In this paper, we conduct a secondary analysis of The Institute of Educational Sciences’ (IES) 2011-2012 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) data, a self-reported, nationally representative database to examine: (a) the average caseload of students with disabilities and emergent bilingual learners within and across social studies content areas, as well how social studies teachers’ caseloads compare with other content area disciplines and (b) the extent and perceived utility of professional development opportunities social studies teachers receive to support both students with (...) disabilities and emergent bilingual learners. (shrink)

This book review is a thorough analysis of The Political Classroom: Evidence and Ethics in Democratic Education by Diana E. Hess and Paula McAvoy. These authors conducted a study that emphasizes the importance of deliberation of controversial political issues in the social studies classroom. This review analyzes the process of the study the authors conducted, what they discovered, and the implications of their findings for social studies educators and researchers. The authors shed light on how to implement empirical based strategies (...) and practices that support and foster deliberation. They also explain which methods should be avoided and why. This work is a significant contribution to the field of social studies and is part of an ongoing work in which Diana E. Hess continues to illuminate the need for more deliberation in the social studies classroom. (shrink)

General discussion of grounding, including its formal features, relations to other notions, and applications. (Originally published 2014; revised 2021).

This paper offers a reading of passages in Heidegger’s Nietzsche lectures in which Heidegger describes love as a feeling which grants an essential vision. I contend that by invoking this language of vision while simultaneously contrasting love with infatuation, Heidegger is implicitly attempting to situate love within his category of fundamental attunements. While Heidegger does not explicitly follow this thought through, I argue that doing so leads to a problem—namely, how can love be a fundamental attunement if such attunements are (...) necessarily objectless? I suggest we can see a response to this problem in Heidegger’s treatment of Plato’s Phaedrus within the same lecture course. I conclude by claiming that while Heidegger attempts to follow Plato in arguing that love is most properly directed towards Being, love nonetheless poses a challenge to Heidegger’s category of fundamental attunements which also strikes at the heart of his claim that ontology is first philosophy. (shrink)

Given the centrality of arguments from vicious infinite regress to our philosophical reasoning, it is little wonder that they should also appear on the catalogue of arguments offered in defense of theses that pertain to the fundamental structure of reality. In particular, the metaphysical foundationalist will argue that, on pain of vicious infinite regress, there must be something fundamental. But why think that infinite regresses of grounds are vicious? I explore existing proposed accounts of viciousness cast in terms of contradictions, (...) dependence, failed reductive theories and parsimony. I argue that no one of these accounts adequately captures the conditions under which an infinite regress—any infinite regress—is vicious as opposed to benign. In their place, I suggest an account of viciousness in terms of explanatory failure. If this account is correct, infinite grounding regresses are not necessarily vicious; and we must be much more careful employing such arguments to the conclusion that there has to be something fundamental. (shrink)

Fifteen leading philosophers explore metaphysical foundationalism, the idea that reality has an over-arching hierarchical structure ordered by relations of metaphysical dependence, where chains of entities ordered by those dependence relations terminate in something fundamental.

Philosophical questions regarding the nature and methodology of philosophical inquiry have garnered much attention in recent years. Perhaps nowhere are these discussions more developed than in relation to the field of metaphysics. The Routledge Handbook of Metametaphysics is an outstanding reference source to this growing subject. It comprises thirty-eight chapters written by leading international contributors, and is arranged around five themes: • The history of metametaphysics • Neo-Quineanism (and its objectors) • Alternative conceptions of metaphysics • The epistemology of metaphysics (...) • Science and metaphysics. Essential reading for students and researchers in metaphysics, philosophical methodology, and ontology, The Routledge Handbook of Metametaphysics will also be of interest to those in closely related subjects such as philosophy of language, logic, and philosophy of science. (shrink)

Metaphysicians of a certain stripe are almost unanimously of the view that grounding is necessarily irreflexive, asymmetric, transitive, and well-founded. They deny the possibility of circles of ground and, therewith, the possibility of species of metaphysical coherentism. But what's so bad about circles of ground? One problem for coherentism might be that it ushers in anti-foundationalism: grounding loops give rise to infinite regresses. And this is bad because infinite grounding regresses are vicious. This article argues that circles of ground do (...) not necessarily give rise to infinite regresses, and where they do, those regresses are not necessarily vicious. (shrink)

