We describe a patient LS, profoundly deaf in both ears from birth, with underdeveloped superior temporal gyri. Without hearing aids, LS displays no ability to detect sounds below a fixed threshold of 60 dBs, which classifies him as clinically deaf. Under these no-hearing-aid conditions, when presented with a forced-choice paradigm in which he is asked to consciously respond, he is unable to make above-chance judgments about the presence or location of sounds. However, he is able to make above-chance judgments about (...) the content of sounds presented to him under forced-choice conditions. We demonstrated that LS has faint sensations from auditory stimuli, but questionable awareness of auditory content. LS thus has a form of type-2 deaf hearing with respect to auditory content. As in the case of a subject with acquired deafness and deaf hearing reported on a previous occasion, LS’s condition of deaf hearing is akin in some respects to type-2 blindsight. As for the case of type 2 blindsight the case indicates that a form of conscious hearing can arise in the absence of a fully developed auditory cortex. (shrink)

Recent criticism has already shown that the notoriously unanswered plot questions of The Big Sleep elicit serious philosophical issues, including skepticism about the validity of interpretation itself. The film allegorizes the reason for this questioning in what Derrida calls the "blackmail" of photography--its coercive claim to represent objective truth. Blackmail arising from photography is the main plot premise of The Big Sleep, but it serves as a figure for the "postal" world of signs divorced from referents, finally epitomized in thel (...) groundlessness of Marlowe's logic and final conclusions. Parallels are drawn between this Derridean world and Adorno's writings, in the light of Derrida's acknowledgement of their affinity. The phrase "big sleep" is gangster-slang for death, but this essay argues that it also refers to life, understood in the Buddhist sense of the human illusion of a waking or enlightened life. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.2 (2003) 19-30 [Access article in PDF] Bugged Out:A Reflection on Art Experience Christopher Perricone I used to enjoy art. Not all the arts equally. Overall literature spoke to me most clearly. I am not sure exactly why. I guess some combination of inborn and learned dispositions. Whatever is the case, my enjoyment of literature always seemed natural to me, since literature was (...) of a medium I already knew, the vocabulary and grammar of my own language. But I enjoyed paintings and musical pieces as well, some of which I shall never forget even though they have virtually faded from my life, from what I have become.I cannot say that I ever had a favorite artwork. I have always thought the idea foolish, reminiscent of children who think often in terms of favorites, whether colors, candies, or friends. However, there are some works that do stand out in memory, even though, as I say, I cannot bring myself to enjoy them now. They are ghosts whose forms are discernible, but whose flesh is long gone.I had read lots of literature. I even enjoyed the act and the atmosphere of reading. I remember the chair I sat in, the lighting, the room. I also used to love to wake up on weekends, eat a leisurely breakfast, and then get back into bed and read until noon. Of course the setting itself of reading was ultimately not crucial, it was merely a pleasant means of facilitating one's excursion into another world. It was the other world that counted. So many worlds. Of course, I entered joyfully the worlds of Shakespeare and Dante, which Harold Bloom recently has judged at the center of the Western canon, but I entered also lesser but personally not less significant worlds to which I was drawn. 1 I needed some tutoring in Shakespeare and Dante because they did not quite speak my language, my twentieth-century American tongue. I had trouble negotiating their worlds. However, I had none whatsoever when it came to the worlds of James Joyce, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Graham Greene, Walt Whitman, T.S.Eliot, Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, or Joseph Conrad. I was at home in these worlds, different [End Page 19] worlds, but nonetheless home. I loved Conrad's the "Heart of Darkness." For me this was one of the truly haunting tales. After my first reading of the "Heart of Darkness," I can honestly say, my life was changed. I neither talked nor walked the same. I moved among and around people and things differently. I saw myself differently both among others and when I would stand before my mirror alone. And subsequent readings brought about further changes, changes of my comportment in the world. I imagined that I saw, heard, touched, tasted, and smelled the details from the beginning of that story to its very end. I sat on the deck of the Nellie with Marlow, Conrad's character narrator, and his listeners. I watched with them as the sun went down over the Thames. I followed Marlow as he told the story of how he had "set off for the center of the earth," up the Congo perhaps where in his mind all human life had its source; how as he came closer to the center facts became less straightforward, the greed for ivory, the "flavor of mortality in lies," the hollowness of Mr. Kurtz, the final horror of it all. I sweated in the heat of the "Heart of Darkness." Like any experience of a masterpiece, the "Heart of Darkness" was a visceral experience for me. After such experiences one feels emotionally and physically drained. One feels comfort in thinking, as with a dream, it was not real. And yet there is a lingering discomfort: as it were no mere fantasy at all.I often had feelings of the same intensity and profundity in respect to painting and music. They, too, were worlds for me. I enjoyed the varioustouches of the painters. In particular, I enjoyed the gold, the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.2 (2003) 19-30 [Access article in PDF] Bugged Out:A Reflection on Art Experience Christopher Perricone I used to enjoy art. Not all the arts equally. Overall literature spoke to me most clearly. I am not sure exactly why. I guess some combination of inborn and learned dispositions. Whatever is the case, my enjoyment of literature always seemed natural to me, since literature was (...) of a medium I already knew, the vocabulary and grammar of my own language. But I enjoyed paintings and musical pieces as well, some of which I shall never forget even though they have virtually faded from my life, from what I have become.I cannot say that I ever had a favorite artwork. I have always thought the idea foolish, reminiscent of children who think often in terms of favorites, whether colors, candies, or friends. However, there are some works that do stand out in memory, even though, as I say, I cannot bring myself to enjoy them now. They are ghosts whose forms are discernible, but whose flesh is long gone.I had read lots of literature. I even enjoyed the act and the atmosphere of reading. I remember the chair I sat in, the lighting, the room. I also used to love to wake up on weekends, eat a leisurely breakfast, and then get back into bed and read until noon. Of course the setting itself of reading was ultimately not crucial, it was merely a pleasant means of facilitating one's excursion into another world. It was the other world that counted. So many worlds. Of course, I entered joyfully the worlds of Shakespeare and Dante, which Harold Bloom recently has judged at the center of the Western canon, but I entered also lesser but personally not less significant worlds to which I was drawn. 