The “Italian invert’s confessions” have long been known to historians of sexuality, yet this new edition lends them an authenticity never before enjoyed. The Prime Mover in the publication is Micha...

Roslynn D. Haynes, From Faust to Strangelove: Representations of the Scientist in Western Literature. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994. Pp. ix+417. ISBN 0-8018-4801-6, £16.50.George Levine , Realism and Representation: Essays on the Problem of Realism in Relation to Science, Literature and Culture. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993. Pp. xiii+330. ISBN 0-229-13630-2, £40.00 ; 0-229-13634-5, £19.00 .Sherry Turkle, Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. Cambridge, MA: Simon and Schuster, 1995. Pp. 347. ISBN 0-297-81514-8. (...) No price given.Despite the alarming drop in numbers of students studying science throughout the Western world today there is no more important subject in our time than science broadly construed, and these three books provide some of the reasons. Their diversity indicates the shape of the debates occurring about the scientist in Western culture, science's tortured philosophical realism and representation as troubled categories, and, most predictably, life on the screen in the age of the Internet. (shrink)

The goal of this essay is to analyse the influence of Johann Bernhard Basedow and Rousseau on Kant’s cosmopolitanism and concept of cosmopolitan education. It argues that both Basedow and Kant defined cosmopolitan education as non-denominational moral formation or Bildung, encompassing—in different forms—a thin version of moral religion following the core tenets of Christianity. Kant’s encounter with Basedow and the Philanthropinum in Dessau helps to understand the development of Kant’s concept of cosmopolitanism and educational theory ‘in weltbürgerlicher Absicht’. (...) class='Hi'>Rousseau’s role is more complex: he clearly influenced Kant; he is usually considered a precursor of modern nationalism and national education; and recent studies have stressed the cosmopolitan dimension of his educational programme. I claim that the dilemma of education according to Rousseau is that one has to choose between education of homme or education of citoyen, and that there is no way to avoid or go beyond this stark alternative. Kant’s reinterpretation of Rousseau is favourable and creative and has found many followers up to the present, but is misleading, as he ignores the dilemma and imposes his own conception of cosmopolitanism, of cosmopolitan education and of (possible) progress in history on Rousseau while claiming that this was actually Rousseau’s message. (shrink)

Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categories and (...) On Interpretation and boethius'S textbook on topical inference. They comprise a freestanding Dialectica (“Logic”; probably c.1116), a set of commentaries (known as the Logica [Ingredientibus], c. 1119) and a later (c. 1125) commentary on the Isagoge (Logica Nostrorum Petititoni Sociorum or Glossulae). In a work Abelard called his Theologia, issued in three main versions (between 1120 and c.1134), he attempted a logical analysis of trinitarian relations and explored the philosophical problems surrounding God's claims to omnipotence and omniscience. The Collationes (“Debates,” also known as “Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew”; probably c.1130) present a rational investigation into the nature of the highest good, in which the Christian and the Philosopher (who seems to be modeled on a philosopher of pagan antiquity) are remarkably in agreement. The unfinished Scito teipsum (“Know thyself,” also known as the “Ethics”; c.1138) analyses moral action. (shrink)

The history of philosophy is replete with attempts at invoking rationality as a means of directing and even subduing human desire and emotion. Understood as that which moves human beings to action, desire and emotion come to be associated with human freedom and rationality as a means of curbing that freedom. Plato, for instance, takes for granted a separation between thought and action that drives a wedge between our rational ability to exercise self-discipline and the free expression of desire and (...) emotion. Hobbes, on the other hand, replaces our internal ability for rational self-control with the external authority of the political State. So long as freedom and control are pitted against one another, human beings are incapable of attaining a symbiosis of these two elements of human action so essential to realizing true democracy. Unlike Plato, John Dewey sees in democracy the greatest potential for individual and social life. The purpose of this dissertation is to demonstrate how the educational philosophy of Dewey, which culminates in an educational aesthetic, appeals to and makes the most of the symbiosis of freedom and self-control, emotion and reason. Dewey’s educational aesthetic not only offers an alternative to traditional methods of education, but also demonstrates how the goal of a democratic way of life is made feasible by means of intelligently guided self-discipline—a form of self-control guided by intelligence that is not a constraint upon freedom, but instead embodies greater opportunity for freedom. I trace the basis for this synthesis, in the social-political and pedagogical principles of John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Both Locke and Rousseau offer educational theories that begin turning our attention toward the essential partnership required of rationality and emotion. Dewey's educational aesthetic is then considered as a response to alienating forms of education that continue to pit control and freedom against one another, and which thwart the intellectual and emotional development necessary for autonomy and democratic forms of social organization. (shrink)

