The notion of "feminist pragmatism" or "pragmatist feminism" has been around since Charlene Haddock Seigfried introduced it two decades ago. However, the bulk of the work in this field has been directed toward recovering the feminist strain of classical American philosophy, largely through renewed interest in the work of Jane Addams. This exploration of the origins of feminism and pragmatism has been fruitful in building a foundation for theoretical considerations. The editors of this volume believe the next logical step is (...) the contemporary application to both theory and experience. Contemporary Feminist Pragmatism is the first book to address the modern significance of the nexus of feminism and pragmatism. The issues explored here include the relationship between community and identity, particularly around the impact of gender and race; reframing political practice regarding feminist pragmatist commitments including education, sustainability movements, and local efforts like community gardens; and the association between ethics and inquiry including explorations of Buddhism, hospitality, and animal-human relationships. (shrink)

The Safe by Design conceptual initiative being developed for nanomaterials offers a template for a new sustainable innovation approach for advanced materials with four important sustainability characteristics. Firstly, it requires potential toxicity risks to be evaluated earlier in the innovation cycle simultaneously with its chemical functionality and possible commercial applications. Secondly, it offers future options for reducing animal laboratory testing by early assessment using in silico predictive toxicological approaches, minimizing the number that reaches in vitro and in vivo trials. Thirdly, (...) it promotes a culture of shared responsibility for ethical and sustainable outcomes in the innovation process by promoting early dialogue between groups with vested interests. Finally, it offers the prospect of a more democratized innovation process by including civil society actors in decisions on product safety, commercial applications, and social utility. Collectively, these four characteristics offer the prospect for a new social contract between science, technology, and society for the societal alignment and sustainable innovation of advanced materials. (shrink)

On February 13, 2020, the Toronto Police Services (TPS) issued a statement admitting that its members had used Clearview AI’s controversial facial recognition technology (FRT). The controversy sparked widespread outcry by the media, civil society, and community groups, and put pressure on policy-makers to address FRTs. Public consultations presented a key tool to contain the scandal in Toronto and across Canada. Drawing on media reports, policy documents, and expert interviews, we investigate four consultations held by the Toronto Police Services Board (...) (TPSB), the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (OPC), and the parliamentary Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics (ETHI) to understand how public opinion and outrage translate into policy. We find that public consultations became a powerful closure mechanism in the policy-making toolbox, inhibiting rather than furthering democratic debate. Our findings show that consultations do not advance public literacy; that opportunities for public input are narrow; that timeframes are short; and that mechanisms for inclusion are limited. Even in the best-case circumstances, consultations are merely one of many factors in AI governance and seldom impact concrete policy outcomes in the cases studied here. (shrink)

The original extended mind theory propagated by Clark and Chalmers (Analysis 58:7–19, 1998) refers to the idea that our minds do not simply live within our brains or bodies but extend into the material world. In other words, the extended mind refers to the externalization of cognitive processes into technology. Through the case study of the artistic performance of the android Alter inspired by the Japanese Shintoist ritual of Kagura this paper reconceptualizes the extended mind from a technological act of (...) transfer towards the relational, spatial, and performative ontologies of the intersubjective encounters between humans and non-humans. In an effort to decolonize performance and curatorial practice the paper draws upon indigenous scholarship, feminist STS, and performance studies to overcome preconceived conceptualizations of affect, perception, and relationality. The fundamental question the paper explores is how does intersubjective relationality unfold through performance in space? Based upon a critique of the android Alter’s past performance the paper concludes with a re-envisioned event score that employs a reconceptualized theory of the extended mind and aimed at a different kind of intersubjective relationality to emerge. (shrink)

