This paper undertakes textual exegesis and rational reconstruction of Mukula Bhaṭṭa’s Abhidhā-vṛttta-mātṛkā, or “The Fundamentals of the Communicative Function.” The treatise was written to refute Ānandavardhana’s claim, made in the Dhvanyāloka, that there is a third “power” of words, vyañjanā (suggestion), beyond the two already accepted by traditional Indian philosophy: abhidhā (denotation) and lakṣaṇā(indication).1 I argue that the explanation of lakṣaṇā as presented in his text contains internal tensions, although it may still be a compelling response to Ānandavardhana.

While many people today might turn to ancient Sanskrit philosophers for meditation or yoga, probably few would turn to them for help with difficult contemporary problems, such as what counts as "fake news" or navigating Internet debates. Philosopher Malcolm Keating argues that, in fact, a group of premodern Indian philosophers known as "Nyāya" have important things to say about how we can distinguish truth from falsity and reason well together, both of which are crucial to living a good (...) life. -/- In Reason in an Uncertain World, Keating teaches us what's distinctive in Nyāya approaches to knowledge and discussion, explaining these ideas in relationship to ordinary examples readers can understand. What are the limits of our reasoning? What counts as good evidence for our beliefs? How do we know if someone is a trustworthy source of information? What do we do when we are gripped by doubt? When is a debate with someone worth our time, and how can we discuss contentious topics? The answers to these questions are as relevant today as they were in ancient India. There, they were the focus of Nyāya philosophy, one of the most influential traditions of Indian philosophy, which few outside of scholarly communities have heard of. (shrink)

In Indian philosophy, a pramāṇa is an epistemic instrument or doxastic practice that results in a veridical cognition (in an event of knowing). For just about all Indian thinkers, perception (pratyakṣa) and inference (anumāna) are the foundational pramāṇas, although they debated energetically over how to characterize the content of the resultant cognitions and how to explain the basis for the authority of these pramāṇas. Debate also includes the relationship of knowledge to religious liberation, the role of scripture in knowing, and (...) the possibility of omniscience. (shrink)

According to the seventh-century C.E. philosopher Kumārila Bhat.t.a, epistemic agents are warranted in taking their world-presenting experiences as veridical, if they lack defeaters. For him, these experiences are defeasibly sources of knowledge without the agent reflecting on their content or investigating their causal origins. This position is known as svatah prāmāṇya in Sanskrit (henceforth the SP principle). -/- As explicated by the eleventh-century commentator, Pārthasārathi Misŕa, this position entails that epistemic agents know things without simultaneously knowing that they know them, (...) or being in a position to know that they know. In contrast, some contemporary Anglo-analytic philosophers argue for the “knows-knows principle” (KK principle), in which if someone knows that p, then that person also knows that they know that p, or that person is in a position to know that they know p. Despite some apparent similarities, the SP principle is not a version of the KK principle, nor would Pārthasārathi’s Kumārila have held the KK principle. -/- Recently, Daniel Immerman (2018) has argued that the SP principle is a position-to-know version of the “knows-knows principle” (KK-pos principle). By examining Kumārila’s response to his Buddhist opponent, who challenges the veracity of Vedic testimony, we will see that Kumārila understands higher-order knowing as involving an independent check on one’s epistemic processes, through an epistemic instrument known as postulation (arthāpatti). This precludes him from holding the KK-pos principle. (shrink)

Arthâpatti is a pervasive form of reasoning investigated by Indian philosophers in order to think about unseen causes and interpret ordinary and religious language. Its nature is a point of controversy among Mimamsa, Nyaya, and Buddhist philosophers, yet, to date, it has received less attention than perception, inference, and testimony. This collection presents a one-of-a-kind reference resource for understanding this form of reasoning studied in Indian philosophy. Assembling translations of central primary texts together with newly-commissioned essays on research topics, it (...) features a significant introductory essay. Readable translations of Sanskrit works are accompanied by critical notes that introduce arthâpatti, offer historical context, and clarify the philosophical debates surrounding it. Showing how arthâpatti is used as a way to reason about the basic unseen causes driving language use, cause-and-effect relationships, as well as to interpret ambiguous or figurative texts, this book demonstrates the importance of this epistemic instrument in both contemporary Anglo-analytic and classical Indian epistemology, language, and logic. (shrink)