1 I needed some tutoring in Shakespeare and Dante because they did not quite speak my language, my twentieth-century American tongue. I had trouble negotiating their worlds. However, I had none whatsoever when it came to the worlds of James Joyce, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Graham Greene, Walt Whitman, T.S.Eliot, Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, or Joseph Conrad. I was at home in these worlds, different [End Page 19] worlds, but nonetheless home. I loved Conrad's the "Heart of Darkness." For me this was one of the truly haunting tales. After my first reading of the "Heart of Darkness," I can honestly say, my life was changed. I neither talked nor walked the same. I moved among and around people and things differently. I saw myself differently both among others and when I would stand before my mirror alone. And subsequent readings brought about further changes, changes of my comportment in the world. I imagined that I saw, heard, touched, tasted, and smelled the details from the beginning of that story to its very end. I sat on the deck of the Nellie with Marlow, Conrad's character narrator, and his listeners. I watched with them as the sun went down over the Thames. I followed Marlow as he told the story of how he had "set off for the center of the earth," up the Congo perhaps where in his mind all human life had its source; how as he came closer to the center facts became less straightforward, the greed for ivory, the "flavor of mortality in lies," the hollowness of Mr. Kurtz, the final horror of it all. I sweated in the heat of the "Heart of Darkness." Like any experience of a masterpiece, the "Heart of Darkness" was a visceral experience for me. After such experiences one feels emotionally and physically drained. One feels comfort in thinking, as with a dream, it was not real. And yet there is a lingering discomfort: as it were no mere fantasy at all.I often had feelings of the same intensity and profundity in respect to painting and music. They, too, were worlds for me. I enjoyed the varioustouches of the painters. In particular, I enjoyed the gold, the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:TragedyA Lesson in SurvivalChristopher Perricone (bio)Tragedy and Its Historical Context"Tragedy" in the strict sense of the word refers to an ancient Greek literary genre, a form of drama for the most part performed publicly in the theater. As is well known, the word "tragedy" literally means "goat song." The belief among scholars is that early singers of tragedy wore goatskin costumes in imitation of satyrs. Also, as is well (...) known, Aristotle defines "tragedy" in the strict sense of the word as "the imitation of an action that is serious and also having magnitude, complete in itself; in language with pleasurable accessories, each kind brought in separately in the parts of the work; in a dramatic, not in a narrative form; with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions."1 Of course, when one thinks of tragedy in the strict sense the names that come to mind are Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. It is arguable that these men not only set the stage for and developed the idea of tragedy in the strict sense, but they also laid the foundations of tragedy for centuries to come.After the Greeks, not surprisingly, tragedy evolves. The strict sense of the term as a point of reference, origin, or nucleus, remains—that is, after the Greeks, tragedy still retains that sense of "an imitation of an action that is serious." However, when one considers what later goes by the name of tragedy, one is hard-pressed, without resorting to Procrustean measures, to fit with any precision those later works of tragedy into the original Greek mold. After the Greeks, Seneca composes tragedies, as do Marlowe, Shakespeare, Corneille, Racine, Goethe, Schiller, Ibsen, Chekov, Lorca, Anouilh, Miller, et al. Even the sense of "serious" is not exactly the same: is the seriousness of Hedda Gabler's or Willie Loman's fate at all comparable to the fates of [End Page 70] Medea or Oedipus? The former cases surely seem serious in some domestic sense, whereas the latter clearly are intended to imply seriousness on a much grander and perhaps cosmic scale.The reason I mention all this is that "tragedy," both in what I call the strict and nuclear ancient Greek sense of the term (which does not imply that tragedy is clearly and distinctly defined, even in ancient Greece) and in the looser, derived sense of the word, has a long and compelling history. Tragedy is a form of drama to which we continually return. It is a genre that seems intrinsic not only to our very idea of theater but also to the very nature of art itself. Although one may debate the plausibility of writing tragedies in a disillusioned and nonheroic age, nevertheless one can hardly imagine the theater existing without tragedy. One way or another, it seems tragedies, whether in the strict or loose sense, will always be performed, and not merely out of nostalgia. Indeed, given the compelling nature of tragedy, it seems no accident that among the giants of literature, the tragedians are significantly represented. The compelling nature of tragedy is nicely expressed by the literary critic F. L. Lucas, and his statements should be considered a complement to Aristotle:Tragedy, then, is a representation of human unhappiness, which pleases us notwithstanding, by the truth with which it is seen and the fineness with which it is communicated—"l'amertume poignante et fortifiante de tout ce qui est vrai." ["The invigorating and poignant bitterness of whatever is true"; my translation.] The world of everyday seems often a purposeless chaos, a mangy tiger without even the fearful symmetry of Blake's vision; but the world of tragedy we can face, for we feel mind behind it and the symmetry is there. Tragedy, in fine, is man's answer to this universe that crushes him so pitilessly. Destiny scowls upon him; his answer is to sit down and paint her where she stands.2It is not only true that tragedy as practice and performance has a long and rich history; the study of tragedy has an equally long and rich history. The idea of tragedy has attracted, tantalized, frustrated, and exercised... (shrink)

