In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Commentary on “Minds, Memes, and Multiples”Michael Bavidge (bio)Multiple Personality Disorder challenges the idea we have of ourselves—selves whose essential characteristics are simplicity, identity, transparency. Stephen Clark argues that we should look behind the myth of a unitary self to an older tradition which represents personal integration not as a given but as something to be striven for, “a distant, luminous goal,” a “light” over the multiple parts (...) of the human personality, a therapeutic and personal ideal of ourselves as persons separate from the ideas that invade us and the experiences that flow through us.He argues that this notion has a number of advantages. It is compatible with the data of Multiple Personality Disorder. It avoids Cartesian myths while providing a self substantial enough to meet both philosophers’ demands for an explanation of the coherence of experience and clinicians’ requirements for a therapeutic objective.Clark sees Multiple Personality Disorder as an exotic manifestation of the unstable and fractured nature of familiar experience. He points up the complexities of our personalities and the passivity of our normal experience. So our everyday experience comes together with the psychiatric disorder to encourage a looser, more dispersed notion of the self than has been felt necessary since Descartes.The notion of self which we think of as Cartesian (though, Clark suggests, Descartes may never have accepted it), caught on as part of the settlement between the emerging sciences and older wisdom. The basis of the settlement was that the world was to be made amenable to scientific investigation and our innermost selves were to be protected from it. This requires that the self has to be all the things that the rest of the world is not—non-spatial, privately accessible, outside determinist, causal chains, simple and indivisible. The settlement was never stable, and, as contemporary arguments over the cognitive sciences demonstrate, it is as controversial today as ever. Multiple Personality Disorder adds psychiatric considerations to the evidence piling up against the Cartesian self.However, the diagnosis is extremely controversial. A highly critical editorial in the British Journal of Psychiatry in March 1995 suggests that the condition is largely generated within therapy. 1 The diagnosis, as the New Scientist (June 17, 1995) reported, seems excessively subject to trends and fashions. 2 Clark shares these reservations, but he concludes that there is now strong evidence of a “real condition.” Yet he does not discuss what he means by a “real condition.” Certainly he intends to exclude malingering or mere therapist suggestion. Nevertheless, he prefers to interpret the disorder as a matter of one [End Page 29] person having different strategies for dealing with a stressful world, rather than as the emergence of a plurality of persons. Some psychiatrists will think that his acceptance, however qualified, is too much of a concession, while others may feel that he is not allowing the alters, and therefore the condition itself, to be “real” enough.Clark’s philosophical remarks are also circumspect, but ambitious claims are there. He wants a re-appraised, strong theory of the self, though he doubts that the truth of such a theory could ever be established. Nevertheless, for Clark, we need a notion of self as “substance, a real being”; we discover and rediscover it; “it becomes aware of itself in me.”Apart from its philosophical advantages, the notion of self he wishes to revive has therapeutic value. Autonomy is the therapeutic target. Understood in Cartesian terms, Multiple Personality Disorder presents paradoxes of autonomy. Cognitive autonomy is the defining characteristic of the Cartesian self; when we have multiple persons, the question arises: autonomy for whom? The difficulties are softened if our idea of self allows for plurality, opacity and divergence within the one person, so the prospect held out to the patient is the possibility of repossessing the fragmented parts of his or her life.Clark engages in a two-fold maneuver for making sense of Multiple Personality Disorder. He revives a looser philosophical concept of self, and he interprets the disorder as an extension of ordinary experience in which there is a divergence of coping strategies rather than a plurality of egos. One could argue that Clark is too optimistic... (shrink)

ABSTRACT The purpose of this article is to supply a justification in moral philosophy for considering the grossly depraved criminal to be less than a normally responsible agent. Decisions concerning the responsibility of a person depend upon our ability to act and react morally with that person. The argument is that when we reflect on the implications of (1) the moral role that desires play in excusing or condemning actions and (2) the minimum moral requirements of punishment, we realise that (...) a moral community does not exist between us and the grossly depraved. That is, we cannot apply key moral categories simpliciter, including the notion of guilt. (shrink)

