This handbook provides the Personal, Social and Health Education co-ordinator in a school with everything that they need to deliver good practice in this subject. The book contains thorough guidance through policy and required practice and has a strongly practical bias. It shows through examples of good practice what can be achieved and how this can generally help to raise standards in schools. This is a topical, lively and up-to-date book which tackles the real issues facing schools, heads, co-ordinators and (...) classroom teachers in an engaging and practical manner. It quotes from examples and case studies where strategies worked, and failed - but also keeps the learning of the pupil as the focus of all activities. _The PSHE Co-ordinators Handbook_ is what every Head and PSHE co-ordinator needs to help them make practical sense of the new curriculum, the new PSHE, the new healthy school standard, social inclusion, citizenship, school councils, and the new Ofsted requirements - and how these can be woven together in a coherent way to support the raising of academic standards. (shrink)

In this book the metaphysical system of Graham Harman is presented in lucid form, aided by helpful diagrams. In Chapter 1, Harman gives his most forceful critique to date of philosophies that reject objects as a primary reality. All such rejections are tainted by either an undermining or overmining approach to objects. In Chapters 2 and 3, he reviews his concepts of sensual and real objects. In the process, he attacks the prestige normally granted to philosophies of human access, (...) which Harman links for the first time to the already discredited Menos Paradox. In Chapters 4 through 7, Harman brings the reader up to speed on his interpretation of Heidegger, which culminates in a fourfold structure of objects linked by indirect causation. In Chapter 8, he speculates on the implications of this theory for the debate over panpsychism, which Harman both embraces and rejects. In Chapters 9 and 10, he introduces the term ontography as the study of the different possible permutations of objects and qualities, which he simplifies with easily remembered terminology drawn from standard playing cards. (shrink)

We humans tend to believe that things are only real in as much as we perceive them, an idea reinforced by modern philosophy, which privileges us as special, radically different in kind from all other objects. But as Graham Harman, one of the theory's leading exponents, shows, Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) rejects the idea of human specialness: the world, he states, is clearly not the world as manifest to humans. "To think a reality beyond our thinking is not nonsense, but (...) obligatory." At OOO's heart is the idea that objects--whether real, fictional, natural, artificial, human, or non-human--are mutually autonomous. This core idea has significance for nearly every field of inquiry which is concerned in some way with the systematic interaction of objects, and the degree to which individual objects resist full participation in such systems. In this brilliant new introduction, Graham Harman lays out OOO's history, ideas, and impact, taking in art and literature, politics and natural science along the way. From Sherlock Holmes, unicorns, and videogames to Dadaism, Voltaire, and string theory, this book will change the way you understand everything. (shrink)

Graham Priest presents an original exploration of questions concerning the one and the many. He covers a wide range of issues in metaphysics--unity, identity, grounding, mereology, universals, being, intentionality and nothingness--and draws on Western and Asian philosophy as well as paraconsistent logic to offer a radically new treatment of unity.

A crucial question here is what, exactly, the conditional in the naive truth/set comprehension principles is. In 'Logic of Paradox', I outlined two options. One is to take it to be the material conditional of the extensional paraconsistent logic LP. Call this "Strategy 1". LP is a relatively weak logic, however. In particular, the material conditional does not detach. The other strategy is to take it to be some detachable conditional. Call this "Strategy 2". The aim of the present essay (...) is to investigate Stragey 1. It is not to advocate it. The work is simply an extended exploration of the strategy, its strengths, its weaknesses, and the various dierent ways in which it may be implemented. In the first part of the paper I will set up the appropriate background details. In the second, I will look at the strategy as it applies to the semantic paradoxes. In the third I will look at how it applies to the set-theoretic paradoxes. (shrink)

Hylomorphism is the Aristotelian theory according to which substances are composites of matter and form. If my house is a substance, then its matter would be a collection of bricks and timbers and its form something like a structure that unites those bricks and timbers into a single substance. Contemporary hylomorphists are divided on how to understand forms best, but a prominent group of theorists argue that forms are emergent powers. According to such views, when material components are arranged appropriately, (...) a novel substance emerges with the power to impose unity on its components through time. I argue that these accounts of form fall prey to a bootstrapping problem, and so, suffer from issues of redundancy, given plausible assumptions about inherence. In their place, I suggest an ontologically minimalist conception of forms as collective manifestations of the powers of matter. (shrink)

