Human cooperation is held to be an evolutionary puzzle because people voluntarily engage in costly cooperation, and costly punishment of non-cooperators, even among anonymous strangers they will never meet again. The costs of such cooperation cannot be recovered through kin-selection, reciprocal altruism, indirect reciprocity, or costly signaling. A number of recent authors label this behavior ‘strong reciprocity’, and argue that it is: (a) a newly documented aspect of human nature, (b) adaptive, and (c) evolved by group selection. We argue exactly (...) the opposite; that the phenomenon is: (a) not new, (b) maladaptive, and (c) evolved by individual selection. In our perspective, the apparent puzzle disappears to reveal a biological and evolutionary logic to human cooperation. Group selection may play a role in theory, but it is neither necessary nor sufficient to explain human cooperation. Our alternative solution is simpler, makes fewer assumptions, and is more parsimonious with the empirical data. (shrink)

Introduction -- Context -- Overview of themes -- Reading the text -- Reception and influence.

The Film Theory in Practice series fills a gaping hole in the world of film theory. By marrying the explanation of a film theory with the interpretation of a film, the volumes provide discrete examples of how film theory can serve as the basis for textual analysis. Fredric Jameson and The Wolf of Wall Street offers a concise introduction to Jameson in jargon-free language and shows how his Marxist theories can be deployed to interpret Martin Scorsese's critically acclaimed 2013 film (...) The Wolf of Wall Street. Beginning with a detailed account of Jameson's extensive writings on Marxist theory and how they have been deployed in the analysis of film writings, Clint Burnham then illustrates how Jameson's theory can help to make sense of The Wolf of Wall Street, a film that shows in all its glory the excesses, lunacies, and inner workings of 1990s finance capitalism. As Jameson has influentially argued, films like The Wolf of Wall Street are both complicit in and critical of their historical subject: Scorsese's film is not about the richest stockbrokers, but the Long Island penny traders who made it big. As a narrative of American success, it is also a film about failure. Clint Burnham's reading of Jameson and The Wolf of Wall Street is a book about a contemporary film, and contemporary events, and contemporary theory. (shrink)

The dominant position of science in our culture has ended. In our postmodern world, belief that science will provide the answer to our problems and that progress is inevitable has been shaken, if not toppled. Optimism has been replaced by realism, creating a milieu for the development of intelligent Christian belief. Participating in the Trinity Institute's conference on ÒThe Church in a Postmodern Age, these six prominent scholars explore the breakdown of the basic tenets of the Enlightenment, the sorry state (...) of biblical literacy in our culture, Christian faith in a pluralistic world, the relevance of the Bible today, and the role of the church in our age. Contributors include Robert N. Bellah, Diogenes Allen, George A. Lindbeck, James B. Miller, Sandra M. Schneiders, and Rowan D. Williams. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Notes.

This chapter contains sections titled: Taste and Discernment Delicacy of Taste and the Supertasters Practices and Comparisons Who Are the True Judges of Wine? Experts and Projects Experts and Evaluation Ideal and Izeal experts ‐ And You The Canon and Ideal Critics: The Special Relationship Levinson's Problems The Canon and Wine Wine Canons and Ideal Wine Critics Taste, the Competencies and Trust Iconic or Iconoclastic Critics Conclusion Notes.

This article critically interrogates contemporary forms of addiction medicine that are portrayed by policy-makers as providing a ‘rational’ or politically neutral approach to dealing with drug use and related social problems. In particular, it examines the historical origins of the biological facts that are today understood to provide a foundation for contemporary understandings of addiction as a ‘disease of the brain’. Drawing upon classic and contemporary work on ‘styles of thought’, it documents how, in the period between the mid-1960s and (...) the mid-1970s, such facts emerged in relation to new neurobiological styles of explaining and managing social problems associated with drug abuse, and an alliance between a relatively marginal group of researchers and American policy-makers who were launching the ‘War on Drugs’. Beyond illustrating the political and material conditions necessary for the rise of addiction neuroscience, the article highlights the productivity of neurobiological thought styles, by focusing on the new biological objects, treatments and hopes that have emerged within the field of addiction studies over the last several decades. (shrink)