Cora Diamond’s discussions of the ethics of our treatment of animals offer a critique of conceptions of morality which regard our ethical responses as founded on reasons which ought to be reasons for anyone. Diamond takes issue with accounts of our treatment of animals based on their possession of capacities which are shared with us. She offers instead a concept of the moral life, as a form of life—inherited, shared and negotiated—only within which can moral reasons count as reasons at (...) all. Our fellow creatures have some share in this life, but one that must be recognized as partial and problematic.In this discussion, we offer an account which is consistent with Diamond’s general perspective. But one which also offers a more generous account of ways in which the discoveries of the ethological sciences dynamically reshape the place of animals in our shared moral life. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Under the Floorboards:Examining the Foundations of Mild Cognitive ImpairmentMichael Bavidge (bio)KeywordsAlzheimer’s disease, culture, dementia, normal aging, science"Building a mystery: Alzheimer disease, mild cognitive impairment, and beyond" (Gaines and Whitehouse 2006) is an absorbing and important case study of how Alzheimer's disease (AD) came to be seen as a disease and how mild cognitive impairment (MCI) has been constructed in recent years as a related incipient condition.The interdisciplinary approach (...) taken in the article produces findings of very different sorts, which are then marshaled to challenge the status of AD and MCI. The factors identified as contributing to the emergence of dementia as a disease include the inconclusive nature of the empirical evidence relating to the causes of dementia, the divergence in the paradigms of the biological sciences, the social pressures resulting from the aging of the population, consumerism in medicine, research funding, the profit motive in the pharmaceutical industries, and our "hypercognitive culture."There is a danger in a short article drawing on detailed work in different disciplines that no single argument is conclusive and the combination of inconclusive arguments remains unsatisfactory. Nevertheless, the picture that emerges is convincing. It is interesting to follow the details of a particular case history to track the intricate interlacing of clinical findings and social decision making that enter into the construction of a disease. The article traces the factors that encouraged the identification of dementia as a widespread, treatable condition and the diagnostic techniques and treatments that determined the delineation of the disease.In the case of AD and MCI, the implications of this process of construction extend beyond taxonomy. They call into question our attitude to aging. Do we see aging as itself a pathology? When Professor Tom Kirkwood writes "from a biological point of view, there is nothing necessary or inevitable about aging" (2001, xi), he does not mean to deny that as the years pass people get older (inevitably); he means that the deteriorations that at present we cannot but see as normal features of aging, are not inevitable. Do we have a spurious ideal of competence based on a time-slice taken from what we like to think of the prime of our lives? Why do we not think of the "cognitive [End Page 75] impairments" of childhood and adolescence as pathological? These are fundamental questions about our experience and understanding of living, aging and dying and they add layers of significance to the topic of the paper (Bavidge 2006).The main focus of the article is to expose the complex process involved in the classification of dementia as "a degenerative, biological, clinical entity" (Gaines and Whitehouse 2006, XX) and to raise doubts about its distinction from normal aging. Not everyone will be happy that so much weight is placed on disease as a dysfunctional clinical entity. Nor will everyone think that so much hangs on the disease status of dementia and MCI. However, on any account, the contrast between disease and normal aging has become less clear because our understanding of both terms of the comparison has become less secure. The question "Is dementia a disease?" is matched by the question "Is aging normal?"Many of the disabilities or degenerations associated with aging are now understood to be conditions that could be avoided, cured, or controlled. So although the article raises doubts about the stability of the category of AD, parallel problems have arisen about normal aging. If important elements of what we classify as dementia should be seen as normal human development, it is equally the case that some aspects of what we accept as part of the normal aging experience should be seen as pathological. The authors assert "we have not argued that there is no 'there' there. Rather, we suggest that the mystery of the 'there' (i.e., AD, MCI) may not be much different (if at all) from, and probably is, the mystery of the 'everywhere' (i.e., aging)" (Gaines and Whitehouse 2006, 61).The article is an exercise in the sociology of knowledge. This will be enough in itself to raise some hackles. It is interesting how an historical and sociological approach to the sciences has... (shrink)

This book brings together disparate strands of ToM research, lays out historical roots of the idea, and indicates better alternatives.

