The author describes how he uses Shakespeare's play about Henry V in his courses on ethics and warfare to illustrate several principles in the just-war tradition.

An introduction to ethical reasoning -- Comparative religious perspectives on war -- Just and unjust war in Shakespeare's Henry V -- Anticipating and preventing atrocities in war -- The CIA's original "social contract" -- The KGB: CIA's traditional adversary -- Espionage -- Covert action -- Interrogation -- Concluding reflections.

Strict pacifists say that killing is always wrong. Jewish and Christian pacifists often appeal to the claim in Genesis that all people are made in the image of God, suggesting that killing them represents a kind of sacrilege as well as a violation of human dignity. Christian pacifists also refer to sayings of Jesus in the Gospels to love one's enemies and not retaliate against force with force. Hindu and Buddhist pacifists would cite their basic obligation of ahimsa, avoiding harm (...) to any sentient creature. And nonreligious pacifists often say that violence only begets more violence. (See my "Ethics and War in Comparative Religious Perspective."). (shrink)

Deeply original, inspiring to some, abhorrent to others, George Berkeley’s philosophy of immaterialism is still influential three hundred years after the publication of his most widely read book, _Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous. _Berkeley published the _Dialogues _because of the unenthusiastic reception of his _Principles of Human Knowledge _in 1710._ _He hoped the use of the_ _dialogue format would win a more favorable hearing, but unfortunately for Berkeley, the response was every bit as scathing as the reception of his (...) previous work. In recent decades, Berkeley’s work has been recognized as an excellent introduction to the English philosophy of the eighteenth century, and to philosophy in general. This edition of the dialogues is accessibly organized by David Hilbert and John Perry. (shrink)

Kaplan says that monsters violate Principle 2 of his theory. Principle 2 is that indexicals, pure and demonstrative alike, are directly referential. In providing this explanation of there being no monsters, Kaplan feels his theory has an advantage over double-indexing theories like Kamp’s or Segerberg’s (or Stalnaker’s), which either embrace monsters or avoid them only by ad hoc stipulation, in the sharp conceptual distinction it draws between circumstances of evaluation and contexts of utterance. We shall argue that Kaplan’s prohibition is (...) also essentially stipulative, and that it is too general. The main difference between ourselves and Kaplan is that the basic carriers of a truth-value is a sentence-in-a-context; our account is utterance-based. (shrink)

Han Bo’s 2011 China Eastern Railway nine-poem cycle begins and ends with the figures of two different women, initiating and then intensifying via the cycle’s structure of a circuit, or loop, a reading of the poems in which conceptual binaries are scrambled and undone. Gender binaries are at the root of the larger structure of binary pairs, and as such gender serves as a particularly intense site of a critique that may be read in coproductive terms by way of both (...) contemporary critical theory and China’s deep philosophical tradi­tions. In this essay’s reading of the poems, modernity—in both Western and Chinese forms—is deconstructed in ways that are legible in terms of aspects of 道 Dao as well as concepts drawn from the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Further in this regard, Kyoo Lee’s analysis of xuanpin in the Daodejing helps bring this deconstructive critique into a space of “ontologically interfused or fermented thoughts” that challenge gender itself as a stable and stabilizing category, positing instead a “contemporized” conception of Dao as ceaseless dynamic flux and flow with respect to gender as well as all received and constructively “natural”-ized binaries. The poems gesture toward a dissolution of conceptual binaries, and further toward a state of generative flux, that is not only obliterative of “modernity” but also radically productive of capacities for new, creative apprehensions and articulations of relations between humankind and nonhuman nature. This analysis has broad application ranging from concrete historical moments and events to ideological formations, national and civilizational projects and identities, and ongoing planetary ecological crisis. Finally, it points toward possible productive entanglements and fusions of lines of Chinese thought with lines of Western philosophical endeavor. (shrink)

Kasher and Yadlin make significant contributions to the literature on counter-terrorism, (1) in their fine-tuned distinctions among degrees of individual involvement in terrorist activities, and (2) in weighing (a) obligations to minimize harm to one's own noncombatants and combatants against (b) the duty to limit harm to non-citizen noncombatants. But the authors? analysis is hampered by some ambiguous definitions, some unwieldy terms, and some questionable moral assumptions and arguments.

The ability to keep someone alive by replacing one or more of their major organs is an astounding achievement of 20th-century medicine. Unfortunately, the current supply of transplant organs is much lower than the need or demand for them, which means that thousands of people die every year in the U.S. alone for lack of a replacement organ.

