This essay explores the future of the liberal arts by investigating the visions of the future assumed respectively in the institutions of specialized and general education. The core dichotomy is between the specialized, which is instrumentality useful for a closed future, against the general, which is inherently valuable for an open future. The author doubts that educators can prioritize, in a single pedagogy, both inspiring people to freedom (liberal education) and preparing people to fit into an economic or academic niche (...) (professional education). This frames a critique of LEAP'S rationale for higher education, although the value of particular classroom practices therein is affirmed. With reference to Freire and Seery, the essay proposes that theory per se presents the best mode for teaching toward an open future. The value of such teaching would be "potential," neither usable nor exchangeable, instrumental nor inherent. (shrink)

In The Origin of Species (1859) Darwin challenged many of the most deeply-held beliefs of the Western world. Arguing for a material, not divine, origin of species, he showed that new species are achieved by "natural selection." The Origin communicates the enthusiasm of original thinking in an open, descriptive style, and Darwin's emphasis on the value of diversity speaks more strongly now than ever. As well as a stimulating introduction and detailed notes, this edition offers a register of the many (...) writers referred to by Darwin in the text. (shrink)

This is a major and comprehensive study of the philosophy of Hegel, his place in the history of ideas, and his continuing relevance and importance. Professor Taylor relates Hegel to the earlier history of philosophy and, more particularly, to the central intellectual and spiritual issues of his own time. He engages with Hegel sympathetically, on Hegel's own terms and, as the subject demands, in detail. This important book is now reissued with a fresh new cover.

The relationship between logics with sets of theorems including contradictions (“inconsistent logics”) and theories closed under such logics is investigated. It is noted that if we take “theories” to be defined in terms of deductive closure understood in a way somewhat different from the standard, Tarskian, one, inconsistent logics can have consistent theories. That is, we can find some sets of formulas the closure of which under some inconsistent logic need not contain any contradictions. We prove this in a general (...) setting for a family of relevant connexive logics, extract the essential features of the proof in order to obtain a sufficient condition for the consistency of a theory in arbitrary logics, and finally consider some concrete examples of consistent mathematical theories in Abelian logic. The upshot is that on this way of understanding deductive closure, common to relevant logics, there is a rich and interesting kind of interaction between inconsistent logics and their theories. We argue that this suggests an important avenue for investigation of inconsistent logics, from both a technical and a philosophical perspective. (shrink)

The Mares-Goldblatt semantics for quantified relevant logics have been developed for first-order extensions of R, and a range of other relevant logics and modal extensions thereof. All such work has taken place in the the ternary relation semantic framework, most famously developed by Sylvan and Meyer. In this paper, the Mares-Goldblatt technique for the interpretation of quantifiers is adapted to the more general neighbourhood semantic framework, developed by Sylvan, Meyer, and, more recently, Goble. This more algebraic semantics allows one to (...) characterise a still wider range of logics, and provides the grist for some new results. To showcase this, we show, using some non-augmented models, that some quantified relevant logics are not conservatively extended by connectives the addition of which do conservatively extend the associated propositional logics, namely fusion and the dual implication. We close by proposing some further uses to which the neighbourhood Mares-Goldblatt semantics may be put. (shrink)

Situation theory, and channel theory in particular, have been used to provide motivational accounts of the ternary relation semantics of relevant, substructural, and various non-classical logics. Among the constraints imposed by channel-theory, we must posit a certain existence criterion for situations which result from the composites of multiple channels (this is used in modeling information flow). In associative non-classical logics, it is relatively easy to show that a certain such condition is met, but the problem is trickier in non-associative logics. (...) Following Tedder (2017), where it was shown that the conjunction-conditional fragment of the logic B admits the existence of composite channels, I present a generalised ver- sion of the previous argument, appropriate to logics with disjunction, in the neighbourhood ternary relation semantic framework. I close by suggesting that the logic BB+(^I), which falls between Lavers' system BB+ and B+ , satisfies the conditions for the general argument to go through (and prove that it satisfies all but one of those conditions). (shrink)

The present edition provides a detailed and accessible discussion ofhis theories and adds an account of the immediate responses to the book on publication.

Discusses contemporary notions of the self, and examines their origins, development, and effects.