Jacques Derrida returns relentlessly to the question of literature which is already a prominent concern in early texts such as Writing and Difference. The focus of this article is the conception of literature in ‘Literature in Secret: An Impossible Filiation’, in which Derrida discusses filiation with reference to Abraham and Isaac, the fundamental necessity of secrecy and the notion of the pardon. Above all, it is Kafka's Letter to His Father which perhaps provides a paradigm for defining literature. In this (...) specular address, the promise of a heritage is in the balance. Writing incessantly on Kafka, Maurice Blanchot also reflects on literature. The notion of literature put forward by Derrida in ‘Literature in Secret: An Impossible Filiation’ is considered in this article, as well as reflections by Blanchot, to show what might be at stake in Kafka's Letter to His Father. (shrink)

Writing and that which it entails are the subject of countless texts by Maurice Blanchot. In particular, Blanchot has focused on the notion of the work, or more precisely on a groundlessness or an absence of the work, which he has designated from different perspectives over the course of more than half a century. In various ways, Blanchot has conceived of the work as an affirmation of its undoing. The question of narration, often about a confrontation with death, is (...) fundamentally important, as is evident for example in Blanchot’s Death Sentence, The Madness of the Day or The Instant of My Death. In a sense, it is bound up with the possibility of the work. Writing about Henry James in “The Turn of the Screw” 2 in The Book to Come, Blanchot discusses narration. What is described is indeed a certain absence of the work relating to the writer’s difficult struggle to narrate everything. I will examine Blanchot’s reading of James to expose this conception of narration centred on seizing the truth. It is apparent that Blanchot approaches the question very differently in “Narrative Voice ,” in The Infinite Conversation in which there is a decentring of the work. 3 I will show that this text as well as certain writings by Derrida make it possible to arrive at a conception of narration in Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw which strongly contrasts with the one put forward by Blanchot in The Book to Come. Thus, alongside Blanchot’s reading of The Turn of the Screw which relates to the project of realising the work as a totality, Blanchot makes possible a more radical approach to the text, illustrating the non-totalization of the work whose borders are uncertain. In this way, Blanchot can be shown to step beyond an impossible conception of the absence of the work. (shrink)

Since William Jones announced the kinship of Sanskrit and the European languages, a massive body of scholarship has illuminated the development of the so-called "Indo-European" language group. This new historical philology has enormous technical achievements to its credit. But almost from the start, it became entangled with prejudices and myths--with efforts to recreate not only the lost language, but also the lost--and superior--civilization of the Indo-European ancestors. This drive to determine the identity and nature of the first language of (...) humanity was deeply rooted in both near eastern and western traditions. The Bible described the perfect, transparent language of Adam and followed its degeneration, caused by human sin, into the multiple, opaque languages of later nations. The three sons of Noah became, for Jewish and early Christian writers, the founders of three distinct human groups. By the sixth and seventh centuries, historians began to magnify the deeds of certain later peoples, such as the Scythians and Goths, and to connect them with the biblical genealogy of languages and races. And in the Renaissance, speculative historical etymology took root and flourished, as national pride led European intellectuals to assert that their own modern languages--for example, Flemish--either could be identified with the original one or offered the closest surviving approximation to it. Japheth, Noah's favorite son and the forefather of the Europeans, emerged as the hero who had preserved the original language in its purity. A new history of the European languages developed, one which traced them back to the language of the barbarian Scythians and emphasized the connections between Persian and European languages. It came to seem implausible that the European languages derived from Hebrew. By the eighteenth century, in short, all the preconditions were present for a discovery that the ancestors of the Europeans, like the common ancestor of their languages, had been independent of Semitic influence. A modern scholarly thesis whose political and intellectual consequences are still working themselves out reveals the continuing impact of a millennial tradition of speculation about language and history. (shrink)

The target paper claims to contribute to the conceptualisation of kinship but is, in fact, only concerned with descriptive kinship terminologies. It uses Optimal Theory to analyse this vocabulary but it is not clear if this is to be understood as a psychological phenomenon. Jones does not make clear how this special vocabulary might relate to kinship in general.

