Healthcare ethics consultation is therefore one of the most consequential, institutionally accepted, and widespread forms of public philosophy in the United States. In this chapter, the authors begin with an overview of the development of healthcare ethics and its emergence as a concrete practice embedded in healthcare settings. They then describe the core ethical principles that inform the everyday practice of ethics consultations and the generally accepted steps involved in conducting a consultation. The authors discuss the role of clinical ethicists (...) in medical education and policy development. Finally, they conclude with some remarks on the distinctive contributions made by those with philosophical training to these endeavors and the importance of continued engagement by philosophers in this important public work. (shrink)

The focus of this article is on multi-organizational cross-sector social partnerships (CSSP), an increasingly common means of addressing complex social and ecological problems that are too extensive to be solved by any one organization. While there is a growing body of literature on CSSP, there is little focus on collaborative strategic management, especially where implementation and outcomes are concerned. This study addresses these gaps by offering a conceptual model of collaborative strategic management, which is then tested through the use of (...) two qualitative empirical cases of collaborative regional sustainable development strategies (CRSDS). The model augments previous collaboration models by highlighting two levels of implementation (the collaboration and the organizational levels) and by considering the different types of outcomes, and the feedback loops. (shrink)

History of science is, we are told, an important subject for study. Its rise in recent years to become a ‘stand alone’ discipline has been mirrored by an expansion of popular history of science texts available in bookstores. Given this, it is perhaps surprising that little attention has been given to how history of science is written. This article attempts to do that through constructing a typology of histories of science based upon a consideration of audiences who read these texts (...) and writers who construct them. It identifies four ideal types of history of science which describe the opposite poles of two continua running from exoteric to esoteric. The article also examines the content of a sample of history of science texts and finds that often these texts, whether esoteric or exoteric, provide only a chronology of events (often incredibly detailed), avoiding discussion or even mention of wider social, economic and political contexts. Such histories serve to reinforce a ‘standard’ account of science as ‘separate’ from the rest of society, an account that is at odds with almost all contemporary sociology of science and science and technology studies. This prompts the question: why should I read histories of science? (shrink)

History of science is, we are told, an important subject for study. Its rise in recent years to become a ‘stand alone’ discipline has been mirrored by an expansion of popular history of science texts available in bookstores. Given this, it is perhaps surprising that little attention has been given to how history of science is written. This article attempts to do that through constructing a typology of histories of science based upon a consideration of audiences who read these texts (...) and writers who construct them. It identifies four ideal types of history of science which describe the opposite poles of two continua running from exoteric to esoteric. The article also examines the content of a sample of history of science texts and finds that often these texts, whether esoteric or exoteric, provide only a chronology of events, avoiding discussion or even mention of wider social, economic and political contexts. Such histories serve to reinforce a ‘standard’ account of science as ‘separate’ from the rest of society, an account that is at odds with almost all contemporary sociology of science and science and technology studies. This prompts the question: why should I read histories of science? (shrink)

The phrase, "state of nature", has been used over centuries to describe the uncultivated state of lands and animals, nudity, innocence, heaven and hell, interstate relations, and the locus of pre- and supra-political rights, such as the right to resistance, to property, to create and leave polities, and the freedom of religion, speech, and opinion, which may be reactivated or reprioritised when the polity and its laws fail. Combining intellectual history with current concerns, this volume brings together fourteen essays on (...) the past, present and possible future applications of the legal fiction known as the state of nature. Contributors are: Daniel S. Allemann, Pamela Edwards, Ioannis D. Evrigenis, Mary C. Fuller, David Singh Grewal, Francesca Iurlaro, Edward J. Kolla, László Kontler, Grant S. McCall, Tom Sparks, Benjamin Straumann, Karl Widerquist, Sarah Winter, and Simone Zurbuchen. (shrink)

This chapter provides a flavor of Chomsky's ideas relevant to linguistic diversity, and what can be taken away from them in the contemporary scene. The chapter also focuses on a variety of topics in syntactic theory and English syntax, a few in some detail, several quite superficially, and none exhaustively. Chomsky's focus on English seemed like a retrenchment. Chomsky is famous for his views about Universal Grammar, which have evolved over the years. Chomsky's early seeming neglect of crosslinguistic diversity was (...) a tactical move that has served the study of linguistic diversity very well. Lectures on Government and Binding has comments on all these developments, as Chomsky's vision burgeoned outward toward a fuller engagement with language diversity. The chapter concludes with some brief discussion of how the most recent phase of Chomsky's research, inaugurated by The Minimalist Program, affects his legacy in the study of linguistic diversity. (shrink)

I do not deny that Fuller is often right on the mark, but there comes a point when such relentless all‐round deprecation gets on one’s nerves. Roberto Torretti When as an undergraduate I first re...

