Using the principles of John Rawls' theory of justice, this book offers an alternative political vision; one which describes a mode of governance that will enable communities to implement a sustainable and socially just future. Rawls described a theory of justice that not only describes the sort of society in which anyone would like to live but that any society can create a society based on just institutions. While philosophers have demonstrated that Rawls's theory can provide a framework for the (...) discussion of questions of environmental justice, the problem for many philosophical theories is that discussions of sustainable development open the need to address questions of ecological interdependence, historical inequality in past resource use and the recognition that we cannot afford to ignore the limitations of growth. These ideas do not fit in comfortably in standard discourse about theories of justice. In contrast, this book frames the discussion of global justice in terms of environmental sustainability. The author argues that these ideas can be used to develop a coherent political theory which reconciles cosmopolitan arguments and the non-cosmopolitan or nationalist arguments concerning social and environmental justice. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of environment philosophy and ethics, moral and political philosophy, global studies and sustainable development. (shrink)

One of the most important recent developments in the discussion of Kierkegaard's ethics is an interpretation defended, in different forms, by Philip Quinn and Stephen Evans. Both argue that a divine-command theory of moral obligation is to be found in Works of Love . Against this view, I argue that, despite significant overlap between DCT and the view of moral obligation found in Works of Love , there is at least one essential difference between the two: the former, but not (...) the latter, is committed to the claim that, necessarily, p is morally obligatory only if God commands that p. (shrink)

One important version of the problem of divine freedom is that, if God is essentially good, and if freedom logically requires being able to do otherwise, then God is not free with respect to willing the good, and thus He is not morally praiseworthy for His goodness. I develop and defend a broadly Molinist solution to this problem, which, I argue, provides the best way out of the difficulty for orthodox theists who are unwilling to relinquish the Principle of Alternate (...) Possibilities. The solution is that the divine essence includes the property of transworld goodness: i.e., for any possible morally significant choice that God could have faced, if God had actually faced it, God would have chosen to will the good. This view makes coherent the otherwise paradoxical theological intuition that it is within God’s power to do something evil, but He would not ever do such a thing. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Learning to BreatheFive Fragments Against RacismB. Venkat Mani (bio)For Dr. JLW, for all Black academics and students1. Air HungerI know you, Derek Chauvin. You may think that we first met on May 25, 2020, in Minneapolis. I was called George Perry Floyd. For you, I was just another Black man, a potential criminal. For me, you were not a police officer, but the knee that stands for racism. You (...) kneeled on my windpipe for 9 minutes and 29 seconds. Those were neither my first nor my last memories.You may choose not to recognize me, as you always have. But I do. I recognize every bone, muscle, tendon, pointy curve of the cap, every contour of your strong, heavy, determined, calculating, conniving knee that presses on my windpipe with a false sense of racist superiority. 9 minutes and 29 seconds. As often as you can.We have a history. You have never missed the opportunity of kneeling on my windpipe. You hauled me into your slave ships from various African ports along the Atlantic, then you kneeled on my windpipe all over your cotton and tobacco plantations in the Americas. We met again on schooners from Indian shores journeying across the Indian and Pacific oceans. With slavery banned in the British empire, you turned me into an indentured laborer. You made me put my thumb imprint on a document you created, in a script I could not read, of a language I could not speak. Then you threw me thousands of miles away in Mauritius, Fiji, and numerous Caribbean islands, pressing on my windpipe on sugarcane plantations. My wife, children, sisters, mothers, aunts, brothers, uncles, nephews, nieces, grandparents, great grandparents, we all have lived through those fatal 9 minutes and 29 seconds: on water and land. Repeatedly. Consistently. Incessantly.You want specific dates? April 8, 1857, Barrackpore, Northern India. My name was Mangal Pandey, you called me a Sepoy. You hanged me for standing up against my subjugation by your British East India Company. Against your rule over my land and my people. With your many titles [End Page 41] and names: Major-General Sir Henry Havelock, Lieutenant-General Sir Colin Campbell, Brigadier-General Charles Windham, you rampaged through the streets of Delhi, Meerut, Lucknow, killing anyone in your way so I could be a jewel in Victoria's crown. January 29, 1863, Bear River, Idaho. I was one among the Shoshone of Bia Ogoi, you were Colonel Patrick Connor. You came to us on a frigid morning and killed us by the hundreds. November 15, 1884, the Congo Conference, Berlin. You were called Chancellor Otto von Bismarck and were acting at the behest of sharecropping interests of King Leopold the Second. Your name for me was a "savage." You set up a society to civilize me while you plundered my bounty. You started drawing lines through land, rivers, mountains, deserts. For you, it was the Scramble for Africa. For me, bloody murder. You knelt on my windpipe, smoking a pipe with tobacco my people had grown. April 13, 1919, Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar. You were called Brigadier General Reginald Edward Harry Dyer. For you, I was just a troublemaking native disrupting the civilized business of the Empire. You surrounded our peaceful gathering in Amritsar and opened fire. Your Nobel Laureate Rudyard Kipling claimed that "you did your duty as you saw fit." By killing us in thousands until the bullets ran out. Rikki Tikki Tavi. May 31, 1921, Tulsa, Oklahoma. Inspired by Jim Crow, your knees came running to us in mobs to massacre us. October 19, 1926, Imperial Conference, London. Your name was Field Marshall the Right Honorable Jan Christian Smuts. For you, I was one among the many "colored" subjects from the Cape Colony. You spoke vehemently against mixing my people with your people. Eloquently, I was told, in favor of apartheid.You know very well, Chauvin, that our acquaintance neither begins in 1857 nor ends in 1926. I could take you on a grand tour of the world and give you all the dates when you appeared in different forms. Your self-induced conviction of racial supremacy over me remained the same... (shrink)

