This monograph explores the logical systems of early logicians in the Arabic tradition from a theoretical perspective, providing a complete panorama of early Arabic logic and centering it within an expansive historical context. By thoroughly examining the writings of the first Arabic logicians, al-Fārābī, Avicenna and Averroes, the author analyzes their respective theories, discusses their relationship to the syllogistics of Aristotle and his followers, and measures their influence on later logical systems. Beginning with an introduction to the writings of the (...) most prominent Arabic logicians, the author scrutinizes these works to determine their categorical logic, as well as their modal and hypothetical logics. Where most other studies written on this subject focus on the Arabic logicians’ epistemology, metaphysics, and theology, this volume takes a unique approach by focusing on the actual technical aspects and features of their logics. The author then moves on to examine the original texts as closely as possible and employs the symbolism of modern propositional, predicate, and modal logics, rendering the arguments of each logician clearly and precisely while clarifying the theories themselves in order to determine the differences between the Arabic logicians’ systems and those of Aristotle. By providing a detailed examination of theories that are still not very well-known in Western countries, the author is able to assess the improvements that can be found in the Arabic writings, and to situate Arabic logic within the breadth of the history of logic. This unique study will appeal mainly to historians of logic, logicians, and philosophers who seek a better understanding of the Arabic tradition. It also will be of interest to modern logicians who wish to delve into the historical aspects and progression of their discipline. Furthermore, this book will serve as a valuable resource for graduate students who wish to complement their general knowledge of Arabic culture, logic, and sciences. (shrink)

We re-examine the problem of existential import by using classical predicate logic. Our problem is: How to distribute the existential import among the quantified propositions in order for all the relations of the logical square to be valid? After defining existential import and scrutinizing the available solutions, we distinguish between three possible cases: explicit import, implicit non-import, explicit negative import and formalize the propositions accordingly. Then, we examine the 16 combinations between the 8 propositions having the first two kinds of (...) import, the third one being trivial and rule out the squares where at least one relation does not hold. This leads to the following results: (1) three squares are valid when the domain is non-empty; (2) one of them is valid even in the empty domain: the square can thus be saved in arbitrary domains and (3) the aforementioned eight propositions give rise to a cube, which contains two more (non-classical) valid squares and several hexagons. A classical solution to the problem of existential import is thus possible, without resorting to deviant systems and merely relying upon the symbolism of First-order Logic (FOL). Aristotle’s system appears then as a fragment of a broader system which can be developed by using FOL. (shrink)

RésuméDans son analyse des propositions hypothétiques, conditionnelles et disjonctives, Ibn Sīnā suggère que ces propositions peuvent être quantifiées et présente dans la section VI de son traité un système hypothétique contenant les propositions conditionnelles, qui est exactement parallèle à la syllogistique des propositions catégoriques et utilise les mêmes règles de conversion et les mêmes démonstrations. Dans la section VII, il présente quatre listes de propositions hypothétiques quantifiées dont les composants sont eux-mêmes quantifiés et affirme que les relations du carré aristotélicien (...) des oppositions valent pour ces propositions. Par ailleurs, il affirme que certaines propositions conditionnelles universelles affirmatives sont équivalentes à certaines universelles négatives dont les conséquents sont opposés, et également à certaines propositions disjonctives. Le problème est que ces thèses sont incompatibles entre elles, car elles requièrent deux lectures différentes de la proposition conditionnelle universelle affirmative, qu'Ibn Sīnā ne distingue pas clairement. Dans le présent article nous résolvons le problème en distinguant explicitement entre ces deux interprétations et en montrant que la première valide la conversion de l'universelle affirmative et les relations du carré des oppositions ainsi que tous les modes admis, alors que la seconde valide la règle de contraposition et les équivalences énoncées par Ibn Sīnā, ce qui rend compte des affirmations d'Ibn Sīnā et rend le système cohérent. (shrink)

RésuméDans cet article, je pose le problème suivant: quelles propositions ont un import dans la logique modale d'Avicenne? Lesquelles n'en ont pas? Partant de l'assomption que les propositions singulières et quantifiées ont un import si elles requièrent l'existence de leur sujet pour être vraies, j'analyse d'abord l'import des propositions absolues, ensuite celui des propositions modales en tenant compte des définitions d'Avicenne et des relations entre ces propositions. Cette analyse conduit aux résultats suivants: Avicenne défend l'opinion générale selon laquelle les affirmatives, (...) qu'elles soient modales ou assertoriques, ont un import alors que les négatives n'en ont pas. Il attribue un import aux propositions possibles affirmatives aussi bien dans l'interprétation externaliste que dans l'interprétation internaliste des logiciens post-Avicenniens, pourvu que le sujet ne soit pas impossible. Toutefois, la théorie n'est pas toujours claire, car Avicenne attribue un import aux propositions contenant ‘parfois non’ et aux nécessaires négatives contenant ‘tant qu'il est P’ malgré leur caractère négatif; les propositions nécessaires affirmatives contenant ‘tant qu'il est P’ sont considérées comme ayant un import alors qu'elles ne l'exigent pas. De plus, l'analyse qu'il donne des assertoriques spéciales E et O et de leurs contradictoires est erronée, ce qui ne permet pas de déterminer clairement leur import. Mais quand elles sont correctement analysées, ces propositions E et O n'ont pas d'import, alors que leurs contradictoires – les assertoriques spéciales I et A respectivement – ont un import. (shrink)

