction between three conceptions of the specious present, it is argued that the incoherence is due to hidden metaphysical assumptions about perception and time. It is argued that for those who do not hold such assumptions, (...) so long as we are clear about what the doctrine is really saying, we can make perfect sense of the specious present doctrine. (shrink)

This handbook gives an overview of cognition and emotion research. It provides readers with the historical background and the philosophical arguments on the debate, before moving on to outline the general aspects of various research traditions. Split into comprehensive sections, it discusses cognitive processes, including memory, decision-making, and reasoning, and also emotions such as anger, anxiety, sadness, and jealousy. With contributions from leading researchers in the subject, this volume examines the main theories, and also the application of these to other (...) areas of psychology. (shrink)

Many of the contemporary disagreements regarding privacy are conceptual in nature. They concern the meaning or definition of privacy and the analytic basis of distinguishing privacy rights from other kinds of rights recognized within moral, political, or legal theories. The two main alternatives within this debate include reductionist views, which seek a narrow account of the kinds of invasions or intrusions distinctly involving privacy losses, and anti-reductionist theories, which treat a much broader array of interferences with a person as separate (...) and irreducible kinds of privacy invasions. Other theorists have expressed doubts about the prospects for achieving greater analytical precision even within a fairly expansive anti-reductionist approach. However, a reductionist privacy definition is defended in this article, and its primary theoretical virtues are its ability to unify and explain the insights of several competing definitions and its role in developing an account of privacy rights that is both internally coherent and consistent with a plausible understanding of the theoretical basis for a number of related rights. (shrink)

Articles by Lyn Horn and Alison Thompson highlight several points crucial to understanding how our theory figures in wider debates about social justice as well as the particular relevance of our theory for assessing the overall practice of public health (Horn, 2013; Thompson, 2013). We begin with these two articles, first to respond to and concur with many of their central points, and second to set the stage for dealing more efficiently with some points raised in the other articles.

Understanding what types of issues working adults perceive as ethical in their workplaces will allow better teaching of business ethics. This study reports findings of a thematic analysis of 764 ethical challenges described by working adults in a part-time MBA program and combines its findings with the other published studies on perceptions of ethical issues in the workplace. The results indicate that most people are assured about what they describe as ethical transgressions although experts might disagree. It also highlights certain (...) issues and contexts as being more frequently perceived than others. Ideas for future research in this area are also explored. (shrink)

Understanding what types of issues working adults perceive as ethical in their workplaces will allow better teaching of business ethics. This study reports findings of a thematic analysis of 764 ethical challenges described by working adults in a part-time MBA program and combines its findings with the other published studies on perceptions of ethical issues in the workplace. The results indicate that most people are assured about what they describe as ethical transgressions although experts might disagree. It also highlights certain (...) issues and contexts as being more frequently perceived than others. Ideas for future research in this area are also explored. (shrink)

Since management is about influencing - influencing people who work in the organization, the structure and practices of the organization, as well as its environment - how ‘influencing’ is understood evidently makes a huge difference. The still popular empiricist concept of cause-effect relations as presupposing regularities is mistaken, since it forms no sufficient basis for action in new and unique situations. As alternative notions of causation, the paper discusses the Critical Realist conception of causal powers and the counterfactual conditional (...) view, arguing that the classical notion of power (dunamis in Greek; power, potentiality, possibility, ability, capacity, capability in English) offers the most fruitful analysis of causal relations for managerial purposes. The paper presents the four ontological features of power scrutinised already by Aristotle in his Metaphysics and Physics, and actively discussed in current philosophy of science. These are the potentiality-actuality distinction, full power as consisting of an active and a receptive component, the distinction of rational and non-rational powers, and the idea of hierarchy of powers. These ontological distinctions suit management contexts not only because they allow room for new unique decision-making situations, but primarily because they imply invaluable practical advice. The relevance of the power ontology for management is illustrated in the context of the Bohm and the new Timeout dialogue. The paper concludes with a summary of the practical implications of the classical power ontology to management and the adoption of dialogical practices to managerial expertise. (shrink)

