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Irrationality: A History of the Dark Side of Reason
by Justin E. SmithA fascinating history that reveals the ways in which the pursuit of rationality often leads to an explosion of irrationalityIt’s a story we can’t stop telling ourselves. Once, humans were benighted by superstition and irrationality, but then the Greeks invented reason. Later, the Enlightenment enshrined rationality as the supreme value. Discovering that reason is the defining feature of our species, we named ourselves the “rational animal.” But is this flattering story itself rational? In this sweeping account of irrationality from antiquity to today—from the fifth-century BC murder of Hippasus for revealing the existence of irrational numbers to the rise of Twitter mobs and the election of Donald Trump—Justin Smith says the evidence suggests the opposite. From sex and music to religion and war, irrationality makes up the greater part of human life and history.Rich and ambitious, Irrationality ranges across philosophy, politics, and current events. Challenging conventional thinking about logic, natural reason, dreams, art and science, pseudoscience, the Enlightenment, the internet, jokes and lies, and death, the book shows how history reveals that any triumph of reason is temporary and reversible, and that rational schemes, notably including many from Silicon Valley, often result in their polar opposite. The problem is that the rational gives birth to the irrational and vice versa in an endless cycle, and any effort to permanently set things in order sooner or later ends in an explosion of unreason. Because of this, it is irrational to try to eliminate irrationality. For better or worse, it is an ineradicable feature of life.Illuminating unreason at a moment when the world appears to have gone mad again, Irrationality is fascinating, provocative, and timely.
Irrationality: A History of the Dark Side of Reason
by Justin E. SmithFrom sex and music to religion and politics, a history of irrationality and the ways in which it has always been with us—and always will beIn this sweeping account of irrationality from antiquity to the rise of Twitter mobs and the election of Donald Trump, Justin Smith argues that irrationality makes up the greater part of human life and history. Ranging across philosophy, politics, and current events, he shows that, throughout history, every triumph of reason has been temporary and reversible, and that rational schemes often result in their polar opposite. Illuminating unreason at a moment when the world appears to have gone mad again, Irrationality is timely, provocative, and fascinating.
Irrationally Yours: On Missing Socks, Pickup Lines, and Other Existential Puzzles
by Dr Dan Ariely William HaefeliNew York Times bestselling author Dan Ariely teams up with legendary New Yorker cartoonist William Haefeli to present an expanded, illustrated anthology of his immensely popular Wall Street Journal advice column, "Ask Ariely."Social scientist Dan Ariely revolutionized the way we think about ourselves, our minds, and our actions in his books Predictably Irrational, The Upside of Irrationality, and The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty. Ariely applies this scientific analysis of the human condition in his "Ask Ariely" Q&A column in the Wall Street Journal, in which he responds to readers who write in with personal conundrums, ranging from the serious to the curious. What can you do to stay calm when you're playing the volatile stock market? What's the best way to get someone to stop smoking? How can you maximize the return on your investment at an all-you-can-eat buffet? Is it possible to put a price on the human soul? Can you ever rationally justify spending thousands of dollars on a Rolex?With their trademark insight and wit, Ariely and Haefeli help us reflect on how we can reason our way through external and internal challenges. Readers will laugh, learn, and, most important, gain a new perspective on how to deal with the inevitable problems that plague daily life.
Irrealism in Ethics (Ratio Special Issues)
by Bart StreumerIrrealism in Ethics presents a collection of six original essays contributed by prominent moral philosophers that address various forms of the philosophical position of ethical irrealism. Addresses various forms of the philosophical position of ethical irrealism Presents arguments both for and against the two major versions of ethical irrealism—the error theory and expressivism Offers innovative new arguments on topics relating to ethical irrealism Features original contributions from internationally prominent moral philosophers
Irreconcilable Differences? A Learning Resource For Jews And Christians: A Learning Resource For Jews And Christians
by David SandmelWritten by Jewish and Christian educators for use by college and adult learners, this volume explores eight basic questions that lie at the core of both traditions and that can serve as a bridge for understanding. Among the questions are: Do Jews and Christians worship the same God? Do Jews and Christians read the Bible the same way? What is the place of the land of Israel for Jews and Christians? Are the irreconcilable differences between Christians and Jews a blessing, a curse, or both? Each chapter includes discussion questions.
