This paper explores possible important relationships and sympathies between Amartya Sen’s Capabilities Approach framework for understanding the human condition and the educational ideas of John Dewey and Paolo Freire. All three focus on the importance of democratic values in a fair, well-functioning society, while Sen and Freire especially explore the difficulties and possibilities of oppressed populations. Sen suggests that all humans have a right to choice in determining their life trajectories and should be provided with the tools that allow them (...) to flourish. Both education and democratic values play important roles in creating the types of context that allow individuals and communities to recognize a wide array of human capabilities. We suggest here that the theories of Dewey and Freire offer avenues through educational processes for developing these contexts for expanded human capability. Dewey suggests an educational approach that stresses democratic values and the ability and willingness of individuals to reach out towards new possibilities. Freire stresses the idea of praxis playing a central role in education—a focus on the cycle of everyday action, reflection, and re-creation of action that leads to productive changes in life trajectories. We argue that Sen, Dewey, and Freire together help to offer a new way of understanding education in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

Lexicalized theories of syntax often assume that verb-structure regularities are mediated by lemmas, which abstract over variation in verb tense and aspect. German syntax seems to challenge this assumption, because verb position depends on tense and aspect. To examine how German speakers link these elements, a structural priming study was performed which varied syntactic structure, verb position, and verb overlap.structural priming was found, both within and across verb position, but priming was larger when the verb position was the same between (...) prime and target. Priming was boosted by verb overlap, but there was no interaction with verb position. The results can be explained by a lemma model where tense and aspect are linked to structural choices in German. Since the architecture of this lemma model is not consistent with results from English, a connectionist model was developed which could explain the cross-linguistic variation in the production system. Together, these findings support the view that language learning plays an important role in determining the nature of structural priming in different languages. (shrink)

Despite Augustine's reputation as the father of Christian intolerance, one finds in his thought the surprising claim that within non-Christian writings there are 'some truths in regard even to the worship of the One God.' The essays here uncover provocative points of comparison and similarity between Christianity and other religions to further such an Augustinian dialogue.

The established view regarding ‘brain death’ in medicine and medical ethics is that patients determined to be dead by neurological criteria are dead in terms of a biological conception of death, not a philosophical conception of personhood, a social construction or a legal fiction. Although such individuals show apparent signs of being alive, in reality they are dead, though this reality is masked by the intervention of medical technology. In this article, we argue that an appeal to the distinction between (...) appearance and reality fails in defending the view that the ‘brain dead’ are dead. Specifically, this view relies on an inaccurate and overly simplistic account of the role of medical technology in the physiology of a ‘brain dead’ patient. We conclude by offering an explanation of why the conventional view on ‘brain death’, though mistaken, continues to be endorsed in light of its connection to organ transplantation and the dead donor rule. (shrink)

Drawing on a recent case report of a pregnant, brain‐dead woman who gave birth to a healthy child after over seven months of intensive care treatment, this essay rejects the established doctrine in medicine that brain death constitutes the biological death of the human being. The essay describes three policy options with respect to determination of death and vital organ transplantation in the case of patients who are irreversibly comatose but remain biologically alive.

Taking a Blue Marble evaluation perspective means viewing the world holistically. It begins with watching for, making sense of, and interpreting the implications of things that are interconnected in the global system. Blue Marble thinkers see the interconnections between the global and local, the macro and the micro, and the relationships between worldwide patterns and area-specific challenges. Part 1 of this book presents and explains four overarching Blue Marble principles. Part 2 examines and elaborates the implications of the overarching principles (...) with 12 operating principles. The Blue Marble perspective is both an approach to evaluation and a way of thinking about all aspects of systems change initiatives and interventions, at all levels at which they occur from local to global. (shrink)

