Mind body, not a pseudo-problem, by H. Feigl.--Is consciousness a brain process? by U. T. Place.--Sensations and brain processes, by J. J. C. Smart.--The nature of mind, by D. M. Armstrong.--Materialism as a scientific hypothesis, by U. T. Place.--Sensations and brain processes: a reply to J. J. C. Smart, by J. T. Stevenson.--Further remarks on sensations and brain processes, by J. J. C. Smart.--Smart on sensations, by K. Baier.--Brain processes and incorrigibility, by J. J. C. Smart.--Could mental states be brain (...) processes? by J. Shaffer.--The identity of mind and body, by J. Cornman.--Shaffer on the identity of mental states and brain processes, by R. Coburn.--Mental events and the brain, by J. Shaffer.--Comment: mental events and the brain, by P. Feyerabend.--Materialism and the mind-body problem, by P. Feyerabend.--Materialism, by J. J. C. Smart.--Scientific materialism and the identity theory, by N. Malcolm.--Professor Malcolm on scientific materialism and the identity theory, by E. Sosa.--Rejoinder to Mr. Sosa, by N. Malcolm.--Mind-body identity, privacy and categories, by R. Rorty.--Physicalism, by T. Nagel.--Mind-body identity, a side issue? by C. Taylor.--Illusions and identity, by J. M. Hinton.--Bibliography (p. [259]-261). (shrink)
Der Aufsatz zielt auf eine nähere Präzisierung der üblicherweise gegebenen Bestimmung, Leibniz sei „Kompatibilist“ gewesen. Willensfreiheit ist für Leibniz mit Gottes Vorherwissen und Vorherbestimmung sowie mit dem Prinzip des zureichenden Grundes kompatibel, keineswegs jedoch mit Indifferenz. Urn die Vereinbarkeit der Willensfreiheit mit vollständigen individuellen Begriffen zu zeigen, scheint der Rekurs auf Gegenstücke in anderen möglichen Welten unerläßlich. Es wird argumentiert, daß Willensfreiheit für Leibniz nicht mit der prinzipiellen Vorhersagbarkeit von Willensentscheidungen durch einen menschlichen Beobachter oder durch einen Laplaceschen Dämon kompatibel (...) ist. (shrink)
Mark Vernon links the resources of the philosophical tradition with numerous illustrations from modern culture to ask what friendship is and how it relates to sex, work, politics and spirituality. Unusually, he argues that Plato and Nietzsche, as much as Aristotle and Aelred, should be put center stage. Their penetrating and occasionally tough insights are invaluable if friendship is to be a full, not merely sentimental, way of life for today.
The politics of wellbeing and the new science of happiness have shot up the agenda since Martin Seligman coined the phrase "positive psychology". After all, who does not want to live the good life? So ten years on, why is it that much of this otherwise welcome debate sounds like as much apple-pie - "work less", "earn enough", "keep fit", "find meaning", "enjoy freedoms"? The reason is not, ultimately, cynicism. Rather, it is because a central, tricky question is being glossed (...) over: just what is wellbeing? Mark Vernon argues that positive psychology has overlooked and sidelined the ancient wisdom on wellbeing, notably from the Greek philosophers. Now is the time to pay it proper attention.Vernon shows, surprisingly, that wellbeing is not found in a focus on pleasure, or even the pursuit of happiness itself. Rather, it is a question of meaning and responding to the great challenge of our day: the search for transcendence. For at root, the life that is going well cultivates a way of life based upon love: it is that which draws you out of yourself - in friends, hopes and ultimately the contemplation of mystery - and orientates a life towards that which is good. (shrink)
The politics of wellbeing and the new science of happiness have shot up the agenda since Martin Seligman coined the phrase "positive psychology". After all, who does not want to live the good life? So ten years on, why is it that much of this otherwise welcome debate sounds like as much apple-pie - "work less", "earn enough", "keep fit", "find meaning", "enjoy freedoms"? The reason is not, ultimately, cynicism. Rather, it is because a central, tricky question is being glossed (...) over: just what is wellbeing? Mark Vernon argues that positive psychology has overlooked and sidelined the ancient wisdom on wellbeing, notably from the Greek philosophers. Now is the time to pay it proper attention.Vernon shows, surprisingly, that wellbeing is not found in a focus on pleasure, or even the pursuit of happiness itself. Rather, it is a question of meaning and responding to the great challenge of our day: the search for transcendence. For at root, the life that is going well cultivates a way of life based upon love: it is that which draws you out of yourself - in friends, hopes and ultimately the contemplation of mystery - and orientates a life towards that which is good. (shrink)
About the Author:Joanna Harrington is associate professor, law, University of Alberta.Michael Milde is associate professor, philosophy, and associate dean, arts and humanities, University of Western Ontario.Richard Vernon is professor, political science, University of.
