Everything we do relies on causation. We eat and drink because this causes us to stay alive. Courts tell us who causes crimes, criminology tell us what causes people to commit them. D.H. Mellor shows us that to understand the world and our lives we must understand causation. _The Facts of Causation_, now available in paperback, is essential reading for students and for anyone interested in reading one of the ground-breaking theories in metaphysics. We cannot understand the world and our (...) place in it without understanding causation. Yet a complete account of the nature and implications of causation does not exist. D.H Mellor's new book is that account. (shrink)

Revisiting African philosophy’s classic questions, D. A. Masolo advances understandings of what it means to be human—whether of African or other origin. Masolo reframes indigenous knowledge as diversity: How are we to understand the place and structure of consciousness? How does the everyday color the world we know? Where are the boundaries between self and other, universal and particular, and individual and community? From here, he takes a dramatic turn toward Africa’s current political situation and considers why individual rights and (...) freedoms have not been recognized, respected, demanded, or enforced. Masolo offers solutions for containing socially destructive conduct and antisocial tendencies by engaging community. His unique thinking about community and the role of the individual extends African philosophy in new, global directions. (shrink)

_Probability: A Philosophical Introduction_ introduces and explains the principal concepts and applications of probability. It is intended for philosophers and others who want to understand probability as we all apply it in our working and everyday lives. The book is not a course in mathematical probability, of which it uses only the simplest results, and avoids all needless technicality. The role of probability in modern theories of knowledge, inference, induction, causation, laws of nature, action and decision-making makes an understanding of (...) it especially important to philosophers and students of philosophy, to whom this book will be invaluable both as a textbook and a work of reference. In this book D. H. Mellor discusses the three basic kinds of probability – physical, epistemic, and subjective – and introduces and assesses the main theories and interpretations of them. The topics and concepts covered include: * chance * frequency * possibility * propensity * credence * confirmation * Bayesianism. _Probability: A Philosophical Introduction_ is essential reading for all philosophy students and others who encounter or need to apply ideas of probability. (shrink)

Leading philosopher of religion D. Z. Phillips argues that intellectuals need not see their task as being for or against religion, but as one of understanding it. What stands in the way of this task are certain methodological assumptions about what enquiry into religion must be. Beginning with Bernard Williams on Greek gods, Phillips goes on to examine these assumptions in the work of Hume, Feuerbach, Marx, Frazer, Tylor, Marett, Freud, Durkheim, Le;vy-Bruhl, Berger and Winch. The result exposes confusion, but (...) also gives logical space to religious belief without advocating personal acceptance of that belief, and shows how the academic study of religion may return to the contemplative task of doing conceptual justice to the world. Religion and the Hermeneutics of Contemplation extends in important ways D. Z. Phillips' seminal 1976 book Religion Without Explanation. It will be of interest to scholars and students of philosophy, anthropology, sociology and theology. (shrink)

_Expanding Hermeneutics _examines the development of interpretation theory, emphasizing how science in practice involves and implicates interpretive processes. Ihde argues that the sciences have developed a sophisticated visual hermeneutics that produces evidence by means of imaging, visual displays, and visualizations. From this vantage point, Ihde demonstrates how interpretation is built into technologies and instruments.

Giuseppina D'Oro explores Collingwood's work in epistemology and metaphysics, uncovering his importance beyond his better known work in philosophy of history and aesthetics. This major contribution to our understanding of one of the most important figures in history of philosophy will be essential reading for scholars of Collingwood and all students of metaphysics and the history of philosophy.

D. N. MacCormick; XI*—The Obligation of Reparation, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 78, Issue 1, 1 June 1978, Pages 175–194, https://doi.org/10.

D.W. Hamlyn presents a history of the great philosophical thinkers and their responses to the profound problems involved in trying to understand the world and our place in it.

D. M. Armstrong; II—Does Knowledge Entail Belief?, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 70, Issue 1, 1 June 1970, Pages 21–36, https://doi.org/10.109.

