This topically organized, interdisciplinary anthology provides competing perspective on the claim that western culture faces a moral crisis. Using clearly written, accessible essays by well-known authors in philosophy, the social sciences, and the humanities, the book introduces students to a variety of perspectives on the current cultural debate about values that percolates beneath the surface of most of our social and political controversies.

Jane Smiley's award winning and disturbing novel, A Thousand Acres, invites a critical appraisal of a popular assumption for proponents of sustainable agriculture: that family farming and sustainable agriculture are (at least indirectly) mutually reinforcing. This process begins with a plot that presents an Iowa multigenerational farm family headed by an acutely dominant father. Consequences of this dominance include subjugation of everyone involved with the farming operation, varieties of abuse of the daughters, and primitive non-environmental farming. Also in (...) the novel three structural components of the family farm/rural setting aggravate the nightmarish situation: multigenerational participation in one farming operation, children remaining on the farm, uninterrupted, into adulthood, and the power of community appearances. It is argued that these components contribute not only to the family problems, but also to making the poor farming that emerges in this family not very coincidental. This analysis, if correct, raises many issues about farm structure and farming practices. They include how the younger generation(s) of family farm structures cope with their situations, whether aspects of family farms skew who decides to remain to farm, family farm ownership and transfer structure, how well farmers understand their own farms, and the case for voluntarism regarding environmental issues in farming. One theme throughout the essay is that the novel enables better recognition and appreciation of the subtle relationship between family problems and farming practices. (shrink)

This is part of a complete set of Jane Austen's novels collating the editions published during the author's lifetime and previously unpublished manuscripts. The books are illustrated with 19th century plates and incorporate revisions by experts in the light of subsequent research.

[Michael Tye] Externalism about thought contents has received enormous attention in the philosophical literature over the past fifteen years or so, and it is now the established view. There has been very little discussion, however, of whether memory contents are themselves susceptible to an externalist treatment. In this paper, I argue that anyone who is sympathetic to Twin Earth thought experiments for externalism with respect to certain thoughts should endorse externalism with respect to certain memories. /// [Jane Heal] Tye (...) claims that an externalist should say that memory content invoking natural kind concepts floats free of the setting where the memory is laid down and is at later times determined by the context in which the memory is revived. His argument assumes the existence of 'slow switching' of the meaning of natural kind terms when a person is transported from Earth to Twin Earth. But proper understanding of natural kind terms suggests that slow switching (contrary to what is often presupposed) is likely never to be completed. Hence the situation of a person unknowingly transported to Twin Earth is not that his memories switch content but rather that he gets two natural kinds confused. (shrink)

Moran rightly links performance of speech acts to instituting second‐personal normative relations. He also maintains that an audience's recognition of the speaker's intention in speaking is sufficient for the speaker's success in doing the speech act intended. The claim is true on some ways of understanding speech act verbs, but false on others. This complexity of speech act verbs can be explained by seeing how speech acts need to be understood in the context of shared life and cooperative action.

It is argued that the thought of Lady Jane Grey has received too little attention, and that her name and beliefs need to be resuscitated. The work of Levin, DeLisle and others is alluded to, and it is concluded that Grey was a devoted Dissenter of her time with explicit beliefs.

"First edition 1954. Reprinted 1958, with revisions 1963, 1965, with further revisions by B.C. Southam 1969...".

The context for these interviews was a seminar [Peter Gratton] conducted on speculative realism in the Spring 2010. There has been great interest in speculative realism and one reason Gratton surmise[s] is not just the arguments offered, though [Gratton doesn't] want to take away from them; each of these scholars are vivid writers and great pedagogues, many of whom are in constant contact with their readers via their weblogs. Thus these interviews provided an opportunity to forward student questions about their (...) respective works. Though each were conducted on different occasions, the interviews stand as a collected work, tying together the most classical questions about “realism” to ancillary movements about the non-human in politics, ecology, aesthetics, and video gaming—all to point to future movements in this philosophical area. (shrink)

Questions about knowledge, and about the relation between logic and language, are at the heart of philosophy. Eleven distinguished philosophers from Britain and America contribute papers on such questions. All the contributions are examples of recent philosophy at its best. The first half of the book constitutes a running debate about knowledge, evidence and doubt. The second half tackles questions about logic and its relation to language.

