In this chapter, the author's unplanned venture into public philosophy began in the mid‐to‐late 1980s, just as Ronald Reagan was insisting that a certain famous wall be torn down. Various European thinkers and political philosophers in America, along with a few people working in the author's own tradition, like Robert Nozick and Peter Singer, had already begun to work in the nascent movement of “applied philosophy,” and in a public way. The author's early work in philosophy had been solidly within (...) the analytical tradition, with a special interest in religion, focused mainly on metaphysics and, secondarily, epistemological issues. Public philosophy can be rekindled in our time by any number of means and across a wide variety of topics. Many of the philosophers who had the biggest public impact in their own time and into our own have been good storytellers, and some have used the power of humor well. (shrink)

Philosophy at its best is an activity more than a body of knowledge. In an ancient sense, done right, it is a healing art. It’s intellectual self-defense. It’s a form of therapy. But it’s also much more. Philosophy is map-making for the soul, cartography for the human journey. It’s an important navigational tool for life that too many modern people try to do without. _Philosophy For Dummies_ is for anyone who has ever entertained a question about life and this world. (...) In a conversational tone, the book's author – a modern-day scholar and lecturer – brings the greatest wisdom of the past into the challenges that we face now. This refreshingly different guide explains philosophical fundamentals and explores some of the strangest and deepest questions ever posed to human beings, such as How do we know anything? What does the word _good_ mean? Are we ever really free? Do human beings have souls? Is there life after death? Is there a God? Is happiness really possible in our world? This book is chock full of all those questions you may have long wanted to think about and talk with someone about, but have never had the time or opportunity to tackle head on. _Philosophy For Dummies_ invites you to discuss the issues you find in the guide, share perspectives, and compare thoughts and feelings with someone you respect. You'll find lots of material to mull over with your friends or spouse, including thoughts on When to doubt, and when to doubt our doubts The universal demand for evidence and proof The four dimensions of human experience Arguments for materialism Fear of the process of dying Prayers and small miracles Moral justification for allowing evil The ancient philosopher Socrates thought that, when it comes to the Ultimate Questions, we all start off as dummies. But if we are humbly aware of how little we actually know, then we can really begin to learn. _Philosophy For Dummies_ will put you on the path to wising up as you steer through the experience called life. (shrink)

Fanden Sie Philosophie eigentlich schon immer interessant, aber haben sich nie so recht herangetraut? Dann ist dies das Buch für Sie! "Philosophie für Dummies" ist eine Einführung in die Gedanken große Denker, aber vor allem auch eine Ermunterung, sich selbst Gedanken zu machen - über den Sinn des Lebens, ethische Vorstellungen, die Frage, was wir überhaupt wissen können... Der Leser erfährt: * Was Philosophie überhaupt ist, und dass sie eine Menge mit Ihrem Alltag zu tun haben kann * Wissenswertes über (...) die wichtigsten philosophischen Disziplinen wie z.B. Ethik oder Erkenntnistheorie * Welche wichtigsten Philosophen es gibt und was ihre Thesen sind * Welche die wichtigsten philosophischen "Instrumente" sind. (shrink)

The Board of Directors of Vermilion Iron Mining Company was faced with a difficult decision. Since the early 1900s Vermilion operated in the tiny town of Ely, Minnesota. In 1967 Vermilion abandoned its operations in Ely due to the increased cost to mine hematite deep within the ore fields. Vermilion’s departure from Ely was economically devastating to the town. Recent research found that it was now possible to extract the remaining hematite in Ely’s ore fields and the option to return (...) to the mines of Ely was on the table with the Board of Directors of Vermilion. However, the hematite supply would only last for three to four years. Should Vermilion return to Ely to mine the remaining hematite for the sake of the shareholders or should they consider the potential impacts on the town and other stakeholders? (shrink)