In an important and widely cited paper, Zerilli, Knott, Maclaurin, and Gavaghan (2019) argue that opaque AI decision makers are at least as transparent as human decision makers and therefore the concern that opaque AI is not sufficiently transparent is mistaken. I argue that the concern about opaque AI should not be understood as the concern that such AI fails to be transparent in a way that humans are transparent. Rather, the concern is that the way in which opaque AI (...) is opaque is very different than the way in which humans are opaque. What matters is the degree to which the opaque processes of a class of decision makers are stable, uniform, and safe. The degree to which such processes have these features in humans is higher than the degree to which such processes have these features in opaque AI. And therefore we should require AI to be more transparent than humans. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Cognitive Background to the Aesthetic Problem Wine, Cognition and Philosophy The Phenomenology of “Projects” The Aesthetic Project Notes.

The tradition descending from Frege and Russell has typically treated theories of meaning either as theories of meanings, or as theories of truth conditions. However, propositions of the classical sort don't exist, and truth conditions can't provide all the information required by a theory of meaning. In this book, one of the world's leading philosophers of language offers a way out of this dilemma. Traditionally conceived, propositions are denizens of a "third realm" beyond mind and matter, "grasped" by mysterious Platonic (...) intuition. As conceived here, they are cognitive-event types in which agents predicate properties and relations of things--in using language, in perception, and in nonlinguistic thought. Because of this, one's acquaintance with, and knowledge of, propositions is acquaintance with, and knowledge of, events of one's cognitive life. This view also solves the problem of "the unity of the proposition" by explaining how propositions can be genuinely representational, and therefore bearers of truth. The problem, in the traditional conception, is that sentences, utterances, and mental states are representational because of the relations they bear to inherently representational Platonic complexes of universals and particulars. Since we have no way of understanding how such structures can be representational, independent of interpretations placed on them by agents, the problem is unsolvable when so conceived. However, when propositions are taken to be cognitive-event types, the order of explanation is reversed and a natural solution emerges. Propositions are representational because they are constitutively related to inherently representational cognitive acts. Strikingly original, What Is Meaning? is a major advance. (shrink)

An original interpretation of Merleau-Ponty on subjectivity, drawing from and challenging both the continental and analytic traditions.

In the middle of the twentieth century a dispute erupted between the chief architect of Logical Empiricism, Rudolf Carnap, and Logical Empiricism’s chief reformer, Willard van Orman Quine -- who was attempting to save what he took to be its main insights by recasting them in a more acceptable form. Though both eschewed metaphysics of the traditional apriori sort, and both were intent on making the investigation of science the center of philosophy, they disagreed about how to do so. Part (...) of the disagreement involved the nature of ontological disputes. The central documents in the debate are: (i) Quine’s 1948 article, “On What There Is,” which tells us how to discern ontological.. (shrink)

The concept of ‘globalisation’ increasingly dominates economic and political debate in the 1990s. However, despite a profusion of commentaries and case studies on aspects of ‘globalisation’ such as ‘Japanisation', ‘Americanisation', ‘McDonaldisation’ and, of course, global information technologies, there are few radical interrogations of the notion of ‘globalisation/internationalisation’ and little discussion of the theoretical implications of recent changes in the global political economy. The central argument of this paper is that in order to make sense of these developments a broad focus (...) is required which begins by conceptualising the changing nature of relations between national states in the global economy and concludes by understanding these relations in class terms. This is not simply to restate the importance of an international relations or international political economy ‘dimension', since these ‘disciplines’ fail absolutely to relate ‘interstate’ restructuring to the re-composition of class relations. Rather, the aim of the paper is to prompt a more general theoretical reorientation towards understanding the process of international restructuring as one undertaken by national states in an attempt to re-impose tighter labour discipline and recompose the labour/capital relationship. My starting point, therefore, is that global capitalism is still structured as an antagonistic state system, and that many of the changes which characterise the global political economy are introduced by states in an attempt to solve problems that have their roots in labour/capital conflict. In summary form, the paper concludes that the concept of ‘globalisation’ obscures more than it reveals and that Marx's understanding of the relationship between labour, capital and the state remains a more productive starting point for analysing contemporary global processes. (shrink)

