This book applies the formal discipline of logic to everyday discourse. It offers a new analysis of the notion of individual, suggesting that this notion is linguistic, not ontological, and that anything denoted by a proper name in a well-functioning language game is an individual. It further posits that everyday discourse is non-compositional, i.e., its complex expressions are not just the result of putting simpler ones together but react on the latter, modifying their meaning through feedback. The book theorizes that in everyday discourse, there is no algebra of truth values, but the latter can be both input and output of something which has no truth value at all. It suggests that an elementary proposition of everyday discourse (defined as having exactly one predicate) can, in principle, be indefinitely expanded by adding new components, belonging neither to subject nor to predicate, but remain elementary. This book is of interest to logicians and philosophers of language.

There is a growing literature in neuroethics dealing with cognitive neuro-enhancement for healthy adults. However, discussions on this topic tend to focus on abstract theoretical positions while concrete policy proposals and detailed models are scarce. Furthermore, discussions appear to rely solely on data from the US or UK, while international perspectives are mostly non-existent. This volume fills this gap and addresses issues on cognitive enhancement comprehensively in three important ways: 1) it examines the conceptual implications stemming from competing points of view about the nature and goals of enhancement; 2) it addresses the ethical, social, and legal implications of neuroenhancement from an international and global perspective including contributions from scholars in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, and South America; and 3) it discusses and analyzes concrete legal issues and policy options tailored to specific contexts.

Challenging the simplistic story by which feminism has become complicit in neoliberalism, this book traces the course of globalization of women's economic empowerment from the Global South to the Global North and critically examines the practice of empowering low-income women, primarily migrant, indigenous and racialised women. The author argues that women's economic empowerment organizations become embedded in the neoliberal re-organization of relations between civil society, state and market, and in the reconfiguration of relations between the personal and the political. Also examined are the contractual nature of institutional arrangements in neoliberalism, the ontological divide between economy and society, and the marginalisation of feminist economics that persists in the field of women's economic empowerment. The book will be of interest to scholars and students of social sciences, gender studies, sociology, and economics. This book is based on the author's doctoral dissertation at the Humboldt University of Berlin, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences.

In this, the first major philosophical study of contingent pacifism, Larry May offers a new account of pacifism from within the Just War tradition. Written in a non-technical style, the book features real-life examples from contemporary wars and applies a variety of approaches ranging from traditional pacifism and human rights to international law and conscientious objection. May considers a variety of thinkers and theories, including Hugo Grotius, Kant, Socrates, Seneca on restraint, Tertullian on moral purity, Erasmus's arguments against just war, and Hobbes's conception of public conscience. The guiding idea is that the possibility of a just war is conceded, but not at the current time or in the foreseeable future due to the nature of contemporary armed conflict and geopolitics - wars in the past are also unlikely to have been just wars. This volume will interest scholars and upper-level students of political philosophy, philosophy of law, and war studies.

Experimental philosophy has blossomed into a variety of philosophical fields including ethics, epistemology, metaphysics and philosophy of language. But there has been very little experimental philosophical research in the domain of philosophy of religion. Advances in Religion, Cognitive Science, and Experimental Philosophy demonstrates how cognitive science of religion has the methodological and conceptual resources to become a form of experimental philosophy of religion. Addressing a wide variety of empirical claims that are of interest to philosophers and psychologists of religion, a team of psychologists and philosophers apply data from the psychology of religion to important problems in the philosophy of religion including the psychology of religious diversity; the psychology of substance dualism; the problem of evil and the relation between religious belief and empathy; and the cognitive science explaining the formation of intuitions that unwittingly guide philosophers of religion when formulating arguments. Bringing together authors and researchers who have made important contributions to interdisciplinary research on religion in the last decade, Advances in Religion, Cognitive Science, and Experimental Philosophy provides new ways of approaching core philosophical and psychological problems.