Professor Ziman's project in his paper 'No man is an island' is to promote the understanding of science as a social enterprise. His main enemy is what he calls 'methodological solipsism' according to which 'the world of things and beings is surveyed and interpreted from the point of view of a single individual', and scientists think of themselves as lone explorers relying only on 'the evidence of their own eyes and their rational inferences concerning the hidden mechanisms by which these (...) personal percepts may be generated'. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Demystifying the Mystery of Alzheimer's as Late, No Longer Mild Cognitive ImpairmentPeter J. Whitehouse (bio)Keywordsaging, Alzheimer’s disease, deconstruction, mild cognitive impairmentProfessor Tom Kirkwood and Michael Bavidge's comments are welcome additions to our discourse as both emphasize the importance of considering mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's disease (AD) in relationship to the normal biological and cultural processes of aging. Whereas I agree with my colleague and co-author, (...) Atwood Gaines' response, I wish to add my own commentary to update the reader concerning the dynamic political processes at work in the social construction and deconstruction of MCI and AD. I have referred to MCI as autodeconstructing AD because whatever we come to think of the MCI label on the spectrum of cognitive aging should alter our beliefs about the ultimate utility of the concept of AD. Tensions in the field of study of MCI have increased since the project reported in this journal began. The social science and philosophical contributions toward understanding MCI need to inform our debate now; otherwise, we will be less effective at influencing a critical debate for society about its relationships to medicine, science, and modern capitalism.This past year, Ron Petersen, the major proponent of the concept of MCI was awarded the prestigious Potamkin Prize for research in Alzheimer's disease by the American Academy of Neurology. The National Institute on Aging (NIA) placed the discovery of MCI as first on the list of contributions during twenty years of research funded through hundreds of millions of dollars poured into the NIA Alzheimer's Research Centers. Some have even suggested that we relabel MCI of the amnestic type, Petersen syndrome. Yet, John Morris, who was co-awarded the Potamkin Prize, has continued to write that MCI is early AD and most recently has suggested (Morris 2006) that we should revise our diagnostic criteria. He joins me and a growing list of other so-called thought leaders who believe (but do not always state publicly) that the term MCI is not useful clinically. Lon Schneider (2005) has recently joined the camp of critics publicly by suggesting that MCI is [End Page 87] not only confusing clinically but is now possibly retarding research.The proliferation of different kinds of MCI indicates that we are studying heterogeneous processes of brain aging. Whereas, John Morris suggests that we relabel MCI as early AD, I have suggested the converse. For example, in a grand rounds lecture at Johns Hopkins in March 2004, I used the lecture title "LNLMCI (late no longer MCI)" as a synonym for AD.Kirkwood is right to compare the quest for biological therapy for AD to the search to treat aging processes in other organs. He has been an outspoken critic of anti-aging medicine quackery that claims that aging itself is a disease that can be reversed today. But, if AD is brain aging, are we not in fact creating a "disease" category that raises false hopes and expectations?Kirkwood also points out that aging is a lifespan process. To prevent dementia in older individuals, we should prevent damage to neurons in younger individuals. Recently, it has been claimed, for example, that exposure to lead in young animals makes these animals more at risk for amyloid deposition in later life (Basha et al. 2005). Whether or not lead directly affects the pathogenesis of AD, it seems eminently reasonable to try to prevent damage to neurons in young children so that they may have maximum cognitive capacity throughout their lifespan.Almost ten years ago, when I stepped down as the editor of the Alzheimer's Disease and Associated Disorders Journal and as John Morris took over this responsibility, I wrote an editorial calling for the end of AD (Whitehouse 2001). In other words, I argued that thinking through the invention of the term mild cognitive impairment reveals that we are attempting to assign medical categories to what are a heterogeneous set of processes that affect our brains as we age. At the hundredth anniversary of the first case of what we have come to call Alzheimer's disease, perhaps it is time to reflect on the individual and social... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Introduction:The Heat of Mild Cognitive ImpairmentJulian C. Hughes (bio)Keywordsaging, explanation, mild cognitive impairment, understanding, valuesDebates about mild cognitive impairment (MCI) are generating heat, albeit civilized heat. But under the surface, as I think the papers in this special issue demonstrate, the civilized heat comes from a good deal of passion. One way in which philosophy can contribute to the debate is by making plain the sources of this passion, (...) so that the motivating forces are clearer.One motivating force is this: There will be people who do not have dementia but who have symptoms or signs that might predict dementia, which cause them concern, whom we might help by early intervention. The intervention might involve advice and support, or it might involve some form of drug treatment; and in the utopia of our dreams, it might involve prevention. All of this is very motivating for clinical scientists. It also offers a laudable motivation to pharmaceutical companies, who simultaneously must have regard to the possibility of profits for their shareholders.Here, however, is an alternative motivation: The effects of aging must not be ignored if help can be given, but older people must not be stigmatized by a medical process that thrusts disabling labels on them. People age, but they age differently, and it is better to recognize difference, both from a biological and from a philosophical perspective. Thus, a passionate commitment to the cause of individual agency in old age and a desire for authentic autonomy for older people provide strong motivation too.At root, then, the conflicting passions over MCI reflect the age-old struggle in the philosophy of psychiatry between the natural sciences (Naturwissenschaften) and the human or cultural sciences (Geisteswissenschaften): the tension is between a tendency to approach the problem with the aim of eliciting a scientific explanation and a tendency to try to achieve a human and cultural understanding of the phenomena (Phillips 2004). So, although MCI can be regarded as an explanatory diagnostic entity with some predictive value, it can also be regarded as a label that might cause harm or as a human phenomenon that requires understanding. Furthermore, MCI raises ontological questions about the nature of disease entities. And there is a wider issue as well about how aging itself should be regarded.From a biological perspective, it turns out there is no clear cutoff between what is normal and what [End Page 1] is not. Hence, in a number of ways, values seem to be as important as facts (Sadler 2005). Perhaps philosophy should content itself with saying no more than this: MCI ought not to be considered or debated as if it lies outside the realm of evaluative judgment. The very possibility of its existence as a clinical entity is a matter worthy of moral and social discourse.The direction of thought indicated here and in the papers that follow, however, is more radical than the easily won point that the "diagnosis" of MCI is not value free. On the back of the biological point, that there is a continuum between physiological and pathological aging, is the broader philosophical point that aging can neither be understood solely in terms of physiology nor in terms of pathology, nor even in terms of both. Ageing represents, inter alia, a social and cultural phenomenon manifest in the context of particular psychological and spiritual responses to a mixture of physiological adaptations and pathological predispositions. Without the broader picture, we tend to characterize old age, as Michael Bavidge has suggested elsewhere, in terms of deteriorations: "We should think of old age as offering alternative rather than impaired ways of experiencing life" (2006, 49). The difficulty is that any diagnosis seems to suggest impairment in one form or another. The radical suggestion, therefore, might be to commend descriptions that encourage shared understanding over and above the giving of names and labels.In a brief critique of the scientific approach to "banal memory disorders and MCI", Jean-Marie Léger, like Bavidge, regrets the extent to which people with cognitive impairment "are described in terms of what they have lost, with no regard for the wealth of faculties which are still present." Léger... (shrink)

This handbook provides an overview of key ideas, questions, and puzzles in political epistemology. It is divided into seven sections: (1) Politics and Truth: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives; (2) Political Disagreement and Polarization; (3) Fake News, Propaganda, Misinformation; (4) Ignorance and Irrationality in Politics; (5) Epistemic Virtues and Vices in Politics; (6) Democracy and Epistemology; (7) Trust, Expertise, and Doubt.