There is a striking resemblance between the physical theory of Plato'sTimaeus and that of the Stoics; striking enough, indeed, to warrant the supposition that the latter was substantially influenced by the former. In attempting to trace the main lines of this influence, scholars have tended to focus attention almost exclusively on the Stoics' choice and characterization of the world's ultimate constituents: a rational principle that pervades and controls a material principle. In this paper, I offer some suggestions about how the (...) early Stoics may have reacted as readers to Plato's literary presentation of the dialogue's cosmogonic myth. On this basis I consider the proposal that the crucial philosophical appeal of the Timaeus for the Stoics – and perhaps the reason it attracted their interest in the first place – lay not in its claims about the Receptacle and World Soul, but rather in its portrayal of the Demiurge who designed the cosmos. (shrink)

Modern life is full of examples of environmentally-mediated “group harms” – what Derek Parfit describes as harms produced by “what we all do together.” Typically, the harms are unintended and arise from the uncoordinated actions of many individuals. Their actions ordinarily are not inherently wrong, no one’s action causes harm to an identifiable individual, and prevention of the expected harm is unlikely unless all, or nearly everyone, reduce or cease to engage in activities that collectively and cumulatively result in harm. (...) Unless the individual’s action is likely to make a difference to the outcome, it is often argued that it is not clear what, if anything, makes it wrong or a breach of personal moral responsibility. Activities that result in climate change and agricultural practices commonly employed within the global system of food production are prominent examples. There are several well-known strategies for dealing with such cases, but often they rest on idealized assumptions regarding the impact that one individual can have, provide answers suitable only in counterfactual circumstances, or rely on the kinds of principles of justice that make it difficult to identify clearly and address directly many important moral problems. The task of this chapter is to examine these strategies and propose alternative freestanding practical principles that can guide our efforts to address the world as we find it and explain the sense of wrongness individuals often experience. (shrink)

This chapter finds two versions of the distinction between primary and secondary qualities in Galileo, Descartes, Boyle, and Locke. Although agreeing that primary qualities are physically basic properties of extended particles (including size, shape, position, and motion), these authors differed on whether secondary qualities such as color exist only in the mind as sensations or belong to bodies as powers to cause sensations. Kant was initially a metaphysical realist about primary qualities as spatialized forces (vs. (...) bare extended particles), before placing space among the appearances in his critical period. Space becomes the subjective form in which transcendently real forces and relations appear. Kant viewed color as a subjective sensation in the mind, whereas Helmholtz treated color as a power to cause sensations. Helmholtz was initially a realist about primary qualities as spatialized masses and forces, but he later adopted the epistemically modest view of space as the subjective form in which forces and relations appear. (shrink)

Most of the writers who contributed to the issue were locked up at the time in Italian jails.... I was trying to draw the attention of the American Left, which still believed in Eurocommunism, to the fate of Autonomia. The survival of the last politically creative movement in the West was at stake, but no one in the United States seemed to realize that, or be willing to listen. Put together as events in Italy were unfolding, the Autonomia issue--which has (...) no equivalent in Italy, or anywhere for that matter--arrived too late, but it remains an energizing account of a movement that disappeared without bearing a trace, but with a big future still ahead of it.--Sylvère LotringerSemiotext is reissuing in book form its legendary magazine issue Italy: Autonomia: Post-Political Politics, originally published in New York in 1980. Edited by Sylvère Lotringer and Christian Marazzi with the direct participation of the main leaders and theorists of the Autonomist movement, this volume is the only first-hand document and contemporaneous analysis that exists of the most innovative post-'68 radical movement in the West. The movement itself was broken when Autonomia members were falsely accused of being the intellectual masterminds of the Red Brigades; but even after the end of Autonomia, this book remains a crucial testimony of the way this creative, futuristic, neo-anarchistic, postideological, and nonrepresentative political movement of young workers and intellectuals anticipated issues that are now confronting us in the wake of Empire. In the next two years, Semiotext will publish eight books by such Italian "Post-Fordist" intellectuals as Antonio Negri, Christian Marazzi, Paolo Virno, and Bifo, as they update the theories of Autonomia for the new century.Sylvère Lotringer, general editor of Semiotext, lives in New York and Baja California. He is the author of Overexposed: Perverting Perversions, 2007). Christian Marazzi, an Italian economist, lives in Switzerland. He is the author of Capital and Language: From the New Economy to the War Economy and Sock's Place, both forthcoming from Semiotext. (shrink)