In this paper, we investigate neighbourhood semantics for modal extensions of relevant logics. In particular, we combine the neighbourhood interpretation of the relevant implication (and related connectives) with a neighbourhood interpretation of modal operators. We prove completeness for a range of systems and investigate the relations between neighbourhood models and relational models, setting out a range of augmentation conditions for the various relations and operations.

Battle Hall Davies' brother Nick ran away from home when she was in high school. Now he has found her and she is going to stay with him for the summer before starting college. Battle discovers that neither she nor her brother is the person she thought they were.

Relevant propositional dynamic logics have been sporadically discussed in the broader context of modal relevant logics, but have not come up for sustained investigation until recently. In this paper, we develop a philosophical motivation for these systems, and present some new results suggested by the proposed motivation. Among these, we’ll show how to adapt some recent work to show that the extensions of relevant logics by the extensional truth constants \ are complete with respect to a natural class of ternary (...) relation models to show a similar result for the constant-free versions of the logic. In addition, we prove that the logics in question satisfy the variable sharing property, vindicating the claim that they really are relevant logics. (shrink)

Familiarity with Charles Darwin's treatise on evolution is essential to every well-educated individual. One of the most important books ever published--and a continuing source of controversy, a century and a half later--this classic of science is reproduced in a facsimile of the critically acclaimed first edition.

Dunn has recently argued that the logic R-Mingle (or RM) is a good, and good enough, choice for many purposes in relevant and paraconsistent logic. This includes an argument that the validity of Safety principle, according to which one may infer an arbitrary instance of the law of excluded middle from an arbitrary contradiction, in RM is not a problem because it doesn’t allow one to infer anything new from a contradiction. In this paper, I argue that while Dunn’s claim (...) holds for the logic, there is a good reason to think that it’s not the case for (prime) theories closed under the logic, and that this should give relevantists, and some paraconsistentists, pause when considering whether RM is adequate for their purposes. (shrink)

This book is about the liberation of the concept of life from the bondage fashioned by the interpreters of life ever since biology began, and about the liberation of the life of humans and non-humans alike from the bondage of social structures and behaviour, which now threatens the fullness of life's possibilities if not survival itself. It falls into a tradition of writings about human problems from a perspective informed by biology. It rejects the mechanistic model of life dominant in (...) the Western world and develops an alternative 'ecological model' which is applicable to the life of the cell and the life of the human community. For the first time it brings together in one work the insights of modern biology with those of a modern holistic philosophy and a liberal theology in a way which challenges conventional approaches to science, agriculture, sociology, politics, economics, development and liberation movements. (shrink)

Should engineering ethics be taught? Despite the obvious truism that we all want our students to be moral engineers who practice virtuous professional behavior, I argue, in this article that the question itself obscures several ambiguities that prompt preliminary resolution. Upon clarification of these ambiguities, and an attempt to delineate key issues that make the question a philosophically interesting one, I conclude that engineering ethics not only should not, but cannot, be taught if we understand “teaching engineering ethics” to mean (...) training engineers to be moral individuals (as some advocates seem to have proposed). However, I also conclude that there is a justification to teaching engineering ethics, insofar as we are able to clearly identify the most desirable and efficacious pedagogical approach to the subject area, which I propose to be a case study-based format that utilizes the principle of human cognitive pattern recognition. (shrink)

Beall and Cotnoir (2017) argue that theists may accept the claim that God's omnipotence is fully unrestricted if they also adopt a suitable nonclassical logic. Their primary focus is on the infamous Stone problem (i.e., whether God can create a stone too heavy for God to lift). We show how unrestricted omnipotence generates Curry‐like paradoxes. The upshot is that Beall and Cotnoir only provide a solution to one version of the Stone problem, but that unrestricted omnipotence generates other problems which (...) they do not adequately address. (shrink)

The essays collected in this volume all explore the problem of the relation between moral philosophy and modernity. Charles Larmore addresses this problem by attempting to define the way distinctive forms of modern experience should orientate our moral thinking. Charles Larmore wonders whether the dominant forms of modern philosophy have not become blind to important dimensions of the moral life. The book argues against recent attempts to return to the virtue-centered perspective of ancient Greek ethics. As well as (...) exploring the differences between ancient and modern ethics, the author examines such topics as the roles of reason and history in our moral understanding, the inadequacy of philsophical naturalism, and the foundations of modern liberalism. There are also extended discussions of a number of leading contemporary philosophers: Rawls, Habermas, Williams and Rorty. (shrink)