The square of opposition has never been drawn by classical Arabic logicians, such as al-Fārābī and Avicenna. However, in some later writings, we do find squares, which their authors call rather ‘tables’ (sing. _lawḥ_). These authors are Shihāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī and Muhammed b. Yūsuf al-Sanūsī. They do not pertain to the same geographic area, but they both provide squares of opposition. The aim of this paper is to analyse these two squares, to compare them with each other and with the (...) traditional square of opposition drawn by Apuleius and Boethius, with regard to their particular structure and their vertices and to evaluate their validity. We will show that both squares are different from each other and from the traditional square both with regard to their vertices, and to the arrangements of the oppositional relations. In addition, while al-Suhrawardī uses the notion of matter modalities to define the oppositions, al-Sanūsī relies rather on al-Rāzī’s and al-Khūnajī’s distinctions. Both authors agree, however, on the fact that affirmatives have an import while negatives do not. For this reason, their squares are valid from a logical viewpoint. As diagrams, these squares are nevertheless entirely original, due to the particular arrangements of their oppositional relations. Our analysis shows also that the later author does not seem to know the square drawn by the earlier one and that both authors do not seem to know Apuleius’ or Boethius’ squares. (shrink)

In this paper, I raise the following problem: How does Avicenna define modalities? What oppositional relations are there between modal propositions, whether quantified or not? After giving Avicenna's definitions of possibility, necessity and impossibility, I analyze the modal oppositions as they are stated by him. This leads to the following results: The relations between the singular modal propositions may be represented by means of a hexagon. Those between the quantified propositions may be represented by means of two hexagons that one (...) could relate to each other.This is so because the exact negation of the bilateral possible, i.e. ‘necessary or impossible’ is given and applied to the quantified possible propositions.Avicenna distinguishes between the scopes of modality which can be either external or internal . His formulations are external unlike al-F̄ar̄ab̄;’s ones. However his treatment of modal oppositions remains incomplete because not all the relations between the modal propositi.. (shrink)

In this paper I examine Avicenna’s conception of the consequence relation. I will consider in particular his categorical and hypothetical logics. I will first analyse his definition of the implication and will show that this relation is not a consequence relation in his frame. Unlike the medieval logicians, he does not distinguish explicitly between material and formal consequences. The arguments discussed in al-Qiyās, where the conclusion is true only in some matters, and would seem close to a material consequence for (...) that reason, are rejected explicitly as not syllogistic. He also rejects the ‘enthymemes’ unless they are complemented by their missing premise and the superfluous premises which, according to him, should promptly be ruled out. It seems then that the consequence relation in his theory is formal. It can be characterized as being ‘productivity in all matters’ or ‘necessary truth preserving’. It is illustrated by some single premise arguments, and above all by all kinds of syllogisms which, in his theory, are more numerous and various than in Aristotle’s one. The syllogism may contain two or more premises, including disjunctive ones. When it is hypothetical, it may lead to several conclusions. The premises may be in conflict, but then, the conclusion is false. He thus rejects the principle according to which ‘anything follows from a contradiction’. But, unlike what some scholars say, he does not admit any connexive principle. In the compound syllogisms, the conclusion follows by steps, each step taking two premises at once. (shrink)

RésuméLa logique d'Avicenne est présentée dans plusieurs traités, dont le plus important est Al-Qiyās, qui est inclus dans son livre encyclopédique Al-Šifā’. Mais le traité intitulé Manṭiq al-mašriqiyyīn est celui qui, selon certains commentateurs, exprime la véritable logique d'Avicenne. On peut donc poser la question suivante : ce traité est-il en conflit avec Al-Qiyās et les autres écrits d'Avicenne? Dans cet article, nous répondrons à cette question en comparant les analyses d'Avicenne des propositions absolues, i. e. non modales. Nous montrerons (...) qu'il n'y a pas de différence radicale entre les deux traités sur ce sujet puisque la plupart des conditions ajoutées aux propositions absolues dans Al-Qiyās peuvent être trouvées dans Manṭiq al-mašriqiyyīn. Ces conditions sont les suivantes : “tant que S existe”, “tant qu'il est S”, “tant qu'il est P”, “parfois”, “à un moment déterminé”, “parfois mais pas en permanence”. Dans Manṭiq al-mašriqiyyīn, la ḍarūrīya contient, la lāzima contient, la muntašira contient, la mafrūḍa contient, la wujūdiyya contient, mais est abandonnée. La waqtiyya était évoquée dans Al-Qiyās mais sans être classifiée. L'analyse temporelle initiée dans Al-Qiyās est donc poursuivie et développée dans Manṭiq al-mašriqiyyīn, même si dans ce dernier elle est parfois confuse. (shrink)

In this article, I analyze Quine’s conception of science, which is a radical defence of extensionalism on the grounds that first‐order logic is the most adequate logic for science. I examine some criticisms addressed to it, which show the role of modalities and probabilities in science and argue that Quine’s treatment of probability minimizes the intensional character of scientific language and methods by considering that probability is extensionalizable. But this extensionalizing leads to untenable results in some cases and is not (...) consistent with the fact that Quine himself admits confirmation which includes probability. Quine’s extensionalism does not account for this fact and then seems unrealistic, even if science ought to be extensional in so far as it is descriptive and mathematically expressible. (shrink)