Animal rights is now a concept that has achieved wide name-recognition. Vegetarianism, and even veganism, is now commonplace, representing a massive transformation in public attitudes. Fifty years ago, the concept of animal rights was almost unheard of and the animal protection movement lay dormant. Even vegetarians were regarded as, at best, cranks and, at worst, dangerous critics of the social order. Yet the late 1960s and early 1970s were a formative time for the contemporary animal rights movement. One of the most important and influential intellectual moments for animal rights occurred at this time at Oxford University among like-minded scholars who would become known as the Oxford Group. The Oxford Group and the Emergence of Animal Rights is about this little known group-a loose friendship group of primarily postgraduate philosophy students who attended the University of Oxford for a short period of time in the late 1960s. The book traces the early development of the Oxford Group and its influence on animal rights theory and activism. It also serves as a case study of how the emergence of important work and the development of new ideas can be explained, as well as how the intellectual development of participants in a friendship group is influenced by their participation in a creative community. For example, would Peter Singer have written his landmark book Animal Liberation-or anything about animal ethics-without being exposed to the other members of the Oxford Group? How would the discipline of animal ethics differ if the group had not produced their edited collection of articles, Animals, Men and Morals? Drawing on previously unpublished correspondence among and interviews with the surviving Oxford Group members, Robert Garner and Yewande Okuleye explore the social and political milieu in which the group formed to understand how such intellectual movements coalesce.

Sleep is quite a popular activity, indeed most humans spend around a third of their lives asleep. However, cultural, political, or aesthetic thought tends to remain concerned with the interpretation and actions of those who are awake. How to Sleep argues instead that sleep is a complex vital phenomena with a dynamic aesthetic and biological consistency. Arguing through examples drawn from contemporary, modern and renaissance art; from literature; film and computational media, and bringing these into relation with the history and findings of sleep science, this book argues for a new interplay between biology and culture. Meditations on sex, exhaustion, drugs, hormones and scientific instruments all play their part in this wide-ranging exposition of sleep as an ecology of interacting processes. How to Sleep builds on the interlocking of theory, experience and experiment so that the text itself is a lively articulation of bodies, organs and the aesthetic systems that interact with them. This book won't enhance your sleeping skills, but will give you something surprising to think about whilst being ostensibly awake.

Examines the meaning of "life" in an era of emerging biotechnology.

What happens to prevailing beliefs about the uniqueness of individual life when life can be cloned? Or to traditional understandings of family relationships when a child can have up to five parents? These are some of the questions addressed by Valerie Hartouni in her consideration of the cultural effects of new reproductive technologies as reflected in video images, popular journalism, scientific debates, legal briefs, and policy decisions.

In Cultural Conceptions, Hartouni tracks the circulation and communication of various myths, images, and stories pertaining to new reproductive technologies and their effects, both imagined and real, during the past two decades. While addressing topics ranging from surrogacy and cloning to adoption, ultrasound imaging, and abortion, Hartouni looks to American popular culture for clues to what these new -- and not so new -- reproductive practices tell us about issues of personhood.

Hartouni investigates the emergence of new anxieties about the nature of selfhood as well as the recurrence of age-old myths regarding individuality, sexuality, property, and family. She argues that both are being played out in cultural contests over the meaning and organization of women's reproductive capacity. In her discussion of provocative issues such as The Bell Curve controversy and the Baby M. case, Hartouni traces the dialectic of crisis and containment unleashed by reproductive technologies. Ultimately, however, Cultural Conceptions argues that the anxieties that surround new reproductive technologies provide openings for alternative understandings and practices of life to emerge andchallenge those currently in place.

A thoughtful, daring, and original look at this complex set of issues, Cultural Conceptions provides an much-needed guide to our nation's psyche as we approach the new millennium.

Bertrand Russell, (1872 - 1970) was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. Russell's books are excellent for those who have no experience of reading philosophy. This volume contains many of his most notable works: The Problems with Philosophy, The Analysis of the Mind, Mysticism and Logic and other Essays, Political Ideals, The Problem of China, The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism, Proposed Roads to Freedom, Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for Scientific Method in Philosophy

Listen. Hear your deepest longings, triumphs and
trials in these ancient tales of the human experience.