Philosophers and cognitive scientists address the relationships among the senses and the connections between conscious experiences that form unified wholes. In this volume, cognitive scientists and philosophers examine two closely related aspects of mind and mental functioning: the relationships among the various senses and the links that connect different conscious experiences to form unified wholes. The contributors address a range of questions concerning how information from one sense influences the processing of information from the other senses and how unified states (...) of consciousness emerge from the bonds that tie conscious experiences together. Sensory Integration and the Unity of Consciousness is the first book to address both of these topics, integrating scientific and philosophical concerns. A flood of recent work in both philosophy and perception science has challenged traditional conceptions of the sensory systems as operating in isolation. Contributors to the volume consider the ways in which perceptual contact with the world is or may be “multisensory,” discussing such subjects as the modeling of multisensory integration and philosophical aspects of sensory modalities. Recent years have seen a similar surge of interest in unity of consciousness. Contributors explore a range of questions on this topic, including the nature of that unity, the degree to which conscious experiences are unified, and the relationship between unified consciousness and the self. Contributors Tim Bayne, David J. Bennett, Berit Brogaard, Barry Dainton, Ophelia Deroy, Frederique de Vignemont, Marc Ernst, Richard Held, Christopher S. Hill, Geoffrey Lee, Kristan Marlow, Farid Masrour, Jennifer Matey, Casey O'Callaghan, Cesare V. Parise, Kevin Rice, Elizabeth Schechter, Pawan Sinha, Julia Trommershaeuser, Loes C. J. van Dam, Jonathan Vogel, James Van Cleve, Robert Van Gulick, Jonas Wulff. (shrink)

