The papers in this volume reflect much of the current unease of a world that perceives itself once more at the edge of chaos. The authors present different vistas of that experience and their inherent dialectic, expressed in numerous and ceaseless conflicts between ordering and disordering processes. They can be read as comments on the ongoing processes that lead toward greater complexity.

'The most comprehensive and accessibly written account of how people use time across European and North American countries... this book must be read by anyone with specialized interest in time use and socio-economic organisation. The book has a wide application. It is well crafted, tackling difficult and contentious, yet crucial, debates in contemporary society with clarity and precision. Regardless of whether you agree with its prognosis, analysis and theoretical reasoning, this is a thought provoking critique of socio-economic and temporal organisation.' (...) -British Journal of Sociology 'The book will be valued particularly for its careful explanations of how time budget data can be analysed so as to make comparisons between countries and reveal trends over time.' -Sociology 'The book is entirely accessible to the general reader and many of the key ideas are graphically illustrated.' -Annals of Leisure ResearchIs there a 'speed-up' of daily life? Have the best-off members of developed societies lost their leisure? Have women won their jobs but kept their housework? Changing Times seeks to answer these and similar questions, putting together, for the first time, evidence of changing time-use patterns drawn from forty large-scale surveys, from twenty countries in Western Europe, North America, and Australia, covering the last third of the twentieth century. (shrink)

Very roughly, the epistemic objection to the growing block theory (GBT) says that according to that theory there are many past times at which persons falsely believe they are present. Since there is nothing subjectively distinguishable about a situation in which one truly believes one is present, from a situation in which one falsely believes one is present, the GBT is a theory on which we cannot know that we are present. In their articulation and defence of the GBT, (...) Correia and Rosenkranz (C&R) argue that the epistemic objection fails miserably. In what follows I try to unpack their response to the objection, and locate it amongst others. Along the way I flag some confusions I have about how we are to think about the GBT as articulated by C&R. (shrink)

The human experience is punctuated by times of crisis. Some crises are experienced at a personal level (e.g., the diagnosis of a life-threatening disease), organizational level (e.g., a business facing bankruptcy), and still others are experienced on a societal or global level (e.g., COVID-19 pandemic). Although crises can be deeply troubling and anxiety provoking, they can also serve as an important catalyst for creative action and innovative outcomes. This is because during times of crisis our typical forms of (...) reasoning and action may no longer serve us. It is precisely during such times that new ways of thought, action and leadership are needed. A key question for researchers to consider is:Why and how times of crisis serve as an impetus for creative actions and outcomes?The purpose of this paper is to address this question. I open by briefly discussing the features of a crisis. I then introduce an empirically testable, process model that outlines various pathways, factors, and outcomes associated with different ways people and organizations respond during times of crisis. I close by briefly outlining future directions for creativity theory and research. (shrink)

Departing from the (post-)Anthropocenic crisis state of today’s world, fuelled by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, various post-truth populist follies, and an apocalyptic WW3-scenario that has been hanging in the air since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, this article argues for the possibility – and necessity – of an affirmative posthumanist-materialist mapping of hope. Embedded in the Deleuzoguattarian-Braidottian (see Deleuze and Guattari 2005 [1980]; Braidotti 2011 [1994]) methodology of critical cartography, and infused with critical posthumanist, new materialist, and queer theoretical perspectives, (...) this cartography of hope is sketched out against two permacrisis-infused positionalities: nostalgic humanism and tragic (post-)humanism. Forced to navigate between these two extremes, the critical cartography of hope presented here explores hope in numerous historico-philosophical (re-)configurations: from the premodern ‘hope-as-all-too-human’, to a more politicised early modern ‘hope-as-(politically-)human’ – representing hope’s first paradigm shift (politicisation), and from a four decades-long neoliberal redrawing of hope as ‘no-more-hope’ – hope’s second shift (depoliticisation) – to a critical (new) materialist plea to de-anthropocentrise and re-politicise hope – hope’s third and final post-Anthropocenic shift (re-politicisation). By mapping these (re-)configurations of hope, a philosophical plea is made for hope as a material(ist) praxis that can help us better understand – and counter – these extractive late capitalist, neoliberal more-than-human crisis times. (shrink)

