We present a series of arguments for logical nativism, focusing mainly on the meaning of disjunction in human languages. We propose that all human languages are logical in the sense that the meaning of linguistic expressions corresponding to disjunction (e.g. English or , Chinese huozhe, Japanese ka ) conform to the meaning of the logical operator in classical logic, inclusive- or . It is highly implausible, we argue, that children acquire the (logical) meaning of disjunction by observing how adults use (...) disjunction. Findings from studies of child language acquisition and from cross-linguistic research invite the conclusion that children do not learn to be logical—it comes naturally to them. (shrink)

Do foreign direct investment (FDI) and international business ventures promote positive social and economic development in emerging nations? This question will always prove contentious. First, the impacts differ according to context. Second, the social consequences and spillover effects of knowledge diffusion and technology-sharing may be limited and hard to measure. Third, contributions to enhancing social responsibility and improving living standards in host countries are delayed in effect, causally complex, and also hard to measure. Outcomes often critically depend on collaboration of (...) governments, international institutions, the business world, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Research in this area is challenging and requires interdisciplinary collaboration between economists, financial experts, sociologists, ethicists, and other specialists. This paper explores: (1) the evidence to support the proposition that FDI and international business improve social conditions in less-developed countries, and: (2) how these improvements are linked to strategies of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and ethical business practice. The paper draws insights from development, FDI, poverty alleviation, and bottom-of-the-pyramid (BOP) literature. Applications are demonstrated using examples from poverty-stricken areas of Sub-Saharan Africa. The paper attempts not only to argue theoretically but also to provide practical evidence. The approach is simultaneously descriptive, analytical, and prescriptive in order to address a wide audience. It also highlights issues and trends for further academic research and presents the viewpoint that some limitations lie in the nature of ethics frameworks widely referenced in business and that these often fail to consider the compatibility of ethical constructs with relevant incentives. In this vein, we explore the application of Homann’s framework for advantage and incentive-based ethics. (shrink)

Subjects and Simulations presents essays focused on suffering and sublimity, representation and subjectivity, and the relation of truth and appearance through engagement with the legacies of Jean Baudrillard and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe.

Roger Swyneshed, in his treatise on insolubles, dating from the early 1330s, drew three notorious corollaries from his solution. The third states that there is a contradictory pair of propositions both of which are false. This appears to contradict what Whitaker, in his iconoclastic reading of Aristotle’s De Interpretatione, dubbed “The Rule of Contradictory Pairs”, which requires that in every such pair, one must be true and the other false. Whitaker argued that, immediately after defining the notion of a (...) contradictory pair, in which one statement affirms what the other denies of the same thing, Aristotle himself gave counterexamples to the rule. This gives some credence to Swyneshed’s claim that his solution to the logical paradoxes is not contrary to Aristotle’s teaching, as many of Swyneshed’s contemporaries claimed. Insolubles are false, he said, because they falsify themselves; and their contradictories are false because they falsely deny that the insoluble itself is false. Swyneshed’s solution depends crucially on the revision he makes to the acount of truth and falsehood, brought out in his first thesis: that a false proposition can signify as it is, or as Paul of Venice, who took up and developed Swyneshed’s solution some sixty years later, puts it, a false proposition can have a true significate. Swyneshed gave a further counterexample to when he claimed that some insolubles, like future contingents, are neither true nor false. Dialetheism, the contemporary claim that some propositions are both true and false, is wedded to the Rule, and in consequence divorces denial from the assertion of the contradictory negation. Consequently, Swyneshed’s logical heresy is very different from that found in dialetheism. (shrink)

It has been suggested that our experiences of embodiment in general appear to constitute an experiential ground for dualist philosophy and that this is particularly so with experiences of dissociation, in which one feels estranged from one’s body. Thus, Drew Leder argues that these play “a crucial role in encouraging and supporting Cartesian dualism” as they “seem to support the doctrine of an immaterial mind trapped inside an alien body”. In this paper I argue that as dualism does not (...) capture the character of such experiences there is not even an apparent separation of self and body revealed here and that one’s body is experienced as uncanny rather than alien. The general relationship between our philosophical theorizing and the phenomenology of lived experience is also considered. (shrink)