Nietzsche is not difficult to read, but he is famously difficult to understand. This is because of the bewildering array of words, phrases or metaphors that he uses. The Nietzsche Dictionary aims to help, by giving readers a road map to Nietzsche's language, and thus how his terminology and images relate together, forming an overall philosophical picture. The Dictionary also includes synopses of Nietzsche's key works, and short articles on the main philosophical and cultural influences leading up to, and resulting (...) from, Nietzsche. It is designed to be a resource that all readers of Nietzsche will find invaluable, from beginners to more advanced readers.In order to make the book easy to use and navigate, all entries are treated thematically and are of seven types:1. Influences on, or the contemporary context of, Nietzsche2. Major influences of Nietzsche3. Key concepts4. Key metaphors or images5. Alternative translations of the above6. Other words or phrases found in Nietzsche that are cross-referenced to a main entry7. Synopses of major works by Nietzsche. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Canary Wine and Beyond Wine, the Analogy with Art, and Expression Dewey Seeing As and Seeing In Critical Rhetoric The Institutional Theories Attention, Attitude and Appreciation Aesthetic Attributes and Experiences Aesthetic Experience: What Is It? Functionalist Theories The Necessity of Aesthetic Competency Aesthetic Emergence Aesthetic Competency Notes.

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Competency Aesthetic Practices Inter‐Subjective Validity Project Conclusion Notes.

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Hermeneutics of the Wineworld Wine and Its Effect on the Subject Experience and Its Effect upon Wine Wine, Food and the Wineworld(s) Terroir Notes.

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Wine as a Moving Target Wine as a Vague Object 2030 ‐ A Thought Experiment Wine as “Pure Experience” or as “Rich Object”? The Taster of the Future Conclusions Notes.

It is widely believed that Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s theory of argumentation is vulnerable to the charge of relativism. This paper provides a more charitable interpretation of Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s normative views, one that properly considers the historical trajectory of their work and a wider range of texts than existing interpretations. It is argued that their views are better characterized as a form of “contrastivism about arguments” than any kind relativism. This more accurate depiction contributes to ongoing efforts to revive interest (...) in Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s work as well as build bridges with trends in contemporary argumentation theory. (shrink)

_An original interpretation of Merleau-Ponty on subjectivity, drawing from and challenging both the continental and analytic traditions._.

Science and the originality of life -- Christian facticity -- Grasping life as a topic -- Ruinance -- The retrieval of history -- Facticity and ontology -- Factical speaking -- Rhetoric -- Sophistry.

For anyone approaching the Encheiridion of Epictetus for the first time, this book provides a comprehensive guide to understanding a complex philosophical text. Including a full translation and clear explanatory commentaries, Epictetus's 'Encheiridion' introduces readers to a hugely influential work of Stoic philosophy. Scott Aikin and William O. Stephens unravel the core themes of Stoic ethics found within this ancient handbook. Focusing on the core themes of self-control, seeing things as they are, living according to nature, owning one's roles (...) and fulfilling the responsibilities that those roles entail, the authors elucidate the extremely challenging ideas in Epictetus's brisk chapters. Divided into five distinct parts, this book provides readers with: -/- - A new translation of the Encheiridion by William O. Stephens. - A new introduction to ancient Stoicism, its system of concepts, and the ancient figures who shaped it. - A fresh treatment of the notorious and counter-intuitive 'Stoic paradoxes'. - An accessible overview of the origin and historical context of the Encheiridion. - Detailed commentaries on each chapter of the Encheiridion that clarify its recurring themes and highlight their interconnections. - Careful attention to the presentation of the arguments embedded in Epictetus's aphoristic style. - A thoughtful discussion of serious criticisms of Epictetus's Stoicism and replies to these objections. -/- Written with clarity and authority, Epictetus's 'Encheiridion' provides a foundation from which readers can understand this important text and engage with the fundamental questions of Stoic philosophy and ethics. This guide will aid teachers of Epictetus, students encountering Stoicism for the first time, and readers seeking a greater understanding of Stoic ethics. (shrink)

Brentano's innovations in logical theory are considered in the context of his descriptive psychology, with its distinction between differences in quality and in object of mental phenomena. Objections are raised to interpretations that depend on a parallel between Urteil and assertion of a proposition. A more appropriate parallel is drawn between the assertion as subject to description in a metalanguage and the Urteil as secondary object in inner perception. This parallel is then applied so as to suggest a reinterpretation of (...) substitutional quantification, rendering the substitutional interpretation immune to problems that often arise as to the relation between substitutional range and referential range. (shrink)