One of the most important recent developments in the discussion of Kierkegaard's ethics is an interpretation defended, in different forms, by Philip Quinn and Stephen Evans. Both argue that a divine-command theory of moral obligation (DCT) is to be found in "Works of Love". Against this view, I argue that, despite significant overlap between DCT and the view of moral obligation found in "Works of Love", there is at least one essential difference between the two: the former, but not the (...) latter, is committed to the claim that, necessarily, p is morally obligatory only if God commands that p. (shrink)

General preface -- Preface to the second edition -- What is philosophy of religion? -- Philosophy of religion and other disciplines -- Philosophy of religion and philosophy -- Can thinking about religion be neutral? -- Fideism -- Neutralism -- Critical dialogue -- The theistic God : the project of natural theology -- Concepts of God -- The theistic concept of God -- A case study : divine foreknowledge and human freedom -- The problem of religious language -- Natural theology -- (...) Proofs of God's existence -- Classical arguments for God's existence -- Ontological arguments -- Cosmological arguments -- Teleological arguments -- Moral arguments -- Conclusions: The value of theistic argument -- Religious experience -- Types of religious experience -- Models for understanding experience -- Experience of God as direct and mediated -- Are religious experiences veridical? -- Checking experiential claims -- Special acts of God : revelation and miracles -- Special acts -- Theories of revelation -- Is the traditional view defensible? -- What is a miracle? -- Is it reasonable to believe in miracles? -- Can a revelation have special authority? -- Religion, modernity, and science -- Modernity and religious belief -- Naturalism -- Do the natural sciences undermine religious belief? -- Objections from the social sciences -- Religious uses of modern atheism -- The problem of evil -- Types of evil, versions of the problem, and types of response -- The logical form of the problem -- The evidential form of the problem -- Horrendous evils and the problem of hell -- Divine hiddenness -- Faith(s) and reason -- Faith : subjectivity in religious arguments -- The evidentialist challenge to religious belief -- Reformed epistemology -- The place of subjectivity in forming beliefs -- Interpretive judgments and the nature of a cumulative case -- Can faith be certain? -- Faith and doubt : can religious faith be tested? -- What is faith? -- Could one religion be true? (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:What Power Do I Have? A Nursing Student’s Concerns Lead to a Passion for EthicsAnonymous OneThe day began like many in our ten–week rotation, around the large table in the brightly lit ICCU nurses’ station. Report, which was given by the night charge nurse, included information on all the patients on the unit. Since I had cared for A. G. the previous day, I was eager to know (...) how she had spent the night. She had a debilitating neuro–muscular disease known as myasthenia gravis. Placed on the ventilator days before, it was reported that she was likely to be dependent on the machine for life. In the late 1970’s there were very few facilities that accepted ventilator dependent patients. She might be with us for a long time.When I entered her room for the first time, I saw a frail older woman with kind eyes and a warm smile. She was breathing with the help of the ventilator through her tracheostomy tube. I learned through her chart that she had no known family. On the day I took care of her, no one came to see her and she had no visitors the previous evening. She lived in a local long–term care facility and was brought to the hospital after she developed respiratory distress. A. G. was unable to move in the bed due to her condition and required frequent suctioning along with turning and repositioning for comfort.Despite her weakness, A. G. was able to communicate silently by mouthing the words for what she wanted and by nodding and shaking her head. I found her to be quite skilled in non–verbal [End Page 93] communication since it took minimal effort to understand what she wanted, but the activity tired her easily. I had just completed A. G.’s morning care when her physician came in to examine her. After completing his assessment, he stopped and leaned in closely to speak with her. He began asking a number of questions about whether she wanted to spend the rest of her life in this way, on a ventilator. She shook her head. Continuing the line of questioning in different ways, she responded to him. I wondered why he was asking these questions. After seeing her response, the physician asked me to get 30 mg of morphine from the narcotics cabinet. Although I didn’t understand the implication of the request, I complied.While I was retrieving the medication from the narcotics cabinet, the charge nurse came to tell me I was being reassigned to a new admission. When I asked why, she told me she couldn’t discuss it, but asked me to please do what she said. I left her standing there, wondering what was going on. After assisting with the new admission, I went back to see A.G.; her door was closed. When I opened the door, the ventilator tubing hung over the side of the machine. Looking down at the bed, I was shocked to find A.G. had been disconnected. She was dead. In a state of disbelief and panic, I sought out the charge nurse to find out what happened. It was clear that I was not to know. I asked her a number of questions but she adeptly changed the subject and redirected me to other activities. By then it was lunchtime and my instructor had left the unit. I asked to be excused and went to seek her out.When I told my instructor what happened, a look of doubt came over her face. “You think Doctor M. killed your patient? That would never happen.” Although I tried to tell her the story, she too, dismissed me, telling me my story didn’t make sense. I was distraught. An overwhelming sense of dread came over me and I began to cry. She encouraged me to go home, which I did.Happily, I had the weekend to recover before returning to clinical. I never found out what happened to A. G. and neither my instructor nor the charge nurse ever spoke to me about my experience. In fact, it seemed no one believed my story... