Translating current research into accessible terms, Taylor discusses the brain's electrical and chemical processes, amnesia, mystical states, and multiple personality and the nature of dreaming, memory, pain, and intelligence.

Moral choice, as a precursor to behaviour, has an important influence on the success or failure of business entities. According to Rest, 1983, Morality, Moral Behavior and Moral Development (John Wiley & Sons, New York), moral choice is prompted, amongst other things, by a motivational component. With this in mind, data obtained from a sample of four hundred financial sector operatives, employed in a rapidly developing region of China, was used to construct a relatively stable set of motivational typologies which (...) could be used to predict choice within an agency-based context. A non-egoist version of the agency theory was developed, which permitted the modelling of alternative heuristic patterns. Altruists and persons identified as bordering on the verge of being classified as psychological egoists, refused to reorganize their motives when responding to a problem that included both moral hazard and adverse selection criteria. It was also possible to identify certain personal and contextual issues which discriminated between the typologies. (shrink)

Undergraduate projects may contribute new knowledge, but commonly their main purpose is an exercise in learning and applying simple research methods. They are usually short term and a first step into the research field. Support for undergraduate research experience is simple enough. However, integral to the research process is ethical scrutiny. A high standard of conduct of research is essential. The question of whether undergraduate student projects should be subject to full ethical review, to the same extent as that undertaken (...) for full scale academic work, is a matter of debate. The purpose of this study was to explore the views of academics on the nature and extent of ethical review considered appropriate for undergraduate research projects. This was done in order to identify which side of the above debate was favoured. Participants were undergraduate research project supervisors, drawn from a range of disciplines where research on human subjects is undertaken. A series of focus groups were undertaken, transcribed and subjected to thematic analysis. There was general consensus that some consideration should be given to the ethical issues relating to student projects. However, participants were limited in their explicit identification of such issues, with only extreme examples being specifically described. Some favoured a ‘light touch’ proportional to the size of the project as appropriate, while others considered the level ethical scrutiny not related to the size, duration or outcome of the work. Opinions were divided on where responsibility ultimately lay. Some considered it to belong at departmental, faculty or institutional level, but others held the individual supervisor accountable. The degree of involvement of undergraduate research in ethical review and approval is clearly an issue amongst academics. This study helps raise awareness of these issues and promotes debate on the appropriate level and format of review needed for undergraduate research training. (shrink)

Psychological stress reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic are complex and multifaceted. Research provides evidence of a COVID Stress Syndrome, consisting of worry about the dangerousness of getting infected with SARSCoV2 and coming into contact with infected surfaces, worry concerning the personal socioeconomic consequences of COVID-19, xenophobic fears that SARSCOV2 is being spread by foreigners, COVID-19-related traumatic stress symptoms, and compulsive checking and reassurance-seeking about COVID-19. Little is known about how these symptoms are related to vulnerability and protective personality factors. Based (...) on data from 1,976 US and Canadian adults, we conducted a prospective network analysis in which personality factors were initially assessed at Time 1 and then symptoms of the CSS were assessed at Time 2, 2.5 months later. Results indicated that trait optimism and trait resilience were negatively associated with negative emotionality, suggesting a modulatory influence. Negative emotionality was positively linked to the narrower traits of intolerance of uncertainty and health anxiety proneness. These narrower traits, in turn, were prospectively linked to symptoms of the CSS. Results suggest that the effects of broad personality traits on symptoms of the CSS were mediated by narrower traits such as the intolerance of uncertainty. Treatment implications are discussed. (shrink)

The Association of Research Ethics Committees is one of the leading providers of training and education for members of Research Ethics Committees. The introduction of the research governance strategy and the increasing complexity of ethical review place great demands on research ethics committee members that in turn creates challenges for training providers. This paper presents the outcome of an audit of REC members' views about training. Findings demonstrate that REC members are not a homogenous group. Several distinct sub-groups, each with (...) particular training needs emerged. All showed a preference for short, easily accessible events in which there were opportunities for discussion. (shrink)

The essays in Fanon and the Decolonization of Philosophy all trace different aspects of the mutually supporting histories of philosophical thought and colonial politics in order to suggest ways that we might decolonize our thinking. From psychology to education, to economic and legal structures, the contributors interrogate the interrelation of colonization and philosophy in order to articulate a Fanon-inspired vision of social justice. This project is endorsed by his daughter, Mireille Fanon-Mendès France, in the book's preface.