This book has three goals. The first is to demonstrate that the modern, distinctly Kantian, notion of moral responsibility is incoherent by virtue of the way it fuses free will and blameworthiness. The second is to develop an alternative notion of moral responsibility that separates causal responsibility from blameworthiness and views both as relative to the boundaries of our moral community. The third is to establish a framework for arguing openly about our moral responsibility for particular kinds of harm.

Black Entertainment Television (BET) talk show host Tavis Smiley, in an impassioned call to arms, sets forth the tools we can use to stand up for what we believe in and help transform our communities, our lives, and our world. Tavis Smiley isn't alone in pointing out that our neighborhoods are unsafe, our communities are unraveling, and our most basic values--civility, a sense of justice, integrity, and responsibility--are under attack, from the Oval Office to the corner office. But (...) we don't have to put up with a world gone awry, claims Smiley. We don't need to play the blame game. We are neither helpless nor victims. In Doing What's Right , Smiley shows how each and every one of us can take up arms against complacency and fight for the causes in which we believe. We don't have to accept things as they are. By choosing the battles that matter most to us, and organizing a plan to bring about the changes we feel are necessary, we can make a difference--in fact we can transform the world around us. Smiley knows whereof he speaks--it was his lifelong determination to make a difference that helped shape Smiley's career, first as a member of former L.A. mayor Tom Bradley's staff, helping to fight for the rights of residents in South Central, and later in radio and television. He has long been known as a powerful advocate of social and political issues. Through his nightly television show and in his radio commentaries, he has helped to galvanize public opinion and initiate national grassroots campaigns on everything from corporate responsibility to voter turnout. For everyone who wants to be a voice for change, Doing What's Right is a must-read. Visit the author's website at www.tavistalks.com or www.blackvoices.com. In DOING WHAT'S RIGHT, Smiley shows how each and every one of us can take up arms against complacency and fight for the causes in which we believe. We don't have to accept things as they are. By choosing the battles that matter most to us, and organizing a plan to bring about the changes we feel are necessary, we can make a difference--in fact we can transform the world around us. Smiley knows whereof he speaks--it was his lifelong determination to make a difference that helped launch his career in radio and television. And through his advocacy of issues on his nightly television show and in his radio commentaries, Smiley persuaded Christie's auction house to change its policies on selling slave artifacts, and encouraged President Clinton to award the Congressional Gold Medal to Rosa Parks. For everyone who wants to be a voice for change, DOING WHAT'S RIGHT is a must-read. -->. (shrink)

In _Vibrant Matter_ the political theorist Jane Bennett, renowned for her work on nature, ethics, and affect, shifts her focus from the human experience of things to things themselves. Bennett argues that political theory needs to do a better job of recognizing the active participation of nonhuman forces in events. Toward that end, she theorizes a “vital materiality” that runs through and across bodies, both human and nonhuman. Bennett explores how political analyses of public events might change were we (...) to acknowledge that agency always emerges as the_ _effect of ad hoc configurations of human and nonhuman forces. She suggests that recognizing that agency is distributed this way, and is not solely the province of humans, might spur the cultivation of a more responsible, ecologically sound politics: a politics less devoted to blaming and condemning individuals than to discerning the web of forces affecting situations and events. Bennett examines the political and theoretical implications of vital materialism through extended discussions of commonplace things and physical phenomena including stem cells, fish oils, electricity, metal, and trash. She reflects on the vital power of material formations such as landfills, which generate lively streams of chemicals, and omega-3 fatty acids, which can transform brain chemistry and mood. Along the way, she engages with the concepts and claims of Spinoza, Nietzsche, Thoreau, Darwin, Adorno, and Deleuze, disclosing a long history of thinking about vibrant matter in Western philosophy, including attempts by Kant, Bergson, and the embryologist Hans Driesch to name the “vital force” inherent in material forms. Bennett concludes by sketching the contours of a “green materialist” ecophilosophy. (shrink)

Alex Oliver and Timothy Smiley provide a new account of plural logic. They argue that there is such a thing as genuinely plural denotation in logic, and expound a framework of ideas that includes the distinction between distributive and collective predicates, the theory of plural descriptions, multivalued functions, and lists.