This article brings to light some of the characteristics of the pervasive parental overpermissiveness and hyper-protectionism that unfortunately have made their way into our culture. With the aid of philosophers of education, such as Locke, Rousseau, and Dewey, I expose the corrosive effects that parental overindulgence has on the potential happiness of those in their charge, as well as on those who share their social space. As these philosophers warned long ago, by overindulging their desires, parents either overextend their (...) children’s expectations well beyond the reality of their capabilities or they squash their initiative by usurping their independence. In either case, parents cripple their children’s autonomy and thereby detract from the real work needed to develop habits and dispositions necessary to plan and carry out achievable accomplishments that are integral for sustained and enduring happiness. Put more simply, overindulgence, to the extent this impedes the development of requisite skills for achieving happiness and developing a sense of social responsibility, becomes a disguised form of child abuse. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:96 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY the other hand, he tried like Ramsay to distinguish the "all being" of God from nature; he emphasized the doctrine of final causes and of God's "excellence" as man's chief end. It is possible that Edwards's enigmatic sermon on the Trinity may have been stimulated by Ramsay's speculation on this subject, though this is a mere guess. In any case, Ramsay must have made Edwards (...) aware of Berkeley, without converting him to the kind of pluralistic metaphysics which both Ramsay and Berkeley represent. Quite apart from the historical questions of influence and contacts among philosophers, Ramsay's work is a significant event in the history of ideas; it brings to direct collision the two extremes of the Enlightenment. It brings to life in the imagination of a reader today the basic philosophical issues of the eighteenth century and it makes them relevant to those aspects of the old problems that are central issues today. HERBERTW. SCHNEIDER Claremont, Cali/ornia THE ORIGINS OF MARXISM Interest in the philosophical origins of Marxism is currently so widespread as to constitute something of an intellectual phenomenon in its own right. That it denotes a shift of attention away from Marx's own emphasis on human prax~ as the cure for useless metaphysical agonies, the authors here under review would not deny. A tendency to see Marxism as an historicalphenomenon--thus applying to it the criterion of judgment inherent in Marx's own critique of his predecessors -is common to them all.Such an approach is proper to a postrevolutionary age, though this description may seem oddly chosen in view of the continuing turmoil that surrounds us. To describe the present age as postrevolutionary is after all to say no more than was implied by those nineteenth-century writers who looked back upon the French Revolution. If our situation today is similar, it does not follow that we are about to enter calmer waters, though for all one knows the East-West antagonism may gradually come to resemble the rather undramatic tension which characterized Anglo-French relations during the earlier part of the Victorian era. The Russian Revolution might then at last appear as a closed chapter, and Marx himself as its Rousseau: the philosopher of one particular historic upheaval whose consequences have now been absorbed. Such an attitude presupposes that one is not unduly concerned with the intellectual claims of Soviet Marxism but treats it as the ideology of a society which has not yet acquired a self-critical understanding of its own myths. This would be quite in tune with Marx's own approach, though hardly with the Leninist belief that the Russian Revolution represents the start of a new epoch: that of consciousness raised to the level of global reconstruction. For to say that the Bolsheviks, like the Jacobins before them, unwittingly prepared the way for a new exploitative society is to say that the enterprise was a failure. At the same time, recognition of this fact validates the Marxian insight into the peculiar NOTES AND DISCUSSIONS 97 mechanism whereby history has hitherto managed to accomplish its real aims. Thus the critical, or "revisionist," Marxist is able to have it both ways. What prevents the writers under review from taking this easy way out is their concern with the philosophical origins of Marxism. If Marx had been content, like Weber and Pareto, to analyze the mechanism whereby society renews itself from time to time, his position would be unassailable, but by the same token he would simply be another scholar. The perennial interest of Marxism springs from that "union of theory and practice" of which Marx himself was the first and greatest exemplar. No one who has felt the spell of the Theses on Feuerbach or the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts can fail to inquire whether these writings may not outlast the dissolution of the scholastic system constructed by Engels and the epigoni. To say this is not to range oneself on the side of romanticism in its current quasi-anarchist form, which plainly corresponds to a loss of interest in politics. It is simply to acknowledge that thinking people will go on asking... (shrink)

Isaiah Berlin was one of the leading political thinkers of the twentieth century, and his work continues to attract admiration and debate. In Isaiah Berlin: Liberty, Pluralism and Liberalism, George Crowder provides both an accessible introduction to Berlin's ideas and an original contribution to political theory. Berlin's range of interests and learning was vast but united by a single overarching project: the uncovering of the conceptual roots of twentieth-century totalitarianism. He traces these through three levels of analysis: the distortion (...) of the concept of freedom by thinkers such as Rousseau, Fichte, Hegel and Marx; the scientism of the Enlightenment and irrationalism of the Counter-Enlightenment and romanticism; and moral monism, the idea that all ethical questions can be answered by reference to a single moral law. Against monism, Berlin asserts the claims of value pluralism, which he aligns with a politics of liberal moderation. In this new assessment, Crowder argues that Berlin's critique of the modern enemies of liberty is exciting and powerful, but also that the coherence of his thought is threatened by a tension between its liberal and pluralist elements. Crowder goes on to suggest how that tension can be resolved by appeal to arguments that go beyond the case actually presented by Berlin but which remain within the spirit of his general outlook. (shrink)

