To Live Until We Say Good‐bye. By Elisabeth Kübler‐Ross.

To Live Until We Say Good‐bye. By Elisabeth Kübler‐Ross.

: This paper describes John Dewey's attitude regarding the potential for the social studies as a vehicle for citizenship education. During the 1930s, Dewey specifically addressed his concerns for teaching social studies in two articles. By situating these concerns within his framework for democratic education, he outlines the potential for creating participatory citizens. This goal for citizenship education is still relevant today, especially given the current political climate.

Thomas Jefferson and Philosophy: Essays on the Philosophical Cast of Jefferson’s Writings is a collection of essays on topics that relate to philosophical aspects of Jefferson’s thinking over the years. Much historical insight is given to ground the various philosophical strands in Jefferson’s thought and writing on topics such as political philosophy, moral philosophy, slavery, republicanism, wall of separation, liberty, educational philosophy, and architecture.

Pierre Thévenaz was Swiss. At the time of his death he was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Lausanne. Earlier he had taught philosophyat the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale in Zurich, and at the University of Neuchâtel. A large part of his writings are contained in L'Homme et Sa Raison , De Husserl à Merleau-Ponty , La Condition de ia Raison Philosophique . A collection of his articles has been translated into English by James Edie and published under the (...) title. What is Phenomenology? (shrink)

To better understand the work of pre-Darwinian British life researchers in their own right, this paper discusses two different styles of reasoning. On the one hand there was analysis:synthesis, where an organism was disintegrated into its constituent parts and then reintegrated into a whole; on the other hand there was palaetiology, the historicist depiction of the progressive specialization of an organism. This paper shows how each style allowed for development, but showed it as moving in opposite directions. In analysis:synthesis, development (...) proceeded centripetally, through the fusion of parts. In palaetiology, development moved centrifugally, through the ramifying specialization of an initially simple substance. I first examine a community of analytically oriented British life researchers, exemplified by Richard Owen, and certain technical questions they considered important. These involved the neurosciences, embryology, and reproduction and regeneration. The paper then looks at a new generation of British palaetiologists, exemplified by W.B. Carpenter and T.H. Huxley, who succeeded at portraying analysts' questions as irrelevant. The link between styles of reasoning and physical sites is also explored. Analysts favored museums, which facilitated the examination and display of unchanging marine organisms while providing a power base for analysts. I suggest that palaetiologists were helped by vivaria, which included marine aquaria and Wardian cases. As they became popular in the early 1850s, vivaria provided palaetiologists with a different kind of living and changing evidence. Forms of evidence, how they were preserved and examined, and career options all reinforced each other: social and epistemic factors thus merged. (shrink)

In a wide-ranging argument moving from Sumerian demons to Lucian Freud, from Syriac prayer books to John Carpenter's film The Thing, this book explores the ways the body has been represented through time. A response to the vertiginous increase in writings on bodily representations, it attempts to form a single coherent account of the possible forms of representation of the body. This work brings together concerns, images, and concepts from a wide range of perspectives: art history and criticism, the history (...) and philosophy of medicine, the history of race, phenomenological and post-phenomenological thought, studies of feminism and pornography, and the new interest in visual studies. Yet it is less a philosopher's look at history or a historian's foray into philosophy than a practical and critical look at the current constellation of art practices. Above all, it is intended to be of immediate use in the conceptualization and production of visual art and its history. (shrink)