Viral modernity is a concept based upon the nature of viruses, the ancient and critical role they play in evolution and culture, and the basic application to understanding the role of information and forms of bioinformation in the social world. The concept draws a close association between viral biology on the one hand, and information science on the other – it is an illustration and prime example of bioinformationalism that brings together two of the most powerful forces that now drive (...) cultural evolution. The concept of viral modernity applies to viral technologies, codes and ecosystems in information, publishing, education and emerging knowledge systems. This paper traces the relationship between epidemics, quarantine, and public health management and outlines elements of viral-digital philosophy based on the fusion of living and technological systems. We discuss Covid-19 as a ‘bioinformationalist’ response that represents historically unprecedented level of sharing information from the sequencing of the genome to testing for a vaccination. Finally, we look at the US response to Covid-19 through the lens of infodemics and post-truth. The paper is followed by three open reviews, which further refine its conclusions as they relate to philosophy and the notion of the virus as Pharmakon. (shrink)

In this paper I argue for the usefulness of the concept of ‘movement compression’ for understanding sport and games, and particularly the differences between traditional sport and eSport (as currently practised). I suggest that movement compression allows us to distinguish between different activities in terms of how movement quality (in the sense of the qualities the movement possesses, rather than that the movement is of ‘high quality’) affects outcome. While it applies widely, this concept can in particular help us to (...) understand the persistent idea that eSports are in some key way distinct from traditional sports. (shrink)

It is widely believed that open and public speech is at the heart of the democratic ideal. Public discourse is instrumentally epistemically valuable for identifying good policies, as well as necessary for resisting domination (e.g., by vocally challenging decision-makers, demanding public justifications, and using democratic speech to hold leaders accountable). But in our highly polarized and socially fragmented political environment, an increasingly pressing question is: do actual democratic societies live up to the ideal of inclusive public speech? In this essay, (...) I explore Maxime Lepoutre's defence of discursive democracy from the challenge of defective public discourse. I argue that political ignorance, dogmatism, and social fragmentation present more formidable challenges to discursive democracy than Lepoutre acknowledges. As a result, his account occasionally veers from warranted optimism to unwarranted idealism. (shrink)

From 1801–1807 Schelling continued to refine his early attempts at Naturphilosophie in the metaphysical framework of a transcendental Spinozism that he initially called Identity Philosophy. While mathematics and geometry provided the model for identity and its quantitative differentiation in early versions of identity theory, from 1804–1807, logic and theory of language offered a model of identity capable of unknotting persistent Spinozistic puzzles such as the connection between natura naturans and natura naturata—the absolute and its potencies—and the ontological status of the (...) individual. Schelling’s initial concepts of identity as “indifference” or “the identity of identity and difference,” themselves the offshoot of meditations on polarity and repeating structure in the philosophy of nature, make way for logical concepts such as “expression” or “affirmation” and the propositional operator “bond” or “Position” found in the copula. The new essays approach ultimate reality through Spinoza’s disjunction of God or nature, or productive and produced nature; so in addition to identity theory, a general metaphysics of nature prefaces treatments of specific natural phenomena. These dual metaphysics of God and nature inject a dynamic or expressive movement into identity that is not yet the unfolding of identity as grounding-and-division that Schelling will articulate in the 1809 Freedom Essay, but it carries a sense of motion and differentiation—or evolution and unfolding—not found in his earlier attempts. The entire identity philosophy period is best viewed as a step in Schelling’s lifelong project of reworking Spinoza by adding life and spirit to nature. (shrink)

Als Plato de hedendaagse academie zou aanschouwen, zou hij niet alleen stomverbaasd zijn over de massificatie en de byzantijnse bureaucratie, maar gezien het ethische doel van de universiteit zou hij ook reden hebben om bezorgd te zijn.

