1 Evidence-based policy requires researchers to provide the answers to ecological questions that are of interest to policy makers. To find out what those questions are in the UK, representatives from 28 organizations involved in policy, together with scientists from 10 academic institutions, were asked to generate a list of questions from their organizations. 2 During a 2-day workshop the initial list of 1003 questions generated from consulting at least 654 policy makers and academics was used as a basis for (...) generating a short list of 100 questions of significant policy relevance. Short-listing was decided on the basis of the preferences of the representatives from the policy-led organizations. 3 The areas covered included most major issues of environmental concern in the UK, including agriculture, marine fisheries, climate change, ecosystem function and land management. 4 The most striking outcome was the preference for general questions rather than narrow ones. The reason is that policy is driven by broad issues rather than specific ones. In contrast, scientists are frequently best equipped to answer specific questions. This means that it may be necessary to extract the underpinning specific question before researchers can proceed. 5 Synthesis and applications. Greater communication between policy makers and scientists is required in order to ensure that applied ecologists are dealing with issues in a way that can feed into policy. It is particularly important that applied ecologists emphasize the generic value of their work wherever possible. (shrink)

This paper elaborates and defends an expressivist account of the claims of mind-independence embedded in ordinary moral thought. In response to objections from Zangwill and Jenkins it is argued that the expressivist 'internal reading' of such claims is compatible with their conceptual status and that the only 'external reading' available doesn't commit expressivisists to any sort of subjectivism. In the process a 'commitment-theoretic' account of the semantics of conditionals and negations is defended.

Some people argue that the distribution of medical resources should be sensitive to agents’ responsibility for their ill-health. In contrast, others point to the social determinants of health to argue that the collective agents that control the conditions in which agents act should bear responsibility. To a large degree, this is a debate in which those who hold individuals responsible currently have the upper hand: warranted appeals to individual responsibility effectively block allocation of any significant degree of responsibility to collective (...) agents. We suggest that a different understanding of individual responsibility might lead to a fairer allocation of blame. Scaffolded agency is individual agency exercised in a context in which opportunities and affordances are structured by others. Appeals to scaffolded agency at once recognize the role of the individual and of the collective agents who have put the scaffolds in place. (shrink)

I defend hedonism about moral value by first presenting an argument for moral skepticism, and then showing that phenomenal introspection gives us a unique way to defeat the skeptical argument and establish pleasure's goodness.

McKenna’s critique (rather than criticisms) of idealized approaches to epistemology is an important contribution to the literature. In this brief discussion, I set out his main concerns about more idealized approaches, within and beyond social epistemology, before turning to some issues I think he neglects. I suggest that it’s important to pay attention to the prestige hierarchy in philosophy, and to how that hierarchy can serve ideological purposes. The greater prestige of more abstract approaches plays a role in determining what (...) issues and what voices we attend to. (shrink)

An account of how a rational agent should revise beliefs in the light of new evidence.

This book highlights the philosophical and creative basis of knowledge co-production by all citizens regardless of socio-economic background in contrast with neoliberal ideology. Exploring beginning, transitional and theorised practices, the book is a memoir of the author's extensive personal and educational experience. Each topic is discussed in relation to a number of pragmatist themes that run throughout to illustrate how the process of dialectical emergence underpins and substantiates meaningful human living. Building on the work of American Pragmatism, this is a (...) systematic and detailed reintroduction of pragmatism to educators worldwide for progressive educational change. (shrink)

Introduction -- Cultural theories of people -- Identities in standard English -- Language and social institutions -- The cultural self -- The self's identities -- Theories of identities and selves -- Theories of norms and institutions -- Social reality and human subjectivity.

Causal theories of action, perception and knowledge are each beset by problems of so-called ‘deviant’ causal chains. For each such theory, counterexamples are formed using odd or co-incidental causal chains to establish that the theory is committed to unpalatable claims about some intentional action, about a case of veridical perception or about the acquisition of genuine knowledge. In this paper I will argue that three well-known examples of a deviant causal chain have something in common: they each violate Yablos proportionality (...) constraint on causation. I will argue that this constraint provides the key to saving causal theories from deviant chains. (shrink)

Time passes; sometimes swiftly, sometimes interminably, but always it passes. We see the world change as events emerge from the shroud of the future, clandestinely slinking into the past almost immediately as though they are reluctant to meet our gaze: children are born, old friends and relatives die, governments once full of youthful enthusiasm wane. If the Earth were sentient, it might feel itself being torn apart as tectonic plates diverge, and chuckle as it outlived species upon species of transient (...) parasites. How could anyone possibly deny that time passes? (shrink)

