This book provides a timely, compelling, multidisciplinary critique of the largely tacit set of assumptions funding Modernity in the West. A partnership between Michael Polanyi and Charles Taylor's thought promises to cast the errors of the past in a new light, to graciously show how these errors can be amended, and to provide a specific cartography of how we can responsibly and meaningfully explore new possibilities for ethics, political society, and religion in a post-modern modernity.

Harry Collins’ Tacit and Explicit Knowledge is engaged to clarify and expand the notions of tacit and explicit. A broader continuum for tacit knowledge and its indirectly or only partially explicable components is provided by complementing Collins’ exposition of tacit knowledge with a discussion of formal systems and Polanyi’s exposition of tacit knowing. Support is provided for Collins’ distinction between strings and language, mechanical modeling as a form of explication, and the notion that machines lack tacit knowledge and language. While (...) Collins emphasizes the inexplicability of cultural fluency as tacit knowledge, Polanyi emphasizes the functional dimension of skillful performances. The conceptual strengths and weaknesses of Collins’ and Polanyi’s approaches are examined. Collins’ emphasis on string transformation and his division of tacit knowing into Relational (RTK), Somatic (STK), and Collective (CTK) are helpful tools, but should not flatten Polanyi’s multiple levels of knowing and being into a dualism that may encourage reductionism. (shrink)

New moral ways of being are answers to fundamental problems in the human condition regarding the best way to be and the best way to be with each other. Entering a new way of being entails crossing a logical gap into a new interpretive framework. Michael Polanyi’s from-to structure of knowing and discovery is used to show both how we can acquire the state of the good person through an imitation of their behaviors and why those behaviors must be practiced (...) for themselves. The good person experiences a happiness that the person pursuing happiness as a goal cannot fully understand. One thus practices virtues, and heeds their codification into law, not for the sake of one’s own happiness, but for the sake of the happiness of the person one will become. (shrink)

By pointing to deep philosophical confusions endemic to cognitive science, Wittgenstein might seem an enemy of computational approaches. We agree that while Wittgenstein would reject the classicist’s symbols and rules approach, his observations align well with connectionist or neural network approaches. While many connectionisms that dominated the later twentieth century could fall prey to criticisms of biological, pedagogical, and linguistic implausibility, current connectionist approaches can resolve those problems in a Wittgenstein-friendly manner. We present the basics of a Vector Symbolic Architecture (...) formalism, inspired by Smolensky, and indicate how high-dimensional vectors can operate in a context-sensitive and object-independent manner in biologically plausible time scales, reflecting Wittgenstein’s notions of language-games and family resemblance; we show how “soft” symbols for such a formalism can be formed with plausible learning cycles using Sparse Distributed Memory, resolving disputes surrounding Wittgenstein’s private language argument; and show how connectionist networks can extrapolate meaningful patterns to solve problems, providing “ways to go on” without explicit rules, which indicates linguistic plausibility. Connectionism thus provides a systematicity and productivity that is more than a mere implementation of a classical approach, and provides Wittgenstein-friendly and Wittgenstein-illuminating models of mind and language for cognitive science. (shrink)

In this paper I address some of John Dewey’s more generally applicable criticisms of the philosophic "tradition," and show how his criticisms stem from his naturalistic approach to philosophy. This topic is important because Dewey gives great insight into discussions that are relevant today regarding the role of philosophy. In 1935 he anticipated many of the criticisms of the "later" Wittgenstein regarding the establishment of post facto standards as a cause, the separation of language from behavior and the privatization of (...) mind—yet Dewey still finds use for metaphysics or "thinking at large." I believe the essence of Dewey’s criticisms are found in a few key distinctions. Therefore, I cover the history of philosophy with blanket criticisms of the blanket categories of "classical" and of "modern" thought. For Dewey, the fundamental error characteristic of both Greek and Modern thinking is the artificial bifurcation of our thoughts, feelings and actions from the natural world. As I see it, the heart of this metaphysical mistake is captured by the distinctions he draws between the "instrumental" and "consummatory," and between the "precarious" and "stable.". (shrink)