In this paper, I raise the following problem: What terms are considered as syncategoremata in the Arabic logical texts? How are they defined? How do they determine the forms of the propositions and the inferences? To answer these questions, I focus on the analyses provided by al-Fārābī and Avicenna. Both authors apply the grammatical distinction between the particle, the noun and the verb to logic. They also state the semantic and the syntactic criterions, but their analyses of the particles are (...) different. For al-Fārābī devotes two treatises to the analysis of particles: al-musta‘malah fī l-maniq, where he provides a listing of particles that he classifies in the manner of the Greek grammarians and Kitāb al-urūf, where he analyzes some particles used in metaphysics; while Avicenna, despite the considerable amount of his logical corpus, does not devote a special book to the analysis of particles. He does not provide any listing either but characterizes each logical particle on its own, while analyzing the propositions, their elements and the inferences. In this paper, I argue that this treatment of particles in the two frames shows a significant difference between the two authors with regard to the relation between logic and grammar, and with regard to the characterizations of the logical particles themselves. For Avicenna is much less interested than al-Fārābī by the grammatical analysis and focuses much more on the logical particles, which he scrutinizes meticulously. This enriches his definitions of the logical constants and leads him in the final analysis to different and more various inferences than those hold by al-Fārābī. (shrink)

Dans cet article, j'analyse le problème des significations des constantes logiques. Ces significations sont-elles fixées conventionnellement comme le suggèrent Carnap et Wittgenstein, ou bien doivent-elles s'imposer à tous et ne pas dépendre de décisions préalables ? Après avoir examiné le conventionnalisme de Wittgenstein et Carnap et l'anti-conventionnalisme de Peacocke selon lequel les sens des constantes logiques reposent sur des conceptions implicites, je montre que les deux thèses sont également critiquables. La première ne résiste pas à l'incohérence du connecteur « tonk (...) », inventé par Prior, dont les règles montrent que la convention ne peut pas déterminer à elle seule les significations des constantes logiques, la deuxième ne tient pas assez compte des divergences importantes entre les logiques. En me basant sur différents systèmes logiques, je présente de nouveaux arguments pour défendre une position intermédiaire selon laquelle chaque constante logique se déploie en diverses variantes qui forment un spectre allant de la version la plus forte à la version la plus faible. Dans ce cadre, le concept de décision joue un rôle en logique, mais les décisions sont prises en amont, en fonction de certaines conceptions touchant la vérité, la déduction et les critères de logicité adoptés par les logiciens, et tiennent compte des intuitions fondamentales liéesà chaque constante. (shrink)

Dans cet article, j'analyse le problème des significations des constantes logiques. Ces significations sont-elles fixées conventionnellement comme le suggèrent Carnap et Wittgenstein, ou bien doivent-elles s'imposer à tous et ne pas dépendre de décisions préalables? Après avoir examiné le conventionnalisme de Wittgenstein et Carnap et l'anti-conventionnalisme de Peacocke selon lequel les sens des constantes logiques reposent sur des conceptions implicites, je montre que les deux thèses sont également critiquables. La première ne résiste pas à l'incohérence du connecteur « tonk », (...) inventé par Prior, dont les règles montrent que la convention ne peut pas déterminer à elle seule les significations des constantes logiques, la deuxième ne tient pas assez compte des divergences importantes entre les logiques. En me basant sur différents systèmes logiques, je présente de nouveaux arguments pour défendre une position intermédiaire selon laquelle chaque constante logique se déploie en diverses variantes qui forment un spectre allant de la version la plus forte à la version la plus faible. Dans ce cadre, le concept de décision joue un rôle en logique, mais les décisions sont prises en amont, en fonction de certaines conceptions touchant la vérité, la déduction et les critères de logicité adoptés par les logiciens, et tiennent compte des intuitions fondamentales liéesà chaque constante. (shrink)

Dans cet essai, je me propose d’analyser l’interprétation que fait Ricœur de la théorie frégéenne du sens et de la référence des noms et des propositions. Contre les structuralistes, Ricœur présente dans La Métaphore vive ce qu’il appelle une théorie référentielle de la métaphore et puise dans le texte frégéen pour la défendre en se basant sur la distinction sens-référence. Toutefois, les analyses qu’il présente de la théorie frégéenne ne sont pas fidèles au texte de ce logicien, qu’elles mélangent avec (...) ceux de Wittgenstein et Benveniste entre autres, ce qui conduit à une vision faussée de la théorie frégéenne. Pour cette raison, son analyse le conduit à des résultats qui sont aux antipodes de ceux de Frege pour qui ni le discours poétique ni le discours fictif en général n’ont une portée référentielle. (shrink)

Referential opacity is the failure of substitutivity of identity (SI, for short) and in Quine’s view of existential generalization (EG, for short) as well. Quine thinks that its “solution” in epistemic and doxastic contexts, which relies on the notion of exportation, leads to undesirable results. But epistemic logicians such as Jaakko Hintikka and Wolfgang Lenzen provide another solution based on a different diagnosis: opacity is not, as in Quine’s view, due to the absence of reference, it is rather due to (...) the plurality of references; therefore, one must stabilize the reference to restore SI and EG. However, Hintikka’s semantics remains classical in its treatment of existence, which makes EG non-applicable to possible objects, while in Lenzen’s system, EG is applicable by means of a particular quantifier. But this requires adding the predicate of existence to account for real objects. In this paper, I will show the advantages and disadvantages of both solutions and will end by providing an alternative approach to the problem of non-existent objects, which stays into the frame of possible worlds semantics, but introduces some more restrictions, eliminates the problematic predicate of existence, and applies a neutral quantifier to possible non-existent objects. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine al-Fārābī's and Avicenna's conceptions of the conditional. I show that there are significant differences between the two frames, despite their closeness. Al-Fārābī distinguishes between an accidental conditional and two “essential” conditionals. The accidental conditional can occur only once and pragmatically involves succession. In the first “essential” conditional, the consequent follows regularly the antecedent; pragmatically it involves likeliness. The second “essential” conditional can be either complete or incomplete. Semantically the former means “if and only if”; pragmatically (...) it means “necessarily if and only if”. The latter is expressed by ‘if, then’ and means entailment; pragmatically, it involves necessity and the inclusion of the antecedent into the consequent. As to Avicenna, he rejects explicitly al-Fārābī’s complete conditional and distinguishes between the luzūm and what he calls ittifāq. He quantifies over situations to express the various conditionals. The two universals AC and EC are expressed by “In all situations, if…, then…”, while the two particulars IC and OC are expressed by “In some situations, if…, then..”. This gives them a modal connotation, and makes the universals close to strict implications. Pragmatically, AC presupposes the truth of the antecedent, but there is no such presupposition in EC, while what is presupposed in both IC and OC is a conjunction. (shrink)

