This book is a timely new interpretation of the moral and political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes. Staying close to Hobbes's text and working from a careful examination of the actual substance of the account of natural law, R.E. Ewin argues that Hobbes well understood the importance of moral behavior to civilized society. This interpretation stands as a much-needed corrective to readings of Hobbes that emphasize the rationally calculated, self-interested nature of human behavior. It poses a significant challenge to currently fashionable (...) game theoretic reconstructions of Hobbesian logic. It is generally agreed that Hobbes applied what he took to be a geometrical method to political theory. But, as Ewin forcefully argues, modern readers have misconstrued Hobbes's geometric method, and this has led to a series of misunderstandings of Hobbes's view of the relationship between politics and morality. Important implications of Ewin's reading are that Hobbes never thought that "the war of each against all" was an empirical possibility for citizens; that his political theory actually presupposes moral agency; and that Hobbes's account of natural law forces us to the conclusion that Hobbes was a virtue theorist. This major contribution to Hobbes studies will be praised and criticized, welcomed and challenged, but it cannot be ignored. All philosophers, political theorists, and historians of ideas dealing with Hobbes will need to take account of it. (shrink)

Evidence based medicine has been a topic of considerable controversy in medical and health care circles over its short lifetime, because of the claims made by its exponents about the criteria used to assess the evidence for or against the effectiveness of medical interventions. The central epistemological debates underpinning the debates about evidence based medicine are reviewed by this paper, and some areas are suggested where further work remains to be done. In particular, further work is needed on the theory (...) of evidence and inference; causation and correlation; clinical judgment and collective knowledge; the structure of medical theory; and the nature of clinical effectiveness. (shrink)

This essay explores the role of informal logicand its application in the context of currentdebates regarding evidence-based medicine. This aim is achieved through a discussion ofthe goals and objectives of evidence-basedmedicine and a review of the criticisms raisedagainst evidence-based medicine. Thecontributions to informal logic by StephenToulmin and Douglas Walton are explicated andtheir relevance for evidence-based medicine isdiscussed in relation to a common clinicalscenario: hypertension management. This essayconcludes with a discussion on the relationshipbetween clinical reasoning, rationality, andevidence. It is argued that (...) informal logic hasthe virtue of bringing explicitness to the roleof evidence in clinical reasoning, and bringssensitivity to understanding the role ofdialogical context in the need for evidence inclinical decision making. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: Protecting The Vulnerable: A Reanalysis of Our Social Responsibilities. By Robert E. Goodin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Hume's is/ought distinction has long limited the role of empirical research in ethics, saying that data about what something is cannot yield conclusions about the way things ought to be. However, interest in empirical research in ethics has been growing despite this countervailing principle. We attribute some of this increased interest to a conceptual breakdown of the is/ought distinction. MacIntyre, in reviewing the history of the is/ought distinction, argues that is and ought are not strictly separate realms but exist in (...) a close relationship that is clarified by adopting a teleological orientation. We propose that, instead of recovering a teleological orientation, society tends to generate its own goals via democratic methods like those described by Rousseau or adopt agnosticism about teleology such as described by Richard Rorty. In both latter scenarios, the distinction between is and ought is obscured, and the role for empirical research grows, but for controversial reasons. MacIntyre warns that the is/ought distinction should remain, but reminds ethicists to make careful arguments about when and why it is legitimate to move from is to ought. (shrink)

2. The Meno offers a dramatic demonstration of the validity of the first argument put forward for Anamnesis and the immortality of the soul in the Phaedo.