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Surprised DivideAnonymous OneAnonymous OneNot long after our daughter was born, my wife and I were expecting a son. We were busy new parents, so her pregnancy with our second child went by quickly and without a lot of the fuss that a first pregnancy brings. To our surprise, our son was born a few weeks early but aside from a little jaundice he was a happy, healthy baby.My parents (...) were caring for our daughter while we were at the hospital. After my son's birth, we were excited for them to bring our daughter up to the hospital to visit her new baby brother. The hospital photographer came by and took photos of our two kids together and photos of our son swaddled and sleeping soundly in a basket. Other family members stopped by to meet the new baby as well. It was a happy time.Little did we know that a couple of hours later we would be faced with a communication breakdown. My wife and I usually pride ourselves on how well we are able to communicate and plan our future.I grew up heavily Catholic, attending parochial schools through high school graduation. Meanwhile, my wife's family are Unitarian Universalists. You could not have two more polar opposite religions! We are used to having different points of view. We have always talked through many of life's choices and have both had to make compromises in order to have a successful relationship. It was on that happy day of my son's birth that we discovered we forgot to discuss one important topic.As our family was gathered in my wife's hospital room, joyfully celebrating the newest addition, the doctor entered the room to check on my wife and said it was time to do the circumcision if we wanted.Without hesitation, I responded in the affirmative, then the doctor and I looked over at my wife, who was staring at us with saddened, conflicted eyes. I was confused. Didn't she want the same thing for our son that I did? Surprisingly we never discussed this decision, at least not that I remember. I don't recall her ever telling me she was against it.My wife stated that she wasn't prepared to make a decision because she didn't know what our son would want and she was worried about him experiencing pain. She worked hard for 9 months to grow this baby boy, and he was so little. I understood her anguish in the thought of letting someone alter his tiny body.I am circumcised myself. My background provided me guidance and an expectation that this would be happening, so it was a nonissue for me. I never considered a scenario in which my son would not be circumcised. In truth, it felt ridiculous to even contemplate not circumcising him. My words of reassurance that it would be fine and my explanation to my wife that this was just one of the many decisions we would need to make for him and our other child did little to settle her.It was clear that no one (including me) had discussed this with my wife prior to this point, which was unfortunate. The doctor described the process and tried to reassure my wife that it was a safe and minor procedure. This still left my wife in a conflicted state. The other men in my family there visiting at the time chimed in to reassure my wife that this is what our son would want. She reluctantly agreed to the circumcision, giving in to peer pressure I suppose. I'm confident that an alliance of circumcised men telling her that our son would also want to be circumcised is what swayed her. Frankly, I'm glad they happened to be there when the doctor stopped by to help back up my position.But while our son was out of the room undergoing his procedure, my wife remained conflicted and saddened. We were both surprised at each other's response. My opinion on this was coming from the position of expectation and tradition, while she was worried about not knowing... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Second GuessingAnonymous OneThis is difficult for me to write because I have tremendous respect for every doctor that has been involved in my son’s care. I firmly believe that they chose and administered the highest level of care that they assessed as appropriate; that they cared for him both personally and professionally as if he were their own child; and that he was in the care of acknowledged giants (...) in their fields. I write this knowing that I will share this narrative with these doctors, in order that they can better understand the decisions I was faced with and the guilt I must live with feeling that I may not have made the best possible informed choice for my son, because of this trust and relationship.Let me describe my oncologist. I say “my” instead of my son’s whose doctor he really is, because he is mine too in every sense of the word. He cares passionately about his work and about my son specifically; he engenders my trust because he is compassionate, brilliant, and available to me for concerns both great and small. His accomplishments have saved lives and will continue to impact his field. He became the narrow bridge I walk, that is the only thing between me and dangerous water and rocks waiting below; the balancing bar on the tightrope that is the only thing that stands to keep me from falling into the abyss and breaking my neck. And this made it difficult for me to disagree with him and seek a second opinion. Because his unspoken words were, “Don’t you trust me that I will do the best for your child?” and I could not answer then what I would answer now, “Nobody is infallible and sometimes we may miss something that someone else can see despite how much we know or care.”It is ironic, I think, that sometimes a layperson, because of her limited knowledge, can see more clearly where a professional may not.My son was diagnosed at age six with Grade II ependymoma in 2006. He was treated with surgery, a complete resection, and then 33 rounds of conformal radiation. He recurred in 2012, and was diagnosed with anaplastic ependymoma Grade III. He had another surgery, with the same surgeons, who pronounced it another successful total resection. This is where my story begins.The MRI taken the next day showed a sliver of something there. My oncologist, much sought after for his diagnostic abilities in reading MRI’s showed slight concern that it may be residual tumor, but both the surgeons and the MRI report came back negative, identifying the sliver as inflammation. Six [End Page 9] weeks later, 3 days before we were scheduled to leave out of town to receive proton beam radiation, I insisted on another MRI. The sliver was enlarged from the post–op MRI. My oncologist said it was tumor; one surgeon said it was inflammation and the other surgeon abstained from speculation. The MRI report stated it appeared to be recurrent tumor.Now here was my dilemma as a parent. The prognosis today of radiation on residual tumor for ependymomas is very bad, especially with a residual tumor of his size. On the other hand, my oncologist felt that going in for surgery with no guarantee of a total resection anyway, was incurring a risk of damage to my child that may impact severely on his quality of life.My oncologist felt that for many medical reasons, inherent risks of surgery, uncertainty about status of the scan reading, quality versus quantity of life, and—I think—an understandably pessimistic view of the possibility of cure for recurrent anaplastic grade III ependymoma, he was against another surgery, and opted to continue with radiation with the tumor as is.I am part of two support groups on line, one for parents of children with any type of brain tumor and the other specific for ependymoma parents. The clinical and anecdotal knowledge of these groups as a whole is phenomenal because, unfortunately, we have parents who have experienced and researched almost everything about this illness, in all its stages. When I was faced... (shrink)