Drawing on the general ethics and social psychology literature, this study presents a model to delineate the major factors likely to affect consumers’ intentions to bring their own shopping bags when visiting a supermarket (called “bring your own bags” or “BYOB” intention). The model is empirically validated using a survey of 250 Chinese consumers. Overall, the findings support the hypothesized direct influence of teleological evaluation and habit on BYOB intention, as well as that of deontological evaluation and teleological evaluation on (...) ethical judgment about the BYOB practice. Teleological evaluation exerts a much stronger influence on ethical judgment than does deontological evaluation. In addition, the findings reveal that consumers who perceive the BYOB practice to be more important are more inclined to rely on their ethical judgment to derive their BYOB intention. Academically, these findings provide some encouraging evidence for the application of general ethics theories to explain green consumption-related practices. Practically, the findings also suggest that a utilitarian approach (i.e., emphasizing the consequences of BYOB) may represent an effective means for the Chinese government to promote BYOB practice among consumers. (shrink)

Although it is very often taken for granted that there is something fundamental, the literature appears to have developed with little to no careful consideration of what exactly it is that the fundamentalia are supposed to do. If we are to have a good reason to believe that there is something fundamental, we need not only to know what exactly it is that the fundamentalia are invoked for, but why it is that nothing else is available for the task to (...) hand. A good argument in defense of fundamentality, then, will contain an assumption that stipulates an explanatory target; along with a second, crucial, assumption that tells us that no dependent entity is available to do the work that needs to be done. In this paper, I explore both of these assumptions. (shrink)

What is the environment, and how does it figure in an ethical life? This book is an introduction to the philosophical issues involved in this important question, focussing primarily on ethics but also encompassing questions in aesthetics and political philosophy. Topics discussed include the environment as an ethical question, human morality, meta-ethics, normative ethics, humans and other animals, the value of nature, and nature's future. The discussion is accessible and richly illustrated with examples. The book will be valuable for students (...) taking courses in environmental philosophy, and also for a wider audience in courses in ethics, practical ethics, and environmental studies. It will also appeal to general readers who want a reliable and sophisticated introduction to the field. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:The ethics of high frequency trading are obscure, due in part to the complexity of the practice. This article contributes to the existing literature of ethics in financial markets by examining a recent trend in regulation in high frequency trading, the prohibition of deception. We argue that in the financial markets almost any regulation, other than the most basic, tends to create a moral hazard and increase information asymmetry. Since the market’s job is, at least in part, price discovery, we (...) argue that simplicity of regulation and restraint in regulation are virtues to a greater extent than in other areas of finance. This article proposes criteria for determining which high-frequency trading strategies should be regulated. (shrink)

This study empirically examines how Chinese executives perceive the role of guanxi and ethics played in their business operations. By factor-analyzing 850 valid replies collected from a comprehensive survey, the present study identifies three distinct ethics-related attitudes and two distinct guanxi-related attitudes for Chinese executives. The cluster analysis of the composite scores of these five attitudinal factors further indicates the existence of three distinct groups of Chinese executives that vary in their ethics and guanxi orientations. The three groups are unethical (...) profit seeker (UPS), anti-governance, guanxi-cultivator (AGGC), and apathetic executive (AE). The three groups are also found to be significantly different in such demographic characteristics as age and the ownership structure of the serving organization. Specifically, the inter-group comparison suggests that younger Chinese executives, and those working for privately-owned firms and joint ventures are more inclined to engage in unethical activities for profits. These findings provide useful insights for international investors to formulate their human resource and negotiation strategies in China. (shrink)

The causal premise of the evolutionary debunking argument contends that human moral beliefs are explained by the process of natural selection. While it is universally acknowledged that such a premise is fundamental to the debunker’s case, the vast majority of philosophers focus instead on the epistemic premise that natural selection does not track moral truth and the resulting skeptical conclusion. Recently, however, some have begun to concentrate on the causal premise. So far, the upshot of this small but growing literature (...) has been that the causal premise is likely false due to the seemingly persuasive evidence that our moral beliefs are in fact not the result of natural selection. In this paper, I argue that this view is mistaken. Specifically, I advocate the Innate Biases Model, which contends that there is not only compelling evidence for an evolved cognitive capacity for acquiring norms but also for the existence of an evolutionarily instilled set of cognitive biases that make it either more or less likely that we adopt certain moral beliefs. (shrink)

