In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Examples, Stories, and Subjects in Don Quixote and the HeptameronTimothy HamptonI developed a rare and perhaps unique taste. Plutarch became my favorite reading. The pleasure that I took in reading and rereading him endlessly cured me somewhat from reading novels. Ceaselessly occupied with Rome and Athens, living, so to speak, with their great men.... I thought myself Greek or Roman.Rousseau, ConfessionsThe first part of Don Quixote reaches its rambunctious (...) climax when the Don’s neighbors, the curate and the barber, lock him in an ox cart and triumphantly wheel him back to his village. At one point during the journey home Don Quixote engages in a long and famous debate with the Canon of Toledo about the dangers of reading. The Canon attempts to convince Don Quixote to renounce both knight errantry and his passion for romances of chivalry. He also makes the following recommendation:If you are still obsessed by books of adventures and chivalry, read the book of Judges in Holy Scripture, where you will find great and genuine exploits that are as heroic as they are true. Lusitania had its Viriathus, Rome had its Caesar, Carthage its Hannibal, Greece its Alexander, Castille its Count Fernán González, Valencia its Cid, Andalusia its Gonzalo Fernández, Extremadura its Diego García de Paredes, Jérez its Garci Pérez de Vargas, Toledo its Garcilaso, Seville its Manuel de Léon: their doughty deeds will entertain, instruct, delight and amaze the highest intellects that read them. This reading will truly be worthy of your own excellent mind, my dear [End Page 597] Don Quixote, from which you will rise learned in history, enamored of virtue, instructed in goodness, bettered in manners, valiant without rashness, bold without vacillation, and all this to the honor of God, your own profit, and the glory of La Mancha, from where, as I have learned, you derive your birth and origin. 1The Canon proposes to replace one literary genre with another; he condemns the reading of romance and promotes the reading of history. In the process he presumes to substitute one type of exemplarity with another—an exchange that links Don Quixote’s imagination to his status as a political subject. For he suggests that by occupying himself with real exemplars, instead of the perfect knights of romance, Don Quixote will not only turn from a loco back into a cuerdo. He will also be made into a good citizen. The Canon offers a model of reading that links historical truth, moral amelioration, and political subjectivity. The context of this recommendation—a program of reading offered by a representative of authority to a man in a cage—stresses the relationship between reading and imprisonment, between particular uses of language and particular forms of subjection. If he reads the right kinds of exemplary stories, the Canon infers, Don Quixote will lose his desire to practice the profession of chivalry. No longer will he have to be restrained. Instead, he will live within the bounds of reason, inside the borders of mediocritas. History, as Rousseau suggests in my epigraph to this essay, can cure one of the bad habits induced by too much fiction.Yet no less striking in the Canon’s speech is the way he articulates this connection between good citizenship and good books. He links his list of exemplars to a list of geographical and political spaces: Hannibal and Carthage, Garcilaso de la Vega and Toledo, and so on. By associating heroic figures with countries, he underscores the central importance of exemplary images in the definition of group identity. One of the characteristics of the example that makes it so important in early modern intellectual life is that exemplarity defines a point at which group identity interacts with individual identity. The promotion of heroic images is, to be sure, a central feature in techniques of self-fashioning, as defined in humanist discourse from the time of Petrarch. Yet it is no less important in the definition of grouphood, from Erasmus’s exhortation to Christians to imitate the exemplary virtue of Abraham, to the iconography of patriotism. If there is a crisis of the example, then one way... (shrink)

