This essay responds to the helpful criticisms of Valuing Health: Well-Being, Freedom, and Suffering, which have been offered by Elselijn Kingma, Adam Oliver, Anna Alexandrova, Alex Voorhoeve, Erik Nord and James Wilson. I am extremely grateful to Jonathan Wolf and especially James Wilson for arranging a one-day conference on my book, Valuing Health: Well-Being, Freedom, and Suffering [Hausman, D.. Valuing Health: Well-Being, Freedom, and Suffering. Oxford: Oxford University Press.], and for publishing this symposium. I am also grateful to the wonderful (...) six scholars who took the time to study my work and to offer perceptive and helpful criticisms. Without unduly trying the patience of readers, I cannot respond to all their remarks, but I hope that in what follows I have replied to the most important of their comments on the arguments and conclusions of Valuing Health. Before I begin these replies, a brief synopsis of Valuing Health may be helpful to the reader. (shrink)

Christopher Hookway has been influential in promoting engagement with pragmatist and naturalist perspectives from classical and contemporary American philosophy. This book reflects on Hookway's work on the American philosophical tradition and its significance for contemporary discussions of the understanding of mind, meaning, knowledge, and value. Hookway's original and extensive studies of Charles S. Peirce have made him among the most admired and frequently referenced of Peirce's interpreters. His work on classical American pragmatism has explored the philosophies of William James, John (...) Dewey and Josiah Royce, and examined the influence of pragmatist ideas outside of the United States. Additionally, Hookway has participated in a number of celebrated exchanges with some of the most high-profile figures of twentieth- and twenty-first century philosophy, including Karl-Otto Apel, Philip Pettit, Hilary Putnam, and W.V.O. Quine, through which his treatments of a large range of topics in epistemology and the philosophies of mind and language have been developed and promoted. The chapters in this book-which include contributions from several of Hookway's former students and colleagues-include studies of Hookway's engagement with the works of Peirce, James, and Dewey, his contributions to virtue epistemology, and his discussions of hope and pragmatist metaphysics. Pragmatic Reason will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working on American philosophy, the history of analytic philosophy, and epistemology. (shrink)

With his recent contribution to Dewey studies, Deweyan Experimentalism and the Problem of Method in Political Philosophy, Joshua Forstenzer delivers a timely and highly readable examination of Dewey's democratic ideal and its contemporary relevance. Outstanding in its scholarship and compelling in its argument, Forstenzer's fascinating study presents an extensive interpretation of Dewey's experimentalist approach to democratic politics, while highlighting its significant interdisciplinary value and practical interest. Focussing particularly upon its experimentalist character and renunciation of a priori idealisations, Forstenzer examines, over (...) ten well-argued chapters, how Dewey's approach to political philosophy... (shrink)

The present paper makes three contentions with regard to the respective Kantian and Bradleyian accounts of the intrinsically problematic status of our epistemic predicament. First, it is in consequence of their common adherence to a view of the human intellect as both inherently qualified by its cognitive dependence upon the conditional phenomena of sensible experience and rationally committed to the pursuit of knowledge of the unconditional, that Kant and Bradley regard rational cognition as accountable to a standard which it cannot (...) match. Second, Kant and Bradley are committed to differing idealist positions which carry significant implications for their respective outlooks on the ontological commitments we incur in pursuit of the highest standards of reason. Third, and, finally, whereas Kant's transcendental idealism permits him to hold that theoretical reason does not entail ontological commitment to any object which lies beyond the scope of our cognitive powers, Bradley finds himself in the more awkward position of having to concede that our capacity for knowledge necessarily commits us to the existence of an Absolute which is ultimately beyond the grasp of the human intellect. Hence it shall be argued that it is Bradley, and not Kant, whose idealism results in unintelligible ontological commitments. (shrink)

Volume 28, Issue 2, March 2020, Page 411-413.

This is a Trilingual collection of contributions made by members of the Peirce Latin-American Society to their inaugural event in 2019. it is a historical book since there is no such comprehensive approach to the variety of Peirce studies in Latin-America that shows the history of the reception of Peirce and his Pragmatism, a dialogue with the philosophy and thought of the region and, furthermore, contributions to the study of Peirce's thought made from the Americas.

Volume 28, Issue 2, March 2020, Page 411-413.

