This book is designed to explore the various kinds of association found in Chaucer's lexical usage, and so to alert the reader to the wider implications of ...

That style which modern scholars have called “curial” or “clergial” is an elaborate fifteenth-century prose style practiced most notoriously by William Caxton in works published during the last decades of the century. It is often assumed that he learned the style from French courtly models. This view has recently suffered modification through the work of Diane Bornstein, whose study of the Tale of Melibee revealed that Chaucer had an independent grasp of many features of the style almost a hundred years (...) before Caxton used it. Although she was successful in demonstrating the use at an early date of these stylistic features, Bornstein did not question or discuss the sources of Chaucer's evident competence. It could be reasonably assumed, as had been assumed for Caxton, that they lay in French literary texts, since features of the style are present in the source of Melibee, the Livre de Mellibee et de Prudence, and they could be presumed to have occurred also in other literary texts of French origin with which Chaucer was doubtless familiar. (shrink)

Today’s bodies are akin to ‘walking sensor platforms’. Bodies either host, or are the subjects of, an array of sensing devices that act to convert bodily movements, actions and dynamics into circulative data. This article proposes the notions of ‘disembodied exhaust’ and ‘embodied exhaustion’ to conceptualise processes of bodily sensorisation and datafication. As the material body interfaces with networked sensor technologies and sensing infrastructures, it emits disembodied exhaust: gaseous flows of personal information that establish a representational data-proxy. It is this (...) networked actant that progressively structures how embodied subjects experience their daily lives. The significance of this symbiont medium in determining the outcome of interplays between networked individuals and audiences necessitates that it is carefully contrived. The article explores the nature and function of the data-proxy, and its impact on social relations. Drawing on examples that depict individuals engaging with their data-proxies, the article suggests that managing a virtual presence is analogous to a work relation, demanding diligence and investment. But it also shows how the data-proxy operates as a mode of affect that challenges conventional distinctions made between organic and inorganic bodies, agency and actancy, mortality and immortality, presence and absence. (shrink)

We investigate claims about the frequency of "know" made by philosophers. Our investigation has several overlapping aims. First, we aim to show what is required to confirm or disconfirm philosophers’ claims about the comparative frequency of different uses of philosophically interesting expressions. Second, we aim to show how using linguistic corpora as tools for investigating meaning is a productive methodology, in the sense that it yields discoveries about the use of language that philosophers would have overlooked if they remained in (...) their "armchairs of an afternoon", to use J.L. Austin’s phrase. Third, we discuss facts about the meaning of "know" that so far have been ignored in philosophy, with the aim of reorienting discussions of the relevance of ordinary language for philosophical theorizing. (shrink)

Pleidooi voor een metafysische visie op hedendaagse sociale en economische problemen.

The main object of this thesis is to explain in a systematic fashion Francis Hutcheson's moral theory. Such an attempt will necessarily involve a discussion of the various philosophical problems which are inherent in his theory. For example, I discuss the issue of whether Hutcheson's theory of the moral sense is to be interpreted in an intuitionist or an emotivist fashion. It is argued that some aspects of his moral sense theory favour the former and some the latter interpretation, Hutcheson's (...) theory of benevolence is outlined and his' arguments against the psychological egoists are discussed. Perhaps the most important problem with Hutcheson's moral sense theory is the problem of motivation. Any moral theory which locates the virtue of virtuous actions in the motive from which they are done, as Hutcheson's does, will encounter problems in explaining how knowledge of right and wrong can influence us to be virtuous. Hutcheson's ingenious solution to this problem and his theory of moral motivation, which I suggest have not been adequately discussed previously to this thesis, are explicated at length. Hutcheson's criticisms of the moral rationalists are considered, as are Price's criticisms of Hutcheson. A final chapter attempts to show how the development of Hutcheson's thinking was the result of his realizing the implications of his own theories, especially his theory of moral motivation. (shrink)

This paper aims to address the relevance of the natural sciences for transcendental phenomenology, that is, the issue of naturalism. The first section distinguishes three varieties of naturalism and corresponding forms of naturalization: an ontological one, a methodological one, and an epistemological one. In light of these distinctions, in the second section, I examine the main projects aiming to “naturalize phenomenology”: neurophenomenology, front-loaded phenomenology, and formalized approaches to phenomenology. The third section then considers the commitments of Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology with (...) respect to the three varieties of naturalism previously discussed. I argue that Husserl rejected strong and weak forms of epistemological naturalism, strong methodological naturalism, and ontological naturalism. The fourth section presents the argument that Husserl endorsed a weak, conditional form of methodological naturalism. This point is illustrated with Husserl’s proposal of “somatology,” a natural science apt to study the corporeality of the lived body. The final section addresses the complementarity and respective limits of the transcendental phenomenological and the natural scientific frameworks. I argue that, on Husserl’s account, the function of transcendental phenomenology with respect to the natural sciences is to provide them with an epistemological foundation and an ontological clarification. I suggest that certain natural sciences can be understood, within the transcendental phenomenological framework, as “sciences of constitution,” that is, as sciences investigating the contribution of real structures acting as conditions of possibility for the occurrence of certain kinds of comprehensive unities in lived experience. (shrink)