Although Rousseau and his successors may have supplied J.T. with his vision for SAMCRO as a community dedicated to freedom from stultifying social conventions and institutions, it may be Hobbes who can best explain how the Sons of Anarchy lost their way and why their fall into violence was, as J.T. describes it, “inevitable”. Much of the violence the members of SAMCRO commit is motivated by nothing more than this primal instinct to protect oneself and one's “family” from harm. (...) Prudence dictates that SAMCRO delays retaliation until they better understand Zobelle's game. Hobbes's term for this supreme governmental authority is the Leviathan, a name he borrowed from the biblical book of Job. From Hobbes's point of view, J.T. was a Son of Pride before he was a Son of Anarchy, for it was pride that planted in his mind that reckless aspiration for “liberation from shackles and restraint of government”. (shrink)

La derni re dition des Lettres sur les animaux, ouvrage de l'encyclop diste mineur Charles-George Le Roy, date de 1896. Cette nouvelle dition propose une pr sentation tr s respecteuse de la pens e originale de l'auteur, elle pr cise dans quelles circonstances les divers l ments du livre furent successivement publi s et retrace son volution depuis les articles HOMME (Morale) et INSTINCT de l'Encyclop die jusqu' l' dition compl te de 1802. L'introduction situe les Lettresdans l'uvre de (...) Le Roy qui, comptant l' criture parmi ses activit s, fut d'autant plus m l aux conflits d'id es de l' poque. Des documents in dits permettent d' tablir avec exactitude combien Le Roy a su mettre profit ses fonctions de lieutenant des chasses des Parcs de Versailles pour exercer ses talents d'auteur. A la lumi re de divers autres documents, et parmi eux des in dits, il appara t que Le Roy fr quentait quelques-uns des penseurs les plus connus de l' poque (Condillac, Buffon, Diderot, Helv tius, d'Holbach), ainsi que des personnalit s de la haute soci t (en particulier Mme de Marchais), deux mondes don't l'influence est perceptible dans les Lettres sur les animaux. Celles-ci font cho non seulement aux crivains que leur auteur connaissit personnellement, mais aussi aux nombreux autres qu'il avait lus, notamment Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau. Inspir et nourri de ces contacts scientifiques, litt raires et philosophiques, Le Roy a su s'en d gager pour d velopper sa propre pens e et, l'image de l'excellent accueil que les contemporains et la post rit ont r serv l'ouvrage, ses id es ne peuvent qu' veiller un vif int r t. (shrink)

Enlightenment optimism over mankind's progress was often voiced in terms of botanical growth by key figures such as John Millar; the mind's cultivation marked the beginning of this process. For agriculturists such as Arthur Young cultivation meant an advancement towards virtue and civilization; the cultivation of the mind can similarly be seen as an enlightenment concept which extols the human potential for improvable reason. In the course of this essay I aim to explore the relationship between ‘culture’ and ‘cultivation’ through (...) botanical metaphor. By using the recurring motif of the mind's cultivation as a site from which to explore enlightenment views on female understanding, I investigate how far concerns with human progress extended to the female mind. I examine the language of botany and cultivation in texts by authors such as Mary Wollstonecraft and Anna Laetitia Barbauld alongside that of Rousseau and Millar. Wollstonecraft's appropriation and subsequent inversion of the conventional cultivation metaphor, for example, demonstrates her desire to draw attention to society's neglect of women's educational potential by substituting images of enlightened growth with those of luxuriant decay. By pushing this analogy further she indicates how society has cultivated women rearing them like exotic flowering plants or ‘luxuriants’ where ‘strength of body and mind are sacrificed to libertine notions of beauty’. I discuss the antipastoral rationalism which enables her to unmask the false sentiment behind this traditional metaphoric association between women and flowers arguing that such familiar tropes are the language of male desire and are indicative of women's problematic relationship to culture. (shrink)