I do not deny that Fuller is often right on the mark, but there comes a point when such relentless all‐round deprecation gets on one’s nerves. Roberto Torretti When as an undergraduate I first re...

Philosophy may relate to interdisciplinarity in two distinct ways On the one hand, philosophy may play an auxiliary role in the process of interdisciplinarity, typically through conceptual analysis, in the understanding that the disciplines themselves are the main epistemic players. This version of the relationship I characterise as ‘normal’ because it captures the more common pattern of the relationship, which in turn reflects an acceptance of the division of organized inquiry into disciplines. On the other hand, philosophy may be itself (...) the site for the production of interdisciplinary knowledge, understood as a kind of second-order understanding of reality that transcends the sort of knowledge that the disciplines provide, left to their own devices. This is my own position, which I dub ‘deviant’ and to which most of this article is devoted. I begin by relating the two types of interdisciplinarity to the organization of inquiry, especially their respective attitudes to the history of science. Underlying the two types are contrasting notions of what constitutes the ‘efficient’ pursuit of knowledge. This difference is further explored in terms of the organization of the university. The normal/deviant distinction was already marked in the institution’s medieval origins in terms of the difference between Doctors and Masters, respectively, an artefact of which remains in the postgraduate/undergraduate degree distinction. In the context of the history of the university, the prospects for deviant interdisciplinarity were greatest from the early sixteenth to the early nineteenth century—the period called ‘early modern’ in the philosophy curriculum. Towards the end of that period, due to Kant and the generation of idealists who followed him, philosophy was briefly the privileged site for deviant interdisciplinarity. After Hegel’s death, the mantle of deviant interdisciplinarity increasingly passed to some version of ‘biology’. I explore the ‘Natur-’ and ‘Geisteswissenschaft’ versions of that post-philosophical vision, which continue to co-exist within today’s biological science. I then briefly examine the chequered reputation of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, someone who exemplified the promise and perils of deviant interdisciplinarity over the past 200 years. I conclude with an Epilogue that considers contemporary efforts to engage philosophy in interdisciplinary work, invoking William James as an exemplar. (shrink)

The essays in this issue of The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy explore an innovative voucher program for encouraging kidney donation. Discussions cluster around a number of central moral and political/theoretical themes: What are the direct and indirect health care costs and benefits of such a voucher system in human organs? Do vouchers lead to more effective and efficient organ procurement and allocation or contribute to greater inequalities and inefficiencies in the transplantation system? Do vouchers contribute to the inappropriate commodification (...) of human body parts? Is there a significant moral difference between such a voucher system and a market in human organs for transplantation? This paper argues that while kidney vouchers constitute a step in the right direction, fuller utilization of market-based incentives, including, but not limited to, barter exchanges, would save more lives and further reduce human suffering. (shrink)

The ArgumentI argue that “social epistemology” can be usefully reformulated as a philosophy of science accounting, specifically one that fosters a critical form of instrumental rationality. I begin by observing that philosophical and sociological species of “science accountancy” can be compared along two dimensions; constructive versus deconstve; reflexive versus unreflexive. The social epistemologist proposes a constructive and reflixive accounting for science. This possibility has been obscured, probably because of the persuasiveness of the Frankfulrt School's portrayal of “critical” and “instrumental” rationalities (...) as polar opposites. In challenging this polarity, I present four “acciybtability conditions” that define pure critico-instrumental rationality. These conditions are most likely to be met during a period of“crisis” in the future direction of science. The bulk of the paper concerns case study of such a crisis that enables us to examine contrasting ways of meeting the four conditions. Ernst Mach and Max Planck debated“the end of science” in the first decade of this century, a time marked by both science's increasing involvement in the means of social reproduction and prowing concern that science pursued for its own sake was exhibiting diminishing margianl returns on investment. In analyzing Planck's victory, I conclude that its tegacy has been an ever-widenig gap between the“content” and“function” of scientific knowledge in society, as measured by the increasing numbers of jobs that are devoted to mediating the production and distribution of knowledge. (shrink)