The aesthetic sense we inherited from our successful ancestors drew them toward conditions that made for survival and reproductive success and repelled them away from conditions that impacted negatively on longevity and fertility. But for them, as for us, those desirable outcomes were incidental and uncalculated. Their search was for the beautiful and sublime. Aesthetic behaviours are apparent in our forerunner species about 400,000 years ago. They sometimes made symmetrical hand axes that were then not used. We can take (...) an aesthetic interest in more or less anything, but the aesthetic responses that are rooted in our biology include those to landscapes and environments, to non-human animals, and to the appearance and behaviour of our fellow humans. (shrink)

Roger Swyneshed, in his treatise on insolubles (logical paradoxes), dating from the early 1330s, drew three notorious corollaries of his solution. The third states that there is a contradictory pair of propositions both of which are false. This appears to contradict the Rule of Contradictory Pairs, which requires that in every such pair, one must be true and the other false. Looking back at Aristotle's treatise De Interpretatione, we find that Aristotle himself, immediately after defining the notion of a (...) contradictory pair, gave counterexamples to the rule. Thus Swyneshed's solution to the logical paradoxes is not contrary to Aristotle's teaching, as many of Swyneshed's contemporaries claimed. Dialetheism, the contemporary claim that some propositions are both true and false, is wedded to the Rule, and in consequence divorces denial from the assertion of the contradictory negation. (shrink)

This article examines the distinction that Russell drew between his work as a philosopher and his work as a journalist. It explains why, when warning against the threat posed by a nuclear arms race, Russell thought it better to write as a journalist (speaking on behalf of common sense) rather than as a philosopher. It is argued that to put aside philosophy in favour of common sense is, in this instance, a mistake.

My aim in this paper is to describe some of John Stuart Mill’s views about property rights in land and some implications he drew for public policy. While Mill defends private ownership of land, he emphasizes the ways in which ownership of land is an anomaly that does not fit neatly into the usual views about private ownership. While most of MiII’s discussion assumes the importance of maximizing the productivity of land, he anticipates contemporary environmentalists by also expressing concerns (...) about excessive exploitation of land for productive use. I extrapolate from these remarks to suggest changes that Mill might have favored regarding ownership rights ina world in which people aimed to decrease productivity. And, I suggest, it is a virtue of utilitarianism that it so readily supports changes in important principles when circumstances change significantly. (shrink)

Spinoza’s employment of essence and existence is well-known. Though there are precursors to Avicenna for the essence/existence distinction, it is Avicenna who firmly establishes it and many of the surrounding arguments for the rest of the Islamic, Jewish, and Christian traditions. Although there are myriad possible links, it is worth considering how Avicenna himself factors into Spinoza’s views since he is the major source for this tradition. I aim to show even tighter textual and conceptual connections between these philosophers, delineating (...) how Spinoza drew from Avicenna (directly or indirectly) on the definition of essence and the essence/existence distinction. Nevertheless, Spinoza departs from Avicenna, potentially regarding the tendency of essences for existence and especially regarding their universality and particularity. (shrink)

This chapter shows even tighter textual and conceptual connections between these philosophers, delineating how Spinoza drew from Avicenna on the definition of essence and the essence/existence distinction. Spinoza departs from Avicenna, potentially regarding the tendency of essences for existence and especially regarding their universality and particularity. Multiple doses of Avicennianism likely made their way into Spinoza's bloodstream. Avicenna's Najāt and the IP are the most likely sources for Maimonides's own knowledge of Avicenna. In medieval philosophy, including Avicenna accidents are (...) real beings and are isomorphic to Spinoza's modes. As may already be clear and is well‐attested, Avicenna and Spinoza agree that the essence/existence distinction only holds for things other than God. Spinoza's apparent insistence on essence as particular in itself seems to a more fundamental contrast with Avicenna and a more obviously modern/late medieval innovation than Spinoza's utilization of God's nominal essence in an ontological proof. (shrink)