To better understand the work of pre-Darwinian British life researchers in their own right, this paper discusses two different styles of reasoning. On the one hand there was analysis:synthesis, where an organism was disintegrated into its constituent parts and then reintegrated into a whole; on the other hand there was palaetiology, the historicist depiction of the progressive specialization of an organism. This paper shows how each style allowed for development, but showed it as moving in opposite directions. In analysis:synthesis, development (...) proceeded centripetally, through the fusion of parts. In palaetiology, development moved centrifugally, through the ramifying specialization of an initially simple substance. I first examine a community of analytically oriented British life researchers, exemplified by Richard Owen, and certain technical questions they considered important. These involved the neurosciences, embryology, and reproduction and regeneration. The paper then looks at a new generation of British palaetiologists, exemplified by W.B. Carpenter and T.H. Huxley, who succeeded at portraying analysts' questions as irrelevant. The link between styles of reasoning and physical sites is also explored. Analysts favored museums, which facilitated the examination and display of unchanging marine organisms while providing a power base for analysts. I suggest that palaetiologists were helped by vivaria, which included marine aquaria and Wardian cases. As they became popular in the early 1850s, vivaria provided palaetiologists with a different kind of living and changing evidence. Forms of evidence, how they were preserved and examined, and career options all reinforced each other: social and epistemic factors thus merged. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Environment 8.2 (2003) 132-139 [Access article in PDF] Environmentalism: A Global History, by Ramachandra Guha. New York: Longman, 161 pp, includes Bibliographic Essay and Index. Softcover, ISBN 0-321-01169-4. This short but wide-ranging book is a global survey of the history of environmental thought by one of the people most responsible for broadening environmental discussions to include recognition of post-colonial societies. The overall goal of this introductory (...) textbook is to explain multiple environmental discourses from Brazil, the United States, China, India, the Soviet Union, and Africa, and then to situate them as complimentary components of a global socially oriented environmental discursive framework.With that said, it is always difficult to evaluate an introductory textbook. In this case, much of what is covered represents well-worn ground for the environmental scholar. The thesis that emerges is less about a new set of environmental proposals and more about how we ought to understand the history of ideas that informs the development of policy and what ideas ought to be taught in the classroom. Since this book is designed as a textbook, much of my commentary stems from a consideration of how it might work in the classroom. [End Page 132]As an educator regularly teaching courses in environmental thought, ethics, planning, and policy, I have often wondered why so few texts exist on the global history of environmental thought. Guha's work represents an attempt to bridge this gap in the literature. Despite Guha's admirable intentions, I am hesitant to endorse this work as an introductory textbook on the global history of environmental thought for one important reason: Guha's methodology leads to the omission of important components of the global history of environmental thought. From the outset, it is important to acknowledge the difficulty of this type of project. The very title of this work signals perhaps an impossible project, given the 145 pages of text set aside for the task. Guha does cover a number of subjects well, and some are welcome additions to the discussion of the history of environmental thought. Overall though, the topics not covered work to neutralize what is accomplished by the topics that are covered. Consider first what Guha does include.The book is divided into two parts, each focusing on a wave of environmental thought. In the first part, there are four chapters and an afterword. In the initial chapter, Guha argues that a more social and international environmentalism can be a spur to "human reflection and human action," and not just a "scientific study of the state of nature or a balance sheet of the impact of human beings on the earth" (p. 3). While it is common to divide the environmental movement into waves (usually three or four), Guha chooses to delineate only one major shift and thus only two waves of environmentalism. The first wave is comprised of what Guha calls a "period of pioneering and prophecy" and an initial reaction to industrialization; the second wave is comprised of the more socially oriented responses that have emerged in recent decades (p. 3). There are good reasons for delineating more waves, but Guha's project is generally well-served by the two-wave distinction.Guha divides the first wave into three varieties distinguished by their different guiding ideologies—back-to-the-land, scientific conservation, wilderness idea—which are treated respectively in chapters two, three, and four. What I found most compelling about Guha's varieties are some of the figures he chose to include. For example, in chapter two Guha offers a treatment of the back-to-the-land ideology that concurrently condemned excessive industrialization and espoused a commitment to agrarian and pastoral values. From William Wordsworth, William Blake, John Clare, Edward Carpenter, Henry David Thoreau, John Ruskin, Edward Carpenter, [End Page 133] Henry David Thoreau, William Morris, and Octavia Hill, to Gandhi and the Nazis, Guha's range here is impressive. While I do have reservations about how convincing it is to link Wordsworth, Ruskin, and Gandhi according to a largely generic and nondescript agrarian ideal that he claims... (shrink)

The Scottish physician James Lind is the most celebrated name in the history of research into the causes and cures of scurvy. This is due to the famous experiment he conducted in 1747 on H.M.S. Salisbury in order to compare the efficiency of six popular treatments for scurvy. This experiment is generally regarded as the first controlled trial in clinical science (see e.g. Carpenter 1986, p. 52).

