Introduction.--Biographical notes.--General analysis of knowledge and the act.--Perceptual and manipulatory phases of the act.--Cosmology.--Value and the act.--Supplementary essays.

This volume contains 17 articles on various aspects of Islamic thought in the Middle East and in Southeast Asia. The first 9 articles concentrate especially on the Qur’ān and its exegesis, Kalām and Sufism; the second 8 articles deal with Javanese Islam, and with Islam and modernity in Southeast Asia.

A community's abilities to promote health and maximize its response to public health threats require fulfillment of one of the four elements of public health legal preparedness, the capacity to effectively coordinate law-based efforts across different governmental jurisdictions, as well as across multiple sectors and disciplines. Government jurisdictions can be viewed “vertically” in that response efforts may entail coordination in the application of laws across multiple levels, including local, state, tribal, and federal governments, and even with international organizations. Coordination of (...) legal responses to public health emergencies also may involve a horizontal dimension comprising numerous and diverse sectors, such as public health, public and private health care, emergency management, education, law enforcement, the judiciary, and the military.Although responses to many acute health threats can implicate multiple jurisdictions and sectors, the jurisdictional and sectoral dimensions of legal preparedness are complex and may vary substantially by the nature of a threat, its geographic and geopolitical extent, and the operational response demanded. (shrink)

A community's abilities to promote health and maximize its response to public health threats require fulfillment of one of the four elements of public health legal preparedness, the capacity to effectively coordinate law-based efforts across different governmental jurisdictions, as well as across multiple sectors and disciplines. Government jurisdictions can be viewed “vertically” in that response efforts may entail coordination in the application of laws across multiple levels, including local, state, tribal, and federal governments, and even with international organizations. Coordination of (...) legal responses to public health emergencies also may involve a horizontal dimension comprising numerous and diverse sectors, such as public health, public and private health care, emergency management, education, law enforcement, the judiciary, and the military.Although responses to many acute health threats can implicate multiple jurisdictions and sectors, the jurisdictional and sectoral dimensions of legal preparedness are complex and may vary substantially by the nature of a threat, its geographic and geopolitical extent, and the operational response demanded. (shrink)

Many philosophers apparently still accept the proposition that there is such a thing as intrinsic value, i.e., that some part of the value of some things (objects, events, or states of affairs) is intrinsic value. John Dewey's attack seems not to have dislodged this proposition, for today it is seldom questioned. I propose to press the attack again, in terms that owe a great deal to Dewey, as I understand him.

For the events "e" and "f" to be identical, They must have the same subject and spatio-Temporal location, And their (participial) property-Descriptions must belong to the same "modification set" (e.G., Reddening, Reddening slowly, Reddening in july). The same criterion applies to actions, Which are here treated strictly as a proper subclass of events (john's closing the door = the door's being closed by john = the door's becoming closed). Actions related by goldman's "causal generation" are therefore distinct, But (...) those related by his other three types of act-Generation are not. This conclusion requires abandonment of the view--Questionable on other grounds--That causal contexts are thoroughly extensional. (shrink)

Whiskey Lao -- Fair warning -- Randomness at large -- We the addicted -- The best possible world -- The importance of being doomed -- Moral responsibility -- The upper limit to the value of possible worlds.