John Dee’s mathematical interests have principally been studied through his Mathematicall praeface to Henry Billingsley’s 1570 translation of Euclid’s Elements. The focus here is broadened to include the notes he added to Books X–XIII of the Elements. I argue that this additional material drew on a manuscript text, the Tyrocinium mathematicum, that Dee wrote a decade earlier, probably as tutor to the youthful Thomas Digges. Using new evidence for this now-lost work, as well as his notes on Euclid, makes (...) it possible to clarify Dee’s approach to geometry. The contrasting positions adopted by his Parisian acquaintance Petrus Ramus also illuminate Dee’s geometrical choices and values. Unlike Ramus, Dee was not a pugnacious advocate of radical reform, yet he did look beyond the limits of Euclid’s geometry towards deeper disciplinary visions of knowledge. The first published work of his pupil Thomas Digges not only suggests how Dee shaped the younger man’s work but also reflects fresh light back on Dee’s own programme for a ‘more general art Mathematical.’. (shrink)

Barbara Stephen studied history at Girton College, Cambridge from 1891 to 1894. This history of the college, first published in 1933, drew on her previous publication Emily Davies and Girton College as well as on college reports, letters to and from the founders, and information obtained from staff of the college. The college was established on 16th October 1869 by Emily Davies and Barbara Bodichon, and was the first Cambridge college for women students. Women were not admitted to (...) full degrees at Cambridge until 1948, after Stephen's death, though Oxford had awarded degrees to women since 1920. The author probably never imagined that Girton would admit male undergraduates, as it has from 1979. Stephen's informative short history of the college's first sixty years is an intriguing document for those interested in the history of the University of Cambridge or of women's education. (shrink)

The incompleteness of the task of integrating the influences made upon Jonathan Edwards by Calvinism and the moral sense leaves open a great many questions central to identifying his ethical position with any detail. This should worry ethicists, theologians, and church historians alike. For the puzzle of what Edwards meant by virtue is at the heart not only of his ethics but of a great many strands of his thought. It must be pieced together from diverse sources; and there are (...) multiple meanings to be sifted through. But it is nevertheless possible to bring the concepts made available by the diverse moral traditions upon which Edwards drew into a generally coherent counterpoise. Such a counterpoise is not merely of antiquarian interest. Lacking a precise account of Edwards's ethical position, it is awkward to talk about applying it to the problems of the twenty-first, or any, century. (shrink)

