In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Leo Strauss on Plato's Euthyphro ed. Hannes Kerber, and Svetozar Y. MinkovColin David PearsKERBER, Hannes, and Svetozar Y. Minkov, editors. Leo Strauss on Plato's Euthyphro. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2023. vii + 231 pp. Cloth, $74.95; paper, $22.95Leo Strauss is an enigmatic figure in the landscape of political philosophy, deeply committed to the restoration of political philosophy as the premiere discipline in academia. He spent (...) his career working to reopen le querelle des anciens et des modernes and the theologico-political problem underlying those tensions. Though, as the editors of this volume point out, Strauss's motivations were not merely historiographic and the evolution of his thought was not without significant, if fruitful, setbacks.Strauss's early thought is defined by his engagement with Maimonides, and especially Philosophy and Law (1935). Without fully abandoning the [End Page 550] traditional interpretation of Maimonides as reconciling Jewish and Aristotelian philosophy, Strauss advances Maimonides as an esoteric thinker with a more complex and nuanced philosophic perspective. Strauss later turned to al-Farabi, who like Maimonides grapples with the complex interrelation of reason, revelation, and the role of philosophy. It was during this era that Strauss, having just fled Nazi Germany in 1938, confirmed his view of esoterism in philosophic writing and jettisoned limited traditional interpretations.However, these phases of Strauss's early development prove short-lived. In 1946, Strauss "suffers" his famous "shipwreck," a profound philosophic crisis, which compelled him "to begin again from the beginning" (Strauss to Löwith, 1946). Al-Farabi had led Strauss back into a study of Plato and to the crisis of reason laid out in Plato's dialogues, the crux of which is the possibility that there may exist permanent limits on what philosophy or science can know about the fundamental nature of things. The implications this has regarding the legitimacy of divine revelation led to the "second sailing" suggested in the Phaedo, and to Strauss's complete reevaluation of the theologico-political problem.The present volume provides a view of Strauss's evolving thought immediately following his "shipwreck" and as he begins to critically elaborate on his view of the relationship between philosophy and religion. Included are Strauss's notebook on Plato's Euthyphro and Crito (1948), a draft of his first lecture on the Euthyphro (1950), notes for his second lecture on the Euthyphro and the text of the lecture itself (1952), as well as marginalia and selections from his copy of Plato's dialogue. Together, these materials make up the several layers surrounding the heart of Strauss's thought on the problems of justice and piety, or "whether the right and necessity of philosophy are completely evident."Reading this volume is an exercise in flipping back and forth between one section and another to the point where one is tempted to break the spine, separate the sections, and lay them out side by side. Strauss's notebook provides his line-by-line interpretation of the Platonic dialogues and forms the basis for both the draft of his first lecture, his notes on the second, and his 1952 lecture itself. Astute readers may already notice in the notebook how Strauss subtly opens up his view of piety, for example by taking seriously Euthyphro's first but formally flawed definition of piety and gradually refusing to position Euthyphro as a fool. Strauss's draft of his first lecture picks up the notebook's themes but still presents a view of piety more in line with the pro-philosopher stance presented early in the notes. By contrast, the 1952 lecture presents a more elegant formulation of Strauss's position, both in words and actions. That is, not only does the second lecture closely follow the notebook's nuanced exegesis, but it is also designed to stimulate the reader's thinking on the problems of justice and piety, rather than resolve these didactically.Strauss appears to have abandoned the approach he took in the first lecture in favor of an approach that echoed Plato's own presentation in the Euthyphro. He closes the 1952 lecture with two especially salient [End Page 551] points. Returning to his early claim... (shrink)

While there is no principle of evil (archē kakou) for Plato, evil does exist in the Platonic framework in various ways, and these help to illuminate other important and overlooked features of Platonic thought: human freedom and the ability to choose and act. Using the Timaeus as the basis of investigation, this paper examines the world-soul and its relation to the human soul in order to understand Plato’s notion of congruency between parts and the whole. It specifically highlights the importance (...) of the three fundamental characteristics of the cosmos—singularity, proportionalism, and completeness—and their ability to explain the human being. The paper argues that Plato understands evil as basic incongruence on all levels, but specifically active incongruence on the human level. The incongruence between the human and the cosmic levels of evil reveals perhaps the most important aspect of the Platonic framework, the possibility for progress toward the good. (shrink)

