Hall’s monograph aims to demonstrate that Kant’s Opus postumum fills a crucial gap in Kant’s critical philosophy concerning the notion of substance in the analogies of experience from the Critique of Pure Reason. It is organized into an introduction, five chapters and a short recapitulatory conclusion.The first chapter argues that Kant, in the analogies of experience, uses two mutually irreducible notions of substance: the first refers to the plurality of “relatively enduring empirical objects”; the second is the notion of (...) a singular “sempiternal and omnipresent Substance”. As the category of substance suits only the “substances,” Kant needs a complementary a priori concept of substance that fits.. (shrink)

Henry More argues that materialism cannot account for cases where a single subject or perceiver has multiple perceptions simultaneously. Since we clearly do have multiple perceptions at the same time--for example, when we see, hear, and smell simultaneously--More concludes that we are not wholly material. In response to More's argument, Margaret Cavendish adopts a two-fold strategy. First, she argues that there is no general obstacle to mental unification in her version of materialism. Second, Cavendish appeals to the mind or rational (...) matter--terms she often uses interchangeably—to explain the integration of sensory input from multiple senses. When the mind integrates perceptions across modalities, the different parts of rational matter share their knowledge so that they all come to perceive alike. When rational parts successfully communicate their knowledge, each part knows what all the others know. They pool their knowledge; they perceive alike. Thus, when someone hears, sees, and tastes, each part of her mind hears, sees, and tastes alike, in parallel and in unison. The Cavendishian mind, in short, approximates simplicity by achieving uniformity or homogeneity of perceptions across its parts. (shrink)

A shared narrative in the literature on the evolution of cooperation maintains that social learning evolves early to allow for the transmission of cumulative culture. Social norms, whilst present at the outset, only rise to prominence later on, mainly to stabilise cooperation against the threat of defection. In contrast, I argue that once we consider insights from social epistemology, an expansion of this narrative presents itself: An interesting kind of social norm — an epistemic coordination norm — was operative in (...) early and important instances of specialised social learning. I show how there’s a need for such norms in two key social learning strategies and explain how this need is constituted. In assessor-teaching (e.g. Castro et al. 2019; 2021), epistemic coordination norms allow agents to coordinate around the content of social learning, i.e., what is to be known and how this is to be done. These norms also allow agents to coordinate around the form of cultural learning in what’s sometimes called strategic social learning (Laland 2004; Hoppitt and Laland 2013; Heyes 2018, chap. 5) and elsewhere. Broadly speaking, this concerns how cultural learning is organised within the social group. The upshot is that the evolution of social learning and social norms are intertwined in important and underappreciated ways from early on. The above matters as it informs our views about the evolution of social norms more generally. Truly social norms emerged to coordinate a plurality of complex behaviours and interactions, amongst them specialised social learning. I substantiate this view by contrasting it with Jonathan Birch’s views on the evolution of norms. What results is a general but cohesive narrative on the early evolution of social norms. (shrink)

This paper explores how Wundt’s and Bühler’s respective conceptions of gestural expression have implications for how each conceives of what, in broad terms, may be understood as a ‘grammar of gestures’: that is, the rules for the formation and performance of gestures with and without speech. Unlike previous scholarship that has looked at the relationship of Wundt and Bühler, the aim here will be to give particular attention to the relevance of their respective accounts for current philosophical and linguistic research (...) on gesture. Building off of Bühler, we can offer an alternative to the psychologistic and solipsistic model of gestural expression that can be found in Wundt and that seems to be resurgent today in work by McNeil and others. Via Bühler’s notions of diacrisis and of the underlying functions that guide human communication, we propose an understanding of the relationship between gestures and speech that aims to render accurately both the highly contextualised and the highly structured conditions of their mutual employment. (shrink)

"AGM members lunch." Ethos: Official Publication of the Law Society of the Australian Capital Territory, (198), pp. 13.

This book analyzes the moral confusion of contemporary society, relating rival conceptions of morality with a wide variety of views about the nature and predicament of man. Mitchell argues that many secular thinkers possess a traditional "Christian" conscience which they find hard to defend in terms of an entirely secular world-view, but which is more in line with a Christian understanding of man.