This volume of essays offers direct comparisons of historic Western and Buddhist perspectives on ethics and metaphysics, tracing parallels and contrasts all the way from Plato to the Stoics, Spinoza to Hume, and Schopenhauer through to contemporary ethicists such as Arne Naess, Charles Taylor and Derek Parfit. It compares and contrasts each Western philosopher with a particular strand in the Buddhist tradition, in some chapters represented by individual writers such as Nagarjuna, Vasubandhu, Santideva or Tsong Khapa. It does so (...) in light of both analytic concerns and themes from the existentialist and phenomenological traditions, and often in an ecumenical spirit that bridges both analytic and continentalist approaches. Some of the deepest questions in ethics, dealing with the scope of agency, value-laden notions of personhood and the nature of value in general, are intertwined with questions in metaphysics. One set of questions addresses how varying conceptions of selfhood relate to moral values ; another set of questions addresses how a conception of oneself or one’s selves should or should not affect how one thinks of happiness, or eudaimonia, or – in classical Indian terms – artha, sukha or nirvana. Western philosophy has featured discussion of both, but some would argue that certain traditions of Asian philosophy have offered a more sustained and even treatment of both sets of questions. The Buddhist tradition in particular has not only featured much discussion on both fronts, but has attracted many contemporary philosophers to its distinctive spectrum of approaches, and to what is – from many ‘Western’ points of view – a seemingly subversive analysis of ego, selfhood and personhood, whether in metaphysical, phenomenological or other incarnations. (shrink)

Brief survey of Charles Taylor's earlier books, followed by an extensive review of Taylor's A Secular Age, published 2007 by the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

First Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 1997. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In his book A Secular Age, Charles Taylor appeals to the metaphysical?normative distinction between ?immanence? and ?transcendence? as definitive for post-Axial religion. On Taylor's view, therefore, those of us who embrace a fully secular modernity can be described as having abandoned ?transcendence? to take up our lives wholly within the confines of the immanent frame, though he grants we may seek alternative satisfactions or ?substitutes? for eternity. But the notion that any metaphysical?normative model of sacred experience can serve (...) as an irresistible foundation is open to doubt if one recalls the Heideggerian insight that any metaphysical picture both reveals and conceals aspects of our experience. Taylor's own description of sacred and non-sacred experience within the immanent frame seems to rely upon this foundational distinction, without entertaining the possibility that the language itself may very well actually distort what our experience is like. This paper pursues the above objections to Taylor's argument, focusing special attention on the assumption that one can judge aesthetic experience (such as listening to a Beethoven string quartet) with the criteria we have inherited from post-Axial religion. The overwhelming authority of the Axial tradition might seem to validate questions such as, ?Is there an object?? or ?Is the experience purely immanent?? But to such questions we might respond that such language simply has no grip on the phenomena. Any such talk of ?substitution? might therefore be understood as an historical remnant in Taylor's book of the traditional monotheist's critique of idolatry. (shrink)

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 1993. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

To a student audience seduced by the claims of a ‘secular Christianity’, Professor Gordon Rupp once urged the combined loyalties of ‘worldmanship’ and ‘other-worldmanship’. The Muslim world shows little friendship to secularist ideologies which explicitly reject the eschatological dimension, but Muslims are increasingly involved in secularising processes; many of these are ‘Islamised’, if they are compatible with Islamic social or political ideals, and the stigma of bid‘ah , innovation, is thereby avoided. A Lebanese author, Muhammad Darwazah, in his Dustūr (...) al-Qur’ ānī , Cairo 1956, advocated a ‘Qur'ānic Constitution’ for the modern world since the Qur'ān’s world-view is both in-worldly and other-worldly: ‘Islam is a religion of the world , of government, society, morals and order, to the same extent as it is a religion of faith and belief and the next world .’. (shrink)