Neither art nor philosophy was kind to beauty during the twentieth century. Much modern art disdains beauty, and many philosophers deeply suspect that beauty merely paints over or distracts us from horrors. Intellectuals consigned the passions of beauty to the margins, replacing them with the anemic and rarefied alternative, "aesthetic pleasure." In Only a Promise of Happiness, Alexander Nehamas reclaims beauty from its critics. He seeks to restore its place in art, to reestablish the connections among art, beauty, and (...) desire, and to show that the values of art, independently of their moral worth, are equally crucial to the rest of life.Nehamas makes his case with characteristic grace, sensitivity, and philosophical depth, supporting his arguments with searching studies of art and literature, high and low, from Thomas Mann's Death in Venice and Manet's Olympia to television. Throughout, the discussion of artworks is generously illustrated.Beauty, Nehamas concludes, may depend on appearance, but this does not make it superficial. The perception of beauty manifests a hope that life would be better if the object of beauty were part of it. This hope can shape and direct our lives for better or worse. We may discover misery in pursuit of beauty, or find that beauty offers no more than a tantalizing promise of happiness. But if beauty is always dangerous, it is also a pressing human concern that we must seek to understand, and not suppress. (shrink)

For much of its history, philosophy was not merely a theoretical discipline but a way of life, an "art of living." This practical aspect of philosophy has been much less dominant in modernity than it was in ancient Greece and Rome, when philosophers of all stripes kept returning to Socrates as a model for living. The idea of philosophy as an art of living has survived in the works of such major modern authors as Montaigne, Nietzsche, and Foucault. Each of (...) these writers has used philosophical discussion as a means of establishing what a person is and how a worthwhile life is to be lived. In this wide-ranging, brilliantly written account, Alexander Nehamas provides an incisive reevaluation of Socrates' place in the Western philosophical tradition and shows the importance of Socrates for Montaigne, Nietzsche, and Foucault. Why does each of these philosophers—each fundamentally concerned with his own originality—return to Socrates as a model? The answer lies in the irony that characterizes the Socrates we know from the Platonic dialogues. Socratic irony creates a mask that prevents a view of what lies behind. How Socrates led the life he did, what enabled or inspired him, is never made evident. No tenets are proposed. Socrates remains a silent and ambiguous character, forcing readers to come to their own conclusions about the art of life. This, Nehamas shows, is what allowed Montaigne, Nietzsche, and Foucault to return to Socrates as a model without thereby compelling them to imitate him. This highly readable, erudite study argues for the importance of the tradition within Western philosophy that is best described as "the art of living" and casts Montaigne, Nietzsche, and Foucault as the three major modern representatives of this tradition. Full of original ideas and challenging associations, this work will offer new ways of thinking about the philosophers Nehamas discusses and about the discipline of philosophy itself. (shrink)

' But, although such a being (a purely intellectual being) might perhaps be conceived to exist, and although, in studying our internal frame, ...

Alexander R. Pruss examines a large family of paradoxes to do with infinity - ranging from deterministic supertasks to infinite lotteries and decision theory. Having identified their common structure, Pruss considers at length how these paradoxes can be resolved by embracing causal finitism.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Should I believe something if and only if it’s true? Many philosophers have objected to this kind of truth norm, on the grounds that it’s not the case that one ought to believe all the truths. For example, some truths are too complex to believe; others are too trivial to be worth believing. Philosophers who defend truth norms often respond to this problem by reformulating truth norms in ways that do not entail that one ought to believe all the truths. (...) Many of these attempts at reformulation, I’ll argue, have been missteps. A number of these different reformulations are incapable of carrying out a central role a truth norm is meant to play, that of explaining justification. The truth norm I’ll defend, however, avoids the implausible results of a prescription to believe all the truths, but doesn’t thereby fail to explain justification. This norm, introduced by Conor McHugh, states that if one has some doxastic attitude about p—i.e. if one believes, disbelieves, or suspends judgement about whether p—then one ought to believe that p if and only if p is true. (shrink)

The aim of interpretation is to capture the past in the future: to capture, not to recapture, first, because the iterative prefix suggests that meaning, which was once manifest, must now be found again. But the postulated author dispenses with this assumption. Literary texts are produced by very complicated actions, while the significance of even our simplest acts is often far from clear. Parts of the meaning of a text may become clear only because of developments occurring long after its (...) composition. And though the fact that an author means something may be equivalent to the fact that a writer could have meant it, this is not to say that the writer did, on whatever level, actually mean it.Alexander Nehamas, professor of philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, has written articles on ancient Greek philosophy, literary theory, Nietzsche and Thomas Mann. (shrink)