In a Polanyian emergentist ethics, moral ways of being and their concomitant interpretive structures come as achievements in response to a heuristic in the human condition. Religious transformation, as seen in mysticism and enlightenment, however, may present a radical, “transnatural” solution of a different order. Polanyi’s understanding of “breaking out” from conceptual frameworks, and his conception that Christian worship promotes a sustained hopeful anguish, are contrasted with a Polanyian “breaking in” to a new framework of knowing and being that provides (...) a happy solution to human suffering. With a new framework, a new spirit, or center, is seen through that provides a different experience of the world. Polanyi’s conceptions of a telic organizing principle, breaking out, and breaking in provide three different conceptions of God. (shrink)

Looking at the moral law from Polanyi’s post-critical epistemology and emergent ontology reveals two interconnected roles for the letter of the law and two ways in which it can oppose the spirit of the law. For the moral student the law is a procedural method, for the moral virtuoso the law is an incomplete explicit expression of a tacit way of being. The two are connected in that procedural rules and practices set the basis for understanding and experiencing an emergent (...) reality. This reality is embodied in the exemplars of a moraltradition and expressed in its principles and maxims. (shrink)

New moral ways of being are answers to fundamental problems in the human condition regarding the best way to be and the best way to be with each other. Entering a new way of being entails crossing a logical gap into a new interpretive framework. Michael Polanyi’s from-to structure of knowing and discovery is used to show both how we can acquire the state of the good person through an imitation of their behaviors and why those behaviors must be practiced (...) for themselves. The good person experiences a happiness that the person pursuing happiness as a goal cannot fully understand. One thus practices virtues, and heeds their codification into law, not for the sake of one’s own happiness, but for the sake of the happiness of the person one will become. (shrink)

In Retrieving Realism, Taylor and Dreyfus aim to correct mistaken modern assumptions and their post-modern reactions in order to affirm a robust realism about a world for scientific and moral exploration. Their critiques and solutions have much in common with Polanyi’s approach; they all emphasize tacit body-knowing, background frameworks, and our ability to develop epistemological structures that better and better grasp the world considered independent from us. Dreyfus-Taylor and Polanyi diverge, however, when it comes to choosing a framework from which (...) to understand a robust moral realism. The former endorse a Heideggerian “reveal but conceal” pluralist approach, while a Polanyian view advocates a “progress but with risk” emergentist approach. I argue that the emergentist approach provides a better defense against deflationary realism and better reconciles apparent contradictions, such as physical causality and free will, engaged contact and progress in knowing reality in-itself, and cultural relativism and objective morality. While a pluralist account may have the strength of endorsing tolerance, it is more vulnerable to an ethical relativism; and while an emergentist view is more clearly at risk of illicit dogmatism, it has the strength of endorsing the search for moral truth that we all can share. (shrink)

Michael Polanyi’s conceptions of tacit knowing and emergent being are used to correct a reductionism that developed from, or reacted against, the excesses of several Cartesian assumptions: (a) the method of universal doubt; (b) the emphasis on reductive analysis to unshakeable foundations, via connections between clear and distinct ideas; (c) the notion that what is real are the basic atomic substances out of which all else is composed; (d) a sharp body-mind substance dualism; and (e) the notion that the seat (...) of consciousness can be traced to a point in the human body. The reductivist project in biology began with the emphasis Descartes put on the body as a machine. Polanyi reappropriates the machine metaphor to demonstrate how mechanistic explanations are not fully reductive. He shows how an eliminative materialism that would reduce mind to brain is unwarranted if either an interlevel mechanistic reduction or an intralevel successional reduction is posited. (shrink)

This paper looks at Wittgenstein’s criticism of metaphysical philosophy and its possible reconstitution through Polanyi’s epistemology of tacit knowing. The two approaches are contrasted in the end in response to the question “What is the meaning of life?”.

Familiarity with Charles Darwin's treatise on evolution is essential to every well-educated individual. One of the most important books ever published--and a continuing source of controversy, a century and a half later--this classic of science is reproduced in a facsimile of the critically acclaimed first edition.