Kaplan says that monsters violate Principle 2 of his theory. Principle 2 is that indexicals, pure and demonstrative alike, are directly referential. In providing this explanation of there being no monsters, Kaplan feels his theory has an advantage over double-indexing theories like Kamp’s or Segerberg’s (or Stalnaker’s), which either embrace monsters or avoid them only by ad hoc stipulation, in the sharp conceptual distinction it draws between circumstances of evaluation and contexts of utterance. We shall argue that Kaplan’s prohibition is (...) also essentially stipulative, and that it is too general. The main difference between ourselves and Kaplan is that the basic carriers of a truth-value is a sentence-in-a-context; our account is utterance-based. (shrink)

This monograph examines the past, present, and potential relationship between American pragmatism and communication research. The contributors provide a bridge between communication studies and philosophy, subjects often developed somewhat in isolation from each other. Addressing topics, such as qualitative and quantitative research, ethics, media research, and feminist studies, the chapters in this volume: *discuss how a pragmatic, Darwinian approach to inquiry has guided and might further guide communication research; *advocate a functional view of communication, based on Dewey's mature notion of (...) transaction; *articulate a pragmatist's aesthetics and connect it to Deweyan democracy; *discuss the similarities and differences between Dewey's notion of inquiry and the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer; *apply accommodation theory, linked to symbolic interactionism and more generally to the social behaviorism of George H. Mead and his followers, to media research; *interpret media-effects evidence in light of pragmatist ideas about inquiry; and *argue that pragmatism theorizes about despair and life's sense of the tragic. This book is written to be readily accessible to students and professional academics within and outside the field of communication studies without extensive training in specialized areas of communication study. (shrink)

In this essay I intend to highlight a wide range of ethical views on killing and war in the world's major religious traditions. I've found that one can learn a lot about a tradition by paying attention to how it answers the question, Is it ever right to kill? What we find when we survey world religions are teachings that are at least paradoxical, and in some cases downright contradictory. Every major religious tradition regards life and especially human life as (...) sacred in some sense, and affirms mercy and compassion as basic human obligations. But influential religious authorities have also taught that it's sometimes right to kill other human beings. Some have gone so far as to rationalize wars of annihilation against heretics and infidels. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to provide a way of resolving the apparent dilemma between our requirement as agents that actions should be free and our demand as spectators that all events should be predictable and explicable on the basis of antecedent conditions. I hope to show that what has often been incorrectly regarded as a logical incompatibility between freedom and determinism is, in fact, a disparity but not an over-all contradiction between the viewpoint of an agent and that (...) of a spectator. While it is logically impossible for a person to deliberate about his conduct in a given matter from the standpoint of an agent and also predict it as a spectator, this is the only logical incompatibility between these positions, and it does not preclude the two points of view from being equally legitimate ways of viewing action. Perhaps it has sometimes been a vague recognition of the fact that one logically cannot both deliberate upon and predict one’s own conduct in a certain matter that has led some philosophers to conclude erroneously that choice on the part of an agent is inconsistent with prediction or explanation of his decision on the part of any spectator. This unwarranted conclusion is equivalent to denying that conduct can be regarded both from the standpoint of the agent and that of the spectator. (shrink)

Spatial Practices makes a timely and significant contribution to the growing literature on social/spatial theory. In it the notion of spacial practice takes on a rich and layered meaning for some of America's leading scholars as they critically link the theoretical practices of the space of their disciplines to the practical social space of everyday political and economic urban life. Original essays provide compelling insights into the space of racial politics, the unavoidability of recognizing a radical planning practice, and the (...) imagistic face of the contemporary "figured" city. The reader will find rich conceptual tools presented in discussions that grapple with issues raised by the production of reduced public space in common interest developments and the ubiquitous mall, the ideologies of economic restructuring, the rhetorical politics of urban revitalization, and the analytic potential of the photo/text. Students and scholars interested in how spatial theory has enriched and renewed urban theory will find Spatial Practices invaluable. It will be useful in a wide range of classes across disciplines including urban studies, urban planning, architecture, political science, sociology, geography, economics, and policy studies. "This collection explores the exciting analytical edge where investigations of urban political economy converge with cultural studies. In their exploration of theory and practice as they relate to the production of space, the authors cover a dazzling range of topics. Yet despite their varying preoccupations, the essays merge into a unified inquiry that reveals the functions and meanings of contemporary spatial forms. All those who are interested in the forces shaping urban and regional development, as well as in the impact of space on social relations, must read this book. (shrink)

