We correct a misunderstanding by Hale and Wright of an objection we raised earlier to their abstractionist programme for rehabilitating logicism in the foundations of mathematics.

These new studies of Wittgenstein's Tractatus represent a significant step beyond recent polemical debate.

Gottlob Frege (1848-1925) was unquestionably one of the most important philosophers of all time. He trained as a mathematician, and his work in philosophy started as an attempt to provide an explanation of the truths of arithmetic, but in the course of this attempt he not only founded modern logic but also had to address fundamental questions in the philosophy of language and philosophical logic. Frege is generally seen (along with Russell and Wittgenstein) as one of the fathers of the (...) analytic method, which dominated philosophy in English-speaking countries for most of the twentieth century. His work is studied today not just for its historical importance but also because many of his ideas are still seen as relevant to current debates in the philosophies of logic, language, mathematics and the mind. The Cambridge Companion to Frege provides a route into this lively area of research. (shrink)

Throughout his career, Wittgenstein was preoccupied with issues in the philosophy of perception. Despite this, little attention has been paid to this aspect of Wittgenstein's work. This volume redresses this lack, by bringing together an international group of leading philosophers to focus on the impact of Wittgenstein's work on the philosophy of perception. The ten specially commissioned chapters draw on the complete range of Wittgenstein's writings, from his earliest to latest extant works, and combine both exegetical approaches with engagements with (...) contemporary philosophy of mind. Topics covered include: perception and judgement in the _Tractatus _ aspect-perception the putative intentionality of perception representationalism. The book also includes an overview which summarises the evolution of Wittgenstein's views on perception throughout his life. With an outstanding array of contributors, _Wittgenstein and Perception_ is essential reading for students and scholars of Wittgenstein’s work, as well as those working in philosophy of mind and philosophy of perception. Contributors: Yasuhiro Arahata, Michael Campbell, William Child, Daniel Hutto, Michael O’Sullivan, Marie McGinn, Michel terHark, Charles Travis, and José Zalabardo. (shrink)

Academic barbarism : practice and transmission -- Academic barbarism, universities and inequality -- Academic barbarism and the literature of concealment : Roberto Bolaño and W.G. Sebald -- Aaron Swartz, new technologies and the myth of open access -- Academic barbarism and the Asian university : the case of Hong Kong.

It has been claimed that empirical work in psychology requires the attribution of representational content to perceptual states: that is, the attribution of veridicality conditions to those states. This is a claim that can only be evaluated by the examination of actual empirical research. In this paper I argue that talk of ‘representation’ in at least one area of research in the psychology of perception can be reinterpreted so as to avoid the attribution of veridicality conditions. This area is the (...) study of human capacities to perceive the relative numerosities of collections of objects. (shrink)

Bertrand Russell developed a conception of the nature of the visual field, and of other sensory fields, as part of his project of explaining the construction of the external world. Wittgenstein's remarks on the visual field in the Tractatus are in part a response to Russell. Wittgenstein, against Russell, analyses the visual field in terms of facts rather than objects. Further, his conception of the field is, in a distinctive sense, depsychologised.

Crispin Wright and Bob Hale have defended the strategy of defining the natural numbers contextually against the objection which led Frege himself to reject it, namely the so-called ‘Julius Caesar problem’. To do this they have formulated principles (called sortal inclusion principles) designed to ensure that numbers are distinct from any objects, such as persons, a proper grasp of which could not be afforded by the contextual definition. We discuss whether either Hale or Wright has provided independent motivation for a (...) defensible version of the sortal inclusion principle and whether they have succeeded in showing that numbers are just what the contextual definition says they are. (shrink)

Holiness in the Christian tradition has often been understood in a way that devalues embodiment and practical engagement with the world of one's time. The latter understanding, for example, led to Marx's critique and repudiation of Christianity. Both interpretations of holiness can be understood as mistaken efforts to express the dynamism for authenticity in contextualised human subjectivity. Vatican 2 opposed both views by addressing itself to all people of good will, declaring that everyone was called to holiness, and that authentic (...) Christian identity involved solidarity with the world of one's time, especially those who are poor. Vatican 2, therefore, provided an authoritative faith foundation for holiness expressed through social commitment and for viewing social commitment on the part of people of good will in whatever state of life as a form of holiness. This vision was also the conviction of leading spirituality writers of the period, like Thomas Merton, and inspired liberation theologians and the Latin American Catholic bishops at their conference in Medellín a few years after the Council. The argument of this article is that the emergence and development of a non-dualist Christian spirituality is grounded methodologically in the correct appropriation of the common innate dynamism for authenticity in concrete human persons and lived spiritual experiences consistent with and capable of enhancing this dynamism. (shrink)