In this paper, we offer a brief, critical survey of contemporary work on truth. We begin by reflecting on the distinction between substantivist and deflationary truth theories. We then turn to three new kinds of truth theory—Kevin Scharp's replacement theory, John MacFarlane's relativism, and the alethic pluralism pioneered by Michael Lynch and Crispin Wright. We argue that despite their considerable differences, these theories exhibit a common "pluralizing tendency" with respect to truth. In the final section, we look at the underinvestigated (...) interface between metaphysical and formal truth theories, pointing to several promising questions that arise here. (shrink)

Prior research on the impact of mandatory quotas in one dimension of diversity, on other dimensions, shows contradictory results. We seek to resolve this puzzle by relying on theory in social psychology on homophily and recategorization processes in hiring. In the context of a law mandating a gender quota on Indian boards, we predict and find that boards respond to the law by hiring new women directors who are similar to existing directors in terms of caste and community dimensions. We (...) find that this homophily effect is impactful to the extent that even high-status women directors cannot overcome it. At the aggregate level, these organizational-level practices result in caste and community inequalities remaining intact despite the introduction of 1309 new women directors. We contribute to research on inequality, board of directors, and affirmative action. (shrink)

This paper examines the problem of sameness in terms of being it the classical problem of personal identity and various philosophical positions on the existence of the self as a substantive subject. I call this subject an ethical Self, which involves different notions of ego, being, substance, and personhood. The denial of the existence of a permanent self by philosophers like Hume and Buddhists does not seem justified in regard to one's identity or sameness over time. The no-self theorists do (...) not provide any strong ground for how to explain the notion of personhood and one's actions in a moral space without accepting a substantive self as a doer that continues over time. They certainly seem to have failed in establishing a logical connection between their no-self theories on the one hand and the necessity of an ethical self in their philosophical accounts on the other. Rejecting the no-self theory in defense of the self theory of personal identity, I conclude this paper with a note that sameness of a person over time is the prerequisite of morality, law, and present and future plans and that there is no harm in considering a permanent self, as Jīva of Jainism, to solve the problem of personal identity. There is also no harm in preferring the self theory over the no-self theory since the former, unlike the latter, does give a meaning to spirituality and transcendence. (shrink)