‘[Valerius'] Argonautica is a story of high adventure, not a poème à thèse’: so stated Garson in 1965. Strand later added that the essential nature of this poem and the choice of subject-matter was determined by poetic inability; he describes the prooemium to Valerius' Argonautica as ‘a recusatio: the theme of the fall of Jerusalem is beyond his powers, and it would instead be treated by Domitian who was fit for such an arduous task; Valerius had to content himself with (...) the theme of an old myth’. It is these two opinions that I wish to question in this article. Indeed, alarm bells immediately sound at Strand's interpretation of the poet's recusatio. It has long been recognized that the original Callimachean recusatio was twisted by the Augustan poets. Gordon Williams analyses their practice thus: ‘They sadly regret that their poor talents will not rise to great subjects – and the subjects to which they will not rise are not the old mythological tales but the great affairs of contemporary Roman history and, in particular, the deeds of Augustus. It is clear, however, that they are using this form of poem to enumerate and praise the great deeds of Augustus, under the guise of proposing their own inability.’ No-one hesitates to agree that Valerius was well versed in the Augustan poets. It is dangerous, therefore, to assume without question that he was deceived by their insincerity. There is in fact good reason to examine the alternative possibility, namely that Valerius understood well the practice of his literary predecessors, that he dared to tread in their footsteps and that he succeeded in the supreme duty of a poet, that is to say, the business of ensuring that ars celavit artem. (shrink)

In this essay I discuss the historical adequacy of Charles Taylor's philosophical history of secularization, as presented in his A Secular Age . I do so by situating it in relation to the contextual historiography of secularization in early modern Europe, with a particular focus on developments in the German Empire. Considering how profoundly conceptions of secularization have been bound to competing religious and political programmes, we must begin our discussion by entertaining the possibility that modern philosophical and historiographic (...) conceptions of secularization might themselves be outcrops of this unfinished competition. Peter Gordon has rightly observed that Taylor's philosophical history of secularization is a Catholic one, and that this is bound up with a specific view of secularization as a theological and ecclesiological “disembedding” of rational subjectivity from its prior embodiment in a sacral body, community , and cosmos. Taylor delivers this history in his “reform master narrative”: that certain fundamental religious and cultural reforms or changes in early modern Europe wrought the secularization responsible for a modern epoch of “unbelief”. (shrink)

The intellectual history of the last quarter of this century has been marked by the growing influence of Africana thought--an area of philosophy that focuses on issues raised by the struggle over ideas in African cultures and their hybrid forms in Europe, the Americas, and the Caribbean. Existentia Africana is an engaging and highly readable introduction to the field of Africana philosophy and will help to define this rapidly growing field. Lewis R. Gordon clearly explains Africana existential thought to (...) a general audience, covering a wide range of both classic and contemporary thinkers--from Douglass and DuBois to Fanon, Davis and Zack. (shrink)

One of the great difficulties in effecting a synthesis of experience is the contradiction of the apparently mechanical character of the physical universe on the one hand, and the sense of freedom we associate with life on the other. In our own persons, we are told by medical science, or some of it, we are governed by physiological laws which are mechanical, as distinct from vital, in their nature. The best reconciliation of these with freedom, in the writer's opinion, is (...) the philosophy of Samuel Butler. In studying freedom as experienced by human beings Butler pointed out that a large number of practices which are apparently mechanical are really habits that have become stereotyped, and he drew attention to the fact that human actions can be classified as follows:—. (shrink)

The discussion of good and evil must not be confined to the sterile lecture halls of academics but related instead to ordinary human feelings, needs, and desires, says noted philosopher Richard Taylor. Efforts to understand morality by exploring human reason will always fail because we are creatures of desire as well. All morality arises from our intense and inescapable longing. The distinction between good and evil is always clouded by rationalists who convert the real problems of ethics into complex (...) philosophical puzzles. In the first part of Good and Evil, Taylor looks for a more meaningful conception by reexamining and rejecting the whole rationalistic tradition that dominates philosophical ethics. The second part provides an empirical explanation of good and evil, noting that one does not have to look too far to find prime examples of the failure of fixed moral rules. Including important commentary on Joseph Fletcher's groundbreaking situation ethics, and Aristotle's virtues (e.g., magnanimity and pride), Taylor rounds out the book by developing a philosophy of aspiration--personal worth as an ethical ideal--to replace the morality of duty. He offers a modified form of situation ethics to fit the contemporary problems we face. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger devotes extensive discussion to medieval philosophers, particularly to their treatment of Truth and Being. On both these topics, Heidegger accuses them of forgetting the question of Being and of being responsible for subjugating truth to the modern crusade for certainty: ‘truth is denied its own mode of being’ and is subordinated ‘to an intellect that judges correctly’. Though there are some studies that discuss Heidegger’s debt to and criticism of medieval thought, particularly that of Thomas Aquinas, there is (...) no constructive reply to his assertions. As a result, Heidegger’s critique had an unprecedented effect on the credibility of medieval philosophy, whereby great portions of the philosophical community dismiss it altogether as an illegitimate Onto‐Theology. It is the aim of this study to offer a constructive reply that will fundamentally grapple with these allegations. By constructive reply we mean not only a reply that avoids the problems Heidegger raises regarding existence, essence and truth, but more importantly, one that uses Heidegger’s criticism in order to present a more insightful account of these notions. The present study is composed of two parts where the second serves as a sort of addendum. The first part, the core of this study, is an attempt to develop an understanding of the distinction between essence and existence that, on the one hand, accords with Heidegger’s criticism while on the other hand advances our understanding of how we think and understand reality. After presenting Heidegger’s depiction of Aquinas’s distinction between essence and existence (esse) as a real distinction, the study will present several views propounded by scholars of Aquinas regarding the status of this distinction. It will be argued that it is not clear whether the distinction is real, formal or conceptual, and that different types of distinction are applied in different places, particularly in regard to the phantasm that Aquinas considers essential to the human act of thinking. The second part diverges from the first part and focuses on Heidegger’s criticism of Aquinas’s conception of truth as adequation, i.e., what it is that grounds the possibility of truth as adequation. This divergence is necessary in order to present a full metaphysical response to Heidegger’s criticism. Since the aim of the present study is to argue that Aquinas’s philosophical system can contend with Heidegger’s criticism, a partial reply would greatly diminish its effectiveness. (shrink)

