However, as in other disciplines, academic recognition can in turn entrench static and powerful meta-theories and narratives about professional ethos and ...

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Australia has recently experienced what many regard as its greatest judicial crisis. The appointment of Timothy Carmody QC as Chief Justice of Queensland in 2014 emerged from a process that was tainted by the state government’s willingness to break confidences gained in the course of consultation for the appointment. Equally, a strongly negative and heterodox reaction to the appointment by the whole Queensland Supreme Court bench meant that, together, politicians and judges brought on a collapse of the traditional ethics surrounding (...) judicial appointments. Nevertheless, the extreme circumstances of the Carmody affair suggest that, where judges have a legitimate concern that a judicial appointment might put a fundamental constitutional value like judicial independence at risk, a court may be justified in publically expressing concern about the appointment. (shrink)

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This volume brings together for the first time a significant number of Reid's manuscript papers on natural history, physiology and materialist metaphysics. An important contribution not only to Reid studies but also to our understanding of eighteenth-century science and its context.

This paper investigates the topological construction of Wedge Sum, with the aim of showing that it can be done mathematically, via a quotient construction, or logically, via Merge. Consistent and Inconsistent versions are given, while noting that the natural outcome of Merging is an inconsistent theory. Finally it is observed that algebraic constructions can also be treated via Merge, where the extra functionality makes for various triviality and non-triviality results.

Klaus Peter Mortensen; The Double Call: on Bildung in a Literary and Reflective Perspective, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 36, Issue 3, 16 December.

Our traditional ways of thinking about politics and society are becoming obsolete. We need some new points of reference in order to re-imagine the possible character, growth, and functioning of our private and common life. Such re-imagination would imply doing away with every-man-for-himself individualism as well as consumption-makes-me-happy materialism and the-state-will-take-care-of-it passivity. There is an alternative: Personalism is a forgotten, yet golden perspective on humanity that seeks to describe what a human being is and to then draw the social consequences. (...) Personalism builds upon the thinking of Martin Buber and Emmanuel Levinas, among others, and has been a source of inspiration for Martin Luther King, Desmond Tutu, and other important personalities in recent history. According to personalism, humans are relational and engaged and possess dignity. The person and the relationship amongst persons are the universal point of departure: Human beings have inherent dignity, and good relationships amongst humans are crucial for the good, engaged life and for a good society. Personalism has been greatly neglected in Western political thought. In this book, Jonas Norgaard Mortensen attempts to introduce personalism while simultaneously demonstrating its historical origins, acquainting the reader with its thinkers and those who have practiced it, and showing that personalism has a highly relevant contribution to make in the debate about today's social and political developments. (shrink)

Once symbolized by a burning armchair, experimental philosophy has in recent years shifted away from its original hostility to traditional methods. Starting with a brief historical review of the experimentalist challenge to traditional philosophical practice, this chapter looks at research undercutting that challenge, and at ways in which experimental work has evolved to complement and strengthen traditional approaches to philosophical questions.

Thomas Reid is now recognized as one of the towering figures of the Enlightenment. Best known for his published writings on epistemology and moral theory, he was also an accomplished mathematician and natural philosopher, as an earlier volume of his manuscripts edited by Paul Wood for the Edinburgh Reid Edition, Thomas Reid on the Animate Creation, has shown. The Correspondence of Thomas Reid collects all of the known letters to and from Reid in a fully (...) annotated form. Letters already published by Sir William Hamilton and others have been reedited, and roughly half of the letters included appear in print for the first time. Writing in 1802, Reid's disciple and biographer Dugald Stewart doubted that Reid's correspondence &"would be generally interesting.&" This collection proves otherwise, for the letters illuminate virtually every aspect of Reid's life and career and, in some instances, provide us with invaluable evidence about activities otherwise undocumented in his manuscripts or published works. Through his correspondence we can trace Reid's relations with contemporaries such as David Hume and his colleagues at both King's College, Aberdeen, and the University of Glasgow, as well as his engagement with the most controversial philosophical, scientific, and political issues of his day. If anything, the letters assembled here serve as the starting point for understanding Reid and his place in the Enlightenment. (shrink)