The Board of Directors of Vermilion Iron Mining Company was faced with a difficult decision. Since the early 1900s Vermilion operated in the tiny town of Ely, Minnesota. In 1967 Vermilion abandoned its operations in Ely due to the increased cost to mine hematite (high grade iron ore) deep within the ore fields. Vermilion’s departure from Ely was economically devastating to the town. Recent research (2008) found that it was now possible to extract the remaining hematite in Ely’s ore fields (...) and the option to return to the mines of Ely was on the table with the Board of Directors of Vermilion. However, the hematite supply would only last for three to four years. Should Vermilion return to Ely to mine the remaining hematite for the sake of the shareholders or should they consider the potential impacts on the town and other stakeholders? (shrink)

Causal models of agents have been used to analyse the safety aspects of machine learning systems. But identifying agents is non-trivial -- often the causal model is just assumed by the modeler without much justification -- and modelling failures can lead to mistakes in the safety analysis. This paper proposes the first formal causal definition of agents -- roughly that agents are systems that would adapt their policy if their actions influenced the world in a different way. From this we (...) derive the first causal discovery algorithm for discovering agents from empirical data, and give algorithms for translating between causal models and game-theoretic influence diagrams. We demonstrate our approach by resolving some previous confusions caused by incorrect causal modelling of agents. (shrink)

Despite an assumption that Christchurch — the Garden City of New Zealand — has historically been viewed as the manifestation of a utopian dream, the experiences of the city's gardeners reveal a variety of sentiments about the meaning of gardens. Hillside gardeners, in particular, tended to see their gardens and their place in them in very different ways from their counterparts on the flat. These hillside gardens were places that allowed for an explicit appreciation of internationalism, localism, and an often (...) spiritual connection with the world at large. They were `celestial', paradisical, and I therefore argue that tropes of utopias and paradise may sit uneasily with each other in colonial discourse. This point requires further attention from historians. (shrink)

This paper uses George Ritzer’s account of McDonaldization – the socially transformative process of rationalization – to undertake a critical analysis of agri-environment schemes, the dominant form of on-farm nature conservation in England. Drawing on a wide range of evidence, including social surveys of the participants and non-participants of agri-environment schemes, government files, and interviews with government officials, the four key dimensions of McDonaldization – efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control (through non-human technologies) – are applied to the analysis of agri-environment (...) schemes. The irrationalities emerging from a McDonaldized approach to nature conservation are discussed together with their implications for farmers, nature, and society. In conclusion, the paper points to the emergence of alternative models of on-farm nature conservation that may offer ways of resisting and displacing the McDonaldized version. (shrink)

"Offering integrated coverage of both digital and computer design, this text offers well-organized, concise, yet comprehensive content, presented from a contemporary engineering viewpoint. Understanding of the material is supported by clear explanations and a progressive development of examples ranging from sample combinatorial applications to a CISC architecture built upon a RISC core. A thorough coverage of traditional topics is combined with increased attention to computer-aided design, problem formulation, solution verification, and the building of problem-solving skills."--BOOK JACKET.

Introduction: the use and abuse of Thomas Paine in the transatlantic world / Sam Edwards and Marcus Morris -- Part I. The image and idea(s) of Paine: origins, use and reuse -- The image of Tom: Paine in print and portraiture / W.A. Speck -- "I am made to say what I never wrote": deism, spiritualism and ventriloquizing Paine, c.1790s-1850s / Patrick W. Hughes -- All Paine: the American mind and the creation of the League of Nations and the (...) U.N. / Michael Holm -- The distortion of Thomas Paine's philosophy of government / Gary Berton -- Part II. Discovering and using Paine's radicalism -- "Revolutions are the order of the day": Atlantic fragments of Thomas Paine, c.1819-1832 / Matteo Battistini -- Posthumous Paine in the United Kingdom, 1809-1832: Jacobin or loyalist cult? / Matthew Roberts -- "The neglect of Paine seems particularly strange at the present political juncture": explaining British socialists' relationship to Paine, c. 1884-1914 / Marcus Morris -- Citizens of the world: Paine and the political prisoners transported to Australia / Tony Moore -- Part III. Remembering and remaking Paine -- Common sense on the Lower East Side: Thomas Paine and the era of immigration, c.1900-1950 / Louis Mazzari -- "A monument in every city?": Thomas Paine in memoriam / Theodore Marotta -- "He came from America didn't he?": the Thetford Statue controversy and the problem of Paine in transatlantic memory, c.1909-1970 / Sam Edwards -- Afterword: the struggle for Paine's memory and the making of American democracy / Harvey J. Kaye. (shrink)

