Allen Guelzo is the Director of Civil War Era Studies and a Professor of History at Gettysburg College.

This biography of the sixteenth president explores Lincoln's life and political career along with insights into his philosophy, religious views, and moral character.

Critical study of Brahmasiddhi of Maṇḍanamiśra, classical treatise on Advaita ontology.

I Can we make promises to ourselves? This is a question that has not received much consideration in the large body of philosophical work on promising. And in what commentary there is, the answer is uniformly negative. I think this negativity is a mistake, and that the conventional view that we can't make reflexive promises is wrong. I also think that this has some important implications for promissory theory in general. In what follows, I will attempt to argue for the (...) first of these two claims, and to briefly outline my reasons for the second. (shrink)

Original and penetrating, this book investigates of the notion of inference from signs, which played a central role in ancient philosophical and scientific method. It examines an important chapter in ancient epistemology: the debates about the nature of evidence and of the inferences based on it--or signs and sign-inferences as they were called in antiquity. As the first comprehensive treatment of this topic, it fills an important gap in the histories of science and philosophy.

I Can we make promises to ourselves? This is a question that has not received much consideration in the large body of philosophical work on promising. And in what commentary there is, the answer is uniformly negative. I think this negativity is a mistake, and that the conventional view that we can't make reflexive promises is wrong. I also think that this has some important implications for promissory theory in general. In what follows, I will attempt to argue for the (...) first of these two claims, and to briefly outline my reasons for the second. (shrink)

Not the least admirable of the late David Lewis’s attributes was his disdain for technical terminology and jargon. His writings are a model demonstrating that, with skill and care, it is possible to discuss even the most mathematical aspects of logic and semantics in clear English prose, and with only a minimum of symbolism. The main text of Parts of Classes [1, hereafter: PoC], a 120-page essay on the foundations of set theory, follows Aristotle in using letters as variables, and (...) has a few dashes and ellipses where it mentions schemata, but is otherwise free of logical notation. The essential advantages of what Church called “the logistic method” do not depend on its typographical accidents!) It is only natural that writers following him have taken one of his expressive words and turned it into a technical term: he allowed ‘atomless gunk’ as a possible complication in the mereological analysis of things, and ‘gunk’ is now a technical term in mereology. Gunk is stuff every part of which contains further parts, stuff which can be divided endlessly without ever arriving at an indivisible atom. (shrink)

Can the government stick us with privacy we don't want? It can, it does, and according to this author, may need to do more of it. Privacy is a foundational good, she argues, a necessary tool in the liberty-lover's kit for a successful life. A nation committed to personal freedom must be prepared to mandate inalienable, liberty-promoting privacies for its people, whether they eagerly embrace them or not. The eight chapters of this book are reflections on public regulation of privacy (...) at home; isolation and confinement for punitive and health reasons; religious modesty attire; erotic nudity; workplace and professional confidentiality; racial privacy; online transactions; social networking; and the collection, use and storage of electronic data. (shrink)

Teleological terms such as "function" and "design" appear frequently in the biological sciences. Examples of teleological claims include: A (biological) function of stotting by antelopes is to communicate to predators that they have been detected. Eagles' wings are (naturally) designed for soaring. Teleological notions were commonly associated with the pre-Darwinian view that the biological realm provides evidence of conscious design by a supernatural creator. Even after creationist viewpoints were rejected by most biologists there remained various grounds for concern about the (...) role of teleology in biology, including whether such terms are: 1. vitalistic (positing some special "life-force"); 2. requiring backwards causation (because future outcomes explain present traits); 3. incompatible with mechanistic explanation (because of 1 and 2); 4. mentalistic (attributing the action of mind where there is none); 5. empirically untestable (for all the above reasons). Opinions divide over whether Darwin's theory of evolution provides a means of eliminating teleology from biology, or whether it provides a naturalistic account of the role of teleological notions in the science. Many contemporary biologists and philosophers of biology believe that teleological notions are a distinctive and ineliminable feature of biological explanations but that it is possible to provide a naturalistic account of their role that avoids the concerns above. Terminological issues sometimes serve to obscure some widely-accepted distinctions. (shrink)

This special issue of Etikk i Praksis – Nordic Journal of Applied Ethics features four articles that address a number of urgent ethical issues that arise in the COVID-19 pandemic.

