What does the law demand when it requires citizens to conform to standards of reasonableness? I propose and defend the view that the law should demand that citizens conform their behavior to some actual conduct in society. I contrast this idea against what might be called the ``empty vessel'' view of reasonableness, where the standard is understood to function like an empty vessel in the law, allowing courts to use various norms and moral judgments to determine what seems reasonable in (...) the circumstances. The empty vessel account is the more common approach for understanding reasonableness, but it leaves obscure whether and how assessments about appropriate conduct connect with facts about citizens' actual conduct. I argue for a ``binocular'' view that focuses our attention on actual practices and thereby establishes how these standards provide a stable guide to conduct and support the rule of law. (shrink)

Elrod has produced a serious and comprehensive examination of Kierkegaard’s ontology in which he takes the study of the self as the unifying ground for philosophic and theological thought. Unification is Elrod’s consistent theme. Although the title of his work acknowledges Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous corpus as an independent body within the authorship, any such assertion of autonomy—which would effectively subdivide the religious and the secular—is finally denied. Elrod, in fact, mediates all distinctions between the aesthetic and religious modalities of Kierkegaard’s thought (...) by finding within the aesthetic corpus a development of selfhood utterly consistent with Christianity’s quest for self-fulfillment. (shrink)

The publication of the seventeen papers of a 1962 symposium sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, together with records of some of the discussions. Experts in fields as diverse as cybernetics and the history of Greek science converse. Although the papers treat technical topics, the treatments are not technical. Questions such as the possibility of one culture understanding another have practical overtones, being a prelude to finding means for dealing with international problems. Professor Northrop's two chapters are adhesive, (...) and relate contributions concerned with more general issues, like communication theory, and those concerned with specific topics such as the virtually tenseless Burmese language and contract law.—P. S. (shrink)

Because Kierkegaard so stubbornly personalizes all of his corpus, and because he so engrosses reviewers in the structural subtleties of his works, he has tended to resist serious placement within the larger contexts of philosophical tradition and our own social world. In this book, the author attempts to remedy these deficiencies. Consistently, he evades preoccupation with Kierkegaard’s pervasive personality to grapple intellectually with the problems that he raised. Taylor studies Kierkegaard’s notions of self and temporality, relating S. K. both to (...) thinkers as dear to him as Plato and Hegel, and as distant from him as Augustine and Freud. His book is intensive and rigorous: he breaks down, clarifies, and attempts to trace the furthest implications of Kierkegaard’s thought. Yet, in dismissing the problematic nature of Kierkegaard’s self-presentation to speak of his study of "the self," Taylor perhaps understates Kierkegaard’s significant point: that such study is, in itself, problematic. At times his logical reconstruction of Kierkegaard’s renderings tends to negate aspects of their compelling ambiguity. (shrink)

Here is an informal treatment of many-valued logic, especially propositional logic, using Polish notation. The relations of n-valued logics with 2-valued logics are considered, and numerous systems are drawn on for illustrations. The book is written with an eye to scientific applications of many-valued logics, and considers empirical application of formal calculi. A short section on the relation of formal and "dialectical" logics appears. The work is introductory in nature.—P. S.

A survey in the Sovietica series of Soviet epistemology, including a comparison of Western and Soviet typologies of the philosophic classics. The Soviet dispute over the relationship of dialectical and formal logics which involves the objective and subjective dialectics of dialectical materialism may be of interest to philosophers trying to certify Hegel's philosophical respectability. Here the Soviets are perhaps most original. Documentation is excellent, and a complete bibliography of all Soviet writings pertaining to epistemology is appended.—P. S.

A painstakingly-argued, well-documented, scholarly work arguing for a sophisticated representative realism. Heuristically the analysis centers principally around Brentano, Meinong, Frege, and Bergmann. Some distinctive theses are mind is not substantial but a pluralism of momentary mental acts in which a subsequent act may have a predecessor for its object; things are really states of affairs; bare particulars are individuating principles; every mental act is propositional—its content does not intend a particular; possible states of affairs, which are nothing but could be, (...) can be intended ; thought-world, language-world correspondences do not coincide ; and a behavioristic reduction of intentional contexts would not account for "how certain mental phenomena give rise to the occurrence of intentional contexts". The organizational theme is the idealist-realist controversy in perception, with the nominalist-realist controversy covered by excellent discussions of universals and relations.—P. S. (shrink)