Classical Arabic poetry is replete with animal and fruit metaphors commonly used for endearment purposes. The comparative analysis of love metaphors in classical ghazal shows, however, a shift in the poetics of love from the use of animal metaphors in Badi poetry to the occurrence of fruit imagery in Bedouin ghazal. Based on a selection of classical Arabic love poetry, the paper traces the journey of love and sexuality to illustrate the conceptual change from the prevalence of the gazelle metaphor (...) in Bedouin ghazal of pre- and early Islam times to the emergence of fruit metaphors in Badi poetry of the Abbasid era. Evidenced in poetry, the metaphorical shit mirrors a change in the portrayal of women, who cease to be conceived as wild preys, fearing and fleeing male hunters to become exotic ripe fruits, waiting for the male to pick. Seemingly fortuitous, the shift in love imagery is reminiscent of sociocultural changes that help redefine the poetics of love in classical Arabic literature and inform gender dynamics in medieval Arabia. (shrink)

© The Author. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: [email protected] Gabiam’s timely and original book makes an excellent contribution to the limited literature on Palestinian refugees in Syria. The need to be seen to ‘suffer’ as her title suggests has long been a mantra of Palestinian refugees throughout the Middle East. A visit to any Palestinian refugee living in a United Nations Relief and Works Agency (...) camp would be struck by the poverty and crowdedness of the camp as well as its bareness. But the situation for Palestinian refugees in Syria has always been somehow different. Of all the UNRWA countries, Palestinian refugees in Syria had more rights—guaranteed in legislation going back to the 1950s—amounting to a form... (shrink)

The inconclusiveness of previous research on the association between gender diverse boards and corporate social performance has led us to revisit the question in light of stakeholder management and institutional theories. Given that corporate social responsibility is a multidimensional concept, we test the influence of GDB on various groups of stakeholders. By considering the interaction between stakeholders’ power and directors’ personal motivations toward the prioritization of stakeholders’ claims, we find that GDB are positively related to CSR dimensions that are related (...) to less powerful stakeholders such as the environment, contractors, and the community. However, GDB do not appear to have a significant impact on CSR dimensions that are associated with stakeholders who benefit from more institutionalized power, such as employees and customers. (shrink)

A chatty introduction to the problems of philosophy of religion. The book covers such topics as the origin of religion, arguments for the existence of God, fundamentalism, and immortality. Summary questions are included which are designed to stimulate discussion of the text.--S. A. E.

In this book Nicholas Wolterstorff, a well-known proponent of “Reformed epistemology,” sets out to investigate the modern origins of the evidentialist and foundationalist tradition that he opposes. He locates these origins in book 4 of Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Wolterstorff tells us that he had to overcome strong prejudices in writing the book, for “in the philosophical world I inhabit, Locke has the reputation of being boringly chatty and philosophically careless”. He suggests that the earlier parts of the Essay (...) deserve that reputation, but says that while reading book 4 he felt himself to be “present at the making of the modern mind”. To Wolterstorff’s credit, he seems to have vanquished some of his prejudices, for this book offers careful and charitable readings of many important strands in Locke’s epistemology. (shrink)

Why? is a book about the explanations we give and how we give them--a fascinating look at the way the reasons we offer every day are dictated by, and help constitute, social relationships. Written in an easy-to-read style by distinguished social historian Charles Tilly, the book explores the manner in which people claim, establish, negotiate, repair, rework, or terminate relations with others through the reasons they give. Tilly examines a number of different types of reason giving. For example, he shows (...) how an air traffic controller would explain the near miss of two aircraft in several different ways, depending upon the intended audience: for an acquaintance at a cocktail party, he might shrug it off by saying "This happens all the time," or offer a chatty, colloquial rendition of what transpired; for a colleague at work, he would venture a longer, more technical explanation, and for a formal report for his division head he would provide an exhaustive, detailed account. Tilly demonstrates that reasons fall into four different categories:Convention: "I'm sorry I spilled my coffee; I'm such a klutz." Narratives: "My friend betrayed me because she was jealous of my sister." Technical cause-effect accounts: "A short circuit in the ignition system caused the engine rotors to fail." Codes or workplace jargon: "We can't turn over the records. We're bound by statute 369." Tilly illustrates his topic by showing how a variety of people gave reasons for the 9/11 attacks. He also demonstrates how those who work with one sort of reason frequently convert it into another sort. For example, a doctor might understand an illness using the technical language of biochemistry, but explain it to his patient, who knows nothing of biochemistry, by using conventions and stories. Replete with sparkling anecdotes about everyday social experiences, Why? makes the case for stories as one of the great human inventions. (shrink)