John Macmurray's philosophy has had an important influence on political thought, ethics and education, as well as theology and psychology. His aims were to reexamine the western philosophical tradition and call into question its origins and inheritance. He warned against the political, social and religious dangers of outdated thinking and metaphors.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Revolutionary Christianity: The 1966 South American Lectures by John Howard Yoder, and: John Howard Yoder: Spiritual Writings by John Howard YoderJohn C. ShelleyRevolutionary Christianity: The 1966 South American Lectures John Howard Yoder. Edited by Paul Martens, Mark Thiessen Nation, Matthew Porter, and Myles Werntz eugene, or: cascade books, 2011. 193 pp. $18.00John Howard Yoder: Spiritual Writings John Howard Yoder. Selected with an Introduction (...) by Paul Martens and Jenny Howell. Modern Spiritual Masters Series maryknoll, ny: orbis, 2011. 172 pp. $20.00For more than sixteen years after his death in late 1997, John Howard Yoder has provoked, challenged, and inspired a new generation of theologians, ethicists, and pastors—including the editors of these two volumes—many of whom never met Yoder nor heard him speak. Now, just as this new generation prepares to preserve and enlarge his legacy, a series of revelations detailing Yoder’s repugnant behavior against women and against administrators of the Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary (AMBS) in Elkhart, Indiana, compromises that legacy. It has been widely known that in 1992, after some initial resistance, Yoder submitted to a disciplining process initiated by his home congregation for inappropriate advances to women and that he had been reconciled and reunited in worship shortly before his death.1 The new allegations, which have become broadly public only since 2013, are considerably more serious and include coercive—indeed, “violent”—advances toward a number of women over three decades, including many students and others in subordinate positions. Further, Yoder abused the power of his reputation by intimidating the president and other administrators of AMBS, compelling them to keep the matter quiet as he slipped away to a more prestigious appointment at Notre Dame in 1984.2 According to some witnesses, this inappropriate behavior continued at Notre Dame. [End Page 210]These revelations have complicated the process of writing even a simple review.3 Were Yoder an astrophysicist with groundbreaking discoveries regarding dark matter, we would be disappointed with his behavior, but we would not challenge on those grounds the veracity of his discovery. With Christian ethics, the issue is more complicated, especially for someone of Yoder’s stature whose persona suggested that he was committed to and embodied, however imperfectly, what he proclaimed. Reading these volumes a second time has brought several jarring moments. For example, in both volumes, Yoder defines in almost identical language the temptation of “egocentric altruism”:The real temptation of good people like us is not the crude, the crass, and the carnal as those traits are defined in Puritanism. The real refined temptation, with which Jesus himself was tried, was that of egocentric altruism, of being oneself the incarnation of a good and righteous cause for which others are to suffer, of stating our self-justification in the form of a duty to others.(Revolutionary Christianity, 83; Essential Writings, 144)Consider also the following statement on religious liberty, which is certainly prescient in view of the current conflicts being played out in the courts: “Religious liberty is not only a necessary limitation upon the power of the state; it also marks a voluntary renunciation by the church of any capacity to coerce” (Revolutionary Christianity, 11). At the very least, then, perhaps we should read Yoder’s misdeeds as a warning: even we may be tempted by the crude and the carnal as well as by egocentric altruism; when threatened, even we may resort to coercion.The fourteen lectures in Revolutionary Christianity, published here for the first time, are organized into three sections—“The Believers Church,” “Peace,” and “Church in a Revolutionary World”—roughly the order of presentation to predominantly Mennonite and Anabaptist groups in Montevideo and Buenos Aires in May–June 1966. Written and delivered when Yoder was only thirty-eight and not yet a full-time faculty member, it is remarkable how fully they anticipate his later work. Clearly he mined them for later writings. The four lectures titled “The Believers Church” may be the best theological introduction available to the Anabaptist/Mennonite tradition. Yoder’s description of the church as a community of forgiveness, discernment, grace; of the mandate to share; and of a morality of participation and community... (shrink)

John Dupre warns that our understanding of human nature is being distorted by two faulty and harmful forms of pseudo-scientific thinking. Not just in the academic world but in everyday life, we find one set of experts who seek to explain the ends at which humans aim in terms of evolutionary theory, while the other set uses economic models to give rules of how we act to achieve those ends. Dupre demonstrates that these theorists' explanations do not work and (...) that, if taken seriously, their theories tend to have dangerous social and political consequences. For these reasons, it is important to resist scientism: an exaggerated conception of what science can be expected to do for us. Dupre restores sanity to the study of human nature by pointing the way to a proper understanding of humans in the societies that are our natural and necessary environments. Anyone interested in science and human life will enjoy this book--unless they are its targets. (shrink)

Traditional moral theories help corporate decision-makers understand what position consumers, like Rose Cipollone, in Cipollone vs Liggett Group, will take against cigarette manufacturers who fail to warn of the dangers of smoking, conceal data about addiction and other dangers, from the public, as well as continue to neutralize the warnings on cigarettes by deceptive advertisements.