As a study of Hobbes and Rousseau which shows that the seeds of totalitarianism are ingredient in their individualism, this book is a success. Hobbes proceeds from individual natural rights of men to the primacy of sovereign political will with all its concomitant dangers of the total subordination of the individual to the power of the sovereign. Rousseau, unlike Hobbes, attempts to preserve man’s liberty in society. By the social contract man exchanges his natural liberty for civil liberty. (...) But the state then becomes an absolute, ‘universally compulsive power’; the General Will is always right and so potentially totalitarian. The author does well to point up these sometimes overlooked facets of Hobbes and Rousseau, and he argues well that in their systems totalitarianism can spring up in the garden of individualism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 253 Histoire de la Philosophic. Tome IV. Par Albert Rivaud. Philosophic Franqaise et Philosophic Anglaise de 1700 ~ 1830. (Paris: Presses Universitaires, 1962. Coll. "Logos." Pp. xxiii + 594. NF 22.) It is a disservice to the memory of a scholar to publish his unfinished writings, though one can understand how friendship induces his colleagues and pupils to do so. In the case of the fourth volume (...) of Rivaud's Histoire de la Philosophic, the disservice is all the greater, since several chapters and parts of chapters have been written not by him but by his associates: Messrs. Rochot on Vauvenargues, Daumas on the Philosophic chimique, Leroy on British and American philosophy, while the chapter on biology after Lamarck has been left in its unfinished and fragmentary state. What Rivaud would have done with these topics cannot be determined now, but surely he would not have thought that 124 pages out of 574 would suffice for a treatment of British and American philosophy, when even such figures as Hyacinthe Bougeant, Jean-Franqois H6nault, Mercier de la Rivi~re, Paul Thiry, Marmontel, and Hemsterhuis are given at least a few paragraphs each. As far as British and American students are concerned, Book II which treats of their intellectual predecessors might well have been omitted. Not only is the treatment skimpy, but there occur from time to time errors of fact which, though perhaps trivial in themselves, shake one's faith in the historian's accuracy. To refer to but one or two examples, we are surprised to learn that the Island of Rhode Island is one of the Bermudas (p. 484), that Berkeley's two children were born in Bermuda (ibid.), that Hume never once mentioned the poems of Shakespeare or Milton (p. 512), which would seem to indicate that the author had never read Hume's History of England, and that (p. 557) John Galsworthy was a grand romancier du XIXe si~cle. Such errors are made by the best of us nor should I cast the first stone, were it not that this is the type of history of philosophy which goes in heavily for biographical detail. Each man mentioned is given a full biography, sometimes running on for pages in small print and including details which are diverting enough in themselves and which are perhaps important if they illuminate the ideas of the men whose lives they depict. But Rivaud gives one no indication of how, for instance, Rousseau's musical interests affected his philosophy, of why Grimm (p. 197) who ne s'intdresse gu~re gzla philosophic should be given even a paragraph, of what influence the various mistresses and wives of the philosophers mentioned actually had upon their lovers' ideas. A biographical history of philosophy, if done by a psychologist, might be extremely revealing of the procedures of the intellect. But these sketches which precede the expositions of philosophical theses seem irrelevant except insofar as they give us dates and education. One can understand 254 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY that Descartes' having studied with the Jesuits at LaFl~che is a useful bit of information, for it may in part explain why he refused to accept any doctrine which contradicted the teachings of the Church. But would Hume's Dialogues concerning Natural Religion have been different if he had not had his quarrel with Rousseau? If so, to what extent? In spite of these criticisms, the book has the value of a good reference book. Not only are there copious references to the leading intellectuals of eighteenth -century France, but among them are included natural scientists who normally do not figure in histories of philosophy. Such men as Lavoisier, Buffon, Lamarck, Geoff-roy Saint-HiIaire and Cuvier were philosophical in their aims and their philosophical ideas modified their scientific investigations just as their scientific discoveries reacted upon their philosophical thinking. For that we can congratulate ourselves. It would be absurd, for instance, to omit men like Clerk Maxwell, Willard Gibbs, Einstein, Darwin, and Agassiz, Freud and Jung, L. H. Morgan, Franz Boas, and Lester Ward in an account of the role of philosophy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. To the extent that Rivaud has coupled men... (shrink)

Voici le premier livre, non seulement d'un fils de libraire, mais le premier livre fils des livres. Le De antiquissima sapientia italorum (1710) élève en effet soudainement à la hauteur métaphysique ce qui se préparait depuis dix ans dans les Discours inauguraux, et en particulier dans le dernier de ceux-ci, De la méthode des études de notre temps : L'union de la philologie et de la philosophie pour mener LE combat avec Descartes. On sait qu'il durera quinze ans pour Vico (...) (jusqu'à l'assaut final de la Scienza nuova en 1725). On sait aussi (au moins depuis l'essai de B. Croce de 1910, relayé en Allemagne par Windelband à partir de la 5e édition de sa Geschichte der neueren Philosophie, Leipzig, 1911, qui sortirent le Napolitain d'un oubli dont le "rayonnement" français était la cause principale) que ce combat ne s'arrêtera plus : venue de Platon et d'Aristote, mais aussi de tous les Latins (de Plaute, entre autres, dont le Cogito apparaît littéralement le "Sosie"), à travers les écoles scottiste et ockhamienne, passant ensuite par Marsile Ficin et Cardan, la pensée vichienne puise dans le trésor des langues la force de libérer la pensée moderne de ses limites cartésiennes, inaugurant une sorte de deuxième tradition (qui pourrait bien être la reprise de la modernité au sein de LA tradition, tout simplement). Reprise critique et extension en même temps, puisque, du centre métaphysique que constitue la pensée du VERUM IPSUM FACTUM, la pensée philologue s'étend, avant Rousseau, avant Nodier, avant Hegel, sur les langues, sur le droit, sur l'histoire. Non sans préfigurer (ce qui n'a pas été montré encore, malgré certaines prémonitions de Croce) la critique kantienne elle-même. Autant dire que notre temps appartient à ce livre et que Vico est bien, comme le nommait Gœthe, "der Altvater". (shrink)