This special issue arose from a joint conference of the History of Education Society, UK and the Australian and New Zealand History of Education Society, held in Malvern in Worcestershire, England in 2016 on the theme ‘sight, sound and text in the history of education’. The conference drew together media and educational historians, as well as archivists and museum professionals, to examine both methodological issues and a range of examples of sensory and textual histories. The three-day event, as well (...) as being enriching for its international character, proved that although much work has already been done in this area, there is so much more to consider and exploit when it comes to the study of the ‘new’ sonic and visual sources and their intertextual relationship with the documentary, as well as traditional understandings of ‘text’. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Human Nature in Early Franciscan Thought: Philosophical Background and Theological Significance by Lydia SchumacherStephen TomlinsonLydia Schumacher, Human Nature in Early Franciscan Thought: Philosophical Background and Theological Significance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. Pp. vii + 343. ISBN: 978-1-009-20111-7. $120.00This latest monograph from Lydia Schumacher is a welcome addition to the growing body of contemporary scholarship on the early Franciscan intellectual tradition. It offers something of a consolidation of (...) Schumacher's recent work, particularly on the Summa Halensis, where she and others have sought to clarify and establish the sources behind many of the fundamental philosophical and theological positions articulated by prominent members of the early Franciscan Order and faculty at the University of Paris in the first decades of the thirteenth century. Success in this endeavor has afforded scholars a more accurate sense of both the diverse array of auctoritates, particularly non-Christian, from whom these theologians freely drew, as well as the subsequent influence of their work upon the later medieval intellectual tradition. In this respect, the present study, which surveys the field of anthropology as developed and articulated by the friars in the early thirteenth century at the University of Paris, aims to deconstruct certain long-standing narratives regarding early Franciscan theology and especially philosophy, particularly its opposition or aversion to Aristotle on the one hand, and its status as a simple reiteration of Augustine on the other. In support of this objective, Schumacher brings forth compelling evidence that suggests a more complex and unique synthesis, one not only between Augustine and other Christian authors, but especially Arabic and Jewish sources, whose ideas were readily received and subsequently transmitted under Augustine's name. The governing logic for this synthesis, as Schumacher argues, was to secure intellectual justification of and rationale for the religious vision set forth by Francis of Assisi. [End Page 249]Following a brief introduction, where Schumacher establishes her principal thesis and reviews pertinent trends in contemporary scholarship, the first two chapters situate the focus of the book by reviewing the tradition of the philosophy of soul as it developed in the ancient world and early Middle Ages, and its subsequent reception in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. We are first introduced to a survey of seminal contributions in the field of psychology, including the medical works of Galen and Avicenna, as well as certain writings of Gregory Nyssa and John Damascene (pg. 13-15). Moving into the twelfth century, attention is given to the Cistercian authors, particularly William of St. Thierry and Isaac of Stella, and the influential De spiritu et anima (pg. 15-21). During this time the Middle Ages also saw the first translations of key anthropological texts from the Islamic and Jewish tradition, including Avicenna's De Anima, Book of the Cure, and Avicebron's Fons Vitae (pg. 21-31). Once into the thirteenth century, Schumacher provides a helpful overview of the reception and early attempts at a synthesis of the foregoing tradition undertaken at the University of Paris by certain secular masters such as William of Auxerre and Philip the Chancellor, as well as John of La Rochelle and the early Franciscan friars involved in the composition and compilation of the Summa Halensis (pg. 31-64).Having established the historical context and background to the intellectual ferment taking place at the University of Paris in the early thirteenth century, the book then shifts to a systematic examination of various topics of interest within the field of anthropology. Here, Schumacher observes that when it comes to the friars, they do intend to adhere to a basic Augustinian framework as it regards certain fundamentals such as the substance and composition of the soul, its various powers, and its relationship to the body, all the while supplementing and integrating this paradigm with material taken from other non-Christian philosophers, especially Avicenna and Avicebron (pg. 65-103). In light of this, the majority of the subsequent chapters examine closely the teaching of the early friars, especially John of La Rochelle, on the various powers of the soul and in particular, cognition and the mechanics of epistemology (pg. 104-227).Additionally, Schumacher traces the doctrine of... (shrink)

The 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury drew on the naturalism of Locke to open up a naturalistic reading of experience conceived as a matter of reality revealing pattern perception that was lost to view in the impact of subsequent idealist readings of Locke's epistemology offered by Bishop Berkeley (1685–1753) and David Hume (1711–1776). This essay recovers and explicates Shaftesbury's alternative to idealist conceptions of pattern making.

This study investigated personal perceptions and comprehensions of self-ascribed paranormal abilities. Twelve participants with supposed supernatural powers took part in semi-structured interviews exploring the origin, phenomenology, and nature of their powers. Interview transcripts were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis, a qualitative method that identifies patterns within data. Four major themes expressed meanings and representations held by participants: Formative Influences, Subjective Paranormal Experience, Embodied Processes, and Perception of Reality. Consideration of themes identified an inextricable link between perception, interpretation, and belief in (...) ability. Within narratives, interviewees outlined, contextualised, and established the validity of their powers. They drew upon supporting autobiographical evidence from their life histories and obfuscated and/or discounted conventional explanations. Generally, accounts reflected individual attempts to comprehend and justify the nature and experience of professed abilities. The authors discuss these processes and suggest ways to extend and develop ensuing research. (shrink)

We are even less aware of our internal organs and the physiological processes that keep us alive. In this fascinating work, Drew Leder examines all the ways in which the body is absent—forgotten, alien, uncontrollable, obscured.

In Return to Reason, Stephen Toulmin argues that the potential for reason to improve our lives has been hampered by a serious imbalance in our pursuit of ...

In this article, from the 2009 Oxford University Press collection Epistemic Value, I criticize existing accounts of epistemic normativity by Alston, Goldman, and Sosa, and then offer a new view.

