The Beatles and McLuhan: Understanding the Electric Age examines how the incorporation of electric technology in The Beatles’ art would enhance their musical impact. MacFarlane surveys the relationship between McLuhan's ideas on the nature and effects of electric technology and The Beatles own engagement of that technology; offers analyses of key works from The Beatles' studio years; and collates these data to offer stunning conclusions about The Beatles’ creative process in the recording studio and its cultural implications.

Historical demographic research shows that the factors influencing mortality risk are labile across time and space. This is particularly true for datasets that span societal transitions. Here, we seek to understand how marriage, migration, and the local economy influenced mortality dynamics in a rapidly changing environment characterized by high in-migration and male-biased sex ratios. Mortality records were extracted from a compendium of historical vital records for the Baja California peninsula (Mexico). Our sample consists of 1,201 mortality records spanning AD 1835–1900. (...) Findings from Cox proportional hazard models indicate that (1) marriage was associated with a protective effect for both sexes; (2) residing in a mining town was associated with higher mortality for men, but not women; (3) migration was associated with decreased mortality risk for women, but not men; and (4) the risk of mortality increased in the face of infectious disease, but decreased over time. Despite the early initiation of reproduction for women, marriage had a protective effect, likely because marriage linked women to resources. Although mining boomtowns were associated with elevated risk factors generally, only men experienced greater mortality risk, likely due to dangerous working conditions that women did not experience. Last, female, but not male, migrants experienced greater longevity, possibly because exposure to harsh labor conditions eroded the protective effect of selection bias for men. Together, these results shed light on an understudied historical population and broaden our understanding of demographic dynamics in preindustrial settings. (shrink)

It has become a truism in discussions of Imperialist literature to state that the British empire was, in a very significant way, a textual exercise. Empire was simultaneously created and perpetuated through a proliferation of texts driven significantly by a desire for what Thomas Richards describes as “one great system of knowledge.” The project of assembling this system assumed that all of the “alien” knowledges that it drew upon could be easily assimilated into existing, “universal” epistemological categories. This belief (...) in “one great system” assumed that knowledges from far-flung outposts of empire could, through careful categorization and control, be made to reinforce, rather than threaten, the authority of imperial epistemic rule. But this movement into “new” epistemic as well as physical spaces opened up the disruptive possibility for and encounter with Foucault’s “insurrection of subjugated knowledges.” In the Imperial Gothic stories discussed here, the space between “knowing all there is to know” and the inherent unknowability of the “Other” is played out through representations of failures of classification and anxieties about the limits of knowledge. These anxieties are articulated through what is arguably one of the most heavily regulated signifiers of scientific progress at the turn of the century: the body. In an age that was preoccupied with bodies as spectacles that signified everything from criminal behaviour, psychological disorder, moral standing and racial categorization, the mutable, unclassifiable body functions as a signifier that mediates between imperial fantasies of control and definition and fin-de-siècle anxieties of dissolution and degeneration. In Imperial Gothic fiction these fears appear as a series of complex explorations of the ways in which the gap between the known and the unknown can be charted on and through a monstrous body that moves outside of stable classification. (shrink)

Recent ideas about epistemic modals and indicative conditionals in formal semantics have significant overlap with ideas in modal logic and dynamic epistemic logic. The purpose of this paper is to show how greater interaction between formal semantics and dynamic epistemic logic in this area can be of mutual benefit. In one direction, we show how concepts and tools from modal logic and dynamic epistemic logic can be used to give a simple, complete axiomatization of Yalcin's [16] semantic consequence relation for (...) a language with epistemic modals and indicative conditionals. In the other direction, the formal semantics for indicative conditionals due to Kolodny and MacFarlane [9] gives rise to a new dynamic operator that is very natural from the point of view of dynamic epistemic logic, allowing succinct expression of dependence (as in dependence logic) or supervenience statements. We prove decidability for the logic with epistemic modals and Kolodny and MacFarlane's indicative conditional via a full and faithful computable translation from their logic to the modal logic K45. (shrink)