Brentano's innovations in logical theory are considered in the context of his descriptive psychology, with its distinction between differences in quality and in object of mental phenomena. Objections are raised to interpretations that depend on a parallel between Urteil and assertion of a proposition. A more appropriate parallel is drawn between the assertion as subject to description in a metalanguage and the Urteil as secondary object in inner perception. This parallel is then applied so as to suggest a reinterpretation of (...) substitutional quantification, rendering the substitutional interpretation immune to problems that often arise as to the relation between substitutional range and referential range. (shrink)

Albert Einstein's bold assertion of the form-invariance of the equation of a spherical light wave with respect to inertial frames of reference became, in the space of six years, the preferred foundation of his theory of relativity. Early on, however, Einstein's universal light-sphere invariance was challenged on epistemological grounds by Henri Poincaré, who promoted an alternative demonstration of the foundations of relativity theory based on the notion of a light-ellipsoid. Drawing in part on archival sources, this paper shows how an (...) informal, international group of physicists, mathematicians, and engineers, including Einstein, Paul Langevin, Poincaré, Hermann Minkowski, Ebenezer Cunningham, Harry Bateman, Otto Berg, Max Planck, Max Laue, A. A. Robb, and Ludwig Silberstein, employed figures of light during the formative years of relativity theory in their discovery of the salient features of the relativistic worldview. (shrink)

Canada has followed the pattern of Benelux nations by legislating sufferingSuffering as the pivotal eligibilityEligibilitycriterionCriterion for euthanasiaEuthanasia/assisted death without requiring terminal prognosis as is needed in most permissive jurisdictions. This chapter will explore the relationship between sufferingSuffering and Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) and the ways in which sufferingSuffering is understood in the Supreme Court of Canada, the federal Criminal Code legislation and by health care assessors. Based on this analysis, we will argue that the resulting sufferingSufferingeligibilityEligibilitycriterionCriterion leaves the law (...) open to unintended forms of interpretation, thus instituting perhaps the most unbounded and risk-prone form of assisted death in the world. A review of the literature on sufferingSuffering, the wish to dieWish to die, and reasons for MAIDReasons for MAID requests found sufferingSuffering of severe illness to be frequently associated with unstable mental health, social, and existentialExistential variables that are often amenable to therapy or remediation. While sufferingSuffering remains a powerful motivating force to seek opportunities to relieve distress, its use as an eligibilityEligibilitycriterionCriterion for MAID has significant ambiguity in its’ characterization of ‘enduring’ and ‘irremediable’ and thus fails to protect against abuse for the vulnerable. (shrink)

This study renders the complex corpus of the Guodian texts into a more easily manageable form, incorporating the past several years of scholarly activity on these texts and providing them with a comprehensive introduction along with a complete and well-annotated translation into English.

I defend the view that moral properties are identical to properties that can be expressed without using moral vocabulary.

The paper is an attempt to explain what a transcendental argument is for Kant. The interpretation is based on a reading of the 'Discipline of Pure Reason', Sections 1 and 4 of the first Critique. The author first identifies several statements that Kant makes about the method of proof he followed in the 'Analytic of Principles' which seem to be inconsistent. He then tries to remove the apparent inconsistencies by focusing on the idea of instantiation and drawing a distinction between (...) the intension and the extension of a concept. Finally, the results are applied to the second 'Analogy of Experience' for the purposes of illustration. The paper should be seen as an attempt to provide an historical answer to a question that has been treated thematically in much of the recent literature. (shrink)

Two important debates have characterized mainstream epistemology in recent years. The first is the debate between foundationalists and anti-foundationalists. The second is the debate over the details of a naturalized epistemology. Both debates have meant that traditional concepts of rationality and justification are now understood in a new light. Both debates have helped focus attention on the future direction of epistemology, its goals and its limitations.

Essays by 14 Levinas scholars provide a fresh acount of the argument and purpose of Emmanuel Levinas's major work, Totality and Infinity, drawing parallels between Levinas and other thinkers; considering Levinas's relationship to other disciplines such as nursing, psychotherapy, and law; and bringing this seminal text to bear on specific, concrete issues of present-day concern"--Provided by publisher.