The opening lines of Franz Delitzsch's Babel und Bibel offer an unusually frank confession of the personal and psychological motives that animated German orientalism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For Delitzsch and countless others like him, orientalist scholarship provided an opportunity not just to expand their knowledge of the Near East and India, but also to explore the world of the Bible and, in doing so, effect a reckoning with the religious beliefs of their childhoods. In German Orientalism (...) in the Age of Empire, Suzanne Marchand opens up this scholarly world, exploring the criss-crossing forces and interests that shaped it, while effecting her own reckoning with orientalism as a historical and historiographical phenomenon. (shrink)

George Boolos was one of the most prominent and influential logician-philosophers of recent times. This collection, nearly all chosen by Boolos himself shortly before his death, includes thirty papers on set theory, second-order logic, and plural quantifiers; on Frege, Dedekind, Cantor, and Russell; and on miscellaneous topics in logic and proof theory, including three papers on various aspects of the Gödel theorems. Boolos is universally recognized as the leader in the renewed interest in studies of Frege's work on logic (...) and the philosophy of mathematics. John Burgess has provided introductions to each of the three parts of the volume, and also an afterword on Boolos's technical work in provability logic, which is beyond the scope of this volume. (shrink)

Since the dawn of Romanticism, artists and intellectuals in Germany have maintained an abiding interest in the gods and myths of antiquity while calling for a new mythology suitable to the modern age. In this study, George S. Williamson examines the factors that gave rise to this distinct and profound longing for myth. In doing so, he demonstrates the entanglement of aesthetic and philosophical ambitions in Germany with some of the major religious conflicts of the nineteenth century. Through readings (...) of key intellectuals ranging from Herder and Schelling to Wagner and Nietzsche, Williamson highlights three crucial factors in the emergence of the German engagement with myth: the tradition of Philhellenist neohumanism, a critique of contemporary aesthetic and public life as dominated by private interests, and a rejection of the Bible by many Protestant scholars as the product of a foreign, "Oriental" culture. According to Williamson, the discourse on myth in Germany remained bound up with problems of Protestant theology and confessional conflict through the nineteenth century and beyond. A compelling adventure in intellectual history, this study uncovers the foundations of Germany's fascination with myth and its enduring cultural legacy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Abstract General Ideas in Hume George S. Pappas Hume followed Berkeley in rejecting abstract general ideas; that is, both of these philosophers rejected the view that one could engage in the operation or activity ofabstraction — a kind ofmental separation ofentities that are inseparable in reality —as well as the view that the alleged products of such an activity — ideas which are intrinsically general — really exist. (...) What has not been clear to commentators on either of these two philosophers has been why they each were so opposed to abstraction and abstract general ideas. The provision of an answer to this question is the main thrust of this paper. The nature of the question should be clarified at the outset. I am notasking the psychological question, whatwere BerkeleyandHume's actual intentions when they were moved to reject abstraction and abstract general ideas. Though I regard this question as one of great interest and importance, I am presently aiming to answer a somewhat different one, viz., what role, what philosophical role, does the rejection of abstraction and abstract general ideas play in the philosophies ofBerkeley and Hume? The answer to this latter question is apt to have some bearing on the right way to answer the first question; but, for present purposes, it is important to keep the two questions distinct. The maincontentionofthe paperis thattherejectionofabstraction and abstract general ideas lies at the very heart of the philosophy of Berkeley, and that pretty much the same may be said for Hume. Berkeley's defense ofa kind ofidealism stands or falls with the success ofhis attack on abstract general ideas, and Hume's critique ofinfinite divisibility in matters pertaining to space and time, along with his destructive critique ofvarious metaphysical notions, crucially depends on the successful denial of abstract general ideas. I. Berkeleyan Idealism Berkeley's most extended treatment of abstract ideas comes in the introduction to the Principles ofHuman Knowledge, first published in 1710. However, since he does not take up the topic in any systematic way later in the same book, nor in the Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Phihnous (1713), it has seemed to many commentators that Berkeley's attack on abstract ideas is a local matter, one having only to do with issues concerning language use and a somewhat isolated criticism of Locke. That this is the wrong way to look at things is Volume XV Number 2 339 GEORGE S. PAPPAS perhaps best indicated by a couple of passages from the Principles. In section 5 ofthat work Berkeley says: If we thoroughly examine this tenet it will, perhaps, be found at bottom to depend on the doctrine of abstract ideas. For can there be a nicer strain of abstraction than to distinguish the existence of sensible objects from there being perceived, so as to conceive them existing unperceived? The tenet Berkeley is here referring to is to the effect that sensible objects such as trees and chairs exist independently ofperception. This allusion is made clear when we notice that in the immediately preceding passage Berkeley says: It is indeed an opinion strangely prevailing among men that houses, mountains, rivers, and in a word all sensible objects, have an existence, natural or real, distinct from their being perceived by the understanding. But, with how great an assurance and acquiescence soever this Principle may be entertained... whoever shall find in his heart to call it in question may... perceive it to involve a manifest contradiction. For, what are the aforementioned objects but the things we perceive by sense? and what do we perceive besides our own ideas or sensations? and is it not plainly repugnant that any one of these, or any combination of them, should exist unperceived? (Principles 4) The claim that sensible objects exist independently ofall perception is the very denial of Berkeley's esse is percipi thesis regarding such objects. For the latter thesis holds that each sensible object is such that it exists if and only if it is perceived. So, in the first-quoted passage from Principles 5, Berkeley is saying that the denial of esse is percipi 'depends on' the doctrine of abstract ideas. Surely, the esse is percipi thesis is part ofthe core ofBerkeley's... (shrink)