The popular view of non-directive genetic counseling limits the counselor's role to providing information to clients and assisting families in making decisions in a morally neutral fashion. This view of non-directive genetic counseling is shown to be incomplete. A fuller understanding of what it means to respect autonomy shows that merely respecting client choices does not exhaust the duty. Moreover, the genetic counselor/client relationship should also be governed by the counselor's commitment to the principle of beneficience. When non-directive counseling (...) is reexamined in light of both these principles, it becomes clear that there are cases in which counselors should attempt to persuade clients to reconsider their decisions. Such attempts are consistent with non-directive counseling because, while respecting the clients' decision-making authority, they insure that clients act with full knowledge of the moral consequences of their decisions. (shrink)

What marks ours as the "post-epistemic era" is that it refuses to confer any special privilege on knowledge production as a social practice: whatever normative strictures apply to social practices in general, they apply specifically to epistemic practices as well. I trace how we have reached this state by distinguishing two conceptions of normativity in the history of epistemology: a top-down approach epitomized by Kant and Bentham, and a bottom-up approach associated with the Scottish Enlightenment. The advantage of the latter (...) is that it clearly distinguishes the emergence of norms from the conditions of their maintenance. I then show how more recent evolutionary epistemology has, in a pejorative way, "naturalized" socially constructed norms of cognitive competence, whereas the logical positivists — long the bane of "progressive" epistemologists — recognized the fully artificial character of epistemic norms and hence qualify as the first social epistemologists. (shrink)

This brief essay describes what critical legal scholars said – or perhaps more accurately – would have said – about the concept of the rule of law. Describing critical legal studies as a project in American legal thought rather than analytical jurisprudence, it argues that “the rule of law” is an ideological project, and can come in various versions – liberal, social democratic, and more. It addresses Morton Horwitz’s critique of E.P. Thompson’s assertion that the rule of law is an (...) unqualified human good, and situates the CLS critique of the rule of law within more general discussion of the rule of law by Hayek and Fuller. It concludes by applying ideology-critique to the rule of law, arguing that in whatever form it takes the rule of law contributes to a culture of justification, which may indeed be an unqualified human good. (shrink)

I argue that the 21st century will be marked by a realignment of science and religion, which I call the “anthropic” versus the “karmic” perspectives. The former is aligned with the major Western religions and was secularized in the 19th century as positivism, with its identification of social science with the religion of humanity. The latter is aligned with the major Eastern religions, but also Epicureanism in the West. It was secularized as the Neo-Darwinian synthesis in the 20th century, since (...) when it has made major inroads in wider precincts of normative thought. In this context, I focus specifically on the work of E.O. Wilson, Richard Dawkins, and Peter Singer — all of whom, in somewhat different ways, argue on naturalistic grounds for the removal of humanity's normative privilege. Moreover, the karmic sensibility enjoys somewhat surprising support from postmodern quarters, where anti-humanism tends to be strong. These emerging trends, even when articulated by scientists, have also been associated with a decline in scientific meliorism. Against all this, I argue for a reassertion of the anthropic perspective, mainly by suggesting how monotheists and positivists may join to reinstate the collective project of humanity. A crucial part of the strategy is to regard participation in science as a civic obligation, if not (à la Comte) a religious service. (shrink)

This article takes a ‘naturalistic’ look at the historically changing nature of the individual and its implications for the terms on which democracy might be realized, starting from classical Athens, moving through early debates in evolutionary theory, to contemporary moral and political thought. Generally speaking, liberal democracy sees individuality as the mark of an evolutionarily mature species, whereas socialist democracy sees it as the mark of an evolutionary immature species. Overall, the individual has been ‘de-naturalized’ over time, resulting (...) in the indeterminate figure who thrives in the post-truth condition. (shrink)

