February 21st will mark the two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the death of Spinoza, which occurred on February 21st, 1677. The visitor to the Hague may still see, in the Paviljoensgragt, the small two-storied house in the top rooms of which Spinoza spent the last six years of his short life. A tablet placed under the top windows commemorates the fact. It was in these rooms that Spinoza completed his Ethica, which may perhaps be regarded as the greatest masterpiece in the history (...) of Metaphysics. The house is in danger of being pulled down, and the Spinoza Society is endeavouring to secure it as a memorial to Spinoza, and a centre of philosophic studies. It is not so long since the house-breakers I had their way with the home of Erasmus in Rotterdam. It would be sad indeed if the abode of another of the greatest Humanists were to meet with a like fate. It is to be hoped that the revived I interest in Spinoza which we are witnessing now may take the I practical form of saving this precious relic, which may well serve to promote the peace and goodwill among men which Spinoza had so much at heart. (shrink)

The living body appears like an endlessly renewable reservoir of authenticity, hope, and taboo. But, for the sake of conceptual clarity, we are often been told that the (mere) body should be distinguished from the flesh. That is, it’s undeniable that I have a body; that I notice yours; that we worry about their birth and death and upkeep. But the flesh is a more transcendentalized, loaded concept – not least given its frequently religious background (incarnation: the Word made (...) Flesh). It is the body ‘kicked upstairs’, ‘bumped up’ one ontological level. Flesh is like a mantra, an obsessive leitmotif. Is the difference just one of abstraction? Indeed, crucial to the narrative of phenomenology (most obviously in Merleau-Ponty but really, throughout, including in enactivism), to the story of ancestor worship and identity it tells itself and its acolytes around the campfire, is a basic distinction between the merely physical body and the flesh as something requiring ‘mineness’, namely, an understanding of it as uniquely ‘my own’, a feeling of ‘what it is like to be embodied’. This goes back to the Husserlian distinction between Körper, ‘body’ in the sense of one body among others in a vast mechanistic universe of bodies, and Leib, ‘flesh’ in the sense of a subjectivity which is the locus of experience. In this essay I reflect on this vision of the body’s authenticity and its costs, and contrast it with insights derived from Georges Canguilhem, whose critique of mechanism/mechanicism is not done in the name of a wholescale organicism and/or an unproblematized éloge of embodiment and privacy. (shrink)

In What Is Posthumanism? he carefully distinguishes posthumanism from transhumanism (the biotechnological enhancement of human beings) and narrow definitions of the posthuman as the hoped-for transcendence of materiality.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE "JUSTIFIABLE HOMOCIDE" OF ABORTION PROVIDERS: MORAL REASON, MIMETIC THEORY, AND THE GOSPEL James Nash Our land will never be cleansed without the blood of abortionists being shed. (Shelly Shannon) The above quotation is taken, with permission, from a letter written to me by Ms. Shannon. A devout Roman Catholic, she is currently doing time at Federal prison in Kansas, sentenced to 3 1 years for shooting a (...) famous abortion provider. I have also been in touch with Paul Hill, the former Presbyterian minister, who killed the Pensacola abortion doctor, John Britton. Mr. Hill has written extensively on how his Christian faith led him to what he calls the "justifiable homicide" of Dr. Britton. The connection between this kind of religiously-justified violence and the work of René Girard is too obvious to be ignored. The violenct acts and rhetoric that polarize both sides of the abortion debate serve to illustrate our society's collapsing ability to distinguish effectively between "good" and "bad" violence (Girard 1972, 52-3). At the same time, the almost universal condemnation ofthe "religious" proponents ofjustifiable homicide confirms the Girardian claim that in cultures under gospel influence, "acts of violence that once endowed its perpetrators with religious and cultural preeminence radually begin to rob them of it" (Bailie 52-3). Finally, as we shall see, the incoherence of religiouslygrounded efforts to condemn "justifiable homicide suggests that James Nash69 contemporary Christianity is also having increasing difficulty in distinguishing "good" and "bad" violence. But before exploring these issues I want to ask another question, one that will prepare the ground for the application of Girard's theory to abortion violence. What light can moral reason shed on the problem of the "justifiable homicide" of abortion doctors? Are there clear arguments which will convince any reasonable person it is wrong to kill abortion providers in order to protect unborn human life? At first it might appear rather simple to produce such arguments —after all an overwhelming majority of Americans currently believe killing abortion workers is wrong, no matter where they stand on the morality of abortion itself. On the other hand, there is a danger that because the current moral consensus against this type of killing appears to be so strong, we may be misled into a false sense of security. After all, thirty or forty years ago there was little debate about the morality of homosexuality, pre-marital sex, or abortion itself. In fact, there are an increasing number of voices suggesting that violence against abortion providers is justified; the question has in fact divided the pro-life movement. What I will attempt to show in what follows is that the arguments offered by moral reason against shooting abortionists are surprisingly weak. While there is little danger in the foreseeable future that anywhere near a majority of people will view this form of killing as "justifiable," there are, I believe, solid grounds to fear that "moral reason" alone is no longer strong enough to provide compelling arguments against abortion violence. If ethical rationality cannot account for the moral revulsion most people feel at the shooting of abortion doctors, the ground is prepared for another way of understanding and avoiding this religiously—sanctioned violence. I am referring to René Girard's mimetic theory, and at the end of this article I hope to show how it can help us to understand both why some pro-life people have turned to violence, and how this response to abortion can be avoided. For if we come to doubt that moral reason alone can uphold the prohibition against "justifiable homicide," then perhaps we need to develop a different kind of reason, or different kinds of reasons. This will lead, finally, to reflection on some of the radical theological implications of Girard's thought, a dimension of his work which, in my judgment, is too often neglected. 70"Justifiable Homicide " Before going any further, I realize I must define what I mean by "moral reason." My use of this term is simply the common post-Kantian notion that if an action is truly immoral, one will avoid doing it not because offear, custom or human law; rather one's actions will be guided... (shrink)

