By demonstrating the uniformity and universality of the principles of valid interpretation of verbal texts of any sort, this closely reasoned examination provides a theoretical foundation for a discipline that is fundamental to virtually all humanistic studies. It defines the grounds on which textual interpretation can claim to establish objective knowledge, defends that claim against such skeptical attitudes as historicism and psychologism, and shows that many confusions can be avoided if the distinctions between meaning and significance, interpretation and criticism are (...) correctly understood. It provides perhaps the first genuinely comprehensive account of hermeneutic theory to appear in English and the first systematic presentation of the principles of valid interpretation in any language. Mr. Hirsch, associate professor of English at the University of Virginia, is the author of _Wordsworth and Schelling _and _Innocence and Experience: An Introduction to Blake._ “Here is a book that brings logic to the most unruly of disciplines, literary interpretation. Viewing this subject within the tradition of hermeneutics, Mr. Hirsch is able to trace its origins and development with brilliant insight. The result is a lucidly systemic and authoritative account of the premises and procedures applicable to the interpretation of a literary text. Mr. Hirsch has performed a monumental service thereby that of reinstating the credentials of objectivism and defining the limits of the aesthetics of truth. This study is a necessary took for anyone who wants to talk sense about literature.”—_Virginia Quarterly Review_ “Professor Hirsch demonstrates convincingly that objectivity is attainable in humane studies, and that it is not identified with the subject but with the evidence. A valid interpretation is not necessarily a correct one, but one which is more probably than any other on the basis of existing evidence. He makes a subtle and important distinction between a text’s ‘meaning’ and its ‘significance’, and brilliantly relates meaning to understanding and interpretation to explanation…” In short, this is a work which future students of literary theory cannot afford to neglect.”—_Notes and Queries_ E.D. Hirsch, Jr., is professor of English at the University of Virginia. (shrink)

Gadamer's book extends and codifies the main hermeneutical concepts of Bultmann, Heidegger, and their adherents, and can be considered a summa of what Robinson calls "The New Hermeneutic." By Robinson and other theologians, and by Continental literary critics, Wahrheit und Methode has been welcomed as a philosophical justification for "vital and relevant" interpretations that are unencumbered by a concern for the author's original intention. On this point "The New Hermeneutic" reveals its affinities with "The New Criticism" and the newer "Myth (...) Criticism." All three have impugned the author's prerogative to be the determiner of textual meaning. Gadamer, however, grounds his anti-intentionalism only partially in aesthetics and not at all in the collective unconscious but primarily in the radical historicism of Martin Heidegger. (shrink)

Hirsch shows why American students perform less well than students in other industrialized countries. Drawing on classroom observation, the history of ideas, and current scientific understanding of the patterns of intellectual growth, he builds the case that our schools have indeed made progress in teaching the mechanics of reading, but do not convey the more complex and essential content needed for reading comprehension. Hirsch reasons that literacy depends less on formal reading 'skills' and more on exposure to rich (...) knowledge. His argument gives parents specific tools for enhancing their child's ability to read with comprehension; shows how No-Child-Left-Behind tests and SATs are measuring a kind of knowledge that is not being taught in our schools; and maps out how American schools can become a strong antidote to poverty and to the race-based achievement gap, and thus fulfill our democratic ideal for our children.--From publisher description. (shrink)

Melanesian ethnography has been a substantial and enduring presence in Strathern’s comparative project of anthropology. The cornerstone of this project was The Gender of the Gift, where a model was established for demonstrating the analogies between Melanesian societies based on a system of common differences. The comparisons created in this work were centred on a real and radical divide between Melanesia and the West. Strathern’s subsequent comparative work has examined the debates surrounding new social and technological forms in the West (...) (e.g. new genetic and reproductive technologies) through drawing analogies with Melanesian social forms; she has simultaneously highlighted the limits of these comparisons. Her intention in this comparative project has been to expand the range of concepts and language used to understand western social and technological innovations that potentially affect the world at large, so that debate is not simply circumscribed by western preoccupations and concerns. As mediated through the analysis of Strathern and the other Melanesian anthropologists she draws on, the voices and interests of non-westerners can potentially inform and even reform the grounds of such deliberations. (shrink)