We establish a connection between T. Kuhn’s philosophy of science and a Wittgensteinian contextual realism, as we understand it, and interpret the basic concepts of the former in terms of the latter. In particular, we interpret the notion of a scientific paradigm in terms of the notion of a form of life. For instance, we speak of Newtonian and quantum mechanics as grammars of the corresponding forms of life. The incommensurability of paradigms is due to the adoption of different norms (...) (grammars). It is not absolute, as grammatical statements can change their status and become factual, and vice versa. Norms themselves evolve. We support Kuhn’s argument against Popper’s falsification principle with our interpretation of an established scientific theory as a Wittgensteinian norm (rule) for measuring reality. The norm is neither true nor false; its falsification makes no sense. We interpret Wittgenstein’s notion of a family resemblance, used by Kuhn, as the presence of a shared explicit or implicit Wittgensteinian rule (norm). We interpret Kuhn’s historical examples, in particular those with the systems of Ptolemy and Copernicus, relativity theory and quantum mechanics, and Kuhn’s view that participants in different paradigms see the world differently and that observation depends on theory, in terms of our thesis that ontology is sensitive to context. We thus resist the relativistic and constructivist interpretations of Kuhn’s position and show why it does not contradict the idea of scientific progress and the principle of correspondence between scientific theories. We also briefly compare Kuhn’s position with those of I. Lakatos, H. Chang (pragmatic realism) and J. MacFarlane (evaluative relativism), and compare our interpretation of Kuhn with his interpretation in terms of a naturalized transcendentalism proposed by M. Massimi. (shrink)

The purported fact that geometric theories formulated in terms of points and geometric theories formulated in terms of lines are “equally correct” is often invoked in arguments for conceptual relativity, in particular by Putnam and Goodman. We discuss a few notions of equivalence between first-order theories, and we then demonstrate a precise sense in which this purported fact is true. We argue, however, that this fact does not undermine metaphysical realism.

The thirty-three essays in <I>Relativism: A Contemporary Anthology</I> grapple with one of the most intriguing, enduring, and far-reaching philosophical problems of our age. Relativism comes in many varieties. It is often defined as the belief that truth, goodness, or beauty is relative to some context or reference frame, and that no absolute standards can adjudicate between competing reference frames. Michael Krausz's anthology captures the significance and range of relativistic doctrines, rehearsing their virtues and vices and reflecting on a spectrum of (...) attitudes. Invoking diverse philosophical orientations, these doctrines concern conceptions of relativism in relation to facts and conceptual schemes, realism and objectivity, universalism and foundationalism, solidarity and rationality, pluralism and moral relativism, and feminism and poststructuralism. Featuring nine original essays, the volume also includes many classic articles, making it a standard resource for students, scholars, and researchers. <B>Table of Contents:</B> Foreword by Alan Ryan Preface Introduction Michael Krausz <B>Part I. Orienting Relativism</B> 1. Mapping Relativisms Michael Krausz 2. A Brief History of Relativism Maria Baghramian <B>Part II. Relativism, Truth, and Knowledge</B> 3. Subjective, Objective, and Conceptual Relativisms Maurice Mandelbaum 4. “Just the Facts, Ma’am!” Nelson Goodman 5. Relativism in Philosophy of Science Nancy Cartwright 6. The Truth About Relativism Joseph Margolis 7. Making Sense of Relative Truth John MacFarlane 8. On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme Donald Davidson 9. Truth and Convention: On Davidson’s Refutation of Conceptual Relativism Hilary Putnam 10. Conceptual Schemes Simon Blackburn 11. Relativizing the Facts Paul A. Boghossian 12. Targets of Anti-Relativist Arguments Harvey Siegel 13. Realism and Relativism Akeel Bilgrami <B>Part III. Moral Relativism, Objectivity, and Reasons</B> 14. Moral Relativism Defended Gilbert Harman 15. The Truth in Relativism Bernard Williams 16. Pluralism and Ambivalence David B. Wong 17. The Relativity of Fact and the Objectivity of Value Catherine Z. Elgin 18. Senses of Moral Relativity David Wiggins 19. Ethical Relativism and the Problem of Incoherence David Lyons 20. Understanding Alien Morals Gopal Sreenivasan 21. Value: Realism and Objectivity Thomas Nagel 22. Intuitionism, Realism, Relativism, and Rhubarb Crispin Wright 23. Moral Relativism and Moral Realism Russ Schafer-Landau <B>Part IV. Relativism, Culture, and Understanding</B> 24. Anti Anti-Relativism Clifford Geertz 25. Solidarity or Objectivity? Richard Rorty 26. Relativism, Power, and Philosophy Alasdair MacIntyre 27. Internal Criticism and Indian Rationalist Traditions Martha C. Nussbaum and Amartya Sen 28. Phenomenological Rationality and the Overcoming of Relativism Jitendra N. Mohanty 29. Understanding and Ethnocentricity Charles Taylor 30. Relativism and Cross-Cultural Understanding Kwame Anthony Appiah 31. Relativism, Persons, and Practices Amélie Oksenberg Rorty 32. One What? Relativism and Poststructuralism David Couzens Hoy 33. Must a Feminist Be a Relativist After All? Lorraine Code List of Contributors Index. (shrink)