Multiple -conclusion logic extends formal logic by allowing arguments to have a set of conclusions instead of a single one, the truth lying somewhere among the conclusions if all the premises are true. The extension opens up interesting possibilities based on the symmetry between premises and conclusions, and can also be used to throw fresh light on the conventional logic and its limitations. This is a sustained study of the subject and is certain to stimulate further research. Part I reworks (...) the fundamental ideas of logic to take account of multiple conclusions, and investigates the connections between multiple - and single - conclusion calculi. Part II draws on graph theory to discuss the form and validity of arguments independently of particular logical systems. Part III contrasts the multiple - and the single - conclusion treatment of one and the same subject, using many-valued logic as the example; and Part IV shows how the methods of 'natural deduction' can be matched by direct proofs using multiple conclusions. (shrink)

In _influx & efflux_ Jane Bennett pursues a question that was bracketed in her book _Vibrant Matter_: how to think about human agency in a world teeming with powerful nonhuman influences? “Influx _& _efflux”—a phrase borrowed from Whitman's "Song of Myself"—refers to everyday movements whereby outside influences enter bodies, infuse and confuse their organization, and then exit, themselves having been transformed into something new. How to describe the human efforts involved in that process? What kinds of “I” and “we” (...) can live well and act effectively in a world of so many other lively materialities? Drawing upon Whitman, Thoreau, Caillois, Whitehead, and other poetic writers, Bennett links a nonanthropocentric model of self to a radically egalitarian pluralism and also to a syntax and style of writing appropriate to the entangled world in which we live. The book tries to enact the uncanny process by which we “write up” influences that pervade, enable, and disrupt us. (shrink)

In this chapter, the points of intellectual consonance between Jane Addams and John Dewey are explored, specifically their (1) shared belief that philosophy is a method, (2) parallel commitments to philosophical pragmatism and (3) similar convictions that philosophy should serve to address social problems. Also highlighted are points of divergence in their thinking, particularly their positions on U.S. entry into World War I and, more generally, the value of social conflict. Finally, the chapter concludes with what the author believes (...) is Addams's and Dewey's most significant joint contribution to the contemporary philosophical landscape: a vision of practically engaged pragmatism. (shrink)

English has plural terms as well as singular terms. But our standard formal languages, e.g., the predicate calculus, feature only singular terms. How can the plural idiom be formalized?‘Changing the subject’ is by far the most common plurals strategy among both philosophers and linguists: a plural term is replaced by a singular term standing for some complex object that ‘contains’ the individuals to which the plural term alludes. For example, one might simply replace ‘A, B imply C’ with ‘{A, B} (...) implies [singular] C’. We uncover a surprising variety of ways to change the subject, of ever‐increasing complexity and ingenuity. Our question is whether any can made to work. (shrink)

In this paper I look at belief and degrees of belief through the lens of inquiry. I argue that belief and degrees of belief play different roles in inquiry. In particular I argue that belief is a “settling” attitude in a way that degrees of belief are not. Along the way I say more about what inquiring amounts to, argue for a central norm of inquiry connecting inquiry and belief and say more about just what it means to have an (...) inquiry or question settled. (shrink)

Jane Addams, the founder of Hull House in Chicago, may be best known as a social activist. She was also a brilliantly critical intellectual. Implicit in her many speeches, articles, and books is a view of education as a broad process of cultural transformation and renewal, a view that remains as compelling today as when it was first presented. Addams sees education as the foundation of democracy, the basis for the free expression of ideas.Addams's writings on education are interpreted (...) in an enlightening bio-graphical introduction by Ellen Lagemann. After the initial publication of this work, Barbara L. Jacquette of the Delta Group, Inc., in Phoenix wrote, "Professor Lagemann has brought life and immediacy to Jane Addams's work. Better, she has given us a context that shows us that some of our most pressing issues today are simply old problems in new guises, problems for which some of the old solutions may still be of use." Gerald Lee Gutek of Loyola University of Chicago commented "Lagemann's insightful and sensitive biography reveals Addams's transformation from a reserved graduate of a small women's college into the Progressive reformer and pioneer of the settlement house movement."The essays collected here span a significant portion of Jane Addams's life, from the time she spent in college to her founding of Hull House and beyond. Addams's constant interest in education is reflected in her writings. This book also reveals the many influences on Addams's life, including the philosopher and educator John Dewey. On Education is an important work for educators, women's studies specialists, social workers, and historians. (shrink)