Should engineering ethics be taught? Despite the obvious truism that we all want our students to be moral engineers who practice virtuous professional behavior, I argue, in this article that the question itself obscures several ambiguities that prompt preliminary resolution. Upon clarification of these ambiguities, and an attempt to delineate key issues that make the question a philosophically interesting one, I conclude that engineering ethics not only should not, but cannot, be taught if we understand “teaching engineering ethics” to mean (...) training engineers to be moral individuals (as some advocates seem to have proposed). However, I also conclude that there is a justification to teaching engineering ethics, insofar as we are able to clearly identify the most desirable and efficacious pedagogical approach to the subject area, which I propose to be a case study-based format that utilizes the principle of human cognitive pattern recognition. (shrink)

The present edition provides a detailed and accessible discussion ofhis theories and adds an account of the immediate responses to the book on publication.

David Charles presents a major new study of Aristotle's views on meaning, essence, necessity, and related topics. These interconnected views are central to Aristotle's metaphysics, philosophy of language, and philosophy of science, and are also highly relevant to current philosophical debates. Charles aims to reach a clear understanding of Aristotle's claims and arguments, to assess their truth, and to evaluate their importance to ancient and modern philosophy.

This book proposes a new paradigm for the interpretation of Plato's early and middle dialogues. Rejecting the usual assumption of a distinct 'Socratic' period in the development of Plato's thought, this view regards the earlier works as deliberate preparation for the exposition of Plato's mature philosophy. Differences between the dialogues do not represent different stages in Plato's own thinking but rather different aspects and moments in the presentation of a new and unfamiliar view of reality. Once the fictional character of (...) the Socratic genre is recognised, there is no reason to regard Plato's early dialogues as representing the philosophy of the historical Socrates. The result is a unified interpretation of all of the dialogues down to the Republic and the Phaedrus. (shrink)

In Part 1, I contend (using Coriolanus as my mouthpiece) that Keeley and Clarke have failed to show that there is anything intellectually suspect about conspiracy theories per se. Conspiracy theorists need not commit the ‘fundamental attribution error’ there is no reason to suppose that all or most conspiracy theories constitute the cores of degenerating research programs, nor does situationism - a dubious doctrine in itself - lend any support to a systematic skepticism about conspiracy theories. In Part 2. I (...) argue (in propria persona) that the idea that there is something suspect about conspiracy theories is one of the most dangerous and idiotic superstitions to disgrace our political culture. (shrink)

According to the conceptualist view in the philosophy of perception, we must possess concepts for all the objects, properties and relations which feature in our perceptual experiences. In this paper, I investigate the possibility of developing an argument against the conceptualist view by appealing to the notion of attention. In Part One, I begin by setting out an apparently promising version of such an argument, a version which appeals to a link between attention and perceptual demonstrative concept possession. In Part (...) Two, however, I show how the conceptualist can challenge what appears to be the key premise of the argument, and I go on to describe, in Part Three, an important further difficulty which we face if we attempt to overcome this challenge in a particular way. My conclusion will be that the conceptualist's challenge to the argument is convincing and hence that the argument remains inconclusive. (shrink)

Of laws in general -- Of laws directly derived from the nature of government -- Of the principles of the three kinds of government -- That the laws of education ought to be relative to the principles of government -- That the laws given by the legislator ought to be relative to the nature of government -- Consquences of the principles of different governments, with respect to the simplicity of civil and criminal laws, the form of judgements, and inflicting of (...) punishments -- Consquences of the different principles of the three governments, with respect to sumptuary laws, luxury, and the condition of women -- Of the corruption of the principles of the three governments -- Of the laws in the relation they bear to defensive force -- Of laws, in the relation they bear to offensive force. (shrink)

In The Origin of Species (1859) Darwin challenged many of the most deeply-held beliefs of the Western world. Arguing for a material, not divine, origin of species, he showed that new species are achieved by "natural selection." The Origin communicates the enthusiasm of original thinking in an open, descriptive style, and Darwin's emphasis on the value of diversity speaks more strongly now than ever. As well as a stimulating introduction and detailed notes, this edition offers a register of the many (...) writers referred to by Darwin in the text. (shrink)

The place of religion in society has changed profoundly in the last few centuries, particularly in the West. In what will be a defining book for our time, Taylor takes up the question of what these changes mean, and what, precisely, happens when a society becomes one in which faith is only one human possibility among others.

