On the Proximity of the Logical and ‘Objective Bayesian’ Interpretations of Probability

In his Bayesian Nets and Causality, Jon Williamson presents an ‘Objective Bayesian’ interpretation of probability, which he endeavours to distance from the logical interpretation yet associate with the subjective interpretation. In doing so, he suggests that the logical interpretation suffers from severe epistemological problems that do not affect his alternative. In this paper, I present a challenge to his analysis. First, I closely examine the relationship between the logical and ‘Objective Bayesian’ views, and show how, and why, they are highly similar. Second, I argue that the logical interpretation is not manifestly inferior, at least for the reasons that Williamson offers. I suggest that the key difference between the logical and ‘Objective Bayesian’ views is in the domain of the philosophy of logic; and that the genuine disagreement appears to be over Platonism versus nominalism (within weak psychologism).

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A Critical Assessment of the Programmes of Producing ‘Islamic Science’ and ‘Islamisation of Science/Knowledge’

In the present article, working from within the framework of critical rationalism and focusing mostly on the views developed by some Iranian writers, I argue that the programmes of producing ‘Islamic Science’ (cIS) and ‘Islamisation of Science/Knowledge’ (IoK) are doomed to failure. I develop my arguments in three parts. I start by explaining that the advocates of the programmes of producing cIS or IoK subscribe to mistaken images of science that are shaped by either a positivist or outmoded culturalist/interpretivist theories of science. I shall then focus on the similarities and differences of ‘science’ and ‘technology’, arguing that despite close interconnection between the two it is of utmost importance, for analytical purposes, to keep these two socially constructed entities apart. Drawing on the above distinction, I argue that while creating ‘Islamic’ or ‘indigenous’ sciences is impossible, constructing ‘Islamic’ or ‘indigenous’ technologies is, in principle, feasible. Lastly, I turn to some of the more recent works on creating/constructing cIS and/or IoK. I shall try to show that none of the arguments introduced by the advocates of the projects of cIS/IoK is tenable.     

Systemic Wisdom,The ‘Selving’ of Nature,and Knowledge Transformation: Education for the ‘Greater Whole’

Considerations arising in the context of burgeoning concerns about the environment can provoke an exploration of issues that have significance both for environmental education in particular and education more generally. Notions of the ‘greater whole’ and ‘systemic wisdom’ that feature in some strands of environmental discourse are a case in point. It is argued that interpretations of these notions arising in currently influential scientific and systems thinking understandings of nature that attempt to overcome a corrosive separation of humankind and nature through a dilution or dismissal of the distinction between the human and non-human, self and other, require critical evaluation if they are not to bring their own dangers. Merleau-Pontian understandings of object constitution in a subjectively informed life-world and ideas of the ‘selving’ of natural things are drawn upon in developing a non-discursively grounded interpretation of systemic wisdom. The latter is taken to raise questions that have considerable transformative potential for conventional views of knowledge and its curriculum organisation.     

Subjective Well-Being and Kahneman’s ‘Objective Happiness’

This paper is an attempt to clarify the relation between, on the one hand, the construct of ‘objective happiness’ recently proposed by Daniel Kahneman and, on the other hand, the principal focus of happiness studies, namely subjective well-being (SWB). I have two aims. The first, a critical one, is to give a theoretical explanation for why ‘objective happiness’ cannot be a general measure of SWB. Kahneman’s methodology precludes incorporation of relevant pieces of information that can become available to the subject only retrospectively. The second aim, a constructive one, is to clarify the exact connection between ‘objective happiness’ and the wider notion of SWB. Unlike Kahneman, who treats the notion as a useful first approximation, I propose that its applicability should be thought of as context-dependent: under some conditions it could be the right measure of SWB but what these conditions are involves both psychological and ethical considerations.     

‘Mutual Obligation’ and ‘New Deal’: Illegitimate and Unjustified?

It is now commonplace for governments in Western countries to require the unemployed to work in exchange for their unemployment benefits. In this article I raise some serious doubts about the most promising and philosophically interesting defence of this argument, which relies on the ‘principle of reciprocity’. I argue that it is seriously unclear whether the obligations imposed on welfare claimants by ‘workfare’ schemes are legitimate and justified according to the principle of reciprocity. I do this by reconstructing the arguments for the obligations of the unemployed put forward in both the United Kingdom and Australia.     

Getting Ahead: Educational and Occupational Trajectories of the ‘New’ Second-Generation in Switzerland

This paper examines the educational and occupational trajectories among second-generation immigrants of Turkish and Western-Balkan origin in Switzerland. Using a representative sample of 1107 respondents in two Swiss urban areas, the findings reveal that descendants of immigrants have reduced chances to follow a constant successful path from education to occupation, which is mainly determined by parental socioeconomic status. However, young adults of Turkish and Western Balkan origin are significantly more often upward mobile than the majority group, a pattern that is robust against a range of controls. We find parental monitoring and family cohesion to be positively related with upward mobility. Moreover, second-generation immigrants are more likely to be upwardly mobile than starting high in the education system but subsequently moving downwards—a profile that is more frequent among Swiss origin youth. Our multivariate results indicate that a lack of intense parent–child communication and perceived discrimination in school are affecting this downward process.     