The original, prescientific Western belief that the mantis is a pious, helpful creature became a widely held explanation for the mantid's unique resting posture, and for one of its cryptic displays. This belief was a characteristic part of a broader discourse about nature in which ancient authority, religious beliefs, and superstition, but few original observations, mixed freely. Gradually, the belief in mantid gentleness and piousness became a commonplace through the continual retelling of the myths and superstitions surrounding this fascinating insect.By (...) the seventeenth century, a growing interest in observation had begun to replace blind reliance on established wisdom and ancient authority. However, the various young sciences to which the period gave rise did not progress equally, and neither did the subdisciplines within each scientific field; biology, especially entomology, was particularly slow to free itself from past beliefs and contemporary superstitions. In the specific case of the praying mantis, the situation may have been at its worst.Early observers of nature found evidence that seemed, at first, to disconfirm the well-established belief that mantids are gentle creatures. These few observers, faced with startling firsthand information about mantid voraciousness, created a new characterization of mantids as merciless predators and then often juxtaposed the two images in their descriptions. However, it was not until the beginning of the nineteenth century that the two characterizations-gentleness versus cruelty— became reconciled.An amalgamation of these seemingly mutually exclusive characterizations was achieved by an interesting accommodation of each to the other. That is, while it could no longer be maintained that mantids are simply gentle insects, neither could it be accepted that they are all cruelty and viciousness. The melding of the two characterizations yielded a hybrid explanation which claimed that the praying mantis actually hastwo sides to its character! On the one hand, and like other creatures, mantids must nourish themselves, and do so quite reasonably by capturing small insects for food. However, even when “well nourished,” and without “the excuse of hunger,” their other, vicious side may surface; when this happens, the darkest of behaviours, cannibalism, is the result.To understand the remainder of the story one must pause to consider what had happened in the other sciences up to this point. In the mid-seventeenth century, professional scientific societies were established throughout Europe. The societies, and the various journals and periodicals that they produced or encouraged, represented an institutionalization of both science and its special, structured discourse. However, as we have stated, entomology lagged behind; and in the case of some insects, superstitions and anthropomorphisms did not fade from descriptions of their behavior for centuries to come.By the time the new scientific discourse was applied to mantids the creatures were already firmly shackled with a dual personality, and this assumption was never challenged. In fact, it was functionally impossible to disconfirm. Captures of small prey were considered part of the mantid's normal side; captures of large prey were considered part of the mantid's abnormal side. There was no alternative explanation.As luck would have it, by the time that the strictures of scientific discourse had tightened sufficiently to disallow the use of anthropomorphisms in the explanation of insect behavior, another acceptable explanation of mantid cannibalism became immediately available: cannibalism became part of mantid mating behavior. That is, the fundamental explanatory model remained unchanged; it was merely couched in more appropriate terms. The acceptance of this new explanation for cannibalism was virtually immediate and complete. For instance, no one ever asked the following questions: If the headless male remains able to mate as a putative precaution against female cannibalism, for what reason does the headless female remain able to fashion “a perfectly constructed ootheca”? Or: If female-on-male cannibalism plays a role in mating behavior, what role is played by genderindifferent cannibalism, especially that among immature mantids? The latter phenomena were simply ignored — they were just uninteresting artifacts of insect life. However, the grand logic of nature was immediately apparent in the headless male's ability to mate. The ruling theory, to use Chamberlin's term, had been able to accommodate itself to, and assimilate, the new scientific discourse. It remained unscathed.A persistent question posed by several historians of this particular topic has been, Why did not the results of Ken Roeder's experiments debunk the myth that males are regularly cannibalized by the females with which they mate? The reason, which we hope is now clear, is that there were two interdependent ruling theories operating here. If one accepts the argument that mantids' cannibalism is simply a normal part of their prey-catching behavior, then one attacks not only the theory that mantids have two separate predatory strategies, but also the more recent theory that mantids have evolved to be the ideal fly-catching machines. This second theory found its first confirming support in the centuries-old practice of feeding flies to captive mantids. Again, the disconfirming evidence of mantids eating prey of various sizes had no impact on the theory. Confirming observations were accepted: disconfirming observations were seen as anomalies.Additional confirmation of both ruling theories was garnered in experiments done in the mid-twentieth century. These experiments were based on the assumption that the original conceptualizations were correct, and consequently they did not test other hypotheses. The combined strength of the two theories is evidenced especially in the Raus' failure to account for the fact that their empirical observations were at odds with many of the conclusions that they drew, and in the fact that Roeder's work is still used to support the belief in the regularity of mating-related cannibalism despite the fact that Roeder, himself, argued the opposite. with both theories well entrenched, it is virtually impossible to promote an alternative theory of mantid behavior: namely, that mantids are generalized, opportunistic predators that manage to survivein spite of the fact that cannibalism sometimes occurs. (shrink)