This article contests the argument that British political thought in the 19th century was exceptional in European perspective in lacking a strong concept of nationhood and nationality. On the one hand it argues, with reference to Mazzini, Michelet and Renan, that continental European theories of nationality were by no means as dependent on a strong concept of race as a focus on Germany might imply. On the other hand, it identifies the Liberal Anglican tradition (Thomas and Matthew Arnold, F.D. (...) class='Hi'>Maurice, Arnold Toynbee) as a current of thought which generated an important but certainly non-racial concept of nationhood, as part of a general rehabilitation of community in the face of what these thinkers took to be utilitarian neglect. (shrink)

First published in 1945, Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s monumental _Phénoménologie de la perception _signalled the arrival of a major new philosophical and intellectual voice in post-war Europe. Breaking with the prevailing picture of existentialism and phenomenology at the time, it has become one of the landmark works of twentieth-century thought. This new translation, the first for over fifty years, makes this classic work of philosophy available to a new generation of readers. _Phenomenology of Perception _stands in the great phenomenological tradition of (...) Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre. Yet Merleau-Ponty’s contribution is decisive, as he brings this tradition and other philosophical predecessors, particularly Descartes and Kant, to confront a neglected dimension of our experience: the lived body and the phenomenal world. Charting a bold course between the reductionism of science on the one hand and "intellectualism" on the other, Merleau-Ponty argues that we should regard the body not as a mere biological or physical unit, but as the body which structures one’s situation and experience within the world. Merleau-Ponty enriches his classic work with engaging studies of famous cases in the history of psychology and neurology as well as phenomena that continue to draw our attention, such as phantom limb syndrome, synaesthesia, and hallucination. This new translation includes many helpful features such as the reintroduction of Merleau-Ponty’s discursive Table of Contents as subtitles into the body of the text, a comprehensive Translator’s Introduction to its main themes, essential notes explaining key terms of translation, an extensive Index, and an important updating of Merleau-Ponty’s references to now available English translations. Also included is a new foreword by Taylor Carman and an introduction to Merleau-Ponty_ _by Claude Lefort. Translated by Donald A. Landes. (shrink)

Natural and supernatural explanations are used to interpret the same events in a number of predictable and universal ways. Yet little is known about how variation in diverse cultural ecologies influences how people integrate natural and supernatural explanations. Here, we examine explanatory coexistence in three existentially arousing domains of human thought: illness, death, and human origins using qualitative data from interviews conducted in Tanna, Vanuatu. Vanuatu, a Melanesian archipelago, provides a cultural context ideal for examining variation in explanatory coexistence due (...) to the lack of industrialization and the relatively recent introduction of Christianity and Western education. We argue for the integration of interdisciplinary methodologies from cognitive science and anthropology to inform research on explanatory coexistence. (shrink)

Scientists have used models for hundreds of years as a means of describing phenomena and as a basis for further analogy. In Scientific Models in Philosophy of Science, Daniela Bailer-Jones assembles an original and comprehensive philosophical analysis of how models have been used and interpreted in both historical and contemporary contexts. Bailer-Jones delineates the many forms models can take (ranging from equations to animals; from physical objects to theoretical constructs), and how they are put to use. She examines (...) early mechanical models employed by nineteenth-century physicists such as Kelvin and Maxwell, describes their roots in the mathematical principles of Newton and others, and compares them to contemporary mechanistic approaches. Bailer-Jones then views the use of analogy in the late nineteenth century as a means of understanding models and to link different branches of science. She reveals how analogies can also be models themselves, or can help to create them. The first half of the twentieth century saw little mention of models in the literature of logical empiricism. Focusing primarily on theory, logical empiricists believed that models were of temporary importance, flawed, and awaiting correction. The later contesting of logical empiricism, particularly the hypothetico-deductive account of theories, by philosophers such as Mary Hesse, sparked a renewed interest in the importance of models during the 1950s that continues to this day. Bailer-Jones analyzes subsequent propositions of: models as metaphors; Kuhn's concept of a paradigm; the Semantic View of theories; and the case study approaches of Cartwright and Morrison, among others. She then engages current debates on topics such as phenomena versus data, the distinctions between models and theories, the concepts of representation and realism, and the discerning of falsities in models. (shrink)

