The fame of thinkers such as David Hume, Adam Smith and Thomas Reid has led to philosophy being widely acknowledged as the jewel in the intellectual crown of the Scottish Enlightenment. But the Scottish tradition of philosophy extends much further than the 18th century. Its origins are to be found in the Middle Ages when Scotland's ancient universities were founded, and its central themes continued to be explored well into the twentieth century. This collection of readings, the first of its (...) kind, has been chosen with a view to displaying the variety, richness and strength of the Scottish philosophical tradition. Beginning with the Philosophical Theses of Gershom Carmichael, the first person in Scotland to hold a University Chair expressly devoted to philosophy, the extracts offer readers an entry to the examination of topics as diverse as the nature of laughter, the possibility of miracles, and the foundations of psychology. (shrink)

The founders and 19th-Century leaders of the American democratic experiment sought to base their institution on a rationalist and individualist model of political reality. As characterized by D. M. Levitan, they distrusted representative government and powerful executives, subscribing to a laissez-faire philosophy: he governs best who governs least. Levitan goes on to accentuate the intimate relationship of the political system to its philosophical foundation. While he notes that Liberal ideas were well adapted to the needs of the plutocracy, he does (...) not play down the importance of Liberalism to the particular form taken by political institutions in democracy. A paradigm of this Liberal doctrine is John Stuart Mill's famous Principle: “the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will is to prevent harm to others.” This Principle, if not the source, can certainly qualify as a rationalization for a great part of what passes for “policy” in a democracy. (shrink)

Radulphus Brito's Quaestiones super Priora analytica Aristotelis is a major work written in the early 1300s which treated Aristotle's text devoted to the theory of the syllogism. Brito, one of the most influential of the group of medieval thinkers known as the Modistae, examines both categorical and hypothetical syllogisms. In the text offered here, based on six known manuscripts which are complete or nearly complete, Brito was critical of many of the theories of his contemporary, Simon of Faversham. Brito edited (...) his work several times; there are at least two versions which indicate Brito returned to this material during his long career at the university in Paris. This volume is the first critical text edition of Brito's Quaestiones super Priora analytica Aristotelis and will therefore be of great interest to those studying the history of logic and its development during the medieval period. (shrink)

Concussions in professional sports have received increased attention, which is partly attributable to evidence that found concussion incidence rates were much higher than previously thought. Further to this, professional hockey players articulated how their concussion symptoms affected their professional careers, interpersonal relationships, and qualities of life. Researchers are beginning to associate multiple/repeated concussions with Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, a structural brain injury that is characterized by tau protein deposits in distinct areas of the brain. Taken together, concussions impact many people in (...) the sporting community from current and former professional athletes and their families to medical and health professionals and researchers. In light of the growing awareness and sensitivity towards concussions, the purpose of this paper is to provide recommendations that are designed to improve player safety in professional hockey and address the ethical issues surrounding these suggestions. (shrink)

In recent years there has been concern among law enforcement and national security organizations about the use of “anonymous” prepaid mobile phone service and its purported role in supporting criminal and terrorist activities. As a result, a number of countries have implemented registration requirements for such service. Privacy rights advocates oppose such regulatory measures, arguing that there is little practical value in attempting to register prepaid mobile devices, and the issue raises important questions about a citizen's entitlement to anonymity in (...) the ownership of a networked communications device. This article provides an overview of the issue and presents findings drawn from a recent study on prepaid mobile phone regulation in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries. The article concludes by suggesting that there are significant problems with the claim that mandatory registration of prepaid mobile phone service is a necessary or an effective regulatory course of action. (shrink)

Consideration of the experimental activities carried out in one discipline, through the lens of another, can lead to novel insights. Here, we comment from a biological perspective upon experiments in quantum mechanics proposed by physicists that are likely to feasible in the near future. In these experiments, an entire living organism would be knowingly placed into a coherent quantum state for the first time, i.e. would be coerced into demonstrating quantum phenomena. The implications of the proposed experiment for a biologist (...) depend to an extent upon the outcomes. If successful, then the organism will have been temporarily in a state where it has an unmeasurable metabolism—not because a metabolic rate is undetectable, but because any attempt to measure it would automatically bring the organism out of the state. We argue that this would in essence represent a new category of cryptobiosis. Further, the organism would not necessarily retain all of the characteristics commonly attributed to living systems, unlike the currently known categories of cryptobiosis. If organisms can survive having previously been in a coherent state, then we must accept that living systems do not necessarily need to remain in a decoherent state at all times. This would be something new to biologists, even if it might seem trivial to physicists. It would have implications concerning the physical extremes organisms can tolerate, the search for extraterrestrial life, and our philosophical view of animation. (shrink)

This article discusses ethical implications for the academy in the use of cyberspace and virtual reality in conducting its teaching and research responsibilities. It identifies important cyberspace ethics concerns as they intersect with the academy and provides an ethical framework for coming to grips with them. Topics discussed here include the sine qua non of academic collegiality and civility, concerns about digital alteration of images and sounds, and issues pertaining to academic administration and infrastructure.