This paper offers a qualified defense of Terry Horgan’s view of brute, inexplicable supervenience theses as physically unacceptable—as having no place in physicalist metaphysics—and his corresponding emphasis on the importance of “superdupervenience”, metaphysical supervenience that can be explained in a “materialistically acceptable” way. I argue, in response to Tom Polger, that it may be possible to ground the physical unacceptability of brute supervenience in its relation physically unacceptable properties supervening on physical properties; moreover, I argue that Horgan’s emphasis on the (...) need for superdupervenience cannot be rejected as unreasonably demanding for the reasons that Polger offers. I furthermore respond to Jessica Wilson’s reasons for thinking that superdupervenience is neither necessary nor sufficient for physical acceptability. Reflection on these topics helps to bring out several issues about the role of supervenience in physicalist metaphysics and ultimately a problem that any supervenience-based approach to physicalism may face. (shrink)

It has often been thought that compositional variation across systems that are similar from the point of view of the special sciences provides a key point in favor of the multiple realization of special science kinds and in turn the broadly nonreductive consequences often thought to follow from multiple realization. Yet in a series of articles, and culminating in The Multiple Realization Book, Tom Polger and Larry Shapiro argue that an account of multiple realization demanding enough to yield such nonreductive (...) consequences implies that compositional variation is far less significant for the multiple realization of special science kinds than many have supposed. I argue, in contrast, that even on this demanding account, lower-level compositional variation may frequently support the multiple realization of special science kinds across the systems of interest, and that there is a good explanation for where Polger and Shapiro go wrong in drawing the contrary conclusion. I consider but reject Carl Gillett’s claim that different views about the significance of compositional variation for multiple realization phenomena should be traced to implicit disagreement about the metaphysics of realization. (shrink)

Herein I engage with the very difficult question of whether the duty to aid (sometimes called a duty of assistance or a duty of beneficence) extends so far as to justify harming persons, perhaps even lethally, in order to protect wild animals. I argue that this question is not nearly as settled as our intuitions may suggest and that Shelly Kagan’s arguments on Defending Animals, contained in his book How to Count Animals, More or Less, provide a rich substrate in (...) which to cultivate ideas on this subject (2019, pp. 248–279). My intuition is that killing a person, even one ‘guilty’ of trying to kill an animal for sport or leisure, is far beyond what a duty to aid can command, though admittedly I find my own intuition somewhat morally dumbfounding. I argue further that Tom Regan’s ‘worse-off principle’ may ease the ever-uncomfortable sense of moral dumbfounding by providing a surer foundation for the intuitive sense that we cannot ethically go so far as to threaten a person with lethal force in defense of nonhuman animals. (shrink)

Freud’s fascination with the ruins of ancient Rome was an element in the formation and development of psychology. This article concerns the intersection of psychoanalysis with archaeology and history in the study of that city. Its substantive content is an analysis of the life and career of Andrea Carandini, the best-known Roman archaeologist of the past 40 years. He has said and written much about his changing views of himself and about what he is trying to do in his approach (...) to the recuperation of the Roman past. His scholarly publications and autobiographical testimonies are at the core of this article. After an early commitment to Marxism that ended in disenchantment and a crisis in his personal life, Carandini spent a decade undergoing psychoanalysis with the Chilean-born expatriate Ignacio Matte-Blanco. The latter gained a following as a theorist who built upon Freud’s ideas about the unconscious by producing a set of mathematically inspired concepts concerning the workings of temporality in human history in which emotional intuition took priority over the rational(izing) logic of empiricism. Much influenced by his psychoanalyst, Carandini developed a highly personal approach to the writing of archaeology and history. These writings are explored here in terms of Roman historiography, and in the wider arena of formulations of how the past is to be addressed and written about. (shrink)