In this paper we1 assess the potential for research on nonhuman animals to address questions about the phenomenology of painful experiences. Nociception, the basic capacity for sensing noxious stimuli, is widespread in the animal kingdom. Even rel- atively primitive animals such as leeches and sea slugs possess nociceptors, neurons that are functionally specialized for sensing noxious stimuli (Walters 1996). Vertebrate spinal cords play a sophisticated role in processing and modulating nociceptive signals, providing direct control of some motor responses to noxious (...) stimuli, and a basic capacity for Pavlovian and instrumental conditioning (Grau et al. 1990; Grau 2002). Higher brain systems provide additional layers of association, top-down control, and cognition. In humans, at least, these higher brain systems also give rise to the conscious experiences that are characteristic of pain. What can be said about the experiences of other animals who possess nervous systems that are similar but not identical to humans? (shrink)

Jesus was a teacher. That's not all he was, but he was surely that. This essay examines Jesus as a moral teacher who selectively retrieved the moral traditions of apocalypse, wisdom, and Torah. He taught as a seer, a sage, and a scribe. Through a ludicrously anachronistic thought experiment—convening a first-century tenure review committee—it will become clear that the apocalyptic tradition was preeminent in Jesus's teaching, giving shape to how he employed the wisdom and legal traditions. Although the decision about (...) Jesus's tenure is shown ultimately to rest in God's hands rather than any human office or institution, lessons are drawn from Jesus as a moral teacher for the vocation of all those who teach Christian ethics. (shrink)

The act of judging how matters stand was a subject of investigation for Husserl throughout his career. The recurrence of this theme in his work indicates the great importance which Husserlian phenomenology attributed to the task of uncovering the nature of judgment. Scholarly commentary on Husserl has, until now, lacked one of the essential elements for a complete account of Husserl on judgment, because there was no full-length investigation into the important theme of "vague judgment" in his writings. ;This dissertation (...) is a critical interpretation of Husserl's principle texts on vague judgment. In addition to using the general norms of scholarly analysis, it takes great care to understand Husserl from within the transcendental reduction, lest his statements be misinterpreted as paradoxes dissolving into incoherence. The dissertation also seeks to identify the relation of the elements of the description of vague judgment to the more fundamental principles of phenomenology: parts/whole, identity/difference, empty/filled, presence/absence. This investigation starts with Husserl's fullest treatment of categorical vagueness, from Formal and Transcendental Logic , and then considers the theme in Ideas I and Logical Investigations , with a consideration of the use which Husserl makes of this description to analyze cultural sediments in The Origin of Geometry . ;The study concludes that vague judging is an empty act in which from the whole which possesses an attribute there does not emerge that attribute as a distinct part to be then identified with its whole. Because of this failure to think articulatedly, the fact, even in its perceptual presence, is absent as it itself. This description also brings to light essential notes of vague judgment and its foundation, viz., time. Finally this dissertation shows that Husserl's description of vague judgment unfolded organically, without basic reversal, over the course of his life's work. (shrink)

This review essay evaluates The Dialectics of Liberty, a recent collection, edited by Roger E. Bissell, Chris Matthew Sciabarra, and Edward W. Younkins. It describes the dialectical turn in libertarian political and economic theory and analyzes the diverse contributions to dialectics by the various authors in this volume.

abstract Part 1 of this essay argues that one of the most important contributions of philosophers to sound public policy may be to combat the influence of bad Philosophy (which includes, but is not limited to, bad Philosophy produced by accredited academic philosophers). Part 2 argues that the conventional conception of Practical Ethics (CPE) that philosophers bring to issues of public policy is defective because it fails to take seriously the phenomenon of the subversion of morality, the role of false (...) factual beliefs in this subversion, and the vulnerability to the exploitation of our moral powers that our social-epistemic dependency entails. Given the serious risks of the subversion of morality through the propagation of false factual beliefs, CPE's near exclusive emphasis on identifying sound moral principles greatly constrains its potential contribution to the Negative Task of Practical Ethics, the endeavour to reduce the incidence of the most grievously wrong behaviour. Practical ethicists should focus more on the ethics of believing, and develop a more sophisticated conception of the moral and epistemic virtues of individuals and of institutions, one that includes protective meta-virtues, whose function it is to guard us against the more frequent and predictable subversions of morality, including those subversions that are facilitated by the processes of belief-formation that our social institutions and practices foster. (shrink)

abstract Part 1 of this essay argues that one of the most important contributions of philosophers to sound public policy may be to combat the influence of bad Philosophy (which includes, but is not limited to, bad Philosophy produced by accredited academic philosophers). Part 2 argues that the conventional conception of Practical Ethics (CPE) that philosophers bring to issues of public policy is defective because it fails to take seriously the phenomenon of the subversion of morality, the role of false (...) factual beliefs in this subversion, and the vulnerability to the exploitation of our moral powers that our social‐epistemic dependency entails. Given the serious risks of the subversion of morality through the propagation of false factual beliefs, CPE's near exclusive emphasis on identifying sound moral principles greatly constrains its potential contribution to the Negative Task of Practical Ethics, the endeavour to reduce the incidence of the most grievously wrong behaviour. Practical ethicists should focus more on the ethics of believing, and develop a more sophisticated conception of the moral and epistemic virtues of individuals and of institutions, one that includes protective meta‐virtues, whose function it is to guard us against the more frequent and predictable subversions of morality, including those subversions that are facilitated by the processes of belief‐formation that our social institutions and practices foster. (shrink)