I show that Armstrong’s view of laws as second-order contingent relations of ‘necessitation’ among categorical properties faces a dilemma. The necessitation relation confers a relation of extensional inclusion (‘constant conjunction’) on its relata. It does so either necessarily or contingently. If necessarily, it is not a categorical relation (in the relevant sense). If contingently, then an explanation is required of how it confers extensional inclusion. That explanation will need to appeal to a third-order relation between necessitation and extensional inclusion. The (...) same dilemma reappears at this level. Either Armstrong must concede that some properties are not categorical but have essential powers – or he is faced with a regress. (shrink)

Alexander's views on universals are, it seems, quite important in the history of western philosophy. When Boethius gives in his second commentary on Porphyry's Isagoge his solution to the problem of universals as he conceived it, he claims to be adopting Alexander's approach. If true, this means that the locus classicus for all western medieval thinkers on this topic is really a rendering of Alexander's teaching. Alexander commented Aristotle’s statement in his On the Soul “The universal (...) animal either is nothing at all or is posterior if it exists”, and this commentary has been translated into Arabic several times in the classical period. In this study the anonymous Arabic translations of Alexander’s commentary has been translated into English. (shrink)

I argue that the naturalism of Thomas Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions," which he himself later ignored, is worthy of rehabilitation. A naturalistic conception of paradigms is ripe for development with the tools of cognitive science. As a consequence a naturalistic understanding of world-change and incommensurability is also viable.

In this paper I ask how educational researchers can believe the subjective perceptions of qualitative participant-observers given the concern for objectivity and generalisability of experimental research in the behavioural and social sciences. I critique the most common answer to this question within the educational research community, which posits the existence of two (or more) equally legitimate epistemological paradigms—positivism and constructivism—and offer an alternative that places a priority in educational research on understanding the purposes and meanings humans attribute to educational practices. (...) Only within the context of what I call a transcendent view from somewhere—higher ideals that govern human activities—can we make sense of quantitative as well as qualitative research findings. (shrink)

This book presents new findings that deal with different facets of the well-being of children and their relevance to the proper treatment of children. The well-being of children is considered against the background of a wide variety of legal, political, medical, educational and familial perspectives. The book addresses diverse issues from a range of disciplinary perspectives using a variety of methods. It has three major sections with the essays in each section loosely organized about a common general theme. The first (...) section focuses on issues concerning the relation between children’s well-being and autonomy or agency. The second section deals with child well-being insofar as the limits of parental authority are concerned. The third section has a more applied orientation and addresses a variety of public policy controversies involving the interpretation of children’s well-being. (shrink)

Despite its centrality and its familiarity, W. V. Quine's dispute with Rudolf Carnap over the analytic/synthetic distinction has lacked a satisfactory analysis. The impasse is usually explained either by judging that Quine's arguments are in reality quite weak, or by concluding instead that Carnap was incapable of appreciating their strength. This is unsatisfactory, as is the fact that on these readings it is usually unclear why Quine's own position is not subject to some of the very same arguments. A satisfying (...) and surprising account is here presented that stiches together the puzzling pieces of this important philosophical exchange and that in turn leads to an explanation of why it is so difficult to say whether anything of substance is at stake. (shrink)

Beauty, or at least natural beauty, is famously a symbol of the morally good in Kant's theory of taste. Natural beauty is also, we argue, a symbol of the systematicity of nature. This symbolic connection of beauty and systematicity in nature sheds light on the relation between the principles underlying the use of reflecting judgement. The connection also motivates a more general interpretive proposal: the fact that the imagination can symbolize ideas plays a crucial role in the theory of taste; (...) it is the mechanism that underlies pure judgements of taste, the operation by which the imagination ‘schematizes without a concept’. (shrink)

There are norms on action and norms on assertion. That is, there are things we should and shouldn't do, and things we should and shouldn't say. How do these two kinds of norm relate? Are norms on assertion reducible to norms on action? Many philosophers think they are not. These philosophers claim there is a sui generis norm specific to assertion, a norm which is also often claimed to be constitutive of assertion. Both claims, I argue, should be rejected. The (...) phenomenon claimed to support them – the intuitive wrongness of certain assertions – does not in fact support them. Because assertion is an action, the wrongness of assertions can be explained purely by norms on action. And the specifically epistemic wrongness an assertion norm is typically supposed to explain can be explained by an uncontroversial norm on action: one shouldn't act on epistemically faulty beliefs. No additional sui generis norm on assertion is needed. (shrink)

In this volume his object is to fully examine his friend's writings and characters and draws upon his own personal recollections to do so.

