Hodges explores Santayana’s doctrine of matter. Interpreting the realm of matter as the irrational, ineffable counterpart to the realm of essence, he elucidates the function and profound moral significance of materialism in Santayana’s system of philosophy.

We offer a reading of Anselm's Ontological Argument inspired by Wittgenstein which focuses on the fact that the “argument” occurs in a prayer addressed to God, making it a strange argument since as a prayer it seems to presuppose its conclusion. We reconstruct the argument as expressive. Within the religious perspective, the issues are to be focused on the right object not to present an argument for the existence of God. While this sort of reading lets us understand much about (...) the argument, it also opens new avenues of criticism, one of which is the problem of worship. (shrink)

Abstract:A brief response to papers presented by Herman Saatkamp, Krzysztof Skowroński, Eric Weber, and John Stuhr on the occasion of John Lachs' retirement from Vanderbilt University.

Expressivism, the view that ethical claims are expressions of psychological states, has advantages such as closing the gap between normative claims and motivation and avoiding difficulties posed by the ontological status of values. However, it seems to make substantive moral disagreement impossible. Here, we develop a suggestion from William James as a pragmatist extension of expressivism. If we look at a set of moral claims from the perspective of the maximally comprehensive set of co-possible satisfactions, then a claim can be (...) treated as true if it is part of that set. There then is a practical “fact of the matter” about the members of such a set. This makes the notion of moral truth analogous to pragmatic notions of scientific truth, defined as what will withstand inquiry to its ideal limit, and thereby provides a way for expressivists to make sense of moral disagreement. (shrink)

In the light of this attention, it is surprising that we are unable to find a single writer who has noted an obvious contradiction between the Treatise of Human Nature and the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding on the subject of belief. In the Treatise Hume explicitly proposes a definition of belief. He says.

Aristotle's distinction between the practical life and the contemplative life has been of central importance in fixing the sort of justification that is required for engineering activity. As practical it must be justified by its products, while intellect's activity claims intrinsic worth. Most philosophers of technology accept this model of justification. However, engineering is not essentially practical in the relevant sense. To claim that it is overlooks a distinction between "structuring ends" and "products" which when made allows engineering to lay (...) claim to the same sort of value as intellectual activity. The final conclusion is that both have intrinsic worth but that does not free either from the obligation to look to their consequences. (shrink)

This book presents an interestingly different approach to the interpretation of Wittgenstein's later philosophy. Instead of an account focused on the text of the later writings, Suter has chosen to organize his book by reference to certain central philosophical problems and Wittgenstein's actual or constructed treatment of them. Thus, after an opening section dealing with Wittgenstein's conception of philosophy, we are treated to an extended examination of the mind/ body problem which not only develops Wittgenstein's own ideas but also shows (...) how Wittgenstein would deal with various forms of the identity theory, behaviorism, and classical dualism. This section is followed by several chapters that develop Wittgenstein's ideas--in less detail--in relation to Augustine's philosophy of time, the Dream Argument, Russell on proper names, and Kripke's infamous discussion of rule-following. Along the way, Suter makes a number of telling points against various other interpreters and, among other things, offers his own extended analysis of the notion of criteria. This approach, which is meant to let the reader see Wittgenstein's ideas at work, presents his views as engaged and philosophically current and for that reason is a very interesting introduction to Wittgenstein's later thought. (shrink)

"The aim... is to show what implications Wittgenstein's approach has in moral philosophy and in so doing to cast light on that subject-matter itself". While this carefully crafted and well-reasoned book develops ideas in an area that the later Wittgenstein did not discuss in a sustained way, Johnston also sheds light on several of Wittgenstein's remarks including the "Lecture on Ethics," passages from Culture and Value, and "Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough." The author is interested in Wittgenstein's thought in not (...) merely a scholarly way but because he thinks it offers the best account of the matters at hand. He tries to justify this assessment by criticizing a number of contemporary thinkers including Mackie, MacIntyre, Davidson, and Blackburn. (shrink)

The purpose of this book is to show how Wittgenstein's work, early and late, is relevant to aesthetics and to show how art provides "an experience not to be obtained by any other activity: it shows the meaning of life". The book is interesting because it relates the early and later Wittgenstein to a topic not typically treated by Wittgenstein scholars--art and the aesthetic--and because it tries to reinterpret some of the Tractatus in light of the Philosophical Investigations without losing (...) a kernel of truth in the early work. (shrink)