In this essay, the author analyses Berkeley’s conformity and inference argument against Locke’s theory of percep tion. Both arguments are not as decisive as traditionally has been perceived and fail to engage in Locke’s actual position. The main reason for this is that Berkeley does not see that Locke’s position is compatible with the non-inferential nature of perceptual knowledge.

This fourth edition of one of the classic logic textbooks has been thoroughly revised by John Burgess. The aim is to increase the pedagogical value of the book for the core market of students of philosophy and for students of mathematics and computer science as well. This book has become a classic because of its accessibility to students without a mathematical background, and because it covers not simply the staple topics of an intermediate logic course such as Godel's Incompleteness Theorems, (...) but also a large number of optional topics from Turing's theory of computability to Ramsey's theorem. John Burgess has now enhanced the book by adding a selection of problems at the end of each chapter, and by reorganising and rewriting chapters to make them more independent of each other and thus to increase the range of options available to instructors as to what to cover and what to defer. (shrink)

Central-state materialism is a very strong, but also very exciting theory of mind according to which each mental state is identical with a state of the central nervous system. CSM thus goes considerably beyond early versions of the identity theory of mind, since those early accounts held only that sensations are to be identified with neural events. CSM, by contrast, is a thesis about all mental states; every mental state is held to be a state of the central nervous system. (...) In fact, as we will see shortly, CSM is an even more sweeping thesis than this formulation of it suggests, since it is not concerned simply with mental states.One prominent defender of CSM, David Armstrong, has maintained that CSM can be established by means of a two-step argument. (shrink)

