This volume contains the texts from Cave 4 at Qumran which did not find a home in the earlier volumes of Discoveries in the Judaean Desert, which were arranged by literary genre. Although many compositions found at Qumran were works already known from the Bible, Apocrypha, or Pseudepigrapha, these texts were previously unknown and include some works composed by the Qumran community itself. In addition, the volume contains some literary and documentary texts from sites near Qumran.

The book's significance is two-fold: it argues for a new stage in the development of contemporary Confucian philosophy, and it demonstrates the value to Western ...

Stephen Toulmin argues that the potential for reason to improve our lives has been hampered by a serious imbalance in our pursuit of knowledge. The centuries-old dominance of rationality has diminished the value of reasonableness. Toulmin issues a powerful call to redress the balance between rationality and reasonableness.

Hume's Enlightenment Tract is the first full book-length study for forty years of David Hume's Enquiry concerning Human Understanding. The Enquiry has, contrary to its author's expressed wishes, long lived in the shadow of its predecessor, A Treatise of Human Nature. Stephen Buckle presents the Enquiry in a fresh light, and aims to raise it to its rightful position in Hume's work and in the history of philosophy. He argues that the Enquiry is not, as so often assumed, a (...) mere collection of watered-down extracts from the earlier work. It is, rather, a coherent work with a unified argument; and, when this argument is grasped as a whole, the Enquiry shows itself to be the best introduction to the lineaments of its author's general philosophy. Buckle offers a careful guide through the argument and structure of the work. He shows how the central sections of the Enquiry offer a critique of the dogmatic empiricisms of the ancient world, and set in place an alternative conception of human powers based on the sceptical principles of habit and probability. These principles are then put to work, to rule out philosophy's metaphysical ambitions and their consequences: religious systems and their attendant conception of human beings as semi-divine rational animals. Hume's scepticism, experimentalism, and naturalism are thus shown to be different aspects of the one unified philosophy - a sceptical version of the Enlightenment vision. (shrink)

Hume's Enlightenment Tract is the first full book-length study for forty years of David Hume's Enquiry concerning Human Understanding. The Enquiry has, contrary to its author's expressed wishes, long lived in the shadow of its predecessor, A Treatise of Human Nature. Stephen Buckle presents the Enquiry in a fresh light, and aims to raise it to its rightful position in Hume's work and in the history of philosophy. He argues that the Enquiry is not, as so often assumed, a (...) mere collection of watered-down extracts from the earlier work. It is, rather, a coherent work with a unified argument; and, when this argument is grasped as a whole, the Enquiry shows itself to be the best introduction to the lineaments of its author's general philosophy. Buckle offers a careful guide through the argument and structure of the work. He shows how the central sections of the Enquiry offer a critique of the dogmatic empiricisms of the ancient world, and set in place an alternative conception of human powers based on the sceptical principles of habit and probability. These principles are then put to work, to rule out philosophy's metaphysical ambitions and their consequences: religious systems and their attendant conception of human beings as semi-divine rational animals. Hume's scepticism, experimentalism, and naturalism are thus shown to be different aspects of the one unified philosophy - a sceptical version of the Enlightenment vision. (shrink)

These papers are based on a Symposium at the COGSCI Conference in 2010. 1. Naturalizing the Mammalian Mind 2. Modularity in Cognitive Psychology and Affective Neuroscience 3. Affective Neuroscience and the Philosophy of Self 4. Affective Neuroscience and Law.

Elizabeth Anscombe famously argued that "modern moral philosophy" centrally involved unsupported notions of obligation and culpability. Modern Moral Philosophy: From Grotius to Kant exhibits, for the first time, resources that modern moral philosophers had to respond to Anscombe's challenge, also enhancing our own philosophical grasp of morality and its foundations.

Stephen Makin presents a clear and accurate new translation of an influential and much-discussed part of Aristotle's philosophical system, accompanied by an analytical and critical commentary focusing on philosophical issues. In Book Theta of the Metaphysics Aristotle introduces the concepts of actuality and potentiality---which were to remain central to philosophical analysis into the modern era---and explores the distinction between the actual and the potential.