We seem to be responsible for our beliefs in a distinctively epistemic way. We often hold each other to account for the beliefs that we hold. We do this by criticising other believers as ‘gullible’ or ‘biased’, and by trying to persuade others to revise their beliefs. But responsibility for belief looks hard to understand because we seem to lack control over our beliefs. In this paper, I argue that we can make progress in our understanding of responsibility for belief (...) by thinking about it in parallel with another kind of responsibility: legal responsibility for criminal negligence. Specifically, I argue that that a popular account of responsibility for belief, which grounds it in belief’s reasons-responsiveness, faces a problem analogous to one faced by H.L.A. Hart’s influential capacity-based account of culpability. This points towards a more promising account of responsibility of belief, though, if we draw on accounts of negligence that improve on Hart’s. Broadly speaking, the account of negligence that improves on Hart’s account grounds culpability in a concern for others’ interests, whereas my account of epistemic responsibility grounds responsibility for belief in a concern for the truth. (shrink)

I argue that the naturalism of Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which he himself later ignored, is worthy of rehabilitation. A naturalistic conception of paradigms is ripe for development with the tools of cognitive science. As a consequence a naturalistic understanding of world-change and incommensurability is also viable.

In my 'Dispositions and Antidotes', The Philosophical Quarterly, 48 (1998), I raise an objection to the conditional analysis of dispositions, both in its simple formulation and in a more sophisticated version due to David Lewis, The Philosophical Quarterly, 47 (1997). The objection suggests that a disposition may be continuously present and the appropriate stimulus occur without the manifestation occurring, because some outside influence, an antidote, interferes. Gundersen in The Philosophical Quarterly, 50 (2000), argues that my objection rests on an equivocation (...) about which object possesses the disposition and more particularly on an equivocation about the context in which the events referred to take place, and that when the equivocation is resolved the counter-example disappears. I respond by showing that the counter-example does remain if we take contextual and mereological issues into account, and I conclude by remarking that the difference with Lewisdepends on whether certain features are seen as significant for the semanticsand metaphysics of dispositions or as merely characteristic of the pragmaticsof common usage. (shrink)

Paul Horwich has argued that Kripke's Wittgenstein's 'sceptical challenge' to the notion of meaning and rule-following only gets going if an 'inflationary' conception of truth is presupposed, and he develops a 'use-theoretic' conception of meaning which he claims is immune to Kripke's Wittgenstein's sceptical attack. I argue that even if we grant Horwich his 'deflationary' conception of truth, that is not enough to undermine Kripke's Wittgenstein's sceptical argument. Moreover, Horwich's own 'use-theoretic' account of meaning actually falls prey to that sceptical (...) challenge. (publisher). (shrink)

Paul Horwich has argued that Kripke's Wittgenstein's 'sceptical challenge' to the notion of meaning and rule-following only gets going if an 'inflationary' conception of truth is presupposed, and he develops a 'use-theoretic' conception of meaning which he claims is immune to Kripke's Wittgenstein's sceptical attack. I argue that even if we grant Horwich his 'deflationary' conception of truth, that is not enough to undermine Kripke's Wittgenstein's sceptical argument. Moreover, Horwich's own 'use-theoretic' account of meaning actually falls prey to that sceptical (...) challenge. (publisher). (shrink)

Paul Boghossian has recently argued against reductive dispositionalism concerning mental content. However, there is a powerful version of reductive dispositionalism—based on work by Ramsey and Lewis—that Boghossian does not consider. In this paper I argue that Boghossian's arguments can be adapted to apply even to this stronger version of reductionism.