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

Although philosophers have considered some of the implications of the nature of quantum statistics of many-particle systems for the interpretation problem, e.g., Reichenbach, they have not produced a complete analysis of the relationship between aspects of quantum statistics and complications and/or possible solutions of the interpretation problem. While the present work by no means provides a complete account, it does explore some heretofore uncharted regions. One of the latter is an analysis of a situation that I call 'The Paradox of (...) Identical Particles ,' which arises in Bose-Einstein statistics. PIP refers to the fact that Elementary Quantum Mechanics seems to be committed to the thesis that systems of particles of the same species, "identical" particles, exhibit behavior differing from that of systems of particles of different species, simply in virtue of the fact that the former contain entities of the same species while the latter do not. Taken at face value this is tantamount to the Empedoclean "axiom" that like attracts like, while like and unlike repel, a somewhat embarassingly naive proposition for modern physicists to embrace, and one which, furthermore, poses a host of perplexing problems, e.g., how do the particles "know" whether they are of the same species or not? A result proven in the present work is that any "pluralistic" interpretation of quantum theory is unable to provide a satisfactory way of ridding quantum physicists of this appeal to what I call "species sensitivity." Arguing that Quantum Field Theory is most naturally and plausibly interpreted as a "monistic" theory--which means, inter alia, that for a system of n identical particles to exist is not for n distinct objects of any kind to exist, but rather for one unified underlying entity, a quantum field, to be in a certain kind of state or condition--I show that from this point of view PIP can be dissolved. On the basis of this and other considerations, I argue that the interpretation problem is more amenable to solution if we take the QFT point of view as the fundamental expression of quantum theory. (shrink)

By tracing the general evolution of HusserI’s theory of logic and mathematics, this essay explores Husserl’s identification and strategic overcoming of the two forms of psychologism--Iogical psychologism and transcendental psychologism--that bar the way to rigorous phenomenological inquiry. In the early works “On the Concept of Number” and the Philosophie der Arithmetik Husserl himself falls victim to a particular form of logical psychologism. By the time of the Logical Investigations this problem has been dealt with: the method of eidetic intuition enables (...) an account of the “origins” of logical and mathematical concepts without reducing such concepts to mere predicates of mental acts. The task of Formal and Transcendental Logic is to disclose the more pervasive problem of transcendental psychologism, one that taints even the theory of pure logic articulated in the Logical Investigations. A radical solution is provided through the development of an “ultimate logic” of transcendental subjectivity. (shrink)

Hegel’s definition of the state as a common public authority in The German Constitution marks his first thorough attempt to understand the authority of the modern state in terms of the rule of law. Such an understanding of the state constitutes an important advance in Hegel’s political philosophy since, in his early political-theological writings, the legal relation was in essence excluded from the political sphere. Positing a fundamental opposition between legality and authentic ethical life, Hegel interpreted societies in which legal (...) forms become particularly pronounced as societies founded on degenerate political institutions and caught up in an inexorable process of decline. Until Hegel grasped the positive ethical significance of legal authority, something accomplished in The German Constitution, his theory of the state remained largely determined by a Greek-inspired, virtue-based paradigm of political life. Only with the overcoming of this paradigm could he move to a comprehensive analysis of both modern institutional structures and the political theories that attempt to understand and justify them. Hegel’s evolving theory of modern legal form thus provides an important index and measure of his complex stance toward modern political society and of his critical assessment of the self-interpretations of modernity offered by the natural right tradition and the Enlightenment. (shrink)

Kant was one of the inventors of anthropology, and his lectures on anthropology were the most popular and among the most frequently given of his lecture courses. This volume contains the first translation of selections from student transcriptions of the lectures between 1772 and 1789, prior to the published version, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, which Kant edited himself at the end of his teaching career. The two most extensive texts, Anthropology Friedländer and Anthropology Mrongovius, are presented here (...) in their entirety, along with selections from all the other lecture transcriptions published in the Academy edition, together with sizeable portions of the Menschenkunde, first published in 1831. These lectures show that Kant had a coherent and well-developed empirical theory of human nature bearing on many other aspects of his philosophy, including cognition, moral psychology, politics and philosophy of history. (shrink)