Since the birth of the first test-tube baby, Louise Brown, in 1977, we have seen truly remarkable advances in biotechnology. We can now screen the fetus for Down Syndrome, Spina Bifida, and a wide range of genetic disorders. We can rearrange genes in DNA chains and redirect the evolution of species. We can record an individual's genetic fingerprint. And we can potentially insert genes into human DNA that will produce physical warning signs of cancer, allowing early detection. In fact, biotechnology (...) has progressed to such a point that virtually any kind of genetic manipulation, if not already possible, is just around the corner. But these breakthroughs also raise serious ethical and moral dilemmas that we are only now beginning to confront. In Wonderwoman and Superman, noted medical ethicist John Harris offers the first thorough analysis of the moral dilemmas created by the revolution in molecular biology. Covering a wide array of recent innovations, Harris discusses, for example, the moral decisions involved and the consequences of creating egg and embryo banks. Who should be allowed to use such resources? Should recipients be screened? Should such banks be open for public or private use? And does it cheapen life to make embryos available for sale? In another chapter, Harris examines the question of conceiving children chiefly for organ donation, focusing on the recent case of a woman who wanted to have a second child to provide a bone marrow donor for her first child sick with leukemia (she intended to abort the fetus if its bone marrow did not genetically match that of her living child). In this case, the medical staff had to decide whether they should perform in-vitro fertilization, knowing that the mother did not satisfy the clinic's criteria (there was no father), and also knowing the potential for abortion. Discussing the ethics of the mother's choice and the clinic's choice, Harris asks whether it is morally correct to create a child as an organ donor, whether the future child would suffer, whether it is worth any suffering to be born, and who has the right to weigh the various factors (both moral and physiological) involved in making these decisions. Delving into a multitude of issues such as when life begins, when suffering is needless, and whether we should play God, Wonderwoman and Superman provides not only a thought-provoking inquiry into the potential and actual ethical dilemmas created by the many advances in biotechnology, but challenges us to learn to choose responsibly and to face the moral implications of the choices that confront us. (shrink)

Turning his back on neoliberalism, voicing 'the end of history' and the unstoppable spread of liberal values across the globe, Gray's was a lone voice of scepticism. The thinking he criticised would lead to the invasion of Iraq. Today, its folly might seem obvious, but Gray has been trying to warn us for years.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:HUME'S IDEAS In the eighteenth century, there was widespread acceptance of a physiological basis for cognition. Some writers even argued for a rather detailed correlation between awareness and physiological changes, suggesting that (a) the former could be adequately explained in terms of the latter or, in some few instances, (b) that the former are the latter. David Hartley may come to mind as fitting one or the other of (...) these alternatives, but Robert Hooke had earlier argued for ideas as brain impressions, as of course did Descartes in his early scientific treatises. There was also one medical doctor in the eighteenth century, Dr. Astruc, who seems (on the basis of what Chambers reports) to have attempted a very specific correlation between specific forms of awareness and specific states and changes in physiology. There were also writers in this century who warned against the dangers of using physical-object vocabulary when talking about the mind and acts of awareness. Berkeley is one such writer,- Thomas Reid at the end of the century traced, to the use of this vocabulary, what he took to be the indirect realism of the way of ideas. Hume is writing in both these traditions: the tradition of using physical language for characterizing mental operations and the tradition of physiological explanations and correlations. The phrase used by Alexander Pope and Hume, 'the anatomy of the mind', seems to be a mixed metaphor, but it is a phrase which I take as an indication that Hume is doing what we would call 'cognitive psychology'. Another phrase used by Hume (this time in the Enquiry), 'mental geography', may capture his enterprise better: 'geography' still sounds physical, but it is modified by 'mental'. Hume is engaged in mental mapping. I want to take a look at the use of the term 'idea' in Hume's writing (mainly in the Treatise) in order to see 2. whether Hume's text enables us to say anything about the nature of his ideas, to discover what role they play in his mental geography. As far as I can determine, there are three possible candidates for the nature of ideas in Hume: images, brain impressions, and cognitive contents. The first of these is, I think, the standard reading of Hume's ideas. Professor Anderson has presented strong argument and evidence to support the second. I will be suggesting that the third is the best candidate, given the full range of the text of the Treatise. Of course, the correct answer 4 may be all three of these. The Treatise opens by dividing all perceptions of the human mind into two kinds. Impressions and ideas differ in the degree of force and liveliness with which they strike upon the mind. Even though the language of 'force' and 'liveliness' may be borrowed from physical talk, it is the mind, not the brain, on which perceptions strike. The examples of impressions are sensations, passions, and emotions. Ideas are said to be the faint images of these impressions in thinking and reasoning. The term 'image' throughout the eighteenth century never receives any clear explication. Its inheritance from optical treatises always hangs about it. We should look to the examples cited by Hume, in order to see whether we can construct a meaning for that term when used in these psychological contexts. Let us look first at his very first example of 'ideas': all the perceptions excited by the present discourse. (Tl) He explicitly excludes from these perceptions those which arise from the sight and touch, as well as the immediate pleasure or uneasiness his discourse may excite in us. The perceptions which are thus excluded are sensations and emotions, the impressions he has just distinguished. The only candidate left for ideas would seem to be what this discourse says, our thoughts about it, my understanding of what it says. The distinction is not one Hume thinks is difficult to follow: Every one of himself will readily perceive the difference betwixt feeling and thinking. (Tl-2) Last week I was sad, today I recall that feeling of sadness/ the difference between being sad and remembering that I was sad. Hume gives a different example: the perceptions formed when... (shrink)

