Let's learn about the things all around us, with this fun, bright book of first concepts.

It is widely accepted that the notion of an inertial frame is central to Newtonian mechanics and that the correct space-time structure underlying Newton’s methods in Principia is neo-Newtonian or Galilean space-time. I argue to the contrary that inertial frames are not needed in Newton’s theory of motion, and that the right space-time structure for Newton’s Principia requires the notion of parallelism of spatial directions at different times and nothing more. Only relative motions are definable in this framework, never absolute (...) ones. (shrink)

The paper defends a view of structural realism similar to that of French and Ladyman, although it differs from theirs in an important respect: I do not take indistinguishabiity of particles in quantum mechanics to have the significance they think it has. It also differs from Cao's view of structural realism, criticized in my "Critical Notice: Cao's `The Conceptual Development of 20th Century Field Theories".

In this paper, we draw attention to several important tensions between Kant’s account of moral education and his commitment to transcendental idealism. Our main claim is that, in locating freedom outside of space and time, transcendental idealism makes it difficult for Kant to both provide an explanation of how moral education occurs, but also to confirm that his own account actually works. Having laid out these problems, we then offer a response on Kant’s behalf. We argue that, while it might (...) look like Kant has to abandon his commitment to either moral education or transcendental idealism, there is a way in which he can maintain both. (shrink)

The question of whether or not early Chinese philosophers had a concept of truth has been the topic of some scholarly debate over the past few decades. The present essay offers a novel assessment of the debate, and suggests that no answer is fully satisfactory, as the plausibility of each turns in no small part on difficult and unsettled philosophical issues prior to the interpretation of any ancient Chinese philosophical texts—particularly the issues of what it means to “have a concept” (...) and how we understand the concept of truth itself. This essay summarizes prominent views within the debate over truth and Chinese philosophy and offers conditional assessments of each answer with respect to contemporary theories of concepts and theories of truth. The essay concludes with an appeal to methodological and interpretive pluralism, within reasonable constraints, in discussions of this topic. (shrink)

Mill’s harm principle is commonly supposed to rest on a distinction between self-regarding conduct, which is not liable to interference, and other-regarding conduct, which is. As critics have noted, this distinction is difficult to draw. Furthermore, some of Mill’s own applications of the principle, such as his forbidding of slavery contracts, do not appear to fit with it. This article proposes that the self-regarding/other-regarding distinction is not in fact fundamental to Mill’s harm principle. The sphere of protected liberty includes not (...) only self-regarding conduct, but also actions that affect only consenting others. On the other hand, the occasional permissibility of interfering with self-regarding conduct can plausibly be explained by reference to the agent’s consent. Thus, the more important distinction appears to be that between consensual and non-consensual harm, rather than that between the self-regarding and non-self-regarding action. That is, interference can be justified in order to prevent non-consensual harms, but not to prevent consensual harms. It is argued that the harm principle, thus reformulated, both captures Mill’s intentions and is a substantively plausible position. (shrink)

The concept of indistinguishable particles in quantum theory is fundamental to questions of ontology. All ordinary matter is made of electrons, protons, neutrons, and photons and they are all indistinguishable particles. Yet the concept itself has proved elusive, in part because of the interpretational difficulties that afflict quantum theory quite generally, and in part because the concept was so central to the discovery of the quantum itself, by Planck in 1900; it came encumbered with revolution. I offer a deflationary reading (...) of the concept ‘indistinguishable’ that is identical to Gibbs’ concept ‘generic phase’, save that it is defined for state spaces with only finitely-many states of bounded volume and energy. That, and that alone, makes for the difference between the quantum and Gibbs concepts of indistinguishability. This claim is heretical on several counts, but here we consider only the content of the claim itself, and its bearing on the early history of quantum theory rather than in relation to contemporary debates about particle indistinguishability and permutation symmetry. It powerfully illuminates that history. (shrink)

A heuristic comparison is made of relativistic and non-relativistic quantum theory. To this end the Segal approach is described for the non-specialist. The significance of antimatter to the local and microcausal properties of the fields is laid bare. The fundamental difference between relativistic and non-relativistic (complex) fields is traced to the existence of two kinds of complex numbers in the relativistic case. Their relation to covariant and Newton-Wigner locality is formulated.