BackgroundIn Australia, the peer review process for competitive funding is usually conducted by a peer review group in conjunction with prior assessment from external assessors. This process is quite mysterious to those outside it. The purpose of this research was to throw light on grant review panels (sometimes called the ‘black box’) through an examination of the impact of panel procedures, panel composition and panel dynamics on the decision-making in the grant review process. A further purpose was to compare experience (...) of a simplified review process with more conventional processes used in assessing grant proposals in Australia.MethodsThis project was one aspect of a larger study into the costs and benefits of a simplified peer review process. The Queensland University of Technology (QUT)-simplified process was compared with the National Health and Medical Research Council’s (NHMRC) more complex process. Grant review panellists involved in both processes were interviewed about their experience of the decision-making process that assesses the excellence of an application. All interviews were recorded and transcribed. Each transcription was de-identified and returned to the respondent for review. Final transcripts were read repeatedly and coded, and similar codes were amalgamated into categories that were used to build themes. Final themes were shared with the research team for feedback.ResultsTwo major themes arose from the research: (1) assessing grant proposals and (2) factors influencing the fairness, integrity and objectivity of review. Issues such as the quality of writing in a grant proposal, comparison of the two review methods, the purpose and use of the rebuttal, assessing the financial value of funded projects, the importance of the experience of the panel membership and the role of track record and the impact of group dynamics on the review process were all discussed. The research also examined the influence of research culture on decision-making in grant review panels. One of the aims of this study was to compare a simplified review process with more conventional processes. Generally, participants were supportive of the simplified process.ConclusionsTransparency in the grant review process will result in better appreciation of the outcome. Despite the provision of clear guidelines for peer review, reviewing processes are likely to be subjective to the extent that different reviewers apply different rules. The peer review process will come under more scrutiny as funding for research becomes even more competitive. There is justification for further research on the process, especially of a kind that taps more deeply into the ‘black box’ of peer review. (shrink)

Christopher Hookway has been influential in promoting engagement with pragmatist and naturalist perspectives from classical and contemporary American philosophy. This book reflects on Hookway’s work on the American philosophical tradition and its significance for contemporary discussions of the understanding of mind, meaning, knowledge, and value. -/- Hookway’s original and extensive studies of Charles S. Peirce have made him among the most admired and frequently referenced of Peirce’s interpreters. His work on classical American pragmatism has explored the philosophies of William James, (...) John Dewey, and Josiah Royce, and examined the influence of pragmatist ideas outside of the United States. Additionally, Hookway has participated in a number of celebrated exchanges with some of the most high-profile figures of twentieth- and twenty-first-century philosophy, including Karl-Otto Apel, Philip Pettit, Hilary Putnam, and W.V.O. Quine, through which his treatments of a large range of topics in epistemology and the philosophies of mind and language have been developed and promoted. The chapters in this book—which include contributions from several of Hookway’s former students and colleagues—include studies of Hookway’s engagement with the works of Peirce, James, and Dewey, his contributions to virtue epistemology, and his discussions of hope and pragmatist metaphysics. -/- Pragmatic Reason will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working on American philosophy, the history of analytic philosophy, and epistemology. (shrink)

Shame is one of the most stigmatized and stigmatizing of emotions. Often characterized as an emotion in which the subject holds a global, negative self-assessment, shame is typically understood to mark the subject as being inadequate in some way, and a sizable amount of work on shame focuses on its problematic or unhealthy aspects, effects, or consequences. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Shame brings into view a more balanced understanding of what shame is and its value and social function. The contributors recognize (...) shame as a complex, richly layered, conscious or unconscious phenomenon, and the collection offers an understanding of what shame is, the scholarly discourse on shame, and how theories of shame help us to understand ourselves, others, and the world around us. It also highlights a diverse range of perspectives on shame, and how these unique perspectives can enlighten our understanding of both the positive and negative aspects of this powerful emotion. Edited by Cecilea Mun, the ten chapters by an international group of contributors reflect a broad range of methods, disciplinary perspectives, and both theoretical and practical concerns regarding shame. -/- 30% Discount Code: LEX30AUTH1. (shrink)

Here is a simple, clear, useful proof that quantum mechanics contradicts Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen's local realistic assumptions. It is a variant of the powerful argument first worked out by Daniel Mordechai Greenberger, Michael A. Horne, and Anton Zeilinger. This version uses the eigenstates of two orthogonal spin components for three spin-1/2 particles. No operator or matrix algebra is necessary. A novel discussion of the background and history serves to introduce this proof and to place it in the context (...) of Danny's work. (shrink)