Underpinning all the other branches of science, physics affects the way we live our lives, and ultimately how life itself functions. Recent scientific advances have led to dramatic reassessment of our understanding of the world around us, and made a significant impact on our lifestyle. In this book, leading international experts, including Nobel prize winners, explore the frontiers of modern physics, from the particles inside an atom to the stars that make up a galaxy, from nano-engineering and brain research to (...) high-speed data networks. Revealing how physics plays a vital role in what we see around us, this book will fascinate scientists of all disciplines, and anyone wanting to know more about the world of physics today. (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.

Genocide in Rwanda, multiple murder at Denver or Dunblane, the gruesome activities of serial killers - what makes these great evils, and why do they occur? In addressing such questions this book, unusually, interconnects contemporary moral philosophy with recent work in New Testament scholarship. The conclusions to emerge are surprising. Gordon Graham argues that the inability of modernist thought to account satisfactorily for evil and its occurrence should not lead us to embrace an eclectic postmodernism, but to take seriously (...) some unfashionable pre-modern conceptions - Satan, demonic possession, spiritual powers, cosmic battles. Precisely because it strives to observe the high standards of clarity and rigour that are the hallmarks of philosophy in the analytical tradition, the book makes a powerful case for the rejection of humanism and naturalism, and for explaining the moral obligation to struggle against evil by reference to the New Testament's cosmic narrative. (shrink)

One of the most basic questions an ontology can address is: How many things, or substances, are there? A monist will say, ‘just one’. But there are different stripes of monism, and where the borders between these different views lie rests on the question, ‘To what does this “oneness” apply?’ Some monists apply ‘oneness’ to existence. Others apply ‘oneness’ to types. Determining whether a philosopher is a monist and deciphering what this is supposed to mean is no easy task, especially (...) when it comes to those writing in the early modern period because many philosophers of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries include God in their ontologies. InThe Principles,Anne Finch Conway offers an ontology that is often described as being both ‘vitalist’ and ‘monist’. I take this to mean that, for Conway, all that exists is in some way alive and that if asked ‘How many things, or substances, are there?’ Conway would say, ‘Just one’. But to what does this ‘oneness’ apply? And where does the point of disagreement between Conway and her interlocutors, Hobbes, Spinoza, More, and Descartes lie? In this paper, I argue that determining the answer to this first question turns out to be quite difficult. Nevertheless, we can still make sense of the second. (shrink)

The notion of proof is central to mathematics yet it is one of the most difficult aspects of the subject to teach and master. In particular, undergraduate mathematics students often experience difficulties in understanding and constructing proofs. Understanding Mathematical Proof describes the nature of mathematical proof, explores the various techniques that mathematicians adopt to prove their results, and offers advice and strategies for constructing proofs. It will improve students’ ability to understand proofs and construct correct proofs of their own. The (...) first chapter of the text introduces the kind of reasoning that mathematicians use when writing their proofs and gives some example proofs to set the scene. The book then describes basic logic to enable an understanding of the structure of both individual mathematical statements and whole mathematical proofs. It also explains the notions of sets and functions and dissects several proofs with a view to exposing some of the underlying features common to most mathematical proofs. The remainder of the book delves further into different types of proof, including direct proof, proof using contrapositive, proof by contradiction, and mathematical induction. The authors also discuss existence and uniqueness proofs and the role of counter examples. (shrink)