This book explores the important yet neglected relationship between the philosophy of time and the temporal structure of perceptual experience. It examines how time structures perceptual experience and, through that structuring, the ways in which time makes perceptual experience trustworthy or erroneous. -/- Sean Power argues that our understanding of time can determine our understanding of perceptual experience in relation to perceptual structure and perceptual error. He examines the general conditions under which an experience may be sorted into different kinds (...) of error such as illusions, hallucinations, and anosognosia. Power also argues that some theories of time are better than others at giving an account of the structure and errors of perceptual experience. He makes the case that tenseless theory and eternalism more closely correspond to experience than tense theory and presentism. Finally, the book includes a discussion of the perceptual experience of space and how tenseless theory and eternalism can better support the problematic theory of naïve realism. -/- Philosophy of Time and Perceptual Experience originally illustrates how the metaphysics of time can be usefully applied to thinking about experience in general. It will appeal to those interested in the philosophy of time and debates about the trustworthiness of experience. (shrink)

This paper takes as its starting point the problem of characterizing, in a precise way, situations in which two people collaborate to achieve a common goal. It is suggested that collaboration is normally based on an apparently paradoxical state of mind which I call “mutual intention”. Mutual intention is a concept belonging to the same family as Lewis's and Schiffer's “mutual knowledge”. These concepts have the paradoxical feature that they require, for their definition, an infinite series of propositions of the (...) form X knows p, where X is a single agent and p is a proposition. The source of these infinite series is traced, and it is shown that they can be represented in a plausible and enlightening way by means of a recursive notation. Finally, three applications of the concept of “mutual intention” are given: in the semantic analysis of certain sentences with plural subjects; in the analysis of agreement and related speech acts; and in the clarification of the phenomenon of “implicit agreement”. (shrink)

Does the status of certain temporal experiences as illusory depend on one’s conception of time? Our concept of time in part determines our concept of what we hold to be real and unreal; what we hold to be real and unreal partially determines what we hold to be illusory; thus, our concept of time in part determines what we hold to be illusory. This paper argues that this dependency of illusions on the concept of time is applicable to illusions of (...) time. Two possible temporal illusions given the evidence are examined, simultaneity and the experience of the past; it is argued that the evidence points at temporal illusions depending on which conception of time is true. (shrink)

An important objection to many utilitarian theories is that their conceptions of utility may count as morally relevant contributions to individual well-being items which are morally or rationally suspect. For example, if the conception of utility is pleasure, or alternatively, the fulfilment of actual desire or satisfaction of preferences, then greater individual utility may be produced by whatever increases pleasure, fulfils desire, or satisfies someone's preferences. This is true no matter how disgusting or vile we may think such pleasures are, (...) or how irrational or distasteful we find the fulfilment of a desire or the satisfaction of some preference. (shrink)

Using devices such as unified power quality conditioners in distribution networks seems essential for higher electricity quality. Moreover, distribution network reconfiguration is a suitable model for improving network characteristics, including loss reduction and voltage increase for distribution networks, and is widely used in this era. Here, the study discusses the rechanging of distribution networks for UPQC via proposing an appropriate model for it. In addition to the optimum structure of distribution networks, the most appropriate branch where UPQC must be located (...) and the most appropriate reactive power size with which series and shunt filters must be injected into the grid are determined. The simulations have been applied on two 69- and 84-standard-bus networks. The results of the simulations indicate much power loss reduction and much voltage increase in the presence of UPQC compensators. (shrink)