This article takes a ‘naturalistic’ look at the historically changing nature of the individual and its implications for the terms on which democracy might be realized, starting from classical Athens, moving through early debates in evolutionary theory, to contemporary moral and political thought. Generally speaking, liberal democracy sees individuality as the mark of an evolutionarily mature species, whereas socialist democracy sees it as the mark of an evolutionary immature species. Overall, the individual has been ‘de-naturalized’ over time, resulting (...) in the indeterminate figure who thrives in the post-truth condition. (shrink)

In Sonic Virtuality: Sound as Emergent Perception, authors Mark Grimshaw and Tom Garner introduce a novel theory that positions sound within a framework of virtuality. Arguing against the acoustic or standard definition of sound as a sound wave, the book builds a case for a sonic aggregate as the virtual cloud of potentials created by perceived sound. The authors build on their recent work investigating the nature and perception of sound as used in computer games and virtual environments, and (...) put forward a unique argument that sound is a fundamentally virtual phenomenon.Grimshaw and Garner propose a new, fuller and more complete, definition of sound based on a perceptual view of sound that accounts more fully for cognition, emotion, and the wider environment. The missing facet is the virtuality: the idea that all sound arises from a sonic aggregate made up of actual and virtual sonic phenomena. The latter is a potential that depends upon human cognition and emotion for its realization as sound. This thesis is explored through a number of philosophical, cognitive, and psychological concepts including: issues of space, self, sonosemantics, the uncanny, hyper-realism, affect, Gettier problems, belief, alief, imagination, and sound perception in the absence of sound sensation.Provocative and original, Grimshaw and Garner's ideas have broader implications for our relationship to technology, our increasingly digital lives, and the nature of our being within our supposed realities. Students and academics from philosophy to acoustics and across the broad spectrum of digital humanities will find this accessible book full of challenging concepts and provocative ideas. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Sharing God’s Company: A Theology of the Communion of Saints by David Matzko McCarthyMark RyanSharing God’s Company: A Theology of the Communion of Saints By David Matzko McCarthy GRAND RAPIDS: WILLIAM B. EERDMANS, 2012. 182 PP. $28.00What is the meaning of “communion” as it occurs in Christian references to the “Communion of Saints”? It clearly implies a particular social bond, but of what sort? David Matzko McCarthy observes (...) that recent attempts to account [End Page 192] for the saints and Christians’ relations with them tend to thin out the meaning of communion. Modern approaches turn saints into exemplars intended to inspire us as we live within egalitarian, leveled societies, whereas postmodern approaches turn the lives of the saints into texts, subject to interpretive play. In both approaches the possibility of real relationship is left behind as the saints become subservient to our modern sensibilities. What McCarthy seeks to revive is substantial, real relationships with saints that can draw us out of ourselves.In chapters 1 and 2 McCarthy uses the family to indicate the strong bonds signified by the Communion of Saints (COS)—bonds that respond to our “social desire.” The COS extends such kinship across time and space, without banishing ordinary time and particular places. Yet the kind of social tie embodied in the COS has been rendered a problem by our modern biases with regard to knowledge, representation, and social life—in short, our sense of reality. If we are to enrich our participation in the COS, McCarthy implies, we must work the metaphysical ground to make it a little more hospitable to the lives of the saints. The remaining chapters consider how the reality embodied in the COS challenges modern sensibilities with regard to what is real. They do so by allowing literary and visual representations of the saints—in hagiography, scripture, statues, and painting—to interrogate modern forms of representation and the assumptions about reality and time that underlie these forms.McCarthy uses Beverly Donofrio’s Looking for Mary to exemplify the trajectory of his book. Donofrio weaves together her own life and her pilgrimage to Medjugorge with the story of Mary from the Annunciation to the present day. Of particular importance, she narrates a transformation whereby her personal stories are engrafted into the life of Mary, rather than the other way around. In this, her story illustrates how Mary becomes the key agent in de-centering the author’s life as an autonomous agent, and resituating it in the COS with Mary as her patron and route. It shows the difference between an approach to the saints that domesticates them for use in our world and one where we surrender and become part of theirs.McCarthy’s previous work is notable for its concern with family and neighborhood as the practical context, or “home,” for the Christian life. In this book, “the question of home goes deeper. Does our life together here and now have any connection to the course of things and to life as a whole?” (8) In his introduction to the inaugural issue of the Journal of Moral Theology, which he edits, he mapped out the terrain of moral theology between “hyper-enchantment,” which seeks a magic bullet for modern ills, and impersonal mechanism, which posits a “nature” abstracted from human meanings. In this book, he begins to present a fuller vision of this terrain in the form of a kinship that stretches across time and place. As he writes, “The saints and their lives embody an [End Page 193] incarnational reality; they populate the borderlands between the future and now, there and here, and heaven and earth. … They bring ordinary life and people into a real experience of communitas” (53).The book is relevant to Christian ethics, then, because of its account of what we want most, and the moral ecology in which such desire could be at home. It is tempting to treat the COS as an optional “extra” to be added to the “factory model” of moral goodness in the Christian life. McCarthy’s exceptional gift is displayed in showing us how ordinary and basic is our desire to be part... (shrink)