Kant's Mathematical World aims to transform our understanding of Kant's philosophy of mathematics and his account of the mathematical character of the world. Daniel Sutherland reconstructs Kant's project of explaining both mathematical cognition and our cognition of the world in terms of our most basic cognitive capacities. He situates Kant in a long mathematical tradition with roots in Euclid's Elements, and thereby recovers the very different way of thinking about mathematics which existed prior to its 'arithmetization' in the nineteenth (...) century. He shows that Kant thought of mathematics as a science of magnitudes and their measurement, and all objects of experience as extensive magnitudes whose real properties have intensive magnitudes, thus tying mathematics directly to the world. His book will appeal to anyone interested in Kant's critical philosophy -- either his account of the world of experience, or his philosophy of mathematics, or how the two inform each other. (shrink)

This book challenges the view that bad beliefs - beliefs that blatantly conflict with easily available evidence - can largely be explained by widespread irrationality, instead arguing that ordinary people are rational agents whose beliefs are the result of their rational response to the evidence they're presented with.

How may we characterize the intrinsic structure of physical quantities such as mass, length, or electric charge? This article shows that group-theoretic methods—specifically, the notion of a free and transitive group action—provide an elegant way of characterizing the structure of scalar quantities, and uses this to give an intrinsic treatment of vector quantities. It also gives a general account of how different scalar or vector quantities may be algebraically combined with one another. Finally, it uses this apparatus to give a (...) simple intrinsic treatment of Newtonian gravitation. (shrink)

The notion that eukaryotes are ancestrally sexual has been gaining attention. This idea comes in part from the discovery of sets of “meiosis‐specific genes” in the genomes of protists. The existence of these genes has persuaded many that these organisms may be engaging in sex, even though this has gone undetected. The involvement of sex in protists is supported by the view that asexual reproduction results in the accumulation of mutations that would inevitably result in the decline and extinction of (...) such lineages. It is argued that this phenomenon can be obviated by polyploidy and that the “meiosis‐specific genes” are used in other processes, including polyploidy control and homologous recombination, independent of meiosis. These phenomena account for the finding that these genes are expressed in cultures devoid of apparent cell fusion events. Hence, it is also proposed that asexual, and not sexual, reproduction is the ancestral condition. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

The cries of Lamentations are desperate, wailing up from the darkest side of human existence. They will not be silenced. Lament harasses those who oppress and calls all to justice—even God.

We explain and explore class-theoretic potentialism—the view that one can always individuate more classes over a set-theoretic universe. We examine some motivations for class-theoretic potentialism, before proving some results concerning the relevant potentialist systems (in particular exhibiting failures of the $\mathsf {.2}$ and $\mathsf {.3}$ axioms). We then discuss the significance of these results for the different kinds of class-theoretic potentialists.

For more than 60 years, Chomsky has been an intellectual Colossus bestriding the worlds of language, philosophy, and the cognitive sciences, and focusing attention on the whole field and emphasizing the crucial importance of domains overlooked by the mainstream. One such area is the study of first‐language acquisition. This chapter considers “atypical acquisition” to cover two conceptually related situations. First, it covers a variety of cases where there is an obvious “poverty of the stimulus” in that children either receive or (...) perceive no linguistic input at the essential early stages referred to as critical periods. Second, it covers where there is rather the opposite situation. The chapter presents atypicality in language acquisition that stems from the learner's atypical neurological profile rather than environmental or input properties. It focuses on Developmental Language Disorder, Autism Spectrum Disorder, and the case of the polyglot‐savant Christopher to exemplify atypical acquisition. (shrink)

This book was written with my University of Mississippi "Philosophy of Religion" students in mind. Many of them have no prior experience with philosophy. That is why Chapter One begins with a crash course in philosophy, with an emphasis on the basic concepts in logic, metaphysics, and epistemology. While not all students may need to cover that material, quite a few will. And for the rest, a refresher never hurts. I am sure this applies to many "Philosophy of Religion" courses (...) taught elsewhere. With that in mind, instructors are advised to begin with Chapter One. The subsequent chapters have been arranged in sequence, with each chapter building on the prior ones. However, the chapters are not that tightly bound, so instructors could cover the chapters out of sequence without much disruption. Key terms are underlined. Sometimes the key terms also occur with an associated hyperlink. Other terms have a hyperlink without a corresponding key term. In the print the hyperlink is included as a footnote, in the ebooks the term is hyperlinked [Production - check the ebooks will have hyperlinbks - amend wording here if not]. In general, the hyperlinks follow a pattern. First, key terms are often linked to entries in online academic encyclopedias - either The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, or The Encyclopedia Britannica. [Students are recommended also to consult The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (1967), edited by Paul Edwards; it is still an excellent resource and has entries corresponding to many key terms. Almost every university library has a copy.] Second, named individuals are sometimes linked to an encyclopedia entry. In both sorts of cases, the URL is provided in an endnote at the end of each chapter. No other description of the contents of the web page will be given. In most other cases, a short description of the contents of the web page is provided in the endnote. Each chapter includes an annotated bibliography for more advanced material. Helpful material is also available on the website for this book. This material includes a glossary, a sample syllabus (with recommended readings), study questions, and a test bank, among other features. (shrink)