It is often assumed that if the fetus is a person, then abortion should be illegal. Thomson1 laid the groundwork to challenge this assumption, and Boonin2 has recently argued that it is false: he argues that abortion should be legal even if the fetus is a person. In this article, I explain both Thomson’s and Boonin’s reason for thinking that abortion should be legal even if the fetus is a person. After this, I show that Thomson’s and Boonin’s argument for (...) legalised abortion fail; they have not given us good reason for thinking abortion should be legal.1 Finally, I argue that—if we play Boonin’s game—abortion should be illegal. When discussing the ethics and politics of abortion, whether the fetus is a person is usually central.3 4.2 However, Thomson1 long ago challenged this view. She argued that abortion is permissible even if the fetus is a person. To do so, she asks us to consider a case in which you are non-consensually taken to a hospital and hooked up to a famous violinist. The violinist, if he is to survive, needs to filter his blood through your body. After 9 months, he will be fine and you can unplug yourself and go on your way. If you unplug yourself prior to this, however, he will die. Is it permissible to unplug yourself? Thomson thinks the answer is ‘yes’. And this, she thinks, shows that abortion is permissible even if the fetus is a person. While the majority of her article focuses on the ethics of abortion, it is clear that she also aims to show that abortion should be legal if the fetus is a person; she would no doubt reject the view that the state is right to coerce you into …. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:An Epiphany in Munich LINCOLN PERRY W hen I used to say the sentence (softly and to myself ) “I hate palms” or “Palms are not beautiful; possibly they are not even trees,” it was a composite palm that I had somehow succeeded in making without even ever having seen, close up, many particular instances. Conversely, when I now say, “Palms are beautiful,” or “I love palms,” it (...) is really individual palms that I have in mind. This quote from Elaine Scarry’s On Beauty and Being Just applies perfectly to an experience I recently had regarding a painting by an artist I had assumed I didn’t much care for. Perhaps it would be best to lead into my epiphany gradually, to recreate the preparation that might have been necessary to have my realization. Actually, I speak of a double epiphany, in that it was shared by the friend I was travelling with when we saw the artwork in question. He and I are both painters, and have much in common, both in terms of our own work and our voracious appetite for seeing museums, so when I planned a trip for late October 2018 to see thirty museums in two weeks in Germany and Austria, I knew just whom to call. David Carbone and I have known each other, and appreciated each other’s work, since leaving graduate school in 1975, meeting at the College Art Association held that year in Washington, DC, where people compete for jobs while trying to maintain a veneer of civility. David made less of an effort than most, and I vividly remember him in saddle shoes he had painted bright blue, wearing a tie featuring a burlesque dancer, sipping champagne in the garden courtyard of the National Gallery. All the nearby aspiring art historians were immaculately dressed and scrupulously behaved, but David finished his drink, and in imitation of a arion 27.1 spring/summer 2019 Russian toast, threw his empty glass against the wall, where it noisily shattered. I like this guy, thought I. Over the next few days, visiting DC’s museums together, I recognized the brilliance of his commentaries on the art we saw. And his wit: He told of studying with his painting professor, who became frustrated with David’s pace in painting and said “David, painting is really very simple!” The reply: “But, what if you’re not simple?” I can’t conjure a single artist about whose work we’ve disagreed in the course of the fortythree years we’ve known each other. Meeting often in New York, where he lives with his wife Donna (who, like my wife, is always perfectly willing to let us go museum schlepping without them), we’ve also travelled in central Italy, and even flew to Fort Worth to see a show of the Le Nain brothers. A very sweet guard there asked us, “Who ARE you?” and when we said we were painters, she said, “Oh, because I’ve never seen anybody look at paintings this long, or talk about them so much!” Berlin is a treasure trove, where we visited ten fine museums, then flew to Vienna, which was hosting an extensive exhibit of Bruegel’s paintings, though feast might be a more apt word. A visual feast, but one that didn’t leave one sated, jaded, or bloated, but rather improved, made less ambivalent about membership in a questionable species. Yes, the viewer consumed a meal of war, famine, foolishness, and pride, but the chef made it not just palatable but beautiful, thought-provoking and humorous. Bruegel and his contemporary Rabelais seem kindred spirits, skeptical but amused, bawdy but tender, creating not just works but micro to macro worlds, an alternate world view, in fact. Each painting mesmerized anyone looking long and carefully enough, discovering that a tiny girl on a sled is able to get a purchase on the ice not just with her diminutive sticks, but by the miniscule iron nails in which they end, painted with a one hair-brush. From this minutia we graduate to a wider and wider view, one that comes to imply infinity. Bruegel’s brilliant guidance doesn’t confront us... (shrink)

This volume brings together the vital contributions of distinguished past and contemporary philosophers to the important topic of personal identity. The essays range from John Locke's classic seventeenth-century attempt to analyze personal identity in terms of memory, to twentieth-century defenses and criticisms of the Lockean view by Anthony Quinton, H.P. Grice, Sydney Shoemaker, David Hume, Joseph Butler, Thomas Reid, and Bernard Williams. New to the second edition are Shoemaker's seminal essay "Persons and Their Pasts," selections from the important and (...) previously unpublished Clark-Collins correspondence, and a new paper by Perry discussing Williams. (shrink)