Beautifully packaged reissue of the vividly lyrical biography of Nietzsche that John Banville called 'a major intellectual event' In 1888, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche moved to Turin. This would be the year in which he wrote three of his greatest works: Twilight of the Idols, The Antichrist, and Ecce Homo; it would also be his last year of writing. He suffered a debilitating nervous breakdown in the first days of the following year. In this probing, elegant biography of that pivotal year, (...) Lesley Chamberlain undoes popular clichés and misconceptions about Nietzsche by offering a deeply complex approach to his character and work. Focusing as much on Nietzsche's daily habits, anxieties and insecurities as on the development of his philosophy, Nietzsche in Turin offers a uniquely lively portrait of the great thinker, and of the furiously productive days that preceded his decline. (shrink)

Despite his reputation for neglecting the body, Descartes develops a systematic account of bodily awareness. He holds that in bodily awareness each of us feels intimately connected to our body. We experience this body as inescapable, as infused with bodily sensations and volitions, and as a special object of concern. This multifaceted experience plays an ambivalent role in Descartes’s philosophy. Bodily awareness is epistemically dangerous. It tempts us to falsely judge that we cannot exist apart from our bodies. But bodily (...) awareness isn’t all bad for Descartes. It helps us stay alive. Bodily awareness also serves as a corrective to overly disembodied conceptions of the self. (shrink)

St. Basil was a towering figure in the fourth-century Church. In the midst of great controversy, he led the charge of those faithful to the doctrine proclaimed at Nicaea. For the bishop of Caesarea, the array of false teachings that plagued the Church was not merely a matter of conflicting opinions or interpretations. It was rather a result of the moral failure of so-called leaders of the Church to look first to the will of God revealed in Scripture as (...) their compass in all things-in matters of both theology and personal conduct. Here St. Basil lays out a consistent theological ethic, rooted in a nuanced appreciation for the supremacy of Scripture. These texts, presented with the Greek on the facing page, are essential reading for anyone interested in early Christian approaches to ethics as well as the right use and interpretation of the Bible. (shrink)

The emergence of private authority has become a feature of the post-Cold War world. The contributors to this volume examine the implications of this erosion of the power of the state for global governance. They analyse actors as diverse as financial institutions, multinational corporations, religious terrorists and organised criminals. The themes of the book relate directly to debates concerning globalization and the role of international law, and will be of interest to scholars and students of international relations, politics, sociology and (...) law. (shrink)

A personal glimpse into the life of one of the most influential twentieth-century philosophers covers his involvement with the existentialist movement and false accusations associating him with Hitler and Nazism.

This book encourages today's students to engage in Plato's thought, grapple with Plato's arguments, and explore the relevance of his arguments in contemporary terms. A text only comes alive if we make it our own; Plato's great work The Republic, often reads as though it were addressing the problems of the day rather than those of ancient Athens. Treating The Republic as a whole and offering a comprehensive introduction to Plato's arguments, Mitchell and Lucas draw students into an exploration of (...) the relevance of Plato's thought to our present ideas about politics, society and education, as well as the philosophy of mathematics, science and religion.The authors bring The Republic to life. The first chapters help the reader to make sense of the text, either in translation or the original Greek. Later chapters deal with the themes that Plato raises, treating Plato as a contemporary. Plato is inexhaustible: he speaks to many different people of different generations and from different backgrounds. The Republic is not just an ancient text: it never ceases to be relevant to contemporary concerns, and it demands fresh discussion in every age. (shrink)

Consider the distinctive qualitative property grass visually appears to have when it visually appears to be green. This property is an example of what I call sensuous color. Whereas early modern mechanists typically argue that bodies are not sensuously colored, Margaret Cavendish (1623–73) disagrees. In cases of veridical perception, she holds that grass is green in precisely the way it visually appears to be. In defense of her realist approach to sensuous colors, Cavendish argues that (i) it is impossible to (...) conceive of colorless bodies, (ii) the very possibility of color experience requires that bodies are sensuously colored, and (iii) the attribution of sensuous colors to bodies provides the best explanation of color constancy. Although some passages might suggest that Cavendish endorses a reductive account of sensuous color, according to which sensuous color reduces to a body's microscopic surface texture (or some other mechanistically respectable property), I argue that she accepts a nonreductive account, on which sensuous color is not thus reducible. (shrink)