As much a portrait of his time as a biography of the man, Karl Marx: Greatness and Illusion returns the author of Das Kapital to his nineteenth-century world, before twentieth-century inventions transformed him into Communism’s patriarch and fierce lawgiver. Gareth Stedman Jones depicts an era dominated by extraordinary challenges and new notions about God, human capacities, empires, and political systems—and, above all, the shape of the future. In the aftermath of the Battle of Waterloo, a Europe-wide argument began about (...) the industrial transformation of England, the Revolution in France, and the hopes and fears generated by these occurrences. Would the coming age belong to those enthralled by the revolutionary events and ideas that had brought this world into being, or would its inheritors be those who feared and loathed it? Stedman Jones gives weight not only to Marx’s views but to the views of those with whom he contended. He shows that Marx was as buffeted as anyone else living through a period that both confirmed and confounded his interpretations—and that ultimately left him with terrible intimations of failure. Karl Marx allows the reader to understand Marx’s milieu and development, and makes sense of the devastating impact of new ways of seeing the world conjured up by Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach, Ricardo, Saint-Simon, and others. We come to understand how Marx transformed and adapted their philosophies into ideas that would have—through twists and turns inconceivable to him—an overwhelming impact across the globe in the twentieth century. (shrink)

Depuis 2020, le monde a connu une situation sanitaire exceptionnelle à la suite de la pandémie de Covid-19, faisant face à une incertitude dans le monde médical clinique, de la recherche et dans l’ensemble des domaines connexes en santé publique. Le caractère imprévisible et l’absence de données fiables en lien avec ce virus ont fait émerger une quantité d’enjeux éthiques concrets, cela a donc révélé un domaine particulier, la bioéthique, et plus particulièrement une profession, les bioéthiciens. Les « bioéthiciens » (...) se sont fait connaître du grand public en se dressant parfois comme des garde-fous contre des dérives sanitaires, à d’autres moments comme des lanceurs d’alertes face à des injustices naissantes, ou comme critiques, polémistes et parfois même militants dans les médias ou en tant qu’acteurs de première ligne dans les systèmes politico-sanitaires. Ces divers rôles et pratiques illustrent bien la diversité et l’hétérogénéité du domaine de la bioéthique. Toutefois, l’absence de professionnalisation traditionnelle et formelle de la bioéthique complexifie la compréhension de ce champ disciplinaire. Même en Amérique du Nord, où la pratique de la bioéthique est professionnalisée, il ne s’agit toujours pas d’une profession officiellement reconnue et le terme « bioéthicien » lui-même peut être controversé. La forte présence de cette profession durant la pandémie de Covid-19 a révélé l’importance de décrire ce qu’est un bioéthicien, les fonctions qu’il occupe et en quoi consistent ses interventions. Nous apportons cette clarification nécessaire en expliquant la nature de la bioéthique contemporaine dans toute sa diversité. Comme nous l’a démontré la pandémie de Covid-19, les bioéthiciens représentant un soutien et un guide indispensable de nos jours menés par leur esprit critique et leur réflexivité permanente. (shrink)

Call a bit of scientific discourse a description of a missing system when (i) it has the surface appearance of an accurate description of an actual, concrete system (or kind of system) from the domain of inquiry, but (ii) there are no actual, concrete systems in the world around us fitting the description it contains, and (iii) that fact is recognised from the outset by competent practitioners of the scientific discipline in question. Scientific textbooks, classroom lectures, and journal articles abound (...) with such passages; and there is a widespread practice of talking and thinking as though there are systems which fit the descriptions they contain perfectly, despite the recognition that no actual, concrete systems do so—call this the face value practice. There are, furthermore, many instances in which philosophers engage in the face value practice whilst offering answers to epistemological and methodological questions about the sciences. Three questions, then: (1) How should we interpret descriptions of missing systems? (2) How should we make sense of the face value practice? (3) Is there a set of plausible answers to (1) and (2) which legitimates reliance on the face value practice in our philosophical work, and can support the weight of the accounts which are entangled with that practice? In this paper I address these questions by considering three answers to the first: that descriptions of missing systems are straightforward descriptions of abstract objects, that they are indirect descriptions of “property-containing” abstracta, and that they are (in a different way) indirect descriptions of mathematical structures. All three proposals are present in the literature, but I find them wanting. The result is to highlight the importance of developing a satisfactory understanding of descriptions of missing systems and the face value practice, to put pressure on philosophical accounts which rely on the practice, and to help us assess the viability of certain approaches to thinking about models, theory structure, and scientific representation. (shrink)

