What does it mean to "trust?" What makes us feel secure enough to place our confidence—even at times our welfare—in the hands of other people? Is it possible to "trust" an institution? What exactly do people mean when they claim to "distrust" their governments? As difficult as it may be to define, trust is essential to the formation and maintenance of a civil society. In Trust and Trustworthiness political scientist Russell Hardin addresses the standard theories of trust and articulates his (...) own new and compelling idea: that much of what we call trust can be best described as "encapsulated interest." Research into the roles of trust in our society has offered a broad range of often conflicting theories. Some theorists maintain that trust is a social virtue that cannot be reduced to strategic self-interest; others claim that trusting another person is ultimately a rational calculation based on information about that person and his or her incentives and motivations. Hardin argues that we place our trust in persons whom we believe to have strong reasons to act in our best interests. He claims that we are correct when we assume that the main incentive of those whom we trust is to maintain a relationship with us—whether it be for reasons of economic benefit or for love and friendship. Hardin articulates his theory using examples from a broad array of personal and social relationships, paying particular attention to explanations of the development of trusting relationships. He also examines trustworthiness and seeks to understand why people may behave in ways that violate their own self-interest in order to honor commitments they have made to others. The book also draws important distinctions between vernacular uses of "trust" and "trustworthiness," contrasting, for example, the type of trust (or distrust) we place in individuals with the trust we place in institutions Trust and Trustworthiness represents the culmination of important new research into the roles of trust in our society; it offers a challenging new voice in the current discourse about the origins of cooperative behavior and its consequences for social and civic life. A Volume in the Russell Sage Foundation Series on Trust. (shrink)

The inflation which is endemic to late capitalism does not exempt concepts and theories; if inflated money seeks to overcome the falling rate of profit, inflated concepts seek to overcome the falling rate of intelligence. Within left and radical thought this assumes a particular form: an increase in revolutionary face value. Today every theory is more revolutionary than the previous one, or so it claims. Such an increase is a response to a depreciation, as it were, in the critical substance (...) and categories of the theories; as silver coins are now fabricated with copper, revolutionary theories are constructed with conformist and establishment concepts. The result is inflation. (shrink)

Philosophy: The Classic Readings is a collection of accessible readings from the history of philosophy specifically focused on metaphysics and epistemology. The philosophers include Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, Hume, Russell and Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia.

Binmore analyzes the genetic basis of cooperation. Much of the literature doing this supposes that we must explain directly the cooperative tendency, whether by individual or group selection. A more effective way to go is to find something more general and likely more deeply embedded in personal traits that enables and even enhances cooperation. Hume, with whom Binmore claims affinities, long ago proposed a psychological phenomenon now called mirroring, which induces good relations through shared sentiments in a way that is (...) essentially hard-wired. Mirroring indirectly contributes to cooperativeness. There may be other similarly indirect ways to account for human cooperativeness. (shrink)

We attribute to morality an inescapable authority over human actions, but the source of this authority is mysterious. It cannot come from God, nature, or reason. Morality is best understood as a technology that aids in social cooperation, while often being rationalized as something more metaphysical.

2015 Reprint of 1953 Edition. Full Facsimile of the original edition. Not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. In attempting to clarify the spirit of conservatism, Kirk turns his attention to three broad fields-political philosophy, religious thought, and imaginative literature. Following Burke, whom he calls the first truly modern conservative thinker, he studies the work of John Adams, Walter Scott, Calhoun, Fenimore Cooper, Tocqueville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Benjamin Disraeli, Cardinal Newman, George Santayana, and T.S. Eliot and others. Vigorously written, the book (...) represents conservatism as an ideology born of sound intellectual traditions. (shrink)

David Gauthier's Morals by Agreement presents a partial theory of distributive justice. It is partial because it applies only to the distribution of gains from joint endeavors, or what we may call the ‘social surplus’ from cooperation. This surplus is the benefit we receive from cooperation insofar as this is greater than what we might have produced through individual efforts without interaction with others. The central core of Gauthier's theory of distributive justice is his bargaining theory of ‘minimax relative concession’ (...) or MRC. Whether his theory is compelling turns essentially on whether MRC is workable and compelling. It is this issue that I wish to address. (shrink)

