It is now integral to much of cultural, political and social analysis. This is the first comprehensive survey in one volume of the interdisciplinary field of cosmopolitan studies.

Despite hundreds of definitions, no consensus exists on a definition of life or on the closely related and problematic definitions of the organism and death. These problems retard practical and theoretical development in, for example, exobiology, artificial life, biology and evolution. This paper suggests improving this situation by basing definitions on a theory of a generalized particle hierarchy. This theory uses the common denominator of the “operator” for a unified ranking of both particles and organisms, from elementary particles to animals (...) with brains. Accordingly, this ranking is called “the operator hierarchy”. This hierarchy allows life to be defined as: matter with the configuration of an operator, and that possesses a complexity equal to, or even higher than the cellular operator. Living is then synonymous with the dynamics of such operators and the word organism refers to a select group of operators that fit the definition of life. The minimum condition defining an organism is its existence as an operator, construction thus being more essential than metabolism, growth or reproduction. In the operator hierarchy, every organism is associated with a specific closure, for example, the nucleus in eukaryotes. This allows death to be defined as: the state in which an organism has lost its closure following irreversible deterioration of its organization. The generality of the operator hierarchy also offers a context to discuss “life as we do not know it”. The paper ends with testing the definition’s practical value with a range of examples. (shrink)

The history of the concept of “religion” in Western tradition has intrigued scholars for years. This important collection of eighteen essays brings further light to the ongoing debate. Three of the invited participants, W.C. Smith, M. Despland and E. Feil, has each previously written impressive books treating this subject; the last two acknowledged the impact and continuing influence of Smith’s work, The Meaning and End of Religion. An introduction and a recapitulation of Smith’s contribution as a scholar set the stage (...) for a retrospective look at the published literature. Contributors then examine the transformation of words (the classical religio to the modern religion), particularities of religion in nineteenth-century France, Troeltsch’s concept of religion, the study of religion from an Asian point of view and the categorization of “World Religions.” The concluding essays elaborate contemporary anthropological, cross-disciplinary, semiological, deconstructive and psychoanalytical methodological approaches to the concept and study of “religion.” Exploring critically different aspects of the concept and study of religion, these provocative essays typically reflect the methodological pluralism currently existing in the field of Religious Studies. Of interest to scholars and students alike, this collection also contains a complete bibliography of W.C. Smith’s publications. (shrink)

This article offers a new theory about how using lotteries to distribute scarce benefits satisfies beneficiaries' claims. In the first section of the article I criticize John Broome's view and on the basis of these criticisms set out four desiderata for a philosophically adequate account of claim satisfaction by lottery. In section II I propose and defend a new view called the dual structure view, so called because it posits that claimants have two types of claims in the relevant scarce (...) benefit distribution cases under discussion. This view meets all the desiderata set out in section I. Section III draws out the practical implications of my view for a variety of temporally extended cases, including the distribution of corneas to patients who have suffered corneal degeneration. (shrink)

On a charge of murder or manslaughter it must be shown that the person killed was one who was in being. It is neither murder nor manslaughter to kill an unborn child while still in its mother’s womb although it may be the statutory offences of child destruction or abortion. If however the child is born alive and afterwards dies by reason of an unlawful act done to it in the mother’s womb or in the process of birth, the person (...) who committed that act is guilty of murder or manslaughter according to the intent with which the act is done. [Halsbury’s LAWS OF ENGLAND, 4th ed. reissue, Vol. 11 (1). London: Butterworths, 1990.]. (shrink)

Cosmopolitanism has been understood as a postnational identity. This conflates the distinction between nation and nationalism. Most accounts of cosmopolitanism emphasise its legal form or its cultural dimension or its political. This paper argues for a civic dimension to cosmopolitanism, conceived of in terms of discourses of self, other and world. This is tied to a notion of nations without nationalism.

(2003). Rethinking Kuhn's legacy without paradigms: some remarks on Steve Fuller's Thomas Kuhn: A Philosophical History for Our Times. Social Epistemology: Vol. 17, No. 2-3, pp. 153-156. doi: 10.1080/0269172032000144108.

The future has become a problem for the present. Almost every critical issue is now understood and experienced through the prism of the future since this is the primary focus for the playing out of crises. Senses of the Future offers a wide-ranging discussion of theories of the future. It covers the main ideas of the future in modern thought and explores how we should view the future today in light of a plurality of very different and conflicting visions. The (...) key contribution of this book is to bring together the different approaches with an account that is grounded in sociological and philosophical analysis as opposed to visions of the future that are inspired by extreme visions of catastrophe or approaches that see the future as only the continuation of the present. Given a revival of apocalyptical visions of the ‘end times’ and dystopian views of the future of human societies, there is urgent need for a new approach on how we should imagine the future. The author explores the future as a field of tensions that is revealed in narratives, utopian desires, hope, imaginaries, and social struggles concerning the potential possibilities of the present: the future does not just arrive; it has to be fought for. This book is an important contribution to a critical sociology of the future. It is both a work of reconstruction and critique grounded in a historical and philosophical hermeneutics of the future. Table of Contents Chapter One Introduction: Conflicting Visions of the Future Contested Visions of the Future Today Return to the Future Outline of the Chapters References Chapter Two When is the Future? The Problem of Time and the Human Condition Time in the Physical World: Lessons from Physics Has the Future already Begun? Time and History Time, Life, and the Human Condition: Biology, Evolution, and Culture Conclusion References Chapter Three Lessons from the Past: What Does the Past Tell Us about the Future? The Future in the Past Failed Societies and Civilizational Collapse Catastrophes and History Conclusion References Chapter Four Modernity and the Concept of the Future: Utopia, Progress, and Prophecy The Future as Expectation The Future as an Imaginary and the Emergence of Utopianism The Future as Possibility The Future as Experience Conclusion References Chapter Five Ideas of the Future in the Twentieth Century: Futurism, Modernism, Sociology, and Political Theory New Political Ideas of the Future after 1945 Responses to the Future: From Fear of the Future to Futurology Sociological Theory and the Future Conclusion: The New Sociology of the Future References Chapter Six Critical Theory and the Future: The Sources of Transcendence The Intellectual Origins of Critical Theory: A Brief Outline The Idea of the Future in the Critical Theory of the Early Frankfurt School Habermas and the Communication Paradigm The Responsibility Paradigm and Cosmopolitanism: Jonas and Apel Critical Cosmopolitanism and the Idea of the Future Conclusion: Cultural Models and the Future as Possibility References Chapter Seven Conclusion: In The Shadow of the Future Do We Need a Theory of the Future? Are we already in a New Historical Era? AI and a Posthuman Future Struggles for the Future References Index. (shrink)