Informally rigorous mathematical reasoning is relevant. So too should be the premises to the conclusions of formal proofs that regiment it. The rule Ex Falso Quodlibet induces spectacular irrelevance. We therefore drop it. The resulting systems of Core Logic C and Classical Core Logic C+ can formalize all the informally rigorous reasoning in constructive and classical mathematics respectively. We effect a revised match-up between deducibility in Classical Core Logic and a new notion of relevant logical consequence. It matches better the (...) deducibility relation of Classical Core Logic than does the Tarskian notion of consequence. It is implosive, not explosive. (shrink)

This book rethinks the discussion of sport as a cinematic subject. Arguing for the vitality of the sports film as distinctively 'modern' genre, the book looks at its innovative potential to capture twentieth- and twenty-first-century sport in all its complexity. Written in an accessible style and illustrated throughout, the book integrates work and ideas from film studies with thinking from sports psychology, philosophy, data theory and ecocriticism. In its detailed analyses of a wide-ranging group of films, the book shows how (...) film, from fictional works to biopics to experimental documentaries, can illuminate individual sporting experience, as well as sport's wider place in modern life. (shrink)

Offers a historical study of the world that contends that history is continually created and recreated by conscious, collective human action. Faulkner argues that the struggles of the common people--slaves, serfs, handloom weavers, mine workers, women fighting oppression, black people fighting racism, colonized people fighting imperialism--these struggles, occasionally fusing into mass revolutionary upsurges, drive the historical process. He states that this is an approach to history that emphasizes agency, contingency, and the existence of alternatives; an approach that rejects the view (...) that war and empire are inevitable, that there is no alternative to the market, and that greed, bullying, and violence are universal. In other words, Faulkner contends that the course of history is not predetermined, its outcome is not inevitable; it can go in different directions according to what human beings do. (shrink)

Making Sense of the World: Living, Learning and Teaching with Radical Philosophy of Education proposes that human knowledge arises from an integrated physical and metaphysical experience involving the continuing social acts of personal and community cultures and languages. It seeks to provide a means of thinking about and acting with the philosophical nature of human existence, so that the daily activities and achievements of all are respected and taken into account. Given the dominance of neoliberal politics and economics in many (...) countries, it is unusual to find the work of educators and practitioners being framed generally by an explicit philosophy of knowledge. (shrink)

One of the hardest parts of being a leader is handling disagreements about values. The skills required to do this are increasingly important in polarized societies where there is pressure for businesses and organizations to have a sense of purpose and "do the right thing." Our book helps readers address these challenges. To do this, we don''t give a simplistic cookie-cutter recipe for what is right and wrong. Rather, we guide readers on a journey to rigorously explore their values and (...) better understand the values of others. We discuss the human psychology that drives conflicts over values as well as the philosophical frameworks that have guided people for millennia. We provide strategies, based in research from psychology and the behavioral sciences, whichthat readers can use to implement their values in their lives and their organizations. Topics covered include moral intuitions, self-serving biases, situational pressures, social norms, the role of business in society, consequentialism/utilitarianism, motives, perspective-taking, justice, fairness, and liberty. (shrink)

I defend ethical hedonism, the view that pleasure is the sole good thing, by arguing that it offers the only answer to an argument for moral skepticism. The skeptical problem arises from widespread fundamental moral disagreement, which entails the presence of enough moral error to undermine the reliability of most processes generating moral belief. We know that pleasure is good through the reliable process of phenomenal introspection, which reveals what our experiences are like. If knowing of pleasure’s goodness through phenomenal (...) introspection is the only reliable way to form our initial moral beliefs, we should accept ethical hedonism. (shrink)

Neil Levy presents a new theory of freedom and responsibility. He defends a particular account of consciousness--the global workspace view--and argues that consciousness plays an especially important role in action. There are good reasons to think that the naïve assumption, that consciousness is needed for moral responsibility, is in fact true.