George Herbert Mead has long been known for his social theory of meaning and the 'self' - an approach which becomes all the more relevant in light of the ways we develop and represent ourselves online. But recent scholarship has shown that Mead's pragmatic philosophy can help us understand a much wider range of contemporary issues including how humans and natural environments mutually influence one another, how deliberative democracy can and should work, how thinking is dependent upon the body (...) and on others, and how social changes in the present affect our understandings of the past. Historical scholarship has also changed what we know of Mead's life, including new emphasis on his social reform efforts, his engagement with colonization and war, and critical reinterpretation of the works published after his death. This book provides an approachable introduction to Mead's contemporary relevance in the social sciences, showing how a pragmatic view of social action serves as the core of Mead's theory, offering striking insights into human agency, symbolism, politics, social change, temporality, and materiality. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology and the social sciences more broadly, with interests in social theory and the enduring importance of the sociological classics. (shrink)

The consensus among evolutionists seems to be that the morphological complexity of organisms increases in evolution, although almost no empirical evidence for such a trend exists. Most studies of complexity have been theoretical, and the few empirical studies have not, with the exception of certain recent ones, been especially rigorous; reviews are presented of both the theoretical and empirical literature. The paucity of evidence raises the question of what sustains the consensus, and a number of suggestions are offered, including the (...) possibility that certain cultural and/or perceptual biases are at work. In addition, a shift in emphasis from theoretical to empirical inquiry is recommended for the study of complexity, and guidelines for future empirical studies are proposed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Equal Freedom and Utility: Herbert Spencer’s Liberal Utilitarianısm by David WeinsteinDaniel PalmerDavid Weinstein. Equal Freedom and Utility: Herbert Spencer’s Liberal Utilitarianısm. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp. xii + 235. Cloth, $69.95.Herbert Spencer, though influential and widely read in the nineteenth century, has been largely neglected by contemporary philosophers. David Weinstein argues that this neglect is unjustified, and that Spencer’s moral and political thought deserves (...) the same attention that has been afforded to Spencer’s contemporary John Stuart Mill. The comparison with Mill is particularly important for Weinstein. Indeed, he claims that, like Mill, Spencer was a liberal utilitarian who attempted to preserve a place for strong moral rights within a broadly utilitarian framework.A large part of Weinstein’s study is devoted to delineating the precise nature of Spencer’s utilitarianism. Weinstein argues that Spencer is both more consistently utilitarian and more systematic than has often been alleged. In the first two chapters he discusses Spencer’s utilitarianism in relation to his metaphysical principles and his account of moral psychology. Weinstein convincingly demonstrates that Spencer’s liberal utilitarianism follows from his views on social evolution. Spencer viewed evolutionary processes as leading to increasing differentiation among phenomena, which implied for Spencer a trend towards greater individuation of persons as societies evolve. Evolutionary principles also led Spencer to view happiness as largely dependent upon the exercise of faculties. Together, these views lend support to what Weinstein sees as the centerpiece of Spencer’s liberal utilitarianism, his principle of equal freedom, or the claim that “each shall have as much liberty to pursue his ends as consists with maintaining like liberties to pursue their ends by others” (38). The increasing individuation of individuals coupled with the dependence of happiness upon the free exercise of our faculties guaranteed for Spencer that the greatest happiness will be generated through the adoption of the principle of equal freedom.Weinstein’s central argument is that Spencer’s moral philosophy offers a distinctive version of indirect utilitarianism. In chapters 3 through 5 he outlines the main contours of Spencer’s liberal utilitarianism and its relevance to contemporary discussions, maintaining that Spencer accepted the utilitarian principle as the ultimate criterion of actions. However, much like Mill, and in reaction to Bentham, he argued that any direct pursuit of the greatest happiness is self-defeating. Spencer’s indirect utilitarianism sought to promote the conditions upon which happiness is founded through the principle of equal freedom. Moral rights were for him merely corollaries of the principle that flesh out its empty formalism, providing the basis for deliberation. Concrete moral rights such as property rights, contract rights, and exchange rights are therefore the basis for our primary obligations and yet find their ultimate justification in the principle of utility.Spencer’s two-tiered account of our moral obligations is thus remarkably similar to Mill’s account of moral rights in Chapter 5 of Utilitarianism. The difference between them concerns the stringency of moral rights. While Mill saw moral rights as important, but ultimately defeasible, Spencer viewed them as indefeasible. While Mill’s position seems more plausible from the utilitarian perspective, Weinstein shows that Spencer’s stronger position must be judged in terms of his beliefs about the exercise of human [End Page 685] faculties. Weinstein correctly shows that if Spencer is wrong, it is not because, as critics have charged, his position is logically inconsistent, but because he held mistaken views about human nature and society.While the heart of Equal Freedom and Utility concerns the relation between utility and moral rights in Spencer’s work, the final two chapters are devoted to metaethics and applied ethics respectively. Weinstein marshals strong textual support to show that Spencer never simply defined the good as happiness and that G. E. Moore’s use of Spencer in Principia Ethica as an example of someone who committed a glaring version of the naturalistic fallacy was not justified. Spencer simply avoided prolonged treatments of such metaethical concerns. In the last chapter Weinstein argues that Spencer’s evolving views on land nationalization reveals both the general nature of Spencer’s derivation of moral rights from the principle... (shrink)