This introduction brings to life the main themes in Indian philosophy of language by using an accessible translation of an Indian classical text to provide an entry into the world of Indian linguistic theories. -/- Malcolm Keating draws on Mukula's Fundamentals of the Communicative Function to show the ability of language to convey a wide range of meanings and introduce ideas about testimony, pragmatics, and religious implications. Along with a complete translation of this foundational text, Keating also (...) provides: - Clear explanations of themes such as reference, figuration and sentence meaning - Commentary illuminating connections between Mukula and contemporary philosophy - Romanized text of the Sanskrit - A glossary of terms and annotated bibliography - A chronology of important figures and dates -/- By complementing a historically-informed introduction with a focused study of an influential primary text, Keating responds to the need for a reliable guide to better understand theories of language and related issues in Indian philosophy. (shrink)

The present issue of Journal of World Philosophies will host a series of papers discussing the phenomenon of linguistic communication2 from a philosophical point of view and from a cross-cultural perspective. The papers’ authors discussed the topic together with some other scholars in a workshop in Athens, 2015. The contributions are organized around the following four issues: 1. What do we know? 2. How (through which instrument of knowledge) do we know it? 3. What is the role of language as (...) a medium? 4. What is the role of the social context? (shrink)

Analytic philosophers have, since the pioneering work of B.K. Matilal, emphasized the contributions of Nyāya philosophers to what contemporary philosophy considers epistemology. More recently, scholarly work demonstrates the relevance of their ideas to argumentation theory, an interdisciplinary area of study drawing on epistemology as well as logic, rhetoric, and linguistics. This paper shows how early Nyāya theorizing about argumentation, from Vātsyāyana to Jayanta Bhaṭṭa, can fruitfully be juxtaposed with the pragma-dialectic approach to argumentation pioneered by Frans van Eemeren. I illustrate (...) the implications of this analysis with a case study from Jayanta Bhaṭṭa’s satirical play, Much Ado about Religion (Āgamaḍambara). (shrink)

In this paper, I examine Kumārila Bha ṭṭ a's account of figurative language in Tantravārttika 1.4.11-17, arguing that, for him, both metonymy and metaphor crucially involve verbal postulation, a knowledge-conducive cognitive process which draws connections between concepts without appeal to speaker intention, but through compositional and contextual elements. It is with the help of this cognitive process that we can come to have knowledge of what is meant by a sentence in context. In addition, the paper explores the relationship between (...) metonymy and metaphor, the extent to which putatively literal language involves metonymy, and the objective constraints for metaphorical interpretation. (shrink)

The tradition of Nyāya philosophy centers on a dispassionate quest for truth which is simultaneously connected to soteriological and epistemic aims. This article shows how Vācaspati Miśra brings together the soteriological concept of dispassion with the discourse practices of debate, as a response to Buddhist criticisms in Dharmakīrti’s Vādanyāya. He defends the Nyāyasūtra’s stated position that fallacious reasoning is a legitimate means for a debate, under certain circumstances. Dharmakīrti argues that such reasoning is rationally ineffective and indicates unvirtuous qualities. For (...) Vācaspati, fallacies are a way to prevent the spread of morally weighty falsehoods when no other method is available to a debater. After showing textual relationships between Vācaspati’s defense and Dharmakīrti’s earlier criticism, it evaluates their arguments, concluding that Vācaspati’s position involves irresolvable tensions with other Nyāya commitments. (shrink)