Discusses the work of G.I. Gurdjieff and his establishment of the Institute for the Harmonious Development of man, and examines the contributions of Gurdjieff's two major disciples, P.D. Ouspensky and A.R. Orage.

Animal behaviour and welfare research are part of a wider endeavour to optimize the health and wellbeing of humans, animals and ecosystems. As such, it is part of the One Health research agenda. This article applies ethical principles described by the One Health High Level Expert Panel to animal behaviour and welfare research. These principles entail that animal behaviour and welfare research should be valued equitably alongside other research in transdisciplinary and multisectoral collaboration. It should include and promote a multiplicity (...) of marginalized voices, including those of animals, and it should apply and describe a harmonious balance between human—animal-environment interactions. Lastly, it should describe how humans need to change behaviour, adopt sustainable solutions and recognize the importance of animal welfare and the integrity of the whole ecosystem. (shrink)

This book presents a comprehensive, accessible survey of Western philosophy of music from Pythagoras to the present. Its narrative traces themes and schools through history, in a sequence of five chapters that survey the ancient, medieval, early modern, modern and contemporary periods. Its wide-ranging coverage includes medieval Islamic thinkers, Continental and analytic thinkers, and neglected female thinkers such as Vernon Lee (Violet Paget). All aspects of the philosophy of music are discussed, including music and the cosmos, music's value, music's relation (...) to the other arts, the problem of opera, the origins of musical genius, music's emotional impact, the moral effects of music, the ontology of musical works, and the relevance of music's historical context. The volume will be valuable for students and scholars in philosophy and musicology, and all who are interested in the ways in which philosophers throughout history have thought about music. (shrink)

Amie Thomasson’s work provides numerous ways to rethink and improve our approach to metaphysics. This chapter is my attempt to begin to sketch why I still think the easy approach leaves room for substantive metaphysical work, and why I do not think that metaphysics need rely on any ‘epistemically metaphysical’ knowledge. After distinguishing two possible forms of deflationism, I argue that the easy ontologist needs to accept (implicitly or explicitly) that there are worldly constraints on what sorts of entities could (...) exist, and could co-exist. I argue this leaves room for a substantive role for metaphysics if (following the work of E.J. Lowe) we take metaphysics to be concerned with the possible ways that reality could be. I explain how this conception does not need to appeal to any ‘epistemically metaphysical’ knowledge, and need only make use of conceptual and/or empirical means to arrive at views on what could exist (and co-exist). Thus, the answer I propose to the question posed in the title, at least in my view, is no-one. Or, at least, no-one should be afraid of conceptual analysis. Not even metaphysicians. (shrink)

Organ donation after the circulatory determination of death requires the permanent cessation of circulation while organ donation after the brain determination of death requires the irreversible cessation of brain functions. The unified brain-based determination of death connects the brain and circulatory death criteria for circulatory death determination in organ donation as follows: permanent cessation of systemic circulation causes permanent cessation of brain circulation which causes permanent cessation of brain perfusion which causes permanent cessation of brain function. The relevant circulation that (...) must cease in circulatory death determination is that to the brain. Eliminating brain circulation from the donor ECMO organ perfusion circuit in thoracoabdominal NRP protocols satisfies the unified brain-based determination of death but only if the complete cessation of brain circulation can be proved. Despite its medical and physiologic rationale, the unified brain-based determination of death remains inconsistent with the Uniform Determination of Death Act. (shrink)