In this essay, I reconstruct H. Richard Niebuhr's interpretation of George Herbert Mead's account of the social constitution of the self. Specifically, I correct Niebuhr's interpretation, because it mischaracterizes Mead's understanding of social constitution as more dialogical than ecological. I also argue that Niebuhr's interpretation needs completing because it fails to engage one of Mead's more significant notions, the I/me distinction within the self. By reconstructing Niebuhr's account of faith and responsibility as theologically self-constitutive through Mead's I/me distinction, I (...) demonstrate Niebuhr's deep yet unacknowledged agreement with Mead: the self is constituted by its participation in multiple communities, but responds to them creatively by enduring the moral perplexity of competing communal claims. I conclude by initiating a constructive account of conscience that follows from this agreement. Conscience is more ecological than dialogical because it regards our creative participation in multiple ecologies of social roles oriented by patterns of responsive relations. (shrink)

Joshua Daniel offers a reconstruction of the influence of Josiah Royce and George Herbert Mead on H. Richard Niebuhr to counter predominate strains in Christian ethics that overemphasize the role of socialization in moral formation at the expense of acknowledging the agency of individuals and their importance in preventing communities from turning in on themselves or becoming static. Daniel characterizes the driving worry of postliberal Christian ethics as “the accommodation of Christian communities to prevailing social forces and (...) norms, which is understood to radically undermine the churches’ existence and mission”. The primary accusation against these prevailing social norms is individualism. The modern... (shrink)

In Herbert Roitblat, ed., _Comparative Approaches to Cognitive Sciences_ , MIT Press, 1995. Daniel C. Dennett <blockquote> Do Animals Have Beliefs? </blockquote> According to one more or less standard mythology, behaviorism, the ideology and methodology that reigned in experimental psychology for most of the century, has been overthrown by a new ideology and methodology: cognitivism. Behaviorists, one is told, didn't take the mind seriously. They ignored--or even denied the existence of--mental states such as beliefs and desires, and mental (...) processes such as imagination and reasoning; behaviorists concentrated exclusively on external, publicly observable behavior, and the (external, publicly observable) conditions under which such behavior was elicited. Cognitivists, in contrast, take the mind seriously, and develop theories, models, explanations, that invoke, as real items, these internal, mental, goings-on. People (and at least some other animals) have minds after all--they are rational agents. (shrink)

