Argues that the only way to understand the Confucian vision of the consummate moral life is to take the tradition on its own terms.

The earliest Analects yet discovered, this work provides us with a new perspective on the central canonical text that has defined Chinese culture--and clearly illuminates the spirit and values of Confucius.

This is a three-part exchange on the relationship between belief and credence. It begins with an opening essay by Roger Clarke that argues for the claim that the notion of credence generalizes the notion of belief. Julia Staffel argues in her reply that we need to distinguish between mental states and models representing them, and that this helps us explain what it could mean that belief is a special case of credence. Roger Clarke's final essay reflects on the (...) compatibility of the previously discussed views with dualist and monist interpretations of our mental states and our ways of modeling them. (shrink)

This paper argues that, in a community of rights, the prima facie responsibilities of researchers to attend to the ancillary-care needs of their participants would be determined by a four-stage test . This test, it is suggested, sets a standard for common law courts that are invited to recognize the ancillary-care responsibilities of researchers, whether as a matter of contract or tort law.

This paper argues for two theses: that degrees of belief are context sensitive; that outright belief is belief to degree 1. The latter thesis is rejected quickly in most discussions of the relationship between credence and belief, but the former thesis undermines the usual reasons for doing so. Furthermore, identifying belief with credence 1 allows nice solutions to a number of problems for the most widely-held view of the relationship between credence and belief, the threshold view. I provide a sketch (...) of a formal framework on which both theses are true. This is a modified Bayesian framework; I argue that despite making credences context-sensitive, the framework lets Bayesians hold on to their signature explanatory successes. The sort of context-sensitivity claimed for credences here mirrors the sort of context-sensitivity I have elsewhere claimed for outright belief: one's credences depend, in part, on the space of alternative possibilities one takes seriously in a context. (shrink)

What is music, what is its value, and what does it mean? In this stimulating volume, Roger Scruton offers a comprehensive account of the nature and significance of music from the perspective of modern philosophy. The study begins with the metaphysics of sound. Scruton distinguishes sound from tone; analyzes rhythm, melody, and harmony; and explores the various dimensions of musical organization and musical meaning. Taking on various fashionable theories in the philosophy and theory of music, he presents a compelling (...) case for the moral significance of music, its place in our culture, and the need for taste and discrimination in performing and listening to it. Laying down principles for musical analysis and criticism, this bold work concludes with a theory of culture--and a devastating demolition of modern popular music. "A provocative new study."--The Guardian. (shrink)

I have a hairstylist whose lover was very sick. I’d been seeing this stylist for ten years and we’re good friends. [His lover was] becoming an invalid, not able to get out of bed. He said “I hate to ask you this but would you mind writing a prescription to help us out?” [So] I wrote a prescription to a patient who I had never seen, and I sent it to him in the mail and I heard the next time (...) I went in to get my hair cut that it was the most beautiful experience that my stylist had ever had. It was Valentine’s Day and they had a lovely meal with champagne. And they held each other and then, you know, his partner took his pills and was released. (shrink)

Forensic science error rates are needlessly high. Applying the perspective of veritistic social epistemology to forensic science could produce new institutional designs that would lower forensic error rates. We make such an application through experiments in the laboratory with human subjects. Redundancy is the key to error prevention, discovery, and elimination. In the “monopoly epistemics” characterizing forensics today, one privileged actor is asked to identify the truth. In “democratic epistemics,” several independent parties are asked. In an experiment contrasting them, democratic (...) epistemics reduced the rate at which biased observers obscured the truth by two-thirds. These results highlight, first, the potential of “epistemic systems design,” which employs the techniques of economic systems design to address issues of veracity rather than efficiency, and second, the value of “experimental epistemology,” which employs experimental techniques in the study of science. (shrink)