Hobbes’s views on free will and action were radically revisionary of a well-established scholastic theory of the ethical significance of freedom and of freedom’s relation to law. At the heart of this scholastic theory was an account of freedom as a multiway power to determine alternatives and of human action as a distinctively practical mode of exercising reason. The chapter explains this theory as developed by Suarez and, following Suarez, by Bramhall, and examines Hobbes’s attack on the theory’s basis—the theory (...) of freedom as a metaphysical power and of action as a distinctively practical mode of exercising reason. (shrink)

Findings in dynamic unit formation suggest that completion processes reflect the optics of our world. Dynamic unit formation may depend on patterns of motion signals that are consistent with the causes of optical changes. In addition, dynamic completion conforms to a local curvature minimization constraint. Such relational aspects of vision are important to consider in linking perceptual experience and neural activity.

Thomas Wheatland examines the influence of the Frankfurt School, or Horkheimer Circle, and how they influenced American social thought and postwar German sociology.

Dans sa violente charge contre la Révolution française, Edmund Burke avait élevé le débat politique à un niveau philosophique. Son argument le plus profond consistait à reprocher aux révolutionnaires de pécher par apriorisme, en cherchant à déduire, comme des géomètres, une nouvelle constitution à partir des principes abstraits énoncés dans la Déclaration des droits de l’homme. Reprise par les disciples allemands de Burke, cette critique de la méthode adoptée par la Constituante tirait des postulats empiristes des Lumières anglo-écossaises toutes les (...) implications conservatrices que recelaient déjà les textes politiques et historiques de Hume. Or c’est d’emblée sur ce terrain spéculatif que se joue, chez Fichte, la défense du droit de révolution. Reprochant à l’empirisme de réduire l’esprit au « mécanisme aveugle de l’association des idées », passivement déterminé par une extériorité en soi, Fichte entend au contraire fonder l’expérience elle-même sur l’activité d’un « Moi-en-soi », absolument indépendant. Conçu comme causalité libre, pouvant donc s’affranchir des « conjonctions coutumières » humiennes pour commencer une nouvelle série dans l’ordre des phénomènes, l’homme, pour Fichte, n’a pas seulement la « faculté de se perfectionner », mais la loi de sa liberté lui en fait même un devoir. Au regard de cet impératif catégorique de perfectionnement, il n’y a pas de Common Law qui tienne. Aussi Fichte ne recule-t-il pas devant la révolution, si les institutions du passé font obstacle à la destination de l’homme. (shrink)

Thomas Williams presents the most extensive collection of John Duns Scotus's work on ethics and moral psychology available in English. This accessible and philosophically informed translation includes extended discussions on divine and human freedom, the moral attributes of God, and the relationship between will and intellect.

Thomas Alexander shows that the primary, guiding concern of Dewey's philosophy is his theory of aesthetic experience.

This book offers a much-needed new political theory of an old phenomenon. The last decade alone has marked the highest number of migrations in recorded history. Constrained by environmental, economic, and political instability, scores of people are on the move. But other sorts of changes—from global tourism to undocumented labor—have led to the fact that to some extent, we are all becoming migrants. The migrant has become the political figure of our time. Rather than viewing migration as the exception to (...) the rule of political fixity and citizenship, Thomas Nail reinterprets the history of political power from the perspective of the movement that defines the migrant in the first place. Applying his "kinopolitics" to several major historical conditions (territorial, political, juridical, and economic) and figures of migration (the nomad, the barbarian, the vagabond, and the proletariat), he provides fresh tools for the analysis of contemporary migration. (shrink)

In der 1970 gegründeten Reihe erscheinen Arbeiten, die philosophiehistorische Studien mit einem systematischen Ansatz oder systematische Studien mit philosophiehistorischen Rekonstruktionen verbinden. Neben deutschsprachigen werden auch englischsprachige Monographien veröffentlicht. Gründungsherausgeber sind: Erhard Scheibe (Herausgeber bis 1991), Günther Patzig (bis 1999) und Wolfgang Wieland (bis 2003). Von 1990 bis 2007 wurde die Reihe von Jürgen Mittelstraß mitherausgegeben.