Sullo scorcio del XIII secolo il patriarca Gregorio di Cipro inviò a Tessalonica un prezioso esemplare di Platone, su cui era riuscito a mettere le mani, perché fosse trascritto. Gregorio commissionò il lavoro a Giovanni Stauracio – figura di letterato anche altrimenti nota – e ad un certo Cabasila, chiamato a collaborare con Stauracio, «come Iolao con Eracle», per la realizzazione di un βιβλίον οὔ τοι ϕαυλον, un «libro non da nulla». Questo passo, scelto tra i molti che si potrebbero (...) addurre, documenta una realtà assai frequente nel mondo bizantino, vale a dire la collaborazione tra più copisti nell'allestimento di un codice. Nel caso in questione l'attività di trascrizione, come testimonia del resto la presenza di una committenza esterna di alto rango, assume la fisionomia di un lavoro vero e proprio, vincolato al pagamento di un compenso. Nonostante ne sia risultato un prodotto αἴσχιστον, «turpissimo» – sappiamo che il libro al suo solo apparire disgustò a tal punto il patriarca che questi avrebbe voluto gettarlo nell'acqua o nel fuoco perché non sopravvivesse a disonorare la propria biblioteca – Cabasila e, almeno in una certa misura, Stauracio dovevano essere scribi di mestiere e le loro, conseguentemente, mani professionali. Ma v'è un dato sul quale occorre riflettere: Stauracio e Cabasila erano solamente in due così come in due, ad esempio, erano gli scribi sicuramente di professione che, alla fine del secolo IX, avevano collaborato alla trascrizione del Vat. gr. 1594 e del Laur. 28.27, splendidi esemplari, specie il primo, della cosiddetta “collezione filosofica”. Di contro, alla trascrizione del codice che meglio di altri testimonia il lavoro e l'attività di studio di Gregorio di Cipro, giacché ne conserva, fra altri scritti, una silloge di testi classici da lui stesso messa insieme – l'Escor. X.I.13 + Φ.I.18 –, hanno preso parte insieme al patriarca almeno altri tre copisti, mentre in sei hanno collaborato con lui all'allestimento del corpus di logica aristotelica tradito dal codice Ambr. M 71 sup. Sembra lecito parlare, dunque, nei casi in cui molteplici siano le mani impegnate a trascrivere un codice, dell'attività più o meno organizzata di un gruppo di copisti, dietro i quali talvolta è possibile individuare “leading figures of scholarship”. Dal momento che gli esemplari usciti da questi ambienti non presentano un carattere univoco – si va da libri di pregio forse scritti su commissione a libri di studio, fino agli “Hausbücher” di cui parla Herbert Hunger – e che i modi stessi della collaborazione tra copisti si rivelano assai variegati, diverse e spesso contrastanti sono state le interpretazioni date del fenomeno. (shrink)

George Herbert Mead is widely considered one of the most influential American philosophers of the twentieth century, and his work remains vibrant and relevant to many areas of scholarly inquiry today. The Timeliness of George Herbert Mead brings together a range of scholars who provide detailed analyses of Mead’s importance to innovative fields of scholarship, including cognitive science, environmental studies, democratic epistemology, and social ethics, non-teleological historiography, and the history of the natural and social sciences. Edited by well-respected (...) Mead scholars Hans Joas and Daniel R. Huebner, the volume as a whole makes a coherent statement that places Mead in dialogue with current research, pushing these domains of scholarship forward while also revitalizing the growing literature on an author who has an ongoing and major influence on sociology, psychology, and philosophy. (shrink)

The astounding flourishing of fashion we have witnessed for the past centuries would not have been possible without a range of specifically modern phenomena like capitalism, the rise of an ambitious middle-class, the growth and diversification of mass-communication, and the Industrial Revolution. However, there is yet another interesting link between the two as they both have a common ‘condition of possibility’, that makes them interconnected. In this paper I will argue that such a condition is what I loosely call a (...) ‘will to novelty’. Following some of Herbert Blumer’s suggestions, I will argue that the quest for renewal remains probably the best explanation of all possible candidates in explaining the incessant change of fashion (one of such candidates being Simmel’s famous class-differentiation analysis). My claim is that such a pursuit of renewal is undertaken for the sake of renewal itself, and this is a key aspect that connects fashion with modernity, namely an aesthetic concept of modernity, which I will outline, in the footsteps of Michel Foucault and Matei Călinescu, as a quest for novelty and change. Unlike the bourgeois modernity or the scientific one, the aesthetic modernity does not innovate for the sake of profit or truth respectively, but for the sake of innovation itself. Like fashion, the aesthetic modernity is an expression of the ‘will to novelty’. (shrink)