This book proposes a new paradigm for the interpretation of Plato's early and middle dialogues. Rejecting the usual assumption of a distinct 'Socratic' period in the development of Plato's thought, this view regards the earlier works as deliberate preparation for the exposition of Plato's mature philosophy. Differences between the dialogues do not represent different stages in Plato's own thinking but rather different aspects and moments in the presentation of a new and unfamiliar view of reality. Once the fictional character of (...) the Socratic genre is recognised, there is no reason to regard Plato's early dialogues as representing the philosophy of the historical Socrates. The result is a unified interpretation of all of the dialogues down to the Republic and the Phaedrus. (shrink)

"This is a marvelous book, full of subtle, thoughtful, and original argument.

We investigate a hitherto under-considered avenue of response for the logical pluralist to collapse worries. In particular, we note that standard forms of the collapse arguments seem to require significant order-theoretic assumptions, namely that the collection of admissible logics for the pluralist should be closed under meets and joins. We consider some reasons for rejecting this assumption, noting some prima facie plausible constraints on the class of admissible logics which would lead a pluralist admitting those logics to resist such closure (...) conditions. (shrink)

Darwin discusses why different muscles are brought into action under different emotions and how particular animals have adapted for association with man.

The collapse models of arithmetic are inconsistent, nontrivial models obtained from ℕ and set out in the Logic of Paradox (LP). They are given a general treatment by Priest (Priest, 2000). Finite collapse models are decidable, and thus axiomatizable, because finite. LP, however, is ill-suited to normal axiomatic reasoning, as it invalidates Modus Ponens, and almost all other usual conditional inferences. I set out a logic, A3, first given by Avron (Avron, 1991), and give a first order axiom system for (...) the finite collapse models. I present some standard arithmetical axioms in addition to a cyclic axiom and prove that these axioms are sound and complete for the cyclic models, reporting a similar result for the heap models. The state of the situation for the each of the kinds of infinite collapse model is, however, left an open question. (shrink)

The standard style of argument used to prove that a theory is unde- cidable relies on certain consistency assumptions, usually that some fragment or other is negation consistent. In a non-paraconsistent set- ting, this amounts to an assumption that the theory is non-trivial, but these diverge when theories are couched in paraconsistent logics. Furthermore, there are general methods for constructing inconsistent models of arithmetic from consistent models, and the theories of such inconsistent models seem likely to differ in terms of (...) complexity. In this paper, I begin to explore this terrain, working, particularly, in incon- sistent theories of arithmetic couched in three-valued paraconsistent logics which have strong (i.e. detaching) conditionals. (shrink)

Perhaps the most readable and accessible of the great works of scientific imagination, The Origin of Species sold out on the day it was published in 1859. Theologians quickly labeled Charles Darwin the most dangerous man in England, and, as the Saturday Review noted, the uproar over the book quickly "passed beyond the bounds of the study and lecture-room into the drawing-room and the public street." Yet, after reading it, Darwin's friend and colleague T. H. Huxley had a different (...) reaction: "How extremely stupid not to have thought of that." Based largely on Darwin's experience as a naturalist while on a five-year voyage aboard H.M.S. Beagle, The Origin of Species set forth a theory of evolution and natural selection that challenged contemporary beliefs about divine providence and the immutability of species. A landmark contribution to philosophical and scientific thought, this edition also includes an introductory historical sketch and a glossary Darwin later added to the original text. Charles Darwin grew up considered, by his own account, "a very ordinary boy, rather below the common standard of intellect." A quirk of fate kept him from the career his father had deemed appropriate--that of a country parson--when a botanist recommended Darwin for an appointment as a naturalist aboard H.M.S. Beagle from 1831 to 1836. Darwin is also the author of the five-volume work Zoology of the Voyage of the Beagle (1839) and The Descent of Man (1871). (shrink)

The propensity interpretation of fitness (PIF) is commonly taken to be subject to a set of simple counterexamples. We argue that three of the most important of these are not counterexamples to the PIF itself, but only to the traditional mathematical model of this propensity: fitness as expected number of offspring. They fail to demonstrate that a new mathematical model of the PIF could not succeed where this older model fails. We then propose a new formalization of the PIF that (...) avoids these (and other) counterexamples. By producing a counterexample-free model of the PIF, we call into question one of the primary motivations for adopting the statisticalist interpretation of fitness. In addition, this new model has the benefit of being more closely allied with contemporary mathematical biology than the traditional model of the PIF. (shrink)