John Locke's Letter Concerning Toleration is one of the most widely-read texts in the political theory of toleration, and a key text for the liberal tradition. However, Locke also defended toleration more extensively in three subsequent Letters, which he wrote in response to criticism by an Anglican cleric, Jonas Proast. This edition, which includes a new translation of the original Letter, by Michael Silverthorne, enables readers to assess John Locke's theory of toleration by studying both his classic work and essential (...) extracts from the later Letters. An introduction by Richard Vernon sets Locke's theory in its historical context and examines the key questions for contemporary political theorists which arise from this major work in the history of political thought. (shrink)
The extraordinary story of Krishnamurti, hailed early in life as the messiah for the 20th century, is told here in the light of a century of changing spiritual attitudes. It is a tale of mysticism, sexual scandals, religious fervor and chicanery, out of which emerged one of the most influential thinkers of modern times. Krishnamurti was "discovered" as a young boy on a beach in India by members of the Theosophical Society, convinced that they had found the new world leader, (...) a spiritual savior as historic and as influential as Jesus himself. By the 1920s he was attracting worldwide press attention and people flocked to his talks in the thousands. In 1922, Krishnamurti broke with the society and set out on a teaching mission of his own as a secular philosopher of spirituality. He ultimately had a career that spanned six decades, founded seven schools, published 50 books and encompassed thousands of talks. This extraordinary story is told for the first time by Roland Vernon in the full light of 20th-century attitudes in a narrative that is as compelling as any novel. (shrink)
Against associative obligations -- Particularizing obligation : the normative role of risk -- The social waiver -- Compatriot preference and the iteration proviso -- Humanitarian intervention and the case for natural duty -- Associative risk and international crime -- A global harm principle? -- Citizens in the world.
_Hegel and Deleuze_ cannily examines the various resonances and dissonances between these two major philosophers. The collection represents the best in contemporary international scholarship on G. W. F. Hegel and Gilles Deleuze, and the contributing authors inhabit the as-yet uncharted space between the two thinkers, collectively addressing most of the major tensions and resonances between their ideas and laying a solid ground for future scholarship. The essays are organized thematically into two groups: those that maintain a firm but nuanced disjunction (...) or opposition between Hegel and Deleuze, and those that chart possible connections, syntheses, or both. As is clear from this range of texts, the challenges involved in grasping, appraising, appropriating, and developing the systems of Deleuze and Hegel are varied and immense. While neither Hegel nor Deleuze gets the last word, the contributors ably demonstrate that partisans of either can no longer ignore the voice of the other. (shrink)
London Medical Group was founded in 1963. It was student-led, spawned Medical Groups in almost every UK medical school and met a need for non-partisan debate and dialogue in medical ethics. It became a victim of its own success as the Institute of Medical Ethics published the Pond Report in 1987, which recommended that medical ethics be incorporated into the undergraduate curriculum. Medical schools began to teach medical ethics and the General Medical Council demanded this in 1993's Tomorrow's Doctors. The (...) Institute of Medical Ethics had grown out of the LMG. After running a number of successful conferences for medical ethics teachers, the Institute of Medical Ethics is recapturing the natural innovative tendencies of students and junior doctors that the LMG and related Medical Groups had fostered. It is now launching itself as a membership organisation: the recommendations of the Francis report and responses to it have emphasised the need to support individuals with the ability, freedom and confidence to question the status quo from a reasoned ethical basis. The Institute of Medical Ethics aims to develop a robust medical ethics community ready to face the challenges of 21st Century healthcare. (shrink)
The book also points to some of the ways in which polities currently termed 'liberal democracies' fall clearly short of the values that might legitimize them.