Embodied Care is the first work to argue for the body's centrality to care ethics, doing so by analyzing our corporeality at the phenomenological level.

In this new and original book, Claire Armon-Jones examines the concept of affect and various philosophical positions which attempt to define and characterize it: the standard view, the neo-cognitivist view, and the objectual thesis. She contends that these views radically distort our understanding of affect by disregarding modes of affect which fail to conform to the accounts they each employ. Against the standard and neo-cognitivist views she argues that the notions they use to characterize affect are neither necessary nor (...) sufficient; and against the objectual thesis she further argues that affective states exhibit degrees of independence from the concept of an object. She develops a new theory of the varieties of affect that explains their cognitive nature, their felt aspect, their special logic and the relationship between their objectless and object-directed forms. Armon-Jones concludes by suggesting that her arguments call into question certain assumptions about the rationality and moral status of affect and require a revision of the conception of the good in affect. (shrink)

Scientific models represent aspects of the empirical world. I explore to what extent this representational relationship, given the specific properties of models, can be analysed in terms of propositions to which truth or falsity can be attributed. For example, models frequently entail false propositions despite the fact that they are intended to say something "truthful" about phenomena. I argue that the representational relationship is constituted by model users "agreeing" on the function of a model, on the fit with data and (...) on the aspects of a phenomenon that are modelled. Model users weigh the propositions entailed by a model and from this decide which of these propositions are crucial to the acceptance and continued use of the model. Thus, models represent phenomena when certain propositions they entail are true, but this alone does not exhaust the representational relationship. Therefore, the constraints that produce the choice of the relevant propositions in a model must also be examined and their analysis contributes to understanding the relationship between models and phenomena. (shrink)

In many jurisdictions in the United States and elsewhere, the law governing deadly force by police and civilians contains a notable asymmetry. Often civilians but not police are bound by the imminence requirement—that is, a necessary condition for justifying deadly force is reasonable belief that oneself or another innocent person faces imminent threat of grave harm. In U.S. law enforcement, however, there has been some shift toward the imminence requirement, most evident in the use-of-force policy adopted by the Department of (...) Justice in 2022. This article defends that shift and argues that the ethical case for the imminence requirement in policing is stronger than Shannon Brandt Ford suggests in a recent article. Though the imminence requirement’s impacts on policing and public safety require ongoing study, the principle of equality before the law and the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing both provide moral grounds for this requirement, especially given the lack of evidence that the status quo helps protect life. (shrink)

In this book , Lorraine Besser-Jones develops a eudaimonistic virtue ethics based on a psychological account of human nature. While her project maintains the fundamental features of the eudaimonistic virtue ethical framework—virtue, character, and well-being—she constructs these concepts from an empirical basis, drawing support from the psychological fields of self-determination and self-regulation theory. Besser-Jones’s resulting account of "eudaimonic ethics" presents a compelling normative theory and offers insight into what is involved in being a virtuous person and "acting well." (...) This original contribution to contemporary ethics and moral psychology puts forward a provocative hypothesis of what an empirically-based moral theory would look like. (shrink)

[1] The early years, 1878-1923 -- [2] The middle years, 1923-1945 -- [3] The later years, 1945-1965.