The Tattvasaṃgraha, or Encyclopedia of Metaphysics, is the most influential and most frequently studied philosophical text from the late period of Indian Buddhism. This edition includes verses by Śāntarakṣita (c. 725-788 CE), which are clarified and expounded in the commentary of his student Kamalaśīla (c. 740-795 CE); both of these authors played crucial roles in founding the Buddhist tradition of Tibet. In the Tattvasaṃgraha, they explain, discuss and critique a vast range of views and arguments from across the whole South (...) Asian philosophical and religious spectrum. The work deals at length with ideas drawn from Buddhism, Jainism, and a variety of traditions now incorporated within Hinduism, including Mīmāṃsā, Nyāya-vaiśeṣika, and Sāṃkhya; it also includes the earliest discussion of Advaita Vedānta in any Buddhist text. The chapters selected for translation from Sanskrit and Tibetan deal with such fundamental philosophical issues as the existence or nonexistence of God and the soul; the nature of matter and of causal relationships; the connection between words and their referents; the rules of logic; the sources of our knowledge; and the compatibility of beliefs about karma with Buddhism's fundamental claim that there is no self. Introductory chapters discuss translation choices and explain the forms of argument and methods of reasoning employed by Śāntarakṣita and Kamalaśīla. (shrink)

Of laws in general -- Of laws directly derived from the nature of government -- Of the principles of the three kinds of government -- That the laws of education ought to be relative to the principles of government -- That the laws given by the legislator ought to be relative to the nature of government -- Consquences of the principles of different governments, with respect to the simplicity of civil and criminal laws, the form of judgements, and inflicting of (...) punishments -- Consquences of the different principles of the three governments, with respect to sumptuary laws, luxury, and the condition of women -- Of the corruption of the principles of the three governments -- Of the laws in the relation they bear to defensive force -- Of laws, in the relation they bear to offensive force. (shrink)

Charles Mills makes visible in the world of mainstream philosophy some of the crucial issues of the black experience.

Nearly everyone has wronged another. Who among us has not longed to be forgiven? Who has not struggled to forgive? Charles Griswold has written the first comprehensive philosophical book on forgiveness in both its interpersonal and political contexts, as well as its relation to reconciliation. Having examined the place of forgiveness in ancient philosophy and in modern thought, he discusses what forgiveness is, what conditions the parties to it must meet, its relation to revenge and hatred, when it is (...) permissible and whether it is obligatory, and why it is a virtue. Griswold argues that forgiveness is inappropriate in politics, and analyzes the nature and limits of political apology with reference to historical examples. The book concludes with an examination of the relation between memory, narrative, and truth. (shrink)

David Charles presents a major new study of Aristotle's views on meaning, essence, necessity, and related topics. These interconnected views are central to Aristotle's metaphysics, philosophy of language, and philosophy of science, and are also highly relevant to current philosophical debates. Charles aims to reach a clear understanding of Aristotle's claims and arguments, to assess their truth, and to evaluate their importance to ancient and modern philosophy.

An algebraic characterisation is given of the Mares-Goldblatt semantics for quantified extensions of relevant and modal logics. Some features of this more general semantic framework are investigated, and the relations to some recent work in algebraic semantics for quantified extensions of non-classical logics are considered.

The Spirit of the Laws is, without question, one of the central texts in the history of eighteenth-century thought, yet there has been no complete, scholarly English-language edition since that of Thomas Nugent, published in 1750. This lucid translation renders Montesquieu's problematic text newly accessible to a fresh generation of students, helping them to understand quite why Montesquieu was such an important figure in the early enlightenment and why The Spirit of the Laws was, for example, such an influence upon (...) those who framed the American constitution. Fully annotated, this edition focuses attention upon Montesquieu's use of sources and his text as a whole, rather than upon those opening passages towards which critical energies have traditionally been devoted, and a select bibliography and chronology are provided for those coming to Montesquieu's work for the first time. (shrink)