Philosophers often claim that doing philosophy makes people better thinkers. But what evidence is there for this empirical claim? This paper reviews extant evidence and presents some novel findings. We discuss standardized testing scores, review research on Philosophy for Children and critical thinking skills among college students, and present new empirical findings. On average philosophers are better at logical reasoning, more reflective, and more open-minded than non-philosophers. However, there is an absence of evidence for the claim that studying philosophy led (...) to these differences. We present some preliminary and suggestive evidence that, although some of these differences may be attributable to philosophical training, others appear to be selection effects. The key takeaway is that more data are needed. We conclude by urging philosophers and interdisciplinary collaborators to gather more data to test the claim that studying philosophy makes people better thinkers. (shrink)

In de afgelopen tijd is compensatoir toetsen in het Nederlandse onderwijs een populaire toetsvorm geworden. Hierbij slaagt een student voor een reeks toetsen indien het gemiddelde op deze reeks voldoende is. In deze analyse betogen wij dat het compensatoire systeem echter zowel onverdedigbaar als moreel gezien onverantwoordelijk is. Het grote gevaar van compensatoire toetsregimes is namelijk dat het hiaten in kennis en vaardigheden tolereert, wat de validiteit van een diploma ondermijnt en bovendien medeburgers in gevaar brengt.

Solidarity is a widespread but under-explored phenomenon. In this paper, I give a philosophical account of solidarity, answering three salient questions: What motivates acts of solidarity? What unifies different acts into tokens of a single type of act, one of solidarity? And what values do acts of solidarity exhibit? The answer to all three, I argue, involves a certain way of relating to others: identifying with them on the basis of shared features, and identifying with the larger group that one (...) and the others both belong to. (shrink)

One recurrent objection to the idea that the right kind of reasons for or against an attitude are object-given reasons for or against that attitude is that object-given reasons for or against belief and disbelief are incapable of explaining certain features of epistemic normativity. Prohibitive balancing, the behaviour of bare statistical evidence, information about future or easily available evidence, pragmatic and moral encroachment, as well as higher-order defeaters, are all said to be inexplicable in terms of those object-given reasons. In (...) this paper, I provide a rebuttal to all these challenges by drawing attention to the object-given reasons for and against the third doxastic state, namely the suspension of judgement. First, I introduce an original picture of how suspension relates to belief and disbelief – as ways of being decided – which yields a novel weighing model of the corresponding reasons. Second, I demonstrate that this new take on doxastic deliberation can accommodate all five features of epistemic normativity. Finally, I extend the weighing model to cover practical deliberation and the suspension of intentions. The resulting theory provides an explanation of why epistemic and practical normativity differ in certain respects in terms of a significant difference between doxastic and conative suspension. (shrink)

Right after Philo’s about-face in Part 12 of the Dialogues, he gives an argument that the dispute between the theist and the atheist is merely verbal. Since everything is at least a little like everything else, the atheist must concede that the source of order is at least remotely like a human intellect, even if this source is something like a rotting turnip. This passage provides a major argument for dismissing Hume’s apparent avowals of theism in the Dialogues and elsewhere, (...) since Philo’s assertions are so loose as to let in a rotting turnip. The right reading of the passage is more interesting. The paragraph was written in 1776, right before Hume’s death. It’s thus one of the few philosophical texts written late enough to reflect his encounter with the French philosophes in the 1760s. We have good biographical evidence that Hume was criticized for being too much of a theist in France. The turnip is rotting not in order to make fun of the argument from design, but in order to make fun of d’Holbach's and Diderot's account of the origin of life, accounts that generalized dramatically from John Needham’s observations of nematodes in rotting wheat. In the rotting turnip paragraph, Hume is attempting to establish that the dispute between the theist and the atheist isn’t empirically tractable, that atheists will never outflank the apophatic theologian on the question of whether human minds are unlike God, and that if atheists are consistent with their analogical methods, they ought to be more open to the argument from design. (shrink)

In this essay, I examine Kant’s interpretation of Rousseau through the lens of Reflection 6593. This Reflection deserves scrutiny because it serves as a bridge between Kant’s well-known engagement with Rousseau in the mid-1760s and his later discussions of the vocation of the human being in the lectures on ethics and anthropology. Through a close reading of R 6593, I argue that the Reflection offers the earliest evidence of Kant’s philosophy of history and its integration into his treatment of the (...) human vocation. This change, I propose, is instigated by Rousseau’s “Abstract” of St. Pierre’s Perpetual Peace. I conclude that R 6593 is a crucial indicator of Kant’s evolving views on Rousseau and shows his enduring importance for understanding the formation of Kant’s mature political thought. (shrink)

