This paper argues that the concept and role of ‘institutional racism’ in contemporary discussions of race should be reconsidered. It starts by distinguishing between ‘intrinsic institutional racism’, which holds that institutions are racist in virtue of their constitutive features, and ‘extrinsic institutional racism’, which holds that institutions are racist in virtue of their negative effects. It accepts intrinsic institutional racism, but argues that a ‘disparate impact’ conception of extrinsic conception faces a number of objections, the most serious being that it (...) has no plausible account of what it is that makes extrinsically racist institutions racist. It also argues that claims about the explanatory indispensability of institutional racism are overstated (individual racism is at least as important), critiques structural approaches to racial inequality, and suggests that there is reason to doubt whether institutional reform can provide us with all that morality may require in the racial domain. (shrink)

The US neutrino community gathered at the Workshop on the Intermediate Neutrino Program at Brookhaven National Laboratory February 4-6, 2015 to explore opportunities in neutrino physics over the next five to ten years. Scientists from particle, astroparticle and nuclear physics participated in the workshop. The workshop examined promising opportunities for neutrino physics in the intermediate term, including possible new small to mid-scale experiments, US contributions to large experiments, upgrades to existing experiments, R&D plans and theory. The workshop was organized into (...) two sets of parallel working group sessions, divided by physics topics and technology. Physics working groups covered topics on Sterile Neutrinos, Neutrino Mixing, Neutrino Interactions, Neutrino Properties and Astrophysical Neutrinos. Technology sessions were organized into Theory, Short-Baseline Accelerator Neutrinos, Reactor Neutrinos, Detector R&D and Source, Cyclotron and Meson Decay at Rest sessions.This report summarizes discussion and conclusions from the workshop. (shrink)

In this groundbreaking work, C. D. C. Reeve uses a fundamental problem--the Primacy Dilemma--to explore Aristotle's metaphysics, epistemology, dialectic, philosophy of mind, and theology in a new way. At a time when Aristotle is most often studied piecemeal, Reeve attempts to see him both in detail and as a whole, so that it is from detailed analysis of hundreds of particular passages, drawn from dozens of Aristotelian treatises, and translated in full that his overall picture of Aristotle emerges. Primarily a (...) book for philosophers and advanced students with an interest in the fundamental problems with which Aristotle is grappling, Substantial Knowledge's clear, non-technical and engaging style will appeal to any reader eager to explore Aristotle's difficult but extraordinarily rewarding thought. (shrink)

"Reeve's book is an excellent companion to Plato's Apology and a valuable discussion of many of the main issues that arise in the early dialogues. Reeve is an extremely careful reader of texts, and his familiarity with the legal and cultural background of Socrates' trial allows him to correct many common misunderstandings of that event. In addition, he integrates his reading of the apology with a sophisticated discussion of Socrates' philosophy. The writing is clear and succinct, and the research is (...) informed by a thorough acquaintance with the secondary literature. Reeve's book will be accessible to any serious undergraduate, but it is also a work that will have to be taken into account by every scholar doing advanced research on Socrates." --Richard Kraut, Northwestern University. (shrink)

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Although Broad published many books in his lifetime, this volume is unique in presenting some of his most interesting unpublished writings. Divided into five clear sections, the following figures and topics are covered: Autobiography, Hegel and the nature of philosophy, Francis Bacon, Hume's philosophy of the self and belief, F. H. Bradley, The historical development of scientific thought from Pythagoras to Newton, Causation, Change and continuity, Quantitative methods, Poltergeists, Paranormal phenomena. -/- Each section is introduced and placed in context by (...) the editor, Joel Walmsley. The volume also includes an engaging and informative foreword by Simon Blackburn. It will be of great value to those studying and researching the history of twentieth-century philosophy, metaphysics, and the recent history and philosophy of science, as well as anyone interested in Broad's philosophical thought and his place in the history of philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper I propose an interpretation of classical statistical mechanics that centers on taking seriously the idea that probability measures represent complete states of statistical mechanical systems. I show how this leads naturally to the idea that the stochasticity of statistical mechanics is associated directly with the observables of the theory rather than with the microstates (as traditional accounts would have it). The usual assumption that microstates are representationally significant in the theory is therefore dispensable, a consequence which suggests (...) interesting possibilities for developing non-equilibrium statistical mechanics and investigating inter-theoretic answers to the foundational questions of statistical mechanics. (shrink)