How we understand, protect, and discharge our rights and responsibilities as citizens in a democratic society committed to the principle of political equality is intimately connected to the standards and behaviour of our media in general, and our news media in particular. However, the media does not just stand between the citizenry and their leaders, or indeed between citizens and each other. The media is often the site where individuals attempt to realise some of the most fundamental democratic liberties, including (...) the right to free speech. -/- Media Ethics, Free Speech, and the Requirements of Democracy explores the conflict between the rights that people exercise in, and through, the modern media and the responsibilities that accrue on account of its awesome and increasing power. The individual chapters—written by leading scholars from the US, UK, and Australia—address several recent events and controversial developments in the media, including Brexit, the rise of Trump, Lynton Crosby, Charlie Hebdo, dog-whistle politics, fake news, and political correctness. This much-needed philosophical treatment is a welcome addition to the recent literature in media ethics. It will be of interest to scholars across political and social philosophy, applied ethics, media and communication studies, and political science who are interested in the important issues surrounding the media and free speech and democracy. (shrink)

Freedom lies at the heart of Kant’s philosophy. Three recent edited collections explore this key idea in different ways, alongside other related concep...

A relationist will account for the use of ‘left’ and ‘right’ in terms of relative orientations, and other properties and relations invariant under mirroring. This analysis will apply whenever mirroring is a symmetry, so it certainly applies to classical mechanics; we argue it applies to any physical theory formulated on a manifold: it is in this sense an a priori symmetry. It should apply in particular to parity violating theories in quantum mechanics; mirror symmetry is only broken in such theories (...) as a special symmetry. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine the concept of truth in classical Chinese philosophy, beginning with a critical examination of Chad Hansen’s claim that it has no such concept. By using certain passages that emphasize analogous concepts in the philosophy of language of the Later Mohist Canons, I argue that while there is no word in classical Chinese that functions as truth generally does in Western philosophy for grammatical reasons, the Later Mohists were certainly working with a notion of semantic adequacy (...) in which a language-to-world relationship is made an object of investigation, challenging Hansen’s position that classical Chinese functions within a primarily pragmatic linguistic framework in which a language-to-user relationship determines the meaning of words. (shrink)

Over the years, Katie Cannon's students referred to her work in progress as "Katie's canon." Not only does this book represent the canon of Cannon's best work; the book itself directly addresses the issues of canon formation and canon reformation. Cannon canonizes a literary tradition and directly addresses both oppression and liberation of African American women. Now in an expanded 25th-anniversary edition, Katie's Canon still packs firepower.

Is tense real and objective? Can the fact that something is past, say, be wholly objective, consistent with special relativity? The answer is yes, but only so long as the distinction has no ontological ground. There is a closely related question. Is the contrast between the determinate and the indeterminate real and objective, consistent with relativity and quantum mechanics? The answer is again yes, but only if the contrast has no ontological ground. Various accounts of it are explored, according to (...) different approaches to quantum mechanics. The Everett interpretation is much the most successful in accounting for it. (shrink)

This paper examines the problem of selecting a number of candidates to receive a good (admission) from a pool in which there are more qualified applicants than places. I observe that it is rarely possible to order all candidates according to some relevant criterion, such as academic merit, since these standards are inevitably somewhat vague. This means that we are often faced with the task of making selections between near-enough equal candidates. I survey one particular line of response, which says (...) that we should allow our choice of borderline candidates to be guided by non-relevant criteria such as gender-balancing. I argue that this would not, as commonly objected, be a case of sex discrimination if it is to be applied either in favour of men or women. Nonetheless, I argue that such policies are problematic because they violate the demand for publicity, which is required for legitimacy and to assure everyone that discrimination has not in fact taken place. Instead, I suggest that, if we are concerned to avoid discrimination, there may be a case for using lotteries as tie-breakers, not on grounds of fairness but to prevent taint of bias. (shrink)