The central problem with understanding altruism is that it is one of many motivations that may work in tandem and we do not have an adequate grasp of how various motivations interact. This claim runs contrary to a sense one gets from much of the contemporary study of altruism, which is that the central problem is more nearly to understand what kind of motivation altruism is. Much of that literature is especially concerned to show the existence of altruism as a (...) motivation separate from self interest. I think the existence of altruism as such a motive is well established. In discussing the fit of altruistic with other motivations, I address the nature of self interest accounts of action, the relationship of self-interest and altruism, the differences between univeralistic and particularistic altruism, and multiple motivations in ostensible cases of altruism. I then relate these discussions to state versus individual capacities for action and to legal problems of good samaritan protections. Narrow self interest can work beneficially in small-number cooperative contexts but not in large-number generalizations of such contexts. Many of these contexts are those in which altruistic behaviors of various kinds would be especially beneficial. Altruistic actions in these contexts would not violate rational choice theory although they would violate an assumption that all action is narrowly self-interested. Das grundlegende Problem beim Verständnis von Altruismus ist, daß Altruismus nur eine von vielen Motivationen ist, die zusammentreffen können, und daß wir kein angemessenes Verständnis davon haben, wie sich verschiedene Motivationen wechselseitig beeinflussen. Diese Behauptung steht einem Eindruck entgegen, den man bei vielen der zeitgenössischen Studien zum Altrusimus bekommt, daß nämlich das zentrale Problem eher ist, zu verstehen oder besser zu verstehen, was für eine Art von Motivation Altruismus ist. Ein Großteil dieser Literatur ist vor allem damit beschäftigt zu zeigen, daß es Altruismus als eine vom Eigeninteresse verschiedene Motivation überhaupt gibt. Ich denke, die Existenz von Altruismus als einem solchen Motiv ist genügend nachgewiesen. Ich diskutiere, wie Altruismus mit anderen Motivationen zusammenpasst, und bespreche dabei die Natur von Erklärungen, die Handlungen als eigennützig betrachten, die Beziehung von Eigeninteresse und Altruismus, die Unterschiede zwischen universalistischem und partikularistischem Altruismus und mehrfache Motivationen in scheinbaren Altruismus-Fällen. Ich bringe diese Diskussionen dann in Verbindung mit staatlichen und individuellen Fähigkeiten zur Hilfeleistung und mit rechtlichen Problemen des Schutzes von "guten Samaritern". Enges Eigeninteresse kann wohltätig wirken in kooperativen Kontexten, in die nur eine kleine Zahl von Personen involviert ist, aber nicht in Verallgemeinerungen solcher Kontexte, wenn viele mitwirken. In einer ganzen Reihe solcher Kontexte würde altruistisches Verhalten verschiedener Art besonders wohltätig sein. Altruistisches Handeln in derartigen Kontexten würde der Theorie der vernünftigen Wahl bei alternativen Handlungsmöglichkeiten nicht zuwiderlaufen, auch wenn es der Annahme widerstreitet, daß alles Handeln von engen Eigeninteressen bestimmt wird. (shrink)

Certain messages, even when not directly payoff relevant, can be a credible form of communication in light of natural social preferences. Social image concerns and other-regarding preferences interact to create incentives to communicate about how one feels about other people. Recognizing the prevalence of the incentive to communicate about one’s social preferences suggests that many social and economic phenomena—from norms of etiquette to cooperation to gift exchange—should be seen, in part, as forms of signaling. These behaviors may be surprisingly robust (...) to material costs, yet sensitive to context. (shrink)

The Internet is a huge form of social capital that is not reducible in its characteristics to other forms of social capital, such as ordinary networks of people who more or less know each other. It enables us to do many things with radically greater efficiency than we could without it. It can do some things better but other things much less well than traditional devices can. At both extremes, the differences are so great as to be not merely quantitative (...) but also qualitative. The things it can do better include things that can readily be checked and verified. The things that it often cannot do include securing commitments for action. A brief history of the forms of social cooperation suggests that relationships on the Internet are typically too thin to back trust and cooperation among those who do not have fairly rich relations hips off-line. (shrink)