A number of commentators on the work of berkeley have maintained that berkeleyan minds are related to ideas by the relation of inherence. Thus, Ideas are taken to inhere in minds in something like the way that accidents were supposed to inhere in substances for the aristotelian. This inherence account, As I call it, Is spelled out in detail and critically evaluated. Ultimately it is rejected despite its considerable initial plausibility.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:167. ON McRAE' S HUME Professor McRae's interesting paper may be rather naturally divided into two parts. In the first part he explains what he takes Hume's account of time to be; in the second he advances the bold thesis that Hume's account of time, or perhaps of duration, provides a basis or foundation for his more widely discussed remarks on identity, substance, the self, the necessary connections. In (...) what follows I first reconstruct Professor McRae' s paper, and then I raise some problems, perhaps puzzles, about Hume's view on duration, time and fictions. According to McRae, some philosophers (Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz) distinguish between time and duration, both of which are taken to be perfectly legitimate notions. Hume, by contrast, takes time and duration to be the same, viz., a succession of moments. What philosophers and the vulgar call 'duration' is something quite different, namely a single unbroken stretch of time which is not composed of successive parts. Of duration taken in this latter way, McRae says, Hume has four things to say, all of them negative: (1) we have no idea of duration; (2) no object has duration; (3) there is no such thing as duration; and (4) duration is a fiction. Properly understood as a succession of moments, however, time certainly exists and is thus not a fiction. Moreover, we have the or at least an idea of time, despite the fact that it is obtained without derivation from a precedent impression. And, while no object can be said to have time, Hume will nonetheless allow that objects exist at certain times and perhaps across a time span. In the second part of his paper, Professor McRae distinguishes two types of Humean fictions. The first arises when one idea is confused with another and mis-applied to some object. The second arises when the imagination creates an "idea" in the attempt to resolve a 168. contradiction which comes up when the first fiction is applied to an object. What I have called McRae' s "bold thesis" in the second part of his paper can now be stated. Duration, or the putative idea thereof, is a fiction of the first type, one that is attributed to what Hume calls "steadfast objects." However, such an object can be considered in two ways. One might consider the object at two stages of this duration and, McRae says, "...this will give us the idea of number" (p. 126); or, one might consider in turn a series of objects, each of them supposedly "steadfast," all along supposing that though time is changing, the objects are not, and "...in this way- we get the idea of unity" (Ibid.). But no object is both a unity and a multiplicity. So, to reconcile these conflicting considerations, the "idea" or fiction of identity is invented. As McRae says: "The idea of identity is a pure product of the imagination invented to mediate between unity and number" (Ibid. ). This invented "idea" is then mis-applied (a fiction of type one) to interrupted appearances of an object. To reconcile the supposed identity of an object with successive appearances of it, the fiction of substance is invented. Quoting both McRae and Hume, In order to reconcile the contradiction between identity and diversity, the imagination is apt to feign something unknown and invisible, which it supposes to continue the same under all these variations ; 2 and this unintelligible something it calls a substance... (p. 128). Related needs to resolve contradictions, on McRae' s account, lead to the fictions of the self (p. 128) and of necessary connections (p. 130), though the latter fiction is of type one. Hence, McRae' s "bold thesis" amounts to this: Duration is a fiction. In the attempt to apply this fiction, one is led to, logically led to, most, if not all, of the other famous Humean fictions. And, if we allow that there are mental acts, for Hume, as well as impressions and ideas, "...then a fictitious duration will be attributed to 169. objects and by a progressive compounding of fictitious mental actions will give the world the ontological structure which it has for the vulgar belief we all share. It... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Perception of the Self George S. Pappas Differences of detail aside, we may think ofboth Locke and Berkeley as accepting the same view of the mind. They agree that there are minds, and that each mind is a simple, immaterial substance. Sometimes the word 'soul' is used instead of'mind'; but in this context, the different terminology is not consequential. Moreover, Locke and Berkeley employ essentially the same argument (...) for their shared view about minds. More exactly, they use the same argument for the limited thesis that there is something distinct from perceptions and from ideas perceived, and that this somethingis aperceiver, or that which perceives. The argument, given in more detail below, claims that we are aware ofour own minds in, or while we are engaged in, perception. The kind ofawareness is said to be or to involve a reflex act, a concept we associate with Berkeley, though I think it is one he appropriated from Locke. Hume, ofcourse, rejects the view ofLocke and Berkeley. He rejects the very notion of an immaterial mind or soul, finding it to be meaningless. And he rejects as well the limited thesis that there is something which perceives and which is distinct from all perceptions. In this paper I will restrict attention to Hume's arguments for rejecting the limited thesis. 1. Rejection ofthe limited thesis Hume investigates the limited thesis of Locke and Berkeley in the well-known section ofthe Treatise which deals with personal identity (Treatise 1.4.6). Here is how he expresses the view of "some philosophers": Theke are some philosophers, who imagine we are every moment intimately conscious of what we call our SELF; that we feel its existence and continuance in existence; and are certain, beyond the evidence of a demonstration, both of its perfect identity and simplicity. The strongest sensation, the most violent passion, say they, instead of distracting us from this view, only fix it the more intensely, and make us consider their influence on selfeither by their pain or pleasure.1 Thus, Hume represents the argumentofthosehe opposes as containing two premises: Volume XVIII Number 2 275 GEORGE S. PAPPAS (1)In perception, one is aware ofone's self, and aware ofthe simplicity of the self. (2)In being thus aware of the self and its simplicity one gains an idea of a simple self. These premises, in turn, support a double conclusion: (3)There are simple selves (minds). (4)We have an idea of a simple self(mind). Hume does not take the trouble to cite the second premise given here in the passage I have quoted, butitis clear that he has it in mind, since he proceeds directly to a criticism of it. The criticism is quite familiar inform, encapsulatingwhat I call aderivabilityargument. Here is what Hume says: all these positive assertions are contrary to that very experience, which is pleaded for them, nor have we any idea of self, after the manner it is here explain'd. For from what impression cou'd this idea be deriv'd?... It must be some one impression, that givesrise toeveryreal idea. But selfor person is not any one impression, but that to which our severahmpressionsandideas are suppos'd to have areference. Ifany impression gives rise to the idea ofself, that impression must continue invariably the same, thro' the whole course of our lives; since self is suppos'd to exist after that manner. (T 251) He is also sharply critical ofthe first premise. Hume says: when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particularperception orother, ofheatorcold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myselfat any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception. (T 252) So, minimally, Hume's arguments amount to this: (1) is false; hence, we have nogroundforclaiming(3). Similarly, (2) is false, so that we have no ground for claiming (4). Actually, of course, Hume asserts stronger claims, maintaining that (3) and (4) arefalse, and not merely that we lack adequate support forthem. Buttoshowtheirfalsityrequires additional argumentbeyond whatis providedin the above-quoted passages. Here I will not consider those additional arguments, except to note... (shrink)