It is widely recognized by proponents of the notion that grounding can be, indeed is, overdetermined. Moreover, it seems safe to suppose that something of a consensus has emerged: grounding is overdetermined and there is nothing about it that we ought to find concerning. Not only is the overdetermination apparently not problematic, metaphysically speaking, but that grounding is overdetermined is not problematic, conceptually speaking, either. From a small sampling of alleged cases, however, no such conclusions can responsibly be drawn. And (...) without an account of when a fact is technically overdetermined, we are unable to reasonably answer questions about the acceptability of that overdetermination either. In this paper, I attempt to understand when a fact is technically metaphysically overdetermined. I argue that such an exploration reveals that nothing as regards the overdetermination of grounding is straightforward, and that the phenomenon is deserving of much more philosophical attention. (shrink)

In Phenomenology of Spirit (1806) Hegel is often held to have announced the end of history, where 'history' is to be understood as the long pursuit of ends towards which humanity had always been striving. In this, the first book in English to thoroughly critique this entrenched view, Eric Michael Dale argues that it is a misinterpretation. Dale offers a reading of his own, showing how it sits within the larger schema of Hegel's thought and makes room for (...) an understanding of the 'end of history' as Hegel intended. Through an elegant analysis of Hegel's philosophy of history, Dale guides the reader away from the common misinterpretation of the 'end of history' to other valuable elements of Hegel's arguments which are often overlooked and deserve to endure. His book will be of great interest to scholars and advanced students of Hegel, the philosophy of history, and the history of political thought. (shrink)

This paper develops and tests a new conceptual model incorporating the indirect impact of two ethical ideologies (idealism and relativism) on Chinese consumers’ ethical judgments under four ethically problematic consumption situations (active benefit, passive benefit, deceptive practice, and no/indirect harm) through two cultural values (integration and moral discipline). Data from a large-scale online consumer survey in five major Chinese cities (_N_ = 1046) support most hypotheses. The findings are consistent with the postulated global impact of ethical ideology on forming an (...) individual’s beliefs and values and highlight the importance of a thorough understanding of the significant determinants of consumer ethics to promote ethically responsible consumption behaviors. This study also uses an emic approach to conceptualize and measure Chinese cultural values by using cultural constructs and measures that are designed explicitly in the Chinese context. (shrink)

Previous studies have explored the effects of attention on spatial representation. Specifically, in the attentional repulsion effect, a transient visual cue that captures attention has been shown to alter the perceived position of a target stimulus to the direction away from the cue. The effect is also susceptible to retrospective influence, that attention appears to attract the target when the cue appears afterwards. This study examined the necessity of visual awareness of the cue in these phenomena. We found that when (...) the cues were rendered invisible by backward visual masks, both repulsion and attraction effects were weakened but still observed. The results suggest that the effects possibly depend on processes that are not necessarily associated with conscious visual awareness of the cues. We conjecture that attentional shift produced by the weak, invisible cues may play a role in spatial distortion; but other possible accounts including non-attentional ones are also discussed. (shrink)

There is a long lineage of philosophers concerned with coming to understand what explains everything broadly construed, or within a certain, restricted domain. We call such explanations ultimate explanations. Contemporarily, philosophers of a certain stripe have devoted much attention to the notion of fundamentality - that there is something which is without explanation. This Element explores some of the connections between fundamentality and ultimate explanations both contemporarily and historically.

This paper draws on the notion of “objects of research” in psychology as clusters of phenomena (Feest in Philos Sci 84:1165–1176, 2017) to analyze the productive role of folk psychological concepts—and the operational definitions that arise from them—in the development of concepts in scientific psychology. Using the case study of similarity, I discuss the role of the folk psychological concept in the regimentation of different measures of similarity judgments. I propose that by giving rise to operational definitions that lead to (...) experimental dissociation on the one hand, and by providing the concept with unity on the other hand, the folk psychological concept generates a productive tension that facilitates empirical and theoretical development of the scientific concept. (shrink)