While substantial progress has been made in the field known as artificial consciousness, at the present time there is no generally accepted phenomenally conscious machine, nor even a clear route to how one might be produced should we decide to try. Here, we take the position that, from our computer science perspective, a major reason for this is a computational explanatory gap: our inability to understand/explain the implementation of high-level cognitive algorithms in terms of neurocomputational processing. We explain how addressing (...) the computational explanatory gap can identify computational correlates of consciousness. We suggest that bridging this gap is not only critical to further progress in the area of machine consciousness, but would also inform the search for neurobiological correlates of consciousness and would, with high probability, contribute to demystifying the “hard problem” of understanding the mind–brain relationship. We compile a listing of previously proposed computational correlates of consciousness and, based on the results of recent computational modeling, suggest that the gating mechanisms associated with top-down cognitive control of working memory should be added to this list. We conclude that developing neurocognitive architectures that contribute to bridging the computational explanatory gap provides a credible and achievable roadmap to understanding the ultimate prospects for a conscious machine, and to a better understanding of the mind–brain problem in general. (shrink)

This chapter provides an account of sexual ontology, grounded in and responsive to Irigaray’s philosophy, that focuses on the question of possibility. I first consider possibility in terms of the ontological negativity of sexuate beings, whereby one sex or sexuate morphology does not exhaust all that that kind of being is or can be. Second, I consider how sexual difference, as a relational structure of being, engenders possibilities for sexuate beings to develop as irreducible individuals. With particular focus on the (...) human being and the looming question of transhumanist technologies, I argue that these principles develop a sexual ontology that recognizes determinate limits between sexes while allowing for varied and creative expressions of sexuate life. (shrink)

We are immersed within an odorous sea of chemical currents that we parse into individual odors with complex structures. Odors have been posited as determined by the structural relation between the molecules that compose the chemical compounds and their interactions with the receptor site. But, naturally occurring smells are parsed from gaseous odor plumes. To give a comprehensive account of the nature of odors the chemosciences must account for these large distributed entities as well. We offer a focused review of (...) what is known about the perception of odor plumes for olfactory navigation and tracking, which we then connect to what is known about the role odorants play as properties of the plume in determining odor identity with respect to odor quality. We end by motivating our central claim that more research needs to be conducted on the role that odorants play within the odor plume in determining odor identity. (shrink)

The past few decades have seen an explosion of research on causal reasoning in philosophy, computer science, and statistics, as well as descriptive work in psychology. In Causation with a Human Face, James Woodward integrates these lines of research and argues for an understanding of how each can inform the other: normative ideas can suggest interesting experiments, while descriptive results can suggest important normative concepts. Woodward's overall framework builds on the interventionist treatment of causation that he developed in Making (...) Things Happen. Normative ideas discussed include proposals about the role of invariant or stable relationships in successful causal reasoning and the notion of proportionality. He argues that these normative ideas are reflected in the causal judgments that people actually make as a descriptive matter. Woodward also discusses the common philosophical practice-particularly salient in philosophical accounts of causation--of appealing to intuitions or judgments about cases in support of philosophical theses. He explores how, properly understood, such appeals are not different in principle from appeals to results from empirical research, and demonstrates how they may serve as a useful source of information about causal cognition. (shrink)

Many people attempt to give meaning to their lives by pursuing projects that they believe will bear fruit after they have died. Knowing that their death will preclude them from protecting or promoting such projects people who draw meaning from them will often attempt to secure their continuance by securing promises from others to serve as their caretakers after they die. But those who rely on such are faced with a problem: None of the four major accounts that have been (...) developed to explain directed promissory obligation (the Authority View, the Trust View, the Assurance View, and the Reliance View) support the view that we are obligated to keep our promises to persons who are now dead. But I will provide hope for those who wish to use such promises to protect the meaning with which they have endowed their lives. I will argue that while we cannot wrong a person who is now dead by breaking a promise made to her during her life, we could wrong the living by so doing. We thus (might) have reason to keep the promises that we made to those who are now dead. (shrink)