In The Ethos of a Late-Modern Citizen, Stephen K. White contends that Western democracies face novel challenges demanding our reexamination of the role of citizens. White argues that the intense focus in the past three decades on finding general principles of justice for diversity-rich societies needs to be complemented by an exploration of what sort of ethos would be needed to adequately sustain any such principles. Accessible, pithy, and erudite, The Ethos of a Late-Modern Citizen will appeal to a (...) wide audience. (shrink)

Can we talk meaningfully about God? The theological movement known as Grammatical Thomism affirms that religious language is nonsensical, because the reality of God is beyond our capacity for expression. Stephen Mulhall critically evaluates the claims of this movement to be a legitimate inheritor of Wittgenstein's philosophical methods as well as Aquinas's theological project. The major obstacle to this claim is that Grammatical Thomism makes the nonsensicality of religious language when applied to God a touchstone of Thomist insight, whereas (...) 'nonsense' is standardly taken to be solely a term of criticism in Wittgenstein's work. Mulhall argues that a place can be found in both his early work and his later writings for a more positive role to be assigned to nonsensical utterances--one which depends on exploiting an analogy between religious language and riddles. This allows us to see various ways in which his later work has a perfectionist dimension, and results in a radical reconception of the role of analogous usage in language, and in the relation between philosophy and theology. (shrink)

The Limits of Influence is a detailed examination and defense of the evidence for largescale-psychokinesis. It examines the reasons why experimental evidence has not, and perhaps cannot, convince most skeptics that PK is genuine, and it considers why traditional experimental procedures are important to reveal interesting facts about the phenomena.

This paper argues that calls for neurorights propose an overcomplicated approach. It does this through analysis of ‘rights’ using the influential framework provided by Wesley Hohfeld, whose analytic jurisprudence is still well regarded in its clarificatory approach to discussions of rights. Having disentangled some unclarities in talk about rights, the paper proposes the idea of ‘novel human rights’ is not appropriate for what is deemed worth protecting in terms of mental integrity and cognitive liberty. That is best thought of in (...) terms of Hohfeld’s account of ‘right’ as privilege. It goes on to argue that as privileges, legal protections are not well suited to these cases. As such, they cannot be ‘novel human rights’. Instead, protections for mental integrity and cognitive liberty are best accounted for in terms of familiar and established rational and discursive norms. Mental integrity is best thought of as evaluable in terms of familiar rational norms, and cognitive freedom is constrained by appraisals of sense-making. Concerns about how neurotechnologies might pose particular challenges to mental integrity and cognitive liberty are best protected through careful use of existing legislation on data protection, not novel rights, as it is via data that risks to integrity and liberty are manifested. (shrink)

Historically, male sexual fitness was framed by a patriarchal politics of life centred on regeneration, population and nation. In the later 20th century, as successful ageing became promoted by the lifestyle practices of an idealized healthy and active senior citizenry, traditional gerontocratic power over the sexual risks of youth gave way to a medical sexology concerned with sexual functionality across the lifecourse; in particular, erectility. Recently, erectile dysfunction has expanded to become a population-wide health problem with increasingly refined diagnoses based (...) on `phases', `early warning signs' and preventative regimes, especially as Viagra has become so widely available. This article explores a new bodily configuration in the making; arising, on the one hand, from the pharmacological and scientific technologization of male sexuality, and, on the other, from a contemporary politics of life that both contests the late-life ageism of the past and fosters a mid-life ageism in the present. (shrink)

Disability and enhancement are often treated as opposing concepts. To become disabled in some respect is to move away from those who are enhanced in that same respect; to become enhanced is to move away from the corresponding state of disability. This chapter examines how best to understand the concepts of disability and enhancement in this symmetrical way. After considering various candidates, two types of accounts are identified as the most promising: welfarist accounts and typical-functioning accounts. The authors ultimately defend (...) a complex typical-functioning account as the best way to achieve a symmetrical understanding of disability and enhancement. (shrink)

Stephen Makin; VIII*—An Ancient Principle about Causation, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 91, Issue 1, 1 June 1991, Pages 135–152, https://doi.