abstract This paper examines the problem of selecting a number of candidates to receive a good (admission) from a pool in which there are more qualified applicants than places. I observe that it is rarely possible to order all candidates according to some relevant criterion, such as academic merit, since these standards are inevitably somewhat vague. This means that we are often faced with the task of making selections between near‐enough equal candidates. I survey one particular line of response, which (...) says that we should allow our choice of borderline candidates to be guided by non‐relevant criteria such as gender‐balancing. I argue that this would not, as commonly objected, be a case of sex discrimination if it is to be applied either in favour of men or women. Nonetheless, I argue that such policies are problematic because they violate the demand for publicity, which is required for legitimacy and to assure everyone that discrimination has not in fact taken place. Instead, I suggest that, if we are concerned to avoid discrimination, there may be a case for using lotteries as tie‐breakers, not on grounds of fairness but to prevent taint of bias. (shrink)

O espaço geográfico é uma categoria da ciência geográfica que possibilita uma acentuada e complexa possibilidade de refletir a coletividade social, sendo que neste desafio são trazidas à tona inúmeras perspectivas de análises da relação homem-natureza. Dessa feita, o presente estudo elabora uma breve discussão acerca do espaço geográfico enquanto uma ferramenta de análise das relações sociais, além de evidenciar a sua centralidade no interior da Geografia. Ao longo do estudo estão colocadas algumas concepções teóricas desta categoria geográfica, com destaque (...) para os entendimentos elaborados pela Geografia Crítica, uma reflexão que propõem a necessidade de se politizar os sujeitos por intermédio do ensino, com destaque para os conteúdos geográficos ensinados por seus respectivos professores desde os primeiros anos do ensino fundamental. A busca aqui foi a de confirmar a capacidade que a Geografia possui em se utilizar do próprio espaço geográfico na qual os alunos estão inseridos enquanto materialidade para uma concepção própria de mundo, sendo que através desta conquista, se permite compreender e pensar a construção de uma sociedade pela e para a própria coletividade envolvida. É esta a grande questão discorrida no presente ensaio, pensar uma proposta de ensino na geografia que politize os sujeitos, permitindo assim a formação de sujeitos ativos e cientes do seu papel no mundo. (shrink)

This symposium brings into conversation normative political theory on migration and critical border/migration studies, with a particular focus on digital border control technology. Normative theorists have long been concerned with questions about the extent and nature of control over migration that the state should exercise, and the balance of rights and duties between states and migrants. To date, however, there has been little reflection among such theorists on digital border control technology. Critical border/migration studies scholars, on the other hand, have (...) paid considerable attention to the rapid development of digital technology in the border control/mobility management space, and revealed a range of problems with the technology itself and the ways it is deployed. What has thus far been lacking, however, is sustained ethical reflection on what should be done about the use of this technology. The papers in this symposium thus seek to bring these two groups of scholars together and to prompt what we hope will be a sustained conversation on these rapidly evolving and deeply problematic practices. This introduction contextualises the issue at the heart of this symposium – the rapid expansion of digital border controls and the ethical challenges that these pose – and offers brief summaries of the contributions. (shrink)

Normative theorists of migration are beginning to shift their focus away from an earlier obsession with whether the ‘liberal' or ‘legitimate’ state should have a right to exclude, and toward evaluation of how states engage in immigration control. However, with some notable exceptions – such as work of Rebecca Buxton, David Owen, Serena Parekh, and Alex Sager – this work tends not to focus on the global coordination of such control, and is still largely concerned with issues of membership. In (...) this paper I aim to show the value of shifting normative attention to the fundamentally interdependent nature of state control of migration, and the management of all forms of movement – not just settlement. This global management is greatly facilitated by the rapid digitisation of border controls. As such, I outline three aspects of the way digital border controls work – profiling, biometric identification, and the data sharing practices upon which they rest – and highlight ethical challenges of accountability, consent and the reach of the state, and entrenching global inequalities in access to movement. Ultimately, I hope to show that the globally interconnected nature of migration management is a combination of practices that normative theorists of migration should turn their attention to. (shrink)