The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius are treasured today--as they have been over the centuries--as an inexhaustible source of wisdom. And as one of the three most important expressions of Stoicism, this is an essential text for everyone interested in ancient religion and philosophy. Yet the clarity and ease of the work's style are deceptive. Pierre Hadot, eminent historian of ancient thought, uncovers new levels of meaning and expands our understanding of its underlying philosophy. Written by the Roman emperor for his (...) own private guidance and self-admonition, the Meditations set forth principles for living a good and just life. Hadot probes Marcus Aurelius's guidelines and convictions and discerns the hitherto unperceived conceptual system that grounds them. Abundantly quoting the Meditations to illustrate his analysis, the author allows Marcus Aurelius to speak directly to the reader. And Hadot unfolds for us the philosophical context of the Meditations, commenting on the philosophers Marcus Aurelius read and giving special attention to the teachings of Epictetus, whose disciple he was. The soul, the guiding principle within us, is in Marcus Aurelius's Stoic philosophy an inviolable stronghold of freedom, the "inner citadel." This spirited and engaging study of his thought offers a fresh picture of the fascinating philosopher-emperor, a fuller understanding of the tradition and doctrines of Stoicism, and rich insight on the culture of the Roman empire in the second century. Pierre Hadot has been working on Marcus Aurelius for more than twenty years; in this book he distills his analysis and conclusions with extraordinary lucidity for the general reader. (shrink)

HLA Hart and Joseph Raz are usually interpreted as being fundamentally opposed to Lon Fuller’s argument in The Morality of Law that the principles of the rule of law are of moral value. Hart and Raz are thought to make the ‘instrumental objection’, which says that these principles are of no moral value because they are actually principles derived from reflection on how to best allow the law to guide behaviour. Recently, many theorists have come to Fuller’s defence (...) against Hart and Raz, refuting the ‘instrumental objection’ and affirming the non-instrumental moral value of conformity to the principles of legality. This article argues that although this moral value should be affirmed, the orthodox view is incorrect, because Hart and Raz never understood their arguments about the instrumental or ‘purposive’ value of the principles of legality as denials of their moral value, as a close reading of their work shows. (shrink)

Why does the air-target and its associated practices matter? This special section is about the politics, practices and ethics surrounding the target and efforts to subvert or circumvent them. Since Eyal Weizman’s groundbreaking essay on the ‘politics of verticality’ in 2002, there have been numerous attempts to critically open up the aerial gaze, but rarely have they come together for sustained analysis and critique, to explore the implications of the air-target’s techniques, processes, visual cultures and aesthetics for politics and life (...) itself. This special section brings together leading international experts in order to open out a fuller and more complete analysis of the kinds of tensions of verticality that lie at the heart of today’s warfare, security and politics. This introduction outlines three dominant problematics of the air-target, which the articles in the section will go on to explore in more detail. (shrink)

