In Stoic philosophy, the writing of the Early Church Fathers, and in its allegorical interpretations in medieval and renaissance mythologies, Sisyphus is the archetypal model of human perfectibility. The Myth of Sisyphus investigates this archetype as a principal theme in renaissance theories of astral magic; in humanist theories of eugenic education; and in utopian thought.

Equally important, he offers much insight into why our own environmental policies have failed and what we can do to better manage our resources.

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This landmark study brings together a comprehensive collection of readings on Educational Thought from Antiquity to the Present. It includes four volumes and over 100 different selections: Vol 1: Classic/Early Modern (to 1945) Vol 2: Modern (1945-1979) Vol 3/4: Postmodern (1979-present) From Montaigne to Chomsky, the editor has included articles from some of the Western world's most influential educational thinkers alongside authoritative voices from the field to show a full spectrum of ideas about Education, its purpose and objectives. The first (...) volume includes a lead essay by the editor on the nature of Educational Thought and the Social and Cultural Foundations of Education. Each volume also includes its own introduction. Taken together, the volumes provide an unparalleled resource featuring broad coverage of the subject with historical depth and contemporary relevance. (shrink)

Taking the formal analogies between black holes and classical thermodynamics seriously seems to first require that classical thermodynamics applies in relativistic regimes. Yet, by scrutinizing how classical temperature is extended into special relativity, I argue that the concept falls apart. I examine four consilient procedures for establishing the classical temperature: the Carnot process, the thermometer, kinetic theory, and black-body radiation. I argue that their relativistic counterparts demonstrate no such consilience in defining the relativistic temperature. As such, classical temperature doesn’t appear (...) to survive a relativistic extension. I suggest two interpretations for this situation: eliminativism akin to simultaneity, or pluralism akin to rotation. (shrink)

Conventional wisdom holds that the von Neumann entropy corresponds to thermodynamic entropy, but Hemmo and Shenker (2006) have recently argued against this view by attacking von Neumann's (1955) argument. I argue that Hemmo and Shenker's arguments fail due to several misunderstandings: about statistical-mechanical and thermodynamic domains of applicability, about the nature of mixed states, and about the role of approximations in physics. As a result, their arguments fail in all cases: in the single-particle case, the finite particles case, and the (...) infinite particles case. (shrink)

The rise and legacy of world religions out of that period centered roughly around 600-500 BCE, what John Stuart-Glennie termed in 1873 the moral revolution, and Karl Jaspers later, in 1949, called the axial age, has been marked by heightened ideas of transcendence. Yet ironically, the world itself, in the literal sense of the actual earth, took on a diminished role as a central element of religious sensibility in the world religions, particularly in the Abrahamic religions. Given the issue today (...) of ecological unsustainability, including massive die-offs of wildlife and ever-increasing global human population and consumption, the legacy of those world religions face the question I consider here: Can religion transcend the earth in the long run? With the Axial Age/Moral Revolution, comes the possibility of transcendence of the world per se. The moral revolution/Axial Age represented significant changes in civilization, to be sure, but it can also be taken, as I do, as a second phase in the radical shift to anthropocentric mind already begun with the advent of agriculturally based civilization. The axial ideal of transcendence connects to a larger ideal, manifest not only in the legacies of the world religions but in contemporary science and technology, of a philosophy of escape from the earth. I show how ideas of axial transcendence, celebrated by scholars such as Jaspers and Bellah, nevertheless involve an unacknowledged tragic cost, the forgetting of the earth and its lessons and limits as central to what I have termed elsewhere, “sustainable wisdom.”. (shrink)

Akratic belief, or belief one believes one should not have, has often been thought to be impossible. I argue that the possibility of akratic belief should be accepted as a pre-theoretical datum. I distinguish intuitive, defensive, systematic, and diagnostic ways of arguing for this view, and offer an argument that combines them. After offering intuitive examples of akratic belief, I defend those examples against a common argument against the possibility of akratic belief, which I call the Nullification Argument. I then (...) offer an Argument from Belief Attribution, using a discussion of the marks by which we typically attribute belief to defend attributions of akratic belief. I conclude by offering a way to explain what is puzzling about akratic belief, while allowing that it is possible. (shrink)

What role should it play? And are claims to rationality liberating or oppressive? For the Sake of Argument addresses questions such as these to consider the relationship between thought and character.

FOUNDATIONALISM IN PHILOSOPHY n his autobiographical work, The Education of Henry Adams, this I brooding and disillusioned offspring of American presidents confronted, at age sixty, his own perplexity concerning the new scientific world-view that was emerging at the end of the century. He noted that the unity of things, long guaranteed morally by the teachings of Christianity and scientifically by the Newtonian world-view, was being challenged by a newer vision of things that found only incomprehensible multiplicity at the root of (...) the world: What happened if one dropped the sounder into the ab yss-let it go-frankly gave up Unity altogether? What was Unity? Why was one to be forced to affirm it? Here every body flatly refused help.... [Adams] got out his Descartes again; dipped into his Hume and Berkeley; wrestled anew with his Kant; pondered solemnly over his Hegel and Scho penhauer and Hartmann; strayed gaily away with his Greeks-all merely to ask what Unity meant, and what happened when one denied it. Apparently one never denied it. Every philosopher, whether sane or insane, naturally af firmed it. I Adams, then approaching with heavy pessimism a new century, felt instinc tively that, were one to attack the notion of unity, the entire edifice of human knowledge would quickly collapse. For understanding requires the unification of apparently different phenomena. (shrink)

In the battle against the vampiric Ticks, humanity was slowly but certainly headed for extinction. For months, twin sisters Lily and Mel had been “quarantined” with thousands of other young people being harvested for their blood—food for the Ticks. Finally escaping with a few friends, the twins are separated—and must continue the fight on their own . . . After making it to a resistance base camp in Utah, Lily learned to survive at all costs. But when a Tick attack (...) decimates the fighters, Lily and her pregnant friend, McKenna, decide to make the hard trek north to Canada—and safety. Meanwhile, Mel is being taught how to survive by the very vampire that turned her. Living without her sister is hard, but dealing with the fact that her autism was cured by the vampire bite is an even bigger challenge. But when a monstrous betrayal places Lily in mortal danger, Mel must set out to find her, save her, and begin to unravel the empire of destruction that the Ticks have built. (shrink)

We are responsible not only for what we think and feel but for what others do and for what we would have done. This book expands and updates the original attributionist theory of responsibility and applies it to pressing contemporary issues such as collective responsibility, leaders’ responsibility for their followers’ acts, and addiction.

Some conceptions of the role of philosophers in climate change focus mainly on theoretical progress in philosophy, or on philosophers as individual citizens. Against these views, I defend a skill view: philosophers should use our characteristic skills as philosophers to combat climate change by integrating it into our teaching, research, service, and community engagement. A focus on theoretical progress, citizenship, expertise, virtue, ability, social role, or power, rather than on skill, can allow for some of these contributions. But the skill (...) view, I argue, uniquely captures the breadth of philosophers’ role in climate change; promises to make us more effective in practice; and offers a compelling way to overcome our own lingering climate denial by integrating climate change into all aspects of philosophical activity. (shrink)