This paper explores some of the ethical issues around offering COVID-19 vaccines to children. My main conclusion is rather paradoxical: the younger we go, the stronger the grounds for justified parental hesitancy and, as such, the stronger the arguments for enforcing vaccination. I suggest that this is not thereductio ad absurdumit appears, but does point to difficult questions about the nature of parental authority in vaccination cases. The first section sketches the disagreement over vaccinating teenagers, arguing that the UK policy (...) was permissible. The second section outlines a problem for this policy, that it faces justified vaccine hesitancy. The third section discusses three strategies for responding to this problem, arguing that there may be no simple way of overcoming parents’ reasons to resist vaccinations. (shrink)

This article describes the historical emergence of vital systems security, analyzing it as a significant mutation in biopolitical modernity. The story begins in the early 20th century, when planners and policy-makers recognized the increasing dependence of collective life on interlinked systems such as transportation, electricity, and water. Over the following decades, new security mechanisms were invented to mitigate the vulnerability of these vital systems. While these techniques were initially developed as part of Cold War preparedness for nuclear war, they eventually (...) migrated to domains beyond national security to address a range of anticipated emergencies, such as large-scale natural disasters, pandemic disease outbreaks, and disruptions of critical infrastructure. In these various contexts, vital systems security operates as a form of reflexive biopolitics, managing risks that have arisen as the result of modernization processes. This analysis sheds new light on current discussions of the government of emergency and ‘states of exception’. Vital systems security does not require recourse to extraordinary executive powers. Rather, as an anticipatory technology for mitigating vulnerabilities and closing gaps in preparedness, it provides a ready-to-hand toolkit for administering emergencies as a normal part of constitutional government. (shrink)

William James argued for a philosophy of democracy and pluralism that advocates individual and collective responsibility for our social arrangements, our morality, and our religion. In James' view, democracy resides first and foremost not in governmental institutions or in procedures such as voting, but rather in the characteristics of individuals, and in qualities of mind and conduct. It is a philosophy for social change, counselling action and hope despite the manifold challenges facing democratic politics, and these issues still resonate strongly (...) today. In this book, Stephen Bush explores how these themes connect to James' philosophy of religion, his moral thought, his epistemology, his psychology, and his metaphysics. His fresh and original study highlights the relevance of James' thought to modern debates, and will appeal to scholars and students of moral and political philosophy. (shrink)

What might it mean to think of philosophy as being in the condition of modernism -- in which its relation to its own past, and hence its sense of its own future, has become an undismissable problem? If philosophy's hitherto-defining conventions can neither be taken for granted nor rejected, they must be put in question -- which menans re-evealuating the relation between the form and content of philosophical writing, rethinking the demands that such writing must place on its readers, and (...) reconceiving the nature of philosophy itself. Inheritance and Originality argues that the writings of Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Kierkegaard are best understood as responsive to such questions, and as driven in consequence to strikingly similar reconceptions of language, reason, and understanding, doubt and scepticism, morality, and the structure of selfhood. Through detailed re-readings of these authors' most influential texts, as attentive to their specificity as to their family resemblances, Stephen Mulhall reorients our sense of the philosophical work each text aims to accomplish, to engender a critical dialogue betweeen them from which the elements of a new conception of philosophy might emerge, and to uncover that conception's indebtedness to certain fundamental theological preoccupations. (shrink)

How did science come to have such a central place in Western culture? How did our ways of thinking, and our moral, political, and social values, come to be modelled around scientific values? Stephen Gaukroger traces the story of how these values developed, and how they influenced society and culture from the 19th to the mid-20th century.

Foucault, Power, and Education invites internationally renowned scholar Stephen J. Ball to reflect on the importance and influence of Foucault on his work in educational policy.