Adopting temporal parts theory is the most popular way of addressing a host of puzzles about diachronic identity. For example, it is not obvious how I am the same person as the baby who shared my name. With the theory, sameness of person, e.g., consists in being comprised by the same temporally extended, four-dimensional object. However, temporal parts theory has unacceptable consequences for notions of freedom and probability. I show that the only acceptable reading of four-dimensionalism entails that the four (...) dimensional object that is me, say, already exists in its entirety. This entails that all of my future properties are already set. This nearly Spinozistic result robs us of familiar notions of choice and possibility. I argue that these notions are more central to our thinking than temporal parts theory, and that on these grounds we must look elsewhere for solutions to our questions about identity across time. (shrink)

An illustrated introduction to the major subjects of Western philosophy, guided by Heraclitus.

Minnich and Patton gather an eclectic cohort of thought-leaders to reflect on the importance and intricacies of thinking in their respective fields. Philosophically framed and interdisciplinary in approach, this illuminating book is designed to be supremely useful to readers from all backgrounds.

Strangers to Nature brings together many of the leading scholars who are working to redefine and expand the discourse on animal ethics. This volume will engage both scholars and lay-people by revealing the breadth of theorizing about the human/non-human animal relationship that is currently taking place.

Researchers from across the social sciences have found consistent deviations from the predictions of the canonical model of self-interest in hundreds of experiments from around the world. This research, however, cannot determine whether the uniformity results from universal patterns of human behavior or from the limited cultural variation available among the university students used in virtually all prior experimental work. To address this, we undertook a cross-cultural study of behavior in ultimatum, public goods, and dictator games in a range of (...) small-scale societies exhibiting a wide variety of economic and cultural conditions. We found, first, that the canonical model – based on self-interest – fails in all of the societies studied. Second, our data reveal substantially more behavioral variability across social groups than has been found in previous research. Third, group-level differences in economic organization and the structure of social interactions explain a substantial portion of the behavioral variation across societies: the higher the degree of market integration and the higher the payoffs to cooperation in everyday life, the greater the level of prosociality expressed in experimental games. Fourth, the available individual-level economic and demographic variables do not consistently explain game behavior, either within or across groups. Fifth, in many cases experimental play appears to reflect the common interactional patterns of everyday life. Key Words: altruism; cooperation; cross-cultural research; experimental economics; game theory; ultimatum game; public goods game; self-interest. (shrink)

We would like to thank the commentators for their generous comments, valuable insights and helpful suggestions. We begin this response by discussing the selfishness axiom and the importance of the preferences, beliefs, and constraints framework as a way of modeling some of the proximate influences on human behavior. Next, we broaden the discussion to ultimate-level (that is evolutionary) explanations, where we review and clarify gene-culture coevolutionary theory, and then tackle the possibility that evolutionary approaches that exclude culture might be sufficient (...) to explain the data. Finally, we consider various methodological and epistemological concerns expressed by our commentators. (shrink)

I examine the role of inference from experiment in theory building. What are the options open to the scientific community when faced with an experimental result that appears to be in conflict with accepted theory? I distinguish, in Laudan's (1977), Nickels's (1981), and Franklin's (1993) sense, between the context of pursuit and the context of justification of a scientific theory. Making this distinction allows for a productive middle position between epistemic realism and constructivism. The decision to pursue a new (...) or a revised theory in response to the new evidence may not be fully rationally determined. Nonetheless, it is possible to distinguish the question of whether there is reason to pursue a theory from the question of whether that theory, once it has been pursued over time, solves a problem of interest to science. I argue that, in this context, there is a solid way to distinguish between the contexts of pursuit and of justification, on the basis of a theory's evidential support and problem-solving ability. (shrink)

Kant's account of space as an infinite given magnitude in the Critique of Pure Reason is paradoxical, since infinite magnitudes go beyond the limits of possible experience. Michael Friedman's and Charles Parsons's accounts make sense of geometrical construction, but I argue that they do not resolve the paradox. I argue that metaphysical space is based on the ability of the subject to generate distinctly oriented spatial magnitudes of invariant scalar quantity through translation or rotation. The set of determinately oriented, (...) constructed geometrical spaces is a proper subset of metaphysical space, thus, metaphysical space is infinite. Kant's paradoxical doctrine of metaphysical space is necessary to reconcile his empiricism with his transcendental idealism. (shrink)