Towards the conclusion of the First Section of the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant describes a process whereby a subject can undergo a kind of moral corruption. This process, which he calls a “natural dialectic”, can cause one to undermine one’s own or¬dinary grasp of the demands of morality. Kant also claims that this natural dialectic is the basis of the need for moral philosophy itself, since first-order moral reasoning is insufficient to protect against it. I show that (...) this passage is closely related to another in the First Section, one where Kant warns against the threat of “misology”, or the hatred of reason. I argue that both these passages must be read as engaging with specific claims from Rousseau’s writings. Uncovering the historical context and rhetorical function of Kant’s account of moral self-deception can re-orient the reader to his ambitions for the Groundwork itself. (shrink)

Seldom does human reasoning fit the standards of deduction. Yet logicians have tended to use the strict standards of deductive validity for assessing all inferences. _Within Reason_ develops instead a way of assessing arguments and inferences that is directly appropriate to the non-deductive forms people regularly use. It uses analogy, and argument from analogy, to provide a thread that unites various forms: raising objections, inductions of various sorts, arguments to explanation, and arguments to action. The discussion is developed progressively, at (...) each stage building on the skills learned previously. And at each stage the book suggetss ways of assessing the strength of reasoning. Most of the examples are taken from the great texts of the Western tradition. In the exercises that form an integral part of each chapter an even broader range of writing is presented, offering instructors an extraordinary variety of texts at various levels ot assign to their students. The thesis implicit in the book is that induction, arguments to explanation and arguments to action are all sophisticated forms of arguments from analogy. Burbidge is concerned not simply to warn against the misuse of non-deductive reasoning but also to develop a more positive theory that allows us both to better udnerstand the workings of non-deductive reasoning, and to better employ it. (shrink)

What Aphorism Does Nietzsche Explicate in Genealogy of Morals, Essay III ? JOHN T. WILCOX A picture held us captive. Wittgenstein ~ AS EVERYONE KNOWS, the dominant opinion is not always correct. Current scholarship, in all likelihood, makes assumptions which have not yet been questioned; and probably some of them will be seen to be false, once they have been examined. I will argue here that there is a dominant but erroneous assumption concerning the Third Essay in Nietzsche's On (...) the Genealogy of Morals. It will be obvious that correcting this error has some serious implica- tions for almost all current interpretations of the essay. After acknowledging, at the end of his Preface to the Genealogy, that some might find his new book "incomprehensible," Nietzsche warns that "the fault.., is not necessarily mine." He assumes, he says, that readers have already worked hard at his earlier writings, themselves "not easy to pene- trate," and have been "wounded" and "delighted" by his Zarathustra. Then he begins one of several passages we must examine carefully: In other cases, people have difficulty with the aphoristic form: this arises from the fact that today this form is not taken seriously enough. An aphorism, properly stamped and molded, has not been "deciphered" when it has simply been read; rather, one has then to begin its exegesis, for which is required an art of exegesis. I have offered in the third essay of the present book an example of what I.. (shrink)