When Bloor's Knowledge and Social Imagery was first published in 1976, it was not the first time that a “strong programme” in the sociology of knowledge was treated to a hostile reception by philosophers. But never before has such a dialectically unproductive encounter with philosophers led to such a methodologically fruitful response, for, when an array of positivist, historicist, Popperian, and realist philosophers argued against Bloor and his Edinburgh colleagues that normative accounts of scientific rationality could not be refuted by (...) empirical accounts of what scientists do, an entire line of research was launched that sought to explain science without having to make reference to the philosophers' cherished norms. This is the field now known as Science and Technology Studies. Although STS is normally taken to be intellectually centered in sociology, its main practitioners are just as likely to have been drawn from philosophy and the natural sciences as from the social sciences proper. The unmistakable mark of Bloor's influence is that, unlike the sociology of science most recognizable to sociologists, the STS practitioner is committed to studying science in the same spirit of analytic detachment and epistemic neutrality as she would any other aspect of society. In practice, this has amounted to a preference for methods that incorporate “ethnographic distance”, although in recent years theoretical debate has increasingly focused on the appropriate attitude that STS practitioners should adopt toward science, given their findings to date. I will return to this debate at the end of this essay. (shrink)

This book aims to present a richer alternative to the popular conception of freedom as the power to choose by giving an account of freedom in Schiller, Schelling, and Hegel. Despite my points of criticism (especially with regard to moral responsibility and the freedom to do evil), the contributions of the book are significant. By posing and developing the question of the relationship between freedom and actuality, Schindler introduces a problem that any complete account of freedom must address. At the (...) same time, Schindler provides us with a useful framework for relating Schelling and Hegel on freedom. Finally, the book gives an overview of the potential richness that a fuller conception of freedom provides. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Educational Imperative: A Defense of Socratic and Aesthetic LearningMark StockerThe Educational Imperative: A Defense of Socratic and Aesthetic Learning, by Peter Abbs; x & 250 pp. Bristol, Pennsylvania: Taylor & Francis, 1994, $29.00 paper.O tempora! o mores! Peter Abbs begins by deploring “the cultural catastrophe” of British education in the mid-1990s. He states in his always lucid and accessible prose: “I want to come clean; I want (...) to place the general argument of the book in the current arena of public debate, and to do so without apology and without equivocation.” He bemoans today’s massive denial of spiritual energy, of intellectual enquiry, of aesthetic beauty and public virtue. In a better world, he says, education would serve, “willingly and lovingly... the transcendent ends” of culture and society. Abbs decisively rejects the “Cato” model where teachers are unquestioning skill-based technicians who employ [End Page 393] “managerial” language. Instead, he advocates a Socratic view, which is “to reaffirm that education should be primarily concerned with critical reflection, with personal development and with the sustained enquiry into the various forms of meaning.”Subsequent chapters apply this approach to the arts curriculum. Its failure to gain proper recognition and the absurd and continued conflation of Dance and Physical Education are indicted. Abbs convincingly attacks the notion of “self-expression” in art and language long upheld by educationalists. Its application at the expense of reason, abstract thinking, and the study of “the truly significant writers through the centuries” has in his view helped to trivialize and to marginalize the arts. Nowhere is this more apparent than in so-called “educational drama.” For three generations it has denied “the aesthetic field of drama, the symbolic field of its own form,” and has elevated one genre, improvisation, and made it the totality.Abbs is committed to reconciling “the creative energies of the individual and the creative energies of the culture.” Who would argue with that? And who could deny the value of critical reflection or indeed public virtue? He declares, rather ponderously: “The vested interests of Coca-Cola manufacturers or political missionaries have to be seen as too ‘recent and relevant’ to be allowed” to shape education. The Abbs academy requires “a formally protected place, an institutional space more like the theatre than Tesco [a supermarket chain], more like the cathedral than the Stock Exchange.” For all this patent seriousness and sincerity, here is an educationalist irrevocably and irreconcilably out of joint with the present. The austere modernism of Herbert Read profoundly influenced Abbs in his teens; he also admires F. R. Leavis, Richard Hoggart, and David Holbrook, whose writing at its most influential spans the 1930s and the 1960s. Abbs’s most recent source of inspiration is the art critic Peter Fuller, whose abiding legacy was a romantic nationalism that eloquently celebrated an “essentially symbolic and figurative” tradition in British art from J. M. W. Turner to Henry Moore.Modern Painters, which Fuller edited, could afford to eschew popular culture and its connections with “higher” arts. Fine for a periodical, but how could such a fastidious approach be applied to the classroom experience? Abbs describes an experiment that he performed on student-teachers at the University of Sussex to understand their aesthetic responses. Among the events and objects that the students were asked to consider were John Constable’s The Haywain, Richard Strauss’s The Four Last Songs, a visit to Claude Monet’s garden and a performance of Coriolanus. Abbs’s list does not, however, contain Pulp Fiction, a Courtney Love concert, or an S. E. Hinton novel. What place, if any, do the latter have in the arts curriculum? Must they be ruled out for being too “recent and relevant”? Can student responses to them be brought to bear on their comprehension of higher culture? Or is there a great and ultimately irreconcilable divide? Abbs never faces these issues and instead, in his fogyish [End Page 394] coda, denounces once more “the consumer society” which has “trivialized on an unprecedented scale” and has “tarnished whatever it has touched.”Mark StockerUniversity of Canterbury, New ZealandCopyright © 1995 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