Causation is a deeply intuitive and familiar relation, gripped powerfully by common sense. Or so it seems. As is typical in philosophy, however, that deep intuitive familiarity has not led to any philosophical account of causation that is at once clean, precise, and widely agreed upon. Not for lack of trying: the last thirty years or so have seen dozens of attempts to provide such an account, and the pace of development is, if anything, accelerating. (See Collins et al. [2003a] (...) for a comprehensive sampling of the latest work.). (shrink)

In the _Meditations_ and related texts from the early 1640s, Descartes argues that the self can be correctly considered as either a mind or a human being, and that the self’s properties vary accordingly. For example, the self is simple considered as a mind, whereas the self is composite considered as a human being. Someone might object that it is unclear how merely considering the self in different ways blocks the conclusion that a single subject of predication—the self—is both simple (...) and composite, which is contradictory. In response to this objection, this paper develops a reading of Descartes’s various ways of considering the self. I argue that the best reading of Descartes’s qualified claims about the self, i.e., about the self _qua_ mind or the self qua human being, presupposes an account of the unqualified self, that is, of the self _simpliciter_. I argue that the self _simpliciter_ is not a mind, and that it is not a human being either. This result might suggest the pessimistic conclusion that Descartes’s view of the self is incoherent. To avoid this result, I introduce a new metaphysical account of the Cartesian self. On my view, the self is individuated by a unified mental life. The self is constituted by the beings that jointly produce this mental life, and derives its unity from it. (shrink)

This book represents part of an ongoing effort to understand the rules, practices, agencies and agents which shape and change the social construction of pedagogic discourse. It draws together and re-examines the findings of the author's earlier work.

How does Descartes characterize the peculiar way in which each of us is aware of our bodies? I argue that Descartes recognizes a sense of bodily ownership, such that the body sensorily appears to be one's own in bodily awareness. This sensory appearance of ownership is ubiquitous, for Descartes, in that bodily awareness always confers a sense of ownership. This appearance is confused, in so far as bodily awareness simultaneously represents the subject as identical to, partially composed by, and united (...) to her body, without distinguishing these relations. Finally, the appearance of ownership is grounded in multiple other ways in which the body sensorily appears: namely, in the fact that the body appears to be inescapable, modified by bodily sensations, and an object of special concern. (shrink)

Referring to a problem-oriented research mode, transdisciplinarity faces the challenge of dealing with the complexity of real-world problems in a methodologically controlled manner. As the first st...

This paper analyzes the nature of the Star Maker in Olaf Stapledon’s Star Maker, as well as Stapledon’s exploration of the theological problem of evil, as compared with philosophical conceptions of God and their respective theodicies in the tradition of classical theism, as propounded by philosophers such as Aristotle, Plotinus, Augustine, Maimonides, Aquinas, and Avicenna. It argues that Stapledon’s philosophical divergence from classical theism entails that the Star Maker of the novel is more demiurge than true divinity, and that this (...) divergence is integral to the basically amoral character of the Star Maker, as well as the purely aesthetic resolution of the problem of evil articulated in Star Maker. This analysis, in turn, will hopefully bear on future studies touching on the trope of quasi-divinities, evolved and contingent gods, present in the work of other SF authors. (shrink)

Malebranche holds that the feeling of having a body comes in three main varieties. A perceiver sensorily experiences herself (1) as causally connected to her body, in so far as the senses represent the body as causing her sensory experiences and as uniquely responsive to her will, (2) as materially connected to her body, in so far as the senses represent the perceiver as a material being wrapped up with the body, and (3) as perspectivally connected to her body, in (...) so far as the external senses represent the world from the body’s perspective. In addition to distinguishing these varieties of embodied experience, I explain why the perceiver experiences her connection to the body in these ways. Although Malebranche often casts the experience of embodiment in a negative light, his considered view is that this experience contributes to our survival and salvation. (shrink)