Animistic cognition has adaptive value in domains of social and physical niche prediction. This argument is extended to our contemporary relationship with digital and AI technology.

ABSTRACT:Many of humanity's most serious problems are global, intergenerational, and ecological, yet current institutions are poorly placed to confront such problems. In part, this institutional challenge reflects difficulties with our basic concepts and theories. Bioethics is a central area where such questions arise. Although some have argued for an environmentalized bioethics since its inception, biomedicine has thus far failed to embrace the challenge, and some accuse most bioethicists of being "asleep at the wheel" (Schenck and Churchill 2021). This paper discusses (...) the basic ethical challenge, offers the "perfect moral storm" analysis, and explores one promising new concept for bioethics, planetary health, in light of that analysis. Drawing on the foundational report of the Rockefeller Foundation–Lancet Commission (Whitmee et al. 2015) and using climate change as the example, the author argues that planetary health has significant strengths but also some weaknesses, and that identifying both is helpful in charting a path forward for environmentalized bioethics. (shrink)

The current system of ethical oversight in the United States is based on Institutional Review Board (IRB) review. The system was established in response to well-known and egregious mistreatment of subjects in both biomedical and social and behavioral research. In the decades since the research regulations were enacted, reaction to the burden of IRB oversight has led the system to focus on compliance and limit its active oversight disproportionately to studies that could present the risk of physical harm. At the (...) same time, the characteristics of the research enterprise have changed and methodologies now present novel risks that were not envisioned in the regulations. We convened a group of IRB professionals, academic leaders, and others to discuss limitations of the current system, how that system could be changed to recognize evolving risks and an increasing focus on participant and community voice, and how it could better serve the needs of researchers and support the societal project of science as a public good. Recommendations included a call to reexamine the academic incentive structure, to develop a system to support consideration of ethical principles from the time of study design, and to explicitly provide different ethical support and oversight for high-risk interventional trials and lower risk biomedical and social behavioral research. (shrink)

In a world where every person is exposed daily through the mass media to images of violence and suffering, as most dramatically exemplified in recent years by the ongoing tragedy in Darfur, the question naturally arises: What responsibilities do we, as bystanders to such social injustice, bear in holding accountable those who have created the conditions for this suffering? And what is our own complicity in the continuance of such violence—indeed, how do we contribute to and benefit from it? How (...) is our responsibility as individuals connected to our collective responsibility as members of a society? Such questions underlie Stephen Esquith’s investigation in this book. For Esquith, being responsible means holding ourselves accountable as a people for the institutions we have built or tolerated and the choices we have made individually and collectively within these institutional constraints. It is thus more than just acknowledgment; it involves settling accounts as well as recognizing our own complicity even as bystanders. (shrink)

Do people who cause themselves to be ill (e.g. by smoking) forfeit some of their rights to healthcare? This paper examines one argument for the view that they do, the restoration argument. It goes as follows. Smokers need more health‐resources than non‐smokers. Given limited budgets, we must choose between treating everyone equally (according to need) or reducing smokers' entitlements. If we choose the former, non‐smokers will be harmed by others' smoking, because there will be less resources available for them than (...) if no‐one smoked. This is unfair: why should non‐smokers suffer because of others' unhealthy lifestyle choices? We should therefore choose the latter and reduce smokers' entitlements. This paper criticises the restoration argument on the following grounds. In order to avoid generating unpalatable conclusions elsewhere, it must be combined with a principle according to which activities which are sufficiently ‘socially valuable’ (e.g. parenting) are immune from restoration claims. This however means that what was supposed to be one of the argument's most attractive features, its compatibility with ‘liberal neutrality’ with respect to the value of different lifestyles, doesn't really exist. Hence, the restoration argument is nowhere near as attractive as it at first appears to be. (shrink)