Journey through these fascinating stories and you will see how myths and tales retold from many cultures bring universal themes from love and life, fears and foibles, straight into your heart.

From the learned housekeeper who imparts her wisdom on the importance of listening, to a juggler who shows that gifts from the heart are truly the best of all, these stories offer timeless insight and inspiration. They will allow you to connect with the strength and value of your own myths and tales.

Drawn from many cultures and faith traditions including Irish, Scottish, English, European, Asian, Indian and Middle Eastern each retelling illustrates the healing and powerful connection that stretches across the globe and unites us all in an embrace of wisdom through words. You will see your own struggles and successes mirrored in the lives of the characters contained in these pages: As you travel through their stories, you will hear a gentle voice urging you to tap into your own endless power and potential.

Superficially, Wittgenstein and Heidegger seem worlds apart: they worked in different philosophical traditions, seemed mostly ignorant of one another's work, and Wittgenstein's terse aphorisms in plain language could not be farther stylistically from Heidegger's difficult prose. Nevertheless, Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations and Heidegger's Being and Time share a number of striking parallels. In particular, this book shows that both authors manifest a similar concern with authenticity. David Egan develops this position in three stages. Part One explores the emphasis both philosophers place on the everyday, and how this emphasis brings with it a methodological focus on recovering what we already know rather than advancing novel theses. Part Two argues that the dynamic of authenticity and inauthenticity in Being and Time finds homologies in Philosophical Investigations. Here Egan particularly articulates and defends a conception of authenticity in Wittgenstein that emphasizes the responsiveness and reciprocity of play. Part Three considers how both philosophers' conceptions of authenticity apply reflexively to their own work: each is concerned not only with the question of what it means to exist authentically but also with the question of what it means to do philosophy authentically. For both authors, the problematic of authenticity is intimately linked to the question of philosophical method.

Shedding new light on a controversial and intriguing issue, this book will reshape the debate on how the Judeo-Christian tradition views the morality of personal and national self-defense. Are self-defense, national warfare, and revolts against tyranny holy duties-or violations of God's will? Pacifists insist these actions are the latter, forbidden by Judeo-Christian morality. This book maintains that the pacifists are wrong. To make his case, the author analyzes the full sweep of Judeo-Christian history from earliest times to the present, combining history, scriptural analysis, and philosophy to describe the changes and continuity of Jewish and Christian doctrine about the use of lethal force. He reveals the shifting patterns of thought in both religions and presents the strongest arguments on both sides of the issue. The book begins with the ancient Hebrews and Genesis and covers Jewish history through the Holocaust and beyond. The analysis then shifts to the story of Christianity from its origins, through the Middle Ages and the Reformation, up the present day. Based on this scrutiny, the author concludes that-contrary to popular belief-the legitimacy of self-defense is strongly supported by Judeo-Christian scripture and commentary, by philosophical analysis, and by the respect for human dignity and human rights on which both Judaism and Christianity are based. Takes a multidisciplinary approach, directly engaging with leading writers on both sides of the issue Examines Jewish and Christian sacred writings and commentary and explores how interpretations have changed over time Offers careful analysis of topics such as the political systems of the ancient Hebrews, the Papacy's struggle for independence, the ways in which New England ministers incited the American Revolution, and the effects of the Vietnam War on the American Catholic church's views on national self-defense Covers the many sects that have played crucial roles in the debate over the legitimacy of armed force, including Gnostics, Manicheans, Lutherans, Calvinists, and Quakers Engages with the ideas of leading Jewish philosophers such as Rashi and Maimonides; Christian philosophers such as Origen, Augustine, Aquinas, and Sidney; and the most influential modern exponents of pacifism, such as Dorothy Day, the Berrigan Brothers, and John Howard Yoder