There is an apparent tension in William Blake’s attitude toward the visual. Blake denies the value of sense perception, and of perceptible natural objects, as sources of genuine insight. And he is dismissive of “natural religion” on the grounds that natural objects as present to the senses are insufficient to ground religious experience.Blake’s own spiritual experiences are, however, typically described in intensely visual terms. As a child of eight, he saw “a tree filled with angels” on the common at Peckham (...) Rye in south London, and throughout his life reported “visions” as a source of insight. The narrative of “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” is largely composed of.. (shrink)

How do we become aware of the properties or states that are expressed by gestures, utterances, and facial expressions? This paper argues that expression raises peculiar problems, distinct from those of property perception in general. It argues against some current accounts of awareness of expressed states, before proposing an account which appeals to the notion of empathy. Finally, it situates the proposed account within current discussions of expression in the philosophy of music.

Male violence against women is at shocking levels in South Africa. According to Faul, ‘A woman is killed by an intimate partner every eight hours, a probable underestimate because no perpetrator is identified in 20 percent of killings’, whilst ‘More than 30 percent of girls have been raped by the time they are 18’. Reeva Steenkamp’s killing by her partner, Oscar Pistorius, came ‘the day before she planned to wear black in a “Black Friday” protest against the country’s excruciatingly high (...) number of rapes’. The purpose of this article is to reread a key biblical text regarding male violence against women in order to highlight how Jesus would want us to respond to such violence. The text is John 7:53–8:11. The NRSV: Catholic Edition entitles the story ‘The woman caught in adultery’. However, this title is problematic as it can lead to misleading readings of the text, as I will show, and so I have given it a different title, namely ‘The woman threatened with stoning’. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophers of perception, even those with otherwise widely differing beliefs, often hold that universals enter into the content of perceptual experience. This doctrine can even be seen as a trivial inference from the observation that we observe properties – ways that things are – as well as things. I argue that the inference is not trivial but can and should be resisted. Ordinary property perception does not involve awareness of universals. But there are visual experiences which do involve determinate (...) universals: following Wittgenstein, I call these ‘aspect experiences’. The common view of perceptual content effectively conflates aspect experiences with mere property perceptions. Wittgenstein’s later writings on the philosophy of psychology provide an alternative way to think about both aspects and properties. It also forms a contrast with Wittgenstein’s own early treatment of perception in the Tractatus, the doctrine of which is much closer to the contemporary norm among philosophers of perception. In seeing how Wittgenstein moved away from his early view, we can see how we might move away from that norm. (shrink)

In Legal Pragmatism, Michael Sullivan looks closely at the place of the individual and community in democratic society. After mapping out a brief history of American legal thinking regarding rights, from communitarianism to liberalism, Sullivan gives a rich and nuanced account of how pragmatism worked to resolve conflicts of self-interest and community well-being. Sullivan’s view of pragmatism provides a comprehensive framework for understanding democracy, as well as issues such as health care, education, gay marriage, and illegal (...) immigration that will determine its character in the future. Legal Pragmatism is a bold, carefully argued book that presents a unique understanding of contemporary society, law, and politics. (shrink)

The nature and worth of Michael Oakeshott’s contribution as a political thinker have long been the subject of deep disagreement within the community of Anglophone political theory. This is partly the product of a partial familiarity with Oakeshott’s corpus. During his lifetime, his body of published work had a rather slender appearance, comprising two major monographs, separated by some forty years, and two rather more accessible collections of essays on politics and history. Following his death in 1990, however, a (...) much larger body of writings has become available. In particular, with the publication of his Notebooks, we are afforded the chance to form a nuanced and informed understanding of how the thinking in his texts interconnected, and to appreciate the range of intellectual influences and political preoccupations that characterised his work. (shrink)

We have higher-order evidence that aesthetic judgements in the context of awarding art prizes may be affected by implicit bias, to the detriment of artists from marginalized groups. Epistemologists have suggested how to respond to higher-order evidence by appeal to bracketing or suspending judgement. We explain why these approaches do not help in this context. We turn to three ways of addressing the operation of implicit bias: (i) anonymization, (ii) the production of objective criteria, (iii) direct implicit bias mitigation techniques. (...) We show that, in the art prize case, strategy (i) is sometimes counterproductive and any benefits are partial, and strategy (ii) is difficult or impossible to implement. This means that the need for (iii) (direct implicit bias mitigation techniques) is more pressing here than elsewhere. The art prize context is one where mitigation of a particular kind is all we are left with. However, domain-specific problems arise for this strategy too, which call for further empirical work on the operation of implicit bias in the artworld. We conclude that the problem of implicit bias as it arises in the specific context of awarding prizes in the artworld is especially challenging and, given the unavailability of alternative mitigations in this context, the need for direct bias mitigation is even more pressing here than in society in general. (shrink)