Realism,Reliabilism, and the ‘Strong Programme’ in the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge

In this essay, I respond to Tim Lewens’s proposal that realists and Strong Programme theorists can find common ground in reliabilism. I agree with Lewens, but point to difficulties in his argument. Chief among these is his assumption that reliabilism is incompatible with the Strong Programme’s principle of symmetry. I argue that the two are, in fact, compatible, and that Lewens misses this fact because he wrongly supposes that reliabilism entails naturalism. The Strong Programme can fully accommodate a reliabilism which has been freed from its inessential ties to naturalism. Unlike naturalistic epistemologists, the Strong Programme’s sociologistic reliabilist insists that all scientific facts are the product of both natural and social causal phenomena. Anticipating objections, I draw on Wittgenstein’s rule‐following considerations to explain how the sociologistic reliabilist can account for standard intuitions about the objective elements of knowledge. I also explain how the Strong Programme theorist can distinguish between a belief’s seeming reliable and its being reliable.

?Ich setzte

?den Fuß in die Luft,

?und sie trug.

?(Hilde Domin)     

Sons and Mothers: New Insight into the End of Active Motherhood in the ‘Age of Austerity’

True independence is difficult for young adults to achieve by leaving home due to economic austerity and contemporary expectation. Such extended dependence has, however, been little studied. Midlife mothers were interviewed to explore their experience of having their adult sons live at home. The interviews were analysed using Grounded Theory (Strauss and Corbin in Basics of qualitative research: grounded theory procedures and techniques. Sage, Newbury Park, CA, 1990). The essence of the mothers’ (n = 5) experience was captured in the core category, Coming to Terms and Entering a New Phase. This category integrates the three-stage model of process that occurred as mothers accepted that their maternal role was changing and they needed to prepare for the next stage of their lives. The three stages were represented by the subcategories, Shifting Role, Anticipating Loss and Letting Go. The women believed that their sons would not be able to leave home until they could purchase a property, a distant prospect for many. The findings extend the work of previous lifespan models, including that of Apter (Secret paths: women in the new midlife. W. W. Norton, New York, 1995) but with greater depth and clarity, in a vital and changed contemporary context that is likely to be relevant for a large population of women.     

Reiteration: The ‘Imperative of the Word’ and Echoing the ‘Significative Terms’

Abstract

The act of reiteration is viewed as a therapeutic reply that is especially responsive in the face of what Lacan (1977) and Heidegger (1927/1962) respectively refer to as “empty speech” and “idle talk.” By hearing and selecting those key signifiers and phrasings that bear the client's story of distress, the act of reiteration allows us to focus and address the “subject who speaks” rather than the commonsense storyline itself. As an active and continuing punctuation of the client's direct discourse at the level of the word, the act of reiteration is only the first moment of a more complete narrative reply. But in keeping the therapist ever grounded in the client's direct expressions, it is this first moment of reiteration that leaves the therapist positioned to be responsive to the client's discourse of “rhetorical displacements,” of intimation and allusion, as these “echo” from “elsewhere.”     

‘Developing’ the Self in the Knowledge Economy

The term ‘knowledge economy’, like the term ‘globalisation’, has become a catchword in political and educational debate over the last decade or so, especially in debates upon educational policy where the role of education in preparing young people to take their part in the Knowledge Economy is often seen as paramount over other traditional schooling activities. It is said in such debates that the production of knowledge, information and skills, will become more valuable than traditional primary and secondary production. A lot is said about the knowledge required in the Knowledge Economy, and about how institutions, businesses, activities and human beings are to be ordered or structured in accordance with views of knowledge and new Management theories. But little is said of the young people expected to take their part in the knowledge economy. Do they have a choice? Is lying on a surfboard excluded from their life options? How will they be developed, trained or educated to take their part? Will they be committed to developing their selves in accordance with the model of the IT Knowledge Entrepreneur (hereinafter TIKE) presented as a model for education by policy makers in the Knowledge Economy? This article will argue against this latter notion of the development of the self, arguing that because knowledge is prioritised over ethics, there is both an inadequate notion of the self and the educational development of the self and, because of its implicit view only of ethics, an inadequate ethical and moral view of education [246 words].     