The Developmental Systems approach to evolution is defended against the alternative extended replicator approach of Sterelny, Smith and Dickison (1996). A precise definition is provided of the spatial and temporal boundaries of the life-cycle that DST claims is the unit of evolution. Pacé Sterelny et al., the extended replicator theory is not a bulwark against excessive holism. Everything which DST claims is replicated in evolution can be shown to be an extended replicator on Sterelny et al.s definition. Reasons are given (...) for scepticism about the heuristic value claimed for the extended replicator concept. For every competitive, individualistic insight the replicator theorist has a cooperative, systematic blindspot. (shrink)

The boundaries of psychology have never been very distinctly defined and, as a consequence, science has witnessed frequent border incidents. But it obviously is not psychology alone which suffers from such lack of delineation, but its neighbors, the biological and social sciences, do as well. Cooperation between sciences becomes difficult under these conditions. All agree that psychology is the science of mind, but few agree to what “mind” is. At least within our century “mind” has been taken to be “behavior”, (...) for the present day outlook is that mind is behavior rather than that which is responsible for behavior. The metaphysical dynamism of a prime mover has been replaced by an experimental concept, i.e., one that is susceptible to scientific investigation. There is no need to review the complex history of behavioristic psychology in its many ramifications, ranging from Watson's mechanism to the various vitalistic teleologies. We turn instead to a fundamental problem on which there is little agreement: “What kind of behavior should be called mind?”. (shrink)

In the so-called agreement model of psychic conformity, the passions do not retain their former character, only under tighter rein, but take on a new character altogether. In the competing control model, the passions may conform to reason, but they never change their character so as to cooperate with reason, just as a trained lion conforms to the commands of a tamer whose direction it is never capable of internalizing and cooperating. This chapter argues that these two models appear together (...) in Plato for the simple reason that each captures, in its own way, aspects of our psychology Plato finds too important to ignore. It is further argued that without a psychological model of the agent as a whole, Plato lacks the psychological underpinnings for an account of virtue as the transformation of the agent as a whole, and thus for an account of happiness that is holistic rather than dimensional, consisting not in one's flourishing in some dimension of one's life but in one's flourishing as a harmoniously integrated whole. Consequently, Plato offers a compelling ethical and value-theoretical account of pleasure as a conditional good that is rationally incorporated by practical intelligence, but lacks an adequate unified psychology of the affective and rational activities of the soul to underwrite that ethical and value-theoretical account. (shrink)

_Metaphysics: The Classic Readings_ is an essential collection of the most influential attempts to depict the fundamental nature of reality or being - from Spinoza's doctrine of a single, indivisible substance to Russell's 'logical atomism', and from the Buddha's account of a causally interrelated world to Leibniz's one of casually independent 'monads'.

The complexity that we observe in nature can often be explained in terms of cooperative behavior. For example, the major transitions of evolution required the emergence of cooperation among the lower-level units of selection, which led to specialization through division-of-labor ultimately resulting in spontaneous order. There are two aspects to address explaining how such cooperation is sustained: how free-riders are prevented from free-riding on the benefits of cooperative tasks, and just as importantly, how those social benefits arise. We review these (...) problems from an economic perspective, and highlight how ideas from economics can help us to better understand how the benefits of social interactions arise, how they are sustained, and how they affect the underlying social dilemmas. (shrink)

Détente or Destruction, 1955-57 continues publication of Routledge's multi-volume critical edition of Bertrand Russell's shorter writings. Between September 1955 and November 1957 Russell published some sixty-one articles, reviews, statements, contributions to books and letters to editors, over fifty of which are contained in this volume. The texts, several of them hitherto unpublished, reveal the deepening of Russell's commitment to the anti-nuclear struggle, upon which he embarked in the previous volume of Collected Papers ( Man's Peril, 1954-55 ). Continuing with the (...) theme of nuclear peril, this volume contains discussion of nuclear weapons, world peace, prospects for disarmament and British-Soviet friendship against the backdrop of the Cold War. One of the key papers in this volume is Russell's message to the inaugural conference of the Pugwash movement, which Russell was instrumental in launching and which became an influential, independent forum of East-West scientific cooperation and counsel on issues as an internationally agreed nuclear test-ban. In addition to the issues of war and peace, Russell, now in his eighties, continued to take an interest in a wide variety of themes. Russell not only addresses older controversies over nationalism and empire, religious belief and American civil liberties, he also confronts head-on the new and pressing matters of armed intervention in Hungary and Suez, and of the manufacture and testing of the British hydrogen bomb. This volume includes seven interviews ranging from East-West Relations after the Geneva conference to a Meeting with Russell. (shrink)