Irregular Governance: A Plea for Bold Organizational Experimentation
by Gilles Paquet HubbardA Plea for Bold Organizational Experimentation. The eighth book in the Collaborative Metagovernance series is an irreverent challenge to administrative conservatorship, and a case for bold organizational experimentation. It makes the case for effective new actors, new structural forms and new social technologies, while showing the perils of ill-conceived contraptions like super-bureaucracies, single-purpose agencies and failure to pay due attention to good management. This series of books is designed to define cumulatively the contours of collaborative decentered metagovernance. At this time, there is still no canonical version of this paradigm: it is en émergence. This series intends to be one of many construction sites to experiment with various dimensions of an effective and practical version of this new approach. Metagovernance is the art of combining different forms or styles of governance, experimented with in the private, public and social sectors, to ensure effective coordination when power, resources and information are widely distributed, and the governing is of necessity decentred and collaborative.
Irregular Negatives, Implicatures, and Idioms
by Wayne A. DavisThe author integrates, expands, and deepens his previous publications about irregular (or "metalinguistic") negations. A total of ten distinct negatives--several previously unclassified--are analyzed. The logically irregular negations deny different implicatures of their root. All are partially non-compositional but completely conventional. The author argues that two of the irregular negative meanings are implicatures. The others are semantically rather than pragmatically ambiguous. Since their ambiguity is neither lexical nor structural, direct irregular negatives satisfy the standard definition of idioms as syntactically complex expressions whose meaning is non-compositional. Unlike stereotypical idioms, idiomatic negatives lack fixed syntactic forms and are highly compositional. The final chapter analyzes other "free form" idioms, including irregular interrogatives and comparatives, self-restricted verb phrases, numerical verb phrases, and transparent propositional attitude and speech act reports.
Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don't Add Up
by John Allen PaulosA lifelong unbeliever finds no reason to change his mind: “A good-natured primer for infidels” from the bestselling author of Innumeracy (Kirkus Reviews).Are there any logical reasons to believe in God? Mathematician and bestselling author John Allen Paulos thinks not. In Irreligion he presents the case for his own worldview, organizing his book into twelve chapters that refute the twelve arguments most often put forward for believing in God’s existence. The latter arguments, Paulos relates in his characteristically lighthearted style, “range from what might be called golden oldies to those with a more contemporary beat. On the playlist are the first cause argument, the argument from design, the ontological argument, arguments from faith and biblical codes, the argument from the anthropic principle, the moral universality argument, and others.” Interspersed among his twelve counterarguments are remarks on a variety of irreligious themes, ranging from the nature of miracles and creationist probability to cognitive illusions and prudential wagers. Special attention is paid to topics, arguments, and questions that spring from his incredulity “not only about religion but also about others’ credulity.” Despite the strong influence of his day job, Paulos says, there isn’t a single mathematical formula in the book.“He’s done it again. John Allen Paulos has written a charming book that takes you on a sojourn of flawless logic, with simple and clear examples drawn from math, science, and pop culture. At journey’s end, Paulos has left you with plenty to think about, whether you are religious, irreligious, or anything in between.” —Neil deGrasse Tyson
Irreparable Evil: An Essay in Moral and Reparatory History
by David ScottWhat was distinctive about the evil of the transatlantic slave trade and New World slavery? In what ways can the present seek to rectify such historical wrongs, even while recognizing that they lie beyond repair? Irreparable Evil explores the legacy of slavery and its moral and political implications, offering a nuanced intervention into debates over reparations.David Scott reconsiders the story of New World slavery in a series of interconnected essays that focus on Jamaica and the Anglophone Caribbean. Slavery, he emphasizes, involved not only scarcely imaginable brutality on a mass scale but also the irreversible devastation of the ways of life and cultural worlds from which enslaved people were uprooted. Colonial extraction shaped modern capitalism; plantation slavery enriched colonial metropoles and simultaneously impoverished their peripheries. To account for this atrocity, Scott examines moral and reparatory modes of history and criticism, probing different conceptions of evil. He reflects on the paradoxes of seeking redress for the specific moral evil of slavery, criticizing the limitations of liberal rights-based arguments for reparations that pursue reconciliation with the past. Instead, this book argues, in making the urgent demand for reparations, we must acknowledge the fundamental irreparability of a wrong of such magnitude.