Traditionally, the dominant theory of metaphor has taken the form of saying that metaphor is a matter of using a word with a figurative meaning, that is, a meaning which deviates from standard, literal, meaning. The present article challenges the assumption on which such a characterization rests: that there are standard meanings for words fixed by conventions normative for our use of words. It argues that the most sophisticated defence of such a conception of meaning‐that of David Lewis‐gives an account (...) of convention that cannot be coherently applied to the case of language, and which misdescribes the phenomena of language. The fluidity and flexibility exhibited in our normal literal uses of words is such that to say that a meaning deviates from past meanings assigned to a word registers no contrast between the metaphorical use of words and the literal. Hence if we contrast the literal and the metaphorical, we must do it in some other way than by talking about what happens to the meanings of words. (shrink)

The two questions, “What is public health law?” and “How can law improve the public's health?” are perennial ones for public health law scholars. This paper proposes a framework for conceptualizing discussion and debate about the scope and opportunities for public health law within liberal democracies. Part 2 of the paper draws selectively on this framework in order to highlight some areas where law's potential role deserves greater acknowledgment and exploration.

Offers an in-depth exposition of the Confucian conception of persons as the starting point of Confucian ethics.

Possession of any actual physical property depends on the ambient conditions for its bearers, irrespective of one's particular theory of dispositions. If 'self-sufficiency' makes a property intrinsic, then, because of this dependence, things in the actual world cannot have an intrinsic physical resemblance to one another or to things in other possible worlds. Criteria for the self-sufficiency of intrinsic properties based on, or implying indifference to both 'loneliness' and 'accompaniment' entail that no self-sufficient property can require its bearers to be (...) extended in space or time, yet all physical properties of concrete objects do require this. These outcomes undermine the vindication of physicalism claimed by neo-Humeans for their metaphysical project. For physical properties dependent on ambient conditions cannot supervene on intrinsic properties independent of ambient conditions: when ambient conditions change we get a change in the former without a change in the latter. (shrink)

The notion of self-interest has not received from philosophers of this century the attention it deserves. In this paper, I shall first elucidate the views on self-interest of a philosopher who nourished in the last century. It could be argued that Henry Sidgwick's views on this topic are the most considered in the history of philosophy. I shall then point to a number of misconceptions in his position, and suggest a more satisfactory account. I shall attempt also to solve a (...) problem for this new account with the aid of a Sidgwickian distinction. (shrink)

Die Zusammenhänge die zwischen G. Freges und R. H. Lotzes logischen Lehren bestehen, sind, wie die gemeinsame Beurteilung der Gebrauchssprache zeigt, noch tiefer als allgemein angenommen. Insbesondere die von Frege konzipierte logische Sprachkritik ist in drei Punkten von Lotze beeinflußt. Lotze fordert nämlich die strenge Trennung von Logik und Gebrauchssprache. Daneben spielt der Begriff des Logischeinfachen eine zentrale Rolle in seiner Logik. Schließlich unterscheidet er den objektiven Gedanken von seiner Färbung. The connexions that exist between the logical doctrines of G. (...) Frege and R. H. Lotze are, as shows their common treatment of natural language, deeper than is generally admitted. In particular, the logical criticism of language conceived by Frege is influenced in three points by Lotze. Firstly, Lotze postulates the strict separation of logic and natural language. Furthermore, the idea of logical simplicity plays an important role in his logic. Finally, he distinguishes objective thought from its tone. (shrink)

Roger Ariew presents a new account of Descartes as a philosopher who sought to engage his contemporaries and society. He argues that the Principles of Philosophy was written to rival Scholastic textbooks, and considers Descartes' enterprise in contrast to the tradition it was designed to replace and in relation to the works of the first Cartesians.

The natural bias towards the contemporary in teaching and in research, combined with numerous specialized journals, mean that certain areas of philosophy, including ethics, are in danger of forgetting their past. In that context, history of philosophy of the high standard exemplified in this book is particularly important.