Philip Reed’s interesting and welcome comparison of the expressivist case against, on the one hand, prenatal testing and abortion and, on the other, physician-assisted suicide and voluntary active euthanasia, indicates the relevance of the expressivist case against the latter and its resilience to criticisms of the expressivist case against the former. Advocates of PAS/VAE commonly argue that they should be lawful out of respect for autonomy: everyone has the right to choose a physician-hastened death if they meet specified conditions such (...) as ‘terminal illness’ or ‘unbearable suffering’. The focus on autonomy is distracting, for the real work of justifying PAS/VAE is done by the argument that life with the conditions specified is not ‘worth living’. Legalisation endorses, and expresses, the judgement that it is reasonable for people with those conditions to think their lives no longer worth living and obtain medical help to end them. Were the justification to respect autonomy, why limit the choice? It is small wonder, in light of the discriminatory nature of such a judgement, that disability groups have been outspoken opponents of legalisation. As society’s ‘canaries in the coalmine’ they have warned of the …. (shrink)

Cornelius Castoriadis was an important intellectual figure in France for many decades, beginning in the late-1940s. Trained in philosophy, Castoriadis also worked as a practicing economist and psychologist while authoring over twenty major works and numerous articles spanning many traditional philosophical subjects, including politics, economics, psychology, anthropology, and ontology. His oeuvre can be understood broadly as a reflection on the concept of creativity and its implications in various fields. Perhaps most importantly he warned of the dangerous political and ethical consequences (...) of a contemporary world that has lost sight of autonomy, i.e. of the need to set limits or laws for oneself. (shrink)

Part of the epistemological crisis of the twentieth century was caused by empirically establishing that introspection provides little reliable self-knowledge. While we all have full actual selves to which our self-representations do not do full justice, we focus on the formation and existence of a narrative self, and on problematic reliability. We will explore the cognitive neuroscience behind its limitations, including pathological forms of confabulation, the generation of plausible but insufficiently grounded accounts of our actions, and the normal patterns of (...) narrative creation and checking. The evolutionary logic of self-deception may produce adaptive results, particularly in service of the “commitment strategies” that give our species results otherwise unobtainable. It is largely in our close relationships with other human beings, the relationships so well served by these very strategies, that we may find the powerful counterbalancing feedback which may provide positive change and self-transcendence. Nevertheless, we will also warn about a shadow side for which religion can provide both acknowledgment and hope. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume's Essays on Happiness John Immerwahr The second volume of Hume's Essays, Moral and Political (1742) includes a set offour pieces on the sects, that naturally form themselves in the world. These essays, "The Epicurean," "The Stoic," "The Platonist," and "The Sceptic,"refer to the ancient philosophical schools, but their main purpose, according to Hume, is to describe four different ideas ofhuman life and ofhappiness. There is little discussion (...) ofthese works in the Hume literature, but Hume himself seemed to be rather fond of them. Although several early essays were dropped from later editions, this set reappears in every version of the Essays. Hume also invested unusual care in crafting these essays, "polishingthe sentences with such precision," according to Green and Grose, "that the subsequent editions made scarcely an alteration in their language." In this article I will argue that these essays do play a significant role in Hume's overall philosophical strategy, and that a close reading ofthem helps us fill out important aspects of Hume's moral philosophy. An Attractive Reading of the Four Essays In one of the few detailed discussions of these essays, Robert Fogelin presents one reading that has a good deal of initial plausibility. Fogelin's interpretation has several main points. First, he dismisses the importance of the first three essays and asserts that "despite certain particular points of agreement," these essays are "not expressive ofHume's own position." Secondly, he argues that the final essay, "The Sceptic," does represent Hume's own position, and that in this essay Hume presents himself"under the thinnest possible disguise." In effect, Fogelin'sinterpretation is that"The Sceptic"canbe profitably readinisolationfrom the first three. Finally, Fogelin sees "The Sceptic" as having roughly the same function as the Treatise ofHuman Nature. He sees "The Sceptic" as another technical philosophical work where Hume tries, in a somewhat different way, to work out the relationship between scepticism, morality, and the passions. It is not hard to see what makes this type of interpretation plausible. On stylistic grounds alone, there are reasons to dismiss the first three essays and focus attention primarily on "The Sceptic." The first three are quite brief and are written in a rhetorical and flowery style, whereas "The Sceptic" is longer (as long as the other three essays combined) and returns to Hume's normal prose style. Substantively, Volume XV Number 2 307 JOHN IMMERWAHR there are many doctrines in "The Sceptic" which, as Fogelin correctly points out, are reminiscent of Hume's other philosophical works. An Alternative Reading Despite the plausibility of this reading, I will defend an alternative interpretation. First, I will argue that the essays are intended to be read as a set. The four essays constitute a philosophical dialogue that consists offour closely related speeches; it is misleading to read one of the speeches out of the context of the dialogue as a whole. Secondly, I will try to show that none of the speakers represents Hume's own position. From Hume's point of view, all of the speeches make important points but also contain significant errors. Finally, I will argue that the purpose of these popular essays is different from the goal of technical philosophical works such as the Treatise. While the Treatise is intended to describe and analyze human nature, the purpose ofthese essays is therapeutic rather than analytic; they are designed to change rather than to inform the reader. In the next three sections I discuss these claims in detail. I. Hume's First Dialogue Taken together, the four essays can be read as Hume's first (but by no means last) effort in dialogue writing. The evidence that they were intended by Hume as a dialogue is drawn from what Hume says about them, from internal evidence, and from a comparison with their classical model, the dialogues of Cicero. For the most part, Hume wanted his readers to see his Essays as stand-alone pieces. In the Advertisement for the first volume Hume warns his readers that they must not look for any Connexion among these Essays, but must consider each ofthem as a Work apart. But both in the Advertisement to the second volume (where... (shrink)