This paper was presented at a session on "Three views of experiment: Atomic parity violations," in which Allan Franklin's study of an episode in the recent history of particle physics was discussed and criticized. Franklin argues in favor of what he calls "the evidence model," a general claim to the effect that physicists' theory choices are based on valid experimental evidence. He contrasts his position to that of the social constructivists, who, according to him, insist that social and (...) cognitive interests, and not the evidence, explains physicists' practical and theoretical judgments. My paper argues that Franklin miscasts the debate between experimental realism and social constructivism, because constructivists do not insist that evidence has no role whatsoever in experimental practice. My position draws lessons from Wittgenstein's later philosophy and ethnomethodological studies of scientific practices. The paper does not aim to support social constructivism against Franklin's arguments, so much as to suggest that the terms of the realist-constructivist debate provide a poor context for the examination of the temporal production of experiments and observations. (shrink)

According to reductionists about agency, an agent’s bringing something about is reducible to states and events involving the agent bringing something about. Many have worried that reductionism cannot accommodate robust forms of agency, such as self-determination. One common reductionist answer to this worry contends that self-determining agents are identified with certain states and events, and so these states and events causing a decision counts as the agent’s self-determining the decision. In this paper, I discuss Michael Bratman’s well-known identification reductionist (...) theory and his general strategy of grounding an agent’s identification at a time in the agent’s identity over time. I develop two constraints that an adequate identification reductionist theory must satisfy, argue that Bratman’s theory cannot satisfy both, and show that his general strategy for grounding an agent’s identification at a time in the agent’s identity over time is without merit. (shrink)

One important point that has emerged from recent work on the history and philosophy of experiment is that technology plays an integral role in experiment, and therefore in science. Technology determines what experimenters can measure and how well it can be measured. The importance of technology, along with several new questions that its use raises, has been made quite clear in the papers presented in this session.

Recent work on the philosophy of Hermann Cohen (1848-1914), founder of the Marburg School of Neo-Kantianism, has appeared in three distinct circles in the English-speaking philosophical context. Cohen re-interpreted Kant's a priori to take scientific developments into account. Michael Friedman acknowledges that the later development of this view by Cohen's intellectual heir Ernst Cassirer influenced Friedman's work on the dynamic a priori, especially in the history and philosophy of science. Owing to Cohen's links to Franz Rosenzweig, scholars have begun (...) to investigate Cohen's philosophy with reference to Derrida, Benjamin, Habermas, and Levinas and the philosophy of responsibility. And there is increasing interest in analyzing Cohen's influence on Deleuze and Badiou, particularly in the areas of ethics and aesthetics. (shrink)

A collection of articles on the the principles of social justice from an Australian Catholic perspective. Contents: Forward (Archbishop Philip Wilson), Introduction (James Franklin), The right to life (James Franklin), The right to serve and worship God in public and private (John Sharpe), The right to religious formation (Richard Rymarz), The right to personal liberty under just law (Michael Casey), The right to equal protection of just law regardless of sex, nationality, colour or creed (Sam Gregg), The (...) right to freedom of expression (Damian Grace), The right to choose and freely maintain a state of life, married or single, lay or religious (Marita Winters), The right to education (Anthony Cleary), The right to petition government for the redress of grievances (Paul Russell), The right to a nationality (Andrew Hamilton), The right to have access to the means of livelihood, by migration when necessary (Brenda Hubber), The right of association and peaceful assembly (Michael Hogan), The right to work and choose one's occupation (Ian Blandthorn), The right to personal ownership, use and disposal of property subject to the right of others (Brian Coman), The right to a living wage (Garrick Small), The right to collective bargaining (Keith Harvey), The right to associate by industries and professions to obtain economic justice (Henrik Jurisevic), The right to assistance from society, if necessary from the State, in distress of persons and family (Catherine Althaus), Afterword (James Franklin). (shrink)

In December’s Quadrant James Franklin asked “Is Jensenism compatible with Christianity?” and claimed of Sydney Anglicans that they “fear the gospels, for the gospel message is inconvenient”. This brand of “narrow” “Bible-based” Christianity pits Paul against Jesus, he says; engages in selective reading of the Bible; and creates “an inwardlooking and recent sect.”.