Many advances in public health and medical technology have contributed to the improved wellbeing and overall longevity of Americans. Such benefits, however, have been offset by a change in the nature and prolongation of the dying process. Daniel Callahan offers a challenge to caregivers in his observation of violent death by technological attenuation, and he sets an agenda to identify a more appropriate approach to the needs of the dying.Over the past quarter century, hospice has increasingly been used as a (...) resource for care at the end of life. However, according to 1995 estimates by the National Hospice Organization, hospice care presently accounts for only about 15 percent of the care of terminally ill patients in the United States. We will review issues of access and use of hospice services and examine the various institutional, professional, societal, and cultural barriers to hospice principles of care, and consider various options to promote optimal care at the end of life. (shrink)

Many advances in public health and medical technology have contributed to the improved wellbeing and overall longevity of Americans. Such benefits, however, have been offset by a change in the nature and prolongation of the dying process. Daniel Callahan offers a challenge to caregivers in his observation of violent death by technological attenuation, and he sets an agenda to identify a more appropriate approach to the needs of the dying.Over the past quarter century, hospice has increasingly been used as a (...) resource for care at the end of life. However, according to 1995 estimates by the National Hospice Organization, hospice care presently accounts for only about 15 percent of the care of terminally ill patients in the United States. We will review issues of access and use of hospice services and examine the various institutional, professional, societal, and cultural barriers to hospice principles of care, and consider various options to promote optimal care at the end of life. (shrink)

The transcendental aesthetic -- Arithmetic and the categories -- Remarks on pure natural science -- Two studies in the reception of Kant's philosophy of arithmetic: postscript to part I -- Some remarks on Frege's conception of extension -- Postscript to essay 5 -- Frege's correspondence: postscript to essay 6 -- Brentano on judgment and truth -- Husserl and the linguistic turn.

Charles Beitz rejects two highly influential conceptions of international theory as empirically inaccurate and theoretically misleading. In one, international relations is a Hobbesian state of nature in which moral judgments are entirely inappropriate, and in the other, states are analogous to persons in domestic society in having rights of autonomy that insulate them from external moral assessment and political interference. Beitz postulates that a theory of international politics should include a revised principle of state autonomy based on the justice (...) of a state's domestic institutions, and a principle of international distributive justice to establish a fair division of resources and wealth among persons situated in diverse national societies. (shrink)

Iris Murdoch and moral philosophy -- Understanding the other: a Gadamerian view on conceptual schemes -- Language not mysterious? -- Celan and the recovery of language -- Nationalism and modernity -- Conditions of an unforced consensus on human rights -- Democratic exclusion (and its remedies?) -- Religious mobilizations -- Themes from a secular age -- The immanent counter-enlightenment -- Notes on the sources of violence: perennial and modern -- The future of the religious past -- Disenchantment-re-enchantment -- What does secularism (...) mean? -- Die blosse Vernunft ("reason alone") -- Perils of moralism -- What was the Axial revolution? (shrink)

Subsequent chapters discuss Vives's ideas on the soul, especially his analysis of the emotions, his contribution to rhetoric and dialectic and a posthumous defense of the Christian religion in dialogue form."--BOOK JACKET.

Recent scholarship has focused attention on the difficulties that evil, suffering, and tragic conflict present to religious belief and moral life. Thinkers have drawn upon many important historical figures, with one significant exception - Augustine. At the same time, there has been a renaissance of work on Augustine, but little discussion of either his work on evil or his influence on contemporary thought. This book fills these gaps. It explores the 'family biography' of the Augustinian tradition by looking at Augustine's (...) work and its development in the writings of Hannah Arendt and Reinhold Niebuhr. Mathewes argues that the Augustinian tradition offers us a powerful, though commonly misconstrued, proposal for understanding and responding to evil's challenges. The book casts new light on Augustine, Niebuhr, and Arendt, as well as on the problem of evil, the nature of tradition, and the role of theological and ethical discourse in contemporary thought. (shrink)

Human rights have become one of the most important moral concepts in global political life over the last 60 years. Charles Beitz, one of the world's leading philosophers, offers a compelling new examination of the idea of a human right.