In Part 1, I contend (using Coriolanus as my mouthpiece) that Keeley and Clarke have failed to show that there is anything intellectually suspect about conspiracy theories per se. Conspiracy theorists need not commit the ‘fundamental attribution error’ there is no reason to suppose that all or most conspiracy theories constitute the cores of degenerating research programs, nor does situationism - a dubious doctrine in itself - lend any support to a systematic skepticism about conspiracy theories. In Part 2. I (...) argue (in propria persona) that the idea that there is something suspect about conspiracy theories is one of the most dangerous and idiotic superstitions to disgrace our political culture. (shrink)

The publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species in 1859 ignited a public storm he neither wanted nor enjoyed. Having offered his book as a contribution to science, Darwin discovered to his dismay that it was received as an affront by many scientists and as a sacrilege by clergy and Christian citizens. To answer the criticism that his theory was a theory only, and a wild one at that, he published two volumes in 1868 to demonstrate that evolution was (...) obvious to anyone who cared to look at a bull in a pasture or a dog on a hearth. In response to those who insisted that species were distinct since creation, Darwin pointed to breeders of pigs and pigeons. In reply to those who protested that human intervention is one thing and natural selection another, he argued, "If organic beings had not possessed an inherent tendency to vary, man could have done nothing." To counter those who scorned his descriptions of species in exotic places, he submitted local evidence of cabbages and cauliflower. Based on a wide array of sources, from ancient pictographs to Polish roosters, from skins and from skeletons, from scientific journals and breeding manuals, Darwin assembled a mass of proof--and a hypothesis about species reversion that risked his reputation anew. The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication is a two-volume compilation of his thorough and intensive research and the revolutionary conclusions that resulted. The first portion of his work is dedicated to a meticulous analysis of various aspects of plant and animal life, including an inventory of varieties and their physical and behavioral characteristics, investigation of the impact of a species' surrounding environment and the role that both natural and forced changes in this environment have had. Darwin then turns to a richly detailed discussion of the roles of inheritance and crossing in the development of species. A wealth of illustrations further support and enhance his findings. This fascinating, invaluable, and courageous undertaking eventually formed the foundation for our current understanding of evolution. "In science as in politics the victors tend to write the history books. As a result, the record of the past is edited, intentionally or unintentionally, so that it focuses mainly on the precursors of contemporary orthodoxy. Such a focus may accurately represent the genealogy of modern ideas, but it almost inevitably misrepresents the historical experience of their progenitors... Even the powerful, persuasive, and ultimately triumphant theory of evolution by natural selection required not only defense, but repeated buttressing and revision. Variation showed Darwin hard at work on this rearguard action, using the materials he had at hand... His information was gleaned from the observations of fanciers, breeders, and amateur naturalists, as well as from the treatises of those on the cutting edge of zoology and botany. As hindsight narrows the historical spotlight, it imposes its own sense of hierarchy on the preoccupations of the past. But Darwin was interested in all of these topics, valued all of these sources, and belonged, to a greater or lesser extent, to all of these communities."--from the Introduction. (shrink)

We investigate an information based generalization of the incompatibility-frame treatment of logics with non-classical negation connectives. Our framework can be viewed as an alternative to the neighbourhood semantics for extensions of lattice logic by various negation connectives, investigated by Hartonas. We set out the basic semantic framework, along with some correspondence results for extensions. We describe three kinds of constructions of canonical models and show that double negation law is not canonical with respect to any of these constructions. We also (...) compare our semantics to Hartonas’. (shrink)

In this book Taylor brings together some of his best essays, including "Overcoming Epistemology," "The Validity of Transcendental Argument," "Irreducibly Social ...

Divided into three parts, this book's purpose, as given in the introduction, is to consider whether or not man is descended from a pre-existing form, his manner ...

This book presents a thorough overview of a model of human functioning based on the idea that behavior is goal-directed and regulated by feedback control processes. It describes feedback processes and their application to behavior, considers goals and the idea that goals are organized hierarchically, examines affect as deriving from a different kind of feedback process, and analyzes how success expectancies influence whether people keep trying to attain goals or disengage. Later sections consider a series of emerging themes, including dynamic (...) systems as a model for shifting among goals, catastrophe theory as a model for persistence, and the question of whether behavior is controlled or instead 'emerges'. Three chapters consider the implications of these various ideas for understanding maladaptive behavior, and the closing chapter asks whether goals are a necessity of life. Throughout, theory is presented in the context of diverse issues that link the theory to other literatures. (shrink)