Epistemic akrasia can be rational. I consider a lonely pragmatist who believes that her imaginary friend doesn’t exist, and also believes on pragmatic grounds that she should believe in him. She rationally believes that her imaginary friend doesn’t exist, rationally follows various sources of evidence to the view that she should believe in him to end her loneliness, and rationally holds these attitudes simultaneously. Evidentialism suggests that her ambivalent epistemic state is rational, as considerations grounded in the value of truth (...) justify her beliefs. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.3 (2003) 426-427 [Access article in PDF] Timothy Smiley, editor. Mathematics and Necessity: Essays in the History of Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp. ix + 166. Cloth, $35.00.Mathematics and Necessity contains essays by M. F. Burnyeat, Ian Hacking, and Jonathan Bennett based on lectures given to the British Academy in 1998. All concern the history of the philosophical treatment of (...) mathematics, necessity, or both, although there is no single thread running through all three essays.Burnyeat focuses on Plato's understanding of mathematics in the Republic, making use of the Timeaus in particular to defend his interpretation. Plato claimed that in the ideal society mathematics should be studied for a full ten years, which many have thought excessive. To explain it, Burnyeat argues that the role of mathematics is pervasive: ethics and politics are mathematical, because in Plato's view mathematics is a constitutive part of ethical understanding. On Burnyeat's interpretation, goodness is part of the objective world, and mathematics is a science of values. The link between mathematics and goodness in the objective world is forged by the concord, harmony, and unity of proportions, which express the goodness of the Divine Craftsman's beneficent design. Proportions are both intrinsically good and the proper study of mathematics.Burnyeat explains why Plato thinks abstract kinematics (the pure non-sensible counterpart to astronomy) and abstract harmonics lead to knowledge of the good. Abstract kinematics concerns the "harmony of the spheres" described in the Republic. Drawing heavily on the Timeaus, Burnyeat argues that the circular motions of the spheres are motions in the intelligence of the world soul and that there are similar motions in human souls. The world soul and human souls are spatial and have circular motions (invisibility and intangibility make them incorporeal). Souls are the most important subject matter of abstract harmonics—the study of good proportions. A soul that understands the various mathematical disciplines and their relations takes on the harmony and hence goodness of the world soul. Such a soul serves as a model for organizing the social world, a model which properly trained rulers can use to shape a community. Burnyeat's well-argued essay is compelling and exciting. [End Page 427]Ian Hacking's views provide a great contrast to Burnyeat's Plato. Hacking conducts a phenomenological inquiry into why some philosophers have become obsessed by mathematics as a source of philosophical inspiration. He holds that mathematics concerns a relatively minor part of human culture and that the influence of mathematics on philosophy is pernicious; he even describes it as an infection.Hacking examines the views of six philosophers: Plato, Leibniz, Mill, Descartes, Lakatos, and Wittgenstein. Hacking's assessment of the six philosophers is at times disputable, but it is also interesting and stimulating, and serves his phenomenological inquiry.Hacking traces philosophy's infection by mathematics to two factors. A mathematical proof can be perspicuous; that is, a proof can be "grasped," which requires seeing directly why something must be true and being able to recapitulate it. A mathematical proof can also anticipate facts about the world. He thinks that these two factors affect us in two ways: they give us the idea of a priori knowledge, and they dazzle us into unreasoned conviction in proofs. One might respond that, setting aside the feeling proofs give us, we are still justified in being impressed by them. Hacking argues that much of what impresses is based on a misunderstanding of their nature, which he attempts to correct.According to Hacking, a mathematical demonstration involves shifts of meaning that analytically bind the proof and the theorem it establishes. They thereby mutually support each other and provide what he calls self-authentication. The correctness of the proof is supported by the "analytified" truth of the theorem and the theorem is considered true because proven.This bootstrapping feature of mathematical proofs supports Hacking's deflationary account of necessity. Hacking suggests that the "must" of logical necessity rests upon our unwillingness to accept empirical counter-examples to the... (shrink)

What is the basis of our capacity to act morally? This is a question that has been discussed for millennia, with philosophical debate typically distinguishing two sources of morality: reason and sentiment. This collection aims to shed light on whether the human capacity to feel for others really is central for morality and, if so, in what way. To tackle these questions, the authors discuss how fellow feeling is to be understood: its structure, content and empirical conditions. Also discussed are (...) the exact roles that relevant psychological features - specifically: empathy, sympathy and concern - may play within morality. The collection is unique in bringing together the key participants in the various discussions of the relation of fellow feeling to moral norms, moral concepts and moral agency. By integrating conceptually sophisticated and empirically informed perspectives, Forms of Fellow Feeling will appeal to readers from philosophy, psychology, sociology and cultural studies. (shrink)