"Drawing upon recent work in theoretical archaeology, and on case studies from the prehistoric Near East, medieval Europe, early modern North America, and Mesoamerica, John Moreland challenges many of the assumptions which have hitherto underpinned archaeological research in historic periods, arguing that we will only fully understand these pasts when we begin to appreciate the historically specific ways in which both documents and artefacts were 'activated' in the reproduction and transformation of power and identity. A concluding chapter warns that (...) any contribution these arguments may make to the better understanding of the historical past will be negated if we fail to appreciate the very real dangers posed, to all the peoples of the past, by the recent 'linguistic turn' in both disciplines."--BOOK JACKET. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:OwlJohn HollanderOwlNow that the owl-light—in the time between Dog and wolf, as some call it—ends, we wait As you alight on an unseen Branch to interrogateThe listener and the rememberer; Lost outlines heighten—as last colors fade— The sounder darkness you confer Upon the spruce’s shade.Deluded by the noonlight’s wide display Of everything, our vision floats through thin Spaces of ill-illumined day: How we are taken inBy what we take (...) in with our roving eyes! Your constant ones, if moved to track or trace, Take their head with them, lantern-wise Taking heed, keeping faceIn the society of night, and keeping Faith with the spirit of pure fixity That sets the mind’s great heart to leaping At what you more than see. [End Page 163]Medusa’s visage gazed our bodies to Literal stone unshaded: your face, caught In our glance widely eyes us through, Astonishing our thought. You who debated with the nightingale The rectitude of northern wisdom, cold Against the love-stuff of the tale The laid-back south had told; And yet who stood amid the lovely, thick Leaves of the ivy, while in all their folly The larks and thrushes sought the prick And berries of the holly; You who confounded the rapacious crow Thus to be favored by the great sky-eyed Queen of the air and all who know, Now ever by her side; With silent wing and interrogative Cry in lieu of a merely charming song, You sound the dark in which you live Perched above right and wrong. Resonance is not vacancy: although He could hear nothing in your hollow howls But woe and his own guilt, Thoreau Rejoiced that there were owls. Scattered and occasional questionings With here and there too late a warning shout, Wisdom arises on the wings Of darkness and of doubt. Where in day’s vastnesses does truth reside? In noon’s uncompromising light and heat When even our own shadows hide Under our very feet? Or in the hidden center of the quick Resilient dark on which your narrowed sight So pointedly alights to pick Not the day, but the night, [End Page 164] Its fruitful flower, petaled a hundredfold? Oh it is there, truth, with the poor blind prey Trembling with prescience or cold Waiting for how your way Of well-tuned suddenness and certitude Tight-strung and execution highly wrought Leads to the pounced-on object, food For something beyond thought, By overlooking nothing, overseeing In all the stillness hidden, tiny motions Squirming with the life of being Inferences and notions. With patient agency the beak and claws Of fierce sublime awareness pluck it clean Deriving what for us are laws Governing the unseen. Under torn canvas we put out to sea Trusting, though puzzled by what glows above, To something like philosophy To be the helmsman of Life (but whose life?). Your lessons of the land, Down-to-tree, then, if not -to-earth, indict Our helplessness to understand Just what we are at night. Immensities of starlight told us lies Of what and where we are; but, we allow, Drunk with the Milky Way, our eyes Are on the Wagon now, Fugitive slaves, leaving despair for dread As if in search of the cold, freeing North, Keep gazing steadily ahead Keep on Keep knowing forth You urge us, as your silences address The power that Minerva chose you for: Great-winged, far-ranging consciousness Now come to rest in your [End Page 165] Olympian attentiveness that finds The affrighted heartbeat on the ground, perceives The flutter of substances, the mind’s Life in the fallen leaves.John HollanderYale UniversityCopyright © 1996 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