This distinction has sometimes been read as purely epistemic, resting not on things, but on our knowledge of them: there is one world, not two, though it may be apprehended in two ways. But this view is patently at odds with the text. Knowledge and opinion are δυνάμεις, "faculties," to be distinguished and defined by their objects, no less than by the state of mind they produce, and Plato clearly states that the fallibility and unclearness of opinion is rooted in (...) the relative unreality of opinables. (shrink)

The development of virtue ethics in the contemporary philosophical world, as a reaction to various forms of consequentialism, deontology, and moral skepticism, has now brought forth translators determined to offer the wisdom of pre-moderns to contemporary readers. Here is a “small work” of Denis , the “last of the scholastics” and a contemporary of humanists like Ficino and Erasmus, who opened the modern age that is now rapidly closing. Educated in “the way of Thomas Aquinas” at the University of Cologne, (...) the Carthusian cloister allowed him leisure to become a prolific author, often cited by Catholics during the Protestant Reformation.He should be rescued from obscurity, for here he weaves together the vices and virtues in a way that eluded even Aquinas. In the spirit of the age, his audience was the ordinary layman. Denis brought Thomistic materials together with Scripture and the Fathers, using the Neoplatonic circle made famous by his namesake, Dionysius the Areopagite. Book One charts how sin pushes us ever deeper through the seven deadly sins. Then Book Two follows the workings of grace and nature in producing progress in virtue. Especially insightful is the way Denis uses Plotinus to. (shrink)

The Lex Plotia Agraria is known to us only by name through a single reference in one of Cicero's letters, from which we can extract nothing more than a terminus ante quern and a very general notion of its probable scope. Gabba in a short article, after reviewing the different hypotheses about this law, decided in favour of a suggestion put forward originally by Zumpt, that it belongs probably to the year 70/69 B.C.; and identifying it with a law referred (...) to in a passage of Dio, he argued that the law was passed on behalf of Pompey's and Metellus Pius' veterans of the Spanish war. Following a suggestion of Niccolini he identified Plotius with the Plotius, tribune 70/69 B.C., who was responsible for the Lex Plotia de reditu Lepidanorum, and the date of his tribunate he put in 70 B.C. With Gabba's reasoning and general conclusions the present writer is in agreement, namely, that the law belongs to 70/69 B.C., and aimed at providing land for the veterans of Pompey and Metellus; the object of this note is to draw attention to a piece of evidence which has hitherto been strangely neglected, and to draw some possible inferences about the scope and fate of the law. (shrink)

There are a variety of puzzling features about this argument. One of them—questions of validity apart—is its apparent redundancy. Parmenides’ initial division provided him with an infinite plurality of parts. He might therefore have given an existence proof of infinitely many numbers, conceived as pluralities of units, by means of this division. Instead, he introduces a new principle of division for the purpose. Again, he derives the conclusion that Unity has infinitely many parts from the infinity of number; but he (...) has already shown that Unity is infinitely divisible into parts consisting of being and unity. In short, the new principle of division introduced for number seems unnecessary, and Parmenides has twice shown that Unity has infinitely many parts. (shrink)

This book of fifteen essays is presented in honor of one of the premier historians of medieval philosophy, Armand Maurer of the Pontifical Institute for Mediaeval Studies and the University of Toronto. The authors, internationally recognized scholars in the field of medieval philosophy and theology, are friends, colleagues, and students of Fr. Maurer. They are united in a common love of medieval thought and a common appreciation of philosophizing through the study of the history of philosophy. Their interests and methodologies, (...) however, are diverse, and cover a range from Justin Marytr, who died during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, to Bartholomew Mastrius, a contemporary of Descartes. “This is a volume that honors the memory of Armand Maurer not only by reviewing his own scholarly achievements but by advancing the state of scholarship on the subject that he loved, the philosophy of the middle ages. The range of topics covered here richly reflect the pluralism of medieval thought. Some of the essays gathered for this collection give a fresh look at important perennial themes like the nature of Christian philosophy and the real distinction between essence and existence. Others turn—as Maurer loved to do—to figures who are studied less often that help fill out our knowledge of this period and add to our sense of the contributions that study of medieval authors can make for contemporary philosophizing.” —Joseph W. Koterski, S.J., Fordham University “This lovely Festschrift for Armand Maurer contains fourteen essays by distinguished scholars on the tradition of medieval philosophy, from its ancient origins to seventeenth-century inheritors. Since many essays treat large-scale movements or fundamental issues, the volume will be useful to serious undergraduates and graduate students, as well as to scholars._ Laudemus_ indeed: from the editor’s moving tribute to Armand Maurer, through discussions of Avicenna and Thomas and Ockham, to Maurer’s closing recollections of his teachers, this volume is full of well-earned praise.” —Donald Morrison, Rice University. (shrink)