Twenty years ago, people thought only cranks or sentimentalists could be seriously concerned about the treatment of non-human animals. However, since then philosophers, scientists and welfarists have raised public awareness of the issue; and they have begun to lay the foundations for an enormous change in human practice. This book is a record of the development of 'animal rights' through the eyes of one highly-respected and well-known thinker. This book brings together for the first time Stephen R.L. Clark's major (...) essays in one volume. Written with characteristic clarity and persuasion, Animals and Their Moral Standing will be essential reading for both philosophers and scientists, as well as the general reader concerned by the debates over animal rights and treatment. (shrink)

Pre-natal-diagnosis technologies allow parents to discover whether their child is likely to suffer from serious disability. One argument for state funding of access to such technologies is that doing so would be “cost-effective”, in the sense that the expected financial costs of such a programme would be outweighed by expected “benefits”, stemming from the births of fewer children with serious disabilities. This argument is extremely controversial. This paper argues that the argument may not be as unacceptable as is often assumed. (...) In doing so, it sets out a more general framework for assessing the relevance of efficiency calculations to policy-making. The final section also investigates the relationship between the paper’s arguments and claims about parental responsibility for child-bearing and rearing, with reference to Scanlon’s work on “substantive responsibility”. (shrink)

Stephen E. Smallman describes the process of new birth and what is common in all authentic conversion experiences--genuine faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Spiritual Birthline testifies to new birth in all kinds of people, in all sorts of circumstances. It is helpful to those with a budding curiosity in God as well as to people interested in relational evangelism.

'Christian nationalism' refers to the set of ideas in which belief in the development and superiority of one's national group is combined with, or underwritten by, Christian theology and practice. This study examines Kierkegaard's critique of Christian nationalism in relation to political science theories of religious nationalism.

There are sometimes good reasons to define a criminal offense in a way that is over-inclusive, in the sense that the definition will encompass conduct that is not otherwise wrongful. But are these reasons ever sufficient? When, if ever, can such laws justifiably be made and enforced? When, if ever, can they permissibly be violated? In The Realm of Criminal Law, Antony Duff tackles this challenge head on. We find Duff’s strategy promising in many ways as an effort to reconcile (...) over-inclusive offenses with the wrongness constraint on criminalization. Nonetheless, we aim to move the discussion forward by raising questions about Duff’s solution and highlighting some limitations and costs. We begin in Part 2 by sketching the contours of Duff’s position; then in Part 3 we propose one refinement and offer two practical observations; and finally, in Part 4 we raise broader concerns. In particular, we question whether the problem of over-inclusive offenses is one that can or ought to be solved, or whether it is better conceived as a difficulty to be managed and mitigated. Of course, we should avoid undue harshness in the law where we can, and Duff’s approach is guided by this worthy ambition. But there may also be a limit to this. To the extent that the harshness cannot be avoided, perhaps this should be acknowledged and faced up to, rather than obscured or finessed. (shrink)

In June of 2008, the International Society for Comparative Studies of Chinese and Western Philosophy (ISCWP) convened its third Constructive Engagement conference, on the theme of “Comparative Philosophy Methodology.” During the opening speeches, Prof. Dunhua ZHAO, Chair of the Philosophy Department at Peking University, challenged the conference’s participants to put forward a minimal definition of “comparative philosophy” and a statement of its methods. Based on the papers from the conference and the extensive discussion that ensued, during my closing reflections at (...) the end of the conference I offered a tentative synthesis of the conference’s conclusions. That summary has already been published on-line as part of the bi-annual ISCWP newsletter (Angle 2008). In this brief essay, I recapitulate the themes of my earlier summary and expand, in my own voice, on some of the key points. (shrink)

The concepts of form and function have traditionally been defined in terms of biology and then extended to other disciplines. Stephen T. Asma examines the various interpretations of form and function in science and philosophy, reflecting on the philosophical presuppositions underlying the work of Geoffroy, Cuvier, Darwin, and others. -/- In the continental tradition of Canguilhem and Foucault, Asma's treatment of the historical form/function dispute analyzes the complex interactions among ideologies, metaphysical commitments, and research programs. Following Form and Function (...) is a significant contribution to the history of science, history of philosophy, and disputes within contemporary biology. (shrink)