George S. Counts was a_ _major figure in American education for almost fifty years. Republication of this early work draws special attention to Counts’s role as a social and political activist. Three particular themes make the book noteworthy because of their importance in Counts’s plan for change as well as for their continuing contem­porary importance: _ _Counts’s crit­icism of child-centered progressives; _ _the role Counts assigns to teachers in achieving educational and social re­form; and Counts’s idea for the re­form (...) of the American economy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Second Copy Thesis in Hume? George S. Pappas The copy thesis which applies to simple ideas andimpressionsin Hume is well known; every simple idea is supposed to be a copy of, that is, to exactly resemble, some simple impression. Or very nearly so, at any rate, for there is the famous missing shade ofblue to take into account. There seems to be another copy thesis in Hume, (...) however, and one on which Hume places a great deal ofweight. We find it expressed early on in the Treatise, incorporated into Hume's discussion of space and time. He says: Wherever ideas are adequate representations of objects, the relations, contradictions and agreements of the ideas are all applicable to the objects; and this we may in general observe to be the foundation of all human knowledge. But our ideas are adequate representations of the most minute parts of extension; and thro' whatever divisions and subdivisions we may suppose these parts to be arriv'd at, they can never become inferior to some ideas, which we form. The plain consequence is, that whatever appears impossible and contradictory upon the comparison of these ideas, must be really impossible and contradictory, without any farther FogeUn has recently described this as a "remarkable passage," one which is "a match for anything found in the writings of the rationalists."2 Perhaps it is such a match, perhaps not, but Fogelin is certainly right to regard this as a remarkable passage, at least for Hume. After all, Hume here seems to be endorsing some form of representationalism, a doctrine we typically do not associate with Hume's philosophy. Two important questions emerge from this passage:just what are these adequate ideas ofwhich Hume speaks; and, in what sense can it be true that they form the foundation ofall ofour knowledge? I believe that a correct answer to each of these questions has some strong imphcations for our understanding ofHume's philosophy. I. Humean Adequate Ideas So far as I can discover, the above-quoted passage is the Only place where Hume talks about adequate ideas. The only text which I have Volume XVII Number 1 51 GEORGE S. PAPPAS found which even suggests the same sentiments occurs in "Of the Passions" where Hume discusses ideas and truth (T 448-49), but no mention is made there of adequate ideas. So I think we have to concentrate on the passage from the Treatise in the attempt to understand what Hume is telling us. Hume seems to refer to adequacy as a feature ofindividual ideas, and also to groups or systems ofideas. The latter is suggested by his reference to relations, contradictions, and agreements between ideas, while the former is indicated by the first clause ofthe quoted passage, where Hume mentions adequacy but makes no reference to relations between ideas. Instead, adequacy in the relationsbetween ideas seems to be a consequence of adequacy of individual ideas. Moreover, that individual ideas are supposed to be adequate is made clear from the argument Hume immediately gives regarding the alleged infinite divisibility of space. He writes: I first take the least idea I can form ofa part ofextension, and beingcertainthatthereis nothingmoreminute than thisidea, I conclude, that whatever I discover by its means must be a real quality ofextension. (T 29) Hume's reasoning here can be interpreted in two different ways, but both rest on the adequacy of individual ideas. He might be read as saying that one starts with a least-sized idea, and infers that there are bits of extension which are the same size as the least-sized idea. The inference from the feature of the idea to the feature of the bit of extension rests on the claimed adequacy ofthe idea. The other reading of Hume's reasoning is that one starts with the least-sized idea and then infers that there is (a) a bit ofextended matter that small, and (b) that there is no smaller bit of extended matter. Ofthese two readings, I think the second is the right way to understand Hume here, for only it supports the argument's conclusion that space is not infinitely divisible.3 But notice that this second version ofHume... (shrink)

In this essay, the author analyses Berkeley’s conformity and inference argument against Locke’s theory of percep tion. Both arguments are not as decisive as traditionally has been perceived and fail to engage in Locke’s actual position. The main reason for this is that Berkeley does not see that Locke’s position is compatible with the non-inferential nature of perceptual knowledge.

Philosophical accounts of perception in the tradition of Kant and Reid have generally supposed that an event of making a judgment is a key element in every perceptual experience. An alternative very austere view regards perception as an event containing nothing judgmental, nor anything conceptual. This account of perception as nonconceptual is discussed first historically as found in the philosophies of Locke and (briefly) Berkeley, and then examined in the contemporary work of Chisholm and Alston.

Berkeley construes his own immaterialist philosophy as facing a serious competitor, namely, what he often termed ‘materialism.’ He tries on several grounds to eliminate materialism from the competition, thus leaving immaterialism as the most plausible metaphysical theory of perception and the external world. In this paper these grounds are explored, and it is found that Berkeley’s method for rational choice between materialism and immaterialism involves consideration of a host of criteria for choice between competitive theories.