The method of reflective equilibrium (MRE) is a method of justification popularized by John Rawls and further developed by Norman Daniels, Michael DePaul, Folke Tersman, and Catherine Z. Elgin, among others. The basic idea is that epistemic agents have justified beliefs if they have succeeded in forming their beliefs into a harmonious system of beliefs which they reflectively judge to be the most plausible. Despite the common reference to MRE as a method, its mechanisms or rules are typically expressed (...) in a metaphorical or simplified manner and are therefore criticized as too vague. Recent efforts to counter this criticism have been directed towards the attempt to provide formal explications of MRE. This paper aims to supplement these efforts by providing an informal working definition of MRE. This approach challenges the view that MRE can adequately be characterized only in the negative as a set of anti-essentialisms. I argue that epistemic agents follow MRE iff they follow four interconnected rules, which are concerned with a minimalistic form of foundationalism, a minimalistic form of fallibilism, a moderate form of holism, and a minimalistic form of rationality. In the critical spirit of MRE, the corresponding working definition is, of course, provisional and revisable. In general, the aim is to contribute to a reflective equilibrium (RE) concerning MRE. If it is successful, this working definition provides a better grasp of the most basic elements of the method and thereby enhances our understanding of it. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:February 19, 2011 (11:48 am) E:\CPBR\RUSSJOUR\TYPE3002\russell 30,2 040 red.wpd Reviews 179 THE EARLY “IRON CURTAIN” Michael D. Stevenson Schulich School of Business, York U. / Russell Research Centre, McMaster U. Toronto, on m3j 1p3 / Hamilton, on l8s 4l6, Canada [email protected] Patrick Wright. Iron Curtain: from Stage to Cold War. Oxford: Oxford U. P., 2007. Pp. xvii, 488. isbn 978-0-19-923150-8. £18.99 (hb); £12.99 (pb). In his famous Westminster (...) College address on 5 March 1946 in Fulton, Missouri, Winston Churchill Wred one of the opening salvos of the Cold War by proclaiming that from “Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain” had been lowered across Europe. Patrick Wright’s intriguing and provocative book does not examine the phrase “iron curtain” in its popular Cold War context. Instead, he maintains that many characteristics of this metaphor, “including the pronounced sense of theatricality it would bring to international politics, were inherited from the period before the Second World War” (p. 18). Wright divides Iron Curtain into two primary chronological sections, the Wrst covering the period from 1914 to 1920. An iron curtain originally referred to the steel safety screen that descended in English theatres, beginning in the lateeighteenth century, to separate the audience from the often catastrophic Wres that broke out on the stage. The phrase entered the lexicon of international relations in January 1915 when British author and paciWst Violet Page (writing under the pseudonym Vernon Lee) published an article lamenting that “War’s cruelties and recriminations, War’s monstrous iron curtain” (p. 80) had alienated European nations such as England and Germany sharing a common cultural heritage. But the barrier quickly moved east in the aftermath of the 1917 Russian Revolution and “took the form not just of exaggerated political rhetoric, but of an economic blockade enforced by naval power” (p. 171), as the Allies sought to contain the infection of Bolshevism. Wright devotes most attention in this section to documenting the 1920 visit to Russia by the British delegation jointly sponsored by the Trades Union Congress and the Labour Party, which sought to penetrate the dense fog of Allied anti-Bolshevik propaganda and validate the delegation members’ own preconceived views about the nascent socialist utopia in Russia. British delegates witnessed images both of progress carefully stagemanaged by their hosts and of terrible economic dislocation and poverty caused by the Allied blockade and the civil war, which allowed the majority of them to return home to lavish praise on the Soviet experiment that would, in their minds, inevitably fulWl its potential once the Bolshevik government became stable. February 19, 2011 (11:48 am) E:\CPBR\RUSSJOUR\TYPE3002\russell 30,2 040 red.wpd 180 Reviews 1 “The Future of Europe”, European AVairsz 1, no. 1 (April 1949): 3. The second section of Wright’s book examines Western reports of life behind the iron curtain between 1920 and 1939. Here, the author focuses heavily on the theatrical nature of Soviet attempts to create modern-day Potemkin villages that werez—zwith a limited number of exceptionsz—zaccepted as reality by an endless parade of left-wing visitors. A second British Trades Union Congress delegation in 1924, for example, received a dramatically embellished picture of Soviet economic progress that included a train journey past a long-abandoned factory belching smoke created by burning wet straw frantically provided by Russian peasants; the resulting report of the delegation “repeatedly collapsed into the most abject conformity with the Soviet view of reality” (p. 245). The most tragic examples of Western visitors’ blindness to the truth occurred during the 1930s famine deliberately induced by Stalin, and Wright exposes a wide cast of characters who adopted a blinkered view of conditions in the ussr. Among intellectuals, Wright documents the 1931 visit of George Bernard Shaw, who cavalierly dismissed reports of widespread food shortages while dining sumptuously in Moscow’s Hotel Metropole. Among journalists, Wright develops the case of Walter Duranty, the New York Timesz correspondent who knuckled under to demands of Soviet censors to produce sanitized accounts denying or ignoring the famine in order to protect his privileged place in that... (shrink)

The learning process of both students and teachers can be predicted based on the learning mode. Therefore, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, schools must start using online learning and abandon more traditional teaching techniques. Thus, this study investigates the relationship between self-efficacy and academic resilience among 150 senior high school students. Thus, the researchers employed General Self-Efficacy and Resilience Scale. Finally, the statistical analysis reveals that the r coefficient of 0.78 indicates a high positive correlation between the variables. The p-value (...) of 0.00, which is less than 0.05, leads to the decision to reject the null hypothesis. Hence, a significant relationship exists between self-efficacy and resilience among senior high school students. (shrink)

Climate change intersecting with complex socio-economic and political processes has produced distinctive patterns of crisis migration. However there exists a significant gap in understanding and theorizing these forms of migration creating significant policy challenges. Using a case study of an interstate migrant settlement in Bengaluru, India this article unpacks migration as an adaptation strategy through the lens of emotions. The article offers significant insights into how emotions affect the choice of migration as an adaptation strategy and shapes the differential experiences (...) of risks and vulnerability for different groups of people. Emphasizing such relational aspects of migration, the article calls for more research that develops a nuanced understanding of the emotional landscapes of migrants across migration pathways. (shrink)