This summary is offered as a psychological definition of being-guilty. Guilt is lived pre-reflectively in a context of real or imaginary accusatory others, and is constituted as a person accepts responsibility for damaged world-relationships whose meanings constitute shared and personally appropriated values. The contradiction between valued and damaged world-relationships is lived existentially as a rupture between revealed and hidden modalities, in which an appearance of harmony and integrity is maintained by concealing both the hidden, damaged world-relationships to which the person (...) feels guiltily indebted, and the fact of the existential rupture. Guilt's mood is constituted as feelings, not necessarily clearly articulate, of lack of self-acceptance. Guilt is resolved as, and to the extent that, the existential rupture is closed, and the person is able to be fully and unambiguously present in his openness to the world. (shrink)

The relationship of law and culture has long been a concern of legal anthropology and sociology of law. But it is recognised today as a central issue in many different kinds of juristic inquiries. All these recent invocations of the concept of culture indicate or imply problems at the boundaries of established thought about either the nature of law or the values that law is thought to express or reflect. The consequence is that legal theory must, it seems, now systematically (...) take account of the notion of culture. The present paper asks how this might best be done. I argue that a concept of culture, as such, is of limited utility for legal theory because the term “culture” embraces a too indefinite and disparate range of phenomena. But legal theory needs conceptual resources to consider at a general level the relations of law and culture. This paper suggests that these resources should include, above all, a rigorous distinguishing of different abstract types of community. Legal theory requires a sociologically‐informed concept of community. What is encompassed by the vague idea of culture is actually the content of different types of social relations of community and the networks (combinations) in which they exist. (shrink)

This article examines and elaborates the nature of subjective experience by drawing on a variety of perspectives in recent philosophy, psychology, and psychoanalysis. The question of subjectivity has been much debated in each of these disciplines. In contrast with postmodern thinkers who wish to discard subjectivity altogether, I discuss alternative ways to understand and conceptualize subjectivity, or self-consciousness. I consider a tradition of thinkers that includes Sartre, Fichte, and the early German Romantics, who conceptualize self-consciousness as a "being-familiar-with-oneself" that is (...) prior to all reflection. I argue that a developmental corollary to this approach can be found in the psychological research of Daniel Stern, who attributes to infants a "simple non-self-reflexive awareness," while Jacques Lacan's discussion of the specular misrecognitions of the self complicates any simply rendering of "mirroring." By thus combining epistemological, developmental, and phenomenological treatments of the self, I believe it is possible to achieve a conception of subjectivity that avoids the snares of Cartesian essentialism. (shrink)

The dilemma of whether or not a doctor should tell a patient dying of cancer the truth remains a difficult one, as the disagreement between the two previous writers shows. One favours giving priority to patient autonomy, the other feels the doctor's duty of beneficence should be the overriding principle governing such decisions. To this contributor it seems both approaches have something to offer. By being sensitive to what and how much the patient wishes to know and by learning from (...) the insights provided by the study of medical ethics, doctors can learn how to make better moral decisions in this and in other areas. Both lying and truth-telling carry risks of harm to the patient. Learning to work with and balance these risks is part of clinical practice. So is minimising risks by clear thinking. (shrink)

A text written by a student in a Swedish comprehensive school, during a Biology test, is analyzed using a method based on Husserl's transcendental phenomenology. The method is presented in the article. The analysis results in an explicitation of horizons, which enables an access to the lifeworld opened by the text. In this case, the interplay of school Biology and "everyday life" is visible. The meaning constituted in the encounter with school Biology seems to lack natural science aspects. The visible (...) aspects pertain to the bodily situatedness of a student in school and to the character of school knowledge. The world as constituted by school Biology seems to be a place of disembedded, general people where school is a place of non-learning. (shrink)

This paper argues for a treatment of belief as essentially sensitive to certain features of context. The first part gives an argument that we must take belief to be context-sensitive in the same way that assertion is, if we are to preserve appealing principles tying belief to sincere assertion. In particular, whether an agent counts as believing that p in a context depends on the space of alternative possibilities the agent is considering in that context. One and the same doxastic (...) state may amount to belief that p in one context but not another. The second part of the paper gives a formal treatment of doxastic states, according to which belief is context-sensitive along just these lines. The model is applied to characterize (but not to refute) skeptical arguments. (shrink)