Although not known as a philosopher of history, George Herbert Mead wrote and taught seriously about the nature of the past and about historical investigation throughout his career. The paper identifies the major documentary sources and interpretive literature with which to reconstruct Mead’s radically social and dynamic conceptualization of history and extends beyond the existing literature to develop striking implications of Mead’s approach in response to possible criticisms and challenges. By connecting Mead’s writings on history with his broader social (...) theory of action, democracy, and consciousness, the paper shows how Mead provides a novel grounding of our understandings of history in ongoing social processes and suggests that better historical knowledge may be related to participatory, inclusive social practices. As a result, historians have a responsibility to social reconstruction and society’s self-reflection, in Mead’s view. Because of the novel ways in which Mead’s approach explores the relationship between history and social progress he warrants renewed attention and scrutiny from researchers and theorists of history. (shrink)

Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis want to redirect egalitarianism away from redistribution of income and toward redistribution of assets, particularly productive assets. <1> Their main reason, apart from the fact that income redistribution is so obviously dead in the political waters, is that income redistribution lowers productivity and competitiveness, while asset redistribution raises these, and in the long run the welfare of the worst-off depends more on increasing productivity than it does on distribution. Compound interest is a wonderful thing. (...) Young workers in an inegalitarian society growing at 5% per year making half the wages of those in an egalitarian society growing at 1/2% per year will catch up in 16 years and by the time of their retirement will have four times the income. Bowles and Gintis argue that such mathematics, which has long been an argument for inegalitarian trickle-down policies, in fact supports egalitarian asset redistributions. (shrink)

The Timeliness of George Herbert Mead is a significant contribution to the recent “Mead renaissance.” It gathers some contributions first presented at the conference celebrating the 150th anniversary of the birth of George Herbert Mead held in April 2013 at the University of Chicago and organized by Hans Joas, Andrew Abbott, Daniel Huebner, and Christopher Takacs. The volume brings scholarship on G. H. Mead up to date highlighting Mead’s relevance for areas of research completely ignored by p...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Reintroducing George Herbert Mead by Daniel R. HuebnerAndrea ParraviciniDaniel R. Huebner Reintroducing George Herbert Mead Routledge, 2022, 116 pp.Reintroducing George Herbert Mead is the second book of a brand new series recently inaugurated by Routledge and dedicated to major sociology theorists who contributed to the discipline with significant works. The book reflects the intent of the series to offer concise and accessible texts that (...) appeal to scholars and students interested in the most relevant themes in thought of a particular figure, the context in which it emerged, as well as its reception and importance to contemporary studies. George Mead is, however, such a rich and complex figure that the text inevitably overflows the banks of studies dedicated to sociology and the social sciences and offers a wider glimpse into the boundless interdisciplinary territory of philosophy and natural sciences.Daniel R. Huebner, professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina (USA), has contributed in the past years with other influential books on Mead, such as Becoming Mead (Huebner, 2014), and co-edited with Hans Joas both the definitive edition of Mind, Self and Society (Mead, 2015) and the multi-authored volume The Timeliness of George Herbert Mead (Joas & Huebner, 2016).Huebner's latest book cleverly condenses into little more than a hundred pages the most important aspects of Mead's life and work, and places them in close connection with the world in which he lived and with the people he influenced. At the same time, it highlights the legacy that this thinker left to research and studies of contemporary thought in social sciences and philosophy.In contrast to his more famous colleague and friend John Dewey, a very prolific writer who had no difficulties to develop his ideas through a number of important books and essays, Mead never managed, due to various reasons, to articulate his groundbreaking ideas in the more systematic form of books or treatises. As Dewey (1931: 310–311) witnessed in his obituary of Mead, although Mead could be judged as "the most original mind in philosophy in the America of the last generation", he "experienced great difficulty in finding adequate verbal expression for his philosophical ideas". It was his students, colleagues, and friends (Charles Morris above all) who, aware of the outstanding force of his philosophic mind, collected papers, manuscripts, notes, and transcripts from his classroom teaching, and published posthumously [End Page 249] his most famous books. Thanks to those publications, and especially to Mind, Self, and Society, Mead is now considered one of the founding fathers of modern sociology, despite the fact that he neither taught in that discipline, nor wrote that book for which he is especially known, as Huebner (p. 3) pointed out. Indeed, Mead's ideas have had a major influence not only on sociology, social psychology, and the behavioral and social sciences more generally, but his transdisciplinary philosophy crossed in many other fields as well, such as physical science, biology, history, and the religious literature of the world (Dewey, 1931: 312). Despite his encyclopedic mind and culture, his ideas were always in search of practical connections with the problems of concrete life. As a pragmatist thinker, Mead used his theories as practical tools for better understanding how to face the urgent issues of his time and society.As regards its structure, the book is divided into four main chapters, further articulated into various subsections. The text is enriched by several useful figures (three per chapter) which serve as information boxes illustrating interesting aspects related to Mead. The first section introduces the life and influence of the North American philosopher, in the wake of recent scholarship, which has partially changed what we know about him. The chapter focuses particularly on his social reform efforts, but it also highlights his engagement with colonization and war by providing a critical reinterpretation of the texts published after his death, and the rediscovery of important aspects of his work that had been lost. The way the author closely connects Mead's philosophy to different aspects of his life is particularly interesting. Noteworthy aspects related to Mead's life concern also the importance of the Hull House Social Settlement... (shrink)