Thomas Reid saw the three subjects of logic, rhetoric, and the fine arts as closely cohering aspects of one endeavor that he called the culture of the mind. This was a topic on which Reid lectured for many years in Glasgow, and this volume presents as near a reconstruction of these lectures as is now possible. Though virtually unknown today, this material in fact relates closely to Reid's published works and in particular to the late Essays on (...) the Intellectual Powers of Man and Essays on the Active Powers of Man. When composing these works, Reid drew primarily on his lectures on "pneumatology," which presented a theory of the mental powers, broadly conceived. These lectures were basic to the course on the culture of the mind that explained the cultivation of the mental powers. Although the Essays also included some elements from the material on the culture of the mind, the bulk of the latter was left in manuscript form, and Alexander Broadie's edition restores this important extension of Reid's overall work. In addition, this volume continues the attractive combination of manuscript material and published work, in this case Reid's important and well-known essay on Aristotle's logic. This text was corrupted in earlier editions of Reid's works and is now restored to the state in which Reid left it. This volume underscores Reid's great and growing significance, viewed both as a historical figure and as a philosopher. At the same time, it is of great interdisciplinary importance. While the material emerges directly from the core of Reid's philosophy, as now understood, it will appeal widely to people in literary, cultural, historical, and communications studies. In this regard, the present volume is a true fruit of the Scottish Enlightenment. (shrink)

Paraconsistent logic, logic in which inconsistent information does not deliver arbitrary conclusions, is one of the fastest growing areas of logic, with roots in profound philosophical issues, and applications in information processing and philosophy of science. This book contains selected papers presented at the First World Congress on Paraconsistency, held in Ghent in 1997. It contains papers on various aspects of the subject. As such, it should be of interest to all who want to learn what the subject is, and (...) where it is going. (shrink)

First, we consider an argument due to Popper for maximal strength in choice of logic. We dispute this argument, taking a lead from some remarks by Susan Haack; but we defend a set of contrary considerations for minimal strength in logic. Finally, we consider the objection that Popper presupposes the distinctness of logic from science. We conclude from this that all claims to logical truth may be in equal epistemological trouble.

Dirac’s treatment of his well known Delta function was apparently inconsistent. We show how to reconstruct his reasoning using the inconsistency-tolerant technique of Chunk and Permeate. In passing we take note of limitations and developments of that technique.

Sven Erik Nordenbo; Bildung and the Thinking of Bildung, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 36, Issue 3, 16 December 2002, Pages 341–352, https://doi.or.

One of Arthur Prior’s constructions of the relational calculus for times within tense logic plus propositional quantifiers is considered using Malcolm Rennie’s multimodal semantics and found wantin...

As an intensive housing construction drive in the late 1950s began to provide separate apartments for millions of Soviet citizens, aesthetic experts envisioned the Soviet home as a potential site for the display of works of art and for amateur aesthetic production. In the context of de-Stalinization, reformist artists and aestheticians committed to the liberalization and modernization of Soviet artistic criteria, promoted the value of amateur art and even of home decorating in the formation of the new person who would (...) live under communism. They also pressed for affordable art and craft to be made available to ordinary people for their new homes. Thereby they would dwell in their new apartments surrounded by beauty in their everyday lives, and would thus, the experts argued, be brought closer to communist consciousness. Moreover sales of art to individual citizens would provide an alternative income stream to fund artists’ production. The possibility of private art consumption would therefore free artists to some extent from their reliance on state commissions and from the strict stylistic and thematic norms and hierarchies of Socialist Realism as established under Stalin. (shrink)

Our view is that the folk concept of knowing how is more complicated than many epistemologists assume. We present four studies that go some way towards supporting our view—that the folk concept of knowledge-how is a philosophical hybrid, comprising both intellectualist and anti-intellectualist features. One upshot is, if we are going to award a presumptive status to philosophical theories of know-how that best accord with the folk concept, it ought to go to those that combine intellectualist and anti-intellectualist elements.