Miller's formulation of problems was controlled by tensions between conscious" and "mechanical" and between "understanding" and "mystery." The mechanical world, devoid of morality and purpose, was incompatible with conscious beauty and ethics; within the "conscious" the optimistic drive for knowledge about an intelligible universe conflicted with belief in an unknowable, awful universe. Miller's history was also informed by his sense of development: history proceeds in a continuing series of interactions between inherited cultural forms, and immediate environmental circumstances. Culture is never (...) merely the "product" of environment, but an active agent in the interaction. The search for "historical knowledge" itself proceeds on the terms of this interaction. Here Miller rejected both positivism and the capricious relativism of Becker for the harder relativism subsequently articulated by Kuhn and Toulmin: "forms" are neither wholly arbitrary nor entirely discovered in "the facts," but are instead the inheritance and creation of the historian, altered and confirmed by his experience. (shrink)

Review Jopling's discussion is carried on with remarkable clarity. His presentation of the diverse philosophical positions is balanced and fair. . . . Self-Knowledge and the Self is a work of excellent, sound scholarship, a most significant contribution. Hazel Barnes, author of Sartre and Flaubert Jopling's book is the most sustained and serious contemporary philosophical reflection on the Delphic injunction Know thyself of which I am aware. Drawing on literature and psychotherapy as well as solid argumentation, it gently but persuasively (...) exposes inadequacies in the individualistic theories of Hampshire, Sartre, and Rorty and sketches the advantages of a more dialogic approach. Ideally, readers should come away not only knowing what it means to know oneself, but also, in some respects, actually knowing themselves better!. William L. McBride, author of Social and Political Philosophy In this impressive survey, Jopling not only provides incisive critiques of the major contemporary theories of self-knowledge but also introduces a significant alternative approach, one that stresses the role of dialogue and communication. Ulric Neisser, editor of the Author David A. Jopling is Associate Professor of Philosophy at York University in Toronto. (shrink)

'I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception.' These famous words of David Hume, on his inability to perceive the self, set the stage for JeeLoo Liu and John Perry's collection of essays on self-awareness and self-knowledge. This volume connects recent scientific studies on consciousness with the traditional issues about the self explored by Descartes, Locke and Hume. Experts in the field offer contrasting perspectives on matters (...) such as the relation between consciousness and self-awareness, the notion of personhood and the epistemic access to one's own thoughts, desires or attitudes. The volume will be of interest to philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, cognitive scientists and others working on the central topics of consciousness and the self. (shrink)

It has been persuasively argued by David Kaplan and others that the proposition expressed by statements like (1) is a singular proposition, true in just those worlds in which a certain person, David Israel, is a computer scientist. Call this proposition P . The truth of this proposition does not require that the utterance (1) occur, or even that Israel has ever said anything at all. Marcus, Donnellan, Kripke and others have persuasively argued for a view of proper (...) names that, put in Kaplan’s terms and applied to this example, implies that the proposition expressed by (2) is also simply P .1 The thesis that expressions of a certain category (names, indexicals, demonstratives, pronouns, descriptions, etc.) are referential 2holds that these expressions contribute the object to which they refer, rather than a mode of presentation of that object, to the propositions expressed by statements containing them. The thesis that indexicals and names are referential creates the challenge of explaining the difference in cognitive significance between statements like (1) and (2), that express the same proposition[Wettstein, 1986]. The problem has two parts, which.. (shrink)

The thesis that anything conceivable is possible plays a central role in philosophical debates about the self. Discussions about free will have focused, at least in the last hundred years, on whether a free yet determined action is conceivable. If it is, and if anything conceivable is possible, then a deterministic physics would by itself pose no obstacle to human freedom. Current debates about the nature and value of personal survival turn on whether it is conceivable for a person to (...) move from one body to another. Discussions about the topic of John Perry’s impressive book, the relation between a person’s mental and physical states, has recently centered on whether it is conceivable for physically identical beings to differ in their conscious experiences. Some claim that zombies, beings physically just like us but without any conscious experiences at all, are conceivable. If they are, and if anything conceivable is possible, then it would seem to follow that facts about conscious experience are not physical. In short, some form of mind-body dualism would have to be right after all. (shrink)

John Perry’s splendid book, Knowledge, Possibility, and Consciousness, sets out to dispel the three main objections currently lodged against mind-body materialism. These are the objection from the alleged possibility of zombies, the knowledge argument made famous by Frank Jackson, and the modal objections due principally to Saul A. Kripke and David Chalmers. The discussion is penetrating throughout, and it develops many points in illuminating detail.