New York University mathematical physicist Alan Sokal published in the postmodern humanities journal Social Text a parody entitled Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity [1]. His point in doing so was to test whether the field of ``cultural studies of science'' was seriously lacking in ``intellectual standards.'' His article is nonsense from start to finish, but was still published. He revealed the hoax in another article in Lingua Franca [2]. The incident, and reactions to it, now (...) being called the Sokal Affair, have received wide coverage in The New York Times [3]. (shrink)

To study philosophy is to encounter paradox after paradox. These encounters provoke thought but also frustration. How many times have I seen eager eyes turn to Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling with the expectation that he will tie ethical justification to religious belief in a comforting and familiar manner, counterbalancing the incessant demand for reasons from Plato and Aristotle and the all-too-radical critiques of Nietzsche. Instead, of course, matters get even harder with Kierkegaard. The turn to the religious doesn't provide justification (...) for the ethical as hoped, and worse still in Kierkegaard's little book we are told that he cannot, in language that trades in universals, capture the singularity of god .. (shrink)

The migration and settlement of 11 million unauthorized immigrants is among the leading political challenges facing the United States today. The majority of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. have been here for more than five years, and are settling into American communities, working, forming families, and serving in the military, even though they may be detained and deported if they are discovered. An open question remains as to what to do about unauthorized immigrants who are already living in the United (...) States. On one hand it is important that the government sends a message that future violations of immigration law will not be tolerated. On the other sits a deeper ethical dilemma that is the focus of this book: what do the state and citizens owe to unauthorized immigrants who have served their adopted country? -/- Earned Citizenship argues that long-term unauthorized immigrant residents should be able to earn legalization and a pathway to citizenship through service in their adopted communities. Their service would act as restitution for immigration law violations. Military service in particular would merit naturalization in countries with a strong citizen-soldier tradition, including the United States. The book also considers the civic value of caregiving as a service to citizens and the country, contending that family immigration policies should be expanded to recognize the importance of caregiving duties for dependents. This argument is part of a broader project in political theory and public policy aimed at reconciling civic republicanism with a feminist ethic of care, and its emphasis on dependency work. As a whole, Earned Citizenship provides a non-humanitarian justification for legalizing unauthorized immigrants based on their contributions to citizens and institutions in their adopted nation. (shrink)

This paper is a book review of "Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction" by Edward Feser.

odi profanum uulgus et arceo.fauete linguis: carmina non priusaudita Musarum sacerdosuirginibus puerisque canto.I hate and spurn the unversed crowd.Mind your tongues: songs yet unheardI sing to boys and virgin girls,the Muses' priest.

This project explores the potential for pragmatism to contribute to debates in philosophy of law. In particular, it claims that the method of reconstruction developed in the work of John Dewey can be fruitfully applied to contemporary legal institutions. As an example, a pragmatic approach to rights is defended as not only theoretically attractive, contra Ronald Dworkin, but as offering practical advantages over competing communitarian alternatives. Moreover, it is claimed that by proceeding in a self-consciously genealogical fashion and by recognizing (...) the interests with which one approaches inquiry, the pragmatist has resources to minimize the risk of paternalism even as she offers, in light of present social circumstances, a substantive reconstruction of rights. (shrink)

Originally published in 1987, Sociology and Social Welfare looks at the relationship between state and welfare in the context of a wider sociological analysis of state and society in post-war Britain. The book looks at two main concerns, the first suggests the ways in which the theory and practice of welfare might be made more reflective and self-conscious if located in sociological understandings of state, society, and welfare. The second suggests that the sociological study of social work and other welfare (...) activities might lead to the development of a more sensitive and practice-informed sociology. (shrink)

This book is a synthetic historiography of present-day international relations theory, a critical analysis of the continuing diversity and complexity of enduring themes through a sustained focus on the analysis of the empirical evidence accumulated by social scientists. Special attention is given to key historical changes in theoretical approaches over the past half-century with full recognition of the contestation over state-based theory, and the changing fortunes of contemporary approaches. The book suggests that viable theories must transcend current intellectual fashion, and (...) attempts to bring together theory and practice while demonstrating the difficulty of assessing competing theories. It addresses multiple strands of thought and assumes that their development cannot be understood in isolation from each other. (shrink)