Sensibility, in any of its myriad realms – moral, physical, aesthetic, medical and so on – seems to be a paramount case of a higher-level, intentional property, not a basic property. Diderot famously made the bold and attributive move of postulating that matter itself senses, or that sensibility (perhaps better translated ‘sensitivity’ here) is a general or universal property of matter, even if he at times took a step back from this claim and called it a “supposition.” Crucially, sensibility is (...) here playing the role of a ‘booster’: it enables materialism to provide a full and rich account of the phenomena of conscious, sentient life, contrary to what its opponents hold: for if matter can sense, and sensibility is not a merely mechanical process, then the loftiest cognitive plateaus are accessible to materialist analysis, or at least belong to one and the same world as the rest of matter. This was noted by the astute anti-materialist critic, the Abbé Lelarge de Lignac, who, in his 1751 Lettres à un Amériquain, criticized Buffon for “granting to the body [la machine, a common term for the body at the time] a quality which is essential to minds, namely sensibility.” This view, here attributed to Buffon and definitely held by Diderot, was comparatively rare. If we look for the sources of this concept, the most notable ones are physiological and medical treatises by prominent figures such as Robert Whytt, Albrecht von Haller and the Montpellier vitalist Théophile de Bordeu. We then have, or so I shall try to sketch out, an intellectual landscape in which new – or newly articulated – properties such as irritability and sensibility are presented either as an experimental property of muscle fibers, that can be understood mechanistically (Hallerian irritability, as studied recently by Hubert Steinke and Dominique Boury) or a property of matter itself (whether specifically living matter as in Bordeu and his fellow montpelliérains Ménuret and Fouquet, or matter in general, as in Diderot). I am by no means convinced that it is one and the same ‘sensibility’ that is at issue in debates between these figures (as when Bordeu attacks Haller’s distinction between irritability and sensibility and claims that ‘his own’ property of sensibility is both more correct and more fundamental in organic beings), but I am interested in mapping out a topography of the problem of sensibility as property of matter or as vital force in mid-eighteenth-century debates – not an exhaustive cartography of all possible positions or theories, but an attempt to understand the ‘triangulation’ of three views: a vitalist view in which sensibility is fundamental, matching up with a conception of the organism as the sum of parts conceived as little lives (Bordeu et al.); a mechanist, or ‘enhanced mechanist’ view in which one can work upwards, step by step from the basic property of irritability to the higher-level property of sensibility (Haller); and, more eclectic, a materialist view which seeks to combine the mechanistic, componential rigour and explanatory power of the Hallerian approach, with the monistic and metaphysically explosive potential of the vitalist approach (Diderot). It is my hope that examining Diderot in the context of this triangulated topography of sensibility as property sheds light on his famous proclamation regarding sensibility as a universal property of matter. (shrink)

In selected texts by Diderot, including the Encyclopédie article “Cabinet d’histoire naturelle” (along with his comments in the article “Histoire nat-urelle”), the Pensées sur l’interprétation de la nature and the Salon de 1767, I examine the interplay between philosophical naturalism and the recognition of the irreducible nature of artifice, in order to arrive at a provisional definition of Diderot’s vision of Nature as “une femme qui aime à se travestir.” How can a metaphysics in which the concept of Nature has (...) a normative status, also ultimately consider it to be something necessarily artificial? Historically, the answer to this question involves the project of natural history. A present-day reconstruction would have to make sense of this project and relate it to the vision of Nature expressed in Diderot’s phrase. In addition, it would hopefully pinpoint the difference between this brand of Enlightenment naturalism and contemporary naturalism, and by extension, allow us to understand a bit more about what naturalism is in general. (shrink)

In this essay we expand the notion of thinking by emphasizing the provocation and urgency to think and by reconceptualizing thinking as an embodied practice. The aim is to expand Lipman and Sharp’s approach to philosophical inquiry with children and show how other ways of thinking can be included. We strive to unfold a way of “thinking” that is both different from rationality (critical thinking) as well as from creative and caring thinking. In the first part of the paper, we (...) discuss the merits of Lipman and Sharp’s critical, creative and caring thinking within the Community of Philosophical Inquiry (CPI). We then expand Lipman/Sharp’s philosophical method through Ekkehart Marten’s Five-finger Model, which allows for different philosophical approaches. In the second half of the paper, we draw on Martin Heidegger’s What is called thinking? to develop his concept of the “call” to think together with its related notions of provocation and urgency. Building on this, we draw on Maurice Merleau-Ponty to show how this call is not an intellectual activity or mere exercise of the “mind” but rather affects our entire existence. As such, thinking becomes a response to an existential urgency that is an embodied practice. Using concepts like embodiment, affect, and sensibility, we try to widen our conception of thinking in a CPI. Finally, we hope this will allow facilitators to hear the unique voice of every child so that no one is left unheard. (shrink)