In these lines from the fourth poem of his first collection of satires, Horace defines his poetic identity against the figures of his satiric predecessor Lucilius and his contemporary Stoic rival Crispinus. Horace emerges as the poet of Callimachean restraint and well-crafted writing in contrast to the chatty, unpolished prolixity of both Lucilius and Crispinus. A proponent of the highly wrought miniature over the sprawling scale of Lucilius, Horace knows when enough is enough. And, owing to a playful link between (...) what is satis and satura, this makes Horace not only a skilful poet but also the consummate satirist. I suggest that this programmatic message is both emphasized and illustrated by a piece of wordplay beginning in line 14. In a previously unnoticed telestich, the last letters of lines 14–18 spell out the word satis. Moreover, this hidden word—made possible only by the particular arrangement of words in all five of its lines—anticipates and deepens the poem's later interest in the matter of compositio, or artful word-arrangement. While this may be unique as an example of a Horatian telestich, Horace does engage in various forms of wordplay elsewhere, and could look not only to Hellenistic poets but also to Lucretius as a predecessor in this regard. In the Satires, a collection in which problems of libertas make forms of implication and veiled speech especially significant, a wide range of hidden words and wordplay has been detected and suggested. The instance observed here reaffirms Horace's interest in wordplay, while its uniqueness as a telestich is, as I hope to show, particularly suited to its context in this poem. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Playing the Dummy:Maugham, Smartphones, and the End of EleganceEric BronsonIOn the Russian Trans-Siberian train from Vladivostok to Petrograd (now St. Petersburg), an American businessman won't stop talking for the entire ten-day journey. In his story, "A Chance Acquaintance," W. Somerset Maugham describes this 1917 meeting between Ashenden, a British character loosely based on himself, and the chatty American, named Harrington. The two passengers are blissfully unmoved by the revolution (...) unfolding all around them. Ashenden casually suggests the two of them try and find another pair to pass the time playing bridge. Harrington refuses. "It beats me how an intelligent man can waste his time card-playing," Harrington asserts, "and of all the unintellectual pursuits I have ever seen it seems to me that solitaire is the worst. It kills conversation. Man is a social animal and he exercises the highest part of his nature when he takes part in social intercourse."1 Ashenden doesn't understand the American's distaste for playing cards, especially bridge. "'There is a certain elegance in wasting time,' said Ashenden. … 'Besides,' he added with bitterness, 'you can still talk.'" [End Page 477]Like many of his fictional characters, Maugham enjoyed eloquent, "time-wasting" games like bridge. Unlike solitaire, bridge encourages social interaction. Once, when his confounded bridge partner confronted Maugham with evidence that his high-class opponents were cheating, Maugham was nonplussed. "They gave us double Martinis to start with," he noted, "a slap-up lunch with a particularly good bottle of white Burgundy and old brandy with our coffee."2 The dishonesty was irrelevant. For Maugham, a good bridge game, like the attendant conversation, should help temper one's moral outrage and skim over the unruly passions that so often plague our public and private lives. Elegance, for Maugham, meant presenting the appearance of calm and respectability, especially when such presentations conflicted with one's more turbulent emotions.In Maugham's short story "The Three Fat Women of Antibes," the women around the bridge table desperately try to keep up appearances, both physically and emotionally. When passionate arguments inevitably threaten to undo the air of genteel conversation, Lena, the newest addition to the table, states, "I think it's such a pity to quarrel over bridge. … After all, it's only a game."3 But while it might be true that bridge is "only a game," Maugham took games seriously. Parlor games like bridge were spaces to practice and perfect the social mores on which colonial hierarchies were solidified. In Maugham's England, the game of life required an elegant performance of the many roles the genteel class was expected to play. That performance was predicated on a relentless effort to keep up ordinary appearances by regulating emotional displays. As Maugham wrote in a 1944 article for Good Housekeeping, a good bridge game rewards people who are "truthful, clearheaded, and considerate," characteristics essential "for playing the more important game of life."4More than any other card game, bridge is built on conventions. Etiquette dictates how cards are shuffled, passed, and played. While there is always some room for surprise and risk, everyone around the table needs to know the bidding and playing conventions to ensure the best possible game. In every hand a silent partner, known as the dummy, lays their cards face up, thereby taking themself out of the action.The persistence of such conventions is a holdover from the game of whist, the predecessor of bridge. In an early-nineteenth-century story, "Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist," essayist Charles Lamb describes an elderly whist player who enjoys the elegant waste of time that such long card games encourage. While dances and parties help build social skills around untrustworthy passions, card games like whist, and later bridge, [End Page 478] were more like "a long meal; not like quadrille, a feast of snatches. One or two rubbers might co-extend in duration with an evening. They gave time to form rooted friendships." This kind of congeniality mattered to serious people like Mrs. Battle, people who "despised superficiality, and looked deeper than the colours of things."5The game of bridge... (shrink)

Owen Flanagan is a highly prolific writer and speaker whose work brings together results of research in several empirical disciplines overlapping with philosophy, particularly neuroscience and other areas of psychology. This book of thirteen essays, most of them revisions of work published elsewhere, exhibits both his intellectual and his stylistic range. Many of the essays are light and chatty, others analytical and slower-going.