A Treasury of the Buddha's Words: Discourses from the Middle Collection. Translated by Nanamoli Thera, edited and arranged by Phra Khantipalo. 3 vols, Mahamakut, Bangkok, but available only from Wat Buddha-Dhamma, Ten Mile Hollow, Wisemans Ferry, NSW 2255, Australia.

Buddhismus: Stifter, Schulen und Systeme. Hans Wolfgang Schumann. Diederichs Gelbe Reiher 99, 2nd expanded edition. Munich 1993. 259 pp.

Calm and Insight. A Buddhist Manual for Meditators. Bhikkhu Khantipalo. Curzon Press, London 1981. viii + 152 pp. £3.00.

Das Sutra von den vier Ständen. Das Aggañña Sutta im Licht seiner chinesischen Parallelen. Konrad Meisig., Otto Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1988. ix, 249 pp. DM 44.

Deutsch-Pali Wörterbuch. Helmut Klar. Octopus Verlag, Vienna 1982. 364pp.

Passivity experiences in schizophrenia are thought to be due to a failure in a neurocognitive action self-monitoring system . Drawing on the assumption that inner speech is a form of action, a recent model of auditory verbal hallucinations has proposed that AVHs can be explained by a failure in the NASS. In this article, we offer an alternative application of the NASS to AVHs, with separate mechanisms creating the emotion of self-as-agent and other-as-agent. We defend the assumption that inner speech (...) can be considered as a form of action, and show how a number of previous criticisms of applying the NASS to AVHs can be refuted. This is achieved in part through taking a Vygotskian developmental perspective on inner speech. It is suggested that more research into the nature and development of inner speech is needed to further our understanding of AVHs. (shrink)

Nishida Kitaro, originator of the Kyoto School and 'father of Japanese Philosophy' is usually viewed as an essentially apolitical thinker who underwent a 'turn' in the mid-1930s, becoming an ideologue of Japanese imperialism. Political Philosophy in Japan challenges the view that a neat distinction can be drawn between Nishida's apolitical 'pre-turn' writings and the apparently ideological tracts he produced during the war years. In the context of Japanese intellectual traditions, this book suggests that Nishida was a political thinker form the (...) very beginning of his career, and consequently, his later political works cannot be dismissed as peripheral to his philosophical project. Counter-intuitively however, Christopher Goto-Jones argues that a consistently political reading of his philosophy reveals a dissenting standpoint even during the height of the Pacific War. This book argues that the prevailing postwar tendency to dismiss interwar and wartime Japanese culture as fascist or ultra nationalist en total neglects a lively political discourse, which contained some serous and profound political insight and even dissent. By suggesting that Nishida tetsugaku was a voice of dissent during Japan's Great East Asia War, Goto-Jones presents a case for the rehabilitation of Nishida as a political thinker, and as an example of a Japanese resistance, able to make a valuable contribution to contemporary debates about international political, globalization , and inter-cultural relations. Offering a unique and potentially controversial view of the subject of Nishida and the Kyoto School, The Political Philosophy of Japan will be of huge interest to anyone studying Japanese History, Political Philosophy and comparative philosophy alike. (shrink)

A resurgence of interest in inner speech as a core feature of human experience has not yet coincided with methodological progress in the empirical study of the phenomenon. The present article reports the development and psychometric validation of a novel instrument, the Varieties of Inner Speech Questionnaire , designed to assess the phenomenological properties of inner speech along dimensions of dialogicality, condensed/expanded quality, evaluative/motivational nature, and the extent to which inner speech incorporates other people’s voices. In response to findings that (...) some forms of psychopathology may relate to inner speech, anxiety, depression, and proneness to auditory and visual hallucinations were also assessed. Anxiety, but not depression, was found to be uniquely positively related to both evaluative/motivational inner speech and the presence of other voices in inner speech. Only dialogic inner speech predicted auditory hallucination-proneness, with no inner speech variables predicting levels of visual hallucinations/disturbances. Directions for future research are discussed. (shrink)