"ON DEMAND OF A PUBLISHING HOUSE IN GERMANY, I WAS ASKED TO WRITE ON SCIENTIFIC METHODS THAT I HAD imbibed ON WRITING THE DOCUMENT" [Thanks to accept my work Christopher Marlowe's Edward The Second from Presidency College,Kolkata of interest to international audience] .

“Marlowe wrote Edward The Second in 1590. He found a suitable tragic theme in the Holinshed’s account of Edward II’s reign though it was not a promising dramatic material from the chronological point of view as the events were disjointed and uninspiring disastrous. Improper coordinates of the sources has left its mark on Marlowe’s play, nevertheless, this is his most finished and satisfactory of plays…Edward The Second can surely be regarded as Marlowe’s finest technical achievement.” (Edited, Dr. (...) S. Sen…). (shrink)

A contemporary of William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe was one of the most influential early modern dramatists, whose life and mysterious death have long been the subject of critical and popular speculation. This collection sets Marlowe's plays and poems in their historical context, exploring his world and his wider cultural influence. Chapters by leading international scholars discuss both his major and lesser-known works. Divided into three sections, 'Marlowe's works', 'Marlowe's world', and 'Marlowe's (...) reception', the book ranges from Marlowe's relationship with his own audience through to adaptations of his plays for modern cinema. Other contexts for Marlowe include history and politics, religion and science. Discussions of Marlowe's critics and Marlowe's appeal today, in performance, literature and biography, show how and why his works continue to resonate; and a comprehensive further reading list provides helpful suggestions for those who want to find out more. (shrink)

This research explores the character’s decline in Christopher Marlowe’s play Doctor Faustus. It tells the story of an intellect entitled Dr. Faustus who, after becoming dissatisfied with every piece of the experience he has accumulated, goes to see the devils to satisfy his ambition of becoming a supreme being. Evaluating the reasons behind his demise is the focus of this research. This research is qualitative in nature. The Baum proposal for this type of study serves as the foundation (...) for the investigation’s methodology used in this analysis. The fall from grace concept is based on Sinclair’s argument that a specific individual or system’s collapse or catastrophe occurs after they have recently achieved happiness or influence. The conclusion reveals that Faustus’s failure to discriminate between the real world and his fantasies, uncontrolled necromantic action, and overwhelming yearning is what ultimately lead to his disaster and condemnation. In the end, it is revealed that while Faustus initially appears to be the unfortunate protagonist of the narrative, he encounters the death he deserves. (shrink)

These two volumes are the first extensive study of the influence of Marsilio Ficino on major English poets. Ficino lived in Florence, Italy from 1433 to 1499. He introduced Plato to the Renaissance by his translations of the philosopher's complete works with detailed commentary. He wrote important works on astrology, a multi-volume work on Platonic Theology, and hundreds of brilliant public letters on a variety of subjects.

Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, like Goethe’s Faust, begins in Faustus’ study. Faustus, renowned for his learning, is reading, going through the entire range of medieval disciplines — Aristotelian logic, Galenic medicine, Justinian law, Jerome’s Vulgate. His rapid deductions, after quoting to himself snatches from the concerned texts, read like a pastiche of the vanity of all human knowledge one encounters in De vanitate scientiarum by Cornelius Agrippa, a rumored alchemist and master of the occult.1 Faustus rejects logic as (...) sterile, and medicine and law as “mercenary,” unfit for the gentleman-scholar, who, according to the contemporary code,2 did not study or work for gain — these are.. (shrink)

Plato's dialogues are usually understood as simple examples of philosophy in action. In this book Professor Rowe treats them rather as literary-philosophical artefacts, shaped by Plato's desire to persuade his readers to exchange their view of life and the universe for a different view which, from their present perspective, they will barely begin to comprehend. What emerges is a radically new Plato: a Socratic throughout, who even in the late dialogues is still essentially the Plato (and the Socrates) of the (...) Apology and the so-called 'Socratic' dialogues. This book aims to understand Plato both as a philosopher and as a writer, on the assumption that neither of these aspects of the dialogues can be understood without the other. The argument of the book is closely based in Plato's text, but should be accessible to any serious reader of Plato, whether professional philosopher, classicist, or student. (shrink)

Suppose we believe that God created the world. Then surely we want it to be the case that he intended, in some sense at least, to create THIS world. Moreover, most theists want to hold that God didn't just guess or hope that the world would take one course or another; rather, he KNEW precisely what was going to take place in the world he planned to create. In particular, of each person P, God knew that P was to exist. (...) Call this the "standard" conception. Most theists find the standard conception appealing. Unfortunately, the view seems to conflict with the equally appealing idea — call it "temporal actualism" — that there are no "future" individuals beyond those that already exist in the present moment. For, on this view, for any historical person P, prior to creation, there was no such person as P and hence nothing about P for God to know. Hence, in particular, God couldn't have known that P was to exist. This is of course not a new problem. But past solutions to it are highly problematic. In this paper, after canvassing previous approaches, I will propose a solution that seems to preserve both temporal actualism and a suitably robust form of the standard conception while avoiding the pitfalls of the past. (shrink)

In this article Cristoph Wulf examines the basic concepts of pedagogy and educational science in the German-speaking world, looking at education and socialization from the perspective of educational anthropology. He makes evident that the complex German concept of Bildung, in particular, can only be fully understood by means of a historical and philosophical analysis.

This paper presents a new analysis of the concept of non-instrumental need, and, using it, demonstrates how a need-satisfaction theory of well-being is much more plausible than might otherwise be supposed. Its thesis is that in at least some contexts of evaluation a central part of some persons’ well-being consists in their satisfying certain “personal needs”. Unlike common conceptions of other non-instrumental needs, which make those out to be moralised, universal, and minimal, personal needs are expansive and particular to particular (...) persons, generated rather by persons’ non-moral personal commitments. Against objections to the contrary, I show how these are genuine necessities, since unlike mere desires and freely escapable aims, personal needs constitute objective, inescapable, and non-compensable practical requirements. The personal-need-satisfaction theory of well-being combines objectivity with subject-dependence in novel ways, and motivates well-being pluralism at the level of individual agency. Implicating necessity as it does in the structure of individual well-being, this account presents a robust challenge to ethical and political theories that rely on the intrapersonal aggregation of well-being to be unproblematic. (shrink)

This book is available either individually, or as part of the specially-priced Arguments of the Philosphers Collection.

Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Theory is a collection of papers presented at the 1977 conference on the Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Theory, held in New Orleans. The contributors present their topics from a wide variety of backgrounds and specialization, but all shared a common interest in answering quantum issues. Organized into 20 chapters, this book's opening chapters establish a sound mathematical basis for quantum theory and a mode of observation in the double slit experiment. This book then describes the Lorentz (...) particle system and other mathematical structures with which fun ... (shrink)

The Realm of Reason develops a new, general theory of what it is for a thinker to be entitled to form a given belief. The theory locates entitlement in the nexus of relations between truth, content, and understanding. Peacocke formulates three principles of rationalism that articulate this conception. The principles imply that all entitlement has a component that is justificationally independent of experience. The resulting position is thus a form of rationalism, generalized to all kinds of content.To show how these (...) principles are realized in specific domains, Peacocke applies the theory in detail to several classical problems of philosophy, including the nature of perceptual entitlement, induction, and the status of moral thought. These discussions involve an elaboration of the structure of entitlement in ways that have applications in many other areas of philosophy. He also relates the theory to classical and recent rationalist thought, and to current issues in the theory of meaning, reference and explanation. In the course of these discussions, he proposes a general theory of the a priori.The focus of the work lies in the intersection of epistemology, metaphysics, and the theory of meaning, and will be of interest both to students and researchers in these areas, and to anyone concerned with the idea of rationality. (shrink)

Christopher Hookway presents a series of essays on the work of Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1913), the 'founder of pragmatism' and one of the most important and original American philosophers.

Aristotle attaches particular significance to the homonymy of many central concepts in philosophy and science: that is, to the diversity of ways of being common to a single general concept. His preoccupation with homonymy influences his approach to almost every subject that he considers, and it clearly structures the philosophical methodology that he employs both when criticizing others and when advancing his own positive theories. Where there is homonymy there is multiplicity: Aristotle aims to find the order within this multiplicity, (...) and believes that doing so is crucial to scientific inquiry and philosophical progress.Christopher Shields investigates and evaluates Aristotle's approach to questions about homonymy, characterizing the metaphysical and semantic commitments necessary to establish the homonymy of a given concept. Then, in a series of case-studies, Shields examines in detail some of Aristotle's principal applications of homonymy--to the body, sameness and oneness, life, goodness, and being. Shields's aim is not only to give a fuller understanding of Aristotle's methodology and to illuminate his specific doctrines in a variety of areas, but to show that this methodology remains fruitful today. (shrink)

In an age where issues like climate change and the unintended consequences of technological innovation are high on the ethical and political agenda, questions about the nature and extent of our responsibilities to future generations have never been more important, yet simultaneously so difficult to answer. This book takes a unique approach to the problem by drawing on diverse traditions of thinking about care (including developmental psychology, phenomenology and feminist ethics) to explore the nature and meaning of our relationship with (...) the future. Demonstrating that many influential perspectives on intergenerational ethics, including positions advanced by John Rawls, Brian Barry, and Ulrich Beck are undermined by problems relating to uncertainty, it shows that an approach based on care ethics can confront the uncertain future successfully and give a viable account of the nature and scope of future-oriented responsibilities. (shrink)

In February 54b.c. Cicero concludes a missive to his brother with a passing and – for us – tantalizing remark:Lucreti poemata ut scribis ita sunt, multis luminibus ingeni, multae tamen artis. sed cum veneris. virum te putabo si Sallusti Empedoclea legeris; hominem non putabo. Quintus had, it seems, readDe rerum natura, or at least parts thereof, just before he left Rome for an undisclosed location nearby, and he shared his enthusiasm with his brotherper codicillos. Meanwhile, he was corresponding with Julius (...) Caesar, whose staff in Gaul he was about to join. When, a few months later, he was stationed with Caesar, he was involved in another literary affair, this time concerning his brother who wrote to him, inquiring about his autobiographicalDe temporibus suis:quo modo nam, mi frater, de nostris versibus Caesar? nam primum librum se legisse scripsit ad me ante, et prima sic ut neget se ne Graeca quidem meliora legisse; reliqua ad quendam locum ῥᾳθυμότερα (hoc enim utitur verbo). dic mihi verum: num aut res eum aut χαρακτὴρ non delectat?(Q.fr.2.15.5). (shrink)