In this paper I want to explore the nature of phenomenal concepts by comparing them with perceptual concepts. Phenomenal concepts have been drawn to the attention of philosophers by recent debates in the philosophy of mind. Most obviously, their existence is demonstrated by Frank Jackson’s thought-experiment about Mary, the expert on the science of colour vision who has never had any colour experiences herself. It is widely agreed that, when Mary does first see something red, she acquires a new concept (...) of red experiences, distinct from any of her previous scientific concepts of such experiences. This new mode of reference is an example of a phenomenal concept. Recent interest in phenomenal concepts is independent of views about the ontological significance of Jackson’s Mary argument. Thus phenomenal concepts are acknowledged both (a) by ontological dualists who take the Mary argument to demonstrate the non-physicality of conscious phenomena and (b) by physicalist monists who insist that Mary’s new concept refers to nothing but a material state that she could always refer to using her old scientific concepts. How then do phenomenal concepts work? Here there is far less consensus. Among those who trade in phenomenal concepts, some take them to be sui generis (Tye, 2003, Chalmers, 2003), while others have variously likened them to recognitional concepts (Loar, 1990), to demonstratives (Horgan 1984, Papineau 1993, Perry 2001), or to quotational terms (Papineau 2002, Balog forthcoming). In my Thinking about Consciousness (2002), I developed a ‘quotational-indexical’ of phenomenal concepts account on roughly the following lines. To have a phenomenal concept of some experience, you must be able introspectively to focus on it when you have it, and to.... (shrink)

John Perry's book Knowledge, Possibility, and Consciousness is a lucid and engaging defense of a physicalist view of consciousness against various anti-physicalist arguments. In what follows, I will address Perry's responses to the three main anti-physicalist arguments he discusses: the zombie argument , the knowledge argument , and the modal argument.

Fr. Frank Oppenheim’s body of work dedicated to the philosophy of Josiah Royce exhibits a degree of objectivity and admiration not evidenced in philosophical circles since Ralph Barton Perry’s magisterial The Thought and Character of William James.1 Royce once derisively referred to his own system Σ as akin to a Boston attic—a “junk heap” in which everything is there, but best of luck in getting anything out! It is helpful to consider the entire body of Oppenheim’s Royce-work as the (...) combination of a “Boston attic” and the most ideal image of the “kitchen sink”—the contents not only all there, but neatly separated, perfectly arranged, and brilliantly displayed. The purpose of this essay is to situate Oppenheim’s... (shrink)

My interest in China was rekindled several years ago by an invitation to a conference, "Modernization, Globalization and China's Path to Economic Development," to he held in Hangzhou, July, 2002. The conference was organized by Cao Tian Yu, a philosopher of science at Boston University and his wife Lin Chun of the London School of Economics--both deeply concerned about the future of China. It was attended by a number of Western Leftists (Samir Amin, Perry Anderson, Robin Blackburn and myself), (...) by China specialist Joseph Fewsmith, by representatives from Singapore, Taiwan and India, by representatives from China's developing "New Left," (among them Wang Hui, whose book China's New Order was recently published by Harvard University Press1), by the president of Hangzhou College of Commerce (where the event was held) and by three retired, once prominent government officials, among them Du Runsheng, a principal architect of China's agricultural reform of the late 70s, early 80s. (shrink)