‘Beginning Something New’: Control,Spontaneity and the Dancing Philosopher

This paper suggests ways in which a philosophy modelled as dance provides the means of challenging political structures that emphasise control and constraint at the expense of spontaneity and creativity. Through combining Arendt’s claim that spontaneity is the quintessential human quality with Nietzsche’s modelling of philosophy as disruptive dancing, the possibilities of modelling philosophy as dance are explored. Envisaging philosophical practice in this way provides a corrective to the prioritising of certainty in philosophical method, thus enabling further reflection on what it means to promote human flourishing.     

Chemical and Biological Weapons in the ‘New Wars’

The strategic use of disease and poison in warfare has been subject to a longstanding and cross-cultural taboo that condemns the hostile exploitation of poisons and disease as the act of a pariah. In short, biological and chemical weapons are simply not fair game. The normative opprobrium is, however, not fixed, but context dependent and, as a social phenomenon, remains subject to erosion by social (or more specifically, antisocial) actors. The cross cultural understanding that fighting with poisons and disease is reprehensible, that they are taboo, is codified through a web of interconnected measures, principal amongst these are the 1925 Geneva Protocol; the Biological Weapons Convention; and the Chemical Weapons Convention. Whilst these treaties have weathered the storm of international events reasonably well, their continued health is premised on their being ‘tended to’ in the face of contextual changes, particularly facing changes in science and technology, as well as the changed nature and character of conflict. This article looks at the potential for normative erosion of the norm against chemical and biological weapons in the face of these contextual changes and the creeping legitimization of chemical and biological weapons.     

New Religious Movement Membership and the Importance of Stable ‘Others’ for the Making of Selves

Challenging the view that people join New Religious Movements because they have fallen victim to powerful brainwashing techniques, the analysis of in-depth life history interviews of 23 former members from 11 different Australian ‘cults’ suggests that membership was personally negotiated and motivated by a desire for stronger social connections, albeit for different reasons. While for some participants, a desire for social connectedness was related to a strong need for guidance and direction from ‘stable’ others, for others it reflected a desire for self-change or self-enhancement. To make sense of the participant narratives, symbolic interactionist understandings of the self are applied.     

Materialism and ‘the soft substance of the brain’: Diderot and plasticity

ABSTRACT

Materialism is the view that everything that is real is material or is the product of material processes. It tends to take either a ‘cosmological’ form, as a claim about the ultimate nature of the world, or a more specific ‘psychological’ form, detailing how mental processes are brain processes. I focus on the second, psychological or cerebral form of materialism. In the mid-to-late eighteenth century, the French materialist philosopher Denis Diderot was one of the first to notice that any self-respecting materialist had to address the question of the status and functional role of the brain, and its relation to our mental life. After this the topic grew stale, with knee-jerk reiterations of ‘psychophysical identity’ in the nineteenth-century, and equally rigid assertions of anti-materialism. In 1960s philosophy of mind, brain–mind materialism reemerged as ‘identity theory’, focusing on the identity between mental processes and cerebral processes. In contrast, Diderot’s cerebral materialism allows for a more culturally sedimented sense of the brain, which he described in his late Elements of Physiology as a ‘book – except it is a book which reads itself’. Diderot thus provides a lesson for materialism as it reflects on the status of the brain, science and culture.     

On the Alleged Ambiguity of ‘Now’ and ‘Here’

It is argued that, in order to account for examples where the indexicals `now' and `here' do not refer to the time and location of the utterance, we do not have to assume (pace Quentin Smith) that they have different characters (reference-fixing rules), governed by a single metarule or metacharacter. The traditional, the fixed character view is defended: `now' and `here' always refer to the time and location of the utterance. It is shown that when their referent does not correspond to the time and/or location of the utterance, `now' and `here' work in an anaphoric way, inheriting their reference from another noun phrase. The latter may be explicit or implicit in the discourse. It is also shown that `now' and `here' can inherit their reference from a presupposed or tacit reference. In that case, they are coreferential with what will be labeled a `tacit initiator'. This anaphoric interpretation has the merit of fitting within the Kaplanian distinction between pure indexicals (`now', `here', `today', etc.) and demonstratives (`this', `that', `she', etc.).     

For Want of an ‘And’: A Puzzle about Non-Conservative Extension

The paper analyses Frege's approach to the identity conditions for the entity labelled by him as Sinn. It starts with a brief characterization of the main principles of Frege's semantics and lists his remarks on the identity conditions for Sinn. They are subject to a detailed scrutiny, and it is shown that, with the exception of the criterion of intersubstitutability in oratio obliqua, all other criteria have to be discarded. Finally, by comparing Frege's views on Sinn with Carnap's method of extension and intension and the method of intensional isomorphism, it is proved that these methods do not provide a criterion for the identity of Frege's Sinn, even for extensional contexts, that the concept of intension does not coincide, as stated by Carnap, in these contexts, with Frege's concept of Sinn, and that Carnap's claim that in oratio obliqua Frege's semantics leads to an infinite hierarchy of Sinn entities can be questioned at least hypothetically in the light of certain new historical facts.