Whereas the Platonic-Christian philosophical tradition in the West favours an ”ascent to theory’ and abstract reasoning, east-Asian philosophies tend to be rooted in somatic, or bodily, practice. In the philosophies of Confucius and Zhuangzi in China, and KÅ«kai and Dōgen in Japan, we can distinguish two different forms of somatic practice: developing physical skills, and what one might call ”realising relationships’. These practices improve our relations with others -- whether the ancestors or our contemporaries, the things with which we surround (...) ourselves or the phenomena of nature -- by reducing egocentrism and increasing humility. Because they transform the practitioner’s experience, the major benefit of philosophies grounded in somatic practice is that they help close the gap between beliefs and behaviour, and between ideas and action. (shrink)

More Speculative Realism Graham Harman. GRAHAM HARMAN BELLS AND WHISTLES MURE SPEBLILATIVE REALISM Bell and Whistles More Speculative Realism Graham Harman Winchester, UK. Front Cover.

Hylomorphism is the Aristotelian theory according to which substances are composed of matter and form. If a house is a substance, then its matter would be a collection of bricks and timbers and its form something like the structure of those bricks and timbers. It is widely agreed that matter bears a mereological relationship to substance; the bricks and timbers are parts of the house. But with form things are more controversial. Is the structure of the bricks and timbers best (...) conceived as a part of the house, or is it related to the house in some non-mereological fashion? Kathrin Koslicki argues that substances have formal parts, that forms are best conceived as bearing a mereological relation to substances. This paper shows that her argument fails, given the traditional and plausible distinction between substances and accidental unities. I close with a brief suggestion for a non-mereological construal of forms. (shrink)

It was something of a dogma for much of the twentieth century that one cannot validly derive an ought from an is. More generally, it was held that non-normative propositions do not entail normative propositions. Call this thesis about the relation between the natural and the normative Natural-Normative Autonomy. The denial of Autonomy involves the entanglement of the natural with the normative. Naturalism entails entanglement—in fact it entails the most extreme form of entanglement—but entanglement does not entail naturalism. In a (...) ground-breaking paper “The autonomy of ethics” Arthur Prior constructed some intriguing counterexamples to Autonomy. While his counterexamples have convinced few, there is little agreement on what is wrong with them. I present a new analysis of Autonomy, one which is grounded in a general and independently plausible account of subject matters. While Prior’s arguments do establish shallow natural-normative entanglement, this is a consequence of simple logical relationships that hold between just about any two subject matters. It has nothing special to do with the logical structure of normativity or its relation to the natural. Prior’s arguments leave the fundamental idea behind natural-normative Autonomy intact. I offer a new argument for deep entanglement. I show that in any framework adequate for dealing with the natural and the normative spheres, a purely natural proposition entails a purely normative proposition, and vice-versa. But this is no threat to non-naturalist moral realism. In fact it helps ameliorate the excesses of an extreme non-naturalism, delivering a more palatable and plausible position. (shrink)

1.1 In standard modal logics, the worlds are 2-valued in the following sense: there are 2 values that a sentence may take at a world. Technically, however, there is no reason why this has to be the case. The worlds could be many-valued. This paper presents one simple approach to a major family of many-valued modal logics, together with an illustration of why this family is philosophically interesting.

Theories of verisimilitude have routinely been classified into two rival camps—the content approach and the likeness approach—and these appear to be motivated by very different sets of data and principles. The question thus naturally arises as to whether these approaches can be fruitfully combined. Recently Zwart and Franssen (Synthese 158(1):75–92, 2007) have offered precise analyses of the content and likeness approaches, and shown that given these analyses any attempt to meld content and likeness orderings violates some basic desiderata. Unfortunately their (...) characterizations of the approaches do not embrace the paradigm examples of those approaches. I offer somewhat different characterizations of these two approaches, as well as of the consequence approach (Schurz and Weingartner (Synthese 172(3):415–436, 2010) which happily embrace their respective paradigms. Finally I prove that the three approaches are indeed compatible, but only just, and that the cost of combining them is too high. Any account which combines the strictures of what I call the strong likeness approach with the demands of either the content or the consequence approach suffers from precisely the same defect as Popper’s—namely, it entails the trivialization of truthlikeness. The downside of eschewing the strong likeness constraints and embracing the content constraints alone is the underdetermination of the concept of truthlikeness. (shrink)