Contemporary Materialism brings together the best recent work on materialism from many of our leading contemporary philosophers. This is the first comprehensive reader on the subject. The majority of philosophers and scientists today hold the view that all phenomena are physical, as a result materialism or 'physicalism' is now the dominant ontology in a wide range of fields. Surprisingly no single book, until now, has collected the key investigations into materialism, to reflect the impact it has had on current thinking (...) in metaphysics, philosophy of mind and the theory of value. The classic papers in this collection chart contemporary problems, positions and themes in materialism. At the invitation of the editors, many of the papers have been specially up-dated for this collection: follow-on pieces written by the contributors enable them to appraise the original paper and assess developments since the work was first published. The book's selections are largely non-technical and accessible to advanced undergraduates. The editors have provided a useful general introduction, outlining and contextualising this central system of thought, as well as a topical bibliography. Contemporary Materialism will be vital reading for anyone concerned to discover the ideas underlying contemporary philosophy. David Armstrong, University of Sydney; Jerry Fodor, Rutgers University, New Jersey; Tim Crane, University College, London; D. H. Mellor, Univeristy of Cambridge; J.J.C. (shrink)

The Anvil Book series offers a set of short, paper–back monographs by specialists in history and social science upon special periods or movements of thought. Three of its opening works deal sensibly with those highly ambiguous, but aggressively sentimental terms, Rationalism, Liberalism and Conservatism which in the past three centuries have managed to impose a verbal fetish upon their shifting detail of speculative philosophy and politico–economic policy. It is no small service to the contemporary student to clearly analyse the historical (...) origins and development of each line of thought. And the method is uniformly successful in each book: approximately one hundred pages are devoted to an historico–critical analysis of each topic, followed by a ninety page selection of classic texts from its leading spirits. (shrink)

Every human being has a vast store of knowledge about health and sickness and the ability to draw conclusions on the basis of this knowledge. Yet science research continues to be based largely on `objective studies' conducted by academics and to look down on `subjective' studies. The belief that `pure' objective science is highest and subjective information is lowest, inculcated by the way science is taught in schools, deters doctors from communicating information based on personal experience lest it be decried (...) - as it certainly will be - as scientifically worthless. Alternative medicine with its open, flexible approach to the whole person, has something to teach conventional medicine. And doctors must pay more attention to what their patients can tell them. There is no rational justification for accepting the factual information that people give (in a case history) while disregarding what they have to say about their condition. Old-style science is particularly inept in helping doctors deal with psychosomatic problems. What is needed is a new `science of the subjective' which would be truly appropriate to the subject of study, the whole human being. There is a commentary on this paper by Sir Douglas Black, President of the Royal College of Physicians. (shrink)

Infinite time Turing machines with only one tape are in many respects fully as powerful as their multi-tape cousins. In particular, the two models of machine give rise to the same class of decidable sets, the same degree structure and, at least for partial functions f : ℝ → ℕ, the same class of computable functions. Nevertheless, there are infinite time computable functions f : ℝ → ℝ that are not one-tape computable, and so the two models of infinitary computation (...) are not equivalent. Surprisingly, the class of one-tape computable functions is not closed under composition; but closing it under composition yields the full class of all infinite time computable functions. Finally, every ordinal that is clockable by an infinite time Turing machine is clockable by a one-tape machine, except certain isolated ordinals that end gaps in the clockable ordinals. (shrink)

This is an encyclopedia entry (for the IVR Encyclopedia of legal and political philosophy) covering John Rawls. It aims to provide a general but not superficial introduction to Rawls's theory of justice, justice as fairness.

This anthology brings together many of the more significant contributions to Cartesian scholarship, some of which reach far back as the 1930s. Altogether, there are well over 100 detailed analyses and discussions of salient aspects of Descartes' Promethean legacy. Because Descartes intended his system to embrace not only philosophy but also a complete scientific corpus, this collection covers both philosophical issues and scientific views: Volume 1 is devoted to questions of Cartesian Method and epistemology; Volumes 2 and 3 concentrate on (...) his metaphysics; and Volume 4 discusses Descartes' scientific views and achievements. The lucidity and originality of the essays, a number of which are already classics of Cartesian scholarship, will ensure that this anthology becomes a standard in Cartesian philosophy. An invaluable resource, Rene;e Descartes provides a large variety of introductions, analyses, criticisms, and appraisals of the problems which preoccupied Descartes and the solutions he propounded. (shrink)