The papers presented in this volume examine topics of central interest in contemporary philosophy of logic. They include reflections on the nature of logic and its relevance for philosophy today, and explore in depth developments in informal logic and the relation of informal to symbolic logic, mathematical metatheory and the limiting metatheorems, modal logic, many-valued logic, relevance and paraconsistent logic, free logics, extensional v. intensional logics, the logic of fiction, epistemic logic, formal logical and semantic paradoxes, the concept of truth, (...) the formal theory of entailment, objectual and substitutional interpretation of the quantifiers, infinity and domain constraints, the Löwenheim-Skolem theorem and Skolem paradox, vagueness, modal realism v. actualism, counterfactuals and the logic of causation, applications of logic and mathematics to the physical sciences, logically possible worlds and counterpart semantics, and the legacy of Hilbert’s program and logicism. The handbook is meant to be both a compendium of new work in symbolic logic and an authoritative resource for students and researchers, a book to be consulted for specific information about recent developments in logic and to be read with pleasure for its technical acumen and philosophical insights. Key Features - Written by leading logicians and philosophers - Comprehensive authoritative coverage of all major areas of contemporary research in symbolic logic - Clear, in-depth expositions of technical detail - Progressive organization from general considerations to informal to symbolic logic to nonclassical logics - Presents current work in symbolic logic within a unified framework - Accessible to students, engaging for experts and professionals - Insightful philosophical discussions of all aspects of logic -Useful bibliographies in every chapter - Written by leading logicians and philosophers - Comprehensive authoritative coverage of all major areas of contemporary research in symbolic logic - Clear, in-depth expositions of technical detail - Progressive organization from general considerations to informal to symbolic logic to nonclassical logics - Presents current work in symbolic logic within a unified framework - Accessible to students, engaging for experts and professionals - Insightful philosophical discussions of all aspects of logic - Useful bibliographies in every chapter. (shrink)

How do communities establish shared communication systems? The Common Knowledge view assumes that symbolic conventions develop through the accumulation of common knowledge regarding communication practices among the members of a community. In contrast with this view, it is proposed that coordinated communication emerges a by‐product of local interactions among dyads. A set of multi‐agent computer simulations show that a population of “egocentric” agents can establish and maintain symbolic conventions without common knowledge. In the simulations, convergence to a single conventional system (...) was most likely and most efficient when agents updated their behavior on the basis of local rather than global, system‐level information. The massive feedback and parallelism present in the simulations gave rise to phenomena that are often assumed to result from complex strategic processing on the part of individual agents. The implications of these findings for the development of theories of language use are discussed. (shrink)

The Principle of Sufficient Reason is very seldom, if ever, referred to in the works of whom we might think of as the eminent Asian metaphysicians. In spite of this, the big picture metaphysical views available in the thought of philosophers such as Nāgārjuna, Fazang and Nishida appear to share certain structural features with views more familiar to us from our own tradition; views that explicitly accept or reject the Principle of Sufficient Reason. Nāgārjuna looks to develop a kind of (...) metaphysical infinitism, Fazang an extreme form of coherentism, and Nishida a species of foundationalism. These three positions - infinitism, coherentism and foundationalism - are typically thought to exhaust the spread of possibilities by those working within the Western tradition. -/- In spite of their similarities to positions advanced within our own tradition, the cosmologies of many of the giants of Asian philosophy are characterised by their rather striking conclusions. Amongst such conclusions for Nāgārjuna is that everything is empty; for Fazang that everything is identical to everything else; and for Nishida that everything depends on absolute nothingness. If the Principle of Sufficient Reason is playing a role in the derivation of such striking conclusions, then it looks that there are more options regarding the metaphysical structure of the world available to us than our own tradition typically courts. If, on the other hand, these striking cosmological conclusions are arrived at without any consideration of sufficient reason, then there may well be ways of reasoning about the overarching structure of reality that are powerful but unfamiliar to Western thinking. In this contribution, I explore what, if any, role the PSR might be playing in the thought of Nāgārjuna , Fazang and Nishida, and what we might be able to learn from it. (shrink)

A growing consensus in the philosophy and psychology of concepts is that while theories such as the prototype, exemplar, and theory theories successfully account for some instances of concept formation and application, none of them successfully accounts for all such instances. I argue against this ‘new consensus’ and show that the problem is, in fact, more severe: the explanatory force of each of these theories is limited even with respect to the phenomena often cited to support it, as each fails (...) to satisfy an important explanatory desideratum with respect to these phenomena. I argue that these explanatory shortcomings arise from a shared assumption on the part of these theories, namely, they take similarity judgements and application of causal knowledge to be discrete elements in a theory of concepts. I further propose that the same assumption carries over into alternative theories offered by proponents of the new consensus: pluralism, eliminativism, and hybrid theories. I put forth a sketch of an integrated model of concept formation and application, which rejects this shared assumption and satisfies the explanatory desiderata I discuss. I suggest that this model undermines the motivation for hybrid, pluralist, and eliminativist accounts of concepts. _1_ Introduction _2_ The Similarity-Based Approach and the Importance of Theory _2.1_ The similarity-based approach _2.2_ The selection desideratum _2.3_ Causal knowledge as satisfying the selection desideratum _3_ The Theory-Based Approach and the Importance of Similarity _3.1_ The theory-based approach _3.2_ The range desideratum _3.3_ Similarity as satisfying the range desideratum _4_ An Integrated Approach to Concepts _4.1_ An integrated model _4.2_ The integrated theory versus hybrid theories of concepts _5_ Conclusion. (shrink)