Introduction Understanding the views of the public is essential if generally acceptable policies are to be devised that balance research access to general practice patient records with protection of patients' privacy. However, few large studies have been conducted about public attitudes to research access to personal health information. Methods A mixed methods study was performed. Informed by focus groups and literature review, a questionnaire was designed which assessed attitudes to research access to personal health information and factors that influence these. (...) A postal survey was conducted of an electoral roll-based sample of the adult population of Ireland. Results Completed questionnaires were returned by 1575 (40.6%). Among the respondents, 67.5% were unwilling to allow GPs to decide when researchers could access identifiable personal health information. However, 89.5% said they would agree to ongoing consent arrangements, allowing the sharing by GPs of anonymous personal health information with researchers without the need for consent on a study-by-study basis. Increasing age (by each 10-year increment), being retired and primary level education only were significantly associated with an increased likelihood of agreeing that any personal health information could be shared on an ongoing basis: OR 1.39 (95% CI 1.18 to 1.63), 2.00 (95% CI 1.22 to 3.29) and 3.91 (95% CI 1.95 to 7.85), respectively. Conclusions Although survey data can be prone to response biases, this study suggests that prior consent agreements allowing the supply by GPs of anonymous personal health information to researchers may be widely supported, and that populations willing to opt in to such arrangements may be sufficiently representative to facilitate valid and robust consent-dependent observational research. (shrink)

John MacFarlane explores how we might make sense of the idea that truth is relative. He provides new, satisfying accounts of parts of our thought and talk that have resisted traditional methods of analysis, including what we mean when we talk about what is tasty, what we know, what will happen, what might be the case, and what we ought to do.

Social learning has been shown to be an evolutionarily adaptive strategy, but it can be implemented via many different cognitive mechanisms. The adaptive advantage of social learning depends crucially on the ability of each learner to obtain relevant and accurate information from informants. The source of informants’ knowledge is a particularly important cue for evaluating advice from multiple informants; if the informants share the source of their information or have obtained their information from each other, then their testimony is statistically (...) dependent and may be less reliable than testimony from informants who do not share information. In this study, we use a Bayesian model to determine how rational learners should incorporate the effects of shared information when learning from other people, conducting three experiments that examine whether human learners behave similarly. We find that people are sensitive to a number of different patterns of dependency, supporting the use of a sophisticated strategy for social learning that goes beyond copying the majority, and broadening the situations in which social learning is likely to be an adaptive strategy. (shrink)

Is Naturalism Coherent? Naturalism is the philosophical orthodoxy of the late 20th and early 21st century. However, the content of naturalism is unclear. I aim to demonstrate that naturalism cannot be formulated coherently. I offer two main arguments. First, naturalism presupposes the unity of science thesis; but the unity of science thesis has come under serious attack. But even if the naturalist successfully entitles herself to the unity of science thesis, naturalism is still subject to an argument from incoherence. First, (...) I reconstruct naturalism as the conjunction of a methodological and ontological theme. The ontological theme of naturalism states that only those things truly exist which can be accounted for by physical science. The methodological theme asserts that “philosophy is continuous with science”. While this can be interpreted in different ways, it is often taken to state that philosophy should only make statements that can be countenanced by the standpoint of science. Second, I demonstrate that this common construal has the underlying tacit assumption of the unity of science. The unity of science claims that: the entities and laws of the special sciences can be reduced to a master science, commonly identified as physics. Third, I briefly rehearse two lessons from Fodor and Horgan. Fodor convincingly argued against the inter-level reducibility of special science laws to the laws of physics. Horgan´s argument starts with the observation that a sensible version of reductive physicalism has to be cashed out in terms of supervenience. He then goes on to argue that no available conception of supervenience captures the reductive ambitions of physicalism. Hence, the naturalist simply cannot entitle herself to an uncontroversial notion of the unity of science that is presupposed by naturalism. However, and fourth, even if the naturalist can establish the unity of science thesis, it is subject to an argument from incoherence. I take a cue from the coherence problem of the “empiricist criterion of meaning” in logical positivism, and apply it to the naturalist doctrine. The methodological commitment states that in philosophy only those claims can be made which are countenanced from the standpoint of the natural sciences. This is the standard for philosophical practice set by naturalism. And naturalism is itself a philosophical thesis. However, both commitments of naturalism fall short of this standard. The ontological commitment states that, in effect, the only things that really exist are those entities that are accepted and posited by physics. But this claim itself does not qualify as a piece of natural science since it transcends the bounds of what natural science investigates. Similarly, the methodological commitment cannot be countenanced from the standpoint of natural science. The claim that philosophical practice should only include statements that can be countenanced from the standpoint of natural science, is itself not a statement that is countenanced by natural science. Since this standard was set by naturalism qua methodological commitment, I conclude that naturalism turns out to be an incoherent doctrine. Bibliography Fodor, Jerry : “Special Sciences,” Synthese 28:2, 97-115. Horgan, Terence : “From supervenience to superdupervenience: meeting the demands of a material world,” Mind 102, 555-586. Quine, Williard v. O. : Word and Object, MIT Press. (shrink)