We frequently use single words or expressions to mean multiple things, depending upon context. I argue that a plausible model of this phenomenon, known as lakṣaṇā by Indian philosophers, emerges in the work of ninth-century Kashmiri Mukulabhaṭṭa. His model of lakṣaṇā is sensitive to the lexical and syntactic requirements for sentence meaning, the interpretive unity guiding a communicative act, and the nuances of creative language use found in poetry. After outlining his model of lakṣaṇā, I show how arthāpatti, or presumption, (...) forms the basis of both semantic and pragmatic processes in this approach. I employ a model from contemporary linguist James Pustejovsky as one way of reconstructing Mukulabhaṭṭa’s analysis. Finally, I argue that presumption is responsible for the wide range of interpretations in creative uses of language, and that our interpretations are constrained, through defeasible in a way that our decodings of literal meanings typically are not. (shrink)

Translation of a section of the Nyāyasūtra (and early commentaries) on the reducibility of arthāpatti (postulation) to anumāna (inferential reasoning). This includes NS 2.2.1-6, with the commentaries of Vātsyāyana, Uddyotakara, and Vācaspati Miśra.

Conceptual Metaphor Theory, an approach to human thought and language that began with the work of Lakoff and Johnson, claims that metaphor is not merely a linguistic phenomenon, but is implicated in structuring human thought. On this view, that people use words like "attack" and "defend" to describe argumentative moves demonstrates that they think of argument as a kind of war. This is opposed to the view that some words like "attack" are polysemous, sometimes meaning to engage in physical warfare (...) and sometimes meaning to argue against a position. One implication of CMT is that nearly all human concepts are understood metaphorically, so that reasoning about argumentation turns out to involve concepts of... (shrink)

Translation of a section of the Mānameyodaya dealing with the independence of arthāpatti (postulation) from anumāna (inferential reasoning).

Non-cognitivists about metaphor deny that metaphors like “No man is an island” are meaningful apart from their literal content. Cognitivists argue that metaphors do have additional meaning. One argument for this is evidence from cases where metaphors seem to interact with compositional semantics, such as being embedded under propositional attitudes. Recently, Ernie Lepore and Matt Stone have given a response to this argument in the form of non-cognitivist truth conditions for such cases. I argue that their response fails to account (...) for the variety of ways we use metaphors to report people’s thoughts. (shrink)

This paper examines three commentaries on the Śabdapariccheda in Kumārila Bhaṭṭa’s Ślokavārttika, along with the the seventeenth century Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā work, the Mānameyodaya. The focus is the Mīmāṃsā principle that only sentences communicate qualified meanings and Kumārila’s discussion of a potential counter-example to this claim–single words which appear to communicate such content. I argue that there is some conflict among commentators over precisely what Kumārila describes with the phrase sāmarthyād anumeyetvād, although he is most likely describing ellipsis completion through arthāpatti. (...) The paper attempts both a cogent exegesis and philosophical evaluation of the Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā view of ellipsis completion, arguing that there remain internal tensions in the account of ellipsis preferred by the Bhāṭṭa, tensions which are not entirely resolved even by the late date of the Mānameyodaya. (shrink)

Article lays out the conceptual space for Indian theorizing about literal and non-literal meaning by way of each of these three textual traditions. Since the article’s structure is topical rather than historical, a chronology of major figures is appended to help orient readers. The focus of the article is the period demarcated roughly from 200 CE to 1300 CE, often characterized as the Classical Period of Indian philosophy.

As Richard Davis notes in his recent The Bhagavad Gītā: A Biography, this important text has by now been translated over three hundred times in English alone.1 Given this embarrassment of riches, and the relative poverty for other crucial works of South Asian philosophy, why would anyone translate the Gītā yet again? In the introduction to her new translation, Philosophy of the Bhagavad Gītā: A Contemporary Introduction, Keya Maitra gives an important, primarily pedagogical rationale: she hopes that her book will (...) introduce new readers to the text, philosophically. She aims to facilitate philosophical engagement without too many cognitively-taxing Sanskrit terms or too much religio-historical context, whle also... (shrink)

Thirteen lessons introducing novice language-learners to major grammatical concepts in classical Sanskrit, using example texts from actual philosophical, poetic, and epic texts. Includes lessons on reading commentaries, working with Sanskrit in translation, and poetic meter and figures of speech. -/- Under contract with Hackett Publishing. Estimated publication year: 2023.