Does Allan Franklin’s study of atomic parity-violation experiments provide convincing evidence against social constructivism? According to Franklin (1990a, p. 2), “when questions of theory choice, confirmation, or refutation are raised they are answered on the basis of valid experimental evidence… [and] there are good reasons for belief in the validity of that evidence.” Franklin asserts that social constructivists take the opposite position: “They would say that it is not the experimental results, but rather the social and/or cognitive (...) interests of the scientists, that must be used in the explanation.” Having set up the contrasting positions, he then asks the reader, “which of us is telling the more plausible story?” (Franklin 1990b, p. 163). Consistent with his evidence model, he proposes to discriminate between the two opposed positions by consulting historical evidence. He describes the results of two different sets of experiments on atomic parity-violations, and assesses the extent to which the experimental data match predictions based on the Weinberg-Salam unified theory of electroweak interactions. (shrink)

Adding branching quantification to a first-order language increases the expressive power of the language,without adding to its ontology. The present paper is a defense of this claim against Quine (1970) and Patton (1991).

Typically when a person dies, a number of negative consequences result. Some of these consequences can be framed in terms of loss: lost opportunities, lost income, lost abilities and lost relationships, to name a few. In addition, dying often involves physical and existential suffering, causes grief for loved ones and may result in temporary or eternal damnation. In fact, it may be that killing is considered so very wrong—relative to other harmful actions—because of the many varieties of harm it causes.In (...) a recent article in the Journal of Medical Ethics, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Franklin G Miller claim ‘we need an explanation that captures the full extent of what is wrong with killing’.1 But of course we don't. There is no shortage of reasons why killing is wrong and there is no reason to think something must be wrong for only one reason. Their contention that ‘there is nothing bad about death or killing other than disability or disabling’ simply defies common sense. While disabling someone is indeed harmful, from a moral standpoint there is more to death than disability and there are always other negative consequences to killing that can be legitimately offered as reasons why it should not be done. Rather than a full account of why killing is wrong, I suspect what Sinnott-Armstrong and Miller are after is a sufficient explanation of the wrongness of killing. Such an account would allow for other negative consequences of killing, but in no case would it need them to explain why killing is wrong. Unfortunately, as I discuss below, their account fails both as a full and as a sufficient explanation of the wrongness of killing.To argue their point, Sinnott-Armstrong and Miller begin with a thought experiment in which Abe robs and fatally shoots Betty. Why is …. (shrink)

Portraits of Confucius presents a major collection of Western perspectives on Confucius and Confucianism, stretching from the Jesuit missions of the 16th-century to the dawn of modern cross-cultural scholarship in the early 20th-century. With selections from over 100 figures covering the 1580s to the 1950s, this two-volume work features writing from American and European sources including Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, Friedrich Nietzsche, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Bertrand Russell. Arranged chronologically, they represent methodologies that span philosophy, political (...) science, religious studies, sociology, anthropology, economic theory, linguistics, missionary texts, and works of popular moralism. Together they reveal important ideological trends in Western attitudes toward China-with Confucius becoming positioned at different times as anti-Christian or nearly Christ-like, while Confucianism is interpreted as something positive the West needs to adopt or as something negative that must be opposed. For scholars and students interested in the life, work and teachings of Confucius and the West's reception of Chinese philosophy, this is an indispensable reference resource. (shrink)