Normative debates on migration control, while characterised by profound disagreement, do appear to agree that the state has at least a prima facie right to prevent the entry of security threats. While concern is sometimes raised that this ‘security exception’ can be abused, there has been little focus by normative theorists on concrete practices of security, and how we can determine what a ‘principled’ use of the security exception would be. I argue that even if states have a right to (...) prevent migrants from entering on grounds of security, the practices required to implement this right will likely compromise core liberal democratic values in ways that have not been sufficiently appreciated. I draw on literature from Science and Technology Studies and Critical Security Studies to examine the proliferation of digital border control technologies which are increasingly dominating state security practices, and explain the challenges these technologies pose to non-discrimination, liberty and equality. I also highlight the difficulties of taking these principles as presumptive limitations on the operation of the security exception. A more sustained conversation among ethical theorists is needed to address the profound ethical challenges that the ever-increasing use of these technologies poses, particularly in pursuit of security. (shrink)

This paper explores the political campaigning strategies of Lynton Crosby, and argues that they pose a threat to democracy. In doing so, I looks to shed light on Crosby’s tactics, but also to elucidate exactly what is anti-democratic about them. I argue that there are two worrying aspects to this. The first involves Crosby’s lack of respect for voters’ beliefs, interests and values, whereas the second concerns his propensity for avoiding debate.

Kant worries that if we are not free, morality will be nothing more than a phantasm for us. In the final section of the Groundwork, he attempts secure our freedom, and with it, morality. Here is a simplified version of his argument: -/- 1. A rational will is a free will 2. A free will stands under the moral law 3. Therefore, a rational will stands under the moral law -/- In this paper, I attempt to defuse two prominent objections (...) to this argument. Commentators often worry that Kant has not managed to establish that we are rational beings with wills in the first place, and that he equivocates in his use of ‘free’ between premise 1 and 2. I argue that both of these objections can be overcome, and thus seek to offer some hope for Kant’s approach in Groundwork III. (shrink)