Expressives like damn and bastard have, when uttered, an immediate and powerful impact on the context. They are performative, often destructively so. They are revealing of the perspective from which the utterance is made, and they can have a dramatic impact on how current and future utterances are perceived. This, despite the fact that speakers are invariably hard-pressed to articulate what they mean. I develop a general theory of these volatile, indispensable meanings. The theory is built around a class of (...) expressive indices. These determine the expressive setting of the context of interpretation. Expressives morphemes act on that context, actively changing its expressive setting. The theory is multidimensional in the sense that descriptives and expressives are fundamentally different but receive a unified logical treatment. (shrink)

The essays in this volume illuminate a central topic in ethical theory: moral dilemmas. Some contemporary philosophers dispute the traditional view that a true moral dilemma -- a situation in which a person has two irreconcilable moral duties -- cannot exist. This collection provides the historical background to the ongoing debate with selections from Kant, Mill, Bradley, and Ross. The best recent work on the question is represented in essays by Donagan, Foot, Hare, Marcus, Nagel, van Fraassen, Williams, and others.

The norms surrounding pejorative language, such as racial slurs and swear words, are deeply prohibitive. Pejoratives are typically a means for speakers to express their derogatory attitudes. As these attitudes vary along many dimensions and magnitudes, they initially appear to be resistant to a truth-conditional, semantic analysis. The goal of the paper is to clarify the essential linguistic phenomena surrounding pejoratives, survey the logical space of explanatory theories, evaluate each with respect to the phenomena and provide a preliminary assessment of (...) the initial resistance to a truth-conditional analysis. (shrink)

This article is meant to provide a brief, accessible introduction to the Afterlife Dilemma--an argument challenging a popular Christian pro-life position. A more in-depth and nuanced treatment of the argument can be found in “The Afterlife Dilemma: A Problem for the Christian Pro-Life Movement,” published in the Journal of Controversial Ideas 2(2) (2022), available online.

Discusses Derrida's writings on Plato, Kant, Hegel, Rousseau, Nietzsche, and Freud.

Difficult Atheism shows how contemporary French philosophy is rethinking the legacy of the death of God in ways that take the debate beyond the narrow confines of atheism into the much broader domain of post-theological thinking. Christopher Watkin argues that Alain Badiou, Jean-Luc Nancy and Quentin Meillassoux each elaborate a distinctive approach to the post-theological, but that each approach still struggles to do justice to the death of God.

Many “pro-life” or anti-abortion advocates are Christians who believe that (1) there exists an all-powerful, all-knowing, and morally perfect god who created our universe; (2) restricting abortion ought to be a top social and political priority; and (3) embryos and fetuses that die all go to hell or they all go to heaven. This paper seeks to establish that Christian pro-life advocates with these beliefs face the Afterlife Dilemma. On the one hand, if all embryos and fetuses that die go (...) to hell, they need to abandon their belief in the morally perfect god of traditional Christianity. On the other hand, if all embryos and fetuses that die go to heaven, a plausible triage principle suggests that they must abandon their view that restricting abortions ought to be a top priority. Either way, this popular Christian pro-life view is untenable. The Afterlife Dilemma implies that many pro-life Christians must abandon some aspect of their current beliefs about God, the afterlife, or the comparative moral importance of abortion. (shrink)

Fallacies and Argument Appraisal presents an introduction to the nature, identification, and causes of fallacious reasoning, along with key questions for evaluation. Drawing from the latest work on fallacies as well as some of the standard ideas that have remained relevant since Aristotle, Christopher Tindale investigates central cases of major fallacies in order to understand what has gone wrong and how this has occurred. Dispensing with the approach that simply assigns labels and brief descriptions of fallacies, Tindale provides fuller (...) treatments that recognize the dialectical and rhetorical contexts in which fallacies arise. This volume analyzes major fallacies through accessible, everyday examples. Critical questions are developed for each fallacy to help the student identify them and provide considered evaluations. (shrink)