Irrevocable: A Philosophy of Mortality
by Alphonso LingisIn his latest book, the prolific writer and thinker Alphonso Lingis brings interdisciplinarity and lyrical philosophizing to the weight of reality, the weight of things, and the weight of life itself. Drawing from philosophy, anthropology, psychology, religion, and science, Lingis seeks to uncover what in our reality escapes our attempts at measuring and categorizing. Writing as much from his own experiences and those of others as from his longstanding engagement with phenomenology and existentialism, Irrevocable studies the world in which shadows, reflections, halos, and reverberations count as much as the carpentry of things. Whether describing religious art and ritual, suffering, war and disease, the pleasures of love, the wonders of nature, archaeological findings, surfing, volcanoes, or jellyfish, Lingis writes with equal measures of rigor and abandon about the vicissitudes of our practices and beliefs. Knowing that birth, the essential encounters in our lives, crippling diseases and accidents, and even death are all determined by chance, how do we recognize and understand such chance? After facing tragedies, what makes it possible to live on while recognizing our irrevocable losses? Lingis’s investigations are accompanied by his own vivid photographs from around the world. Balancing the local and the global, and ranging across vast expanses of culture and time, Irrevocable sounds the depths of both our passions and our impassioned bodies and minds.
Irving Babbitt, Literature and the Democratic Culture
by Milton HindusThis is a sustained inquiry into the thought of the influential scholar and critic Irving Babbitt (1865-1933), intellectual leader of the movement known as the New Humanism. Milton Hindus considers the subjects that most interested Babbitt: ethics, literature, education, and social and political conservatism in the United States. In their most general sense, his concerns were man and his nature as the root of all social order. For Babbitt, efforts to improve social conditions must begin and end with the individual human being.In rejecting notions that society is primarily responsible for moral deficiencies in the individual, or that the individual is bom good only to be corrupted by society, Babbitt places responsibility squarely with the individual. As Hindus shows, Babbitt sees human beings as a mixture of good and evil impulses, shaped by what he called "the inner check." Virtue is thus a result of self-discipline, reinforced and confirmed by habit.Babbitt's thinking, emphasizing as it does proven values and accepted wisdom, calls upon us to advance ourselves by rediscovery of the lessons of the past. Hindus demonstrates that Babbitt has much to offer us as we consider contemporary social and political issues. In contrast to those who emphasize avant-garde postures and fashionable ideologies, as well as those conservative followers of outdated theories and dead-end formulas, Babbitt's reinvigorating spirit inspires new insights.Although there have been a number of studies of Irving Babbitt and the New Humanism, Hindus is singular in his combination of detailed consideration of a number of Babbitt's books with his own essays on contemporary issues, approached in what Hindus calls a Babbitian spirit. Like Babbitt's own writings, this book is addressed to the general reader. It will be of particular importance to teachers of comparative literature and those interested in the connections between literature and social thought and philosophy.
Is Administrative Law Unlawful?
by Philip Hamburger“Hamburger argues persuasively that America has overlaid its constitutional system with a form of governance that is both alien and dangerous.” —Law and Politics Book ReviewWhile the federal government traditionally could constrain liberty only through acts of Congress and the courts, the executive branch has increasingly come to control Americans through its own administrative rules and adjudication, thus raising disturbing questions about the effect of this sort of state power on American government and society.With Is Administrative Law Unlawful?, Philip Hamburger answers this question in the affirmative, offering a revisionist account of administrative law. Rather than accepting it as a novel power necessitated by modern society, he locates its origins in the medieval and early modern English tradition of royal prerogative. Then he traces resistance to administrative law from the Middle Ages to the present. Medieval parliaments periodically tried to confine the Crown to governing through regular law, but the most effective response was the seventeenth-century development of English constitutional law, which concluded that the government could rule only through the law of the land and the courts, not through administrative edicts. Although the US Constitution pursued this conclusion even more vigorously, administrative power reemerged in the Progressive and New Deal Eras. Since then, Hamburger argues, administrative law has returned American government and society to precisely the sort of consolidated or absolute power that the US Constitution—and constitutions in general—were designed to prevent.With a clear yet many-layered argument that draws on history, law, and legal thought, Is Administrative Law Unlawful? reveals administrative law to be not a benign, natural outgrowth of contemporary government but a pernicious—and profoundly unlawful—return to dangerous pre-constitutional absolutism.