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Eva Brann writes engagingly on a topic that too frequently is swollen with "flaccid edification" or tired and abstract jargon, whose mere familiarity to the reader elicits his nod. The author early gives notice of her disdain for this conventional rightmindedness: "I defy anyone to produce a present-day effusion on education that does not mean to further students’ creativity; for example, picked utterly at random out of a collection: ‘To create... is the uniquely human attribute'. Now, I would have thought (...) that that was what it was precisely not, and that to become a creator a student should not go to school but to heaven. Similarly with values; it is de rigueur to demand that a ’sense of values’ be instilled. It seems to bother few people that the subversive term value was given currency by Nietzsche to devalue our instilled beliefs and our received morality, so that nothing might be good in itself, but only as someone valued it". Brann also has some harsh words for the urge to restructure society, the encouragement of self-expression, and the project of making students think for themselves. According to Brann, the primary requisite of the teacher’s character should be a "certain proud shamelessness. But it does not become more vivid with more words". Instead, I would suggest that her book exhibits it in deed. (shrink)

This book attacks an assortment of tendencies and assumptions that the author believes endemic to traditional epistemology. Perhaps the main target is what she sees as a tendency to sublimate the concepts of knowledge and belief, whose roles in everyday life are mundane and unsystematic, into rigid abstractions. This tendency is said to show itself in the allegedly false assumptions that propositions are the objects of knowledge and belief, and that there is a definite set of propositions that one knows (...) and another that one believes. One or the other of these assumptions is said to underlie Chisholm’s attempt to state necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge, Prichard’s to distinguish knowledge from belief, Malcolm’s to distinguish a ’strong’ from a ‘weak’ sense of ‘to know’, Moore’s to rebut skepticism by giving examples of things he knows, and Descartes’ to imagine that all his beliefs are false. All make the mistake, Wolgast thinks, of speaking of knowledge or belief in the abstract, without reference to the actual use of language. In particular, Chisholm, Prichard, and Moore fail to realize that the force of ‘I know’ varies from context to context. (shrink)

I discuss the formal implementation, interpretation, and justification of likelihood attributions in cosmology. I show that likelihood arguments in cosmology suffer from significant conceptual and formal problems that undermine their applicability in this context.

This book provides an exploration of the epistemological, metaphysical, and psychological foundations of the Nicomachean Ethics. Rejecting current orthodoxy, this book argues that scientific-knowledge (episteme) is possible in ethics, that dialectic and understanding (nous) play essentially the same role in ethics as in an Aristotelian science, and that the distinctive role of practical wisdom (phronēsis) is to use the knowledge of universals provided by science, dialectic, and understanding so as best to promote happiness (eudaimonia) in particular circumstances and to ensure (...) a happy life. Turning to happiness itself, the book develops a new account of Aristotle's views on ends and functions, exposing their twofold nature. It argues that the activation of theoretical wisdom is primary happiness, and that the activation of practical wisdom — when it is for the sake of primary happiness — is happiness of a second kind. He concludes with an account of the virtues of character, external goods, and friends, and their place in the happy life. (shrink)

This collection features Plato's writings on sex and love in the preeminent translations of Stanley Lombardo, Paul Woodruff and Alexander Nehamas, D. S. Hutchinson, and C. D. C. Reeve. Reeve's Introduction provides a wealth of historical information about Plato and Socrates, and the sexual norms of classical Athens. His introductory essay looks closely at the dialogues themselves and includes the following sections: Socrates and the Art of Love; Socrates and Athenian Paiderastia; Loving Socrates; Love and the Ascent to the Beautiful; (...) The Art and Psychology of Love Explained; and Writing about Love. (shrink)

This book shows you what it is like to think along with Aristotle and helps you to see the universe and our place in it as he thought they had to be seen to be scientifically intelligible. As a portrait is composed of colors and shapes that collectively represent someone, so Aristotles works are composed of arguments that collectively represent the causal structure of the universe, from the stones, plants, and animals around us to the starry heavens above and the (...) god beyond them. The aim of this brief immersion is to guide you through those arguments in a way that lets you understand for yourself why they proceed as they do and end where they do."--Publisher. (shrink)

I will begin this paper by stating in rough outline what I consider to be the relevance of psychical research to philosophy, and I shall devote the rest of it to developing this preliminary statement in detail.

