This article presents a case study of life and work at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich which reveals tensions between the lived reality of the observatory as a social space, and the attempts to create order, maintain discipline and project an image of authority in order to ensure the observatory's long-term stability. Domestic, social and scientific activities all intermingled within the observatory walls in ways which were occasionally disorderly. But life at Greenwich was carefully managed to stave off such disorder (...) and to maintain an appearance of respectability which was essential to the observatory's reputation and output. The article focuses on three areas of management: the observatory's outer boundaries, demonstrating how Greenwich navigated both human and environmental intrusions from the wider world; the house, examining how Greenwich's domestic spaces provided stability, while also complicating observatory life via the management of domestic servants; and the scientific spaces, with an emphasis on the work and play of the observatory's boy computers. Together, these three parts demonstrate that the stability of the observatory was insecure, despite being perpetuated via powerful physical and social boundaries. It had to be continually maintained, and was regularly challenged by Greenwich's occupants and neighbours. (shrink)

There is a revival of notions of leader democracy and plebiscitary leader democracy both at the level of politics and in academic debate. This paper focuses largely on the latter, with occasional reference to real-world political developments. The paper sketches changes in the nature of contemporary governance; argues that Weber’s and Schumpeter’s account of leader democracy LD) as a means of addressing the crisis of representation has marked affinities with current debates; discusses the possible implications of the re-emergence of a (...) political language of LD. The paper takes a sceptical view, arguing that an appeal to leadership is a symptom of, and contributor towards, the problems it purports to address. Two contemporary defences of LD are discussed: that of the political scientist András Körösényi and that of the political theorist Jeffery Green. (shrink)

The story of the show, The Good Place, begins with a common picture of what happens to us after we die. One of the key philosophical issues in the story involves how to assess correctly the moral goodness or badness of a person's life on Earth, since this is the basis of the judgment concerning their eternal destiny. Thomas Nagel claims that there are four kinds of “moral luck”: luck in the circumstances in which we find ourselves, luck with respect (...) to our constitution or character, luck with respect to the results of our actions, and luck with respect to having free choices at all. Perhaps one moral of the story of The Good Place is that life is really complicated, morally speaking—people are not simply good or evil, and cannot be judged easily. (shrink)

This article is both a personal response to Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and an examination of the concept within literature of making the strange familiar and making the familiar strange. It discusses the educative force and potential of Beckett’s strangers in a strange world by examining my own personal experiences with the play. At the same time the limitations of Beckett’s theatre are explored through the contrast with the work of Berthold Brecht, who sought to make the familiar strange (...) as a method of political enquiry to facilitate the transformation of the capitalist state. Parallels are drawn between the possibilities of both theatre and education as tools for social transformation and change. (shrink)

(2001). A quick peek into the abyss: The game of social life in Martin Hollis's trust within reason. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy: Vol. 4, Trusting in Reason: Martin Hollis and the Philosophy of Social Action, pp. 193-206. doi: 10.1080/13698230108403371.

This serves as an introduction to a debate between Hans Kelsen and Otto Bauer concerning the nature and relative autonomy of the state, and the theories that informed the political practices of the Austro-Marxists and of the SDAP immediately after the fall of the monarchy and during the early years of the First Republic. Both pieces were published in Der Kampf, the SDAP’s theoretical journal, in which many key texts of Austro-Marxist thought appeared. The debate is of theoretical interest, particularly (...) with respect to Marxist state theory, but is potentially also of renewed relevance to an age of post-GFC austerity. Bauer’s distinction between functional oligarchy and functional democracy is identified as one such potential contribution to current debate and analysis. (shrink)

This serves as an introduction to a debate between Hans Kelsen and Otto Bauer concerning the nature and relative autonomy of the state, and the theories that informed the political practices of the Austro-Marxists and of the SDAP immediately after the fall of the monarchy and during the early years of the First Republic. Both pieces were published in Der Kampf, the SDAP’s theoretical journal, in which many key texts of Austro-Marxist thought appeared. The debate is of theoretical interest, particularly (...) with respect to Marxist state theory, but is potentially also of renewed relevance to an age of post-GFC austerity. Bauer’s distinction between functional oligarchy and functional democracy is identified as one such potential contribution to current debate and analysis. (shrink)