In order to make sense of Scotus’s claim that rationality is perfected only by the will, a Scotistic doctrine of truth is developed in a speculative way. It is claimed that synthetic a priori truths are truths of the will, which are existential truths. This insight holds profound theological implications and is used on the one hand to criticize Kant's conception of existence, and on the other hand, to offer another explanation of the sense according to which the existence of (...) things is grasped. (shrink)

Charles Taylor and Michel Foucault offer two very different descriptions and analyses of modern identities. While it can be argued that Taylor and Foucault are thematizing two very different aspects of identity — Taylor is focusing on first-person, subjective, affirmed identity, and Foucault is focusing on third-person, or ascribed, category identity — in practice, these two are very much intertwined. I argue that attention to identities of race, gender, class and sexual orientation demands that we combine a (...) Foucauldian power analysis with a Taylorean understanding of authenticity. Taking Nancy Fraser's and Linda Gordon's example of the `single black mother on welfare' as the `icon of dependency' in America and Charles Taylor's example of the `householder' who understands himself in relation to an ideal of independence, I show that neither individual can develop either self-knowledge or freedom without engaging in a quest for authenticity that involves both analysis of relations of power and identification with resistant identities. This requires moving beyond both Taylor and Foucault to an understanding of identity in terms of critical relations with defining communities. Key Words: authenticity • critique • Michel Foucault • freedom • identity • meaning • power • self-knowledge • social being • Charles Taylor. (shrink)

In this paper we show how a realistic normative democratic theory can work within the constraints set by the most pessimistic empirical results about voting behaviour and elite capture of the policy process. After setting out the empirical evidence and discussing some extant responses by political theorists, we argue that the evidence produces a two-pronged challenge for democracy: an epistemic challenge concerning the quality and focus of decision-making and an oligarchic challenge concerning power concentration. To address the challenges we then (...) put forward three main normative claims, each of which is compatible with the evidence. We start with a critique of the epistocratic position commonly thought to be supported by the evidence. We then introduce a qualified critique of referenda and other forms of plebiscite, and an outline of a tribune-based system of popular control over oligarchic influence on the policy process. Our discussion points towards a renewal of democracy in a plebeian but not plebiscitarian direction: Attention to the relative power of social classes matters more than formal dispersal of power through voting. We close with some methodological reflections about the compatibility between our normative claims and the realist program in political philosophy. (shrink)

When artificial intelligence (AI) is used to make high-stakes decisions, some worry that this will create a morally troubling responsibility gap—that is, a situation in which nobody is morally responsible for the actions and outcomes that result. Since the responsibility gap might be thought to result from individuals lacking knowledge of the future behavior of AI systems, it can be and has been suggested that deploying explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) techniques will help us to avoid it. These techniques provide humans (...) with certain forms of understanding of the systems in question. In this paper, I consider whether existing XAI techniques can indeed close the responsibility gap. I identify a number of significant limits to their ability to do so. Ensuring that responsibility for AI-assisted outcomes is maintained may require using different techniques in different circumstances, and potentially also developing new techniques that can avoid each of the issues identified. (shrink)

Kant's Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason was written late in his career. It presents a theory of 'radical evil' in human nature, touches on the issue of divine grace, develops a Christology, and takes a seemingly strong interest in the issue of scriptural interpretation. The essays in this Critical Guide explore the reasons why this is so, and offer careful and illuminating interpretations of the themes of the work. The relationship of Kant's Religion to his other writings is (...) discussed in ways that underscore the importance of this work for the entire critical philosophy, and provide a broad perspective on his moral thought; connections are also drawn between religion, history, and politics in Kant's later thinking. Together the essays offer a rich exploration of the work which will be of great interest to those involved in Kant studies and the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay is a critical study of Jason Brennan's Against Democracy. We make three main points. First, we argue that Brennan's proposal of a right to competent government only works if one considers the absence of government a viable proposition, something most of his opponents are not prepared to do. Second, we suggest that Brennan's account of competent decision-making is blind to forms of oligarchic power that work against the very ideals of justice and epistemic virtue that competence is (...) meant to safeguard. Third, we muster empirical evidence to argue that, in the real world, democracy is not just about making decisions and selecting policies, in which case Brennan's argument misses its mark. (shrink)