Wolff's book defends the Kantian idea of a "general logic" whose principles underlie special systems of deductive logic. It thus undermines "logical pluralism," which tolerates the co-existence of divergent systems of modern logic without asking for consistent common principles. Part I of Wolff’s book identifies the formal language in which the most general principles of logic must be expressed. This language turns out to be a version of syllogistic language already used by Aristotle. The universal validity of logical principles, as (...) well as the translatability of other logical languages into this language, are shown to depend only on the meanings of its logical vocabulary. Part II of the book answers the metalogical question concerning the deductive relation between general logic and special logical systems, which also have their own (less general) principles. This part identifies the rules according to which logical rules can be derived from principles. The main result of the book is that the highest principles of logic and metalogics are provided by the syllogistic, when properly understood. (shrink)

Proponents of zetetic encroachment claim that certain zetetic or inquiry-related considerations can have a bearing on the epistemic rationality of one’s belief formation. Since facts about the interestingness or importance of a topic can be the right kind of reasons for inquisitive attitudes, such as curiosity, and inquisitive attitudes are ways to suspend judgement, these facts also amount to reasons against believing. This mechanism is said to explain several contentious phenomena in epistemology, such as the occurrence of pragmatic encroachment. In (...) this paper, I provide two lines of reasoning against zetetic encroachment. First, on any contrastivist understanding of epistemic reasons, the case in favour of zetetic encroachment loses all its motivational force. Second, the thesis of zetetic encroachment is incompatible with the most promising way to understand degrees of inquisitive attitudes. (shrink)

I offer new arguments for an unorthodox reading of J. L. Mackie’s Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, one on which Mackie does not think all substantive moral claims are false, but allows that a proper subset of them are true. Further, those that are true should be understood in terms of a “hybrid theory”. The proposed reading is one on which Mackie is a conceptual pruner, arguing that we should prune away error-ridden moral claims but hold onto those already free (...) of error. This reading is very different from the standard ones found in the literature. I build on recent work by Moberger and argue that this reading is better corroborated by close attention to the way in which Mackie argues at length that terms like “good” and “ought” are systematically context-sensitive, as well as by considerable additional textual evidence. This reading, however, faces an important challenge—to explain in what sense, if any, morality retains its “normativity” on the proposed reading. I argue that this challenge can be met, at least given some of Mackie’s further assumptions about the nature of rationality. (shrink)

Laboratory science is our only source of knowledge about the world as it is apart from our perceptions of the world. Empiricist philosophy, relying on evidence consisting in human perceptions, can only give us knowledge of phenomena making up the world-perceived, which recent neuroscience tells us is wholly and entirely constructed by our neuron-based human perceptual apparatus. In this light, empiricist philosophy should explicitly and fundamentally be reconceived as a method of thinking critically about phenomena, i.e. as a stripped down, (...) fallibilist, non-foundationalist version of “phenomenology”. I also describe implications of these proposals for thinking critically about and conceptualizing phenomena like the Cartesian “I”-that-thinks, consciousness, mind, personal identity, free will, and causal relationships between the brain and the conscious “I.”. (shrink)

Infantologies is a collective writing project designed to express and summarise important ideas, approaches and forms of advocacy in a short and condensed method, in order to present a network of d...

Social contract theory enjoys a long history in moral and political philosophy. Since the European Enlightenment, social contract theory has become one of the most important traditions in moral and political philosophy. This chapter provides a brief introduction to central concepts in social contract theory and their development over time. Most importantly, the chapter clarifies some of the distinct features of new approaches to social contract theory (or “new social contract theory” for short) that have evolved in the twenty-first century (...) and are most suitable for capturing the circumstances of contemporary societies, even if new social contract theory does not constitute a unified theoretical position but is best considered as a family of approaches, methods, and topics. The chapter also provides an overview of the contributions to this book and their connections both methodologically and thematically. (shrink)

First published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

What are the properties of composite objects, and how do the properties of composite objects and the properties of their proper parts relate to one another? The answers to these questions depend upon which view of composition one adopts. One view, which I call the orthodox view, is that composite objects are numerically distinct from their proper parts, individually and collectively. Another view, known as composition as identity, is that composite objects are numerically identical to their proper parts, taken together. (...) I argue that the orthodox view entails that the intuitive picture of composite objects and their properties that most accept is false. Not so for composition as identity. I also show that all of the available alternatives face serious difficulties. This puts composition as identity at an advantage over the orthodox view, at least when it comes to accounting for the properties of composite objects. (shrink)