In _Why Knowledge Matters_, influential scholar E. D. Hirsch, Jr., addresses critical issues in contemporary education reform and shows how cherished truisms about education and child development have led to unintended and negative consequences. Hirsch, author of _The Knowledge Deficit_, draws on recent findings in neuroscience and data from France to provide new evidence for the argument that a carefully planned, knowledge-based elementary curriculum is essential to providing the foundations for children’s life success and ensuring equal opportunity for (...) students of all backgrounds. In the absence of a clear, common curriculum, Hirsch contends that tests are reduced to measuring skills rather than content, and that students from disadvantaged backgrounds cannot develop the knowledge base to support high achievement. Hirsch advocates for updated policies based on a set of ideas that are consistent with current cognitive science, developmental psychology, and social science. The book focuses on six persistent problems of recent US education: the over-testing of students; the scapegoating of teachers; the fadeout of preschool gains; the narrowing of the curriculum; the continued achievement gap between demographic groups; and the reliance on standards that are not linked to a rigorous curriculum. Hirsch examines evidence from the United States and other nations that a coherent, knowledge-based approach to schooling has improved both achievement and equity wherever it has been instituted, supporting the argument that the most significant education reform and force for equality of opportunity and greater social cohesion is the reform of fundamental educational ideas. _Why Knowledge Matters _introduces a new generation of American educators to Hirsch’s astute and passionate analysis. (shrink)

This article examines strands of an intellectual history in Media and Cultural Studies and Science and Technology Studies in both of which researchers were prompted to take up ethnography. Three historical phases of this process are identified. The move between phases was the result of particular displacements and contestations of perspective in the research procedures within each discipline. Thus concerns about appropriate contextualization led to the eventual embrace of anthropological ethnographic methods. The article traces the subsequent emergence of a ‘crisis (...) of context’ in the deployment of ethnography within these disciplines. The analysis of these historical changes is informed by a particular depiction of Euro-American knowledge conventions. The article suggests that the limits currently perceived for ethnography are a specific instance of the more general limits now recognized for these knowledge conventions. (shrink)

Developing countries face numerous barriers to conducting effective and efficient ethics reviews of international collaborative research. In addition to potentially overlooking important scientific and ethical considerations, inadequate or insufficiently trained ethics committees may insist on unwarranted changes to protocols that can impair a study's scientific or ethical validity. Moreover, poorly functioning review systems can impose substantial delays on the commencement of research, which needlessly undermine the development of new interventions for urgent medical needs. In response to these concerns, the Drugs (...) for Neglected Diseases Initiative, an independent nonprofit organization founded by a coalition of public sector and international organizations, developed a mechanism to facilitate more effective and efficient host country ethics review for a study of the use of fexinidazole for the treatment of late stage African Trypanosomiasis. The project involved the implementation of a novel ‘pre-review’ process of ethical oversight, conducted by an ad hoc committee of ethics committee representatives from African and European countries, in collaboration with internationally recognized scientific experts. This article examines the process and outcomes of this collaborative process. (shrink)

This book updates and adds to the classic Social Movements of the Sixties and Seventies, showing how social movement theory has grown and changed.

Claire Katz & Lara Trout, Emmanuel Levinas. Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers ; Thomas Bedorf, Andreas Cremonini, Verfehlte Begegnung. Levinas und Sartre als philosophische Zeitgenossen ; Samuel Moyn, Origins of the Other: Emmanuel Levinas between Revelation and Ethics ; Pascal Delhom & Alfred Hirsch, Im Angesicht der Anderen. Levinas’ Philosophie des Politischen ; Sharon Todd, Learning from the other: Levinas, psychoanalysis and ethical possibilities in education ; Michel Henry, Le bonheur de Spinoza, suivi de: Etude sur le spinozisme de (...) Michel Henry, par Jean-Michel Longneaux ; Jean-François Lavigne, Husserl et la naissance de la phénoménologie. Des Recherches logiques aux Ideen: la genèse de l’idéalisme transcendantal phénoménologique ; Denis Seron, Objet et signification ; Dan Zahavi, Sara Heinämaa and Hans Ruin, Metaphysics, Facticity, Interpretation. Phenomenology in The Nordic Countries ; Dimitri Ginev, Entre anthropologie et herméneutique ; Magdalena Mărculescu-Cojocea, Critica metafizicii la Kant şi Heidegger. Problema subiectivităţii: raţiunea între autonomie şi deconstrucţie. (shrink)