Gandhi’s writings on moral issues propose an easiest formula to the world to establish harmony and peace in the global society. In a world where people are confronting a psychological fear of sudden terror and violence, the Gandhian formula of ‘non-violence (ahimsa) as a means’ to form a perfect harmonious world is getting strong attention of the world-community. Truth and non-violence are the two most valuable ingredients of Gandhian moral thoughts. For him, Truth or God is the end and non-violence (...) is the mean and the two can not be separated. They are more effective in life when they are used in their united form. This unity can be actualized only through the motive of ‘love to humanity’ without separating one person from another on any ground. He argues that the unity of truth and non-violence is a better way to have a moral and harmonious life. In this paper, I will focus upon the Gandhian formula in wider perspective, which reflects in his political activities and his writings as well, with the contention that it is highly applicable to normalize the violence rooted in different parts of the world at both the levels of religious and political. I will contend that Gandhian notion of truth and non-violence in terms of ends and means may play a medicinal role to harmonize the world suffering from extremism and terrorism. (shrink)

Attempts to solve the Trolley Problem by means of a single principle have proved unpersuasive. Nor can the intuition about Transplant be adequately grounded in the hypothetical dissent of rational contractors. It is explained by the initial liability principle, that loss should lie where it falls unless there is sufficient reason to shift it. If we did not think we should accept misfortune in such cases and thought that minimising loss of life was sufficient reason to shift the loss we (...) should not be according others the minimum respect and treatment we feel is their due. The intuition about Trolley is explained by the affinity of that case to the pure case where the choice is between saving many and saving fewer, where minimising misfortune is the only credible option. But these considerations are not yet enough to accommodate the cases that lie between the extremes of Trolley and Transplant. We can handle the intermediate cases by attempting to assimilate them to one or other paradigm and to one another with a sensitivity to morally relevant and irrelevant differences that seeks initially to be faithful to the values reflected by our moral intuitions. Those intuitive judgements are unlikely to survive such an examination wholly unmodified. (shrink)

After showing how Aristotle justifies his doctrines by demonstrating how they resolve one/many problems, the author uses this justification to clarify the doctrines and what is puzzling in them.

This chapter argues that some paradigmatic cases of collective action, called mass-action, build upon alienation. Individual alienation qualifies as a coordinative mechanism, which explains collective actions performed by large groups. Alienation requires individuals to detach from their personal stance, and bracket their personal attachments and motivations. Differently from strategic and normative coordinative devices, alienation bypasses strategic normative regulations, such as law and enforcement. However, individuals retain moral responsibility for mass action, which are aligned to delegated actions.

Despite great progress in our theoretical and empirical investigations of boredom, a basic issue regarding boredom remains unresolved: it is still unclear whether the construct of boredom is a unitary one or not. By surveying the relevant literature on boredom and arousal, the paper makes a case for the unity of the construct of boredom. It argues, first, that extant empirical findings do not support the heterogeneity of boredom, and, second, that a theoretically motivated and empirically grounded model of boredom (...) (the functional account) supports the view that the construct of boredom is a unitary one. (shrink)

Composition as identity is the view that a whole is identical to its parts taken collectively. Such a view raises the question of how the same portion of reality can be both one thing and many things. A primitivist view holds that there is no explanation to be had and that we simply need to accept that being one thing and being many things are compatible. One might think that we can do better by resorting to relativization. A (...) relativist view may seem to explain how the same portion of reality can be both one thing and many things on the basis of the assumption that the portion of reality is these ways relative to different ‘concepts’ or ‘counts’. This paper discusses whether relativization truly leads to a satisfactory explanation of how something can be both one thing and many things. The conclusion will be that, when we consider the current accounts of the involved parameters, these relativizations make no explanatory progress. (shrink)

The paper examines philosophical issues that arise in contexts where one has many different models for treating the same system. I show why in some cases this appears relatively unproblematic (models of turbulence) while others represent genuine difficulties when attempting to interpret the information that models provide (nuclear models). What the examples show is that while complementary models needn’t be a hindrance to knowledge acquisition, the kind of inconsistency present in nuclear cases is, since it is indicative of a (...) lack of genuine theoretical understanding. It is important to note that the differences in modeling do not result directly from the status of our knowledge of turbulent flows as opposed to nuclear dynamics—both face fundamental theoretical problems in the construction and application of models. However, as we shall, the ‘problem context(s)’ in which the modeling takes plays a decisive role in evaluating the epistemic merit of the models themselves. Moreover, the theoretical difficulties that give rise to inconsistent as opposed to complementary models (in the cases I discuss) impose epistemic and methodological burdens that cannot be overcome by invoking philosophical strategies like perspectivism, paraconsistency or partial structures. (shrink)

Originally published by the Center for Hellenic Studies, this book investigates the extent to which the Presocratics were hamstrung by their lack of detailed conceptual framework in the case of the words "one" and "many." This investigation is based on Aristotle's analyses.