As inter‐organisational relations represent an increasingly important element in business the ability to build sustainable relationships becomes a key skill. To achieve sustainable relationships parties need to move from a low trust/low ethics base to a high trust/high ethics base in their relating. This paper uses data from a study into trust‐based partnering in the construction industry to demonstrate that ethics is integral to trust building. The data supports the proposition that ethical partnering, which is characterised by reliability, delivery of (...) promises, open and honest communications, respect and reciprocity, and a willingness to act reasonably towards each other, is the most effective model for parties seeking to build sustainable relationships. (shrink)

Hylomorphism is the Aristotelian theory according to which objects are composites of form and matter. Form is what unifies the various parts of an object – the matter – into a cohesive whole. Some contemporary hylomorphists argue their theory applies beyond the realm of concreta, and that it explains the unity of various abstract entities. Not everyone agrees. Recent criticism alleges that hylomorphism fails to explain the unity of certain abstract entities, namely, complex properties – properties with other properties as (...) proper parts. Here, I both respond to this criticism and show that and how hylomorphism extends to the domain of complex properties. By discussing hylomorphism’s applicability to the hitherto unchartered domain of complex properties, I hope to defend its credentials as a general mereological theory. (shrink)

The cognitive science of religion draws on insights from evolutionary psychology, and offers explanations of religious belief based on natural cognitive processes. This article examines a number of competing explanations of religious belief by considering it as a solution to the challenge of cooperation. The challenge of stopping individuals cheating within a cooperative group has been a problem throughout humanity’s evolutionary history. Empirical evidence drawn from fields such as anthropology and psychology suggests that religious beliefs are part of an evolved (...) cognitive system that motivates individuals to cooperate with other members of their group. Three possible evolutionary accounts, the memetic, by‐product, and adaptation accounts, are considered as evolved solutions to the challenge of cooperation. (shrink)

Hylomorphists claim that substances—human beings, oak trees, chemical compounds—are compounds of matter and form. If a house is a substance, then its matter would be some bricks and timbers and its form the structure those bricks and timbers take on. While hylomorphism is traditionally presented as a theory of change, it only treats the coming-to-be and passing-away of matter-form compounds. But many hylomorphists understand forms to be entities in their own right, as parts or constituents of substances. So, a neglected (...) question arises: how, when, and from where do forms come to be? I take up the view of one prominent and representative hylomorphist, Kathrin Koslicki, and argue that she cannot answer these questions satisfactorily. I close with a proposal for an account of the generation of forms based on machinery many hylomorphists already accept, namely, causal powers, that points to a deflationary metaphysics of form. (shrink)

In “On Oppy’s Objections to the Modal Perfection Argument,” Philo 8, 2, 2005, 123–30, Robert Maydole argues that his modal perfection argument—set out in his “The Modal Perfection Argument for a Supreme Being,” Philo 6, 2, 2003, 299–313—“remains arguably sound” in the face of the criticisms that I made of this argument in my “Maydole’s 2QS5 Argument,” Philo 7, 2, 2004, 203–11. I reply that Maydole is wrong: his argument is fatally flawed, and his attempts to avoid the criticisms that (...) I have made of his argument are to no avail. (shrink)

Motivated by accounts of concept use in autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) and a computational model of weak central coherence (O'Loughlin and Thagard, 2000) we examined comprehension and production vocabulary in typically-developing children and those with ASD and Down syndrome (DS). Controlling for frequency, familiarity, length and imageability, Colorado Meaningfulness played a hitherto unremarked role in the vocabularies of children with ASD. High Colorado Meaningful words were underrepresented in the comprehension vocabularies of 2- to 12-year-olds with ASD. The Colorado Meaningfulness of (...) a word is a measure of how many words can be associated with it. Situations in which high Colorado Meaningfulness words are encountered are typically highly variable, and words with High Colorado Meaningfulness often involve extensive use of context. Our data suggest that the number of contexts in which a particular word can appear has a role in determining vocabulary in ASD. This suggestion is consistent with the weak central coherence theory of autism. (shrink)