This paper develops in certain directions the work of Meyer in [3], [4], [5] and [6]. In those works, Peano’s axioms for arithmetic were formulated with a logical base of the relevant logic R, and it was proved finitistically that the resulting arithmetic, called R♯, was absolutely consistent. It was pointed out that such a result escapes incau- tious formulations of Goedel’s second incompleteness theorem, and provides a basis for a revived Hilbert programme. The absolute consistency result used as a (...) model arithmetic modulo two. Modulo arithmetics are not or- dinarily thought of as an extension of Peano arithmetic, since some of the propositions of the latter, such as that zero is the successor of no number, fail in the former. Consequently a logical base which, unlike classical logic, tolerates contradictory theories was used for the model. The logical base for the model was the three-valued logic RM3, which has the advantage that while it is an extension of R, it is finite valued and so easier to handle. The resulting model-theoretic structure is interesting in its own right in that the set of sentences true therein consti- tutes a negation inconsistent but absolutely consistent arithmetic which is an extension of R♯. In fact, in the light of the result of [6], it is an extension of Peano arithmetic with a base of a classical logic, P♯. A generalisation of the structure is to modulo arithmetics with the same logical base RM3, but with varying moduli. We first study the properties of these arithmetics in this paper. The study is then generalised by vary- ing the logical base, to give the arithmetics RMni, of logical base RMn and modulus i. Not all of these exist, however, as arithmetical properties and logical properties interact, as we will show. The arithmetics RMni give rise, on intersection, to an inconsistent arithmetic RMω which is not of modulo i for any i. We also study its properties, and, among other results, we show by finitistic means that the more natural relevant arithmetics R♯ and R♯♯ are incomplete. In the rest of the paper we apply these techniques to several topics, particularly relevant quantum arithmetic in which we are able to show that the law of distribution remains unprovable. Aside from its intrinsic interest, we regard the present exercise as a demonstration that inconsistent theories and models are of mathematical worth and interest. (shrink)

This article examines the connections between a theory of redemption as indebtedness and the wider political/economic realities of indebtedness. In order to illustrate the argument the author demonstrates why it is necessary to even question the roots of theories since they too carry a wider agenda. The author contrasts a debt economy with an economy of love.

The article addresses the emerging framework of ‘positioning theory’, which has become influential in educational theory. We will present the central concepts and ideas of ‘positioning theory’ and subsequently how they are being used to contribute to educational theory. We will focus on an article by Svend Brinkmann where he uses ‘positioning theory’ as the foundation for moral education. Seemingly, Brinkmann uses ‘positioning theory’ rather uncritically in an attempt to ‘strengthen’ the educational process by introducing fixed categorisations and concepts to (...) it. Contrary to this approach, we will use the educational theories of Knud Grue-Sørensen and Gert Biesta to emphasise how we instead should recognise what is here defi ned as the ‘weakness’ of educational theory, and how we have to consider both the adaptive element of education as well as the emancipatory element of it. (shrink)

The paper examines connections between ontology and finance. The ontological debates concerning the role of finance are examined between two opposing schools of thought that can be labelled, very broadly, ‘instrumentalist’ and ‘realist’. These two schools of thought have had momentous repercussions in understanding what is a good society. Each school defines Nature in particular ways which can be explored using ontology and philosophical insight. Our theoretical investigation aims to accommodate Nature in community financial deliberations. A positive role for government (...) is advocated to finance environmental infrastructure initiatives. For example, precautionary strategies to address climate change must be funded. New roles for finance and government are proposed to align human relationships with Nature. Environmental precautionary principles must be developed in conjunction with finance theory to maintain decent standards of living for all. Reliance on impersonal market forces will not be enough to save the planet given the power of some over the many in the neoliberal arena. (shrink)