Quantum Information Theory and the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics is a conceptual analysis of one of the most prominent and exciting new areas of physics, providing the first full-length philosophical treatment of quantum information theory and the questions it raises for our understanding of the quantum world. -/- Beginning from a careful, revisionary, analysis of the concepts of information in the everyday and classical information-theory settings, Christopher G. Timpson argues for an ontologically deflationary account of the nature of quantum information. (...) Against what many have supposed, quantum information can be clearly defined (it is not a primitive or vague notion) but it is not part of the material contents of the world. Timpson's account sheds light on the nature of nonlocality and information flow in the presence of entanglement and, in particular, dissolves puzzles surrounding the remarkable process of quantum teleportation. In addition it permits a clear view of what the ontological and methodological lessons provided by quantum information theory are; lessons which bear on the gripping question of what role a concept like information has to play in fundamental physics. Topics discussed include the slogan 'Information is Physical', the prospects for an informational immaterialism (the view that information rather than matter might fundamentally constitute the world), and the status of the Church-Turing hypothesis in light of quantum computation. -/- With a clear grasp of the concept of information in hand, Timpson turns his attention to the pressing question of whether advances in quantum information theory pave the way for the resolution of the traditional conceptual problems of quantum mechanics: the deep problems which loom over measurement, nonlocality and the general nature of quantum ontology. He marks out a number of common pitfalls to be avoided before analysing in detail some concrete proposals, including the radical quantum Bayesian programme of Caves, Fuchs, and Schack. One central moral which is drawn is that, for all the interest that the quantum information-inspired approaches hold, no cheap resolutions to the traditional problems of quantum mechanics are to be had. (shrink)

Christopher G. Timpson provides the first full-length philosophical treatment of quantum information theory and the questions it raises for our understanding of the quantum world. He argues for an ontologically deflationary account of the nature of quantum information, which is grounded in a revisionary analysis of the concepts of information.

Challenging the notion of theory as white and experience as black, Lewis Gordon here offers a philosophical portrait of the thought and life of the Martinican-turned-Algerian revolutionary psychiatrist and philosopher Frantz Fanon as an example of "living thought" against the legacies of colonialism and racism, and thereby shows the continued relevance and importance of his ideas.

Creolizing Rosa Luxemburg brings together a global community of writers to revisit key aspects of Luxemburg’s thought, from the accumulation of capital, to the mass strike, to her debate with Vladimir Lenin on the meaning of socialism, and her searing critiques of colonialism as inherent to capitalist accumulation.

Hypocrisy is a multi-faceted concept that has been studied empirically by psychologists and discussed logically by philosophers. In this study, we pose various behavioral scenarios to research participants and ask them to indicate whether the actor in the scenario behaved hypocritically. We assess many of the components that have been considered to be necessary for hypocrisy (e.g., the intent to deceive, self-deception), factors that may or may not be distinguished from hypocrisy (e.g., weakness of will), and factors that may moderate (...) hypocrisy (e.g., the degree of discrepancy between the attitude and behavior, whether the attitude is stated publicly, and the nature and severity of the behavioral consequences). Our findings indicate that lay conceptions of hypocrisy are often at odds with philosophical speculation. We argue that a complete understanding of the criteria for hypocrisy requires consideration of how ordinary people construe the concept. In contrast to some concepts (e.g., physical causation), for which lay conceptions, while interesting, are largely irrelevant, hypocrisy is an essential component of social judgment. One could argue, therefore, that folk wisdom is the ultimate arbiter of what hypocrisy entails. We note limitations of our methodology and suggest avenues for future research. (shrink)

Tradition is a central concern for a wide range of academic disciplines interested in problems of transmitting culture across generations. Yet, the concept itself has received remarkably little analysis. A substantial literature has grown up around the notion of 'invented tradition,' but no clear concept of tradition is to be found in these writings; since the very notion of 'invented tradition' presupposes a prior concept of tradition and is empty without one, this debunking usage has done as much to obscure (...) the idea as to clarify it. In the absence of a shared concept, the various disciplines have created their own vocabularies to address the subject. Useful as they are, these specialized vocabularies (of which the best known include hybridity, canonicity, diaspora, paradigm, and contact zones) separate the disciplines and therefore necessarily create only a collection of parochial and disjointed approaches. Until now, there has been no concerted attempt to put the various disciplines in conversation with one another around the problem of tradition. Combining discussions of the idea of tradition by major scholars from a variety of disciplines with synoptic, synthesizing essays, Questions of Tradition will initiate a renewal of interest in this vital subject. (shrink)

This paper surveys some of the questions that arise when we consider how entanglement and relativity are related via the notion of non-locality. We begin by reviewing the role of entangled states in Bell inequality violation and question whether the associated notions of non-locality lead to problems with relativity. The use of entanglement and wavefunction collapse in Einstein's famous incompleteness argument is then considered, before we go on to see how the issue of non-locality is transformed if one considers quantum (...) mechanics without collapse to be a complete theory, as in the Everett interpretation. (shrink)