Two complete eBooks for one low price! Created and compiled by the publisher, this Philosophy & Ethics bundle brings together two important titles in one, e-only bundle. With this special bundle, you’ll get the complete text of the following two titles: _Philosophy For Dummies_ _Philosophy For Dummies_ is for anyone who has ever entertained a question about life and this world. In a conversational tone, the book's author – a modern-day scholar and lecturer – brings the greatest wisdom of the (...) past into the challenges that we face now. This refreshingly different guide explains philosophical fundamentals and explores some of the strangest and deepest questions ever posed to human beings, such as: How do we know anything? What does the word _good_ mean? Are we ever really free? Do human beings have souls? Is there life after death? Is there a God? Is happiness really possible in our world? _Ethics For Dummies_ An easy-to-grasp guide to addressing the principles of ethics and applying them to daily life How do you define "good" versus "evil?" Do you know the difference between moral "truth" and moral relativity? Whether or not you know Aristotle from Hume, _Ethics For Dummies_ will get you comfortable with the centuries-old study of ethical philosophy quickly and effectively! _Ethics For Dummies_ is a practical, friendly guide that takes the headache out of the often-confusing subject of ethics. In plain English, it examines the controversial facets of ethical thought, explores the problem of evil, demystifies the writings and theories of such great thinkers through the ages as Aristotle, Confucius, Descartes, Kant, Nietzsche, and so much more. You’ll learn how to apply the concepts and theories of ethical philosophy to your everyday life. Whether you're currently enrolled in an ethics course or are interested in living a good life but are vexed with ethical complexities_, Ethics For Dummies_ has you covered! About the Author of _Philosophy For Dummies_ Tom Morris, Ph.D., author of True Success and other books, taught philosophy at Notre Dame University for 15 years and currently heads the Morris Institute for Human Values. About the Authors of _Ethics For Dummies_ Christopher Panza, PhD, is an associate professor of philosophy at Drury University and coauthor of Existentialism For Dummies. Adam Potthast, PhD, is an assistant professor of philosophy at Missouri University of Science and Technology. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:White Collar Zen: Using Zen Principles to Overcome Obstacles and Achieve Your Career GoalsCarol S. GouldWhite Collar Zen: Using Zen Principles to Overcome Obstacles and Achieve Your Career Goals. By Steven Heine. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Pp. ix + 198.In these days of corporate corruption, downsizing, and outsourcing, not to mention the continuous cutbacks in the Academy, it is no surprise that people are open to (...) unconventional ways of looking at life and work. Several years ago, Epicurus became a best-selling author in Italy, and more recently we have seen philosophical approaches from authors such as Alain de Botton (Consolations of Philosophy), Lou Marinoff (Plato, Not Prozac), and Tom Morris (If Aristotle Ran General Motors), to name a few. Steven Heine's White Collar Zen: Using Zen Principles to Overcome Obstacles and Achieve Your Career Goals applies as well to the academic as to the corporate workplace.Heine has written White Collar Zen from the standpoint of a scholar of Buddhism and a professional academic administrator. That he has been extremely successful [End Page 123] at both should make one take a serious look at this book. Given the indifference of both institutions and the natural world to human suffering (think of Enron and Hurricane Katrina), we all need survival skills, and Heine shows us how we can acquire them in our professional lives by applying Zen philosophy. While his expressed purpose is not to illuminate the subtleties of Zen, the attentive nonspecialist reader can glean much about the tradition nonetheless and, like the Zen specialist, find new paths for navigating around the foxholes in organizations.Zen, as Heine points out, infiltrated American culture over one hundred years ago and has made its way into subcultures beyond the American-Japanese, for example the worlds of psychotherapy, the arts, medicine, and even some of the more liberal branches of Judaism and Christianity. In case a novice feels unprepared to use Zen for success, Heine points out that Zen has great flexibility, that it is not orthodoxy. "Discover your own way... of 'being Zen,"' he tells us (p. 10).While it might seem clear that Zen could foster creativity, introspection, and self-understanding, the philosophical reader might raise two questions about using Zen to achieve worldly power. First, how can Zen, with its well-known requirement for periods of solitude, be a guide in the workplace? Second, is this endeavor consistent with the Zen principles that the ego is a mirage and that desires are fruitless?Heine does not explicitly address these matters as problems, but the reader will find them resolved by the end of the book. Do not be deceived by his informal tone or his hip references to the likes of Bob Dylan. The logic of this book is carefully mapped out. As for the first issue, Heine demonstrates that the sort of isolation prescribed by Zen makes us more fit for organizational life. With regard to the second, human life, according to Zen, is a series of constantly vanishing moments. Success is simply survival and gaining the ability to be in each moment fully. The Zen philosophy, like the Heraclitean, does not shy away from the inconsistencies to which reflection leads us. Thus, Zen does not require that we resolve the tension between the twin needs for solitude and life with others. White Collar Zen is a guide to accepting this fact without anxiety.The self, according to Zen, is not an atomic individual, but something constantly in flux and part of a whole. Everything is Buddha nature, and meditation is the way to discover it. The Unmoving Mind is the state within each of us that can transcend the perspective of our own desires, peculiarities, interests, and ego. To look at events from the standpoint of the Unmoving Mind is to look at them from a higher perspective. It gives one tremendous freedom to choose wisely, because this cleanses the self of petty resentments. When a conflict can be resolved in a way that benefits everyone, each individual will benefit. When one is glued to one's own vantage point, it is difficult to want to act for the benefit... (shrink)