Transnational corporations have become actors with significant political power and authority which should entail responsibility and liability, specifically direct liability for complicity in human rights violations. Holding TNCs liable for human rights violations is complicated by the discontinuity between the fragmented legal/political structure of the TNC and its integrated strategic reality and the international state system which privileges sovereignty and non-intervention over the protection of individual rights. However, the post-Westphalian transition—the emergence of multiple authorities, increasing ambiguity of borders and jurisdiction (...) and blurring of the line between the public and private spheres—should facilitate imposing direct responsibility on transnational firms. Mechanisms for imposing direct responsibility on TNCs are considered including voluntary agreements and international law. However, I conclude that a hybrid public-private regime which relies on non-hierarchical compliance mechanisms is likely to be both more effective and consistent with the structure of the emerging transnational order. (shrink)

Stephen Toulmin argues that the potential for reason to improve our lives has been hampered by a serious imbalance in our pursuit of knowledge. The centuries-old dominance of rationality has diminished the value of reasonableness. Toulmin issues a powerful call to redress the balance between rationality and reasonableness.

Introduction : a search for icons -- Burke in brief : a "philosophical" primer -- Old seeds, new soil : the land of Paine -- John and J.Q. Adams : federalist persuasions -- Democratic America : the ethos of liberalism -- American Whigs : a conservative response -- The Gilded Age : eclectic interpretations -- Theodore Roosevelt : blazing forward, looking backward -- Woodrow Wilson : confronting American maturity -- Modern times : conjunctions and consensus -- Natural law : a (...) neo-traditionalist revival -- The Cold War : existential threat redux -- Contemporary conservatives : victories and illusions -- Conclusion : a world without fathers. (shrink)

"Biophilia" is the term coined by Edward O. Wilson to describe what he believes is humanity's innate affinity for the natural world. In his landmark book Biophilia, he examined how our tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes might be a biologically based need, integral to our development as individuals and as a species. That idea has caught the imagination of diverse thinkers. The Biophilia Hypothesis brings together the views of some of the most creative scientists of our time, (...) each attempting to amplify and refine the concept of biophilia. The variety of perspectives -- psychological, biological, cultural, symbolic, and aesthetic -- frame the theoretical issues by presenting empirical evidence that supports or refutes the hypothesis. Numerous examples illustrate the idea that biophilia and its converse, biophobia, have a genetic component: fear, and even full-blown phobias of snakes and spiders are quick to develop with very little negative reinforcement, while more threatening modern artifacts -- knives, guns, automobiles -- rarely elicit such a response people find trees that are climbable and have a broad, umbrella-like canopy more attractive than trees without these characteristics people would rather look at water, green vegetation, or flowers than built structures of glass and concrete The biophilia hypothesis, if substantiated, provides a powerful argument for the conservation of biological diversity. More important, it implies serious consequences for our well-being as society becomes further estranged from the natural world. Relentless environmental destruction could have a significant impact on our quality of life, not just materially but psychologically and even spiritually. (shrink)

Why is it that some instances of disagreement appear to be so intractable? And what is the appropriate way to handle such disagreements, especially concerning matters about which there are important practical and political needs for us to come to a consensus? In this paper, I consider an explanation of the apparent intractability of deep disagreement offered by hinge epistemology. According to this explanation, at least some deep disagreements are rationally unresolvable because they concern ‘hinge’ commitments that are unresponsive to (...) rational considerations. This explanation, if correct, seems to have troubling implications for how we should respond to deep disagreement. If my position on a topic is not responsive to rational considerations, then what choice have I but to dogmatically hold to that position, and simply dismiss the views of those with whom I disagree? I address this problem by identifying an attitude of intellectual humility that is appropriate to have towards one's hinge commitments, and suggest that this attitude provides the basis for a non-rational, constructive way to resolve deep disagreement. (shrink)

What does it mean to think of philosophy in the condition of modernism, in which its relation to its past and future has become a relevant problem? This book argues that the writings of Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Kierkegaard are best understood as responsive (each in their own way) to such questions. Through detailed analysis of these authors' most influential texts, Stephen Mulhall reorients our sense of the philosophical work each text aims to accomplish, engendering a critical dialogue between them (...) from which the elements of a new conception of philosophy might emerge. (shrink)

Hume's Enlightenment Tract is the first full study for forty years of David Hume's Enquiry concerning Human Understanding. The Enquiry has, contrary to its author's expressed wishes, long lived in the shadow of its predecessor, A Treatise of Human Nature. Stephen Buckle presents the Enquiry in a fresh light, and aims to raise it to its rightful position in Hume's work and in the history of philosophy.