Purity violations overlap with other moral domains. They are not uniquely characterized by hypothesized markers of purity – the witness's emotion of disgust, taint to perpetrator's soul, or the diminished role of intention in moral judgment. Thus, Fitouchi et al.'s proposition that puritanical morality (a subset of violations in the purity domain) is part of cooperation-based morality is an important advance.

The new narcissist is haunted not by guilt but by anxiety. He seeks not to inflict his own certainties on others but to find a meaning in life. Liberated from the superstitions of the past, he doubts even the reality of his own existence. Superficially relaxed and tolerant, he finds little use for dogmas of racial and ethnic purity but at the same time forfeits the security of group loyalties and regards everyone as a rival for the favors conferred by (...) a paternalistic state. His sexual attitudes are permissive rather than puritanical, even though his emancipation from ancient taboos brings him no sexual peace. Fiercely competitive in his demand for approval and acclaim, he distrusts competition because he associates it unconsciously with an unbridled urge to destroy. Hence he repudiates the competitive ideologies that flourished at an earlier stage of capitalist development and distrusts even their limited expression in sports and games. He extols cooperation and teamwork while harboring deeply antisocial impulses. He praises respect for rules and regulations in the secret belief that they do not apply to himself. Acquisitive in the sense that his cravings have no limits, he does not accumulate goods and provisions against the future, in the manner of the acquisitive individualist of nineteenth-century political economy, but demands immediate gratification and lives in a state of restless, perpetually unsatisfied desire. (shrink)

Direct reciprocity, indirect reciprocity, and reputation are important interrelated topics in the evolution of sociality. This non-mathematical review is a summary of each. Direct reciprocity (the positive kind) has a straightforward structure (e.g., "A rewards B, then rewards A") but the allocation might differ from the process that enabled it (e.g., whether it is true reciprocity or some form of mutualism). Indirect reciprocity (the positive kind) occurs when person (B) is rewarded by a third party (A) after doing a good (...) deed towards somebody else (C) — with the structure "A observes B help C, therefore A helps B." Here too, the allocation differs from the process: if there is underlying cognition, then indirect reciprocity is based on some ability to keep track of the reputations of others (to remember that "B helped C"). Reputation is a kind of social impression based on typicality, derived from three channels of experience (direct encounters, bystander observation, and gossip). Although non-human animals cannot gossip verbally, they can eavesdrop on third parties and learn vicariously. This paper ends with a proposal to investigate the topic of social expertise as a model for understanding how animals understand and utilise observed information within their social groups. (shrink)

In addition to facing the known competitors in the formal economy, entrepreneurs must also be concerned with rivalry emanating from the informal economy. The informal economy is characterized by actions outside the normal scope of commerce, such as unsanctioned payments and gift-giving, as means of influencing competition. Scholars and policy makers alike have an interest in mitigating the impacts of such informal activity in that it might present an obstacle for legitimate commerce. Received theory suggests that country institutions can enable (...) and constrain productive activity, and, in doing so, influence competitive obstacles in a country. Leveraging 13,670 responses from entrepreneurs distributed across 59 countries, we provide evidence that two particular types of enabling institutions, countries’ property rights regulations and cooperative actions, are useful for lowering the obstacles presented by informal activity. We also find evidence that two constraining institutions, economic and financial regulations lead to more obstacles presented by informal activity. We describe implications for entrepreneurs, policy makers, and future researchers stemming from these findings. (shrink)