In 2002, Hugh Laddie lamented the “blind adherence to dogma” that had led to an apparent impasse in philosophical and practical discussions of intellectual property : “On the one side, the developed world side, there exists a lobby of those who believe that all IPRs [intellectual property rights] are good for business, benefit the public at large, and act as catalysts for technical progress. They believe and argue that, if IPRs are good, more IPRs must be better.”1 But “on the (...) other side”, he continued: “there exists a vociferous lobby of those who believe that IPRs are likely to cripple the development of local industry and technology, will harm the local population, and benefit none but the developed world. They believe and argue that, if IPRs are bad, the fewer the better.” Laddie recommended reforms designed to ensure that IPR development and enforcement would better serve the interests of developing countries. He hoped these reforms would provide an effective response to those who regard IPRs as “food for the rich countries and poison for the poor”.2. (shrink)

In September 2020, Project South, along with numerous other organizations, released a report detailing abuses in a Georgia Detention Center – including forced hysterectomies. Whatever other factors are at play, one of them is an intrinsic connection between obstetric violence against pregnant migrants and immigration injustice. It is not incidental that these acts – in US detention centers, along the US‐Mexico border, in Colombian hospitals and clinics – are being perpetrated on immigrant bodies. And it is not accidental or random (...) which immigrant bodies are vulnerable to these violations. Understanding and confronting obstetric violence directed at pregnant migrants, though, requires reconceptualizing the nature of obstetric violence itself. In particular, we must recognize that obstetric violence against pregnant Latin American migrants in the United States and Colombia is a type of immigration injustice, a means to perpetrate immigration injustice, and a product of immigration injustice. As such, bioethicists need to collaborate with immigration scholars to resist it.After providing some background on the nature of obstetric violence and some ways it is perpetuated against pregnant migrants in the United States and Colombia, I will give a brief overview of how I conceptualize immigration justice. From there, I explain how this type of obstetric violence constitutes a type of immigration injustice, a means to perpetrate immigration injustice, and a product of immigration injustice. My hope is that this analysis motivates bioethicists throughout the Americas to engage with immigration scholars and activists to confront the issue more forcefully. (shrink)

This paper considers the extent to which market institutions respond to the needs and morally significant interests of future generations. Such an analysis of the intertemporal effects of markets provides important ground for evaluation of normative social theories, and represents a crucial step toward the development of an adequate account of intergenerational justice. After presenting a prima facie case that markets cannot provide appropriate protections for future needs and interests, I evaluate and reject two of the most promising arguments that (...) purport to rebut this case. None of these arguments is adequate to show that markets will protect the interests of future generations. Given important grounds for pessimism about non-market solutions, this leaves little room for hope that we can successfully preserve productive resources that future generations will need to satisfy their basic needs. However, I tentatively suggest where this hope may reside. (shrink)