In the last decade, experimental philosophers have documented systematic asymmetries in the attributions of mental attitudes to agents who produce different types of side effects. We argue that this effect is driven not simply by the violation of a norm, but by salient-norm violation. As evidence for this hypothesis, we present two new studies in which two conflicting norms are present, and one or both of them is raised to salience. Expanding one’s view to these additional cases presents, we argue, (...) a fuller conception of the side-effect effect, which can be reversed by reversing which norm is salient. (shrink)

Increasingly artists have become political activists. Their work has taken on the shape of a criminal investigator. Where does this turn toward forensics come from? How do we understand it as a aesthetic practice? The words investigative and aesthetics seem like an uneasy match. But this book claims that expanded aesthetic practices can powerfully reshape our approach to the question of truth. Shifts in technology and new ways of thinking together offer a means of searching for facts and understanding them (...) anew. This book proposes that the current period is defined by new forms of "aesthetic power" composed both by sensing, detection and prediction and the torrential proliferation of images and data. To evade and oppose this form of state-corporate domination we can learn to join the dots between traces within our interwoven digital, built and natural environments. Investigative aesthetics can also enable new collaborative forms of verification. Rather than rely on official expertise it calls for an open process that combines the perspectives of communities exposed to state or corporate violence with those of artists, activists and scientists. This new practice takes place equally in the field, the art studio as in the scientific laboratory, online and in the streets, as it strives towards the construction of a new "common sensing". (shrink)

Devastation -- Anguish -- Irresolvability -- Luck -- Plant -- Home -- Coda.

Race and nationality.--Ancients and moderns.--Liberty.--Ultimate facts in economics.--Auto-suggestion.--Nervous tri-unity.--The laws of the mind.--The brain as a laboratory.--Time and space.--Vocabulary and grammar.--Logic.--Motives and feelings.--Free will, trial, and choice.--The foundations of morality.--The development of art.--Amusement.

Are 'the people' too ignorant or stupid to rule? Commentators are beginning to seriously argue that the answer might be 'yes.' In this take-no-prisoners book, Roslyn Fuller shows how many thinkers have embraced the idea that there can be 'too much democracy,' and deftly unravels their attempts to end majority rule.

Vernon Sternberg of the S.I.U Press was responsible for bringing out the first edition of this collection of occasional pieces. In addition to the title piece, written in 1940, it includes other blank verses: “Machine Tools,” 1940; “The Historical Attempt by Man to Convert His Evolution from a Subjective to an Objective Process,” 1948; “Universal Requirements of a Dwelling Advantage,” 1917–62; “The Fuller Research Foundation,” 1946–51; A Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Science,” 1956; and two prose essays with geometrical diagrams and (...) tables, “Introduction to Omnidirectional Halo,” 1959, and “omnidirectional Halo,” 1960. I once asked Fuller whether No More Secondhand God meant secondhand as in clothes or second hand as in watch? He seemed bemused by the question and answered with a casualness I found suspect—”Now that you mention it,” he said, “I suppose both.” Description by Ed Applewhite, courtesy of The Estate of Buckminster Fuller. (shrink)

'Machiavelli's Legacy' situates Machiavelli in general and 'The Prince' in particular at the birth of modernity. Joining the conversation with established Machiavelli scholars are political theorists, Americanists, and international relations scholars, ensuring a diversity of viewpoints and approaches.