Originally published by the Center for Hellenic Studies, this book investigates the extent to which the Presocratics were hamstrung by their lack of detailed conceptual framework in the case of the words "one" and "many." This investigation is based on Aristotle's analyses.

The problem of the one and the many is central to ancient Greek philosophy, but surprisingly little attention has been paid to Aristotle's treatment of it in the Metaphysics. The Central Books of the Metaphysics are widely recognised as the most difficult portion of a most difficult work. This title aims to examine the Central Books.

Hermeneutical injustice, as a species of epistemic injustice, is when members of marginalized groups are unable to make their experiences communicatively intelligible due to a deficiency in collective hermeneutical resources, where this deficiency is traditionally interpreted as a lack of concepts. Against this understanding, this paper argues that even if adequate concepts that describe marginalized groups’ experiences are available within the collective hermeneutical resources, hermeneutical injustice can persist. This paper offers an analysis of how this can happen by introducing the (...) notion of hermeneutical excess: the introduction of additional concepts into collective hermeneutical resources that function to obscure agents’ understanding of the lived experiences of marginalized groups. The injustice of hermeneutical excesses happens not due to hermeneutical marginalization (the exclusion of members of marginalized groups from the construction of hermeneutical resources), but rather hermeneutical domination: when members of dominant groups have been inappropriately included in the construction of hermeneutical resources. By taking as exemplary cases the concepts of “reverse racism” and “non-consensual sex” this paper shows how such excesses are introduced as a kind of defensive strategy used by dominant ideologies precisely when progress with social justice is made. (shrink)

There have been recent disagreements in the philosophy of neuroscience regarding which sorts of scientific models provide mechanistic explanations, and which do not. These disagreements often hinge on two commonly adopted, but conflicting, ways of understanding mechanistic explanations: what I call the “representation-as” account, and the “representation-of” account. In this paper, I argue that neither account does justice to neuroscientific practice. In their place, I offer a new alternative that can defuse some of these disagreements. I argue that individual models (...) do not provide mechanistic explanations by themselves. Instead, individual models are always used to complement a huge body of background information and pre-existing models about the target system. With this in mind, I argue that mechanistic explanations are distributed across sets of different, and sometimes contradictory, scientific models. Each of these models contributes limited, but essential, information to the same mechanistic explanation, but none can be considered a mechanistic explanation in isolation of the others. (shrink)

In this paper, I present a case study in the field of crop protection and discuss its epistemological implications. Through the advent of a novel class of objects at the end of the 1970s in Europe and the USA, namely plant elicitors that trigger the plant’s own defence reactions, we witness how dissent between epistemic communities appears where assimilation had been the rule. The convergence between the industry and the academia as a coherent “phytosanitary universe”, despite the fact that they (...) are made of several epistemic communities, is put to the test by plant elicitors, which do not fit exactly within existing categories. The plasticity of plant elicitors who can serve both as epistemic things and technical objects does not suffice to qualify them as boundary objects bridging diverging communities. In particular, the specific arrangement of epistemic communities that they reveal can be described as Matryoshka dolls. This empirical account provides a fresh look at the relation between physical object... (shrink)

Editorial for ‘One Christ—Many Witnesses: Marking the Completion of the Regnum Edinburgh Centenary Series’, a special issue to celebrate the Regnum Edinburgh Centenary Issue.

A number of attempts have been made to construct a plausible ontology of rock music. Each of these ontologies identifies a single type of ontological entity as the “work” in rock music. Yet, all the suggestions advanced to date fail to capture some important considerations about how we engage with music of this tradition. This prompted Lee Brown to advocate a healthy skepticism of higher-order musical ontologies. I argue here that we should instead embrace a pluralist ontology of rock, an (...) ontology that recognizes more than one kind of entity as “the work” in rock music. I contend that this approach has a number of advantages over other ontologies of rock, including that of allowing us to make some comparisons across ontological kinds. (shrink)

The aim of the present investigation is to sketch a new approach to analysing normativity. First I locate the problem of normativity in the landscape of contemporary philosophy and focus on the dispute between naturalism and antinaturalism. Then I discuss the so-called top-down approach to studying normativity, to which I oppose the bottom-up approach inspired by contemporary philosophy of science. I see the integration of these approaches as enabling investigations of normative phenomena that do not reduce them to just one (...) type of normativity. (shrink)

What is truth? Michael Lynch defends a bold new answer to this question. Traditional theories of truth hold that truth has only a single uniform nature. All truths are true in the same way. More recent deflationary theories claim that truth has no nature at all; the concept of truth is of no real philosophical importance. In this concise and clearly written book, Lynch argues that we should reject both these extremes and hold that truth is a functional property. To (...) understand truth we must understand what it does, its function in our cognitive economy. Once we understand that, we'll see that this function can be performed in more than one way. And that in turn opens the door to an appealing pluralism: beliefs about the concrete physical world needn't be true in the same way as our thoughts about matters -- like morality -- where the human stain is deepest. (shrink)