I offer an account of how ideals motivate us. My account suggests that although emulating an ideal is often rational, it can lead us to do irrational things. * This is the third in a series of four papers on narrative self-conceptions and their role in moral motivation. In the first paper, “The Self as Narrator” (to appear in Autonomy and the Challenges to Liberalism: New Essays, ed. Joel Anderson and John Christman), I explore the motivational role of narrative self-conceptions, (...) drawing on Daniel Dennett’s notion of the self as a “center of narrative gravity”. In the second paper, “Willing the Law” (in Practical Conflicts, ed. Monika Betzler and Peter Baumann [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming]), I explore the role of selfconceptions in Kantian “conflicts in the will”, drawing on Christine Korsgaard’s notion of “practical identities”. In a fourth paper, “A Sense of Self” (ms), I explore the role of narrative self-con-ceptions in Kantian “conflicts in conception”, drawing on the work of Thomas Nagel and John Perry on the self. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Richard Hofstadter: An Intellectual BiographyBruce KuklickDavid S. Brown, Richard Hofstadter: An Intellectual BiographyChicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. xxiv+291 pp. Notes, Bibliographic Essay, Sources, Students of Richard Hofstadter, Index. $27.50.In the mid-twentieth century Richard Hofstadter was one the finest historians of the United States. Uncommitted to work in primary sources, he was perhaps not at the level of Perry Miller, Vann Woodward, and Edmund Morgan. But Hofstadter (...) had a greater range and wider influence than these men, and the combination of intellectual and political history that he wrote was unique, as was the penetration of his intellect and his appealing sensibility.Hofstadter was born in Buffalo, New York, the son of a Lutheran mother and a father who was a secular Jew. The son went to the local University of Buffalo. While not as impoverished as this biography is inclined to make him, Dick Hofstadter "married up" after he fell in love with Felice Swados, the daughter of a Buffalo Jewish doctor who was also a student at the University. Swados introduced Hofstadter to the Marxist intellectual left of the 1930s, although he was himself a successful and intelligent student leader. In the years after their graduation, the couple had a tempestuous start to their marriage, but over the next several years they built a life in New York City. Felice became the medical columnist for Time; Dick productively completed a doctoral degree in history at Columbia University. They both continued their radical activities. In the late 1930s he was briefly a member of the American Communist Party, although Dick quickly resigned because of the authoritarian nature of the organization. Even then, however, he was more removed and skeptical than Felice, with more of an historian's impartiality and sense of the tragic. Felice's unambiguous commitments moved him, but Dick was, literally, only half-inclined to the Jewish left.Swados died of cancer in 1945, after they had moved to Washington, D.C., where Hofstadter was teaching at the University of Maryland. But a year later the devastated young man obtained a position at Columbia. At the same time he met and married Beatrice Kevitt, another capable woman with literary and editorial talent.In 1948 Hofstadter published what I still think is his masterwork, The American Political Tradition. A series of sharp portraits of leading politicians, [End Page 574] the book owed much to Hofstadter's leftist background. It was indebted to Marxist analyses, or at least to those of the sort promulgated by the great historian, Charles Beard, who saw economics as central to the study of national life. But Hofstadter did not see a clash between capitalists and their opponents in the United States. He viewed the entire tradition of American politicians as committed to a certain kind of exploitative social system, although his book did not quite have the edge suggested by this last phrase. Hofstadter became known as a "consensus" historian who had a monolithic sense of the American experience, although this monolith was not benign as was that of other practitioners of consensus.In the 1950s Hofstadter, now a prominent Columbia faculty member, moved away from some of the economic preconceptions of The American Political Tradition. Instead, in his two other important books, The Age of Reform (1955) and The Paranoid Style in American Politics (1965), he brought to bear on the American experience a group of concepts that he took from his study of the social sciences. Overall, these two books undermined his previous materialist interpretation of politics. Instead, Hofstadter found that irrational fears, psychological maladjustments, and concerns about status might motivate leaders and movements more than a rational appraisal of self-interest. In retrospect, this 1950s social science does not appear very enlightening, and so Hofstadter's absorption of it is not to be praised. On the other side, so many of his fellow historians attacked him for his interdisciplinary bent that his generous outreach looks more than daring. Hofstadter's own personal politics shifted, too. He became a staunch if critical defender of the social democratic liberalism of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and its impulses in the 1950s and 1960s.In... (shrink)

Review of The Concept of Pleasure, by David L. Perry (Mouton:1967).

These volumes provide a large introduction to the works of modern value theory from their beginnings in J. Bentham, F. Nietzsche, and H. Lotze to the more recent Anglo-American studies. Volume I is concerned with "the German-Language Group." Extensive discussion is devoted to the views of F. Brentano, A. Meinong, C. von Ehrenfels, J. C. Kreibig, E. Heyde, H. Rickert, H. Münsterberg, M. Scheler, K. Wiederhold, W. Stern, F. Wilken, M. Beck, and V. Krafts. It provides a good conspectus of (...) varieties of nineteenth century value theories. The author aims at an exposition rather than critical treatment of the various philosophers. Each chapter contains a useful bibliography. Of more contemporary interest is Volume II which deals with the Anglo-American Group. One finds here a detailed presentation of the theories of W. M. Urban, J. Dewey, B. Bosanquet, D. Prall, C. G. Shaw, R. B. Perry, D. H. Parkel, W. Stern, A. C. Garnett, J. N. Findlay, E. Brightman, B. E. Jessup, C. I. Lewis, R. Lepley, S. C. Pepper, Everett Hall, R. Hartman, and W. D. Lamont. Shorter discussions deal with works of A. L. Hillard, E. M. Adams, and K. Aschenbrenner. Liberal quotations from original sources are interspersed throughout the exposition. The clarification of issues is not always successful. The author does provide a good focus, however, for important passages from the works discussed. Regrettably, one finds an omission of the view of David Pole, the absence of a summary section on each theory discussed, and the absence of an index. Nevertheless, the students of value theory can find in this work a useful tool of research. The comprehensive scope provides a rich variety of contributions to the important field of value theory.—A.S.C. (shrink)