The subtraction argument aims to show that there is an empty world, in the sense of a possible world with no concrete objects. The argument has been endorsed by several philosophers. I show that there are currently two versions of the argument around, and that only one of them is valid. I then sketch the main problem for the valid version of the argument.

SENSATIONALISM 1 1. Introductory 1 2. Mach's Sensationalism 4 3. Developments of Sensationalism 22 II. THE INHERENT WEAKNESS OF SEN- SATIONALISM 25 1. The Point of Sensationalism 25 2. The Ambiguity of 'Sensation' 27 3. The Fundamental Conflict 35 4. Mistakes, Incorrigibility and Simplicity 40 III. DESCRIPTION 51 1. Describing and Descriptions 51 2. Describing in Terms of Sensations 67 IV. THE POSSIBILITY OF 'PURE' DES- CRIPTIONS 79 V. SCIENTIFIC PROBLEMS 99 VI. DESCRIPTIONS AND EXPLANATIONS 111 BIBLIOGRAPHY 142 INDEX 145 (...) -/- -v- . (shrink)

In my ‘Dispositions and Antidotes’, The Philosophical Quarterly, 48, I raise an objection to the conditional analysis of dispositions, both in its simple formulation and in a more sophisticated version due to David Lewis, The Philosophical Quarterly, 47. The objection suggests that a disposition may be continuously present and the appropriate stimulus occur without the manifestation occurring, because some outside influence, an antidote, interferes. Gundersen in The Philosophical Quarterly, 50, argues that my objection rests on an equivocation about which object (...) possesses the disposition and more particularly on an equivocation about the context in which the events referred to take place, and that when the equivocation is resolved the counter‐example disappears. I respond by showing that the counter‐example does remain if we take contextual and mereological issues into account, and I conclude by remarking that the difference with Lewisdepends on whether certain features are seen as significant for the semanticsand metaphysics of dispositions or as merely characteristic of the pragmaticsof common usage. (shrink)

Alexander Altmann's acclaimed, wide-ranging biography of Moses Mendelssohn (1729-96) was first published in 1973, but its stature as the definitive biography remains unquestioned. In fact, there has been no subsequent attempt at an intellectual biography of this towering and unusual figure: no other Jew so deeply rooted in the Jewish tradition was at the same time so much a part of the intellectual life of the German Enlightenment in the second half of the eighteenth century. As such, Moses Mendelssohn (...) came to be recognized as the inaugurator of a new phase in Jewish history; all modern Jews today are in his debt. Altmann presents Moses Mendelssohn in strictly biographical terms. He does not attempt to assess his significance with the hindsight of historical perspective nor to trace his image in subsequent generations, but rather to observe his life from the period within which it was set. Altmann has written an absorbing and compelling narrative that makes a whole epoch come alive with great drama, for Mendelssohn's life was a kaleidoscope of the European intellectual scene, Jewish and non-Jewish. As both a prominent philosopher and a believing Jew, Mendelssohn became a spokesman for the Jews and Judaism; he was one of the rare figures who become the symbol of an era. Through Altmann's skilful use of hitherto unpublished archival material, the reader is introduced to the vast array of people-men of letters, artists, politicians, scientists, philosophers, and theologians-with whom Mendelssohn was in contact, and sometimes in conflict. What was Mendelssohn's Judaism like? To what extent did the disparate worlds of Judaism and modern Enlightenment jostle each other in his mind and to what degree could he harmonize them? These questions are not easily answered, and it is only in the aggregate of a multitude of accounts of experiences, reaction, and statements on his part that the answer is to be found. Alexander Altmann's analysis of this wealth of material is extraordinary in its discernment, subtlety, and clarity of expression. This masterly work will be of interest not only to those who are concerned with Jewish intellectual history but also to those interested in eighteenth-century cultural and social history, philosophy and theology, literary criticism, aesthetics, and the other areas of intellectual activity in ferment at that time. The general reader will also find much of contemporary relevance in Mendelssohn's life, not only because of his exemplary devotion to reason and tolerance, but also because of his lifelong struggle with the basic dilemma of the Jew in the modern world: the attraction of assimilation versus the singularity of Jewish life, and the preservation of Jewish identity versus integration in the wider society. (shrink)

Paul Boghossian has recently argued against reductive dispositionalism concerning mental content. However, there is a powerful version of reductive dispositionalism—based on work by Ramsey and Lewis—that Boghossian does not consider. In this paper I argue that Boghossian's arguments can be adapted to apply even to this stronger version of reductionism.