Winner of the 1974 National Book Award The product of many years of reflection on phenomenology, this book is a comprehensive and creative introduction to the philosophy of Edmund Husserl. Natanson uses Husserl's later work as a clue to the meaning of his entire intellectual career, showing how his earlier methodological work evolved into the search for transcendental roots and developed into a philosophy of the life-world. Phenomenology, for Natanson, emerges as a philosophy of origin, a transcendental discipline concerned with (...) consciousness, history, and world rather than with introspection and traditional metaphysical warfare. (shrink)

This paper is about rewilding and the tensions it involves. Rewilding is a relatively novel approach to nature conservation, which seeks to be proactive and ambitious in the face of continuing environmental decline. Whilst definitions of rewilding place a strong emphasis on non-human agency, it is an inescapably human aspiration resulting in a range of social conflicts. The paper focuses on the case study of the Cambrian Wildwood project in Mid Wales (UK), evaluating the ways in which debate and strategic (...) action to advance rewilding is proceeding, assessing the extent to which compromise and learning has occurred amongst advocates. As such, we provide an important addition to the field, by detailing how conflicts play out over time and how actors' positioning and approach shifts, and why. In this case, tempers have flared around the threat that rewilding is seen to pose to resident farming communities. Tensions discussed include the differing social constructions of landscape and nature involved; the distribution of impacts on different stakeholders; and the relative power of different actors to make decisions and gain representation. Responding to these, the paper outlines how rewilding advocates have sought to advance a more peopled and culturally responsive vision, which seeks to champion sustainable livelihood strategies. The changes in approach detailed demonstrate a reflexive stance from rewilders, which suggests that learning and adaptation can occur. Nonetheless, caution is expressed regarding the extent to which rewilding can truly advance inclusive opportunities for rural change, given a continued return amongst stakeholders to exclusionary narratives of belonging and authenticity, suggesting substantive difficulty in moving beyond longstanding concerns over identity and the re-imagination of place. Rewilding, it would seem, is about who we think we are and how we co-constitute our sense of self. We, therefore, close by arguing that tactics and politicking can only have so much bearing, tensions over rewilding are unavoidably emotional. (shrink)

Martin Buber: The Life of Dialogue , the first study in any language to provide a complete overview of Buber's thought, remains the definitive guide to the full range of his work and the starting point for all modern Buber scholarship. As well as summarizing Buber's early intellectual development and attitudes - his mysticism, his youthful existentialism, his philosophy of Judaism and religious socialism - it focuses on the two crucial issues of his mature thought: his dialogic or I-Thou philosophy, (...) and his probing of the nature and redemption of evil. As a sensitive, intuitive and perennially fascinating account of one of the twentieth century's great spiritual teachers, and as an influential classic in its own right, Martin Buber: The Life of Dialogue reveals the implications of Buber's thought for theory of knowledge, education, philosophy, myth, history and Judaic and Christian belief. This fully revised and expanded 4th edition includes a new preface from the author, an expanded bibliography incorporating new Buber scholarship, and two new appendices in the form of essays on Buber's influence on Emmanuel Levinas and Mikhail Bakhtin. (shrink)

Astronauts often report experiences of awe and wonder while traveling in space. This paper addresses the question of whether awe and wonder can be scientifically investigated in a simulated space travel scenario using a neurophenomenological method. To answer this question, we created a mixed-reality simulation similar to the environment of the International Space Station. Portals opened to display simulations of Earth or Deep Space. However, the challenge still remained of how to best capture the resulting experience of participants. We could (...) use psychological methods, neuroscientific methods or philosophical methods. Each of these approaches offer many benefits, but each is also limited. Neurophenomenology capitalises on and integrates all three methods. We employed questionnaires from psychology, electroencephalography, electrocardiography, and functional near-infrared spectroscopy from neuroscience, and a phenomenological interview technique from philosophy. This neurophenomenological method enabled extensive insight in experiencers and non-experiencers of awe and wonder in a simulated space scenario that otherwise would not have been possible. Traditional empirical analyses were completed, followed by individual differences analyses using interview transcriptions paired with physiological responses. Experiencers of AW showed differences in theta and beta activity throughout the brain compared to non-experiencers. Questionnaires indicated that non-experiencers of AW gave more positive responses of religious and spiritual practices than experiencers of AW. Interviews showed that awe and wonder were more likely to occur when watching the simulated Earth view instead of the Deep Space view. Our study is a successful example of neurophenomenology, a powerful and promising interdisciplinary approach for future studies of complex states of experience. (shrink)