Perry Anderson, Edward Palmer Thompson, David Harvey, Moishe Postone, Derek Sayer, Simon Clarke, Robert Brenner, Ellen Meiksins Wood et David McNally : neuf penseurs importants dont l'influence grandissante marque un renouveau de l'apport de l'oeuvre de Marx et de ses successeurs au champ des sciences sociales. Chaque chapitre décrit le parcours intellectuel de l'une de ces figures et analyse sa contribution à une pensée en mouvement, offrant ainsi pour la première fois au public francophone un tour d'horizon (...) des différentes formes du marxisme anglo-saxon contemporain. Hétérogène, ce courant de pensée résolument antidogmatique est traversé de tendances communes telles la critique du réductionnisme économique et une sensibilité accrue aux processus historiques des rapports de domination. Historiens, sociologues, politologues, géographes ou philosophes, les auteurs ici réunis ont chacun à leur manière contribué au vaste chantier théorique de la pensée marxiste et du matérialisme historique, qui continue de s'étendre, un siècle et demi après sa fondation. (shrink)

_From the president of Wesleyan University, an illuminating history of the student, spanning from antiquity to Zoom “[Roth] has a clear vision for what it ought to mean to be a student: Learn what you love to do, get better at it, and then share it with others.”—David Perry, _Washington Post__ In this sweeping book, Michael S. Roth narrates a vivid and dynamic history of students, exploring some of the principal models for learning that have developed in very (...) different contexts, from the sixth century BCE to the present. Beginning with the followers of Confucius, Socrates, and Jesus and moving to medieval apprentices, students at Enlightenment centers of learning, and learners enrolled in twenty-first-century universities, he explores how students have been followers, interlocutors, disciples, rebels, and children becoming adults. There are many ways to be a student, Roth argues, but at their core is developing the capacity to think for oneself by learning from others, and thereby finding freedom. In an age of machine learning, this book celebrates the student who develops more than mastery, cultivating curiosity, judgment, creativity, and an ability to keep learning beyond formal schooling. Roth shows how the student throughout history has been someone who interacts dynamically with the world, absorbing its lessons and creatively responding to them. (shrink)

Medical students' professional identity formation is an adaptive, developmental process. PIF is shaped by values implicit in educational practices and in the culture of the learning environment. In 2003, educational leaders at Harvard Medical School created the Cambridge Integrated Clerkship as a new model of clinical education to support PIF intentionally. The CIC, a longitudinal integrated clerkship, differs in structure, processes, and venues from traditional block rotations, while...

_Real Essentialism_ presents a comprehensive defence of neo-Aristotelian essentialism. Do objects have essences? Must they be the kinds of things they are in spite of the changes they undergo? Can we know what things are really like – can we define and classify reality? Many, if not most, philosophers doubt this, influenced by centuries of empiricism, and by the anti-essentialism of Wittgenstein, Quine, Popper, and other thinkers. _Real Essentialism_ reinvigorates the tradition of realist, essentialist metaphysics, defending the reality and knowability (...) of essence, the possibility of objective, immutable definition, and its relevance to contemporary scientific and metaphysical issues such as whether essence transcends physics and chemistry, the essence of life, the nature of biological species, and the nature of the person. (shrink)

We propose a formal framework for interpretable machine learning. Combining elements from statistical learning, causal interventionism, and decision theory, we design an idealised explanation game in which players collaborate to find the best explanation for a given algorithmic prediction. Through an iterative procedure of questions and answers, the players establish a three-dimensional Pareto frontier that describes the optimal trade-offs between explanatory accuracy, simplicity, and relevance. Multiple rounds are played at different levels of abstraction, allowing the players to explore overlapping causal (...) patterns of variable granularity and scope. We characterise the conditions under which such a game is almost surely guaranteed to converge on a optimal explanation surface in polynomial time, and highlight obstacles that will tend to prevent the players from advancing beyond certain explanatory thresholds. The game serves a descriptive and a normative function, establishing a conceptual space in which to analyse and compare existing proposals, as well as design new and improved solutions. (shrink)

Machine learning algorithms may radically improve our ability to diagnose and treat disease. For moral, legal, and scientific reasons, it is essential that doctors and patients be able to understand and explain the predictions of these models. Scalable, customisable, and ethical solutions can be achieved by working together with relevant stakeholders, including patients, data scientists, and policy makers.

"Nivison brings out the exciting variety within Confucian thought, as he interprets and elucidates key thinkers from over two thousand years, from Confucius himself, through Mencius and Xunzi, to such later Confucians as Wang Yangming, Dai Zhen, and Zhang Xuecheng."--Cover.