Pour un arbitrage entre la théorie cognitive de l’esprit et la phénoménologie de l’intersubjectivité la technologie simule une situation de croisement perceptif dans un espace virtuel, où la reconnaissance par un agent de la présence d’un autre repose uniquement sur l’interaction comportementale. À la justification de Merleau-Ponty et Varela quant au caractère non représentationnel ni inférentiel de la reconnaissance d’autrui, en dissociant celle-ci d’avec une détermination spatiale, on ajoutera un analogon technologique de l’expérience du « visage » comme halo de (...) présence non objectivable, d’après Levinas. (shrink)

D. D. Raphael; VI*—Hume and Adam Smith on Justice and Utility, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 73, Issue 1, 1 June 1973, Pages 87–104, https://d.

The work of Michèle Le Dœuff creatively disrupts established notions of what philosophy might be. Far from being a discipline about the leader and the disciple, a hierarchy of knowledge and paternalism, Le Dœuff proposes a philosophy of dialogue and friendship. The conversations in this book explore how this philosophy can be enacted and explored, and show how openness and generosity can be the starting point of truly rigorous thinking. Introduced and curated by the late philosopher, Pamela Sue Anderson, In (...) Dialogue with Michèle Le Dœuff explores themes like contemporary feminism, joy in philosophy, memory, the significance of friendship to thinking and a key Le Dœuffian concept, the imaginary. Le Dœuff's interlocutors, including Penelope Deutscher, Elizabeth Fallaize and Meenda Dhanda, are some of the most significant thinkers in the fields of feminism and continental thought and provide insights and ways into considering philosophy as a profoundly dialogical exercise. (shrink)

D W Hamlyn; Need Philosophy of Education be so Dreary?, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 19, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 159–165, https://doi.org/10.1.

D.O. Thomas; VI*—The Duty to Trust, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 79, Issue 1, 1 June 1979, Pages 89–102, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotelian.

In Bester’s article (2018) challenging the use of the harm principle and advocating sole reliance on the use of a best interest standard (BIS) in pediatric decision-making, we believe that the auth...

D. H. Mellor; VI*—I and Now, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 89, Issue 1, 1 June 1989, Pages 79–94, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotelian/89.1.79.

Social scientists could learn some useful things from philosophy. Here I shall discuss what I take to be one such thing: a better understanding of the concept of utility. There are several reasons why a better understanding may be useful. First, this concept is commonly found in the writings of social scientists, especially economists. Second, utility is the main ingredient in utilitarianism, a perspective on morality that, traditionally, has been very influential among social scientists. Third, and most important, with a (...) better understanding of utility comes, as I shall try to show here, a better understanding of “personal welfare”. or, in other words, of what may be said to be in people's best interests. Such an understanding is useful to social scientists and philosophers alike, whether for utilitarian purposes or not. (shrink)

D.O. Thomas; VI*—The Duty to Trust, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 79, Issue 1, 1 June 1979, Pages 89–102, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotelian.

In this paper we suggest adding to predicate modal and temporal logic a locality predicate W which gives names to worlds (or time points). We also study an equal time predicate D(x, y)which states that two time points are at the same distance from the root. We provide the systems studied with complete axiomatizations and illustrate the expressive power gained for modal logic by simulating other logics. The completeness proofs rely on the fairly intuitive notion of a configuration in order (...) to use a proof technique similar to a Henkin completion mixed with a tableau construction. The main elements of the completeness proofs are given for each case, while purely technical results are grouped in the appendix. (shrink)

It is characteristic of A. to use words that occur only once in Homer, and such a word is ρρητος. In Od. 14. 466 it describes the remark that is better left unspoken, πέρ τ' ρρητον μεινον. But it has the distinction of occurring once also in Hesiod, and this time it is used of men without fame, ητοί τ' ρρητοί τε Διòς μεγάλοιο κατι . It is clearly this line in Hesiod's proem that A. is echoing in his own, (...) and in the same kind of sense, though, as Martin points out, A. ‘renverse en quelque sorte une expression d'Hésiode’. In the Phaenomena it is Zeus who is always being celebrated by men. The idiom with ν and negative is used by Plato, Lg. 793 b, οτε νόμους δε προσαγορεύειν ατ οτε ρρητα ν, and it may have been a familiar expression. But here in A., with the emphatic οδέποτε, it does seem rather contrived, and this may account for the fanciful explanation in the scholia that Zeus here represents the air we use every time we speak. The phrasing is certainly designed to give the maximum emphasis to ρρητον, which comes in enjambement at the beginning of the second line and is then followed by a strong sense pause. It is tempting, therefore, to suggest that the poet is indulging in a kind of pun on the sound of his own name, which usually has a long α in its first syllable and sometines η in its second: e.g. Call. Epigr. 27. 4 ρήτου σύντονος γρυπνίη, and Leonidas, A.P. 9. 25. 1 γράμμα τόδ' ρήτοιο δαήμονος. Other Hellenistic poets have contrived puns on the derivation oftheir names: Philodemusin A.P. 5. 115, Meleager in A.P. 12. 165, and Crates in A.P. 11. 218. 4. Closer to A. is the story recorded in the ancient biographical tradition of Antigonus complimenting the poet with the pun εδοξóτερον ποιες τòν Eδοξον. (shrink)