In this revised edition of his 1979 classic Political Theory and International Relations, Charles Beitz rejects two highly influential conceptions of international theory as empirically inaccurate and theoretically misleading. In one, international relations is a Hobbesian state of nature in which moral judgments are entirely inappropriate, and in the other, states are analogous to persons in domestic society in having rights of autonomy that insulate them from external moral assessment and political interference. Beitz postulates that a theory of international (...) politics should include a revised principle of state autonomy based on the justice of a state’s domestic institutions, and a principle of international distributive justice to establish a fair division of resources and wealth among persons situated in diverse national societies. (shrink)

This book is an examination of the inattention of business schools to moral education, addressing lessons learned from the most recent business corruption scandals and financial crises, and also questioning what we're teaching now and what should be considering in educating future business leaders to cope with the challenges of leading with integrity in the global environment"--Provided by publisher.

This paper has two purposes: to provide a contextualised account of the Young Hegelian theory of the state, and to argue that Marx began working on the manuscript known as his ‘Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law’, not in the Summer of 1843, as most commentators assume, but at least as early as the Spring of 1842. The established narrative describes the Young Hegelians as ‘liberals’, and suggests that Marx ‘Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law’ represents his rejection of their (...) liberalism and turn towards a more radical democratic and revolutionary position. Conversely, I argue that the Young Hegelians (notably Arnold Ruge and Bruno Bauer) were never liberal (at least not by any standard definition of that term) but articulated a radical and revolutionary theory of the state from the outset – one that understood freedom, not as independence, but as political participation, and that characterised the modern state, not as the guarantor of private rights, but as the institutional framework in which all citizens could realise their public freedom. In this sense, Marx’s ‘Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy Law’ does not represent a break with the Young Hegelians theory of state, but a contribution to it. (shrink)

At the very beginning of L’Homme-Machine, La Mettrie claims that Leibnizians with their monads have “rather spiritualized matter than materialized the soul”; a few years later Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, President of the Berlin Academy of Sciences and natural philosopher with a strong interest in the modes of transmission of ‘genetic’ information, conceived of living minima which he termed molecules, “endowed with desire, memory and intelligence,” in his Système de la nature ou Essai sur les corps organisés. This text first (...) appeared in Latin in 1751 under the title Dissertatio inauguralis metaphysica de universali naturae systemate, with the pseudonym Dr Baumann; it was translated by Maupertuis in 1754 as Essai sur la formation des corps organisés and was later included in his 1756 Œuvres under the title Système de la nature. Now, it is clear that Maupertuis was a kind of Leibnizian; and that his molecule possessed higher-level, ‘mental’ properties. In that sense he falls under the first category described by La Mettrie. But he was also involved in a debate on this issue with Diderot, who put forth a sustained critique of Maupertuis’ theory of the molecule in the additions to his 1753 Pensées sur l’interprétation de la nature. Where Maupertuis attributes higher-level properties to his living minima, Diderot argues that these properties are ‘organizational’, i.e., they can only be properties of the whole. At issue here is the degree of commitment to a form of materialism. (shrink)

Fundamental Buddhist teachings -- Main features of some western ethical theories -- Teravāda ethics as rule-consequentialism -- Mahāyāna ethics before Śāntideva and after -- Transcending ethics -- Buddhist ethics and the demands of consequentialism -- Buddhism on moral responsibility -- Punishment -- Objections and replies -- A Buddhist response to Kant.

An indispensable and comprehensive resource for students and scholars of philosophy of religion.

Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species is unquestionably one of the chief landmarks in biology. The Origin (as it is widely known) was literally only an abstract of the manuscript Darwin had originally intended to complete and publish as the formal presentation of his views on evolution. Compared with the Origin, his original long manuscript work on Natural Selection, which is presented here and made available for the first time in printed form, has more abundant examples and illustrations (...) of Darwin's argument, plus an extensive citation of sources. (shrink)

Charles Babbage was an English mathematician, philosopher and mechanical engineer who invented the concept of a programmable computer. From 1828 to 1839 he was Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, a position whose holders have included Isaac Newton and Stephen Hawking. A proponent of natural religion, he published The Ninth Bridgewater Treatise in 1837 as his personal response to The Bridgewater Treatises, a series of books on theology and science that had recently appeared. Disputing the claim that science disfavours (...) religion, Babbage wrote 'that there exists no such fatal collision between the words of Scripture and the facts of nature'. He argues on the basis of reason and experience alone, drawing a parallel between his work on the calculating engine and God as the divine programmer of the universe. Eloquently written, and underpinned by mathematical arguments, The Ninth Bridgewater Treatise is a landmark work of natural theology. (shrink)