"In the second half of his life, Bertrand Russell transformed himself from a major philosopher, whose work was intelligible to a small elite, into a political activist and popular writer, know to millions throughout the world. Yet his life is the tragic story of a man who believed in a modern, rational approach to life and who, though his ideas guided popular opinion throughout the twentieth century, lost everything." "Drawing on thousands of documents collected at the Russell archives in Canada, (...) Monk steers through the turbulence of Russell's public activities, scrutinizing his sometimes paradoxical and often outrageous pronouncements. Monk's focus, however, is on the tragedy of Russell's personal life, and in revealing this inner drama Monk has relied heavily on the cooperation of Russell's surviving relatives and access to previously unexamined legal and private correspondence."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved. (shrink)

From 1895, the year he published his first signed article, to four days before his death in 1970 when he wrote his last, Bertrand Russell was a powerful force in the world of mathematics, philosophy, human rights and the struggle for peace. During those years he published 70 books, almost as many pamphlets and over 2,000 articles, he also contributed pieces to some 200 books. The availability of the Bertrand Russell Archives at McMaster University since 1968 has made it possible (...) for the first time to compile a full, descriptive bibliography of his writings. The Collected Papers are based on it. Fully annotated, the Bibliography is textually oriented and will guide the scholar, collector and general reader to the authoritative editions of Russell's works. It includes references to the locations of all known speeches and interviews, and reproductions of the dust-jackets of Russell's books. Blackwell, Ruja and Turcon have cooperated for nearly 20 years on the new Bibliography. Lord Russell saw the extensive additions for it near the end of his life and declared: `I am impressed.'. (shrink)

From 1895, the year he published his first signed article, to four days before his death in 1970 when he wrote his last, Bertrand Russell was a powerful force in the world of mathematics, philosophy, human rights and the struggle for peace. During those years he published 70 books, almost as many pamphlets and over 2,000 articles, he also contributed pieces to some 200 books. The availability of the Bertrand Russell Archives at McMaster University since 1968 has made it possible (...) for the first time to compile a full, descriptive bibliography of his writings. The _Collected Papers_ are based on it. Fully annotated, the Bibliography is textually oriented and will guide the scholar, collector and general reader to the authoritative editions of Russell's works. It includes references to the locations of all known speeches and interviews, and reproductions of the dust-jackets of Russell's books. Blackwell, Ruja and Turcon have cooperated for nearly 20 years on the new Bibliography. Lord Russell saw the extensive additions for it near the end of his life and declared: `I am impressed.'. (shrink)

I Deliberation, Practical Syllogisms , and Intuition. Introduction Aristotle's views on moral reasoning are a difficult and much disputed subject. ...

'China, by her resources and her population, is capable of being the greatest power in the world after the United States.' Bertrand Russell, The Problem of China In 1920 the philosopher Bertrand Russell spent a year in China as Professor of Philosophy at the University of Beijing, where his lectures on mathematical logic enthralled students and listeners, including Mao Tse Tung, who attended some of Russell's talks. Written at a time when China was largely regarded by the West as backward (...) and weak, The Problem of China sees Russell rise above the prejudices of his era and presciently assess China's past, present and future. Russell brings his analytical and insightful eye to bear on some fundamental aspects of China's history and politics, cautioning China against adopting a purely Western model of social and economic development, which he regarded as characterized by a combination of greed and militarism. Beginning with an overview of nineteenth-century Chinese history and considering China's relations with Japan and Russia, Russell then contrasts Chinese civilization with Western. He devotes a fascinating chapter to the character of the Chinese, which he argues is complex but ultimately defined by a 'pacific temper'. With uncanny foresight, Russell predicts China's resurgence, but only if it is able to establish an orderly government, promote industrial development under Chinese control and foster the spread of education. This Routledge Classics edition includes a new introduction by Bernard Linsky. (shrink)