Developing a vision of morality that is at once compelling and comprehensive is an enormous task. The questions and answers all interlock, making it difficult to know where to start. Most of us, I think, just jump in, with whatever issue or controversy grabs us. We make what headway we can with the section of the moral puzzle on which we choose to work and hope or trust that when we or others work on other sections, the results will (...) fit smoothly, consistently, even supportively with our current attempts. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Disbelief/Dissent/Unbelief/Atheism After Positivism Against False Simplifications Transforming Metaphysical Questions from Urgent Problems into Interesting Puzzles Rejecting Any Answers From Presumed “Higher Instances” Scientific Solutions to Problems and Philosophical Answers to Questions Struggling Toward Humanism Notes.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Old Orders for New Ecology, Animal Rights, and the Poverty of HumanismCary Wolfe (bio)Luc Ferry. The New Ecological Order. Trans. Carol Volk. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1995.1Early on in The New Ecological Order, the French philosopher Luc Ferry characterizes the allure and danger of ecology in the postmodern moment. What separates it from various other issues in the intellectual and political field, he writes, is thatit can (...) call itself a true “world vision,” whereas the decline of political utopias, but also the parcelization of knowledge and the growing “jargonization” of individual scientific disciplines, seemed to forever prohibit any plan for the globalization of thought.... At a time when ethical guide marks are more than ever floating and undetermined, it allows the unhoped-for promise of rootedness to form, an objective rootedness, certain of a new moral ideal.[xx]As we shall see, for Ferry—a staunch liberal humanist in the Kantian if not quite Cartesian tradition—this vision conceals a danger to which contemporary European intellectuals are especially sensitive: not holism, nor even moralism, exactly, but that far more charged and historically freighted thing, totalitarianism. Ferry’s concern is that such “world visions,” incarnated in contemporary environmentalism in movements such as Deep Ecology and ecofeminism, threaten “[o]ur entire democratic culture,” which “since the French Revolution, has been marked, for basic philosophical reasons, by the glorification of uprootedness, or innovation” [xxi]. Ferry’s thesis—it becomes quite explicit in his comparison of environmental legislation under the Third Reich with tenets of Deep Ecology in the book’s second section—is that Deep Ecology and its ilk have moved in to occupy the space left open by the passing of the political imaginaries of fascism and communism, so that denunciations of liberalism (and its corollary in political praxis, reformism) may now be unmasked for what they are: critiques “in the name of nostalgia, or, on the contrary, in that of hope: either the nostalgia for a lost past, for national identity flouted by the culture of rootlessness, or revolutionary hope in a radiant future, in a classless and free society” [xxvi]. To which Ferry responds—literally—“Grow up!” Late in the book, he tells us that we must see through “the adult development of the secular and democratic universe” [137] by rejecting totalizing revolutionary visions of the sort purveyed by Deep Ecology, and by adhering instead to liberal reformism, “the only [End Page 21] position consistent with leaving the world of childhood” [138].Ferry is certainly right to draw our attention to the often uncritical nostalgia and romantic holism of some varieties of environmental thought—problems that have been noted before by critics from points on the map very different politically from Ferry’s avowed liberal humanism. And it is certainly understandable, given the historical context, that he would join a long list of other European intellectuals in pointing out the manifold dangers to democratic society of totalizing moral schemes—dangers often represented for liberal intellectuals like Ferry by the rise of the Greens in European politics. 1 We do well to remember, too (as Fredric Jameson and others have pointed out), that for European intellectuals such as Ferry, liberalism retains, for understandable historical reasons, a viability and a promise about which many American intellectuals are skeptical or even jaded. European intellectuals, conditioned by the experience of fascist authoritarianism and the strong but problematic presence historically of the Communist party in social and intellectual life, may find in liberalism a refreshing and indeed radical democratic openness and dynamism, while American intellectuals, conditioned to the absence of any other major political contenders, have long since grown accustomed to liberalism as the name for that “end of ideology” position which, as Jameson puts it, “can function more effectively after its own death as an ideology, realizing itself in its most traditional form as a commitment to the market system that has become sheer common sense and no longer a political program” [249, my emphasis].But in defending democratic difference, everything hinges, of course, on precisely how such terms are framed and how difference is articulated—an index of which often may be found in how its imagined... (shrink)

Following the success of Hong Kong Corner Houses, German photographer Michael Wolf continues his collaboration with Hong Kong University Press to produce Small God, Big City. Wolf again uses his creative eye to draw attention to overlooked objects in the visually rich urban environment of Hong Kong. This time the object is the Earth God shrine, found commonly by the doorways of shops and homes throughout Hong Kong. Through his visually stimulating and thought-provoking photographs, Wolf challenges our sensitivity to seemingly (...) familiar everyday things. An interpretative text for the photographs is authored by two familiar names: Lee Ho Yin and Lynne DiStefano, who are well-known academics and practitioners of heritage conservation in Hong Kong. The text is a highly readable curatorial essay that leads readers to a better understanding of the topic and the meaning behind Wolf 's photographs of Earth God shrines in urban Hong Kong. The topic of this book is timely, given the vulnerability of traditional beliefs and practices in an increasingly urbanized Hong Kong. It is hoped that Small God, Big City will provoke deeper thoughts on who we are and what we believe in this modern world. (shrink)

With few exceptions, philosophers working on immigration have not taken up the topic of epistemic injustice, primarily, I imagine, because immigration justice is often too narrowly conceived of as encompassing moral and political concerns rather than epistemic ones. But the more I think about the injustices immigrants endure on a daily basis, the more I take this to be a mistake; epistemic injustices must be seen as a central aspect of immigration injustice too. In what follows, I will demonstrate how (...) this is the case. More specifically, after providing an overview of the nature of epistemic injustice, I will highlight some examples of it in the lives of displaced Venezuelan immigrants in Colombia. In doing so, I hope to show why discussions about immigration injustice must include identifying and confronting epistemic wrongs. (shrink)

“Congealing” is a word that evokes senses of unpleasantness where perhaps something inviting had once been. It also implies that things are becoming less fluid and more rigid. As we began organizing ETHICOMP 2018, we wanted a theme that reflected the impact of technologies on human cultures, practices and lives. Our initial draft of the theme was “Creating, Changing, and Congealing Ways of Life with Technologies.” And while we were eventually persuaded to use a more congenial way of putting the (...) idea (it became “Creating, Changing, and Coalescing Ways of Life with Technologies”), in some ways, it remains true for us that “congealing,” and its connotations of something less pleasant, gets at the original idea. As we incorporate technologies into our practices, much attention is paid to how they change our ways of doing things. But technologies can also help ways of life set-up and harden like yesterday’s leftovers – not appealing, yet difficult to budge and sometimes quite unhealthy. Once a particular process is built around a piece of technology, it can become entrenched and increasingly difficult to change. For a historical example, consider how difficult it was to adapt records and software on the eve of the 21st century in response to the so-called “Y2K” problem. In early software development, efficient use of memory was an important design consideration. It had become a standard practice to use a 2-digit field for the year, which would roll to from “99” to “00” in the year 2000, causing problems for datedependent functions. Technologies can also reflect and reinforce existing cultural tendencies. For a recent example, consider the human resources software created by Amazon that used its existing hiring data to train a machine-learning system to rate applicants. The resulting system turned out to be biased against women applicants, downranking resumes that included the word “woman” or “women’s.” Amazon ended up scrapping the project altogether. Because of these kinds of effects, we wanted to encourage people to think beyond well-worn paradigms like “technologies are disruptive” to consider other kinds of effects they can have. As it happened, the imagery of “congealing” proved distasteful enough that the steering committee opted for a more neutral term. But even with the less-dramatic wording the conference ended up attracting a rich and diverse range of papers that examined technological issues from a variety of angles, exactly as we had hoped. (shrink)