The church-going philosopher who settles in for an extended reading of Dan Dennett’s new book will find himself in a familiar circumstance. What one confronts is a lot more like an extended sermon than it is a typical philosophical treatise. And, whatever one’s Sunday morning habits, one can’t help but admire the preaching skills artfully displayed. The delivery is powerful and assured; the argument is streamlined, peppered with evocative and delightful illustrations that will be recalled long after the particular points (...) have faded from memory; dangerous errors are clearly identified, and while we are urged to pity rather than to hate their purveyors, we are also repeatedly warned about the fateful consequences of their mistakes; tropes are repeated to growing effect; finally, the tone is one of earnest exhortation, relieved intermittently with some well-chosen humor, while it lays the necessary foundations for several closing points of practical application. (shrink)

This paper is both a slice of history, a warning and a congratulation. The history is about how the Russell papers found their way to a steel-town in Canada and how it came about that they have gradually been published. The warning is that it is extremely difficult to conduct such an enterprise on a co-operative basis, which may help to explain why so many enterprises of this kind have issued in failure. The congratulations are for those who have edited (...) volumes of very different kinds, as a result of Russell's versatility, in a manner which throws new light on his intellectual history. All of this had to be described in a very schematic way. But it will, I hope, lead readers to the volumes themselves. Only there will they find the answer to the exercise I set towards the end of the article. (shrink)

This paper is both a slice of history, a warning and a congratulation. The history is about how the Russell papers found their way to a steel-town in Canada and how it came about that they have gradually been published. The warning is that it is extremely difficult to conduct such an enterprise on a co-operative basis, which may help to explain why so many enterprises of this kind have issued in failure. The congratulations are for those who have edited (...) volumes of very different kinds, as a result of Russell's versatility, in a manner which throws new light on his intellectual history. All of this had to be described in a very schematic way. But it will, I hope, lead readers to the volumes themselves. Only there will they find the answer to the exercise I set towards the end of the article. (shrink)

This book is an affirmation of faith in God and a warning of the dangers of a world guided by the religion of atheism. It warns against a religion based upon chance, deficient science, and deficient atheistic evolution.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume XX, Number 1, April 1994, pp. 143-149 David Hume and Public Debt: Crying Wolf? JOHN CHRISTIAN LAURSEN and GREG COOLIDGE David Hume's views on public credit have not only received prominent attention in the literature on his political thought, but have even been the subject of attention in The Wall Street Journal.1 Most of the attention has centered on Hume's essay "Of Public Credit" of (...) 1752, and treats it only as an expression of ideas, without relating it to the historical facts. This note lays out Hume's views on this matter throughout his lifetime, and juxtaposes them with figures for the actual public debt, carrying the story down to the twentieth century. Public debt as we know it only goes back about 300 years. The British government in the 1690s was the first modern government to establish enough genuine credit that private citizens would loan it money without having to be compelled.2 At the turn of the century, in the year 1700, the British public debt amounted to 14.2 million pounds sterling.3 As early as 1741, Hume was already worrying about the public debt in the essay "Of Liberty and Despotism" (later changed to "Of Civil Liberty"). In the last paragraph of that essay, he wrote of the "degeneracy" brought about by public debt, suggested that debt-service "taxes may, in time, become altogether intolerable, and all the property of the state be brought into the hands of" the government. If it is not curbed, we may come to "curse our very liberty," he wrote.4 That year, the national debt totaled 48.8 million pounds (45.2 million in 1701 pounds5). John Christian Laursen and Greg Coolidge are at the Department of Political Science, University of California, Riverside, Riverside, CA 92521 USA. Laursen e-mail: [email protected]. 144 John Christian Laursen and Greg Coolidge Hume's essay of 1752, "Of Public Credit, " was devoted entirely to criticism of the public debt (Essays, 349-365). His thoughts on public credit at this time can be summed up in this ominous warning: It must, indeed, be one of these two events; either the nation must destroy public credit, or public credit will destroy the nation. (Essays, 360-361) Hume acknowledged that the use of public credit could benefit the economy in some ways: more men with large stocks and incomes, may naturally be supposed to continue in trade, where there are public debts; and this, it must be owned, is of some advantage to commerce, by diminishing its profits, promoting circulation, and encouraging industry. (Essays, 354) But the many disadvantages would outweigh such advantages (Essays, 354355 ): 1) "It is certain, that national debts cause a mighty confluence of people and riches to the capital," making the head too large for the body. 2) Public stocks "banish gold and silver from the most considerable commerce of the state." 3) The taxes levied to pay the interest oppress the poorer people. 4) "As foreigners possess a great share of our national funds, they render the public, in a manner, tributary to them, and may in time occasion the transport of our people and our industry." 5) Public credit encourages an idle and useless rentier class. All of this pales, however, in comparison to the political consequences. From the point of view of the body politic, public credit was a threat to the security of the state. It would die a natural or a violent death. In wartime, or some national emergency, the funds necessary for the functioning of the economy would be diverted to other purposes. The economy, now dependent on credit, would crumble. The whole fabric, already tottering, falls to the ground, and buries thousands in its ruins. And this, I think, may be called the natural death of public credit. (Essays, 363) Hume Studies David Hume and Public Debt: Crying Wolf? 145 Another scenario would occur if the government became too indebted to intervene in maintaining the balance of power in Europe. Our children, weary of the struggle, and fettered with encumbrances, may sit down secure, and see their neighbors oppressed and conquered ; till, at last, they themselves... (shrink)

