Douglas E. Edlin (ed.), Common Law Theory, Cambridge University Press, 2007, 247pp., $80.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780521846424.

W.J. Waluchow: ". . .if common law is case law, precisely where in legal cases are common law rules to be found? Among the most theoretically troubling features of such rules -- assuming that they do indeed exist -- is that they are not canonically formulated in the manner of statutory rules. Judges seldom formulate anything remotely like what we normally think of as a rule when they decide cases. Rather, they explain and defend their decisions by citing reasons, doctrines, precedents, and so on. Often they cite what appear to be moral, political and social considerations. But these are not the kinds of things we normally think of as legal rules; rather they seem to be factors one could draw on to support the adoption, application, alteration or rejection of such rules. And so our question remains: where precisely do we locate common law rules? And then there is this peculiar feature of common law rules: they are quite often capable of revision in the very act of application by a judge, a respect in which they seem quite unlike, say, statutory rules which judges are not free to change. How can rules, revisable at point of application, be intelligently thought of as legally "binding" on a decision-maker? Indeed, can they sensibly be said to be rules at all? . . ." more

Jesse Prinz, The Emotional Construction of Morals, Oxford University Press, 2007, 334pp., $60.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780199283019.

Ronald de Sousa, University of Toronto: "Is the good a projection of our preferences, or are our preferences correct or incorrect according to their correspondence to some objective good, independent of our minds? The question goes back to Plato's Euthyphro. There have been major hitters on both sides, and it is one of the many scandals of philosophy that the debate drags on. Jesse Prinz's brilliant new book is a detailed and convincing defense of a fresh variant of the projectionist view, in which emotional responses, particularly approbation and disapprobation, constitute the core content of moral judgments. The view is refined in such a way as to embrace the possibility of moral truth, and answer a large array of objections. Its relativist consequences are embraced, and independently supported with a wide range of psychological and anthropological evidence. Prinz shows, however, that even full fledged relativism does not exclude viable notions of moral debate and moral progress." more

"Genres, Categories, and Concepts in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art" May 16-18, 2008 Indiana University, Bloomington   This conference will investigate the particular roles of various types of categorization in the production, experience, and appreciation of works of art. Specific topics include:       * the legitimacy of cross‐categoria l comparison of artworks     * gender in the horror genre: "feminist final girls"     * Collingwood on the distinction between art and craft     * generic resetting in rock covers     * Herder on sculpture     * nuance as a category‐indepe ndent aesthetic property     * Schopenhauer on “genres that matter”: tragedy and still life     * comics as literary/visual hybrid           Amy Coplan (Cal State, Fullerton)         Nicholas Diehl (University of California, Davis)         Jonathan Friday (Kent University, UK)         Ted Gracyk (Minnesota State, Moorhead)         Matthew Kieran (Leeds University, UK)         Aaron Meskin (Leeds University, UK)         Michael Morgan (Indiana University)         Alex Neill (University of Southampton, UK)         Henry Pratt (Marist College, USA)         Aaron Ridley (University of Southampton, UK)         Michael Rings (Indiana University)         Tiger Roholt (Indiana University of Pennsylvania)         Sandy Shapshay (Indiana University)         Joshua Shaw (Penn State, Erie)         Rachel Zuckert (Northwestern University, USA)   Visit conference website at: http:// www.indiana.edu /~aesthete/ For further information or registration, contact: mrings@indiana. edu   Sponsored by the College Arts Humanities Institute and the Indiana University Department of Philosophy. Co-sponsored by the Indiana University Departments of Communication and Culture, English, Germanic Studies, Spanish and Portuguese, West European Studies, and the Fundamental Studio Area of the School of Fine Arts      
[Submitted by Michael Rings]

UNDERSTANDING PRIVACY by Daniel J. Solove (Harvard University Press, 2008)

From the book jacket:
Privacy is one of the most important concepts of our time, yet it is also one of the most elusive. As rapidly changing technology makes information increasingly available, scholars, activists, and policymakers have struggled to define privacy, with many conceding that the task is virtually impossible.

In this concise and lucid book, Daniel J. Solove offers a comprehensive overview of the difficulties involved in discussions of privacy and ultimately provides a provocative resolution. He argues that no single definition can be workable, but rather that there are multiple forms of privacy, related to one another by family resemblances. His theory bridges cultural differences and addresses historical changes in views on privacy. Drawing on a broad array of interdisciplina ry sources, Solove sets forth a framework for understanding privacy that provides clear, practical guidance for engaging with relevant issues.

Understanding Privacy will be an essential introduction to long-standing debates and an invaluable resource for crafting laws and policies about surveillance, data mining, identity theft, state involvement in reproductive and marital decisions, and other pressing contemporary matters concerning privacy.
Daniel Solove offers a unique, challenging account of how to think better about-- and of-- privacy. No scholar in America is more committed to demystifying "the right to privacy".
--Anita L. Allen, University of Pennsylvania Law School



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In this blog post, Stanley Fish argues that Deconstruction in particular and "French Theory" in general do not threaten the loss of anything significant in American intellectual life.

excerpts from the original article in the New York Times:

Certainly mainstream or centrist intellectuals thought there was a lot to worry about. They agreed with Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont, who complained that the ideas coming out of France amounted to a “rejection of the rationalist tradition of the Enlightenment” even to the point of regarding “science as nothing more than a ‘narration’ or a ‘myth’ or a social construction among many others.”

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