At the end of the last century, Ernst Mach coined a term to describe a particular technique of scientific investigation, a mental analogue to physical experiment which he dubbed "Gedunkenexperiment."I According to Mach, this method is central to the history of science; its greatest practitioners include Aristotle and Galileo, and its careful employment "led to enormous changes in our thinking and to an opening up of most important new paths of inquiry."2 In the century that followed, Mach's term showed up (...) occasionally in the philosophy of science literature, most notably, perhaps, in Karl Popper's "On the Use and Misuse of Imaginary Experiments, Especially in Quantum Theory,"s and in Thomas Kuhn's, "A Function for Thought Experiments."4 Discussions of the technique — in science and in philosophy — made sporadic appearances on the pages of philosophy journals, each year's Philosophers' Index sporting some dozen entries under "Thought Experiment." Then, in the mid-1980s, the Zeitgeist smiled upon thought experiments; they were explicitly recognized as a central technique in analytic philosophy, and self-conscious philosophical scrutiny was directed upon them.s In the Spring of 1986, Tamara Horowitz and Gerald Massey organized a conference at the University of Pittsburgh on "The Place of Thought Experiments in Science and Philosophy." The papers given at that conference, along with several others inspired by it, are collected in Thought Experiments in Science and Philosophy, published in 1991. A year later, Roy Sorensen published his Thought Experiments, a detailed ten-chapter discussion of thought experiments in philosophy and science, in which he defends their continuity with physical experiment, and adduces numerous arguments in favor of their philosophical legitimacy. Sorensen's style is chatty and unpretensious, full of striking turns of phrase and colloquialisms: "I am bullish on the comparison;" "this protoype gives us a bum steer;" "Wittgenstein discourages fascination with mental freak shows;" "traditional metaphysicians scoffed at Meinong's... (shrink)

Este trabalho pretende investigar a importância da escuta na Antiguidade greco-romana, especialmente em dois tratados de Plutarco, como um exercício capaz de efetuar no sujeito a cura para uma enfermidade que ele designava quase incurável: a tagarelice. A partir dos últimos cursos e escritos de Michel Foucault poderemos perceber de que forma a escuta representou uma prática essencial para a subjetivação da verdade, que servia de defesa contra os acontecimentos imprevistos ou infelizes da existência e, principalmente, para uma terapia das (...) enfermidades da alma.This article intends to investigate the importance of the hearing skill in the Greek-Roman Antiquity, especially in what concerns to the two treaties of Plutarco, as an exercise that is capable of providing the cure for an illness thathad been considered almost incurable: the chattiness. Starting from the last courses and written material by Michel Foucault we can realize in what way the listening skill represented an essential practice for the subjectivation of the truth, which served as a defense against the unexpected or unhappy happenings of one´s existence and mainly as a therapy for the illnesses of the soul. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 30.1 (2006) 102-117 [Access article in PDF] Gossip and Literary Narrative Blakey Vermeule Northwestern University Since its murky origins in Grub Street, a specter has haunted the novel—the specter of gossip. In its higher-minded mood, literary narratives have been very snobbish about gossip and the snobbishness is unfair. Even the most casual reader of social fiction will recognize that gossiping is what characters do most passionately. (...) However, they can neither admit nor be aware of it. Only minor or morally compromised characters are allowed to indulge in its pleasures. Matronly middle-aged women, chatty maids, little girls, and effeminate fops are the ones who gossip; their more reflective counterparts—the men and women designated as heroes and heroines—only briefly tolerate such idle chatter. Gossip is derided, decried, condemned, and maligned. It is womanish, low, slavish, servantish, silly, pert, loose, wanton, jiggetty, mean. It is the "tittle-tattle of Highbury" in Austen's Emma, an activity for the old maid Miss Bates and her even older, blind, and senile mother. In Middlemarch, although the world is "apparently a huge whispering-gallery," the greatest gossip of all is Mrs. Cadwallader, a matron with a mind like "phosphorous, biting at everything" (Spacks, p. 194). In Richardson's Clarissa, Lovelace—a man not known for his indifference to social information—airily dismisses gossip as "the female go-round." (In novels, the male equivalents of the "female go-round" tend to be such despised modes of exchange as business letters, gambling, chess, and games of chance.) Gossip has always been a part of charivari with the power to turn the world upside down. It also has the power to destroy lives (Les Liasons Dangereuses) and to derail love (when it becomes the "prejudice" of Pride and Prejudice). If it ever innocent, it is only because it is meaningless.Gossip is all of these things even—especially—when it powers the [End Page 102] whole narrative. This paradox is evident almost anywhere we choose to look. Social novelists view the stuff of direct, unmediated social information as so intense that it requires special handling—even disavowal. I will briefly survey examples from French, English, and Russian fiction. The first is a lurid and overheated speech by Henri de Marsay, the peculiar hero of Balzac's short novel, The Girl with the Golden Eyes (1815). De Marsay is a dissipated aristocrat in love with a mysterious young girl who, he finds out much later, is the sexual slave of de Marsay's long-lost sister. But first, after a night of passion that "had begun with a slow trickle of pleasures and ended in overflowing torrents," de Marsay realizes, when his lover accidentally lets slip the name of his rival, that the person he is competing with is female. The next day he becomes consumed with a bitter plan to kill his faithless lover. He reflects to his friend Paul "Upon my honor, man is a clown dancing on the edge of a cliff. We're told about the immorality of Les Liaisons dangereuses, and some book with the name of a chambermaid. But there is one ghastly, dirty, dreadful, corrupting book that is always open and never closed, the great book of the world—not to mention another book, a thousand times more dangerous, that consists of everything passed on by word of mouth between men or women behind their fans at the ball."1 Even though de Marsay is a corrupt aristocrat, his sentiments are little different from those the narrator expresses in the book's opening chapter, a panoptic survey of Parisian life as a glorious mosaic of infection, rot, and moral disease.In Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff's new tenant Lockwood breaks his self-imposed exile from social life by pressing the housekeeper Nellie Dean to do what housekeepers do best and launch into an aggrieved saga about her master's family. He wants her to serve up the gossip hot. "I ate..., hoping sincerely she would prove a regular gossip, and either rouse me to animation, or lull me to sleep... (shrink)