The view that dominated the last century claims that ethical thought requires thinking of some things – e.g. pleasure, knowledge, virtue – as good “full stop,” or good simpliciter . Traditional Consequentialists, for instance, argue that moral evaluations of acts, motives, etc . are grounded in facts about the simple goodness of that which those things bring about. Similarly, some rational intuitionists think that claims about what one has reason to do are grounded in facts about what is good simpliciter (...) . Such a view gives rise to a set of semantic, metaphysical, and epistemological puzzles about the nature of good simpliciter . I argue that an Aristotelian approach to ethics reveals that ethical thought does not requires good simpliciter , that Aristotelian positions avoid charges of metaphysical and epistemological queerness, and that it gives a straightforward semantic analysis of key moral terms, e.g. morally good/bad and morally right/wrong. I then distinguish between two varieties of Aristotelianism. (shrink)

Most philosophers of emotion endorse a compound account of the emotions: emotions are wholes made of parts; or, as I prefer to put it, emotions are mental states that supervene on other (mental) states. The goal of this paper is to ascertain how the intentionality of these subvening members relates to the intentionality of the emotions. Towards this end, I proceed as follows. First, I discuss the problems with the account Justin D'Arms and Daniel Jacobson offer of the intentionality of (...) the emotions; I argue their account is fundamentally misguided by virtue of being motivated by a misunderstanding of the nature of propositional attitudes. Second, I argue against Peter Goldie's claim that an affective component of an emotion contributes to its intentionality. Third, I offer my own compound account of emotions. I argue (1) emotions are mental states that supervene on other mental states, (2) the mental states that constitute the subvenience base of emotion can have nonconceptual and/or conceptual representational content, and (3) an emotion's intentionality supervenes on (but is often not identical to) the intentionality of only one of its subvening members, specifically, the evaluative representation. (shrink)

Disasters arising from natural hazards affect millions of people every year, killing tens of thousands and causing major economics losses. They disproportionately affect poor people and poor countries and are a threat to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. A root cause is the vulnerability of communities to natural hazards, often associated with poverty, social and economic disadvantage, environmental exploitation, and insufficient awareness, information, and political interest. Too often, disaster risk is not factored into planning and management, despite the (...) ready availability of the necessary knowledge, tools and policy frameworks to reduce the risks. Moreover it is likely that global warning will increase the number and intensity of hazard events in future. Recognizing these issues, in 2005 Governments agreed on the landmark Hyogo Framework for Action, which seeks to achieve a substantial reduction in disaster losses by 2015. Progress is slow, however, and a greatly scaled-up effort will be needed to achieve this outcome and to avoid an unnecessarily risky and dangerous future for the countless communities worldwide. (shrink)

Althaus-Reid describes her work, Indecent Theology, as a reflection on sexuality from the perspective of an Argentinian liberation theology, critical queer theory and a theology of camp self-disclosure. As such, it is a diasporic, postcolonial theology concerned to critique accepted ideas of essentialism and to question theology's status as a universal discourse. Althaus-Reid responds to the suggestions and criticisms of the panel members and views her ongoing project as one of doing queer theology from a 'non-vanilla' Argentinian perspective (...) and with a vision for queer holiness in theology. (shrink)

Classical Greece is famous for its athletic art, particularly the image of the nude male athlete. But how did the Greeks understand athletic beauty? Plato, Aristotle, Xenophon, and others discuss athletes’ beauty, while the educational ideal of kalokagathia conceptually connects athletic beauty with the good. More questions need to be answered, however, if we are to understand ancient athletic beauty. We need to ask ourselves what the Greeks appreciated when they looked at athletic bodies. What did those qualities mean to (...) them? In what way was it erotic? How did it differ for females and males? In this paper I argue that the beautiful athletic body is framed in ancient Greek thought, not just as an aesthetically pleasing image, but as an ideal expression of a certain kind of soul. (shrink)

Drawing on radical media archeology and assemblage theory, this article investigates assemblages of computer vision as they construct new spatiotemporal relations and new capacities for seeing and acting.

We present experimental results that support the claim that the folk concept of knowledge how is an epistemological hybrid, encompassing both intellectualist and praxist elements.