“The organism is assumed to be originally acting and for this action no cause need be sought.” Thus concluded American sociologist Ellsworth Faris about George H. Mead’s basic position years ago when reviewing the posthumous edition of lectures, Mind, Self, and Society, for which Mead has become best known. Soon after that time, that basic idea and Mead’s thought in general sank into negligence. Mead has not been absent from the philosophical map in the same way as his fellow-pragmatist and (...) personal friend, John Dewey, once was. Dewey’s philosophy was declared obsolete in the immediate post-WWII time, and it began to arouse new interest only since the 1980s. Mead’s thought has not received that kind of... (shrink)

It is common to hear talk of the aim of belief and to find philosophers appealing to that aim for numerous explanatory purposes. What belief 's aim explains depends, of course, on what that aim is. Many hold that it is somehow related to truth, but there are various ways in which one might specify belief 's aim using the notion of truth. In this article, by considering whether they can account for belief 's standard of correctness and the epistemic (...) norms governing belief, I argue against certain prominent specifications of belief 's aim given in terms of truth, and advance a neglected alternative. (shrink)

The _Physics_ is a foundational work of western philosophy, and the crucial one for understanding Aristotle's views on matter, form, essence, causation, movement, space, and time. This richly annotated, scrupulously accurate, and consistent translation makes it available to a contemporary English reader as no other does—in part because it fits together seamlessly with other closely associated works in the New Hackett Aristotle series, such as the _Metaphysics_, _De Anima_, and forthcoming _De Caelo_ and _On Coming to Be and Passing Away_. (...) Eventually the series will include all of Aristotle's works. Sequentially numbered endnotes provide the information most needed at each juncture, while a detailed Index of Terms indicates places where focused discussion of key notions occurs. An illuminating general Introduction describes the book that lies ahead, explaining what sort of work it is and what sorts of evidence it relies on. (shrink)

The hundred years covered by this book, from the death of Hegel to the establishment of the Third Reich, is often regarded as the heyday of German philosophy, of metaphysics in the grand style and of what J. S. Mill characterised as 'the German or a priori view of human knowledge'. Yet apart from selective attention to individual figures, such as Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Husserl or Heidegger, little is known by English-speaking philosophers of most of the animating concerns and continuing traditions (...) of German philosophy of the time. This book sets out to present a detailed history of the period, adopting a thematic approach which emphasises the more distinctive German approach. It is hoped that the growing but piecemeal interest in German philosophy will be both stimulated and consolidated by this book, which should also interest individuals working in related areas such as the history of ideas, religious studies and the history of science. (shrink)

This volume consists of a collection of articles published by Spencer in leading Victorian periodicals, such as The Westminster Review, The Fortnightly Review and Mind. The wide range of subjects explored includes science, philosophy, aesthetics, ethics, psychology and politics.

Herbert Clark argues that language use is more than the sum of a speaker speaking and a listener listening. It is the joint action that emerges when speakers and listeners, writers and readers perform their individual actions in coordination, as ensembles. In contrast to work within the cognitive sciences, which has seen language use as an individual process, and to work within the social sciences, which has seen it as a social process, the author argues strongly that language use (...) embodies both individual and social processes. (shrink)

Karl Popper is one of the greatest and most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. Originally published in German in 2000, Herbert Keuth's book is a systematic exposition of Popper's philosophy covering the philosophy of science (Part 1); social philosophy (Part 2); and metaphysics (Part 3). More comprehensive than any current introduction to Popper, it is suitable for courses in the philosophy of science and the philosophy of social science.