Is Critique Secular?: Blasphemy, Injury, and Free Speech
by Judith Butler Talal Asad Wendy Brown Saba MahmoodThis volume interrogates settled ways of thinking about the seemingly interminable conflict between religious and secular values in our world today. What are the assumptions and resources internal to secular conceptions of critique that help or hinder our understanding of one of the most pressing conflicts of our times?Taking as their point of departure the question of whether critique belongs exclusively to forms of liberal democracy that define themselves in opposition to religion, these authors consider the case of the “Danish cartoon controversy” of 2005. They offer accounts of reading, understanding, and critique for offering a way to rethink conventional oppositions between free speech and religious belief, judgment and violence, reason and prejudice, rationality and embodied life. The book, first published in 2009, has been updated for the present edition with a new Preface by the authors.
Is Democracy Possible Here?: Principles for a New Political Debate
by Ronald DworkinPolitics in America are polarized and trivialized, perhaps as never before. In Congress, the media, and academic debate, opponents from right and left, the Red and the Blue, struggle against one another as if politics were contact sports played to the shouts of cheerleaders. The result, Ronald Dworkin writes, is a deeply depressing political culture, as ill equipped for the perennial challenge of achieving social justice as for the emerging threats of terrorism. Can the hope for change be realized? Dworkin, one the world's leading legal and political philosophers, identifies and defends core principles of personal and political morality that all citizens can share. He shows that recognizing such shared principles can make substantial political argument possible and help replace contempt with mutual respect. Only then can the full promise of democracy be realized in America and elsewhere. Dworkin lays out two core principles that citizens should share: first, that each human life is intrinsically and equally valuable and, second, that each person has an inalienable personal responsibility for identifying and realizing value in his or her own life. He then shows what fidelity to these principles would mean for human rights, the place of religion in public life, economic justice, and the character and value of democracy. Dworkin argues that liberal conclusions flow most naturally from these principles. Properly understood, they collide with the ambitions of religious conservatives, contemporary American tax and social policy, and much of the War on Terror. But his more basic aim is to convince Americans of all political stripes--as well as citizens of other nations with similar cultures--that they can and must defend their own convictions through their own interpretations of these shared values.
Is Everyone Really Equal? An Introduction to Key Concepts in Social Justice Education
by Özlem Sensoy Robin DiangeloThis practical handbook will introduce readers to social justice education, providing tools for developing "critical social justice literacy" and for taking action towards a more just society. Accessible to students from high school through graduate school, this book offers a collection of detailed and engaging explanations of key concepts in social justice education, including critical thinking, privilege, and White supremacy. Based on extensive experience in a range of settings in the United States and Canada, the authors address the most common stumbling blocks to understanding social justice. They provide recognizable examples, scenarios, and vignettes illustrating these concepts. This unique resource has many user-friendly features, including "definition boxes" for key terms, "stop boxes" to remind readers of previously explained ideas, "perspective check boxes" to draw attention to alternative standpoints, a glossary, and a chapter responding to the most common rebuttals encountered when leading discussions on concepts in critical social justice. There are discussion questions and extension activities at the end of each chapter, and an appendix designed to lend pedagogical support to those newer to teaching social justice education.
Is Everyone Really Equal?: An Introduction to Key Concepts in Social Justice Education
by Özlem Sensoy Robin DiAngelo<P>This is the new edition of the award-winning guide to social justice education. Based on the authors' extensive experience in a range of settings in the United States and Canada, the book addresses the most common stumbling blocks to understanding social justice. <P>This comprehensive resource includes new features such as: a chapter on intersectionality and classism, discussion of contemporary activisms (Black Lives Matter, Occupy, and Idle No More), material on White Settler societies and colonialism, pedagogical supports related to "common social patterns" and "vocabulary to practice using," and extensive updates throughout. <P>Accessible to students from high school through graduate school, Is Everyone Really Equal? is a detailed and engaging textbook and professional development resourcer presenting the key concepts in social justice education. The text includes many user-friendly features, examples, and vignettes to not just define but illustrate key concepts.