An important question facing contemporary philosophy of science is whether the natural sciences in terms of their historical records exhibit distinguishing developmental patterns or structures. At least two philosophical stances are possible in answering this question. The first pertains to the plurality of the individual sciences. From this stance, the various sciences are analyzed individually and compared with one another in order to derive potential commonalities, if any, among them. The second stance involves a general philosophy of science in which (...) a thorough theory of the natural sciences is developed. The latter stance strives to account for more than possible commonalities among the sciences but also to provide a broad-spectrum philosophical framework to account for, or to explicate, the nature of science itself and its progress. In this paper, the second stance is taken in which an evolutionary philosophy of science is proposed. To that end, Thomas Kuhn’s evolutionary philosophy of science is initially discussed and critiqued. An evolutionary philosophy of science is then proposed based on a revision of Kuhn’s evolutionary philosophy of science in terms of George Gaylord Simpson’s various tempos and modes for biological evolution. Next, two historical case studies from the biological sciences are reconstructed to illustrate the robustness of the proposed evolutionary philosophy of science for explicating the progress of the natural sciences. A concluding section discusses the proposed evolutionary philosophy of science with respect to providing a broad-spectrum framework or general philosophy of science for understanding the nature and progress of the natural sciences. (shrink)

The phrase “cosmic consciousness” has a surprising and fascinating history. I will show how it first enters into circulation in the writings of the remarkable Englishman Edward Carpenter, a socialist, philosopher, and prescient activist for gay rights and prison reform. Carpenter made a trip to India and Sri Lanka in 1890, where he spent two months sitting at the feet of Ramaswami, an Indian sage and disciple of Tilleinathan Swami. Carpenter invents the phrase in order to paraphrase Ramaswami’s teaching, which (...) was itself a commonplace among the Advaita-inspired sages of the period, that there is in human beings the possibility of an all-encompassing consciousness. Later still, in the writings of William James and others, the phrase acquires a new and different meaning in the idea that the cosmos itself exhibits a form of consciousness. James, indeed, uses just this phrase in his early formulation of cosmopsychism. (shrink)

In this chapter I argue that writers on metaphor have misunderstood Aristotle on metaphor. Aristotle is not an elitist about metaphor and does not consider metaphors to be merely ornamental. Rather, Aristotle believes that metaphors are ubiquitous and believes that people can express themselves in a clearer and more attractive way through the use of metaphors and that people learn and understand things better through metaphor. He also distinguishes between the use of metaphor and the coinage of metaphor, and believes (...) that the ability to coin marvelous new metaphors is a form of literary genius, and he provided an entirely natural origin of metaphor coinage. (shrink)

This article develops an interpretation and defense of Husserl’s account of the omnitemporality of idealities. I first examine why Husserl rejects the atemporality and temporal individuation of idealities on phenomenological grounds, specifically that these attributions prove countersensical in how they relate idealities to consciousness. As an alternative to these conceptions, I develop a two-sided interpretation of omnitemporality expressed in modal terms of actuality and possibility, the actual referring to appearances in time and the possible, to reactivation at any time. In (...) defense of this interpretation of omnitemporality, I consider influential criticisms against Husserl’s account of idealities as they concern time, particularly whether the historical genesis of idealities compromises their omnitemporality by binding them to time. Ultimately, I argue that the transcendental historicity of idealities, despite being relevant to the question of validity and access, proves indifferent to their omnitemporality. (shrink)

Newton's bucket, Einstein's elevator, Schrödinger's cat – these are some of the best-known examples of thought experiments in the natural sciences. But what function do these experiments perform? Are they really experiments at all? Can they help us gain a greater understanding of the natural world? How is it possible that we can learn new things just by thinking? In this revised and updated new edition of his classic text _The Laboratory of the Mind_, James Robert Brown continues to (...) defend apriorism in the physical world. This edition features two new chapters, one on “counter thought experiments” and another on the development of inertial motion. With plenty of illustrations and updated coverage of the debate between Platonic rationalism and classic empiricism, this is a lively and engaging contribution to the field of philosophy of science. (shrink)