Our regimentation of Goodman and Myhill’s proof of Excluded Middle revealed among its premises a form of Choice and an instance of Separation.Here we revisit Zermelo’s requirement that the separating property be definite. The instance that Goodman and Myhill used is not constructively warranted. It is that principle, and not Choice alone, that precipitates Excluded Middle.Separation in various axiomatizations of constructive set theory is examined. We conclude that insufficient critical attention has been paid to how those forms of Separation fail, (...) in light of the Goodman–Myhill result, to capture a genuinely constructive notion of set. (shrink)

This book focuses on the nature and importance of harm by providing a sustained defense of the counterfactual comparative account, in particular by extending the account to allow for a certain kind of plural or collective harm. According to the counterfactual comparative account, an event harms a person provided that she would have been better off had it not occurred. On the account defended in this book, there are cases in which some events harm a given individual even though none (...) of them by itself harms the individual. This account aims to solve the most serious problem facing the counterfactual comparative account, a problem involving cases of preemption. In such cases, an intuitively harmful event does not make the victim worse off, since if it had not occurred, another event would have had a similar adverse influence on the victim’s well-being. The book also contains discussion of various competing accounts of harm, and it replies to other challenges to the counterfactual comparative account. It argues, moreover, that an action that would harm a person does not thereby have a strong moral reason against it; if there is a strong moral reason against a harmful act, the reason is due primarily to some of the act’s other features. (shrink)

Emerging from the confusion and chaos of neoliberal economic systems around the world, this book brings together a collection of major philosophical ideas from previous centuries and applies them to the practice of education. The book argues that pragmatist philosophy is the most appropriate to guide the organisation of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. It outlines a number of philosophical dilemmas, exploring these in relation to particular philosophers and offers philosophical insights for educational practice. Further, the book proposes Critical Praxis Bricolage, (...) an epistemological framework articulating a view that education practices are embedded in a social context. This reshapes formal education from being dominated by the market forces of neoliberalism, into a way of ethical life that respects the dignity and knowledgeability of each person and community regardless of background. Written in a narrative style, Pragmatist Philosophy for Critical Knowledge, Learning and Consciousness provides a philosophical paradigm of experience, culture and inquiry that actively connects with human interests of the everyday and with the distinctiveness of being human. This work will be of interest to researchers and higher degree students of education and philosophy of education. (shrink)

Abstract: This entry elucidates causal and constitutive roles that various forms of imagining play in human action. Imagination influences more kinds of action than just pretend play. I distinguish different senses of the terms “imagining” and “imagination”: imagistic imagining, propositional imagining, and constructive imagining. Each variety of imagining makes its own characteristic contributions to action. Imagistic imagining can structure bodily movement. Propositional imagining interacts with desires to motivate pretend play and mimetic expressive action. And constructive imagination generates representations of possibilities (...) and actions on the basis of which we choose what to do. [Version archived here is a penultimate draft.]. (shrink)

Informed consent is a central topic in contemporary biomedical ethics. Yet attempts to set defensible and feasible standards for consenting have led to persistent difficulties. In Rethinking Informed Consent in Bioethics Neil Manson and Onora O'Neill set debates about informed consent in medicine and research in a fresh light. They show why informed consent cannot be fully specific or fully explicit, and why more specific consent is not always ethically better. They argue that consent needs distinctive communicative transactions, by (...) which other obligations, prohibitions, and rights can be waived or set aside in controlled and specific ways. Their book offers a coherent, wide-ranging and practical account of the role of consent in biomedicine which will be valuable to readers working in a range of areas in bioethics, medicine and law. (shrink)

This chapter casts into sharp relief Theodor W. Adorno's concept of history as a form of historical immanence of language. Here, as, to one degree or another throughout Adorno's corpus, the “untruth” of the “whole” can only be eluded through constant exertions to wrestle the latter into virtually every lexical predication. That Adorno's thinking at any given point in its development and formal presentation forms a coherent, exquisitely reflective, and mediated whole, supple and adaptive, is in no way contradicted by (...) this. However, the movement of thought through language is at the same time an inward, condensing movement of language within itself, a movement toward what is, for the logical organization of Adornean critical prose, a fusion of dialectics and style at the level of such language's smallest moving part: the sentence or short, aphoristic sequence of sentences. (shrink)