This thesis develops a detailed account of the emergence of for all practical purposes continuous, quasi-classical world histories from the discontinuous, stochastic micro dynamics of Minimal Bohmian Mechanics (MBM). MBM is a non-relativistic quantum theory. It results from excising the guiding equation from standard Bohmian Mechanics (BM) and reinterpreting the quantum equilibrium hypothesis as a stochastic guidance law for the random actualization of configurations of Bohmian particles. On MBM, there are no continuous trajectories linking up individual configurations. Instead, individual configurations (...) are actualized independently of each other, carving out the decoherence-induced branching structure of the universal wave function. Yet, by contrast to the Everett interpretation, branches of the universal wave function are not actualized in parallel, i.e. all at the same time. Rather, world branches, on MBM, are actualized sequentially. -/- For an introduction to MBM, the transition from BM to MBM is described, and their empirical equivalence is established. I present the conditions under which MBM can be classified as a primitive ontology (PO) theory, regarded as crucial for the acceptance of a theory as Bohmian by many proponents of BM. While rendering MBM compatible with the PO approach, it must not fall prey to the problem of communication, arising from the two-space reading of BM. -/- The issue of temporal solipsism, identified by Bell as a serious problem for his “Everett (?) theory” – the historic predecessor of MBM – is discussed. I argue that Barbour’s time capsule approach does not provide a satisfactory solution. In particular, his adopting a more than minimal psychophysical parallelism between brain processes and experience of macroscopic change is argued to be reasonable in light of our current best neuroscience, yet problematic for theories relying solely on time capsules, understood as highly structured, individual, internally static configurations. As a solution, I introduce worlds, and world histories, as key concepts in providing a link between MBM’s micro dynamics and macroscopic phenomena. Worlds, other than time capsules, are coarse-grained regions in phase- or configuration space, defined as sets of possible micro states satisfying a relation of sufficient similarity from a macroscopic perspective, with respect to a given micro state. Hence, worlds may overlap. -/- I argue that worlds thus construed are a reasonable option for replacing the disjoint macro regions of phase space, resulting from the usual way of partitioning phase space in the standard framework of Boltzmannian statistical mechanics. This move solves the issue of discontinuous change of macro variables upon the micro state crossing the boundary between different macro regions. -/- I adapt this move for MBM’s discontinuous micro dynamics in configuration space. Issues revolving around the microscopic-macroscopic distinction, particle identity, impenetrability and haecceity in light of the desideratum of particle number conservation, etc., are discussed. I provide a detailed explanation of how overlapping worlds in MBM form world histories, thereby linking up macroscopically distinct worlds. Thus, the problem of temporal solipsism is resolved in a way that is compatible with a more than minimal psychophysical parallelism. (shrink)

Adult education has long been the Cinderella of the education system. This is not helped by the fact that there is currently an impasse between employers, government and individuals over who should finance such training. So what, if anything, can philosophers do to help resolve the normative question of who ought to pay, setting aside for the moment the practical question of how this might be put into effect? An important strand of contemporary egalitarian philosophy argues that equality of opportunity (...) for education should be implemented in such a way that children with the same level of talent and the same willingness to make an effort have the same opportunity to attain skills and qualifications such that they are each able to compete effectively with others for advantageous positions and rewards in society. But what about children or teenagers who drop out of education or make such little effort that they achieve wholly inadequate exam results? Should they be offered second and third chances for free education as adults funded by the state? A case is made for lifelong as opposed to one‐off equality of opportunity for education on a number of grounds, including efficiency, utility, the value of choice, the social bases of self‐respect and responsibility‐catering prioritarianism. This last view supports lifelong access to education but with the additional stipulation that adults should contribute at least some of the costs themselves in so far as they are accountable for not making enough effort the first time around. (shrink)