Ulrich Meyer's book The Nature of Time uses tense logic to argue for a `modal' view of time, which replaces substantial times with `ersatz times' constructed using conceptually basic tense operators. He also argues against Bertrand Russell's relationist theory, in which times are classes of events, and against the idea that relativity compels the integration of time and space. I find fault with each of these negative arguments, as well as with Meyer's purported reconstruction of empty spacetime (...) from tense operators and substantial spatial points. I suggest that Meyer's positive project is best conceived as an elimination of time in the mode of Julian Barbour's The End of Time. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hard Times:Philosophy and the Fundamentalist ImaginationRandall Everett Allsup"Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and (...) this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to the Facts!" So admonishes headmaster Gradgrind in the very beginning of Hard Times, Charles Dickens' prescient tale of education in the industrial world.1 Facts—"addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, settle everything somehow and never wonder"—Facts form the essence of Gradgrind's philosophy.2A close reading of Gradgrind's opening monologue will provide the starting off point for an examination of the role and place of philosophy in the music curriculum. I am particularly intrigued by the question Reimer posed in his opening. He asked us to consider, Who is philosophy of music education for? We will return to this question at the close of this brief reflection.For the moment, however, I would like to continue on to the second paragraph of Hard Times, where Dickens does something very interesting. Following Gradgrind's inglorious monologue, he casts the scene of a small schoolroom, a "plain, bare, monotonous vault."3 Headmaster Gradgrind stands in front; he is described with a "square wall of a forehead," his mouth is "wide, thin, and hard set," his voice "inflexible and dry."4 His hair "bristled on the skirts of his bald head, a plantation of firs to keep the wind from its shining surface, all covered with knobs, like the crust of a plum pie, as if the head had scarcely warehouse-room for the hard facts stored inside."5 A square wall of a forehead, a lumpy head like the crust of a plum pie: these words give us more than "hard Facts"—they are more than mere descriptors. It seems that Dickens, through metaphor, mood, dynamic contrast—through the aesthetic imagination—has imbedded a quiet rebuke to the bold commonsense of Facts.The Gradgrind philosophy finds easy parallel to current thinking in American education. In the fundamentalist imagination, sources of ambiguity must be rooted out—basic skills make adults out of reasoning animals. "Children should be tested on basic reading and math skills every year, between grades three and eight. Measuring is the only way to know whether all our children are learning—and I want to know, because I refuse to leave any child behind."6 The speaker, of course, is George W. Bush whose call to basic skills and episodic testing appeals [End Page 139] to our sense of reason. Like Gradgrind suggests, it is the principle on which we brought up our own children, and this is the principle on which we will bring up today's children. Such a philosophy of education proudly combines folk beliefs about teaching and learning with the hard science of thorough assessment.The President further recommends that our children "must also be educated in the values of our civil society. Some people think it's inappropriate to make moral judgments anymore. Not me. We must be willing to draw a clear line between right and wrong. Those clear lines must be supported by political leaders, public schools, and our public institutions. Educating our children about their moral and civil responsibilities will serve them—and the nation—every bit as well as the academic learning they require."7 In addition to discipline-based standards of knowledge, Facts (in this view) govern the rules of citizenship, provide moral clarity, and as we will see shortly, inform the aesthetic. It is worth noting that such a linear equation—those clear straight lines—currently places skeptics in the category of unpatriotic, miseducative, and morally corrupt.8The fundamentalist philosophy of education is a governing philosophy—it is a philosophy for, not with, its initiates. Judgments are passed, not reached; answers are given, not argued. Teachers in this setting—whether willing accomplices or not—define what needs to be known and... (shrink)

This essay pursues two goals: to argue that two fundamental types of time—the time of objective reality and “the time of the soul”—meet in human activity and history and to defend the legitimacy of calling a particular version of the second type a kind of time. The essay begins by criticizing Paul Ricoeur’s version of the claim that times of these two sorts meet in history. It then presents an account of human activity based on Heidegger’s Being and Time, (...) according to which certain times of the two types—existential temporality and succession—meet in human activity. The legitimacy of calling existential temporality a kind of time is then defended via an expanded analysis of activity that examines where the two times meet there. The concluding section briefly considers a conception of historical time due to David Carr before showing why history is a broader domain encompassing human activity where the two times meet. (shrink)

This essay pursues two goals: to argue that two fundamental types of time—the time of objective reality and “the time of the soul”—meet in human activity and history and to defend the legitimacy of calling a particular version of the second type a kind of time. The essay begins by criticizing Paul Ricoeur’s version of the claim that times of these two sorts meet in history. It then presents an account of human activity based on Heidegger’s Being and Time, (...) according to which certain times of the two types—existential temporality and succession—meet in human activity. The legitimacy of calling existential temporality a kind of time is then defended via an expanded analysis of activity that examines where the two times meet there. The concluding section briefly considers a conception of historical time due to David Carr before showing why history is a broader domain encompassing human activity where the two times meet. (shrink)