Mainstream cognitive neuroscience typically ignores the role of quantum physical effects in the neural processes underlying cogni¬tion and consciousness. However, many unsolved problems remain, suggesting the need to consider new approaches. We propose that quantum theory, especially through an ontological interpretation due to Bohm and Hiley, provides a fruitful framework for addressing the neural correlates of cognition and consciousness. In particular, the ontological interpretation suggests that a novel type of 'active information', connected with a novel type of 'quantum potential energy', (...) plays a key role in quantum physical processes. After introducing the ontological interpretation we illustrate its value for cognitive neuroscience by discussing it in the light of a proposal by Beck and Eccles about how quantum tunneling could play a role in controlling the frequency of synaptic exocytosis. In this proposal, quantum tunneling would enable the 'self' to control its brain without violating the energy conservation law. We argue that the ontological interpretation provides a sharper picture of what actually could be taking place in quantum tunneling in general and in synaptic exocytosis in particular. Based on the notions of active information and quantum potential energy, we propose a coherent way of understanding how mental processes (understood as involving non-classical physical processes) can act on traditional, classically describable neural processes without violating the energy conservation law. (shrink)

A staff photographer for the Ketchikan Daily News, Hall Anderson counted among his early influences photographers like Robert Frank and Henri Cartier-Bresson, who understood the visual bounty to be found in photographing the candid side of life. For more than twenty-five years, Anderson has brought this perspective to his photographic endeavors, both personal and professional, in the small town of Ketchikan in southeast Alaska. Still Rainin' Still Dreamin' showcases one hundred of Anderson's prize-winning black-and-white images, which collectively chronicle three (...) decades of life in Ketchikan, spanning its transition from a timber- and fishing-based economy to one built on a booming tourism industry. From timber carnivals to election coverage to Fourth of July parades, Still Rainin' Still Dreamin' is a poignant celebration of the uncanny juxtapositions found in everyday life. (shrink)

In this chapter, I will offer a strategic new interpretation of Hannah Arendt's conception of forgiveness. In brief, I propose understanding Arendt as suggesting—not that evil is objectively banal, or a mere failure of imagination—but instead that it is maximally forgiveness-facilitating to understand the seemingly unforgivable as merely a failure of imagination. In other words, we must so expand our imaginative powers (what Arendt terms “enlarged mentality”) by creatively imagining others as merely insufficiently unimaginative, all in order to reimagine them (...) as beings whom we are willing and able to forgive. It is in this sense that I understand forgiveness for Arendt as a kind of “magic.” That is, forgiveness involves the imaginatively-funded creation of a new reality by merely naming it, like the phenomenon of “magic thinking,” wherein one believes one’s thoughts or speech are immediately realized in the world. The magic of forgiveness, in other words, is an incantation or performative speech act, based on the forgiver’s choice to “make believe,” or pretend-into-being, that the forgiven person is forgivable qua thoughtless. (shrink)

Mike Coxhead and James Chamberlain on the transformative potential of philosophical conversations in prison.

In this paper, the aim is to explore how there can be a role for expression of affect in illocution, drawing upon some ideas about expression put forward by Karl Bühler. In a first part of the paper, I map some active discussions and open questions surrounding phenomena that seem to involve “expression of affect”. Second, I home in on a smaller piece of that larger puzzle; namely, a consideration of how there may be non-conventional expression of affect. I provide (...) some examples of what I take that to involve and set out some premises for approaching it. In a third section, I motivate such an interest by pointing to a question in speech act theory concerning ‘force conventionalism’. This is whether and how illocution can be performed non-conventionally—that is, whether (at least some) utterances can be communicated with illocutionary force without need of convention. I propose that where expression of affect may occur non-conventionally, it may in turn constitute one important route through which at least some kinds of illocution are achieved. In the fourth part of the paper, I sketch an account of such non-conventional expression of affect for the purposes of illocution, by exploring a broadly Bühlerian account of some affects; namely, that some affects are teleological in character, that coordinations may be involved in their satisfactional states, and that uptake of the expressed affect constitutes one subset of such satisfactional states. That exposition points to the contemporary relevance of the “action theory of expression” proposed by Bühler. (shrink)