This article discusses one early manifestation of a recurring theme in social theory and sociology: the relationship between general (‘universal’ or ‘grand’) theory and empirical research. For the early critical theorists, empiricism and positivism were associated with technocratic domination. However, there was one place where the opposite view prevailed: science and empiricism were viewed as forces of social and political progress and speculative social theory as a force of reaction. That place was Red Vienna of the 1920s and early 1930s. (...) We examine how this view came to be widespread among Austro-Marxists, empirical researchers and some members of the Vienna Circle. It focuses on the arguments and institutional power of their opponents: reactionary, universalistic and corporatist social theorists. The debate between Catholic corporatist theory and its empiricist critics is located not merely in Vienna but also within wider debates in the German-speaking world. Finally, we seek to link these lesser-known positions to more familiar strands of social thought, namely, those associated with Weber and, more briefly, Durkheim and Elias. (shrink)

The story of the show, The Good Place, begins with a common picture of what happens to us after we die. One of the key philosophical issues in the story involves how to assess correctly the moral goodness or badness of a person's life on Earth, since this is the basis of the judgment concerning their eternal destiny. Thomas Nagel claims that there are four kinds of “moral luck”: luck in the circumstances in which we find ourselves, luck with respect (...) to our constitution or character, luck with respect to the results of our actions, and luck with respect to having free choices at all. Perhaps one moral of the story of The Good Place is that life is really complicated, morally speaking—people are not simply good or evil, and cannot be judged easily. (shrink)

What sorts of things are there in the world? Clearly enough, there are concrete, material things; but are there other things too, perhaps nonconcrete or non-material things? Some people believe that there are such things, which are often called abstract ; purported examples of such objects include numbers, properties, possible but non-actual states of affairs, propositions, and sets. Following a long-standing tradition, I shall describe persons who believe that there are abstract objects as ‘platonists’. In this paper, I shall not (...) directly address the plausibility of platonism, as compared with its rivals; instead, I shall confine my attention to one way in which some people have tried to combine platonism and theism. More specifically, I shall concentrate upon the claim that abstract objects depend upon God ontologically ; I shall argue that platonistic theists should reject DEP in favour of the claim that abstract objects exist independently of God . In order to evaluate the relative merits of DEP versus IND, it will be helpful to examine in some detail a particular articulation of DEP. When it comes to recent work on DEP, we can do no better in this regard than to examine the recent work of Thomas V. Morris and Christopher H. Menzel. According Morris and Menzel, there is a sense in which God literally creates such abstracta through engaging in intellective activities. (shrink)

The ethics literature has identified moral motivation as a factor in ethical decision-making. Furthermore, moral identity has been identified as a source of moral motivation. In the current study, we examine religiosity as an antecedent to moral identity and examine the mediating role of self-control in this relationship. We find that intrinsic and extrinsic dimensions of religiosity have different direct and indirect effects on the internalization and symbolization dimensions of moral identity. Specifically, intrinsic religiosity plays a role in counterbalancing the (...) negative impact of extrinsic religiosity on the internalization of moral identity. Further, intrinsic religiosity also counterbalances the negative and indirect impact of extrinsic religiosity on symbolization of moral identity via self-control. Lastly, self-control does not play a mediating role in the impact of religiosity on the internalization dimension of moral identity. We conclude that this study presents important findings that advance our understanding of the antecedents of moral identity, and that these results may have implications for the understanding of ethical decision-making. (shrink)

Joseph Conrad’s ‘The secret sharer’ has often been associated with what can be called initiation stories. However, in this article I argue that Conrad’s text is more than that. It can, I suggest, be read as an allegory of the inaccessibility to reveal the essence of being in command, being in education, and also the inaccessibility of the essence of the meaning of the text itself. It keeps its secret by allegorically staging alternative readings. This inaccessibility gives rise to a (...) feeling of strangeness, of the uncanny, that must be faced in order to pass through the initiation into the unknown that all the possible allegorical meanings of the text produce. In other words, ‘The secret sharer’ has an educational value that goes beyond the act of merely using it to exemplify a certain type of initiation. In this way I connect Conrad’s text to the themes of strangeness and the stranger and show how they mutually can involve a reading of education and literature as two distinct discourses of learning. (shrink)