Cognitive neuroenhancement involves the use of medical interventions to improve normal cognitive functioning such as memory, focus, concentration, or willpower. In this paper I give a Kantian argument defending the use of CNE in science, scholarly research, and creative fields. Kant’s universal law formulation of the categorical imperative shows why enhancement is morally wrong in the familiar contexts of sports or competitive games. This argument, however, does not apply to the use of CNE in higher education, scholarly or scientific research, (...) or creative endeavors such as visual art, fiction or poetry, or musical composition. This is because performance in these areas is embedded within practices that differ in morally significant ways from competitive practices. This important difference provides good reason to think that there is nothing morally wrong with the use of CNE in these areas. My approach is not simply to assume a full-fledged Kantian ethical theory and apply it straight away to the enhancement issue but to establish a reflective equilibrium between our moral intuitions, moral principles that support those intuitions, and the nature of the practices involved. (shrink)

We introduce a novel point of view on the “models as mediators” framework in order to emphasize certain important epistemological questions about models in science which have so far been little investigated. To illustrate how this perspective can help answer these kinds of questions, we explore the use of simplified models in high energy physics research beyond the Standard Model. We show in detail how the construction of simplified models is grounded in the need to mitigate pressing epistemic problems concerning (...) the uncertainty inherent in the present theoretical and experimental contexts. (shrink)

Readers familiar with the workhorse of cosmology, the hot big bang model, may think that cosmology raises little of interest about time. As cosmological models are just relativistic spacetimes, time is understood just as it is in relativity theory, and all cosmology adds is a few bells and whistles such as inflation and the big bang and no more. The aim of this chapter is to show that this opinion is not completely right...and may well be dead wrong. In our (...) survey, we show how the hot big bang model invites deep questions about the nature of time, how inflationary cosmology has led to interesting new perspectives on time, and how cosmological speculation continues to entertain dramatically different models of time altogether. Together these issues indicate that the philosopher interested in the nature of time would do well to know a little about modern cosmology. (shrink)

The conspicuous similarities between interpretive strategies in classical statistical mechanics and in quantum mechanics may be grounded on their employment of common implementations of probability. The objective probabilities which represent the underlying stochasticity of these theories can be naturally associated with three of their common formal features: initial conditions, dynamics, and observables. Various well-known interpretations of the two theories line up with particular choices among these three ways of implementing probability. This perspective has significant application to debates on primitive ontology (...) and to the quantum measurement problem. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Natural Beings The Polis as a Natural Phenomenon Correct and Deviant Constitutions The Naturalness of the Best Constitution Bibliography.

Cosmological inflation is widely considered an integral and empirically successful component of contemporary cosmology. It was originally motivated by its solution of certain so-called fine-tuning problems of the hot big bang model, particularly what are known as the horizon problem and the flatness problem. Although the physics behind these problems is clear enough, the nature of the problems depends on the sense in which the hot big bang model is fine-tuned and how the alleged fine-tuning is problematic. Without clear explications (...) of these, it remains unclear precisely what problems inflationary theory is meant to be solving and whether it does in fact solve them. I analyze the structure of these problems and consider various interpretations that may substantiate the alleged fine-tuning. On the basis of this analysis I argue that at present there is no unproblematic interpretation available for which it can be said that inflation solves the big bang model’s alleged fine-tuning problems. (shrink)

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Eliminative reasoning is a method that has been employed in many significant episodes in the history of science. It has also been advocated by some philosophers as an important means for justifying well-established scientific theories. Arguments for how eliminative reasoning is able to do so, however, have generally relied on a too narrow conception of evidence, and have therefore tended to lapse into merely heuristic or pragmatic justifications for their conclusions. This paper shows how a broader conception of evidence not (...) only can supply the needed justification but also illuminates the methodological significance of eliminative reasoning in a variety of contexts. (shrink)

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

_A Plato Reader_ offers eight of Plato's best-known works--_Euthyphro_, _Apology_, _Crito_, _Meno_, _Phaedo_, _Symposium_, _Phaedrus_, and _Republic_--unabridged, expertly introduced and annotated, and in widely admired translations by C. D. C. Reeve, G. M. A. Grube, Alexander Nehamas, and Paul Woodruff. The collection features Socrates as its central character and a model of the examined life. Its range allows us to see him in action in very different settings and philosophical modes: from the elenctic Socrates of the _Meno_ and the dialogues (...) concerning his trial and death, to the erotic Socrates of the _Symposium_ and _Phaedrus_, to the dialectician of the _Republic_. Of Reeve's translation of this final masterpiece, Lloyd P. Gerson writes, "Taking full advantage of S. R. Slings' new Greek text of the Republic, Reeve has given us a translation both accurate and limpid. Loving attention to detail and deep familiarity with Plato's thought are evident on every page. Reeve's brilliant decision to cast the dialogue into direct speech produces a compelling impression of immediacy unmatched by other English translations currently available.". (shrink)

I present a recent historical case from cosmology—the story of inflationary cosmology—and on its basis argue that solving explanatory problems is a reliable method for making progress in science. In particular, I claim that the success of inflationary theory at solving its predecessor’s explanatory problems justified the theory epistemically, even in advance of the development of novel predictions from the theory and the later confirmation of those predictions.