This paper considers ways in which rulers can respond to, generate, or exploit fear of COVID-19 infection for various ends, and in particular distinguishes between ‘fear-invoking’ and ‘fear-minimising’ strategies. It examines historical precedent for executive overreach in crises and then moves on to look in more detail at some specific areas where fear is being mobilised or generated: in ways that lead to the suspension of civil liberties; that foster discrimination against minorities; and that boost the personality cult of leaders (...) and limit criticism or competition. Finally, in the Appendix, we present empirical work, based on the results of an original survey in Brazil, that provides support for the conjectures in the previous sections. While it is too early to tell what the longer-term outcomes of the changes we note will be, our purpose here is simply to identify some warning signs that threaten the key institutions and values of democracy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Male Reproductive Strategies in Sherwood Anderson's "The Untold Lie"Judith P. SaundersSingled out repeatedly as one of the finest stories in Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, "The Untold Lie" (1919) has attracted surprisingly little sustained critical comment.1 Like all the stories in the Winesburg cycle, this one delineates a revelatory moment of inner turmoil. There is little outward action; conflict and suspense are generated chiefly in the interior of the protagonist's (...) psyche, focusing on his ambivalence as husband and father. Readers become privy to "the buried life" of unacknowledged impulses and the "hidden truth" of repressed resentments,2 as Anderson's central characters struggle with the antithetical "choices available to the individual as biology works its will."3 A portrait of the male mind deliberating the relative advantages of alternative reproductive strategies, the story notably repays biosocial investigation. The theoretical framework, as well as the intellectual rationale, for undertaking biosocial investigation of literary texts has been explained ably by critics and aestheticians such as Joseph Carroll, Brett Cooke, Ellen Dissanayake, Robert Story, and others. Readers unfamiliar with the historical and theoretical foundations of Darwinian literary criticism will find useful commentary in works by these and other thinkers in this rapidly growing field.4Anderson concentrates on the interactions between two men at different stages in life, one middle-aged, perhaps fifty, and one youthful, "only twenty-two."5 The older man, Ray Pearson, has made his most important reproductive decisions well before the story begins: he has been married for many years and fathered half a dozen children (p. 203). He works as a farm hand, eking out a meagre living for his family by means of hard physical labor. A few details are sufficient to suggest [End Page 311] his poverty: his house is "tumble-down," his children "thin-legged," his coat torn and shiny with age (pp. 203, 206). Ray's wife, "sharp" in both features and voice, appears to be a perpetually anxious scold, concerned with fundamental problems of family subsistence. Ray's direct fitness (as measured by reproductive success) promises to be respectable, but the task of rearing his numerous offspring to adulthood has required and will continue to require his utmost effort and full-time commitment. He is just barely able to support his family (food is being purchased on a day-by-day basis), and there is little margin of safety in his situation.As foil to Ray, Anderson presents Hal Winters, a man not only younger but different in physique, in temperament, and in social class. Hal is big, tall, and broad shouldered; by way of contrast, Ray's shoulders are described as "rounded by too much and too hard labor," and he is "almost a foot shorter" than the robust Hal (p. 203ff). Inclined to prototypical masculine display, Hal is observed "roistering" about the town at night, dressing in "cheap flashy clothes." He challenges his own father in a fist fight, and as a result he is arrested and jailed. His brash and often reckless behavior is very unlike that of the "quiet, nervous," and "altogether serious" Ray. In the community Hal has the reputation of "a bad one." A fighter, a drinker, and a womanizer, he is "always up to some devilment." Unsurprisingly, Hal's family background is said not to be particularly respectable. The fathers of both Hal and Ray are small-business owners: the Winters operate a sawmill, the Pearsons a bakery. (The narrator never explains why Ray did not join or succeed his father in the bakery business, which presumably would have offered him a better income and a physically less onerous profession.) The stated difference in social standing appears to derive from the two families' differing records of conduct.Hal's aggressive propensities seem to be at least in part hereditary. He is "the worst" of three notoriously bad brothers, all sired by "a confirmed old reprobate" (pp. 202–3). The father, old Windpeter Winters, is remembered best for the gratuitous violence of his death. Drunk, he drove his team of horses along the railroad tracks straight into the path of an oncoming train, having slashed with his whip at a neighbor who... (shrink)

Special relativity is most naturally formulated as a theory of spacetime geometry, but within the spacetime framework probability appears to be a purely epistemic notion. It is possible that progress can be made with rather different approaches - covariant stochastic equations, in particular - but the results to date are not encouraging. However, it seems a non-epistemic notion of probability can be made out in Minkowski space on Everett's terms. I shall work throughout with the consistent histories formalism. I shall (...) start with a conservative interpretation, and then go on to Everett's. (shrink)

Abstractabstract:This essay proposes an unconventional approach to teaching "religion and medicine" to American medical students. Received frameworks for such teaching—articulated around faith denomination or "spirituality"—may imply that religiosities and their health effects are grounded in theology or transcendence, respectively. These frameworks may reify, or misrepresent relationships between, religion and science—for example, in supporting notions of conflict, or of an essentially secular character of technical progress. They can neglect ways in which biomedicine and its institutions are themselves engaged with and productive (...) of religious values. In order to move toward fuller student appreciation of diverse religious materialities and embodiments in health and biomedicine, the essay proposes "the sacred, in practice" as an organizing rubric. This pedagogical intervention pivots on notions of sacrality in anthropologies of religion and offers students a wide path to consider a spectrum of material, gestural conditions, and activities—transformative techniques, intensely valued objects, trusted texts, rituals—that mark and propagate religious valences and commitments within and around contemporary biomedicine. This sacred-in-practice approach meshes with standard theological and spiritual framings of the religion/health/medicine nexus, yet offers more capacious and flexible connections to work for which medical students are training, involving vulnerable bodies and material technologies of tremendous life- and world-shaping potency. (shrink)