This article uses recent changes within the Austrian university system to illustrate some general features and dilemmas of organizational design and reform. We focus upon two recent layers of the sediments left by previous and current system reforms: that left by the events of 1968 on continental university systems, and Austria's late conversion to the path taken by the Anglo-American university system since the late 1970s/early 1980s; namely, towards what Marginson and Considine (2000) have called the "enterprise university". These two (...) reform waves are, we argue, neatly reflected in two university laws - UOG 1975 and UG 2002 - which capture with great clarity the spirit of these two policy moments. The Austrian case is thus of interest for two types of reason: first, because of the co-existence of deeply engrained traditions with more recent experiments in organizational democracy (co-determination); secondly, because of the rapidity with which current reforms seek to catch up with what are taken to be international developments in university management. Drawing on arguments advanced by Christopher Hood, Luc Boltanski and Ève Chiapello, and by Albert Hirschman, we seek to draw general conclusions concerning the implications of organizational reform for the management of organizations generally, and of universities in particular. (shrink)

This volume explores the philosophical issues involved in the idea of petitionary prayer, where this is conceived as an activity designed to influence the action of the all-knowing, all-powerful, perfectly good God of traditional theism. Theists have always recognized various logical and moral limits to divine action in the world, but do these limits leave any space among God's reasons for petitionary prayer to make a difference? Petitionary Prayer: A Philosophical Investigation develops a new account of the conditions required for (...) a petitionary prayer to be answered by employing the notion of contrastive explanation. With careful attention to recent developments in metaphysics, epistemology, and value theory, Scott A. Davison surveys the contemporary literature on this question. He considers questions about human freedom and responsibility in relation to different views of divine providence, along with the puzzles inherent in Christian teachings concerning petitionary prayer. Davison develops new challenges to the coherence of the idea of answered petitionary prayer based upon the nature of divine freedom, the limits of human knowledge, and the nature of those good things that require a recipient's permission before they can be given. He proposes new defences, building upon careful analysis of the shortcomings of previous proposals and clarifying the issues for future debate. (shrink)

Traditional theists believe that there exists an all-knowing, all-powerful, perfectly loving, and perfectly good God. They also believe that God created the world, sustains it in being from moment to moment, and providentially guides all events, in accordance with a plan, towards a good ending. Historically, most traditional theists have believed that God sometimes answers prayers for particular things. In keeping with the literature on this subject, these prayers are referred to as ‘petitionary prayers’. This article discusses several problems related (...) to the concept of the traditional theistic God's answering petitionary prayers. (shrink)

Nicholas Wolterstorff: Practices of belief: selected essays, volume 2 (Terence Cuneo, ed.) Content Type Journal Article Category Book Review Pages 255-258 DOI 10.1007/s11153-011-9287-4 Authors Scott A. Davison, Philosophy Program, Morehead State University, 150 University Blvd., 354A Rader Hall, Morehead, KY 40351, USA Journal International Journal for Philosophy of Religion Online ISSN 1572-8684 Print ISSN 0020-7047 Journal Volume Volume 70 Journal Issue Volume 70, Number 3.

I argue that a well-known argument concerning moral luck supports something like the Principle of Alternate Possibilities (PAP), despite the attacks on PAP by Harry Frankfurt and John Martin Fischer.

I respond to Daniel and Frances Howard-Snyder’s criticisms of my arguments in another place for the conclusion that human supplicants would have little responsibility (if any) for the result of answered petitionary prayer, and criticize their defense of the claim that God would have good reasons for creating an institution of petitionary prayer.

In this paper, I explore several privacy issues as they arise with respect to the divine/human relationship. First, in section 1, I discuss the notion of privacy in a general way. Section 2 is devoted to the claim that privacy involves control over information about oneself. In section 3, I summarize the arguments offered recently by Margaret Falls-Corbitt and F. Michael McLain for the conclusion that God respects the privacy of human persons by refraining from knowing certain things about them. (...) Finally, in section 4, I shall criticize Falls-Corbitt and McLain’s arguments and make some concluding remarks about God and privacy. (shrink)

Despite the iconic roles of coelacanths, cycads, tadpole shrimps, and tuataras as taxa that demonstrate a pattern of morphological stability over geological time, their status as living fossils is contested. We responded to these controversies with a recommendation to rethink the function of the living fossil concept. Concepts in science do useful work beyond categorizing particular items and we argued that the diverse and sometimes conflicting criteria associated with categorizing items as living fossils represent a complex problem space associated with (...) answering a range of questions related to prolonged evolutionary stasis. Turner defends the living concept against a variety of recent skeptics, but his criticism of our approach relies on a misreading of our main argument. This misreading is instructive because it brings into view the value of three central themes for rethinking the living fossil concept—the function of concepts in biology outside of categorization, the methodological importance of distinguishing parts and wholes in conceptualizing evolutionary phenomena, and articulating diverse explanatory goals associated with these phenomena. (shrink)