The option of being ‘spiritual but not religious’ deserves much more philosophical attention. That is the aim here, taking the work of Robert Solomon as a starting point, with focus on the particular issues around viewing life as gift. This requires analysis of ‘existential gratitude’ to show that there can be gratitude for things without gratitude to someone for providing things, and also closer attention to the role that metaphor plays in cognition. I consider two main concerns with gift and (...) gratitude thinking, that the nonreligious justification is too instrumentalist in its approach and that viewing life as gift, whether in a religious or nonreligious way, is simply too optimistic. (shrink)

Recent studies of naturalistic face‐to‐face communication have demonstrated coordination patterns such as the temporal matching of verbal and non‐verbal behavior, which provides evidence for the proposal that verbal and non‐verbal communicative control derives from one system. In this study, we argue that the observed relationship between verbal and non‐verbal behaviors depends on the level of analysis. In a reanalysis of a corpus of naturalistic multimodal communication (Louwerse, Dale, Bard, & Jeuniaux, ), we focus on measuring the temporal patterns of specific (...) communicative behaviors in terms of their burstiness. We examined burstiness estimates across different roles of the speaker and different communicative modalities. We observed more burstiness for verbal versus non‐verbal channels, and for more versus less informative language subchannels. Using this new method for analyzing temporal patterns in communicative behaviors, we show that there is a complex relationship between verbal and non‐verbal channels. We propose a “temporal heterogeneity” hypothesis to explain how the language system adapts to the demands of dialog. (shrink)

In his second book, Tierney argues that the purpose of education must move to the heart of the educational debate. Purpose will significantly influence what schools and the education system as a whole will do next.

Hypotheses regarding the selective pressures driving the threefold increase in the size of the hominid brain since Homo habilis include climatic conditions, ecological demands, and social competition. We provide a multivariate analysis that enables the simultaneous assessment of variables representing each of these potential selective forces. Data were collated for latitude, prevalence of harmful parasites, mean annual temperature, and variation in annual temperature for the location of 175 hominid crania dating from 1.9 million to 10 thousand years ago. We also (...) included a proxy for population density and two indexes of paleoclimatic variability for the time at which each cranium was discovered. Results revealed independent contributions of population density, variation in paleoclimate, and temperature variation to the prediction of change in hominid cranial capacity (CC). Although the effects of paleoclimatic variability and temperature variation provide support for climatic hypotheses, the proxy for population density predicted more unique variance in CC than all other variables. The pattern suggests multiple pressures drove hominid brain evolution and that the core selective force was social competition. (shrink)

The norms of simplicity, convenience, unfussiness, and self-control guide Diogenes the Cynic, Zeno of Citium, Chrysippus, Seneca, Musonius Rufus, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius in approaching food. These norms generate the precept that meat and dainties are luxuries, so Stoics should eschew them. Considerations of justice, environmental harm, anthropogenic global climate change, sustainability, food security, feminism, harm to animals, personal health, and public health lead contemporary Stoics to condemn the meat industrial complex, debunk carnism, and select low input, plant-based foods.

Much has been made of the so-called “speculative turn” in contemporary philosophy. For some, this turn marks the “end of phenomenology” and the dawn of a new empiricism in European philosophy. For others, it amounts to nothing more than a renewal of the straw-person accusation of psychologism against phenomenology. In truth, it is neither. Instead, this article argues that while at times mutually critical of one another, speculative materialism and phenomenology are best understood as parallel projects with shared trajectories and (...) aims, common concerns, and even comparable methods. The bene????it of reading these two apparently divergent camps as parallel projects is that it allows phenomenology to understand the diversity of its own history anew and, in light of this, to draw from speculative realism as a resource for rethinking its objectives and methods in its pursuit of a robust post-Kantian realism. (shrink)