Studies on rational conjecture, inference, and reckoning.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies n.s. 34 (winter 2014–15): 131–4 The Bertrand Russell Research Centre, McMaster U. issn 0036–01631; online 1913–8032 c:\users\ken\documents\type3402\rj 3402 050 red.docx 2015-02-04 9:19 PM _ibliography NEW PERIODICAL ARTICLES BY RUSSELL Kenneth Blackwell here are 35 new C entries since 1993 for A Bibliography of Bertrand Russell, and more for all Parts of Vol. 2. With many thanks to several readers. C15.18a [RECONSTRUCTION OF (...) INTELLECTUAL INTERNATIONALISM AFTER THE WAR]. Svenska Dagbladet, Stockholm, 18 July 1915, sec. b, p. 5. Published under the general title “Det kulturella samarbetets återupptagande efter kriget” [The re-establishment of cultural cooperation after the war]. There is a subtitle : “Tre nya svar på Svenska Dagbladets världsenquête” [Three new responses to Svenska Dagbladet’s world enquiry].—Ms. (ra3 rec. acq. 1,325).—In English in Russell, n.s. 18 (1998): 141–3 (ed. K. Blackwell). C16.07a THE CASE OF MR. E. CHAPPELOW. The Manchester Guardian, 19 April 1916, p. 6. Six sentences, introduced thus: “The Hon. Bertrand Russell writes”.—Russell makes reference to the Everett case. C16.10a THE CASE OF THE CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR. The Freethinker, 36 (14 May 1916): 310. “… the country is drifting into the infliction of serious persecution upon a large number of young men.…”—Reprinted, with two-thirds omitted, in Jim Herrick, Vision and Realism: a Hundred years of The Freethinker (London: Foote, 1982), pp. 51–2. C22.39 INSTINCT, HABIT, AND INTELLIGENCE. Hull Weekly Recorder, no. 1 (16 Dec. 1922): 6–9. Reprinted in Collected Papers 16 (in preparation). C23.10a BERTRAND RUSSELL PREDICTS U.S. WILL EVENTUALLY CONTROL THE ENTIRE WORLD. The Daily Argus, Mt. Vernon, ny, 7 March 1923, p. 3. Subtitled “Famous British Philosopher Declares America Will Conquer through Economic Causes What Others Have Tried to Win by Force”.—A note states: “Written exclusively for I.N.S.” (International News Service).—Reprinted in Collected Papers 16 (in preparation). C28.02a WHAT I THINK OF COMPANIONATE MARRIAGE. Children, the Magazine for Parents, Chicago, 3 (Feb. 1928): 17. Russell’s contribution—one of four under the title, the others being by Ernest R. Groves, Stephen S. Wise, and Anna Garlin Spencer, pp. 17, 47—is five sentences long.—Reprinted in Collected Papers 18 (in preparation). C28.02b [ADVICE ON WRITING]. The Daily Illini (U. of Illinois), Champaign, il, 12 Feb. 1928, p. 15. Letter to the author on developing a writing style, quoted fully in Newton York, q= 132 kenneth blackwell c:\users\ken\documents\type3402\rj 3402 050 red.docx 2015-02-04 9:19 PM “What Authors Advise”, ibid.—Part of Russell’s advice is to “read Gibbon all through, at least twice.” —Reprinted in Collected Papers 18 (in preparation). C32.39a MR. BERTRAND RUSSELL’S QUESTIONS. The Manchester Guardian, 27 June 1932, p. 10. Letter to a Coventry correspondent, under the title, “The Dismissed Teacher”. C34.36a ROMAN-CELTIC FARM SITE. The Times, 18 Sept. 1934, p. 7. Letter in “Points from Letters”, signed by John Russell, Telegraph House, Harting, Petersfield, referring to S. E. Winbolt’s “A Roman-Celtic Farm Site; Discovery near Harting, Sussex”, ibid., 10 Sept. 1934, p. 7. The writer states that his part was “not so great” as it appears in the account.—The composition of the letter is ascribed here to Bertrand Russell because a draft, with the exception of a phrase added later, is entirely in his fluent hand. That of his 13-year-old son is not present.—The draft was crossed out, and the verso became folio 1 of the ms. of “On Ceremony” (C34.48). C34.55a [THE AMERICAN LIBRARY OF NAZI BANNED BOOKS]. Jewish Daily Bulletin, New York, 11, no. 3,030 (23 Dec. 1934): 1. A telegram congratulating the Brooklyn Jewish Center for “inaugurating an American Library for Nazi burnt books”.—The allusion is to the Nazi bonfire of banned books on 10 May 1933.—The dinner celebrating the Library and mentioned in Russell’s telegram is the subject of Joseph Goldberg, “ ‘A Splendid and Historic Gathering’: Brooklyn Jewish Center Inaugurates Library of Nazi Banned books”, Brooklyn Jewish Center Review... (shrink)