Desire and Motivation in Indian Philosophy. By Christopher G. Framarin. Routledge Hindu Studies Series. London: Routledge, 2009. Pp. xv + 196. $170 ; $44.95.

As a guide to source material, the book will be useful to readers already somewhat familiar with Vaiśeṣika, and as a reference guide, the book’s lists of categories (padārthas) and other related concepts will also be handy for the same. However, the book is less satisfactory for readers wishing for a general introduction to the study of Vaiśeṣika, given its organization, coupled with its heavy use of untranslated Sanskrit and assumption that readers are already familiar with Indian philosophy. Philosophically speaking, (...) the book is useful in sketching out the commitments of Vaiśeṣikas and their interlocutors, more on which below, but is sparse when it comes to developing the nuances of the sustained arguments and objections throughout the lengthy history of Vaiśeṣika influence on Indian thought. (shrink)

The cross-cultural philosopher B.K. Matilal is one of many who have argued that some Indian philosophers are skeptics. Inspired by Matilal, in Three Pillars of Skepticism in Classical India, Ethan Mills argues that Nāgārjuna (150–200 CE), Jayarāśi (770–830 CE), and Śrī Harṣa (1125–1180 CE) are skeptics in a specific sense: as part of a textually inspired tradition of “skepticism about philosophy,” they share overlapping methods. Mills’ arguments about method are more successful than those about tradition, although the book’s engaging exposition (...) of these three thinkers will hopefully spark new interest in their work. (shrink)

The cross-cultural philosopher B.K. Matilal is one of many who have argued that some Indian philosophers are skeptics. Inspired by Matilal, in Three Pillars of Skepticism in Classical India, Ethan Mills argues that Nāgārjuna (150–200 CE), Jayarāśi (770–830 CE), and Śrī Harṣa (1125–1180 CE) are skeptics in a specific sense: as part of a textually inspired tradition of “skepticism about philosophy,” they share overlapping methods. Mills’ arguments about method are more successful than those about tradition, although the book’s engaging exposition (...) of these three thinkers will hopefully spark new interest in their work. (shrink)

Review of Amber Carpenter's "Indian Buddhist Philosophy.".

Indian philosophy has a history of sophisticated linguistic analysis (Pāṇini's grammar being the usual example), which includes theories of reference, polysemy, ellipsis, sentential unity, figurative language, and more. Roy Tzohar's A Yogācāra Buddhist Theory of Metaphor is a sustained argument for attending both to the intertextual nature of Indian philosophy and to the philosophical importance of topics such as metaphor and figurative language. Tzohar's central thesis is that Sthiramati, a fifth- or sixth-century CE Indian Buddhist thinker, has a theory of (...) metaphor ("metaphor" being Tzohar's preferred translation of the Sanskrit upacāra) which can be understood more broadly as a theory of meaning. (shrink)

Are extreme beliefs constitutive of echo chambers, or only typically caused by them? Or are many echo chambers unproblematic, amplifying relatively benign beliefs? This paper details the conceptual relations between echo chambers and extreme beliefs, showing how different conceptual choice-points in how we understand both echo chambers and extreme beliefs affects how we should evaluate, study, and engage with echo chambering groups. We also explore how our theories of extreme beliefs and echo chambers shape social scientific research and contribute in (...) a practical way when treating these phenomena, focusing on examples of climate change scepticism. (shrink)

Faith occupies an important place in human lives in both religious and secular contexts: faith may be directed towards God, friends, governments, political systems and football teams. It is said to help people through crises and motivate people to achieve life goals. But what is faith? Philosophers and theologians have for centuries been concerned with questions about the rationality of faith, but more recently, have focussed on what kind of psychological attitude faith is. We bring together, for the first time, (...) the different elements of this recent debate, staking out the different positions and arguments, and defend a novel 'true grit' theory of faith, from which we assess questions about the rationality of faith from a fresh perspective. The book engages with a range of questions about the nature of faith, including: Does faith require belief? How is faith expressed in language? Is faith motivational? What is the relationship between faith and cognate attitudes, such as trust and hope? What is the role of faith in our long-term plans? And, in what sense is faith steadfast, resilient or constant, as is commonly supposed? This last issue leads us to additional literature from the social sciences, and we defend a distinctive conception of faith as resistance to practical, psychological and epistemic challenges, that forms the basis of the true grit theory defended in the book. (shrink)