Is Faith in God Reasonable?: Debates in Philosophy, Science, and Rhetoric (Routledge Studies in the Philosophy of Religion)
by Corey Miller Paul GouldThe question of whether faith in God is reasonable is of renewed interest in today’s academy. In light of this interest, as well as the rise of militant religion and terrorism and the emergent reaction by neo-atheism, this volume considers this important question from the views of contemporary scientists, philosophers, and in a more novel fashion, of rhetoricians. It is comprised of a public debate between William Lane Craig, supporting the position that faith in God is reasonable and Alex Rosenberg, arguing against that position. Scholars in the aforementioned fields then respond to the debate, representing both theistic and atheistic positions. The book concludes with rejoinders from Craig and Rosenberg.
Is God A Delusion?: A Reply to Religion's Cultured Despisers
by Eric ReitanIs God a Delusion? addresses the philosophical underpinnings of the recent proliferation of popular books attacking religious beliefs. Winner of CHOICE 2009 Outstanding Academic Title Award Focuses primarily on charges leveled by recent critics that belief in God is irrational and that its nature ferments violence Balances philosophical rigor and scholarly care with an engaging, accessible style Offers a direct response to the crop of recent anti-religion bestsellers currently generating considerable public discussion
Is God Happy?: Selected Essays
by Leszek Ko AkowskiThe late Leszek Kolakowski was one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. A prominent anticommunist writer, Kolakowski was also a deeply humanistic thinker, and his meditations on society, religion, morality, and culture stand alongside his political writings as commentaries on intellectual--and everyday--life in the twentieth century. Kolakowski’s extraordinary empathy, humor, and erudition are on full display in Is God Happy?, the first collection of his work to be published since his death in 2009. Accessible and wide ranging, these essays--many of them translated into English for the first time--testify to the remarkable scope of Kolakowski’s work. From a provocative and deeply felt critique of Marxist ideology to the witty and self-effacing "In Praise of Unpunctuality” to a rigorous analysis of Erasmus’ model of Christianity and the future of religion, these essays distill Kolakowski’s lifelong engagement with the eternal problems of philosophy and some of the most vital questions of our age.
Is God Invisible?: An Essay on Religion and Aesthetics (Cambridge Studies in Religion, Philosophy, and Society)
by Charles Taliaferro Jil EvansIn this volume, Charles Taliaferro and Jil Evans promote aesthetic personalism by examining three domains of aesthetics - the philosophy of beauty, aesthetic experience, and philosophy of art - through the lens of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, theistic Hinduism, and the all-seeing Compassionate Buddha. These religious traditions assume an inclusive, overarching God's eye, or ideal point of view, that can create an emancipatory appreciation of beauty and goodness. This appreciation also recognizes the reality and value of the aesthetic experience of persons and deepens the experience of art works. The authors also explore and contrast the invisibility of persons and God. The belief that God or the sacred is invisible does not mean God or the sacred cannot be experienced through visual and other sensory or unique modes. Conversely, the assumption that human persons are thoroughly visible, or observable in all respects, ignores how racism and other forms of bias render persons invisible to others.
Is God a Mathematician?
by Mario LivioBestselling author and astrophysicist Mario Livio examines the lives and theories of history’s greatest mathematicians to ask how—if mathematics is an abstract construction of the human mind—it can so perfectly explain the physical world.Nobel Laureate Eugene Wigner once wondered about “the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics” in the formulation of the laws of nature. Is God a Mathematician? investigates why mathematics is as powerful as it is. From ancient times to the present, scientists and philosophers have marveled at how such a seemingly abstract discipline could so perfectly explain the natural world. More than that—mathematics has often made predictions, for example, about subatomic particles or cosmic phenomena that were unknown at the time, but later were proven to be true. Is mathematics ultimately invented or discovered? If, as Einstein insisted, mathematics is “a product of human thought that is independent of experience,” how can it so accurately describe and even predict the world around us? Physicist and author Mario Livio brilliantly explores mathematical ideas from Pythagoras to the present day as he shows us how intriguing questions and ingenious answers have led to ever deeper insights into our world. This fascinating book will interest anyone curious about the human mind, the scientific world, and the relationship between them.
Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God
by Paul CopanA recent string of popular-level books written by the New Atheists have leveled the accusation that the God of the Old Testament is nothing but a bully, a murderer, and a cosmic child abuser. This viewpoint is even making inroads into the church. How are Christians to respond to such accusations? And how are we to reconcile the seemingly disconnected natures of God portrayed in the two testaments? In this timely and readable book, apologist Paul Copan takes on some of the most vexing accusations of our time, including: God is arrogant and jealous God punishes people too harshly God is guilty of ethnic cleansing God oppresses women God endorses slavery Christianity causes violence and more Copan not only answers God's critics, he also shows how to read both the Old and New Testaments faithfully, seeing an unchanging, righteous, and loving God in both.
Is God a Vegetarian?
by Richard Alan YoungIs God a Vegetarian? is one of the most complete explorations of vegetarianism in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Young, a linguistics and New Testament scholar, attempts to answer the question being asked with greater and greater frequency: "Are Christians morally obligated to be vegetarians?"Many people are confused about the apparent mixed messages within the Bible. On the one hand, God prescribes a vegetarian diet in the Garden of Eden and the apocalyptic visions of Isaiah and John imply the restoration of a vegetarian diet. However, it is also clear that God permits, Jesus partakes in, and Paul sanctions the eating of flesh. Does the Bible give any clear guidance?Close readings of key biblical texts pertaining to dietary customs, vegetarianism, and animal rights make up the substance of the book. Rather than ignoring or offering a literal, twentieth-century interpretation of the passages, the author analyzes the voices of these conflicting dietary motifs within their own social contexts. Interwoven throughout these readings are discussions of contemporary issues, such as animal testing and experimentation, the fur industry, raising animals in factories, and the effects of meat-eating on human health.Thirteen chapters cover such topics as-- the vegetarian diet in the Garden of Eden-- the clothing of the first humans in animal skins-- God's permitting humans to eat meat-- animal sacrifice-- the dietary habits of Jesus and the early apostles-- Paul's condemnation of vegetarianism as heresy-- the dietary views of the early church fathers-- the peaceable kingdom.The author provides two vegetarian recipes at the end of each chapter. An epilogue includes guidelines for becoming a vegetarian and a recommended reading list.Insightful and challenging, Is God a Vegetarian? poses provocative questions for vegetarians, Christians, and anyone reflecting upon her personal choices and ethical role in our world today.
Is God the Best Explanation of Things?: A Dialogue
by Joshua Rasmussen Felipe LeonThis book provides an up to date, high-level exchange on God in a uniquely productive style. Readers witness a contemporary version of a classic debate, as two professional philosophers seek to learn from each other while making their cases for their distinct positions. In their dialogue, Joshua Rasmussen and Felipe Leon examine classical and cutting-edge arguments for and against a theistic explanation of general features of reality. The book also provides original lines of thought based on the authors’ own contributions to the field, and offers a productive and innovative inquiry into on one of the biggest questions people ask: what is the ultimate explanation of things?
Is It Tomorrow Yet?: Paradoxes of the Pandemic
by Ivan KrastevA FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAROne of our most scintillating public intellectuals explores the political paradoxes of the pandemic and helps us think our way through it'We are able to imagine anything because we are being besieged by something that was considered unimaginable...'Beneath the panic and bluster, beneath the confusing speeches and the conflicting advice, the Coronavirus pandemic acted, changing our world in the most profound ways. The tragic human cost and the economic devastation will be assessed and calculated for decades to come. But the pandemic also changed things in ways that are less easily expressed and understood. It has made bare the frayed contradictions of modern life. It has distorted things that seemed simple and settled. It has affirmed plain, uncomfortable truths. In this brilliant, thought-provoking essay, Ivan Krastev, one of our most interesting thinkers today, explores the pandemic's immediate consequences and conceives of its long-term legacy. Will things be different for the communities most harmed, and for those who escaped the worst? Where are we now with the US and China, with the UK and Europe? And how do we think our way through the unthinkable?