One anaphora (e.g., this is a good one) has been used as a key diagnostic in syntactic analyses of the English noun phrase, and “one‐replacement” has also figured prominently in debates about the learnability of language. However, much of this work has been based on faulty premises, as a few perceptive researchers, including Ray Jackendoff, have made clear. Abandoning the view of anaphoric one (a‐one) as a form of syntactic replacement allows us to take a fresh look at various uses (...) of the word one. In the present work, we investigate its use as a cardinal number (1‐one) in order to better understand its anaphoric use. Like all cardinal numbers, 1‐one can only quantify an individuated entity and provides an indefinite reading by default. Owing to unique combinatoric properties, cardinal numbers defy consistent classification as determiners, quantifiers, adjectives, or nouns. Once the semantics and distribution of cardinal numbers, including 1‐one, are appreciated, many properties of a‐one follow with minimal stipulation. We claim that 1‐one and a‐one are distinct but very closely related lexemes. When 1‐one appears without a noun (e.g., Take one), it is nearly indistinguishable from a‐one (e.g., take one)—the only differences being interpretive (1‐one foregrounds its cardinality while a‐one does not) and prosodic (presence versus absence of primary accent). While we ultimately argue that a family of constructions is required to describe the full range of syntactic contexts in which one appears, the proposed network accounts for properties of a‐one by allowing it to inherit most of its syntactic and interpretive constraints from its historical predecessor, 1‐one. (shrink)

This paper investigates the One over Many, first as it was first introduced by Plato. Here, it is argued, the One over Many can be understood in at least two senses, both different from, but in a sense included in, the sense in which the One-over-Many is regarded as an argument for the existence of universals. In both of these senses, it is argued, it is possible to accept the One-over-Many while denying the existence of universals.This (...) established, I examine the argument from the One-over-Many as given within the framework of Armstrong’s theory of universals. Within this framework there is another thesis of great import, that of scientific realism. I will try to show that there exists a problematic tension, if not an outright contradiction, between this thesis and that of the argument from the One-over-Many. It seems that, as soon as you accept a scientific realism, the support provided by the argument from the One-over-Many dissolves, or, vice versa, if you claim support from the argument the results of your scientific realism seem to be contradicted. I will argue that the way to resolve this tension is to give up the argument from the One-over-Many. In particular, this will results in a weakening of Armstrong’s case for the existence of universals. In general, discussing the argument from the One-over-Many brings to the fore a feature common to all senses given to the One-over-Many, and thereby a feature affecting all theories of properties (since all theories of properties in one sense or another refer on the One-over-Many). (shrink)

What if we looked at the notion of the end of literature as a truism, only lacking in plurality and logical rigor? Nicholas Brown explains that one of these “ends” can be regarded as internal to the functioning of literature itself, and as such, the point of departure for a more complete formulation of a Marxist literary criticism. For Brown, this formulation reveals that both literary criticism and Marxism are to be regarded as what he calls “formal materialisms,” a mode (...) of analysis that must be completed and revised every time in light of an object it cannot posit beforehand. What this means for a Marxist literary-critical project subsequently becomes all the more apparent in Brown’s reading of another end of literature – postmodernism. (shrink)

This article explores rival interpretations of Badiou’s strategy behind the claim ‘mathematics is ontology’, from his construction of an alternative history of being to that of Heidegger to his exposure of the radical contingency of the ‘decisions on being’ carried out by transformative practices in the four conditions of philosophy: art, politics, love and science. The goal of this exploration is to open up the possibility of another strategy that responds to Badiou’s initial intuition – that being is multiple – (...) by embracing the writing of multiple ontologies in the sphere of action. (shrink)

A short response to ‘One Christ—Many Witnesses: Vision of Mission and Unity, Edinburgh and Beyond’ by Dana Robert.

Muslim sages and the perennial philosophy -- The Quran, sunnah, and Muslim sages -- The perennial philosophy -- Tthe Quran, sunnah, and the perennial philosophy -- Classical Muslim sages and the perennial philosophy -- Contemporary Muslim sages and the perennial philosophy (Frithjof Schuon, Titus Burckhardt, Martin Lings, Seyyed Hossein Nasr) -- Some conclusions -- Lovers of sophia -- Ramakrishna and Ibn 'Arabi -- Sri Ramakrishna -- Muhyi al-Din ibn 'Arabi -- Some conclusions -- Thou art dhat -- Metaphysical expressions of (...) non-duality in Islam -- Advaita Vedanta in light of the perennial philosophy -- Non-dual metaphysics in the Islamic tradition -- Some conclusions -- Christic sanctity in Islam -- Husayn and Hallaj -- Christic sanctity according to Ibn 'Arabi -- Husayn ibn 'Ali -- Mansur Hallaj -- Some conclusions -- The eliatic function in Islam -- Khidr and the mahdi -- Khidr -- The mahdi -- Some conclusions -- Hermetic wisdom in Islam -- Islamic philosophy, symbolism, and the arcane sciences -- Some conclusions -- God's viceregent on earth -- Seyyed Hossein Nasr's defense of nature -- Life and writings on nature -- A critique of modern philosophy and science -- A defense of nature -- The wisdom and forms of Islam. (shrink)