A fresh explication of the Thomist justification of self-defense casts off the hobbles of the principle of double effects to find a more secure footing in the historicaldevelopment of subjective natural rights by medieval jurists, and a straight-forward application to the latent threat of death in childbirth posed by non-consensual pregnancy. By articulating the implicit Thomistic right to defensive abortion in terms of conditional rights bestowed in Creation as correlative to particular natural law duties, justly proportionate limits to defensive abortion (...) are identified, and balanced against the forfeited or reserved natural rights variously imputed to conceptus and embryo in non-consensual pregnancies. Subsequently, the varieties of involuntary consent are examined from a Thomist perspective with a view to their relevance in justifying recourse to a rehabilitated practice of defensive abortion when free and full consent to impregnation and childbirth is absent. (shrink)

Although "the Socratic method" is commonly understood as a style of pedagogy involving cross-questioning between teacher and student, there has long been debate among scholars of ancient philosophy about how this method as attributed to Socrates should be defined or, indeed, whether Socrates can be said to have used any single, uniform method at all distinctive to his way of philosophizing. This volume brings together essays by classicists and philosophers examining this controversy anew. The point of departure for many of (...) those engaged in the debate has been the identification of Socratic method with "the elenchus" as a technique of logical argumentation aimed at refuting an interlocutor, which Gregory Vlastos highlighted in an influential article in 1983. The essays in this volume look again at many of the issues to which Vlastos drew attention but also seek to broaden the discussion well beyond the limits of his formulation. Some contributors question the suitability of the elenchus as a general description of how Socrates engages his interlocutors; others trace the historical origins of the kinds of argumentation Socrates employs; others explore methods in addition to the elenchus that Socrates uses; several propose new ways of thinking about Socratic practices. Eight essays focus on specific dialogues, each examining why Plato has Socrates use the particular methods he does in the context defined by the dialogue. Overall, representing a wide range of approaches in Platonic scholarship, the volume aims to enliven and reorient the debate over Socratic method so as to set a new agenda for future research. Contributors are Hayden W. Ausland, Hugh H. Benson, Thomas C. Brickhouse, Michelle Carpenter, John M. Carvalho, Lloyd P. Gerson, Francisco J. Gonzalez, James H. Lesher, Mark McPherran, Ronald M. Polansky, Gerald A. Press, François Renaud, and W. Thomas Schmid, Nicholas D. Smith, P. Christopher Smith, Harold Tarrant, Joanne B. Waugh, and Charles M. Young. (shrink)

Mathematicians often speak of conjectures as being confirmed by evidence that falls short of proof. For their own conjectures, evidence justifies further work in looking for a proof. Those conjectures of mathematics that have long resisted proof, such as the Riemann hypothesis, have had to be considered in terms of the evidence for and against them. In recent decades, massive increases in computer power have permitted the gathering of huge amounts of numerical evidence, both for conjectures in pure mathematics and (...) for the behavior of complex applied mathematical models and statistical algorithms. Mathematics has therefore become (among other things) an experimental science (though that has not diminished the importance of proof in the traditional style). We examine how the evaluation of evidence for conjectures works in mathematical practice. We explain the (objective) Bayesian view of probability, which gives a theoretical framework for unifying evidence evaluation in science and law as well as in mathematics. Numerical evidence in mathematics is related to the problem of induction; the occurrence of straightforward inductive reasoning in the purely logical material of pure mathematics casts light on the nature of induction as well as of mathematical reasoning. (shrink)

One of the most important topics that Thomas Aquinas discusses in his extensive corpus is the love of friendship, which is a unique form of love aimed at persons. Yet Aquinas's teachings on this are perplexing, for he claims that this love always produces union between lover and beloved, and that it is always a mutual love. This implies that one's love depends on reciprocation from the beloved, which seems implausible given the possibility of phenomena such as unrequited love. A (...) common interpretation of Aquinas's account of the love of friendship maintains that it is enough that one desires union and mutuality for such love to obtain even if such desires remain unrealized, but in this paper I reject this reading and argue that achieving union and mutuality is essential to this form of love. This novel interpretation ultimately reveals that the love of friendship is an intrinsically interpersonal act. (shrink)