Virtue ethics is on the move both in Anglo-American philosophy and in the rest of the world. This volume uniquely emphasizes non-Western varieties of virtue ethics at the same time that it includes work in the many different fields or areas of philosophy where virtue ethics has recently spread its wings. Just as significantly, several chapters make comparisons between virtue ethics and other ways of approaching ethics or political philosophy or show how virtue ethics can be applied to "real world" (...) problems. (shrink)

I begin by distinguishing two notions of model, the notion of a truth-making structure and the notion of a mathematical model (in one specific sense). I then argue that although the models of the semantic view have often been taken to be both truth-making structures and mathematical models, this is in part due to a failure to distinguish between two ways of truth-making; in fact, the talk of truth-making is best excised from the view altogether. The result is a version (...) of the semantic view which is better supported by the direct evidence offered for it, better equipped to achieve its avowed aims, and, I think, closer to the intentions of the original proponents of the view in many ways, despite some of their own declarations to the contrary. (shrink)

Inquiries into the nature of scientific modeling have tended to focus their attention on mathematical models and, relatedly, to think of nonconcrete models as mathematical structures. The arguments of this article are arguments for rethinking both tendencies. Nonmathematical models play an important role in the sciences, and our account of scientific modeling must accommodate that fact. One key to making such accommodations, moreover, is to recognize that one kind of thing we use the term ‘model’ to refer to is a (...) collection of propositions. (shrink)

It has at various times been said, both before and since the fall of apartheid, that philosophers in South Africa are neglecting to do certain sorts of work. Behind this accusation lies a general claim that philosophers have responsibilities to their contexts. This essay is dedicated to (i) defending this claim against objections, and (ii) offering a positive argument for there being moral pressure on philosophers to increase understanding. My aim is not to accuse any philosopher or community of philosophers (...) of neglect. It is rather to defend an understanding of both philosophy and ethical responsibilities that makes room for philosophers to have moral responsibilities. Whether or not it has ever in fact been appropriate to accuse philosophers in South Africa, or indeed anywhere else, of neglect, philosophers do indeed have responsibilities to their contexts. (shrink)

IntroductionAllocation of research funds relies on peer review to support funding decisions, and these processes can be susceptible to biases and inefficiencies. The aim of this work was to determine which past interventions to peer review and decision-making have worked to improve research funding practices, how they worked, and for whom.MethodsRealist synthesis of peer-review publications and grey literature reporting interventions in peer review for research funding.ResultsWe analysed 96 publications and 36 website sources. Sixty publications enabled us to extract stakeholder-specific context-mechanism-outcomes (...) configurations for 50 interventions, which formed the basis of our synthesis. Shorter applications, reviewer and applicant training, virtual funding panels, enhanced decision models, institutional submission quotas, applicant training in peer review and grant-writing reduced interrater variability, increased relevance of funded research, reduced time taken to write and review applications, promoted increased investment into innovation, and lowered cost of panels.ConclusionsReports of 50 interventions in different areas of peer review provide useful guidance on ways of solving common issues with the peer review process. Evidence of the broader impact of these interventions on the research ecosystem is still needed, and future research should aim to identify processes that consistently work to improve peer review across funders and research contexts. (shrink)

: This paper contains the analysis of nine interviews with UK scientists on the topic of scientific models. Scientific models are an important, very controversially discussed topic in philosophy of science. A reasonable expectation is that philosophical conceptions of models ought to be in agreement with scientific practice. Questioning practicing scientists on their use of and views on models provides material against which philosophical positions can be measured.