The multiverse is a hypothesis for which there is no evidence, and perhaps can never be any evidence. It is only since 1998 that it has leapt off the blackboards of a few physicists doing esoteric mathematics and lodged itself in the popular imagination. As is the way with popular science, it is easy to move from speculating that there might have been more than one big bang to proceeding on the basis that there has been more than one big (...) bang. (shrink)
The multiverse is a hypothesis for which there is no evidence, and perhaps can never be any evidence. It is only since 1998 that it has leapt off the blackboards of a few physicists doing esoteric mathematics and lodged itself in the popular imagination. As is the way with popular science, it is easy to move from speculating that there might have been more than one big bang to proceeding on the basis that there has been more than one big (...) bang. (shrink)
This is a contribution to construction of a research roadmap for future cognitive systems, including intelligent robots, in the context of the euCognition network, and UKCRC Grand Challenge 5: Architecture of Brain and Mind. -/- A meeting on the euCognition roadmap project was held at Munich Airport on 11th Jan 2007. This document was in part a response to discussions at that meeting. An explanation of why specifying requirements is a hard problem, and why it needs to be done, along (...) with some suggestions for making progress, can be found in this presentation: http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/cosy/papers/#pr0701 "What's a Research Roadmap For? Why do we need one? How can we produce one?" Working on that presentation made me realise that certain deceptively familiar words and phrases frequently used in this context (e.g. "robust". "flexible", "autonomous") appear not to need explanation because everyone understands them, whereas in fact they have obscure semantics that needs to be elucidated. Only then can we understand what the implications are for research targets. In particular, they need explanation and analysis if they are to be used to specify requirements and research goals, especially for publicly funded projects. -/- First draft analyses are presented here. In the long term I would like to expand and clarify those analyses, and to provide many different examples to illustrate the points made. This will probably have to be a collaborative research activity. (shrink)
“ Subsidiarity ” views of crime against humanity propose that state crime is at the core of the idea, thus necessitating a further level of authority. That proposal can be given a strong moral justification in terms of the enormous risks that arise from a state’s authority and territorial control. Discussions of crime against humanity by Larry May and Norman Geras, however, offer different views of the idea, May proposing that it be seen as group-based crime, Geras proposing that it (...) be seen as a serious violation of human rights. Those views are questioned on the basis of their fit with either the nature of the crimes involved or the moral basis of their condemnation, and the subsidiarity view is restated. (shrink)
Machine generated contents note: -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction: There's Something, not Nothing -- Socrates' Quest: The Agnostic Spirit -- Cosmic Religion: How Science does God -- How to Be Human: Science and Ethics -- Socrates or Buddha? On Being Spiritual but not Religious -- Bad Faith: Religion as Certainty -- Christian Agnosticism: Learned Ignorance -- Following Socrates: A Way of Life -- How To Be An Agnostic: An A-Z -- Further reading and references -- Index.
This article attempts to respond to the major critical themes in the commentaries by Jones, Hibbert and Lecce on the book Cosmopolitan Regard. The book's ‘statist’ assumptions are acknowledged, and defended in light of the project that is undertaken. Its use of an un-sociological notion of legitimacy is explained. Its argument is characterized as one that seeks to constrain agency rather than to prescribe distributive outcomes of a strongly egalitarian kind. Finally, the argument's dependence on empirical assumptions is recognized.