The fear of death resists philosophical attempts at reconciliation. Building on theories of emotion, I argue that we can understand our fear as triggered by a de se mode of thinking about death which comes into conflict with our will to live. The discursive mode of philosophy may help us to avoid the de se mode of thinking about death, but it does not satisfactorily address the problem. I focus instead on the voluntary diminishment of one’s will to live. I (...) argue that we can encourage a natural tendency for the will to live to decline as we approach death. I then consider two objections: Is not the will to live too fundamental for us to control? And even if we can control it, would not a declining will to live result in a general despair that it is better to resist? I argue that both of these objections can be overcome. (shrink)

This article describes three utopian attempts to ameliorate the negative effects of income inequality that are less revolutionary than those of More and Bellamy. Rather than dispensing with money or gold, these three utopias modify existing institutions with the aim of lopping off the extremes of both wealth and poverty without upending the entire social and economic structure. Discussion includes Theodor Hertzka’s _Freeland_ (1891), Theodor Herzl’s _Altneuland: The Old New Land_ (1902), and H. G. Wells’s _A Modern Utopia_ (1905). The (...) three utopias provide potential solutions by undercutting causes of poverty and intergenerational wealth accumulation rather than by economic leveling, and by stressing a fresh start for each generation. The primary tools in this effort are education, universal healthcare, a safety net of basic income, fiscal transparency, confiscatory estate taxes, and common ownership of land. (shrink)

Research into esports is proliferating (Bányai et al. 2019; Pizzo et al. 2022; Reitman et al. 2020) and now covers a variety of academic disciplines, including business and management (Scholz 2019)...

To be acquainted with something (in the philosophical sense of “acquainted” discussed here) is to be directly aware of it. The idea that we are acquainted with certain things we experience has been discussed throughout the history of Western Philosophy, but in the early 20th century it gained especially focused attention among analytic philosophers who drew their inspiration from Bertrand Russell's work on acquaintance. Since then, many philosophers—particularly those working on self‐knowledge or perception—have used the notion of acquaintance to explain (...) various facts about human experience and knowledge. In this paper, I offer an overview of this work, with particular focus on the resurgent literature on acquaintance in contemporary analytic philosophy. After more fully explaining what acquaintance is (or is supposed to be), I describe some reasons for thinking that we are indeed acquainted with certain things we experience, and then I survey some of the facts about experience and knowledge that acquaintance may help explain. (shrink)

“Respirators, not furnished” is a phrase that appears in Muriel Rukeyser’s poetic sequence The Book of the Dead, addressed to the catastrophic silicosis epidemic that afflicted miners of the Hawk’s Nest Tunnel. Using the example of Rukeyser’s text, which I taught as part of a course on extractionism during the early months of the pandemic and again in its aftermath, the essay asks what it means to read on the precipice of disaster and what disasters of reading are threatened by (...) our current moment. (shrink)