Tree-Structured Readings of the Tractatus : I argue that the numbering system of the Tractatus lets us see how it was constructed, in two closely related senses of that term. First, it tells us a great deal about the genesis of the book, for the numbering system was used to assemble and rearrange a series of drafts, as recorded in MS 104. Second, it helps us understand the structure of the published book, as cryptically summarized in the opening footnote. I (...) also discuss an unpublished letter from Anscombe to von Wright from 1948 which contains the very first sketch of a tree-structured reading, and what I believe is Stenius’s response to Anscombe’s proposal. The paper critically evaluates previous work on tree-structured readings and contends that we need to read the Tractatus in both the number order used in the published book and the tree order that Wittgenstein used to draft it. It also considers some of the main ways of turning this complex branching structure into a linear, printed text, and so serves as an introduction to the three tree-structured editions of the Tractatus that accompany the original English-language publication of this paper in NWR 11 (the German text, and the translations by Ogden & Ramsey and Pears & McGuinness). (shrink)

According to the theory Russell defends in The Analysis of Mind, ‘true memories’ (roughly, memories that are not remembering-hows) are recollections of past events accompanied by a feeling of familiarity. While memory images play a vital role in this account, Russell does not pay much attention to the fact that imagery plays different roles in different sorts of memory. In most cases that Russell considers, memory is based on an image that serves as a datum (imagebased memories), but there are (...) other cases in which memory judgment requires an image without being based on it (answer-memories). A good example for the former is when a person, asked what the colour of the sea was last afternoon, recalls an image and forms a judgment on this basis. In the second case she may recognize the sea and entertain a memory image of it without ‘reading off’ the memory judgment from this picture. That is, the image does not prompt but itself is part of the propositional content of answer memories. Since in this latter case the feeling of familiarity is constitutive of the recollection but cannot serve as its explanans, answer memories do not conform to Russell’s account. According to Lindsay Judson this is not a vice of the theory, since Russell never meant to extend it to answer memories. Despite having a certain appeal of benevolence, Judson’s interpretation is not supported by textual evidence. Taking side with David Pears, I will argue that Russell did not properly differentiate between image-based memory and answer memory, and illegitimately extended his theory to the latter. (shrink)

I argue that the numbering system of the Tractatus lets us see how it was constructed, in two closely related senses of that term. First, it tells us a great deal about the genesis of the book, for the numbering system was used to assemble and rearrange a series of drafts, as recorded in MS 104. Second, it helps us understand the structure of the published book, as cryptically summarized in the opening footnote. I also discuss an unpublished letter from (...) Anscombe to von Wright from 1948 which contains the very first sketch of a tree-structured reading, and what I believe is Stenius’s response to Anscombe’s proposal. The paper critically evaluates previous work on tree-structured readings and contends that we need to read the Tractatus in both the number order used in the published book and the tree order that Wittgenstein used to draft it. It also considers some of the main ways of turning this complex branching structure into a linear, printed text, and so serves as an introduction to the three tree-structured editions of the Tractatus that accompany this paper (the German text, and the translations by Ogden/Ramsey and Pears & McGuinness). (shrink)

Extinct megafaunal mammals in the Americas are often linked to seed-dispersal mutualisms with large-fruiting tree species, but large-fruiting species in Europe and Asia have received far less attention. Several species of arboreal Maloideae (apples and pears) and Prunoideae (plums and peaches) evolved large fruits starting around nine million years ago, primarily in Eurasia. As evolutionary adaptations for seed dispersal by animals, the size, high sugar content, and bright colorful visual displays of ripeness suggest that mutualism with megafaunal mammals facilitated the (...) evolutionary change. There has been little discussion as to which animals were likely candidate(s) on the late Miocene landscape of Eurasia. We argue that several possible dispersers could have consumed the large fruits, with endozoochoric dispersal usually relying on guilds of species. During the Pleistocene and Holocene, the dispersal guild likely included ursids, equids, and elephantids. During the late Miocene, large primates were likely also among the members of this guild, and the potential of a long-held mutualism between the ape and apple clades merits further discussion. If primates were a driving factor in the evolution of this large-fruit seed-dispersal system, it would represent an example of seed-dispersal-based mutualism with hominids millions of years prior to crop domestication or the development of cultural practices, such as farming. (shrink)

David Pears's recent essay, "How Easy is Akrasia?, '' is, in significant part, a refutation of an argument against the possibility of a certain sort of incontinent action. The kind of incontinent action in question is, in Pears's words, "underivative brazen akrasia, which is commonly taken to be akrasia with the fault located between the last line of an agent's reasoning and his action" (p. 40). The argument which he attacks is attributed to Donald Davidson. The purpose of this (...) note is, not to quarrel with Pears, but rather to supplement his interesting essay. In Section I, drawing upon some of Davidson's views on intending and unconditional practical judgments, I construct a stronger argument for the impossibility of the type of akratic action at issue than the one which Pears refutes. In Section II, I explain why even the stronger argument fails and sketch out some implications of its failure for a causal theory of action. (shrink)