One of the most persistent and poignant human experiences is the sensation of longing--a restlessness perhaps best described as the unspoken conviction that something is missing from our lives. In this study, Drew M. Dalton attempts to illuminate this experience by examining the philosophical thought of Emmanuel Levinas on longing, or what Levinas terms "metaphysical desire." Metaphysical desire, according to Levinas, does not stem from any determinate lack within us, nor does it aim at a particular object beyond us, (...) much less promise any eventual satisfaction. Rather, it functions in the realm of the infinite where such distinctions as inside and outside or one and the other are indistinguishable, perhaps even eliminated. As Levinas conceives such longing, it becomes a mediator in our relation to the other--both the human other and the divine Other. -/- Dalton follows the meandering trail of Levinas's thought along a series of dialogues with some of the philosophers within the history of the Western tradition who have most influenced his corpus. By tracing the genealogy of Levinas's notion of metaphysical desire--namely in the works of Plato, Heidegger, Fichte, Schelling, and Otto--the nature of this Levinasian theme is elucidated to reveal that it is not simply an idealism, a "hagiography of desire" detached from actual experience and resulting in a disconnect between his phenomenological account and our own lives. Rather, Levinas's account of metaphysical desire points to a phenomenology of human longing that is both an ethical and religious phenomenon. In the end, human longing is revealed to be one of the most profound ways in which a subject becomes a subject, arising to its "true self," and hearing the call to responsibility placed upon it by the Other. -/- Throughout, Dalton explicates the nuance of a number of key Levinasian terms, many of which have been taken from the Western philosophical tradition and reinscribed with a new meaning. Eros, the "Good beyond being," shame, responsibility, creation, the trace, the il y a, and the holy are discovered to be deeply tied to Levinas's account of metaphysical desire, resulting in a conclusion regarding longing's role in the relationship between the finite and the Infinite.". (shrink)

Undergraduate students with no prior classroom instruction in mathematical logic will benefit from this evenhanded multipart text by one of the centuries greatest authorities on the subject. Part I offers an elementary but thorough overview of mathematical logic of first order. The treatment does not stop with a single method of formulating logic; students receive instruction in a variety of techniques, first learning model theory (truth tables), then Hilbert-type proof theory, and proof theory handled through derived rules. Part II supplements (...) the material covered in Part I and introduces some of the newer ideas and the more profound results of logical research in the twentieth century. Subsequent chapters introduce the study of formal number theory, with surveys of the famous incompleteness and undecidability results of Godel, Church, Turing, and others. The emphasis in the final chapter reverts to logic, with examinations of Godel's completeness theorem, Gentzen's theorem, Skolem's paradox and nonstandard models of arithmetic, and other theorems. Unabridged republication of the edition published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. New York, 1967. Preface. Bibliography. Theorem and Lemma Numbers: Pages. List of Postulates. Symbols and Notations. Index. (shrink)

Foucault, Power, and Education invites internationally renowned scholar Stephen J. Ball to reflect on the importance and influence of Foucault on his work in educational policy.

Bodily pain and distress come in many forms. They can well up from within at times of serious illness, but the body can also be subjected to harsh treatment from outside. The medical system is often cold and depersonalized, and much worse are conditions experienced by prisoners in our age of mass incarceration, and by animals trapped in our factory farms. In this pioneering book, Drew Leder offers bold new ways to rethink how we create and treat distress, clearing (...) the way for more humane social practices. Leder draws on literary examples, clinical and philosophical sources, his medical training, and his own struggle with chronic pain. He levies a challenge to the capitalist and Cartesian models that rule modern medicine. Similarly, he looks at the root paradigms of our penitentiary and factory farm systems and the way these produce distressed bodies, asking how such institutions can be reformed. Writing with coauthors ranging from a prominent cardiologist to long-term inmates, he explores alternative environments that can better humanize—even spiritualize—the way we treat one another, offering a very different vision of medical, criminal justice, and food systems. Ultimately Leder proposes not just new answers to important bioethical questions but new ways of questioning accepted concepts and practices. (shrink)