Although understanding is the object of a growing literature in epistemology and the philosophy of science, only few studies have concerned understanding in mathematics. This essay offers an account of a fundamental form of mathematical understanding: proof understanding. The account builds on a simple idea, namely that understanding a proof amounts to rationally reconstructing its underlying plan. This characterization is fleshed out by specifying the relevant notion of plan and the associated process of rational reconstruction, building in part on Bratman's (...) theory of planning agency. It is argued that the proposed account can explain a significant range of distinctive phenomena commonly associated with proof understanding by mathematicians and philosophers. It is further argued, on the basis of a case study, that the account can yield precise diagnostics of understanding failures and can suggest ways to overcome them. Reflecting on the approach developed here, the essay concludes with some remarks on how to shape a general methodology common to the study of mathematical and scientific understanding and focused on human agency. (shrink)

I can be aware of myself, and thereby come to know things about myself, in a variety of different ways. But is there some special way in which I—and only I—can learn about myself? Can I become aware of myself by introspecting? Do I somehow show up in my own conscious experiences? David Hume and most contemporary philosophers say no. They deny that the self shows up in experience. However, in this paper I appeal to research on schizophrenia—on thought insertion, (...) in particular—to argue that Hume and his follows are wrong: The self does, in fact, show up in experience. (shrink)

Experiences of motion and change are widely taken to have a ‘flow-like’ quality. Call this ‘temporal qualia’. Temporal qualia are commonly thought to be central to the question of whether time objectively passes: (1) passage realists take temporal passage to be necessary in order for us to have the temporal qualia we do; (2) passage antirealists typically concede that time appears to pass, as though our temporal qualia falsely represent time as passing. I reject both claims and make the case (...) that passage-talk plays no useful explanatory role with respect to temporal qualia, but rather obfuscates what the philosophical problem of temporal qualia is. I offer a ‘reductionist’ account of temporal qualia that makes no reference to the concept of passage and argue that it is well motivated by empirical studies in motion perception. (shrink)

Predictive processing theories are increasingly popular in philosophy of mind; such process theories often gain support from the Free Energy Principle —a normative principle for adaptive self-organized systems. Yet there is a current and much discussed debate about conflicting philosophical interpretations of FEP, e.g., representational versus non-representational. Here we argue that these different interpretations depend on implicit assumptions about what qualifies as representational. We deploy the Free Energy Principle instrumentally to distinguish four main notions of representation, which focus on organizational, (...) structural, content-related and functional aspects, respectively. The various ways that these different aspects matter in arriving at representational or non-representational interpretations of the Free Energy Principle are discussed. We also discuss how the Free Energy Principle may be seen as a unified view where terms that traditionally belong to different ontologies—e.g., notions of model and expectation versus notions of autopoiesis and synchronization—can be harmonized. However, rather than attempting to settle the representationalist versus non-representationalist debate and reveal something about what representations are simpliciter, this paper demonstrates how the Free Energy Principle may be used to reveal something about those partaking in the debate; namely, what our hidden assumptions about what representations are—assumptions that act as sometimes antithetical starting points in this persistent philosophical debate. (shrink)

The tragedy of critique -- The sound and the fury : the insights and limits of the critique of critique -- The experience of critique : inside permanent liminality -- Critique is history? : understanding a tradition of tradition-breaking -- Unthinking critical thinking : the reduction of philosophy to negative logic -- The cacophony of critique : populist radicals and hegemonic dissent -- Asocial media : an auto-ethnography of on-line critiques -- Towards acritical theory -- Bibliography -- Index.

Anselm’s ontological argument is an argument for the existence of God. This paper presents Iris Murdoch’s ontological argument for the existence of the Good. It discusses her interpretation of Anselm’s argument, her distinctive appropriation of it, as well as some of the merits of her version of the argument. In doing so, it also shows how the argument integrates some key Murdochian ideas: morality’s wide scope, the basicness of vision to morality, moral realism, and Platonism.