As inter‐organisational relations represent an increasingly important element in business the ability to build sustainable relationships becomes a key skill. To achieve sustainable relationships parties need to move from a low trust/low ethics base to a high trust/high ethics base in their relating. This paper uses data from a study into trust‐based partnering in the construction industry to demonstrate that ethics is integral to trust building. The data supports the proposition that ethical partnering, which is characterised by reliability, delivery of (...) promises, open and honest communications, respect and reciprocity, and a willingness to act reasonably towards each other, is the most effective model for parties seeking to build sustainable relationships. (shrink)

This paper investigates the question whether we could have reason to believe that time is two-dimensional. I connect discussion of this question to discussion of the question whether we could have reason to believe that there has been a global time freeze.

The manuscript notes described and trascribed below are unique: they show Bacon in the very act of originating, selecting and developing materials for the natural-philosophical projects of the crucial last years of his life. Many of the notes are drafts of material later incorporated in published texts—notably the Sylva Sylvarum . Examination of the drafts indicates that the Sylva is not a hotch-potch of plagiarized scraps. Bacon took great pains, acknowledged borrowings and drew heavily on his own extensive experimental and (...) observational work. The drafts also show that much of the material was used to display the explanatory power of his ambitious speculative philosophy. Preoccupation with the speculative philosophy is also evidenced in the notes which have no counterpart in the published works. Among these notes is a passage on the size of the universe, the motion of the fixed stars and the hypothesis of the earth's diurnal rotation. In that passage Bacon struggled with threats to his unswervingly geostatic conception of the universe. (shrink)

This article proposes a reading of Michel de Certeau’s TheWriting of History which derives an understanding of the concept of practice as authoritative to the establishment and development of Enlightenment rationality. It is seen as a new form of legitimation established in the redeployment of religious ‘formalities’ in early modernity, supportive of the ostensible deliverance of the projects of reason.Subversive of its moral and ideological operations and geneses, this is an understanding of practice whose subject is the state. Practice, as (...) de Certeau advances it, led to the development of a concept of education productive of a regulatory ambit of social utility, and the student as both a figure of the utile and its moral postulate.This article thematizes the authoritative formality of the concept of practice in its hegemonic origins from early modernity to the thought of Karl Marx. It provides a needed supplement to Marx’s still provocative contribution to a persistent counternarrative, one which elides,and thus reinforces, significant prior,and no less persistent, functions of the concept of practice as here elaborated from de Certeau’s TheWriting of History. (shrink)

Many of our current environmental problems stem from damage to the natural world through excessive use of modern technologies. Since these problems are now global in scope, it is helpful to take a comparative philosophical approach—in this case by way of Laozi, Zhuangzi, and Martin Heidegger. Heidegger's thoughts on these topics are quite consonant with classical Daoist thinking, in part because he was influenced by it. Although Zhuangzi and Heidegger warn against the ways technology can impair rather than promote human (...) flourishing, they are not simply anti‐technological in their thinking. Both rather recommend a critical stance that would allow us to shift to a more reflective employment of less disruptive technologies. (shrink)

E.J.Lowe was a prominent and theistically–inclined philosopher who developed and defended a four–category ontology with roots in Aristotle’s Categories. But Lowe engaged in little philosophical theology and said even less about how a divine being might fit into his considered ontology. This paper explores ways in which the reality of a divine being might be squared with Lowe’s ontology. I motivate the exploration with a puzzle that suggests Lowe must reject either divine aseity or the traditional view that God is (...) a substance. After showing that the puzzle cannot be overcome by rejecting one of its premises, I consider ways in which Lowe might try to reject the puzzle wholesale. I argue that the best way to reject the puzzle is to countenance a fifth fundamental category, the category of supernatural substance. (shrink)

Kalam cosmological arguments have recently been the subject of criticisms, at least inter alia, by physicists---Paul Davies, Stephen Hawking---and philosophers of science---Adolf Grunbaum. In a series of recent articles, William Craig has attempted to show that these criticisms are “superficial, iII-conceived, and based on misunderstanding.” I argue that, while some of the discussion of Davies and Hawking is not philosophically sophisticated, the points raised by Davies, Hawking and Grunbaum do suffice to undermine the dialectical efficacy of kalam cosmological arguments.