Two main claims are defended in this paper: first, that typical disputes in the literature about the ontology of physical objects are merely verbal; second, that the proper way to resolve these disputes is by appealing to common sense or ordinary language. A verbal dispute is characterized not in terms of private idiolects, but in terms of different linguistic communities representing different positions. If we imagine a community that makes Chisholm's mereological essentialist assertions, and another community that makes Lewis's four‐dimensionalist (...) assertions, the members of each community speak the truth in their respective languages. This follows from an application of the principle of interpretive charity to the two communities. (shrink)

Here I consider the two most venerated arguments about the existence of God: the Ontological Argument and the Argument from Evil. The Ontological Argument purports to show that God’s nature guarantees that God exists. The Argument from Evil purports to show that God’s nature, combined with some plausible facts about the way the world is, guarantees (or is very compelling grounds for thinking) that God does not exist. Obviously, both arguments cannot be sound. But I argue here that they are (...) both unsound for the very same reason. (shrink)

This Element introduces the philosophical literature on models, with an emphasis on normative considerations relevant to models for decision-making. Chapter 1 gives an overview of core questions in the philosophy of modeling. Chapter 2 examines the concept of model adequacy for purpose, using three examples of models from the atmospheric sciences to describe how this sort of adequacy is determined in practice. Chapter 3 explores the significance of using models that are not adequate for purpose, including the purpose of informing (...) public decisions. Chapter 4 provides a basic framework for values in modelling, using a case study to highlight the ethical challenges in building models for decision making. It concludes by establishing the need for strategies to manage value judgments in modelling, including the potential for public participation in the process. (shrink)

A number of jurisdictions, including England and Wales after their adoption of the 1991 Criminal Justice Act, require that sentences be `proportionate' to the severity of the crime. This book, written by the leading architect of `just deserts' sentencing theory, discusses how sentences may be scaled proportionately to the gravity of the crime. Topics dealt with include how the idea of a penal censure justifies proportionate sentences; how a penalty scale should be `anchored' to reduce overall punishment levels; how non-custodial (...) penalties should be graded and used; and how political pressures impinge on sentencing policies. (shrink)

Milton Friedman's famous methodological essay contains, along with much else, some strands that look as though they were taken from the “empirical-scientific” fabric described by Karl Popper. Think, for example, of Friedman's conviction that the way to test a hypothesis is to compare its implications with experience. Or of his more or less explicit espousal of the view that while no amount of facts can ever prove a hypothesis true, a single “fact” may refute it. Or of his assertion that (...) hypotheses are to be accepted only as provisionally true, and then only after repeated efforts to refute them have failed. The appearance of these Popperian ideas is not surprising. (shrink)

The principle that a sentence should be proportionate to the seriousness of the offence remains at the centre of penal practice and scholarly debate. This volume explores highly topical aspects of proportionality theory that require examination and further analysis. von Hirsch and Ashworth explore the relevance of the principle of proportionality to the sentencing of young offenders, the possible reasons for departing from the principle when sentencing dangerous offenders, and the application of the principle to socially deprived offenders. They (...) examine the claim that the principle tends to be associated with greater severity in sentencing, and explore the relevance of penance and of restorative justice to proportionality theory. Their examination of arguments and counter-arguments culminates in a re-statement of the main criteria for proportionate sentencing.The authors are well known for their previous writings on proportionality theory, and this volume broadens the theory to deal with important contemporary issues in crime and punishment. (shrink)

We review and present a new meta‐analysis of research suggesting that ethicists in the United States appear to behave no morally better overall than do non‐ethicist professors. Measures include: returning library books, peer evaluation of overall moral behavior, voting participation, courteous and discourteous behavior at conferences, replying to student emails, paying conference registration fees and disciplinary society dues, staying in touch with one's mother, charitable giving, organ and blood donation, vegetarianism, and honesty in responding to survey questions. One multi‐measure study (...) found ethicists tending to embrace more stringent moral views, especially about meat eating and charitable donation. The same multi‐measure study found ethicists and other professors to show similarly small‐to‐medium correlations between their expressed normative attitudes and their self‐reported or directly measured behavior. (shrink)