Calls to regulate or restrict scientific research are often a matter of politics, and public desire to regulate science may have its source in several different underlying interests: on one side, people may be motivated by an interest to control risks, prevent harms, or limit access to powerful or dangerous technologies. These interests are easy to understand, and often provide entirely appropriate and creditable grounds for regulation. In a darker vein, people may be motivated by more general mistrust of science, (...) or by moral or religious disapproval of some kinds of research. While these motives may be easy to understand, clearly they should be resisted. But if researchers hope to avoid inappropriate regulations, we need to be prepared to explain our research to the public. And when research is funded by tax dollars, it is especially important that scientists should be able to justify its benefit to taxpayers and legislators. (shrink)

The species of vitalism discussed here, to immediately rule out two possible misconceptions, is neither the feverish cosa mentale found in ruminations on ‘biopolitics’ and fascism – where it alternates quickly between being a form of evil and a form of resistance, with hardly any textual or conceptual material to discuss – nor the opaque, and less-known form in which it exists in the worlds of ‘Theory’ in the humanities, perhaps closely related to the cognate, ‘materiality’. Rather, vitalism here is (...) a malleable construct, often with a poisonous reputation, hovering in the realms of the philosophy of biology, the history of medicine, and the scientific background of the Radical Enlightenment. This is a more vital vitalism, or at least a more ‘biologistic’, ‘embodied’, medicalized vitalism. I first distinguish between what I would call ‘substantival’ and ‘functional’ forms of vitalism, as applied to the eighteenth century. Substantival vitalism presupposes the existence of something like a vital force which either plays a causal role in the natural world as studied by scientific means, or remains a kind of hovering, extra-causal entity. Functional vitalism tends to operate ‘post facto’, from the existence of living bodies to the desire to find explanatory models that will do justice to their uniquely ‘vital’ properties in a way that fully mechanistic models cannot. I discuss some representative figures of the Montpellier school as being functional rather than substantival vitalists. A second point concerns the reprisal of vitalism in ‘late modernity’; from Hans Driesch to Georges Canguilhem. I suggest that in addition to the substantival and functional varieties, we then encounter a third, more existential form of vitalism, articulated by Canguilhem, in which vitalism is a kind of attitude towards Life. All of this, I hope, argues for a form of vitalism which is neither tedious scientism nor dangerous political rhetoric of health and sickness; instead, a vitalism with its own discreet charm. (shrink)

Roman agriculture suffered traumatic changes during the 2nd century B.C. The traditional farmers who tilled their few acres and served family, gods and community were being squeezed out by large estate owners using slaves for investment farming. Politicians, scholars and poets tried to revive the ancestoral rustic life.In 133 B.C. the Gracchi legislated land reform to relieve the distress of the farmer soldiers who had won the empire. Although their efforts led to political confrontation that deteriorated into civil war, programs (...) for the traditional farm became a permanent part of government policy from the late Republic until the end of the empire in 476 A.D.Scholars and poets made a contribution to the revival of agriculture with knowledge for improving the farm and by encouraging an agrarian mentality. The agricultural manuals (e.g. Cato (c. 150 B.C.), Varro (c. 50 B.C), and Columella (c.65 A.D.), defined the nature of the desirable farm and gave practical advice. Profit was the goal, but good farming practices made for pleasure and virtue as well. The image of the ancestoral farmer was perpetuated as was the notion that farming was the only honorable and respectable occupation for a Roman gentleman.In the Augustan Age (34 B.C.—14 A.D.) poets were encouraged by the government to adopted a rustic theme in hopes it would stimulate a return to the land and aid in the rebirth of Rome and Romans. In the GeorgicsVirgil begins with the practical details of farming, but uses myth and philosophy to explore the nature and meaning of life. He admits that Jove made life perilous. But Jove also gave man the art of agriculture and with hard work man could know the pleasure of a simple, virtuous, productive life.Horace directed his poetry against the allure of city life and in praise of rustic living. Epicureanism and Stoicism, in the guise of life on the farm, could show that although fate was unpredictable, the world was orderly and, if one recognized and accepted its limits, one could make a garden of the world and live a simple but happy life.By 300 A.D. Rome missed the peasant-farmer-soldier and by the 470's life had returned to an agrarian condition. Bishop Sidonius, trying to furnish meaning and perspective for the emerging new age, resorted to the Roman agricultural traditions still cherished as that world disappeared. (shrink)