What is it about knowledge that makes us value it more highly than mere true belief? This question lies at the heart of epistemology and has challenged philosophers ever since it was first posed by Plato. Michael Welbourne's examination of the historical and contemporary answers to this question provides both an excellent introduction to the development of epistemology but also a new theory of the nature of knowledge. The early chapters introduce the main themes and questions that have provided (...) the context for modern discussions. The Platonic beginnings, Cartesian individualism and the tripartite analyses of knowledge are examined in turn. In the second half of this book, the focus shifts from conceptual analysis to an examination of the social practices surrounding knowledge, placing special emphasis on the notion of testimony. The author argues originally and persuasively that our idea of knowledge has its roots in communicative practices and that thinking about how testimony works as a source of beliefs actually gives us a handle on the very idea of knowledge itself. This book will be essential reading for anyone interested in epistemology, the philosophy of language, or the intersection between the two areas. (shrink)

Die philosophische Frage nach der Identität einer Person ist nicht wohlbestimmt. Es handelt sich keineswegs, wie der Gebrauch des Begriffes im Alltag oder auch in der Philosophie nahe legt, um ein einheitliches Phänomen. Vielmehr muss die Identität einer Person als Zusammenspiel von folgenden Fragen analysiert werden: Was macht die Ganzheit einer Person aus? Was muss der Fall sein, damit eine Person gestern mit der Person von heute "identisch" ist? Was verstehen wir unter Identität im Sinne von Selbstverstehen und Selbstbewusstsein? Es (...) wird gezeigt, wie sich die beiden "Identitäten" menschlicher Personen - Persistenz und Persönlichkeit -in unserem alltäglichen Verständnis miteinander verschränken. (shrink)

When P(E) > 0, conditional probabilities P(H|E)\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$(H|E)$$\end{document} are given by the ratio formula. An agent engages in ratio conditionalization when she updates her credences using conditional probabilities dictated by the ratio formula. Ratio conditionalization cannot eradicate certainties, including certainties gained through prior exercises of ratio conditionalization. An agent who updates her credences only through ratio conditionalization risks permanent certainty in propositions against which she has overwhelming evidence. To avoid this undesirable consequence, (...) I argue that we should supplement ratio conditionalization with Kolmogorov conditionalization, a strategy for updating credences based on propositions E such that P(E) = 0. Kolmogorov conditionalization can eradicate certainties, including certainties gained through prior exercises of conditionalization. Adducing general theorems and detailed examples, I show that Kolmogorov conditionalization helps us model epistemic defeat across a wide range of circumstances. (shrink)

This essay analyzes Derrida’s questioning of the relationship between “Theory and Practice” in his recently published seminar of 1976–1977 of this same title. It traces Derrida’s reading of this relationship in Marx and Marxism, beginning with various interpretations of the famous line from Marx’s “Theses on Feuerbach,” “Philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; what is important is to transform it.” The essay tries to argue that Derrida’s reading of theory and practice in Marx should be used in (...) the end to reread Derrida himself and so rethink the relationship between theory and practice in deconstruction and, especially, in pedagogy. After tracking the places where Derrida’s seminar, first presented in Paris to help prepare students for the 1977 agrégation exam in philosophy on the theme of “Theory and Practice,” repeated, overlapped with, or anticipated many prior and subsequent treatments of similar themes in Derrida’s published works, the essay concludes that no seminar—and Derrida’s seminars are exemplary in this regard—can be restricted to the time in which they are given but are always, like Derrida’s “specters of Marx,” non-contemporaneous with themselves, in a word, “out of joint.”. (shrink)

Moral diversity poses significant challenges for normative theory building, because no particular conception of justice may be agreeable to all members of society. Polycentrism offers a potential solution by allowing a plurality of local regulative principles. For deeply diverse societies, however, polycentrism fails conceptually. This chapter argues that Moehler’s (2018) multilevel social contract theory can overcome this problem. The theory disposes the quest for justice as the sole and exclusive objective and considers agents’ liberty and peaceful interaction as the primary (...) goals of (new) social contract theory and the basis for an open society. To clarify its nature, the chapter contrasts the vision of the open society provided by Moehler’s theory with the vision provided by Gaus’s (2021) theory. Both theories move beyond polycentrism and offer promising versions of a ‘new social contract’ that shows how diverse societies can progress and become more robust and open in their social fabric. (shrink)

This paper presents Anthony Steinbock's broad theory of moral emotions and specifically the distinction he draws between the temporal orientation and the temporal meaning of emotions. The latter distinction is used in order to provide phenomenological descriptions of, and distinctions between, patience and impatience. The paper takes leading clues from Steinbock’s work in an effort to “do” phenomenology in a way that clarifies these specific natural attitude intentionalities.

Belief fragments and mental files are based on the same idea: that information in people’s minds is compartmentalized rather than lumped all together. Philosophers mostly use the two notions differently, though the exact relationship between fragments and files has yet to be examined in detail. This chapter has three main goals. The first is to argue that fragments and files, properly understood, play distinct yet complementary explanatory roles; the second is to defend a model of belief that includes them both; (...) and the third is to raise and address a shared dilemma that confronts them: that they threaten to be either explanatorily lightweight or empirically refuted. This chapter contends that it is better to embrace the horn of this dilemma that opens up files and fragments to empirical refutation or confirmation, by adopting a psychofunctionalist approach. (shrink)