Summary Historical scholars have recently turned their attention to local communities, resulting in a lively debate about the role of regions and provinces in Western Europe. This has quite predictably led many to question this resurgence of local identities in order to discover the cultural roots and the geographical boundaries of these identities and their interaction with the formation of nation-states in the literary, artistic and political practices of the past two centuries. This article provides an introduction to one (...) specific transnational intellectual network, the Guild of Saint Thomas and Saint Luke, which in the latter half of the nineteenth century served as a forum for the different local identities which were influential in the Gothic (and Catholic) Revival of the Low Countries. The interaction among the most influential members during the annual excursions of the Guild and the choice for the locations of these meetings resulted in different ideological discourses about the position and the borders of ‘Christian art’ in the Low Countries. Due to both internal and external influences these discourses very soon integrated into the national frame, making the definition of a potentially common style for the whole area impossible. The analysis is based on existing literature on regionalism and the Neo-Gothic Revival, and on archive material concerning the first meetings of the Guild. The above-mentioned observations offer the opportunity to underline the peculiarity of transnational permanent networks composed by a fluctuating number of participants and to stimulate debate about the applicability of this example to other geo-cultural contexts. (shrink)

We currently have on offer a variety of different theories of causation. Many are strikingly good, providing detailed and plausible treatments of exemplary cases; and all suffer from clear counterexamples. I argue that, contra Hume and Kant, this is because causation is not a single, monolithic concept. There are different kinds of causal relations imbedded in different kinds of systems, readily described using thick causal concepts. Our causal theories pick out important and useful structures that fit some familiar cases—cases (...) we discover and ones we devise to fit. (shrink)

Uses the problem of the one and the many as a lens through which to examine the Central Books of Aristotle's Metaphysics.

In Truth as One and Many, Michael Lynch offers a new theory of truth. There are two kinds of theory of truth in the literature. On the one hand, we have logical theories, which seek to construct formal systems that are consistent, while also containing a predicate which have as many as possible of the properties which we ordinarily take the English predicate ‘is true’ to have; salient examples include Tarski’s and Kripke’s theories of truth. On the other (...) hand, we have metaphysical theories, which seek to give a non-formal account of the nature of truth – of what truth consists in, of what it means to say that something is true; salient examples include correspondence, coherence and deflationary theories of truth. Lynch’s theory – functionalism about truth – is of the second sort.The theory takes its start from a number of principles which Lynch classifies as truisms about truth:Objectivity: The belief that p is true if, and only if, with respect to the belief that p, things are as they are believed to be.Norm of Belief: It is prima facie correct to believe that p if and only if the proposition that p is true.End of Inquiry: Other things being equal, true beliefs are a worthy goal of inquiry.Lynch argues that other familiar principles can be derived from these: for example, Objectivity together with some auxiliary principles and definitions yields versions of the T-schema, and of the principle that beliefs can be true without being warranted and vice versa. These principles are supposed to give the nominal essence of truth – to constitute our folk theory of truth. Lynch …. (shrink)

This paper reexamines Kierkegaard's work with respect to the question whether truth is one or many. I argue that his famous distinction between objective and subjective truth is grounded in a unitary conception of truth as such: truth as self-coincidence. By explaining his use in this context of the term ‘redoubling’ [Fordoblelse], I show how Kierkegaard can intelligibly maintain that truth is neither one nor many, neither a simple unity nor a complex multiplicity. I further show how these (...) points shed much-needed light on the relationship between objective and subjective truth, conceived not as different kinds or species of truth but as different ways in which truth manifests itself as a standard of success across different contexts of inquiry. (shrink)

This paper surveys the relationship between mission and Christian unity from the Edinburgh 1910 conference to the present. It then identifies several factors that cohere in recent missiological reflection, and concludes with a scriptural model for our contemporary pilgrimage together.

In my paper I tackle the question of whether the term “philosophy” should be restricted to a specific tradition or whether it could be used also for other traditions. I argue in favor of the latter solution from extrinsic and intrinsic viewpoints. From extrinsic viewpoint, more liberal use of the term could facilitate exchanges between scholars of different traditions of thought. From intrinsic viewpoint, I propose an understanding of philosophy as creation of concepts and concepts as contractions and embodiment of (...) reality, not as abstractions or representations of it. (shrink)