It has been known for long time that the cosmic sound wave was there since the early epoch of the Universe. Signatures of its existence are abound. However, such an acoustic model of cosmology is rarely developed fully into a complete framework from the notion of space, cancer therapy up to the sky. This paper may be the first attempt towards such a complete description of the Universe based on classical wave equation of sound. It is argued that one can (...) arrive at a consistent description of space, elementary particles, Sachs-Wolfe acoustic theorem, up to a novel approach for cancer therapy, starting from this simple classical wave equation of sound. We also discuss a plausible extension of Acoustic Sachs-Wolfe theorem based on its analogue with Klein-Gordon equation to become Acoustic Sachs-Wolfe-Christianto-Smarandache-Umniyati (ASWoCSU) equation. It is our hope that the new proposed equation can be verified with observation data. But we admit that our model is still in its infancy, more researches are needed to fill all the missing details. (shrink)

Swedish hunters sometimes appeal to an inviolate ‘right to exist’ for wolves, apparently rejecting NIMBY. Nevertheless, the conditions existence hunters impose on wolves in practice fundamentally contradict their use of right to exist language. Hunters appeal to this language hoping to gain uptake in a conservation and management discourse demanding appropriately objective ecological language. However, their contradictory use of ‘right to exist' opens them up to the charge that they are being deceptive – indeed, right to exist is a 'disguised (...) NIMBY!' We address this situation by distinguishing hunters’ criticisms of wolves from the procedures for reaching objective policy decisions. (shrink)

Bringing these two emergent areas of thought into direct conversation in Before the Law, Cary Wolfe fosters a new discussion about the status of nonhuman animals and the shared plight of humans and animals under biopolitics.

Abstract (German version follows): -/- This paper develops a new proposal for a coherentist business ethic in which ethically justified and empirically supported proposed solutions to economic problems are developed through a coherentist process of adjustments between the three levels of (1) conception of problem and its solution, (2) positive economic theory, and (3) ethical theories. Using an example, it illustrates how in this framework, Homann's business ethics gains in validity and relevance but loses its claim to universality. // -/- (...) Diese Arbeit entwickelt eine kohärentistische Wirtschaftsethik, in der ethisch begründete und empirisch gestützte Lösungsvorschläge für ökonomische Probleme durch einen kohärentistischen Anpassungsprozess zwischen den drei Ebenen (1) Auffassung von Problem und Lösungsansatz, (2) positive ökonomische Theorie, sowie (3) ethischen Theorien erarbeitet werden. Anhand eines Beispiels wird illustriert, wie Homanns Wirtschaftsethik in diesem Rahmen an Validität und Relevanz gewinnt, jedoch ihren Universalitätsanspruch verliert. (shrink)

The Library of the Royal Society of London contains a large collection of manuscript material relating to Henry Oldenburg and his correspondents. Oldenburg was one of the two Secretaries of the Royal Society when it was founded in 1662. For many years he acted as intermediary between British and Continental philosophers: and scientists. He also edited the early volumes of the Royal Society's Philosophical Transactions . His contacts were accordingly very extensive. Nearly all the seventeenth-century pioneers of science were among (...) his correspondents. In his role of intermediary he was in the habit of sending extracts from some of his foreign letters to. (shrink)

A System of philosophy, a comprehensive world-view, is a work of art, although it is also more than that. Already Plato described the philosopher as a poet, and Plato himself was a great poet as well as a great philosopher. In recent years Professor Alexander has explained, on various occasions, that there is artistry involved in all scientific and philosophic thought. They demand creative intellectual construction of a high order. In so far as this is true, as I believe it (...) is, it should be possible, sometimes at least, to contemplate a great system of philosophy as a work of art, to enjoy it in a spirit of detachment, above the noise and the tumult of conflicting personal convictions.It is more or less in this spirit that I propose on this occasion to deal with some of the fundamental ideas of Spinoza. That, I believe, is in accordance with his own wishes. He wanted his works to be published anonymously, so that his philosophy might be considered impersonally, entirely on its own merits. Such a method of treatment may in any case be most suitable on this occasion when, in spite of probably great divergences in our individual views, we have come together to do honour to his memory. This kind of personal tribute may be contrary to his own wishes. But we owe it to ourselves, and to mankind at large, to keep alive the remembrance of one of the greatest masters of the art of high thinking and plain living. (shrink)

It is now well-known that Newton–Cartan theory is the correct geometrical setting for modelling the quantum Hall effect. In addition, in recent years edge modes for the Newton–Cartan quantum Hall effect have been derived. However, the existence of these edge modes has, as of yet, been derived using only orthodox methodologies involving the breaking of gauge-invariance; it would be preferable to derive the existence of such edge modes in a gauge-invariant manner. In this article, we employ recent work by Donnelly (...) and Freidel in order to accomplish exactly this task. Our results agree with known physics, but afford greater conceptual insight into the existence of these edge modes: in particular, they connect them to subtle aspects of Newton–Cartan geometry and pave the way for further applications of Newton–Cartan theory in condensed matter physics. (shrink)

