This volume presents Rosenberg's previously published studies of the central elements and implications of Sellars' philosophy, along with three new essays that ...

Jay Rosenberg introduces Immanuel Kant's masterwork, the Critique of Pure Reason, from a "relaxed" problem-oriented perspective which treats Kant as an especially insightful practicing philosopher, from whom we still have much to learn, intelligently and creatively responding to significant questions that transcend his work's historical setting. Rosenberg's main project is to command a clear view of how Kant understands various perennial problems, how he attempts to resolve them, and to what extent he succeeds. At the same time the book is (...) an introduction to the challenges of reading the text of Kant's work and, to that end, selectively adopts a more rigorous historical and exegetical stance. Accessing Kant will be an invaluable resource for advanced students and for any scholar seeking Rosenberg's own distinctive insights into Kant's work. (shrink)

Jay Rosenberg offers a systematic philosophical theory of knowledge which is specifically responsive to the fact that we always engage the world from a particular perspective within it. It consequently calls into question in a fundamental way many received understandings regarding the relationships among the concepts of knowledge, belief, justification, and truth.

This book is nominally about linguistic representation. But, since it is we who do the representing, it is also about us. And, since it is the universe which we represent, it is also about the universe. In the end, then, this book is about everything, which, since it is a philosophy book, is as it should be. I recognize that it is nowadays unfashionable to write books about every thing. Philosophers of language, it will be said, ought to stick to (...) writing about language; philosophers of science, to writing about science; epis temologists, to writing about knowing; and so on. The real world, however, perversely refuses to carve itself up so neatly, and, although I recognize that the real w,orld is nowadays also unfashionable, in the end I judged that one might get closer to the truth of various matters by going along with it. So I have done so. lt was Wilfrid Sellars who initially convinced me of the virtues of this way of proceeding. At this point one normally says something like "The debt that this book owes him is immense". I would say it too, were it not to understate the case, From Wilfrid, I learned to think about things. If the upshot of my thinking tends, as it obviously does, to show a general con silience with the upshot of his, it is primarily because he is so very good at it - and he had a head start. (shrink)

According to neo-republicans, democracy is morally justified because it is among the prerequisites for freedom as non-domination. The claim that democracy secures freedom as non-domination needs to explain why democratic procedures contribute to non-domination and for whom democracy secures non-domination. This requires an account of why domination is countered by democratic procedures and an account of to whom domination is countered by access to democratic procedures. Neo-republican theory of democracy is based on a detailed discussion of the former but a (...) scant discussion of the latter. We address this lacuna by interpreting the two most influential principles of inclusion, the all-subjected principle and the all-affected principle, in light of neo-republican commitments. The preliminary conclusion is that both principles are able to capture relations of domination between the democratic state and the people controlled by it in the relevant sense. Yet, the state has virtually unlimited powers to control residents, but only limited powers to interfere in the lives of non-residents. Republican aspirations are therefore more in tune with the all-subjected principle according to which only residents in the territory of the state should be granted rights to political participation. (shrink)

The all-affected principle, by which all those affected by the policies of the state ought to be included in the demos governing it, is often considered prima facie attractive but, upon closer examination, implausible. The main alternative, according to which all those and only those affected by possible consequences of possible decisions ought to be included in the demos, is equally implausible. I suggest a reformulated principle: the demos includes all those affected by foreseeable consequences of decisions that the state (...) has legal authority and capacity to take. This avoids the problems of the standard version and the main alternative. (shrink)

Based on the author's nearly 30 years' of teaching introductory philosophy — and his observations of where beginning readers run into difficulty — this compact “primer” gives readers the basic tools they need to explore philosophical reading and writing for the first time. Provides insights and strategies for helping readers get started with reading, thinking about, and discussing philosophical concepts and writing short philosophical essays about what they've been reading and thinking; includes a new chapter that illustrates techniques for probing (...) beneath the expository surface of a given question to uncover the inevitable structure of presuppositions and problems underlying it. (shrink)

Implants and drugs with animal and human derived content are widely used in medicine and surgery, but information regarding ingredients is rarely obtainable by health practitioners. A religious perspective concerning the use of animal and human derived drug ingredients has not thoroughly been investigated. The purpose of this study was to clarify which parts of the medical and surgical treatments offered in western world-hospitals that conflicts with believers of major religions.

Jay Rosenberg's penetrating and persuasively argued analysis of the central metaphysical and moral questions pertaining to death has been updated and revised to expand and deepen several of its key arguments and to address conceptual developments of the past fifteen years. Among the topics discussed are: Life After Death; The Limits of Theorizing; The Limits of Imagination; Death and Personhood; Values and Rights; Mercy Killing; Prolonging Life; Rational Suicide; and One's Own Death. Rosenberg's prose is lucid, lively, thoroughly absorbing, and (...) accessible to introductory-level readers. Essential reading for anyone interested in reflecting on this engaging topic. (shrink)

Sellars’s views on the Myth of the Given and the ontological status of secondary qualities, one would have thought, are well-known, even if not always well-understood. One would not have expected his Carus Lectures, then, to offer anything radically new and exciting. The ground that they cover is, after all, familiar—from “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind”, from “Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man”, from “The Identity Approach to the Mind-Body Problem”, and from the ensuing debates with Cornman and (...) with Firth. One would not really have anticipated many surprises. But one would have been wrong. (shrink)