Gabrielle Suchon’s Treatise on Ethics and Politics offers surprising descriptions of sexual difference for an ostensibly feminist work. Stereotypically feminine traits—such as excessive emotions, chattiness, and deception—are compared to earthquakes, storms, wildfire, and apparitions. Although these descriptions may seem off-putting to modern readers, I argue that in offering these unflattering descriptions of women, Suchon is making a novel intervention in debates about the nature of sexual difference. In the Renaissance and Early Modern period, the salient question about feminine difference was (...) whether it was a preternatural deformity, and specifically a monstrosity. While most pro-woman authors argued that women were not preternatural, Suchon argues the affirmative, claiming that “persons of the sex are true wonders.” In doing so, Suchon presses on a tension at the heart of scholastic conceptions of women while also provoking an emotional response that might encourage men to reconsider whether patriarchal practices are truly to their advantage. (shrink)

Alain Badiou’s Seminar: The One – Descartes, Plato, Kant (1983-1984) inaugurates "The Seminar, " the collection of transcribed and edited seminars that Badiou chose for publication from the sessions he held over his career. To its place opening "The Seminar" other, perhaps more important functions should be added, however. The Seminar: The One serves, with the companion seminar on the Infinite (1984-1985), as a bridge between Badiou’s Theory of the Subject (1982) and the work for which he is best known, (...) Being and Event ( L'Être et l'Événement, 1988; English translation, 2005). 1 (His play Incident at Antioch, whose first drafts are written during the years that Badiou holds the seminars on The One and The Infinite, builds another, rather different, bridge.) At once quite technical and rather chatty, The One – Descartes, Plato, Kant offers a genealogy for two decisive steps in Badiou’s thought: his description and his axiomatization of the operation “counts-as-one.” It also – rather against the grain of these two steps; inchoately, controversially – offers a tentative engagement with the dangerous mode of parody. (shrink)

The meanings collected by Mr. Lee seem very hard to extract from the Latin, neither do they seem to reflect the author's meaning. Surely the sense of the chapter is: The Cherusci ruined themselves with a long peace … when it comes to a fight, moderation and justice are … For example, the Cherusci were once virtuous and just, but now are called idle and foolish, and the success of the Chatti who conquered them has become prudence.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Skeptic Way: Sextus Empiricus’s “Outlines of Pyrrhonism.” by Benson MatesDavid K. GliddenBenson Mates. The Skeptic Way: Sextus Empiricus’s “Outlines of Pyrrhonism.” New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Pp. x + 335. Cloth, $55.00, Paper, $22.95.Benson Mates’s translation and commentary of Sextus Empiricus’ Outlines of Pyrrhonism appears nearly half a century after Mates first began his pioneering work on Sextus and Hellenistic philosophy. This publication coincides with another (...) new translation of the Outlines by Annas and Barnes, who provide only an abbreviated commentary (Cambridge University Press, 1994). After decades when the only available English translation was by Bury from the Loeb, there are now choices available which allow Sextus to be taught to different sorts of English readers.In comparing the two translations, this reader found the Annas and Barnes version more mellifluous. Mates is not as sweet. His style is plain-spoken, but this approach has merits when the arguments get going. The Annas and Barnes version uses footnotes for commentary, along with a brief introduction. Their notes cite parallel passages in other works by Sextus, provide brief guidance for interpretation when it is most needed, and connect the reader with a focused list of bibliographical references, inviting readers themselves to turn toward scholarly debates over certain controversial passages. Consequently, Annas and Barnes opens out to a wide audience of classicists, historians, students of literature, general readers interested in scepticism, as well as philosophers of whatever ideology. [End Page 460]The Mates edition is directed toward philosophers alone. It is much less oriented toward historical scholarship, preferring to read Sextus as a contemporary professional philosopher might. In this way, Mates will approach a passage from the Outlines in terms of a passage in Hume or Berkeley, even though, of course, these latter-day philosophers derived their views from reading Sextus. Mates employs philosophese with ease, constructing a version of Sextus from the professional philosopher’s interpretive stance, in the language of propositions and Fregean intensions. The audience Mates is writing for and the viewpoint he is writing from more or less correspond to the “analytical” faction of the American Philosophical Association. Postmodern Foucaultians, contextualist historians, and Hellenistic scholars might find this approach unhelpful, even irritating. But busy, mainstream American philosophers could find Mates’s approach sufficiently sympathetic to actually read some Sextus, in the way Chisholm once had done, finding a passage on the Cyrenaics in Sextus which led to the reinvention of “adverbial appears locutions” and which, in turn, played for decades in the epistemological arcades.Mates begins his edition with a systematic introduction to the Outlines and follows his translation with another hundred pages of narrative, reflecting primarily what Mates finds interesting about certain selected passages. Although, like Annas and Barnes, he provides parallel passages, ancient references, and highly abbreviated accounts of scholarly disputes, his own narrative line dominates both his introductory essay and his commentary. Mates writes in a somewhat chatty style prone to the blunt Cephalean confidence that comes with considerable experience and success as a professional philosopher. His narrative line is clear, connected, often compelling, as for instance when he argues that for Sextus “dogmatizing and believing turn out to be one and the same” (61).Fashion has returned to favor Pyrrhonism in the late twentieth century, just as the cycle had come around before, toward the end of the sixteenth century, sparking a philosophical renaissance. This time around the import may be different. Both Annas and Barnes as well as Mates find Sextus worth reading as serious philosophy. This is a considerable improvement in the fortuna of the Outlines. For decades Sextus was banned in American philosophy departments, as no philosopher at all. He was not taught, he was not read. One highly prominent American philosopher was expressly forbidden to write a dissertation on him, around the time Mates and Chisholm had the courage to publish on him. Sextus is now welcome in the Canon.If Sextus now is one of us, a serious philosopher, then the dogmatists (Stoics, Epicureans, Peripatetics, etc.) he ridiculed were merely failures. The game continues. So, Mates, Annas and Barnes can embrace Sextus as ours. His readers won’t... (shrink)