The relationship of consciousness to brain, which Schopenhauer grandly referred to as the "world knot," remains an unsolved problem within both philosophy and science. The central focus in what follows is the relevance of science---from psychoanalysis to neurophysiology and quantum physics-to the mind-brain puzzle. Many would argue that we have advanced little since the age of the Greek philosophers, and that the extraordinary accumulation of neuroscientific knowledge in this century has helped not at all. Increas- ingly, philosophers and scientists have (...) tended to go their separate ways in considering the issues, since they tend to differ in the questions that they ask, the data and ideas which are provided for consideration, their methods for answering these questions, and criteria for judging the acceptability of an answer. But it is our conviction that philosophers and scientists can usefully interchange, at least to the extent that they provide co~straints upon each other’s preferred strategies, and it may prove possible for more substantive progress to be made. Philosophers have said some rather naive things by ignoring the extraordinary advances in the neurosciences in the twentieth century. The skull is not filled with green cheese! On the other hand, the arrogance of many scientists toward philosophy and their faith in the scientific method is equally naive. Scientists clearly have much to learn from philosophy as an intellectual discipline. Manifestations of Mind: Some Conceptual and Empirical Issues Walter B. Weimer Pages 5-31 The Mysterious “Split‘: A Clinical Inquiry into Problems of Consciousness and Brain Peter H. Knapp Pages 37-69 Mind, Brain, and the Symbolic Consciousness Irwin Savodnik Pages 73-98 Brain and Free Will John C. Eccles Pages 101-121 An Old Ghost in a New Body C. Wade Savage Pages 125-153 How Dogmatic Can Materialism Be? John C. Eccles Pages 155-160 Mental Phenomena as Causal Determinants in Brain Function R. W. Sperry Pages 163-177 Consciousness as an Emergent Causal Agent in the Context of Control System Theory E. M. Dewan Pages 181-198 Reductionism, Levels of Organization, and the Mind-Body Problem William C. Wimsatt Pages 205-267 Mind, Structure, and Contradiction Gordon G. Globus Pages 271-293 Problems Concerning the Structure of Consciousness Karl H. Pribram Pages 297-313 The Role of Scientific Results in Theories of Mind and Brain: A Conversation among Philosophers and Scientists E. M. Dewan, John C. Eccles, Gordon G. Globus, Keith Gunderson, Peter H. Knapp, Grover Maxwell et al. Pages 317-328 Scientific Results and the Mind-Brain Issue: Some Afterthoughts Grover Maxwell Pages 329-358. (shrink)

Economic sanctions are emerging as one of the major tools of international governance in the post-Cold War era. Gordon considers the issue of sanctions within three ethical frameworks: just war doctrine, deontological ethics, and utilitarianism.

Engaging variously with the legacy of Paul L. Lehmann, these essays argue for a reorientation in Christian theology that better honours the formative power of ...

The distinction between proper and improper mixtures is a staple of the discussion of foundational questions in quantum mechanics. Here we note an analogous distinction in the context of the theory of entanglement. The terminology of `proper' versus `improper' separability is proposed to mark the distinction.

Modern Jewish philosophy emerged in the seventeenth century, with the impact of the new science and modern philosophy on thinkers who were reflecting upon the nature of Judaism and Jewish life. This collection of new essays examines the work of several of the most important of these figures, from the seventeenth to the late-twentieth centuries, and addresses themes central to the tradition of modern Jewish philosophy: language and revelation, autonomy and authority, the problem of evil, messianism, the influence of Kant, (...) and feminism. Included are essays on Spinoza, Mendelssohn, Cohen, Buber, Rosenzweig, Fackenheim, Soloveitchik, Strauss, and Levinas. Other thinkers discussed include Maimon, Benjamin, Derrida, Scholem, and Arendt. The sixteen original essays are written by a world-renowned group of scholars especially for this volume and give a broad and rich picture of the tradition of modern Jewish philosophy over a period of four centuries. (shrink)

In a world riddled with disappointment, malice, and tragedy, what rationale do we have for believing in a benevolent God? If God is all-powerful and all-loving, why is there so much evil in the world? John Stackhouse takes a historically informed approach to this dilemma, examining what philosophers and theologians have said on the subject and offering reassuring answers for thoughtful readers. Stackhouse explores how great thinkers have grappled with the problem of evil--from the Buddha, Confucius, Augustine, and David Hume (...) to Martin Luther, C. S. Lewis, and Alvin Plantinga. Without brushing aside the serious contradictions posed by a God who allows incurable diseases, natural disasters, and senseless crimes to bring misery into our lives, Stackhouse asks if a world completely without evil is what we truly want. Would a life without suffering be a meaningful life? Could free will exist if we were able to choose only good? Stackhouse examines what the best minds have had to say on these questions and boldly affirms that the benefits of evil, in fact, outweigh the costs. Finally, he points to Christian revelation--which promises the transformation of suffering into joy--as the best guide to God's. (shrink)