The “demos paradox” is the idea that the composition of a demos could never secure democratic legitimacy because the composition of a demos cannot itself be democratically decided. Those who view this problem as unsolvable argue that this insight allows them to adopt a critical perspective towards common ideas about who has legitimate standing to participate in democratic decision-making. We argue that the opposite is true and that endorsing the demos paradox actually undermines our ability to critically engage with common (...) ideas about legitimate standing. We challenge the conception of legitimacy that lurks behind the demos paradox and argue that the real impossibility is to endorse democracy without also being committed to significant procedure-independent standards for the legitimate composition of the demos. We show that trying to solve the problem of the demos by appeal to some normative conception of democratic legitimacy is a worthwhile project that is not undermined by paradox. (shrink)

Sellars’s views on the Myth of the Given and the ontological status of secondary qualities, one would have thought, are well-known, even if not always well-understood. One would not have expected his Carus Lectures, then, to offer anything radically new and exciting. The ground that they cover is, after all, familiar—from “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind”, from “Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man”, from “The Identity Approach to the Mind-Body Problem”, and from the ensuing debates with Cornman and (...) with Firth. One would not really have anticipated many surprises. But one would have been wrong. (shrink)

Rosenberg concludes with a critical reassessment of widely accepted views regarding the relationships among natural languages, mathematical formalisms, and philosophical commitments. The culmination of twenty years' reflection, Beyond Formalism is an original and sophisticated book of importance to both philosophers and linguists.

This article examines the sexist work experiences of a sample of women lawyers in a mediumsized midwestern city. Specifically, it focuses on reports of discrimination, gender disparagement, and sexual harassment as components of gendered systems that maintain and reinforce inequalities between men and women on the job. The relationships between these experiences, professional role orientation and structural work characteristics are explored. Respondents report lower levels of discrimination at the more visible and legally protected “front door” than on the job. For (...) the most part, private sector employees and those in token positions report higher levels of sexist behavior. Contrary to expectations, those with careerist orientations report more sexual harassment. The interrelations and implications of these findings for women's careers in the law are discussed. (shrink)

Wilfrid Sellars' conclusion in "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind" that "the Given" is a "Myth" quickly elicited philosophical opposition and remains contentious fifty years later. William Alston has challenged that conclusion on several occasions by attempting to devise an acceptable account of perception committed to the givenness of perceived objects. His most recent challenge advances a "Theory of Appearing" which posits irreducible non-conceptual relations, ostensibly overlooked by Sellars, e.g., of "looking red", between the subject and the object perceived, that (...) can playa justificatory role vis-à-vis the corresponding beliefs, e.g., that the object is red. I argue that Alston undermines his positive plausibility arguments by first blurring and then ignoring crucial differencesamong various looks-concepts, and that his own putative "phenomenal" looks-concept demonstrably cannot play the justificatory role that he envisions for it. Both his critique of Sellars' arguments and his own alternative proposal thus fail on all fronts. (shrink)

According to Hume, the idea of a persisting, self-identical object, distinct from our impressions of it, and the idea of a duration of time, the mere passage of time without change, are mutually supporting "fictions". Each rests upon a "mistake", the commingling of "qualities of the imagination" or "impressions of reflection" with "external" impressions (perceptions), and, strictly speaking, we are conceptually and epistemically entitled to neither. Among Kant's aims in the First Critique is the securing of precisely these entitlements. Like (...) Hume, he acknowledges the correlativity of the notions of temporal duration and persisting self-identical objects (i.e., continuant substances). Unlike Hume, however, he undertakes to establish the legitimacy or objective validity of the schematized category of substance and, correspondingly, of the representation of time as a formal unity with duration as one of its modes. (shrink)

During his atomistic period, Russell felt compelled to include negative facts in his ontology. In this essay, I diagnose the grounds of that compulsion, Assess the cogency of an ontology which includes negative facts, And, Finding it inadequate, Consider finally alternative solutions within the atomistic framework to the root problems of negation.

I develop one account of propositions as pictures sharing logical form with what they depict. Two concepts of simplicity in the "tractatus" are then isolated. Since characterization of sachverhalten as configurations of referential simples does not entail their inferential simplicity, By rejecting the tractarian theory of inference, I retain the picture theory without commitment to atomistic ontology. Interpretation of inference as performance then gives rise to a second sense of picturing.

Discusses epistemic foundationalism. Examines the confrontation between Wilfrid Sellars's critique of the ‘Myth of the Given’ and William Alston's defence of ‘immediate knowledge’, and explores and endorses Sellars's strong epistemic internalism and the integrated normative accounts of justification, language‐mastery, concept‐possession, and perceptual experience that support it. The proceduralist thesis that the activity of justifying is prior to the state of being justified is elucidated and defended.

Rorty rejects the idea of a "permanent and neutral matrix of Heuristic concepts". The claim of privilege, however, is separable from the aim of universality, and this idea can be transposed into a regulative ideal, while still preserving the unique intellectual mission of a discipline of philosophy. Rorty's own positive picture of "edifying Philosophy" in contrast is arguably irresponsible and grounded in misreadings both of the epistemology of science and of episodes in the history of philosophy, especially the contributions of (...) Kant. (shrink)

The patient-physician relationship, as formulated in the traditional biomedical model of medicine, is inherently flawed. In entering this relationship, most patients seek simply to be delivered from illness back to normal psychosocial functioning. The physician, however, almost invariably responds with a purely biologic approach to diagnosis and treatment that often does not effectively address the patient's needs. This precludes the opportunity for a consensus between them, and may in fact lead to the physician manipulating the patient's decisions about the course (...) of therapy. The relationship should be reshaped within a new scientific model of patient care that combines the biomedical analysis of disease with an empathic understanding of the patient's illness experience. Truly informed consent is viewed as a natural outcome of the application of this more comprehensive framework. (shrink)