The Archaeology of Semiotics and the social order of things is edited by George Nash and George Children and brings together 15 thought-provoking chapters from contributors around the world. A sequel to an earlier volume published in 1997, it tackles the problem of understanding how complex communities interact with landscape and shows how the rules concerning landscape constitute a recognised and readable grammar. The mechanisms underlying landscape grammar are both physical and mental, being based in part on the mindset (...) of the individual; the same landscape can thus evoke different meanings for different people and at different times. People's perception has greatly influenced the construction of landscapes over millennia but, until recently, the potential of this area has been largely untapped. Apart from chapters focusing solely upon human interaction with landscape, there are several which skilfully integrate artefacts and place with landscape (e.g. Gheorghiu and Sognnes). Other chapters look at the way people have marked the landscape through such mechanisms as rock-art (e.g. Clegg, Devereux, Estévez, Fossati, Kelleher and Skier). Rock-art establishes personal and communal identity in relation to landscape and it is clear that other forms of visual expression were in place which distinctively created special places within the landscape. Landscape constructs can bind cultures together; bringing the old ways of reading the landscape into contemporary life (e.g. Smiseth). Defining early and late prehistoric landscapes and segregating these into, say, mundane domestic and ritualised spaces rely on both clear and subtle archaeologies and in this volume distinct monument clustering and ritualised linearity are considered (e.g. Mason and Nash). A volume such as this cannot escape the influence of New World approaches, such as anthropology, and in many respects chapters by Bender, Muller and Merritt give context to other chapters within the book. Finally, one must consider text as a means of constructing landscape and this is considered by Heyd, who eloquently deconstructs the travel diary of a 17th century Japanese poet. This will be an important volume for archaeologists, landscape scholars and students. The many approaches used are tried and tested, forming an invaluable resource and not just another edited book. (shrink)

This analysis investigates whether solidarity is an appropriate concept for thinking about justifications for a just distribution of bioethical goods in the international arena. This will be explored by looking at the national origins of the idea of justifying solidarity in the form of the health care that welfare states offer. Following that, ‘life’ and ‘health’ will be placed within a philosophical context by focusing on the main arguments of John Rawls and Amartya Sen and the role of solidarity in (...) these two theories of justice will be analysed. It will be shown that these theories assume that solidarity is not a prerequisite for just international structures. Finally, the possibility will be discussed, that there is a degree of uncertainty surrounding justifications for fair distribution in the international context that can result when the concepts of solidarity and justice are handled imprecisely. (shrink)

Prior research suggests that the media plays an important information intermediary role in capital markets. We investigate the role of the media in influencing firms’ engagement in corporate social responsibility activities. Using a large sample of 4396 unique firms from 42 countries over the period 2003–2012, we find strong evidence that firms engage in more CSR activities if located in countries where the media has more freedom. This relation is robust to using various proxies for media freedom, an alternative source (...) of CSR data, and to applying the instrumental variables approach to address endogeneity. In additional analyses, we find that the positive relation between media freedom and CSR engagement is stronger for better governed firms and for larger firms. Since the media have the ability to impact reputational capital, we conclude that media freedom affects firms’ incentives to engage in costly CSR activities. (shrink)

Doctored images can cause people to believe in and remember experiences that never occurred, yet the underlying mechanism responsible are not well understood. How does compelling false evidence distort autobiographical memory? Subjects were filmed observing and copying a Research Assistant performing simple actions, then they returned 2 days later for a memory test. Before taking the test, subjects viewed video-clips of simple actions, including actions that they neither observed nor performed earlier. We varied the format of the video-clips between-subjects to (...) tap into the source-monitoring mechanisms responsible for the ‘doctored-evidence effect.’ The distribution of belief and memory distortions across conditions suggests that at least two mechanisms are involved: doctored images create an illusion of familiarity, and also enhance the perceived credibility of false suggestions. These findings offer insight into how external evidence influences source-monitoring. (shrink)

At the very beginning of L’Homme-Machine, La Mettrie claims that Leibnizians with their monads have “rather spiritualized matter than materialized the soul”; a few years later Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, President of the Berlin Academy of Sciences and natural philosopher with a strong interest in the modes of transmission of ‘genetic’ information, conceived of living minima which he termed molecules, “endowed with desire, memory and intelligence,” in his Système de la nature ou Essai sur les corps organisés. This text first (...) appeared in Latin in 1751 under the title Dissertatio inauguralis metaphysica de universali naturae systemate, with the pseudonym Dr Baumann; it was translated by Maupertuis in 1754 as Essai sur la formation des corps organisés and was later included in his 1756 Œuvres under the title Système de la nature. Now, it is clear that Maupertuis was a kind of Leibnizian; and that his molecule possessed higher-level, ‘mental’ properties. In that sense he falls under the first category described by La Mettrie. But he was also involved in a debate on this issue with Diderot, who put forth a sustained critique of Maupertuis’ theory of the molecule in the additions to his 1753 Pensées sur l’interprétation de la nature. Where Maupertuis attributes higher-level properties to his living minima, Diderot argues that these properties are ‘organizational’, i.e., they can only be properties of the whole. At issue here is the degree of commitment to a form of materialism. (shrink)