Perhaps the most important work of philosophy written in the twentieth century, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus first appeared in 1921 and was the only philosophical work that Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) published during his lifetime. Written in short, carefully numbered paragraphs of extreme compression and brilliance, it immediately convinced many of its readers and captivated the imagination of all. Its chief influence, at first, was on the Logical Positivists of the 1920s and 30s, but many other philosophers were stimulated by its philosophy (...) of language, finding attractive, if ultimately unsatisfactory, its view that propositions were pictures of reality. Perhaps most of all, Wittgenstein himself, after his return to philosophy in the late 1920s, was fascinated by its vision of an inexpressible, crystalline world of logical relationships. The posthumous publication of other writings has, therefore, only served to reawaken interest in the Tractatus and to illuminate its more neglected aspects. David Pears and Brian McGuinness revised their translation in the light of Wittgenstein's own suggestions and comments in his correspondence with C.K. Ogden about the first translation. In addition, this edition contains the introduction by Bertrand Russell which appeared in the original English translation. (shrink)

In this book, which thoroughly revises and greatly expands his classic work Sameness and Substance, David Wiggins retrieves and refurbishes in the light of twentieth-century logic and logical theory certain conceptions of identity, of substance and of persistence through change that philosophy inherits from its past. In this new version, he vindicates the absoluteness, necessity, determinateness and all or nothing character of identity against rival conceptions. He defends a form of essentialism that he calls individuative essentialism, and then a (...) form of realism that he calls conceptualist realism. In a final chapter he advocates a human being-based conception of the identity and individuation of persons, arguing that any satisfactory account of personal memory must make reference to the life of the rememberer himself. This important book will appeal to a wide range of readers in metaphysics, philosophical logic, and analytic philosophy. (shrink)

Lipsey and Lancaster's "general theory of second best" is widely thought to have significant implications for applied theorizing about the institutions and policies that most effectively implement abstract normative principles. It is also widely thought to have little significance for theorizing about which abstract normative principles we ought to implement. Contrary to this conventional wisdom, I show how the second-best theorem can be extended to myriad domains beyond applied normative theorizing, and in particular to more abstract theorizing about the normative (...) principles we should aim to implement. I start by separating the mathematical model used to prove the second-best theorem from its familiar economic interpretation. I then develop an alternative normative-theoretic interpretation of the model, which yields a novel second best theorem for idealistic normative theory. My method for developing this interpretation provides a template for developing additional interpretations that can extend the reach of the second-best theorem beyond normative theoretical domains. I also show how, within any domain, the implications of the second-best theorem are more specific than is typically thought. I conclude with some brief remarks on the value of mathematical models for conceptual exploration. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence has historically been conceptualized in anthropomorphic terms. Some algorithms deploy biomimetic designs in a deliberate attempt to effect a sort of digital isomorphism of the human brain. Others leverage more general learning strategies that happen to coincide with popular theories of cognitive science and social epistemology. In this paper, I challenge the anthropomorphic credentials of the neural network algorithm, whose similarities to human cognition I argue are vastly overstated and narrowly construed. I submit that three alternative supervised learning (...) methods—namely lasso penalties, bagging, and boosting—offer subtler, more interesting analogies to human reasoning as both an individual and a social phenomenon. Despite the temptation to fall back on anthropomorphic tropes when discussing AI, however, I conclude that such rhetoric is at best misleading and at worst downright dangerous. The impulse to humanize algorithms is an obstacle to properly conceptualizing the ethical challenges posed by emerging technologies. (shrink)

A collection of 14 essays honoring the life and work of Oxford philosopher Wiggins touching on topics from ancient philosophy to ethics, metaphysics and the theory of meaning. The contributing scholars debate many of the seminal issues of Wiggins' work, including the determinancy of distinctness, relative identity, naturalism in ethics, logic and truth in moral judgments, and the practical wisdom of Aristotle. The collection uniquely features replies by Wiggins to each of the papers. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, (...) OR. (shrink)

There is a long tradition in philosophy of using a priori methods to draw conclusions about what is possible and what is necessary, and often in turn to draw conclusions about matters of substantive metaphysics. Arguments like this typically have three steps: first an epistemic claim , from there to a modal claim , and from there to a metaphysical claim.