One of the major arguments for theological voluntarism offered by the Ash’arites involves the claim that that some of the factors upon which our salvation or condemnation depend are beyond our control. We will call this “the problem of salvific luck.” According to the Ash’arites, the fact that God does save and condemn human beings on the basis of factors beyond their control casts doubt on any non-voluntarist conception of divine justice. A common way to respond to this Ash’arite argument (...) for voluntarism is to eliminate the role of luck in God’s judgments. But this is not the Mu’tazilite way of resisting the argument. The Mu’tazilite, who oppose theological voluntarism, choose a more daunting solution to the problem of salvific luck. They reject the claim that God’s Judgment concerning the eternal destiny of some persons would be unjust if it depended upon factors beyond their control. The paper discusses this solution to the problem of salvific luck. (shrink)

Diagnostic self-testing devices are being developed for many illnesses, chronic diseases and infections. These will be used in hospitals, at point-of-care facilities and at home. Designed to allow earlier detection of diseases, self-testing diagnostic devices may improve disease prevention, slow the progression of disease and facilitate better treatment outcomes. These devices have the potential to benefit both the individual and society by enabling individuals to take a more proactive role in the maintenance of their health and by helping society improve (...) health and reduce health costs. However, the full implications of future home-based diagnostic technology for individuals and society remain unclear due to their novelty. We argue that the development of diagnostic tools, especially for home use, will heighten a number of ethical challenges. This paper will explore some of the ethical implications of home-based self-testing diagnostic devices for the autonomous and relational dimensions of the person. This will be facilitated by examining the impact of diagnostic devices for individual autonomy, for the delivery of accurate diagnosis and for the personal significance of the information for the user. The latter will be examined using Charles Taylor's view of personhood and his emphasis on human agency and interpretation. While the ethical issues are not necessarily new, the development of home-based self-testing diagnostic devices will make issues regarding autonomy, accuracy of information and personal significance more and more demanding. This will be the case particularly when an individual's autonomous choices come into conflict with the person's relational responsibilities. (shrink)

Are there good reasons for offering petitionary prayers to God, if God exists? Could such prayers make a difference in the world? Could we ever have good reason to think that such prayers had been answered? In this Element, the author will carefully explore these questions with special attention to recent philosophical discussions.

Over recent decades International Relations scholars have investigated norm dynamics processes at some length, with the norm entrepreneur concept having become a common reference point in the literature. The focus on norm entrepreneurs has, however, resulted in a bias towards investigating the agents and processes of successful normative change. This book challenges this inherent bias by explicitly focusing on those who resist normative change - norm antipreneurs. The utility of the norm antipreneur concept is explored through a series of case (...) studies encompassing a range of issue areas and contributed by a mix of well-known and emergent scholars of norm dynamics. In examining the complexity of norm resistance, particular attention is paid to the nature and intent of the actors involved in norm-contestation, the sites and processes of resistance, the strategies and tactics antipreneurs deploy to defend the values and interests they perceive to be threatened by the entrepreneurs, and whether it is the entrepreneurs or the antipreneurs who enjoy greater inherent advantages. This text will therefore be of interest to scholars and students of International Relations, International Law, Political Science, Sociology and History. ". (shrink)

_A lively and highly readable commentary on one of Plato’s most beloved dialogues._.

In “Molinism, Meticulous Providence, and Luck,” Steven Cowan argues that the doctrine of meticulous providence creates a damaging dilemma for Molinists. I argue that Molinists can overcome this dilemma without giving up the doctrine of meticulous providence.

In his recent book Natural Law and Practical Rationality , Mark Murphy develops a sophisticated version of a natural law account of practical rationality. I shall show that with only a few minor changes, Murphy's account can be developed into an environmental ethic that generates human obligations to non-human animals, plants, and perhaps even ecosystems and machines. (I shall not discuss here the plausibility of this extension of Murphy's account, relative to competing accounts in environmental ethics; that discussion will have (...) to wait for another occasion.) I begin with a brief sketch of Murphy's account, and then proceed to show how it can be developed into an environmental ethic, with particular attention to several crucial places in the overall argument of his book and arguments developed in other published works. (shrink)