In an influential recent paper, Hawthorne, Rothschild, and Spectre (“HRS”) argue that belief is weak. More precisely: they argue that the referent of believe in ordinary language is much weaker than epistemologists usually suppose; that one needs very little evidence to be entitled to believe a proposition in this sense; and that the referent of believe in ordinary language just is the ordinary concept of belief. I argue here to the contrary. HRS identify two alleged tests of weakness – the (...) neg-raising and weak upper bounds tests, as I call them – which they claim believe and think pass. But I identify several other expressions in ordinary English for attributing belief, all of which fail both tests. Therefore, even if HRS are correct that believe and think refer to a weak attitude, it does not follow that the ordinary concept of belief is weak. I conclude by raising some problems for the accounts of belief as guessing, building on HRS's arguments, due to Kevin Dorst, Matt Mandelkern, and Ben Holguín. (shrink)

The Zhuangzi is a deliciously protean text: it is concerned not only with personal realization, but also with social and political order. In many ways the Zhuangzi established a unique literary and philosophical genre of its own, and while clearly the work of many hands, it is one of the finest pieces of literature in the classical Chinese corpus. It employs every trope and literary device available to set off rhetorically charged flashes of insight into the most unrestrained way to (...) live one's life, free from oppressive, conventional judgments and values. The essays presented here constitute an attempt by a distinguished community of international scholars to provide a variety of exegeses of one of the Zhuangzi's most frequently rehearsed anecdotes, often referred to as "the Happy Fish debate." The editors have brought together essays from the broadest possible compass of scholarship, offering interpretations that range from formal logic to alternative epistemologies to transcendental mysticism. Many were commissioned by the editors and appear for the first time. Some of them have been available in other languages—Chinese, Japanese, German, Spanish—and were translated especially for this anthology. And several older essays were chosen for the quality and variety of their arguments, formulated over years of engagement by their authors. All, however, demonstrate that the Zhuangzi as a text and as a philosophy is never one thing; indeed, it has always been and continues to be, many different things to many different people. (shrink)

The preface paradox does not show that it can be rational to have inconsistent beliefs, because preface writers do not have inconsistent beliefs. I argue, first, that a fully satisfactory solution to the preface paradox would have it that the preface writer's beliefs are consistent. The case here is on basic intuitive grounds, not the consequence of a theory of rationality or of belief. Second, I point out that there is an independently motivated theory of belief – sensitivism – which (...) allows such a solution. I sketch a sensitivist account of the preface writer's doxastic state. (shrink)

A number of writers have picked out the way knowledge in the human sciences reflexively alters the human subject as what separates these sciences from the natural sciences. Furthermore, they take this reflexivity to be a condition of moral existence. The article sympathetically examines this emphasis on reflexive processes, but it rejects the particular conclusion that the reflexive phenomenon enables us to demarcate the human sciences. The first sections analyse the different meanings that references to reflexivity have in the psychological (...) and social sciences, in philosophy and in material life, and they link these meanings to the post-positivist philosophy of the social sciences. The discussion considers the problems raised (most influentially in the human sciences by Foucault) by being reflexive about reflexivity itself. They put a large question mark against hopes for a revived philosophical anthropology. Whatever the philosophical arguments, however, there is clearly a reflexive practice in the humanities and human sciences which there is not in the natural sciences. This leads to the argument that there are different forms of knowledge for different purposes and that it may therefore be divergence of purpose, not reflexivity itself, that creates differences among the sciences. It is the fact and purpose of human self-reflection that marks out the human sciences. If this is so, then it explains why an apparently circumscribed question about the classification of knowledge turns out to be inseparable from ontological and moral questions about human identity. (shrink)