This volume explores the central problems and exposes intriguing new directions in the philosophy of mathematics, making it an essential teaching resource, ...

We argue that there is a conflict among classical theism's commitments to divine simplicity, divine creative freedom, and omniscience. We start by defining key terms for the debate related to classical theism. Then we articulate a new argument, the Aloneness Argument, aiming to establish a conflict among these attributes. In broad outline, the argument proceeds as follows. Under classical theism, it's possible that God exists without anything apart from Him. Any knowledge God has in such a world would be wholly (...) intrinsic. But there are contingent truths in every world, including the world in which God exists alone. So, it's possible that God contingently has wholly intrinsic knowledge. But whatever is contingent and wholly intrinsic is an accident. So, God possibly has an accident. This is incompatible with classical theism. Finally, we consider and rebut several objections. (shrink)

This paper examines the interplay between conceptual structure and the evolution of scientific concepts, arguing that concepts are fundamentally ‘forward-looking’ constructs. Drawing on empirical studies of similarity and categorization, I explicate the way in which the conceptual taxonomy highlights the ‘relevant respects’ for similarity judgments involved in categorization. I then propose that this taxonomy provides some of the cognitive underpinnings of the ongoing development of scientific concepts. I use the concept synapse to illustrate my proposal, showing how conceptual taxonomy both (...) facilitates and constrains the accommodation of newly discovered phenomena. I end by briefly considering the implications of the proposed approach for a normative evaluation of scientific concepts. (shrink)

Similarity‐based theories of concepts have a broad intuitive appeal and have been successful in accounting for various phenomena related to the formation and application of concepts. Their adequacy as theories of concepts has been questioned, however, as similarity is often taken as too flexible, too unconstrained, to be explanatory of categorization. In this article, I propose an account of similarity that takes the “foil” against which the target items are measured as integral to the process of comparison, making the similarity (...) relation a fundamentally triadic one. I argue that this account delivers more internal constraints on the process of comparison than the traditional, dyadic account of similarity does. Finally, I propose that this account is advantageous for a similarity‐based theory of concepts, as it easily integrates with the notion of conceptual taxonomy and uses it to deliver additional constraints on categorization. On such a theory of concepts, the foil, whose variability is in large part responsible for the flexible nature of similarity judgements, is turned within the framework of conceptual taxonomy to the very element that constrains similarity judgements in categorization. Therefore, this notion of similarity mitigates the worry that similarity is too flexible to be explanatory of categorization. (shrink)

In this essay, we consider questions arising from cases in which people request medical assistance in dying (MAiD) in unjust social circumstances. We develop our argument by asking two questions. First, can decisions made in the context of unjust social circumstance be meaningfully autonomous? We understand ‘unjust social circumstances’ to be circumstances in which people do not have meaningful access to the range of options to which they are entitled and ‘autonomy’ as self-governance in the service of personally meaningful goals, (...) values and commitments. People in these circumstances would choose otherwise, were conditions more just. We consider and reject arguments that the autonomy of people choosing death in the context of injustice is necessarily reduced, either by restricting their options for self-determination, through their internalisation of oppressive attitudes or by undermining their hope to the point that they despair.Second, should MAiD be available to people in such circumstances, even when a sound argument can be made that the agents in question are autonomous? In response, we use a harm reduction approach, arguing that even though such decisions are tragic, MAiD should be available. Our argument engages with relational theories of autonomy as well as recent criticism raised against them and is intended to be general in application, although it emerges in response to the Canadian legal regimen around MAiD, with a focus on recent changes in Canada’s eligibility criteria to qualify for MAiD. (shrink)