Beginning right at the start of the recently published volume II of Donner le temps, at its ‘bord’ or ‘boarding’ upon or out of a calmy oceanic surface, this essay examines the functions and movements of distinct surfaces in between Heidegger and Derrida. Confronting thus the tradition of the ‘Grund’, ‘Abgrund’, ‘Urgrund’, ‘Ungrund’, with the khôra-like surface of archi-writing and dissemination, the essay proposes an investigation of the philosophical and writerly space of Derrida/Heidegger not through their marks and letters, but (...) instead through the different surfaces of inscription and – simultaneous – effacement as the ‘proper places’ of thought and experience, of Destruktion and deconstruction. (shrink)

This paper interprets the influential colony management simulator ‘Dwarf Fortress’ existentially, in terms of finitude, absurdity, and narrative. It applies Aarseth/Möring’s proposed method of game interpretation, adopting their definition of ‘cybermedia’ as a generalized game ontology, then providing a specialized ontology of ‘Dwarf Fortress’ which describes its genre and salient gameplay features, incorporating Ian Bogost’s concept of ‘procedural rhetoric’. It then gives an existentialist interpretation of ‘Dwarf Fortress’ which centres on ‘finitude’, ‘absurdity’, and ‘narrative’, showing that ‘Dwarf Fortress’ is a (...) game about the existential tensions involved in being human. We live knowing our lives and civilizations are finite, that there are radical limits on what we can know and do. There is no meaning inherent in the world, or in history, so it is up to us to create our own, and one of our most powerful ways of doing this is narrative. (shrink)

This article critically analyzes Rawls’s attitude toward envy. In A Theory of Justice, Rawls is predominantly concerned with the threat that class envy poses to political stability. Yet he also briefly discusses the kind of envy that individuals experience toward their social peers, which he calls particular envy, and which I refer to as peer envy. He quickly concludes, however, that particular envy would not present a serious risk to the stability of his just society. In this article, I contest (...) this claim by arguing that the principles that structure Rawls’s ideal society are likely to exacerbate particular envy to a politically risky extent. Section 1 reconstructs his account of envy, giving special attention to his belief that competition kindles envy between peers. Section 2 then examines the way in which Rawls often endorses rivalry within the body politic. I argue that the society governed by justice as fairness is, on account of this rivalry, likely to generate a politically problematic degree of particular envy. In Section 3, I invoke ancient Greece as an example of a society that was, as a result of its intense competitiveness, often imperiled by dangerously elevated levels of peer envy. I then survey the key institutional mechanisms by which the ancient Greeks sought to manage this hazardous emotion. It turns out, however, that most of these mechanisms would be unavailable to Rawls insofar as they starkly contravene his principles of justice. I conclude that if Rawlsians wish to establish a society that fosters rivalry, they would do well to reflect on the means by which peer envy can be effectively harnessed. (shrink)

J. L. Schellenberg's Philosophy of Religion argues for a specific brand of sceptical religion that takes ‘Ultimism’ – the proposition that there is a metaphysically, axiologically, and soteriologically ultimate reality – to be the object to which the sceptical religionist should assent. In this article I shall argue that Ietsism – the proposition that there is merely something transcendental worth committing ourselves to religiously – is a preferable object of assent. This is for two primary reasons. First, Ietsism is far (...) more modest than Ultimism; Ietsism, in fact, is open to the truth of Ultimism, while the converse does not hold. Second, Ietsism can fulfil the same criteria that compel Schellenberg to argue for Ultimism. (shrink)

This paper explores some issues about the choice of variables for causal representation and explanation. Depending on which variables a researcher employs, many causal inference procedures and many treatments of causation will reach different conclusions about which causal relationships are present in some system of interest. The assumption of this paper is that some choices of variables are superior to other choices for the purpose of causal analysis. A number of possible criteria for variable choice are described and defended within (...) a broadly interventionist approach to causation. (shrink)

An unlearned carpenter of my acquaintance once said in my hearing: “There is very little difference between one man and another; but what little there is, is very important.” – William James (1890) On the question of “the individual and the community in pragmatism,” most people would probably think first of Dewey’s influential ideas about the individual and society: his conception of education as preparation for responsible citizenship, perhaps, or his critique of the “ragged individualism” o...