In this essay, after a brief decolonial analysis of the concept of “poetry” in Indigenous communities, I will investigate the poetic-philosophical implications of Cherokee culture, more specifically the poetic essence of the Cherokee language, the poetic aspects of Cherokee myth (pre-history) and post-myth (history), and the poetic-philosophical powers of Cherokee ritual. My first section analyzes the poetic essence, structure, special features, and historical context of the Cherokee language, drawing on Ruth Holmes and Betty Sharp Smith’s language textbook, Beginning Cherokee. My (...) second section considers poetic aspects of the pre-history and history of the Cherokee Nation considered as a text, using Robert J. Conley’s The Cherokee Nation: A History. And my third section investigates the poetic nature of the Cherokee rituals’ myth-ontological background and its existential psychological implications, via J. T. Garrett & Michael Tlanusta Garrett’s The Cherokee Full Circle: A Practical Guide to Ceremonies and Traditions. Collectively, these analyses will suggest that, just as the Cherokee and other tribes are the slandered, disenfranchised, suppressed and covered-over Indigenous peoples of the North American continent, so poetry writ large (including Indigenous philosophy) is the slandered, disenfranchised, suppressed and covered-over arche of western philosophy (as I have previously explored via a new interpretation of Nietzsche). In short, I will argue that both poetry and Cherokee culture can be understood as indigenous “absences” which are in truth vital and enduring presences. (shrink)

Liberalism in Dark Times claims to have two aims, to reconstruct a particular form of liberalism that developed in the interwar years and to save it from neglect because it can serve us well in con...

The demon is, in the thinker,s words, "supremely powerful and clever", and it is only the combination of these two traits with the demon's incessant deception that empowers Descartes to stage the radical doubt that will terminate in his attempted proofs of God and the material world. The reason the demon is necessary is that the thinker cannot prove that it would be wrong for God to allow us to be deceived occasionally. Thus, Descartes needed, methodologically and rhetorically, something more (...) than just an imperfect God or a lack of God altogether; he needed a being with exactly as much power as God but without God's goodness. In short, one should utilize philosophy for the everyday analogue to lucid dreaming. For those unfamiliar with the phenomenon, lucid dreaming involves training oneself, by a simple concentration exercise performed before falling asleep, to be able to become conscious of being in a dream while still in it and without thereby ending it. (shrink)

Malebranche holds that visual experience represents the size of objects relative to the perceiver's body and does not represent objects as having intrinsic or nonrelational spatial magnitudes. I argue that Malebranche's case for this body-relative thesis is more sophisticated than other commentators—most notably, Atherton and Simmons —have presented it. Malebranche's central argument relies on the possibility of perceptual variation with respect to size. He uses two thought experiments to show that perceivers of different sizes—namely, miniature people, giants, and typical human (...) beings—can experience the very same objects as having radically different sizes. Malebranche argues that there is no principled reason to privilege one of these ways of experiencing size over the others and, more specifically, that all three kinds of perceivers experience size veridically. From the possibility of this kind of veridical perceptual variation, Malebranche infers that visual experience represents only body-relative size. (shrink)

David Bohm is one of the foremost scientific thinkers of today and one of the most distinguished scientists of his generation. His challenge to the conventional understanding of quantum theory has led scientists to reexamine what it is they are going and his ideas have been an inspiration across a wide range of disciplines. _Quantum Implications_ is a collection of original contributions by many of the world' s leading scholars and is dedicated to David Bohm, his work and the issues (...) raised by his ideas. The contributors range across physics, philosophy, biology, art, psychology, and include some of the most distinguished scientists of the day. There is an excellent introduction by the editors, putting Bohm's work in context and setting right some of the misconceptions that have persisted about the work of David Bohm. (shrink)

"The spiritual needs and interests of both men and women have changed enough to merit a new edition of this superbly crafted, scholarly study of Sophia." -- Janet Forsythe Fishburn.

In Queer Social Philosophy, Randall Halle analyzes key texts in the tradition of German critical theory from the perspective of contemporary queer theory, exposing gender and sexuality restrictions that undermine those texts' claims of universal truth. Addressing such figures as Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Adorno, and Habermas, Halle offers a unique contribution to contemporary debates about sexuality, civil society, and politics.