The Zhuangzi is a deliciously protean text: it is concerned not only with personal realization, but also with social and political order. In many ways the Zhuangzi established a unique literary and philosophical genre of its own, and while clearly the work of many hands, it is one of the finest pieces of literature in the classical Chinese corpus. It employs every trope and literary device available to set off rhetorically charged flashes of insight into the most unrestrained way to (...) live one's life, free from oppressive, conventional judgments and values. The essays presented here constitute an attempt by a distinguished community of international scholars to provide a variety of exegeses of one of the Zhuangzi's most frequently rehearsed anecdotes, often referred to as "the Happy Fish debate." The editors have brought together essays from the broadest possible compass of scholarship, offering interpretations that range from formal logic to alternative epistemologies to transcendental mysticism. Many were commissioned by the editors and appear for the first time. Some of them have been available in other languages—Chinese, Japanese, German, Spanish—and were translated especially for this anthology. And several older essays were chosen for the quality and variety of their arguments, formulated over years of engagement by their authors. All, however, demonstrate that the Zhuangzi as a text and as a philosophy is never one thing; indeed, it has always been and continues to be, many different things to many different people. (shrink)

Uses a comparative hermeneutical method to explain the most important terms in the classical Confucian philosophical texts, in an effort to allow the tradition to speak on its own terms.

Selected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title In The Politics of Jurisprudence, Roger Cotterrell offers a concise introduction to and commentary ...

Based on ten years of research, The Touch of the Past considers how historically traumatic events uniquely summon forgetting and remembrance. Within a specific focus on events of systemic mass violence, Roger Simon examines how testimonies of historic events influence learning as communities struggle with "difficult histories." The Touch of the Past is a serious and compelling contribution to research in education, historical consciousness, and memory/trauma studies.

A taxonomy of part‐whole or meronymic relations is developed to explain the ordinary English‐speaker's use of the term “part of” and its cognates. The resulting classification yields six types of meronymic relations: 1. component‐integral object (pedal‐bike), 2. member‐collection (ship‐fleet), 3. portion‐mass (slice‐pie), 4. stuff‐object (steel‐car), 5. feature‐activity (paying‐shopping), and 6. place‐area (Everglades‐Florida). Meronymic relations ore further distinguished from other inclusion relations, such as spatial inclusion, and class inclusion, and from several other semantic relations: attribution, attachment, and ownership. This taxonomy is (...) then used to explain cases of apparent intransitivity in merological syllogisms, and standard form syllogisms whose premises express different inclusion relations. The data suggest that intransitivities arise due to equivocations between different types of semantic relations. These results are then explained by means of the relation element theory which accounts for the character and behavior of semantic relations in terms of more primitive relational elements. The inferential phenomena observed are then explained by means of a single principle of element matching. (shrink)

The main question explored by the book is: How can cross-border access to human genetic resources, such as blood or DNA samples, be governed in such a way as to achieve equity for vulnerable populations in developing countries? The book situates the field of genomic and genetic research within global health and research frameworks, describing the concerns that have been raised about the potential unfairness in exchanges during recent decades. Access to and sharing in the benefits of human biological resources (...) are aspects not regulated by any international legal framework such as the Convention on Biological Diversity, which applies only to the exchange of plants, animals and microorganisms, as well as to associated traditional knowledge. Examples of genetic research perceived as exploitative are provided in order to illustrate the legal vacuum concerning the global governance of human genetic resources. The main conclusions drawn from the legal and ethical analysis are: - Benefit sharing is crucial in order to avoid the exploitation of developing countries in human genetic research. - With functioning research ethics committees, undue inducement is less of a concern in genetic research than in other areas of medical research (e.g. clinical trials). - Concerns remain over research involving indigenous populations; accordingly, recommendations are provided. In drawing these conclusions, the book addresses in detail a highly pressing topic in global bioethics and international law. In this regard, it combines bioethical arguments with jurisprudence, in particular with reference to the law of equity and the legal concepts of duress (coercion), unconscionable dealing, and undue inducement. (shrink)

Henry Rosemont, Jr., in his Against Individualism has mounted a compelling argument that foundational individualism in its various iterations has become a malevolent ideology implicated in and aggravating many of the pressing problems of our time. The overall thrust of his thesis can be stated rather simply. The industrial democracies and most of the rest of the world are dominated by a corporate capitalism the interests of which are served largely by a procedural justice grounded in a foundational individualism that (...) compounds the benefits of a few and marginalizes the possibility of realizing a distributive justice for the many. Hence, the more that academic and political forces are successful in defending... (shrink)