There is a certain kind of tension in recent accounts of the role of reasons in virtue ethics between two plausible claims that pull in different directions. First, that virtues are the central normative notion in virtue ethics; and second, that virtue is a kind of responsiveness to reasons: that reasons explain both what it is to act from virtue, and what the virtues are. I argue that this is a serious tension and necessitates a different account of the relationship (...) between virtues and reasons; one that explains the distinctive normative contribution of virtue, central to virtue ethics, and that also captures the ways in which virtues structure practical reason itself and provide normative reasons for thinking, feeling, and acting. I develop a view, which I call virtues as reasons structure, that achieves these aims by drawing a theoretical and practical distinction between reasons from virtue and reasons for virtue. On this view, character traits explain what reasons a person has. A generous person, for example, is one who characteristically takes certain facts to be reasons for action; these are reasons from the virtue. Reasons for the virtues have a different role in theoretical and practical reflection in grounding claims with respect to which character traits to develop. I conclude by arguing that this view does not lead to a problematic kind of relativism and suggest further lines of inquiry. (shrink)

The achievement of Immanuel Kant lies in demonstrating the law-giving power of the human intellect in the metaphysical basis of human cognition and in defence of human freedom. The power of reason was his response to the mechanical view of nature and scepticism in morals, aesthetics and religion. While reason extended over theory and practice, it was, he insisted, one reason: a unity. I advocate the unity of reason as key to understanding Kant’s philosophical project. Given his huge output, this (...) is an inevitably incomplete ambition. After an introductory chapter, comes an explication of the key role of the maxim followed by proposing a three-fold understanding of reason itself with its ideas and postulates. These extend our theoretical and practical knowledge in reason’s differing interests, albeit with conceptual difficulties in motivation and respect. Despite different faculties, theoretical and practical reason cannot conflict for there are not two reasons. One must have primacy which is shown to be the practical. The latter doctrine has implications for Kant’s rational theology and his broader world view. Morality’s supreme principle, a product of universalised reason, highlights the destiny of humankind and leads to a moral faith unique to humans. By virtue of reason, we have the will to realise our final end. The justification of reason’s unity leads to the regulative idea of a highest intelligence as a heuristic. Kant’s moral philosophy culminates in the concept of the highest good as the final end of human life. I discuss its secular and religious interpretations before concluding that, for Kant, we belong not only in the world of nature but in a noumenal world in which God and a future life may be the hope of our finite reason. (shrink)

According to the state of the art in psychology and philosophy, colour sensations are located in a 'quality space'. This space has three dimensions: hue , saturation , and brightness. This space is structured further via a small number of primitive hues or landmark colours, usually four or six . It has also been suggested that there are eleven semantic universals — the six colours previously mentioned plus orange, pink, brown, purple, and grey. Against the standard view, we argue that (...) colour might better be regarded as the outcome of a social-historical developmental trajectory in which there is mutual shaping of philosophical presuppositions, scientific theories, experimental practices, technological tools, rhetorical frameworks, and their intercalated and recursive interactions with the lifeworld. That is: the domain of colour is the outcome of interactive processes of scientific, instrumental, industrial, and everyday lifeworlds. (shrink)

Mill appears to subscribe to the hedonist view that happiness consists in pleasure and the absence of pain, yet he departs from the Benthamite tradition by suggesting that some pleasures are more valuable than others. I suggest that the value of a pleasure depends on its contribution to happiness. Other things equal, more pleasure is more conducive to happiness than less, but some pleasures are also more valuable than others, quantity being equal. These more valuable pleasures are those that Mill (...) describes as higher in quality. Happiness, then, is a function of quality and quantity of pleasures (with quantity itself being a function of intensity and duration). Quality is distinct from quantity and might be traded off against it, since a great quantity of lower quality pleasure can produce more happiness than a smaller quantity of higher quality pleasure, but it is not a good independent of pleasure. (shrink)