Crescas’s position on human freedom is dialectically rooted in the philosophy of his medieval predecessor, Gersonides. Crescas accepts Gersonides’s view that although the celestial bodies influence human affairs, human beings have the ability to overcome their predetermined fate. However, Crescas rejects Gersonides’s premise that God only knows the universal aspect of the particular. Crescas contends that God’s commandments give their followers the means to obtain freedom from the effects of the heavenly bodies, without denying that practical deliberation is still required (...) in order to actualize God’s promises, even if God knows how the individual will achieve the promised outcome. (shrink)

Recognized as one of the earliest Jewish neo-Platonist writers, Isaac ben Solomon Israeli influenced Muslim, Jewish, and Christian scholars through the Middle Ages. A native of Egypt who wrote in Arabic, Israeli explored definitions of such terms as imagination, sense-perception, desire, love, creation, and “coming-to-be” in his writings. This classic volume contains English translations of Israeli’s philosophical writings, including the _Book of Definitions_, the _Book of Substances,_ and the _Book on Spirit and Soul_. Additionally, _Isaac Israeli_ features a biographical sketch (...) of the philosopher and extensive notes and comments on the texts, as well as a survey and appraisal of his philosophy. Restored to print for the first time in decades, _Isaac Israeli _will be essential reading for students and scholars of medieval philosophy and Jewish studies. (shrink)

Paul Boghossian has argued, on grounds concerning the holistic nature of belief fixation, that there are principled reasons for thinking that 'optimal conditions' versions of reductive dispositionalism about content cannot hope to satisfy a condition of extensional accuracy. I discern three separable strands of argument in Boghossian's work—the circularity objection, the open-endedness objection, and the certification objection—and argue that each of these objections fails. My conclusion is that for all that Boghossian has shown, 'optimal conditions' versions of reductive dispositionalism have (...) to be assessed on a case-by-case basis. (shrink)

Adult education has long been the Cinderella of the education system. This is not helped by the fact that there is currently an impasse between employers, government and individuals over who should finance such training. So what, if anything, can philosophers do to help resolve the normative question of who ought to pay, setting aside for the moment the practical question of how this might be put into effect? An important strand of contemporary egalitarian philosophy argues that equality of opportunity (...) for education should be implemented in such a way that children with the same level of talent and the same willingness to make an effort have the same opportunity to attain skills and qualifications such that they are each able (at the onset of adult life) to compete effectively with others for advantageous positions and rewards in society. But what about children or teenagers who drop out of education or make such little effort that they achieve wholly inadequate exam results? Should they be offered second and third chances for free education as adults funded by the state? A case is made for lifelong as opposed to one-off equality of opportunity for education on a number of grounds, including efficiency, utility, the value of choice, the social bases of self-respect and responsibility-catering prioritarianism. This last view supports lifelong access to education (for reasons of priority) but with the additional (responsibility-catering) stipulation that adults should contribute at least some of the costs themselves in so far as they are accountable for not making enough effort the first time around. (shrink)

Alexander Pfander's classical phenomenological logic, a masterwork of unmatched clarity, is presented here for the first time in English. The book unfolds the general essence of logic, its object, not acts of thinking but objective "thoughts," meanings and higher unities formed by them: the nature and kinds (1) of judgments (propositions) and their truth and truth claims, (2) of concepts, and (3)of inferences; (4)the first foundational principles of logic (the principles of identity, contradiction, excluded middle, and sufficient reason) and (...) of valid inferences, their foundation in ontological principles, as well as the valid forms of reasoning recognized in traditional logic and the reasons of their validity. Being a new phenomenological exposition of traditional logic, it reduces the symbolic language used to a minimum in order to concentrate on the logical meanings and laws themselves for which these symbols are signs.". (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)