The death of Alfred North Whitehead late in 1947 was a double loss. Those who knew Whitehead, even slightly, feel keenly the loss of a warm and stimulating personality, which in the last years of his retirement had mellowed to a benign radiance. The wider circle of students and teachers of philosophy who knew him through his writing alone regret the passing of the man who, many thought, was the most capable cosmologist of our time.

The Second Conference of the International Society for the Study of Time was held at Hotel Mt. Fuji, near Lake Yamanaka, Japan, on July I to 7,1973. The present volume is the proceedings at that Con ference and constitutes the second volume in The Study of Time series. * At the closing session of our First Conference in Oberwolfach, Germany, in 1969, I was honored by being elected to the Presidency of the Society, following Dr. J. G. Whitrow, our fIrst (...) President. My mandate was to organize a Second Conference, consistent with the aim of the Society, which is the holding of interdisciplinary conferences for the presentation and discussion of papers on various as pects of time. Several participants expressed to me their wish to have a second conference held in Japan so as to emphasize the international and intercultural dedication of this Society. Dr. Fraser carefully evaluated this and many other suggestions, weighed the possible conference sites and our chances of raising the necessary funds to convene a meeting at such sites, and concurred with my conclusions that we should go ahead with the plans for a Japanese meeting. For the difficult and complicated task of raising funds and organizing a conference in Japan, I had to select and rely heavily on somebody both capable and reliable and also living in Japan. Thus, I asked the Reverend Michael Mutsuo Yanase, S. J. (shrink)

The present essay is primarily concerned with. By analyzing the usefulness of the idea of efficient causation I shall expose its primarily classificatory function and the intrinsic limits which this function of the idea prescribes for it. The plan of these remarks is as follows: to exhibit the classificatory function of the causal analysis, to show how this function operates in the relation between categorical and hypothetical assertions, to show briefly how it operates in counterfactual and dispositional assertions, and to (...) show the role of this function in the identification of events. Then I shall relate the limits of causal classification to those of predicative classification and show briefly the significance of this functional view of causal determinism for Freudian psychology. Each of the topics must be treated only in so far as it bears on the rest, and important questions in each area will therefore be by-passed. In one sense the applications to Freudian psychology constitute the primary target of the study, since it is in that field that classical determinism has enjoyed a notorious renaissance. It is there also that the great practical significance of the question about determinism lies. (shrink)

If nothing of man is outside nature, and nature is essentially a machine, then man is not free. The conclusion is analytic and virtually trivial. Any quibbling about the conclusion can arise only through ignoring one of the postulates, or openly attacking it.

There are several prefatory remarks which ought to be made about this examination. In the first place, we need a label for the fallacy which is being discussed. We shall use Whitehead's term, "the bifurcation of nature." Secondly, it should be noticed that the bifurcation of nature is not a fallacy in the narrowest sense of the term. Thus it has no conventional status among lists of logical fallacies. It is notable that while Whitehead inveighs heavily against it he never (...) calls it a fallacy; he refers to it as a "vice" and a "vicious" theory. However, since the theory expresses itself ambiguously and leads to contradictions, it would seem to merit the epithet "fallacy.". (shrink)

All the above views are statements of or from the so-called emotive theory of value, or are closely related to that theory. Where causal primacy lies or whether all these theories and views are effects of a more deep-laid cause is difficult to determine. Nevertheless, the common bonds between the various views are evident; the views themselves are prevalent. Any work which challenges the current subjective intuitionism in matters of "right," "good," and the like stands out in illuminated relief. Such (...) a work is Natural Right and History by Leo Strauss. (shrink)

That Whitehead's remarks on simple location entail neither an absolute theory of space-time nor a relativistic one. The evidence for this conclusion, especially in view of Whitehead's own remarks, is very good. The ghosts raised by Emmet and Das are laid.

The subsequent history of philosophy can be profitably viewed as the history of dialectic. The most didactic presentation must present, if only implicitly, the views against which it contends. No author is completely non-dialectical; the question is, "How dialectical is he?".

The practical arts demand that the men who practice them have well-defined objectives. Any set of practical objectives in turn requires a maximum inattention to other considerations. A man hitting a tennis ball will fail, if his attention is distracted by a passing funeral procession, or the flutter of a handkerchief in the crowd watching him. The thief is likely to thwart his own ends, if he thinks too concretely about the consequences of his act.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1956.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1956.

There have lately appeared three works on Kant, each of which seeks in its own way to show Kant's importance to contemporary readers. The present essay is largely a review of these works, terminated by some remarks showing how Kant's doctrine of the synthetic function of concepts must be modified for modern purposes.