Recent philosophy of mind has had a mistaken conception of the nature of psychological concepts. It has assumed too much similarity between psychological judgments and those of natural science and has thus overlooked the fact that other people are not just objects whose thoughts we may try to predict and control but fellow creatures with whom we talk and co-operate. In this collection of essays, Jane Heal argues that central to our ability to arrive at views about others' thoughts (...) is not knowledge of some theory of the mind but rather an ability to imagine alternative worlds and how things appear from another person's point of view. She then applies this view to questions of how we represent others' thoughts, the shape of psychological concepts, the nature of rationality and the possibility of first person authority. This book should appeal to students and professionals in philosophy of mind and language. (shrink)

"It is well to remind ourselves, from time to time, that "Ethics" is but another word for "righteousness," that for which many men and women of every generation have hungered and thirsted, and without which life becomes meaningless. Certain forms of personal righteousness have become to a majority of the community almost automatic. But we all know that each generation has its own test, the contemporaneous and current standard by which alone it can adequately judge of its own moral achievements. (...) To attain individual morality in an age demanding social morality, to pride one's self on the results of personal effort when the time demands social adjustment, is utterly to fail to apprehend the situation. This book is a study of various types and groups who are being impelled by the newer conception of Democracy to an acceptance of social obligations involving in each instance a new line of conduct."--. (shrink)

Alex Oliver and Timothy Smiley provide a new account of plural logic. They argue that there is such a thing as genuinely plural denotation in logic, and expound a framework of ideas that includes the distinction between distributive and collective predicates, the theory of plural descriptions, multivalued functions, and lists.

"It is well to remind ourselves, from time to time, that "Ethics" is but another word for "righteousness," that for which many men and women of every generation have hungered and thirsted, and without which life becomes meaningless. Certain forms of personal righteousness have become to a majority of the community almost automatic. But we all know that each generation has its own test, the contemporaneous and current standard by which alone it can adequately judge of its own moral achievements. (...) To attain individual morality in an age demanding social morality, to pride one's self on the results of personal effort when the time demands social adjustment, is utterly to fail to apprehend the situation. This book is a study of various types and groups who are being impelled by the newer conception of Democracy to an acceptance of social obligations involving in each instance a new line of conduct."--. (shrink)

Jane Addams's early attempt to empower the people with information.

In this book Jane Kneller focuses on the role of imagination as a creative power in Kant's aesthetics and in his overall philosophical enterprise. She analyzes Kant's account of imaginative freedom and the relation between imaginative free play and human social and moral development, showing various ways in which his aesthetics of disinterested reflection produce moral interests. She situates these aspects of his aesthetic theory within the context of German aesthetics of the eighteenth century, arguing that Kant's contribution is (...) a bridge between early theories of aesthetic moral education and the early Romanticism of the last decade of that century. In so doing, her book brings the two most important German philosophers of Enlightenment and Romanticism, Kant and Novalis, into dialogue. It will be of interest to a wide range of readers in both Kant studies and German philosophy of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. (shrink)

A paradigm for peace discovered in the cosmopolitan neighborhoods of poor urban immigrants.

This comprehensive encyclopedia entry discusses the life and works of Jane Addams (1860-1935) who influenced contemporaries John Dewey, William James, and George Herbert Mead. Although not traditionally categorized as a philosopher, Addams was a prolific writer who developed a social philosophy of attentiveness and sympathetic knowledge that prefigures contemporary feminist care ethics.

In this paper I revisit Gilbert Harman's arguments for a "clutter avoidance" norm. The norm -- which says that we ought to avoid cluttering our minds with trivialities -- is widely endorsed. I argue that it has some fairly dramatic consequences for normative epistemology.

T. J. Smiley; XII.—Entailment and Deducibility, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 59, Issue 1, 1 June 1959, Pages 233–254, https://doi.org/10.1093.