Building on Jean-Luc Marion's phenomenology of love this book takes up the "question of the Other" and argues that through the interpretive activities of the amorous imagination lovers come to experience one another as the Beloved.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:109 HUME'S MISSING SHADE OF BLUE, INTERPRETED AS INVOLVING HABITUAL SPECTRA David Hume claimed that his hypothetical case of the unseen shade of blue posed no fundamental problem to his general empiricist principle. But I believe it well may show exactly what he denied it showed — viz., that his empiricism rests on a mistake. Hume says: Suppose... a person to have enjoyed his sight for thirty years, and (...) to have become perfectly well acquainted with colours of all kinds, excepting one particular shade of blue, for instance, which it never has been his fortune to meet with. Let all the different shades of that colour, except that single one, be plac'd before him, descending gradually from the deepest to the lightest; 'tis plain, that he will perceive a blank, where that shade is wanting, and will be sensible, that there is a greater distance in that place betwixt the contiguous colours, than in any other. Now I ask, whether 'tis possible for him, from his own imagination, to supply this deficiency, and raise up to himself the idea of that particular shade, tho' it had never been conveyed to him by his senses? I believe there are few but will be of opinion that he can.... Sometimes one is surprised by the colour which emerges when one mixes paints, powders or lights of different hues, in the sense that one is unable to imagine this resulting colour until one actually sees it. I often have analogous experiences when sightreading music on the trombone. If there is a large, unfamiliar interval between the note I am playing and the one to be played next, so I cannot 'hear' the next note inwardly, I bring the slide to the correct position, set my lips at approximately the right tension, and presto! the correct note appears, despite 110 my inability to predict what it was going to sound like. Only after I have heard it can I also 'hear' it, i.e, predict its occurrence in this melodic line. Cases like these are not puzzling philosophically, because in them, the note, colour, etc. arises primarily from the equipment used — e.g., paints, powders or lights, the trombone and tension of the lips, and so on — rather than from the mind of the person who uses these things. But in Hume's example, no extra-mental objects or events play a direct role in creating the imagined colour. In fact, this colour never appears at all outside the subject's mind, and he never sees it. Therefore here the imagined colour is produced entirely by the subject himself, without his having copied it from anything in the external world. Yet this contradicts the maxim Hume laid down at the beginning of the Treatise that all simple ideas arise from correspondingly simple (sense) impressions. Two points perhaps mitigate the seriousness of the problem set by the missing shade of blue. First, Hume saw clearly, as Locke did not, that "innate" does 2 not mean the same as "justified." He was not so much concerned with the question of where ideas come from, as with how these ideas can be shown to be legitimate. His answer to the latter question is that experience alone is competent to show this. Second, strictly speaking, no idea is itself a piece of knowledge, but only something with the help of which one constructs knowledge-claims; and it is necessary for a person to justify knowledge-claims which are composed of innate ideas, by checking them against experience, just as much as knowledge-claims composed of non-innate materials. For example, suppose I possess innately the idea (visual image) of blue and the idea (tactile image) of cool. To say that these ideas are innate means that they are merely triggered or activated in my Ill mind by experiences I happen to have, but are not created by these experiences, and are not necessarily copies of them. Nevertheless, in order for me to know something which involves these ideas, I first must put them together in a judgment, and then confirm that judgment by appeal to experience. For instance, I might use these ideas to make the judgment... (shrink)