DCPS is a connectionist production system interpreter that uses distributed representations. As a connectionist model it consists of many simple, richly interconnected neuron‐like computing units that cooperate to solve problems in parallel. One motivation for constructing DCPS was to demonstrate that connectionist models are capable of representing and using explicit rules. A second motivation was to show how “coarse coding” or “distributed representations” can be used to construct a working memory that requires far fewer units than the number of different (...) facts that can potentially be stored. The simulation we present is intended as a detailed demonstration of the feasibility of certain ideas and should not be viewed as a full implementation of production systems. Our current model only has a few of the many interesting emergent properties that we eventually hope to demonstrate: It is damage‐resistant, it performs matching and variable binding by massively parallel constraint satisfaction, and the capacity of its working memory is dependent on the similarity of the items being stored. (shrink)

The distinction between the essence of an object and its properties has been obscured in contemporary discussion of essentialism. Locke held that the properties of an object are exclusively those features that ‘flow’ from its essence. Here he follows the Aristotelian theory, leaving aside Locke’s own scepticism about the knowability of essence. I defend the need to distinguish sharply between essence and properties, arguing that essence must be given by form and that properties flow from form. I give a precise (...) definition of what the term of art ‘flow’ amounts to, and apply the distinction to various kinds of taxonomic issues. (shrink)

We examine two different descriptions of the behavioral functions of the hippocampal system. One emphasizes spatially organized behaviors, especially those using cognitive maps. The other emphasizes memory, particularly working memory, a short-term memory that requires iexible stimulus-response associations and is highly susceptible to interference. The predictive value of the spatial and memory descriptions were evaluated by testing rats with damage to the hippocampal system in a series of experiments, independently manipulating the spatial and memory characteristics of a behavioral task. No (...) dissociations were found when the spatial characteristics of the stimuli to be remembered were changed; lesions produced a similar deficit in both spatial and nonspatial test procedures, indicating that the hippocampus was similarly involved regardless of the spatial nature of the task. In contrast, a marked dissociation was found when the memory requirements were altered. Rats with lesions were able to perform accurately in tasks that could be solved exclusively on the basis of reference memory. They performed at chance levels and showed no signs of recovery even with extensive postoperative training in tasks that required working memory. In one experiment all the characteristics of the reference memory and working memory procedures were identical except the type of memory required. Consequently, the behavioral dissociation cannot be explained by differences in attention, motivation, response inhibition, or the type of stimuli to be remembered. As a result of these experiments we propose that the hippocampus is selectively involved in behaviors that require working memory, irrespective of the type of material that is to be processed by that memory. (shrink)

To the extent that dualism is even taken to be a serious option in contemporary discussions of personal identity and the philosophy of mind, it is almost exclusively either Cartesian dualism or property dualism that is considered. The more traditional dualism defended by Aristotelians and Thomists, what I call hylemorphic dualism, has only received scattered attention. In this essay I set out the main lines of the hylemorphic dualist position, with particular reference to personal identity. First I argue that overemphasis (...) of the problem of consciousness has had an unhealthy effect on recent debate, claiming instead that we should emphasize the concept of form. Then I bring in the concept of identity by means of the notion of substantial form. I continue by analyzing the relation between form and matter, defending the traditional theses of prime matter and of the unicity of substantial form. I then argue for the immateriality of the substantial form of the human person, viz. the soul, from an account of the human intellect. From this follows the soul's essential independence of matter. Finally, although the soul is the immaterial bearer of personal identity, that identity is still the identity of an essentially embodied being. I explain how these ideas are to be reconciled. Footnotesa I am grateful to Stephen Braude, John Cottingham, John Haldane, David Jehle, Joel Katzav, Eduardo Ortiz, and Fred Sommers for helpful comments and discussion of a draft of this essay. I would also like to thank Ellen Paul, whose suggestions have helped greatly to improve the essay's style and content. (shrink)

Since the introduction and widespread adoption of chemical herbicides, “weed management” has become almost synonymous with “herbicide management.” Over-reliance on herbicides and herbicide-resistant crops has given rise to herbicide resistant weeds. Integrated weed management (IWM) identifies three strategies for weed management— biological-cultural, chemical-technological, mechanical-physical—and recommends combining all three to mitigate herbicide resistance. However, adoption of IWM has stalled, and research to understand the adoption of IWM practices has focused on single stakeholder groups, especially farmers. In contrast, decisions about weed management (...) often occur within a social ecosystem where multiple stakeholder groups co-create knowledge and practices. To more holistically investigate perceptions and decision-making related to herbicide resistant weed management, we conducted 23 in-depth interviews in combination with Q methodology with farmers and public-/private-sector agricultural professionals in the state of Georgia (U.S.). Our investigation focused on the management of an increasingly herbicide resistant weed, Palmer amaranth, which enabled broader conversations about agricultural systems, farmer livelihoods, and sustainability. Factor and thematic analyses allowed us to identify and characterize two distinct typologies: one primarily valued agronomic efficiency and relied upon chemical-technological management practices, while the other valued diversifying weed management strategies as the pathway to agronomic and economic success. Typologies diverged substantially in attitudes toward the three weed management strategies, the role of technology, and systems management generally. These two viewpoints have implications for how we understand underlying stakeholder motivations and choices around weed management strategies, both of which are crucial in promoting and supporting farmer use of diverse, ecologically-sound, weed management strategies. (shrink)