What is the role of psychoanalysis in today's world? _Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow _presents a selection of papers written by Hanna Segal. The collection introduces the reader to a wide spectrum of insights into psychoanalysis, ranging from current thoughts on the nature of dreaming to new ideas about vision and disillusionment. Her long interest in factors affecting war is pursued in her examination of the psychotic factors, symbolic significance and psychological impact of the events of September the 11th, and the (...) ensuing war on Iraq. The second half of the book discusses Segal's presentations to conferences and symposia from 1969-2000, this material is split into six sections: Models of the mind and mental processes Psychoanalytic technique Segal on Klein Segal on Bion Envy and narcissism Interviews. _Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow_ is a masterly contribution to the field. Segal's clarity of thought and striking clinical illustrations make the book accessible to those new to the field as well as those acquainted with her seminal work. (shrink)

There are many alleged problems with trusting another person’s moral testimony, perhaps the most prominent of which is that it fails to deliver moral understanding. Without moral understanding, one cannot do the right thing for the right reason, and so acting on trusted moral testimony lacks moral worth. This chapter, however, argues that moral advice differs from moral testimony, differs from it in a way that enables a defender of moral advice to parry this worry about moral worth. The basic (...) idea is that an advisor and an advisee can together constitute a joint agent, and that this joint agent’s action can indeed have moral worth. So while the advisee himself might not do the right thing for the right reason (this because all alone he lacks the right reason), and while the advisor herself might not do the right thing for the right reason (this because all alone she does not do the right thing), they together do the right for the right reason. (shrink)

In 1970 a coalition of student activists opposing the Vietnam War circulated documents revealing the involvement of several prominent social scientists in U.S. counterinsurgency activities in Thailand--activities that could cause harm to the people who were the subject of the scholars' research. The disclosure of these materials, which detailed meetings with the Agency for International Development and the Defense Department, prompted two members of the Ethics Committee of the American Anthropological Association to issue an unauthorized rebuke of the accused. Over (...) the next two years, the AAA agonized over the allegations and the appropriate response to them. Within an academic community already polarized by the war, political and professional acrimony reached unprecedented levels. Although the association ultimately passed a code of ethics, the key issues raised in the process were never fully resolved. Now back in print, Eric Wakin's Anthropology Goes to War is the first comprehensive study of what became known as the Thailand Controversy--and a timely reminder of a debate whose echoes may be heard in our own time. (shrink)

This paper argues that under some conditions, when one person acts on the direction of another person, the two of them thereby act together, and that this explains why both the director and the directee can be responsible for what is done. In other words, a director and a directee can be a joint agent, one whose members are responsible for what they together do. This is most clearly so when the directive is a command. But it is also sometimes (...) so when the directive is a bit of advice. (shrink)

In his work on Wu wei, Edward Slingerland argues that the classical Chinese ideal is an inherently paradoxical concept that is first and foremost spiritual and political only secondarily. Through a close reading of the Dao de Jing, the first major classical text to substantially deploy and develop the concept, I argue that Wu wei isn’t inherently paradoxical and that this is seen precisely when it is viewed in terms of its political primacy. On my reading, the emergence of Wu (...) wei in the Daoist canon is an equilibrating moment of political mediation between the highly intentionalized sphere of human pursuits and the purposeless fluidity and boundless flux of the natural world. Wu wei here takes on a different aspect—mystery rather than paradox—when considered within a form of political collectivity in which the intentional and the innate, purposive and natural are constantly juxtaposed and contending with one another. (shrink)

A boolean algebra is shown to be completely representable if and only if it is atomic, whereas it is shown that neither the class of completely representable relation algebras nor the class of completely representable cylindric algebras of any fixed dimension (at least 3) are elementary.

Reprint. Originally published: Tsedek u-mishpat, die mosaisch-rabbinische Tugend- und Rechtslehre. 2., verm. und verb. Aufl. Gross-Kanizsa: J. Markbreiter, 1862.