This article deploys Spinoza’s ethic of joy alongside Deleuze and Guattari’s exposition of micropolitics to expose how fascist desires and affects bloom and circulate through digital communications ecosystems that generally promote a diffusion or decentralisation of power. Beyond the steady barrage of alt-right content conscientiously documented by liberal journalists and progressive watchdogs, a more persistent and widespread fascist impulse permeates the very forms of some of our most banal digitally mediated acts and encounters. Rather than a sole looming authoritarian figurehead, (...) the network itself – particularly with the new image paradigms propelled by apps such as Instagram and TikTok – has become the rallying point for the circulation of fascistic affects, burnished through the art and ethos of following: of rules, routines, protocols, accounts. I contend that a joyful passion accompanies much of this everyday experience of keeping up with one’s feeds, engaging the platforms, participating in the spectacles. This is what Sontag, interrogating the appeal of the Third Reich, calls the ‘joy of followers’, a joy in fascist belonging, which is to suggest that fascist movements thrive not only on the circulation of negative affects like hatred and fear, but also on the profusion of pleasure and affiliation. Deleuze’s Spinoza, resolutely anti-fascist, helps us parse this situation as it plays out in the social media sphere. Spinoza offers a bipartite conceptualisation of joy that allows us to diagnose the pleasures particular to fascist belonging and network belonging alike as passive, partial and indirect. Ultimately, what we today share with historical fascisms is a ubiquitous aesthetic that merges art with life and bodies with information, and a corresponding ethos that cultivates conformism, barbarises critical thought and redirects joyful impulses into reactionary social forms. As fascistic power relations spread anew through digital cultures’ newly evolving modes of visuality, hapticity, vibration and expression, one can observe something of what Deleuze calls ‘sad joy’, a sort of joy rooted in conquest and domination. The aim of this article is to root out such sad joys, to appreciate their appeal, and ultimately to reject them in all their various forms. (shrink)

_Telling Stories to Change the World_ is a powerful collection of essays about community-based and interest-based projects where storytelling is used as a strategy for speaking out for justice. Contributors from locations across the globe—including Uganda, Darfur, China, Afghanistan, South Africa, New Orleans, and Chicago—describe grassroots projects in which communities use narrative as a way of exploring what a more just society might look like and what civic engagement means. These compelling accounts of resistance, hope, and vision showcase the power (...) of the storytelling form to generate critique and collective action. Together, these projects demonstrate the contemporary power of stories to stimulate engagement, active citizenship, the pride of identity, and the humility of human connectedness. (shrink)