The general editorial plan behind The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell calls for two parallel series, one concerned with Russell's work on philosophy, logic and mathematics, the other with his less technical contributions in areas such as politics, practical ethics, history and education. Volume 1, sub-titled Cambridge Essays, 1888–99, is in a sense the ancestral volume of both series, for it comprises both technical and non-technical subjects. Russell appears here as diarist, public speaker, political commentator, as well as apprentice philosopher (...) and expert on non-Euclidian geometries. The Collected Papers as a whole will span the more than 80 years of Russell's writings devoted to a formidable range of topics from the personal to the highly abstract but, large as it is, this publishing project will make no attempt to bring together the totality of his writings, since many of these remain in print and are readily available. Instead, the project's distinct emphasis will be on Russell's shorter writings, such as essays, articles, reviews and speeches, which are not so easily located, even when previously published. Grouped together in convenient subdivisions, these papers will chronicle for us Russell's intellectual and social growth to an extent even greater than that attempted by Russell himself in his three-volume Autobiography or in My Philosophical Development, and they will also serve to acquaint us with the thoughts, feelings and attitudes of the venerable figure behind the well-known major books. The project's essential aim, then, is to mine and refine the vast Russell Archives in a way that will yield a permanent foundation of study for anyone, whether mere admirer or life-long scholar, who has any interest in Russell's life and work. (shrink)

Political argument and institutions in the UnitedKingdom have frequently been represented as the products of ablend of nationalistic conservatism, liberal individualism andsocialism, in which consensus has been prized over ideology. This situation changed, as the standard story has it, with therise of Thatcherism in the late 1970s, and again with the arrivalof Tony Blair's ``New Labour'' pragmatism in the late 1990s. Solidarity as an element of political discourse makes itsappearance in the UK late in the day. It has been most (...) stronglylinked to the Third Way debate, as framed most influentially inthe work of Prof. Anthony Giddens.In this paper we review the history and pre-history of the debateon solidarity in the UK, focussing mostly on its implications forwelfare state reform. In particular we discuss the proposals forthe long-term care of the Elderly issued by the Royal Commissionon long-term care in 1999. In this context we critically examinethe idea that solidarity is a new concept in British politicalculture, and that it is a concept which has real political ``bite''in the project of welfare reform. We examine this through aconsideration of Giddens's attempted synthesis of politicalargument and social theory. (shrink)

In a detailed and careful manner, Taylor sets about an analysis of the notions of causation, human action, purpose, and a whole host of other conceptions such as deliberation, willing, mental acts, and reasons that relate to these key concepts in the philosophy of human action. The issue is, of course, what sort of explanation is suited to grasping the inherent intelligibility of human action. Having argued his way through to a notion of agent causality, which differs little from that (...) of Aristotle, and having concluded to the irreducibility of purpose that this conception implies, Taylor maintains that logical reductionism, behaviorism, and/or mechanism are logically deficient and leave human action unexplained; however, the non-reducibility of common sense, teleological and free will concepts does not imply, for Taylor, a dualism Taylor does leave it open as a matter to be empirically decided whether or not ontological reductionism is a viable alternative. While the book is an extraordinarily skillful and dialectical handling of current discussion in the philosophy of action, there is distressingly little mention of the sources and supports of this discussion. The effect is to make some of Taylor's more controversial pronouncements appear a bit more dogmatic than should be the case; but in the end, content triumphs sufficiently over style to make this book important reading for anyone interested in having some clear light thrown on the thorny problems surrounding the philosophy of action.—E. A. R. (shrink)

This book is less about disjunction than about the English word ‘or’, and it is less for than against formal logicians—more exactly, against those who maintain that formal logic can be applied in certain ways to the evaluation of reasoning formulated in ordinary English. Nevertheless, there are many things to interest such of those persons who are willing to overlook the frequent animadversions directed against their kind in the book, and this review will concentrate on them.