We confirm a conjecture, about neat embeddings of cylindric algebras, made in 1969 by J. D. Monk, and a later conjecture by Maddux about relation algebras obtained from cylindric algebras. These results in algebraic logic have the following consequence for predicate logic: for every finite cardinal α ≥ 3 there is a logically valid sentence X, in a first-order language L with equality and exactly one nonlogical binary relation symbol E, such that X contains only 3 variables (each of which (...) may occur arbitrarily many times), X has a proof containing exactly α + 1 variables, but X has no proof containing only α variables. This solves a problem posed by Tarski and Givant in 1987. (shrink)

We show, for any ordinal γ ≥ 3, that the class RaCAγ is pseudo-elementary and has a recursively enumerable elementary theory. ScK denotes the class of strong subalgebras of members of the class K. We devise games, Fⁿ (3 ≤ n ≤ ω), G, H, and show, for an atomic relation algebra A with countably many atoms, that Ǝ has a winning strategy in Fω(At(A)) ⇔ A ∈ ScRaCAω, Ǝ has a winning strategy in Fⁿ(At(A)) ⇐ A ∈ ScRaCAn, Ǝ (...) has a winning strategy in G(At(A)) ⇐ A ∈ RaCAω, Ǝ has a winning strategy in H(At(A)) ⇒ A ∈ RaRCAω for 3 ≤ n < ω. We use these games to show, for γ ≥ 5 and any class K of relation algebras satisfying RaRCAγ ⊆ K ⊆ ScRaCA₅, that K is not closed under subalgebras and is not elementary. For infinite γ, the inclusion RaCAγ ⊂ ScRaCAγ is strict. For infinite γ and for a countable relation algebra A we show that A has a complete representation if and only if A is atomic and Ǝ has a winning strategy in F(At(A)) if and only if A is atomic and A ∈ ScRaCAγ. (shrink)

We consider the problem of finding and classifying representations in algebraic logic. This is approached by letting two players build a representation using a game. Homogeneous and universal representations are characterized according to the outcome of certain games. The Lyndon conditions defining representable relation algebras (for the finite case) and a similar schema for cylindric algebras are derived. Finite relation algebras with homogeneous representations are characterized by first order formulas. Equivalence games are defined, and are used to establish whether an (...) algebra is ω-categorical. We have a simple proof that the perfect extension of a representable relation algebra is completely representable. An important open problem from algebraic logic is addressed by devising another two-player game, and using it to derive equational axiomatisations for the classes of all representable relation algebras and representable cylindric algebras. Other instances of this approach are looked at, and include the step by step method. (shrink)

This book reflects on the variety of ways in which mourning affects political and social life. Through the narrative of the contributors, the book demonstrates how mourning is intertwined with politics and how politics involves a struggle over which losses and whose lives can, or should, be mourned.

A. W. Brian Simpson, Cannibalism and the Common Law Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1984.

. Selective incapacitation reexamined: The national academy of sciences' report on criminal careers and “career criminals”. Criminal Justice Ethics: Vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 19-35.

Introduction: the emergence of the proportionate sentence -- Sentence proportionality sketched briefly -- Why should the criminal sanction exist? -- Why punish proportionately? -- Ordinal and cardinal proportionality -- Seriousness, severity and the living-standard -- The role of previous convictions -- Proportionate non-custodial sanctions -- A "modified" desert model? -- The politics of the desert model -- Proportionate sentences for juveniles -- Appendix: the desert model's evolution : a brief chronology.

Are philosophical arguments as effective as narratives in influencing charitable giving and attitudes toward it? In four experiments, we exposed online research participants to either philosophical arguments in favor of charitable giving, a narrative about a child whose life was improved by charitable donations, both the narrative and the argument, or a control text (a passage from a middle school physics text or a description of charitable organizations). Participants then expressed their attitudes toward charitable giving and were either asked how (...) much they would hypothetically donate if given $10 (Experiment 1) or told they had a 10% chance of winning $10 and given the opportunity to donate from their potential winnings (Experiments 2–4). Across the four experiments, participants in all of the narrative conditions and in some of the argument conditions tended to express more positive attitudes toward charitable giving and donated about $1 more on average than did participants in the control conditions. These effects appear to have been mediated by the “narrative transportation” scale, which suggests that appeals to donate can be effective if they engage participants’ emotions, imagery, and interest. (shrink)

A boolean algebra is shown to be completely representable if and only if it is atomic, whereas it is shown that neither the class of completely representable relation algebras nor the class of completely representable cylindric algebras of any fixed dimension are elementary.