Deprivation accounts of death's badness, such as Feldman’s (1992), that purport to avoid questionable life-death comparatives Silverstein warns against (1980) by comparing only the values of various alternative life-wholes, implicitly depend upon assigning greater comparative value to periods of these life-wholes (for the person who lives) than is assigned to periods when the person is not alive, and thus are simply special cases of the problematic life-death comparative. Life-death comparatives undermine any deprivation account if (1) there is no way things (...) are (good or bad) for one who does not exist, and (2) values are comparative in the way specified by VC. Rejecting VC is not an option for the standard deprivation account, since this account uses VC to show that since continued life is good for the person who continues to live, death must be worse for that person. The non-standard deprivation account, dubbed by McMahan the reconciliation strategy, does not employ VC, but it also fails to vindicate common sense attitudes towards matters of life and death, and is in the main a capitulation to the Epicurean position. The remaining option for one who wishes to defend the view that death is typically bad for the person who dies is to directly target the Epicurean starting point, that things cannot be good or bad for a person when he does not exist. (shrink)

Michel Serres was a successful scholar who made a living within the university on two continents. However, he also viewed the university with great trepidation and tried to warn young scholars against falling victim to the university culture that encouraged a scholar to become a critic and not do original work. In place of the current university system, Serres offers an alternative vision that I refer to as the Diogenes University.

The paper explores a subclass of ethical judgements that are disturbing in that the strength of moral abhorrence generally associated with such judgements is not remotely matched by any rational moral arguments supporting them, and yet we nevertheless appear to think we have no intellectual obligation to change the said ethical judgments so as to accord with the degree of justification. This may stand as a warning that we should be guarded in holding our ethical beliefs since we may not (...) be as rational as we like to think we are. (shrink)

In this paper I investigate the mechanics of killing, brining together neuroscience, military history, and the work of the French philosophers Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari. Investigating the Columbine killers and the way they negotiate with the intensity of the act of killing allows me to construct a concept of “political physiology,” defined as “interlocking intensive processes that articulate the patterns, thresholds, and triggers of emergent bodies, forming assemblages linking the social and the somatic, with sometimes the subjective as intermediary.” (...) While most people must be in a blind rage to kill at close range, the Columbine killers raised the threshold at which an evolutionarily inherited non-subjective “rage agent” kicks in, thus allowing themselves to be subjects in the act of killing. Yet they were not “cold-blooded killers,” either, those who lower the intensity of the act of killing below the threshold that prevents most interpersonal violence from reaching lethal proportions, since they committed suicide soon after their killing spree from burning out. The success of the Columbine killing machine warns us of a “machinic phylum” whose singularities are virtually available for incorporation into bodies by subjects willing to undergo extreme experiments in political physiology. (shrink)