The papers presented in this volume examine topics of central interest in contemporary philosophy of logic. They include reflections on the nature of logic and its relevance for philosophy today, and explore in depth developments in informal logic and the relation of informal to symbolic logic, mathematical metatheory and the limiting metatheorems, modal logic, many-valued logic, relevance and paraconsistent logic, free logics, extensional v. intensional logics, the logic of fiction, epistemic logic, formal logical and semantic paradoxes, the concept of truth, (...) the formal theory of entailment, objectual and substitutional interpretation of the quantifiers, infinity and domain constraints, the Löwenheim-Skolem theorem and Skolem paradox, vagueness, modal realism v. actualism, counterfactuals and the logic of causation, applications of logic and mathematics to the physical sciences, logically possible worlds and counterpart semantics, and the legacy of Hilbert’s program and logicism. The handbook is meant to be both a compendium of new work in symbolic logic and an authoritative resource for students and researchers, a book to be consulted for specific information about recent developments in logic and to be read with pleasure for its technical acumen and philosophical insights. Key Features - Written by leading logicians and philosophers - Comprehensive authoritative coverage of all major areas of contemporary research in symbolic logic - Clear, in-depth expositions of technical detail - Progressive organization from general considerations to informal to symbolic logic to nonclassical logics - Presents current work in symbolic logic within a unified framework - Accessible to students, engaging for experts and professionals - Insightful philosophical discussions of all aspects of logic -Useful bibliographies in every chapter - Written by leading logicians and philosophers - Comprehensive authoritative coverage of all major areas of contemporary research in symbolic logic - Clear, in-depth expositions of technical detail - Progressive organization from general considerations to informal to symbolic logic to nonclassical logics - Presents current work in symbolic logic within a unified framework - Accessible to students, engaging for experts and professionals - Insightful philosophical discussions of all aspects of logic - Useful bibliographies in every chapter. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Purity and Pollution: Resisting the Rehabilitation of a VirtueAmy Mullin“Purity” is a term used infrequently in contemporary academic literature. A survey of periodical indexes for the past ten years shows that references to purity occur predominantly in metallurgy. Purity is an increasingly important topic in anthropology, religious studies, and history, but it is a decidedly rare concern in philosophy. In my most recent search I found three references.Yet “purity” (...) was once a recurrent term in the philosophical tradition ranging from Plato through Augustine and Kant to Kierkegaard. Today when we encounter the many references to purity in the history of philosophy we too often filter them out. We assume either that “pure” is a generic term for good, or, in what seems a more knowing and sophisticated response, we read “pure” as a code term for chastity or sexual morality, the elimination, suppression or control of sexual desire. In both cases purity is written off either as a generic or as an old fashioned and rather embarrassing virtue. Hence it seems there is little reason for contemporary philosophical investigation into the rhetorical use of the language of purity and pollution.Three assumptions account for the lack of contemporary philosophical interest in the topic. First, it is assumed that purity is no longer a concern in twentieth-century philosophy. Second, purity in historical discourse is considered to be limited to a prudish or downright misogynist hostility to sex. Third and finally, it is assumed that the work historians and anthropologists have done recently into connections between purity beliefs and practices and social cohesion is irrelevant for philosophy. This is because purity in philosophy is supposed to be a resolutely individualist virtue, having little or nothing to do with unified and coherent communities.There are elements of truth to all three beliefs, but they also contain important distortions of the truth. As regards the first assumption, purity remains a concern in contemporary aesthetics, where it often means roughly something like a priori and apolitical; but I am interested in whether the concern with purity has survived in philosophies with ethical implications. [End Page 509] Here it is my contention that authenticity is the twentieth-century descendant of the virtue of purity.Second, there is much more to the rhetoric and practices of purity than concern with the sexual dimension of life, though this is a key aspect of most, and the beliefs and practices are often misogynist. There have been numerous anthropological documentations of ways in which purity beliefs, particularly an emphasis on sexual purity, are used to control women. Santi Rozario’s work, for instance, makes this point in her analysis of contemporary Bengali village life. 1 The connection between the language of purity and the practice of female circumcision, which I will not discuss in this paper, is in itself evidence enough of connections between purity beliefs and practices harmful to women. 2 However, I hope to show that there is more to purity than misogyny. Purity most basically is about order, both social and personal. 3My response to the second assumption, that purity masks an obsession with sexual control, indicates the source of my disagreement with the third, the contention that purity in philosophy is exclusively an individual virtue. Communal beliefs and practices associated with the language of purity and pollution are relevant to the philosophical treatment of purity because of the presence in both the practices and the philosophies of an interplay between social and personal order. As a result I believe an understanding of the dynamics of beliefs about purity in social practice can inform a philosophical concern with purity.First I investigate shifts in beliefs and practices concerning purity and pollution. I will concentrate on three models: ancient Greek (from the eighth to the third century BC), biblical to Talmudic Judaism (from the third century BC to the third century AD), and early Christian (from the first to the fifth century AD). These represent three traditions which have played a very significant role in shaping western civilization, theology, and philosophy. 4 They were also frequently interrelated in this period, as Christian and Jewish Platonists writing in Greek attest and of course as... (shrink)

_The Female Trickster_ presents a Post-Jungian postmodern perspective regarding the role of women in contemporary Western society by investigating the re-emergence of female trickster energy in all aspects of popular culture. Ricki Tannen explores the psychological aspects of what happened when women’s imagination was legally and psychologically enclosed millennia ago and demonstrates how the re-emergence of Trickster energy through the female imagination has the radical potential to effect a transformation of western consciousness. Examples are drawn from a diverse range of (...) sources, from Jane Austen, and female sleuth narratives, to Madonna and Sex and the City, illustrating how Trickster energy is used not to maintain power and control but to integrate and unite the paradoxical through humour. Subjects covered include: imagination and metaphor the traditional trickster law and the imagination humour: Eros using logos the postmodern female trickster. This highly original perspective on women's role in contemporary culture will offer readers a new vision of how humour psychologically operates as a healthy adaptation to trauma and adversity. It will be of great interest to all analytical psychologists and psychoanalysts as well as those in women's, cultural, legal and literary studies. (shrink)

This review discusses recent work on foundational questions about concepts. The first of these questions is whether concepts are context-independent bodies of knowledge, or context-dependent constructs, created on the fly. The second question is whether concepts are abstract, amodal representations, or whether they are embedded within the sensory-motor system. I discuss these two questions in light of empirical data from psychology and neuroscience, as well as theoretical considerations, and examine their implications for theories of concepts.