Bernard Williams identifies Hume as “in some ways an archetypal reconciler” who, nevertheless, displays “a striking resistance to some of the central tenets of what [Williams calls] ‘morality’”. This assessment, it is argued, is generally correct. There are, however, some significant points of difference in their views concerning moral responsibility. This includes Williams’s view that a naturalistic project of the kind that Hume pursues is of limited value when it comes to making sense of “morality’s” illusions about responsibility and blame. (...) It is, Williams maintains, only when we consider moral responsibility in genealogical terms, which gives attention to the importance of culture and history, that we can find a way of exposing the various prejudices and illusions of “the morality system”. Nevertheless, despite these differences, what Hume and Williams share is a fundamental commitment to provide a more “truthful” and “realistic” understanding of moral responsibility and our human ethical predicament. (shrink)

Iris Murdoch offers a distinctive conception of moral psychology. She suggests that to develop a moral psychology is to develop what she calls a soul-picture; different philosophical moral psychologies are, as she puts it, “rival soul-pictures.” In this paper I clarify Murdoch’s generic notion of “soul-picture,” the genus of which, for example, Aristotle’s, Kant’s, Nietzsche’s, and Murdoch’s constitute rival species. Are all philosophical moral psychologies soul-pictures? If not, what are the criteria that a moral psychology must meet in order to (...) qualify as a soul-picture? I propose five key dimensions. A soul-picture provides a picture of the soul or self that is 1) holistic, 2) value-rich and psychologically realistic (for Murdoch these are intertwined), 3) reflexive, 4) therapeutic and 5) the articulation of which makes use of imaginative language. (shrink)

_Détente or Destruction, 1955-57_ continues publication of Routledge's multi-volume critical edition of Bertrand Russell's shorter writings. Between September 1955 and November 1957 Russell published some sixty-one articles, reviews, statements, contributions to books and letters to editors, over fifty of which are contained in this volume. The texts, several of them hitherto unpublished, reveal the deepening of Russell's commitment to the anti-nuclear struggle, upon which he embarked in the previous volume of _Collected Papers_. Continuing with the theme of nuclear peril, this (...) volume contains discussion of nuclear weapons, world peace, prospects for disarmament and British-Soviet friendship against the backdrop of the Cold War. One of the key papers in this volume is Russell's message to the inaugural conference of the Pugwash movement, which Russell was instrumental in launching and which became an influential, independent forum of East-West scientific cooperation and counsel on issues as an internationally agreed nuclear test-ban. In addition to the issues of war and peace, Russell, now in his eighties, continued to take an interest in a wide variety of themes. Russell not only addresses older controversies over nationalism and empire, religious belief and American civil liberties, he also confronts head-on the new and pressing matters of armed intervention in Hungary and Suez, and of the manufacture and testing of the British hydrogen bomb. This volume includes seven interviews ranging from East-West Relations after the Geneva conference to a Meeting with Russell. (shrink)

_Détente or Destruction, 1955-57_ continues publication of Routledge's multi-volume critical edition of Bertrand Russell's shorter writings. Between September 1955 and November 1957 Russell published some sixty-one articles, reviews, statements, contributions to books and letters to editors, over fifty of which are contained in this volume. The texts, several of them hitherto unpublished, reveal the deepening of Russell's commitment to the anti-nuclear struggle, upon which he embarked in the previous volume of _Collected Papers_. Continuing with the theme of nuclear peril, this (...) volume contains discussion of nuclear weapons, world peace, prospects for disarmament and British-Soviet friendship against the backdrop of the Cold War. One of the key papers in this volume is Russell's message to the inaugural conference of the Pugwash movement, which Russell was instrumental in launching and which became an influential, independent forum of East-West scientific cooperation and counsel on issues as an internationally agreed nuclear test-ban. In addition to the issues of war and peace, Russell, now in his eighties, continued to take an interest in a wide variety of themes. Russell not only addresses older controversies over nationalism and empire, religious belief and American civil liberties, he also confronts head-on the new and pressing matters of armed intervention in Hungary and Suez, and of the manufacture and testing of the British hydrogen bomb. This volume includes seven interviews ranging from East-West Relations after the Geneva conference to a Meeting with Russell. (shrink)

The Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776) is widely regarded as the greatest and most significant English-speaking philosopher and often seen as having had the most influence on the way philosophy is practiced today in the West. His reputation is based not only on the quality of his philosophical thought but also on the breadth and scope of his writings, which ranged over metaphysics, epistemology, morals, politics, religion, and aesthetics. The Handbook's 38 newly commissioned chapters are divided into six parts: Central (...) Themes; Metaphysics and Epistemology; Passion, Morality and Politics; Aesthetics, History, and Economics; Religion; Hume and the Enlightenment; and After Hume. The volume also features an introduction from editor Paul Russell and a chapter on Hume's biography. (shrink)

Bertrand Russell was one of the greatest logicians since Aristotle, and one of the most important philosophers of the past two hundred years. As we approach the 125th anniversary of the Nobel laureate's birth, his works continue to spark debate, resounding with unmatched timeliness and power. The Problems of Philosophy, one of the most popular works in Russell's prolific collection of writings, has become core reading in philosophy. Clear and accessible, this little book is an intelligible and stimulating guide to (...) those problems of philosophy which often mistakenly lead to its status as too lofty and abstruse for the lay mind. Focusing on problems he believes will provoke positive and constructive discussion, Russell concentrates on knowledge rather than metaphysics, steering the reader through his famous 1910 distinction between "knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description," and introducing important theories of Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Hume, Locke, Plato, and others to lay the foundation for philosophical inquiry by general readers and scholars alike.With a new introduction by John Perry, this valuable work is a perfect introduction to the field and will continue to stimulate philosophical discussion as it has done for nearly forty years. (shrink)

Welcome precision is brought to the idea, history, types and motives of ethical investment in what will become an authoritative review of the subject. Marc Cooper is a postgraduate researcher at the European Business Management School, University of Wales, and Bodo Schlegelmilch, recently British Rail Professor of Marketing there, has recently been appointed Professor of Marketing at the American Graduate School of International Management (Thunderbird), Phoenix, Arizona.

The art of rational conjecture.--The art of drawing inferences.--The art of reckoning.

Bertrand Russell is concerned in this book with the foundations of knowledge. He approaches his subject through a discussion of language, the relationships of truth to experience and an investigation into how knowledge of the structure of language helps our understanding of the structure of the world. This edition includes a new introduction by Thomas Baldwin, Clare College, Cambridge.

The Problems of Philosophy is a 1912 book by Bertrand Russell, in which Russell attempts to create a brief and accessible guide to the problems of philosophy. Focusing on problems he believes will provoke positive and constructive discussion, Russell concentrates on knowledge rather than metaphysics: If it is uncertain that external objects exist, how can we then have knowledge of them but by probability. There is no reason to doubt the existence of external objects simply because of sense data. Russell (...) guides the reader through his famous 1910 distinction between knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description and introduces important theories of Plato, Aristotle, René Descartes, David Hume, John Locke, Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and others to lay the foundation for philosophical inquiry by general readers and scholars alike. "In the following pages I have confined myself in the main to those problems of philosophy in regard to which I thought it possible to say something positive and constructive, since merely negative criticism seemed out of place. For this reason, theory of knowledge occupies a larger space than metaphysics in the present volume, and some topics much discussed by philosophers are treated very briefly, if at all. (shrink)

Thinking about God is historical thinking and that in two senses : the idea of God has a history, and those who think about God think through an historically formed mind. The task of the theologian, is not the attempt to move outside his historicity - such an attempt constitutes a fallacy and not a virtue - but to accept its implications and limitations. Methodologically this means that the theologian must point to the historical perspectives that underlie the idea of (...) God in its development and, in his own constructive thought, must work self-consciously with an historical perspective informed by the psychological and cosmological understanding of his own time. This book centers on that idea which traditionally has been associated with the very godness of God - the idea of divine abso luteness - and puts certain historical, logical, religious and, finally, cosmological questions to it. The roots of that idea lie in Greek thought, which entered Christian theology via the early church fathers; even so, there is much indication, particularly in Patristic trinitarian thought, that the Biblical heritage is pushing theological thinking towards a social or relative concept of divine being (ch. 1). (shrink)