There is no general agreement among scholars that Aristotle had a unified concept of phantasia. That is evident from the most cursory glance through the literature. Freudenthal speaks of the contradictions into which Aristotle seems to fall in his remarks about phantasia, and explains the contradictions as due to the border position which phantasia occupies between Wahrnehmung and thinking. Ross, in Aristotle, p. 143, talks of passages on phantasia in De Anima 3. 3 which constitute ‘a reversal of his doctrine (...) of sensation’ and perhaps do not ‘represent his deliberate view’. This is a serious state of affairs, since De Anima 3. 3 is Aristotle’s main discussion of phantasia. Of passages on phantasia, appearances and images in De Anima 3. 3, Hamlyn says: ‘There is clearly little consistency here’. Even Schofield, who is more optimistic about saving the unity of Aristotle’s concept than the last two scholars, grants that ‘some of the inconsistencies of Aristotle’s account seem more than merely apparent’.1 He thinks of Aristotle’s phantasia as a ‘loose-knit, family concept’. My purpose here is to suggest that Aristotle is more consistent in his use of phantasia than his critics will allow him to be. The translation of the term as imagination frequently adds unnecessarily to the confusion, so I shall avoid it and use transliteration instead. (shrink)

The problem of violence for social theory is not only a normative question which can be answered in political-ethical terms, but it is also a cognitive question relating to the definition of violence. This cognitive question is one of the main problems with the contemporary discourse of violence and it is this that makes the idea of a cosmopolitan public sphere particularly relevant since it is in public discourse that cognitive models are articulated. The real power of cosmopolitanism lies in (...) communicative power, the problematizing, the reflexive transformation of cultural models and the raising of `voice'. Unless global civil society is based on a cosmopolitan political sphere there is the danger that it will be disembodied and helpless in the face of new forms of violence. (shrink)

This essay explores how it might be possible to recover a more pluralistic and therefore participatory understanding and exercise of the teaching office in the Christian Church by, first, briefly reflecting upon the historical backdrop to the emergence and development of the role of authoritative ecclesial teacher. Second, I identify some of the ecclesial fault lines and tensions that emerged in the modern and contemporary periods pertaining to teaching authority. Third, I raise the issue of the impact of such developments (...) upon the manner in which Christian churches have sought to offer teachings on ethical issues in recent times. Fourth, I explore, via an ecclesiological analysis that is both a comparative and ecumenical in nature, three visions for retrieving a more participatory and life-giving understanding of the teaching office and practice of the teaching function for our times. The visions explored come from a Reformed, Roman Catholic, and ecumenical standpoint: respectively, those of Richard Robert Osmer, Richard R. Gaillardetz, and Willem Visser 't Hooft. The final section offers some brief conclusions about the potential for truly ecumenical collaboration in moral discernment in the light of such considerations. (shrink)

Sometimes, it is difficult to know what someone means. Sometimes, it merely appears to be difficult. Consider this masterpiece of philosophical hermeneutics from a P. G. Wodehouse short story: “Jeeves,” I said. “A rummy communication has arrived. From Mr. Glossop.” “Indeed, sir?” “I will read it to you. Handed in at Upper Bleaching. Message runs as follows: ‘When you come tomorrow, bring my football boots. Also, if humanly possible, Irish water-spaniel. Urgent. Regards. Tuppy.’.

This paper describes a novel perspective on the foundations of mathematics: how mathematics may be seen to be largely about “information compression via the matching and unification of patterns”. That is itself a novel approach to IC, couched in terms of nonmathematical primitives, as is necessary in any investigation of the foundations of mathematics. This new perspective on the foundations of mathematics reflects the facts that mathematics is almost exclusively the product of human brains, and has been developed, as an (...) aid to human thinking, mathematics is likely to be consonant with much evidence for the importance of IC in human learning, perception, and cognition. This perspective on the foundations of mathematics has grown out of a long-term programme of research developing the SP Theory of Intelligence and its realization in the SP Computer Model, a system in which a generalised version of ICMUP—the powerful concept of SP-multiple-alignment—plays a central role. This paper shows with an example how mathematics, without any special provision, may achieve compression of information. Then, it describes examples showing how variants of ICMUP may be seen in widely used structures and operations in mathematics. Examples are also given to show how several aspects of the mathematics-related disciplines of logic and computing may be understood as ICMUP. Also discussed is the intimate relation between IC and concepts of probability, with arguments that there are advantages in approaching AI, cognitive science, and concepts of probability via ICMUP. Also discussed is how the close relation between IC and concepts of probability relates to the established view that some parts of mathematics are intrinsically probabilistic, and how that latter view may be reconciled with the all-or-nothing, “exact,” forms of calculation or inference that are familiar in mathematics and logic. There are many potential benefits and applications of the mathematics-as-IC perspective. (shrink)