Marino et al. recently published a critique of a three-year National Science Foundation—funded investigation of the impact of zoo and aquarium visits on the public’s understanding of animals and their attitudes toward conservation . This critique of that critique will show that Marino et al. seriously misrepresent both the intent of the research and the methods used. The methods used by Falk and his colleagues were consistent with current, accepted research practice and their conclusions regarding impact were congruent with a (...) growing body of scientific research showing that visits to zoos and aquariums almost always result in enhanced scientific understanding and strengthened beliefs in the value of nature conservation. (shrink)
While Rawls himself put contractualism to work at the national level, his more cosmopolitan followers have argued that the full requirements of international justice can be reached only by way of a global contractualist argument. Both positions neglect a resource from within the contractualist tradition, The need for iteration of the nation-level contract gives rise to strong and reasonably definite moral requirements. A good-faith adoption of the contractual argument entails, first, a duty to assist those whose potential recourse to just (...) arrangements is blocked by tyranny or political collapse. Second, understood as a net risk-reducing project, a nation-level contract entails a duty not to impede the iterated risk-reduction projects of other national soceties. Envisaging the duty in this contractualist way avoids problems that beset both "natural duty" and "interactionist" approaches to international justice. The non-impedance requirement bears especially on international economic arrangements. The institutional representation of those affected by such arrangements would connect this abstract requirement with practical conclusions. (shrink)
The study of micro-organisms in Britain in the early twentieth century was dominated by medical concerns, with little support for non-medical research. This paper examines the way in which microbes came to have a place in industrial contexts in the 1920s and early 1930s. Their industrial capacity was only properly recognized during World War I, with the development of fermentation processes to make required organic chemicals. Post-war research sponsored by chemical and food industries and the D.S.I.R. established the industrial significance (...) of microbes. The primary focus here is the D.S.I.R. work which aimed to pull microbes away from medical concerns and promote the role of microbes in British industry. (shrink)
Now that she has retired from public life, philosophers can begin to understand the cultural phenomenon that was Cindy Sheehan, the generally recognized (and self-professed) “‘Face’ of the American anti-war movement.”1 Why did the Iraq War produce domestic resistance led by someone whose moral credentials consisted solely in being a mother? Why was the cartoon-cowboy masculinity of the war president opposed by the equally hyperbolic familial femininity of the “eternally grieving mother of Casey Sheehan”? In what follows, I seek to (...) comprehend the emergence of both the Iraq War and the “face” of its opposition through the most notorious account.. (shrink)
Why should members of societies engaging in humanitarian intervention support the costs of that project? It is sometimes argued that only a theory of natural duty can require their support and that contractualist theories fail because they are exclusionary. This article argues that, on the contrary, natural duty is inadequate as a basis and that contractualism provides a basis for placing support for (justified) interventions among the duties of citizenship. The duty to support intervention is not, therefore, a competitor (of (...) indeterminate weight) to our duties to compatriots, since it rests on the same basis. That is because exclusive citizenship can be justified only if social contracts can be iterated elsewhere and successful societies therefore owe assistance to societies that are immobilized by state abuse or state failure. (shrink)
The ‘Pascalian’ tradition in French thought is a moral rigorism that demands practical embodiment while denying that any embodiment of its demands can ever be complete. The power of this tradition may be seen even in French political moralists of the 20th century. It is revealed in Bergson’s view that the open morality must seek practical expression through the closed society, while constantly subverting it. It is revealed in Levinas’s claim that the ‘saying’ requires to be ‘said’ but always undermines (...) the said, so that what is explicit is ‘always wanting’. Directly, and also through the influence of Levinas, the Pascalian tradition exerts a complex influence on Derrida, in whose thoughts about the topic of justice moral rigorism transforms into an idea of radical epistemic incompleteness, or infinite deferral. ‘Pascalians’ such as Bergson, Levinas and Derrida are convinced, consequently, that the ethical can be given only sporadic or uninstitutionalized political expression; in this regard, they may be contrasted with ‘Lockeans’ who believe that political theory is at one remove from our deepest ethical or religious conclusions. In light of that contrast, the differences between Continental and Anglophone political theory may be traced to post-Reformation circumstances rather than, as is often supposed, to the Enlightenment. (shrink)
In this paper, through Hegel’s account of the predicative judgment in the Greater Logic, I develop an immanent, presuppositionless deduction ofgrammatical form from the very idea of language in general. In other words, I argue that Hegel’s account of the judgment can be read as a demonstrationof a truly universal (rather than empirically “common” or “general”) grammar through which any and all determinate thought must be expressed. In so doing, I seek to resolve the problem that linguistic contingency poses for (...) systematic philosophy by deducing a necessary linguistic form from a contingent linguistic content. (shrink)
The goal of cognitive modeling is to build faithful simulations of human cognition. One of the challenges is that multiple models can often explain the same phenomena. Another challenge is that models are often very hard to understand, explore, and reuse by others. We discuss some of the solutions that were discussed during the 2015 International Conference on Cognitive Modeling.