In this paper, we discuss the inherent temporal orientation of fear, a matter on which philosophers seem to have contrasting opinions. According to some, fear is inherently present-oriented; others instead maintain that it is inherently future-oriented or that it has no inherent temporal orientation at all. Despite the differences, however, all these views seem to understand fear’s temporal orientation as one-dimensional—that is, as uniquely determined by the represented temporal location of the intentional object of fear. By contrast, we present a (...) view that introduces a two-dimensional account of fear’s temporal orientation. On such a view, we can say that fear is inherently future-oriented, independently of its being about something in the present or in the future. (shrink)

In an ideal democracy, people from all walks of life would come together to talk meaningfully and respectfully about politics. But we do not live in an ideal democracy. In contemporary democracies, which are marked by deep social divisions, different groups for the most part avoid talking to each other. And when they do talk to each other, their speech often seems to be little more than a vehicle for rage, hatred, and deception. -/- Democratic Speech in Divided Times (...) argues that we should nevertheless not give up on the ideal of democratic public speech. Drawing on the resources of political theory, epistemology, and philosophy of language, this book develops a sustained account of the norms that should govern public discourse in deeply divided circumstances. Should we try to find common ground when we talk to our political opponents, even though they seem unreasonable? Should we refrain from expressing anger, if we want to get things done? How can we use our speech to fight hate speech and disinformation? And is it even possible to speak to 'the other side,' in settings where different groups dislike one another, live apart from one another, and don't know much about one another? By tackling these questions, Lepoutre demonstrates that, when governed by the right set of norms, public speech can be a powerful force for good even amidst profound social divisions. (shrink)

The historical sciences, such as geology, evolutionary biology, and archaeology, appear to have no means to test hypotheses. However, on closer examination, reasoning in the historical sciences relies upon regularities, regularities that can be tested. I outline the role of regularities in the historical sciences, and in the process, blur the distinction between the historical sciences and the experimental sciences: all sciences deploy theories about the world in their investigations.

In this article I address the ethical implications of the legal issues the U. S. Supreme Court resolved in New York Times v. Sullivan and its progeny. In a ruling with far-reaching moral implications, the Court addressed truthtelling-journalism's primary ethical directive-and undermined it by favoring other moral principles and social goals. Much of this article focuses on the ethical arguments addressed to the Court in legal briefs that sought rulings that would support fundamental principals of ethical journalism. The creation (...) of actual malice as a legal concept in the Sullivan case owes more to the Court's pursuit of other moral and social values than strict legal reasoning, according to the descriptive theory of pragmatic instrumentalism, which informs this analysis. (shrink)

Evidence-based medicine has been studied as a rich and diverse set of epistemic and infrastructural practices that relate imperfect medical knowledges to complex clinical practices. We examine instances of medical decision-making where medical professionals relate recommendations from clinical practice guidelines to individual patient characteristics when deciding to prescribe implantable cardioverter defibrillators to treat heart failure. When connecting evidence-based recommendations to decisions about individual patients, we find that clinical deliberations invoke different times, such as linear, chronological time, and biological aging, (...) as well as different futures, such as individual future risks and the future sustainability of health systems. Such different “temporalities of evidence” are integral parts of clinicians’ considerations concerning economy, suffering, risks, and hopes in making decisions on individual patients. In line with calls to anchor science and technology studies scholarship studying EBM in the concerns that matter most to patients and health care providers, we argue that the social study of EBM needs to attend to such temporalities to understand how evidence is weighed, which outcomes are considered important, and hence which clinical action is proposed. However, since different ways of “doing time” lead to different appreciations of the clinical outcomes, the notion of clinical “anchoring” becomes rather elusive. (shrink)

Until recently, an almost perfect parallelism seemed to hold between theories of identity through time and across possible worlds,as every account in the temporal case(endurantism,perdurantism, exdurantism) was mirrored by a twin account in the modal case (trans-world identity, identity-via-parts, identity-via-counterparts). Nevertheless, in the recent literature, this parallelism has been broken because of the implementation in the debate of the relation of location. In particular, endurantism has been subject to a more in-depth analysis, and different versions of it, corresponding to different (...) ways an entity can be located in time, emerged. In this article, we provide a precise map of the conceptions at stake, complete the debate by introducing a version of endurantism not yet considered in the debate — we call transcendentism — and show that it allows us to provide an effective interpretation of the relation of trans-world identity and an intuitive solution in the temporal case. (shrink)