St Thomas Aquinas saw religion as part of the natural human propensity to worship. His ability to recognize the naturalness of this phenomenon and simultaneously to go beyond it, to explore spiritual revelation, makes his work fresh and highly readable today. While drawing on a strong distinction between theology and philosophy, Aquinas interleaved them intricately in his writings, which range from an examination of the structures of thought to the concept of God as the end of all things. This (...) accessible new translation chooses substantial passages not only from the indispensable Summa Theologicae, but from many other works, fully illustrating the breadth and progression of Aquinas's philosophy. (shrink)

It seems generally agreed that a theory of sensory episodes that mentions sensory objects and a sensing relation — the ‘act-object’ theory — is unacceptable and should be replaced by some other account. A chief competitor is the Adverbial Theory, and one of its chief advocates is Wilfrid Sellars. While it is clear that there are serious difficulties for the act-object theory not facing the adverbial theory, I will argue that the latter has difficulties of its own.

How can I know something? How can I convince someone of the rightness of my position? How does reality function? What is artistic creativity? What is the role of the state? It is well known that people from various cultures give dissimilar answers to such philosophical questions. After three decades in the cross-cultural study of ideas and values, Thomas Kasulis found that culture influences not only the answers to these questions, but often how one arrives at the answers. In (...) generalizing cultural difference, Kasulis identifies two kinds of orientation: intimacy and integrity. Both determine how we think about relations among people and among things, and each is reasonable, effective, and consistent. Yet the two are so incompatible in their basic assumptions that they cannot successfully engage each other. Cultural difference extends beyond nations. Cultural identities crystallize in relation to religion, occupation, race, gender, class. Rather than attempt to transcend cultural difference, Kasulis urges a deeper awareness of its roots by moving beyond mere cultural relativism toward a cultural bi-orientationality that will allow us to adapt ourselves to different cultural contexts as the situation demands. Wonderfully clear and unburdened by jargon, Intimacy or Integrity is accessible to readers from a variety of perspectives and backgrounds. By analyzing the synergy between thought and culture, it increases our understanding of cultural difference and guides us in developing strategies for dealing with orientations different from our own. (shrink)

Nineteenth-century spiritism was a blend of religious elements, the philosophy of mind, science and popular science and contacts with extraterrestrials were a commonplace phenomenon during spiritistic séances. Using the example of Carl du Prel I show how his comprehensive mystic philosophy originated in a theory of extraterrestrial life. Carl du Prel used a Darwinian and monistic framework, theories of the unconscious and a Neo-Kantian epistemology to formulate a philosophy of astronomy and extraterrestrial life. He claimed that the mechanism of Darwinian (...) selection is responsible for the distribution of stars and the orbits of the planets. In his speculations on the nature of extraterrestrial life he used the concept of organ projection to argue that technical solutions on earth will be realized organically on other planets and claimed that superior extraterrestrials have quantitatively and qualitatively different senses and thus different forms of intuition. A comparison with Camille Flammarion, spiritist and populariser of astronomy, demonstrates the contextual complexities of spiritism. In contrast to du Prel’s sober Neo-Kantian philosophical speculations, Flammarion was a late proponent of a French esoteric tradition that was rooted in romantic socialism, painted grand cosmological vistas and emphasized reincarnation. I put forward the hypothesis that current discourses on extraterrestrial life are affected by the spiritist tradition mainly through the ‘Golden Age’ science fiction literature of the 1940s and 50s and its successors. However, neither Carl du Prel nor Camille Flammarion contributed significantly to this tradition, which is mainly shaped by the psychical research of J. B. Rhine.Keywords: Spiritism; Carl du Prel; Camille Flammarion; Organ projection; Science fiction. (shrink)

Thomas Joseph; Secular vs. Orthodox Chaplaincy: Taking the Kingdom of Heaven Seriously, Christian bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies in Medical Morality, Volume.

Thomas Weber's book comprises a series of biographical reflections about people who influenced Gandhi, and those who were, in turn, influenced by him. Whilst previous literature tended to focus on Gandhi's political legacy, Weber's book explores the spiritual, social and philosophical resonances of these relationships, and it is with these aspects of the Mahatma's life in mind, that the author selects his central protagonists. These include friends such as Henry Polak and Hermann Kallenbach, who are not as well known (...) as those usually cited, but who left a deep impression nevertheless, and motivated some of Gandhi's major life changes. Conversely, the work of luminaries such as E. F. Schumacher and Gene Sharp reveal the Mahatma's influence in arenas which are not traditionally associated with his thinking. Weber's book offers intriguing insights into the life and thought of one of the most significant figures of the twentieth century. (shrink)