Nietzschean Meditations takes its inspiration from the version of Nietzsche that was popular before the Second World War, which stressed the 'Zarathustrian' elements of his thought as the harbinger of a new sort of being - the Ubermensch. The book updates the image of this creature to present a version of 'transhumanism' that breaks with the more precautionary and pessimistic approaches of humanity's future in contemporary 'posthumanist' thought. Fuller follows Nietzsche in discussing deeply and frankly the challenging issues that (...) aspiring transhumanists face. They include their philosophical and especially theological roots, the implications of transhumanism for matters of life and death, and whether any traces of classical humanity will remain in the 'transhuman' being. (shrink)

Traces the impact of Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" on a diverse group of writers, abolitionists, and social reformers, including Henry David Thoreau and Bronson Alcott, against a backdrop of growing tensions and transcendental idealism in 1860 America.

Developing directly from Fuller's recent book Humanity 2.0, this is the first book to seriously consider what a 'post-' or 'trans'-' human state of being might mean for who we think we are, how we live, what we believe and what we aim to be.

We argue that the interaction of biased media coverage and widespread employment of the recognition heuristic can produce epistemic injustices. First, we explain the recognition heuristic as studied by Gerd Gigerenzer and colleagues, highlighting how some of its components are largely external to, and outside the control of, the cognitive agent. We then connect the recognition heuristic with recent work on the hypotheses of embedded, extended, and scaffolded cognition, arguing that the recognition heuristic is best understood as an instance of (...) scaffolded cognition. In section three, we consider the double-edged sword of cognitive scaffolding. On the one hand, scaffolds can reduce the internal processing demands on cognitive agents while increasing their access to information. On the other hand, the use of scaffolding leaves cognitive agents increasingly vulnerable to forming false beliefs or failing to form beliefs at all about particular topics. With respect to the recognition heuristic, agents rely on third parties (such as the media) to report not just what’s true but also what’s important or valuable. This makes cognitive agents relying on these third parties vulnerable to two erroneous influences: 1) because they don’t recognize something, it isn’t important or valuable, and 2) because they do recognize something, it is important or valuable. Call the latter the Kardashian Inference and the former the Darfur Inference. In section four, we use Fricker’s (2007) concept of epistemic injustice to characterize the nature and harm of these false inferences, with special emphasis on the Darfur Inference. In section five, we use data-mining and an empirical study to show how Gigerenzer’s population estimation task is liable to produce Darfur Inferences. We conclude with some speculative remarks on more important Darfur Inferences, and how to avoid them by scaffolding better. One primary way to accomplish this it to shift the burden of embodying the virtue of epistemic justice from the hearer or consumer of media to the media themselves. (shrink)

(2013). Is scientific theory change similar to early cognitive development? Gopnik on science and childhood. Philosophical Psychology: Vol. 26, No. 1, pp. 109-128. doi: 10.1080/09515089.2011.625114.

This book offers a systematic framework for thinking about the relationship between language and technology and an argument for interweaving thinking about technology with thinking about language. The main claim of philosophy of technology—that technologies are not mere tools and artefacts not mere things, but crucially and significantly shape what we perceive, do, and are—is re-thought in a way that accounts for the role of language in human technological experiences and practices. Engaging with work by Wittgenstein, Heidegger, McLuhan, Searle, Ihde, (...) Latour, Ricoeur, and many others, the author critically responds to, and constructs a synthesis of, three "extreme", idealtype, untenable positions: only humans speak and neither language nor technologies speak, only language speaks and neither humans nor technologies speak, and only technology speaks and neither humans nor language speak. The construction of this synthesis goes hand in hand with a narrative about subjects and objects that become entangled and constitute one another. Using Words and Things thus draws in central discussions from other subdisciplines in philosophy, such as philosophy of language, epistemology, and metaphysics, to offer an original theory of the relationship between language and technology centered on use, performance, and narrative, and taking a transcendental turn. (shrink)