The desperate straits to which commentators are driven in attempting to explain inter impotentis et ualidos falso quiescas: ubi manu agitur, modestia ac probitas nomina superioris sunt are illustrated by a recent contributor to this journal . In the decent obscurity of a review of Büchner's fourth volume of Studien zur römischen Literatur I hazarded a suggestion that has escaped notice. The crux may be removed by reading non superioris and supposing a confusion between N ═ non and Ñ ═ (...) nomine . In war legality is dumb, and amid the squabbles of competing tribes restraint and honesty are not the marks of the winner. The Chatti were proved wiser than the children of light, for they had fought and flourished: Chattis uictoribus fortuna in sapientiam cessit. (shrink)

Although amply footnoted this book is informal to the point of being chatty and preachy. Overall its virtue is to announce that Roman Catholics and Marxists are not such strange bed-fellows after all, but that with intellectual openness they can truly talk to one another. The greatest defect of the book is its function as a primer for unenlightened Catholics on the massive changes taking place in Rome. The volume, then, denies Martin D'Arcy's contention "that the Ark of Peter is (...) not sinking, it is only being buffeted." The author gives no indication of how a rapprochement between Roman Catholicism and Marxism can be worked out. Instead the reader can only see that Marxism provides disenchanted catholics with one more unsophisticated flirtation with the world.--W. A. J. (shrink)

This book appears in the International Library of Psychology, Philosophy and Scientific Method, along with the Platonic studies of Cornford, but it can hardly satisfy the public that reads those. There are chapters on various aspects of Plato’s thought such as Ethics, Aesthetics, Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy of Education, and included in the last is the perennial topic of Plato’s relation to Socrates, so that most subjects of importance are touched on in some way. But the treatment will not satisfy (...) a philosopher or a Hellenist, for it seems everywhere too superficial; there is much in summary, but problems are not properly indicated. Indeed, in spite of its length and inclusiveness, the book still has the feel of journalism, of something addressed to the readers of a literary digest who wish to know what broad line Plato took on various matters of human interest, or at any rate of lectures intended for those who need some philosophy in a rapid course on liberal arts, or on the background of modern literature, or educational theory which has been influenced by Plato. This impression is strengthened by the style, which is deliberately chatty and repetitive, and uses such expressions as ‘the Veritable Above’ and ‘biosocial living’. It is also most misleading to call such a person as Heraclitus a ‘factual scientist’. (shrink)

Owen Flanagan is a highly prolific writer and speaker whose work brings together results of research in several empirical disciplines overlapping with philosophy, particularly neuroscience and other areas of psychology. This book of thirteen essays, most of them revisions of work published elsewhere, exhibits both his intellectual and his stylistic range. Many of the essays are light and chatty, others analytical and slower-going.

A series of lengthy and chatty arguments suggesting that most criticism written on the various arts is preoccupied with a misguided sense of the critics' own objectivity. Boas gives examples--there seem to be hundreds--aptly drawn to demonstrate his thesis that what the art-work actually meant to the artist and spectator varies from era to era, from culture to culture, and from class to class. On these grounds Mr. Boas offers a plea "for the understanding of disagreement in matters of taste."--G. (...) D. D. (shrink)

Three introductory sections precede the main entries in this Dictionary: 1) a chronological list of 109 significant American thinkers of the past, with their years of birth and death, plus 38 living American thinkers, with their years of birth; 2) a list, with a brief discussion, of the 10 greatest American philosophers ; and 3) an analysis of the general characteristics of American philosophy. The main entries which follow cover, in alphabetical order, each of the philosophers included in the chronological (...) lists, plus 16 subject entries on topics such as behaviorism, being, and conscience. The entries on individuals are chatty but informative. Less useful are the topical entries. Of the 89 lines devoted to "being," for example, 55 consist of a quotation from an essay by Emerson which is only tangentially about being qua being, and 19 more lines are quoted from Jonathan Edwards on "nothing" and on the fitness of what is. There is an article on "Art," consisting solely of quotations from Art as Experience, but no general article on art or aesthetics. There is an article on "Epistemology," consisting of quotations from Dewey, but no general article on epistemology, truth, logic, or ontology. One of the best features of the Dictionary is the fact that it devotes considerable space to more than 30 living American philosophers. It also includes full-page photographs of eight representative thinkers.—W. G. (shrink)

Although amply footnoted this book is informal to the point of being chatty and preachy. Overall its virtue is to announce that Roman Catholics and Marxists are not such strange bed-fellows after all, but that with intellectual openness they can truly talk to one another. The greatest defect of the book is its function as a primer for unenlightened Catholics on the massive changes taking place in Rome. The volume, then, denies Martin D'Arcy's contention "that the Ark of Peter is (...) not sinking, it is only being buffeted." The author gives no indication of how a rapprochement between Roman Catholicism and Marxism can be worked out. Instead the reader can only see that Marxism provides disenchanted catholics with one more unsophisticated flirtation with the world.--W. A. J. (shrink)