Intro -- Title -- Contents -- Publisher's Acknowledgment -- Introduction -- Madhyamaka's Promise as Philosophy -- 1. Trying to Be Fair -- 2. How Far Can a Mādhyamika Reform Customary Truth? Dismal Relativism, Fictionalism, Easy-Easy Truth, and the Alternatives -- Logic and Semantics -- 3. How Do Mādhyamikas Think? Notes on Jay Garfield, Graham Priest, and Paraconsistency -- 4. "How Do Mādhyamikas Think?" Revisited -- 5. Prasaṅga and Proof by Contradiction in Bhāviveka, Candrakīrti, and Dharmakīrti -- 6. Apoha Semantics: What (...) Did Bhāviveka Have to Do with It? -- 7. What Happened to the Third and Fourth Lemmas in the Tibetan Madhyamaka? -- Ethics and the Spiritual Path -- 8. Madhyamaka Buddhist Ethics -- 9. Reason, Irrationality, and Akrasia (Weakness of the Will) in Buddhism: Reflections upon Śāntideva's Arguments with Himself -- 10. Yogic Perception, Meditation, and Enlightenment: The Epistemological Issues in a Key Debate between Madhyamaka and Chan -- Madhyamaka in Contemporary Debates -- 11. On Minds, Dharmakīrti, and Madhyamaka -- 12. Serious, Lightweight, or Neither: Should Madhyamaka Go to Canberra? -- Notes on the Articles -- Abbreviations -- Bibliography -- Index -- About the Author -- Studies in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism Titles Previously Published -- About Wisdom Publications -- Copyright. (shrink)

This book systematically reviews a variety of methods for addressing ethical problems in medicine, accounting for both their weaknesses and strengths. Illustrated throughout with specific cases or controversies, the book aims to develop an informed eclecticism that knows how to pick the right tool for the right job.

Subjectivity is that feature of consciousness whereby there is something it is like for a subject to undergo an experience. One persistent challenge in the study of consciousness is to explain how subjectivity relates to, or arises from, purely physical brain processes. But, in order to address this challenge, it seems we must have a clear explanation of what subjectivity is in the first place. This has proven challenging in its own right. For the nature of subjectivity itself seems to (...) resist straightforward characterization. In this paper, I won't address how subjectivity relates to the physical. Instead, I'll address subjectivity itself. I'll do this by introducing and defending a model of subjectivity based on self-acquaintance. My model does not purport to reduce, eliminate, or naturalize subjectivity, but it does make subjectivity more tractable, less paradoxical, and perhaps less dubious to those averse to obscurity. (shrink)

In this lively and accessible book, Matt Matravers considers the highly contested role of responsibility in politics, morality, and the law. He asks, what are we doing when we hold people responsible in deciding questions of distributive justice or of punishment? and considers the role of philosophy in answering this very contemporary question.

In this textbook, Michael Morris offers a critical introduction to the central issues of the philosophy of language. Each chapter focusses on one or two texts which have had a seminal influence on work in the subject, and uses these as a way of approaching both the central topics and the various traditions of dealing with them. Texts include classic writings by Frege, Russell, Kripke, Quine, Davidson, Austin, Grice and Wittgenstein. Theoretical jargon is kept to a minimum and is (...) fully explained whenever it is introduced. The range of topics covered includes sense and reference, definite descriptions, proper names, natural-kind terms, de re and de dicto necessity, propositional attitudes, truth-theoretical approaches to meaning, radical interpretation, indeterminacy of translation, speech acts, intentional theories of meaning, and scepticism about meaning. The book will be invaluable to students and to all readers who are interested in the nature of linguistic meaning. (shrink)

Bulk collection involves the mining of large data sets containing personal data, often for a security purpose. In 2013, Edward Snowden exposed large scale bulk collection on the part of the US National Security Agency as part of a secret counter-terrorism effort. This effort has mainly been criticised for its invasion of privacy. I argue that the right moral argument against it is not so much to do with intrusion, as ineffectiveness for its official purpose and the lack of oversight (...) by security cleared legislators. It also lends itself to government "domination" (in Pettit's sense) of those who are subject to it. (shrink)