Plato is a philosophical writer of unusual and impressive versatility. His dialogues not only engage in argument but also abound in allegory, myth and paradox, with clearly characterised participants set against a particular historical context. This engrossing book shows how Plato's literary qualities are crucial to understanding his philosophy.

MacIntyre’s theory of practices, institutions, and their respective kinds of goods, has revived and enriched the ethical critique of market economies, and his view of politics as centrally concerned with common goods and human flourishing presents a major challenge to neutralist liberal theorists’ attempts to exclude distinctively ethical considerations from political deliberation. However, the rejection of neutrality does not entail the rejection of liberalism tout court: questions of human flourishing may be accorded a legitimate role in political decisions-including those about (...) economic systems - provided that the powers of the state remain subject to certain recognizably liberal constraints. Further, although neutralist liberals often defend market economies on the mistaken grounds that they alone are consistent with the principle of ethical neutrality, a non-neutralist defence of them should not be ruled out, especially if the substantive theory of goods used to evaluate them is somewhat less restrictive than MacIntyre’s. (shrink)

The second edition of this volume is a comprehensive, practical and up-to-date analysis of the principles and rules of construction and post-probate issues, including how the courts interpret wills once they become the subject of litigation. This comprehensive work takes account of all recent case law-as well as new legislation such as the Land and Conveyancing Law Reform Act 2009-pertaining to trustees, trusts, trusts of land, and the amendments of the Rules of the Superior Courts by SI No 254 of (...) 2016 relating to the conduct of trials, and SI No 255 of 2016 which deals with pre-trial procedures. Part 1 provides the principles and rules of construction, and the rules of intrinsic and extrinsic evidence, which are applied by the courts when attempting to ascertain and give effect to a testator's intention from vague or uncertain language used by him or her in creating gifts. Part 2 deals with issues that may arise in construction suits concerning, not only uncertain language used in the creation of gifts, but also the actual legal validity of such gifts. Part 3 supplies a useful constructive and interpretative methodology that may be applied for construing and interpreting relevant statutory provisions. Part 4 deals with the forms and procedures required for instituting construction suits, and with issues involving the award of costs. This book is written primarily with legal practitioners in mind and will be of practical use in construction and probate litigation matters. It will also be a useful resource for academic lawyers, students engaged in professional courses, and those undertaking law degrees. [Subject: Wills & Trusts, Irish Law]. (shrink)

The place of play in the education of young children has been the focus of much interest in the past. But the findings from this research project demonstrate that there remains a significant amount of confusion about the role that play has in young children's education. In particular we found that there is a clear distinction between the rhetoric and reality of play in the reception class. Further, there was evidence of real anguish for some early years workers who were (...) failing to offer the play activities that they knew should be provided. These findings are particularly interesting at present, since the debate on the role of play has once again emerged as fundamental in the attempt to define a curriculum appropriate to the needs of the 3-6 year olds who, from the year 2000, will be required to work within the highly contentious Foundation Stage of the National Curriculum. (shrink)

Most contemporary accounts of the nature of faith explicitly defend what we call ‘the positivity theory of faith’ – the theory that faith must be accompanied by a favourable evaluative belief, or a desire towards the object of faith. This paper examines the different varieties of the positivity theory and the arguments used to support it. Whilst initially plausible, we find that the theory faces numerous problematic counterexamples, and show that weaker versions of the positivity theory are ultimately implausible. We (...) discuss a distinct property of faith that we call ‘true grit’, such that faith requires one to be resilient toward the evidential, practical, and psychological challenges that it faces. We show how true grit is necessary for faith, and provides a simpler and less problematic explanation of the evidence used to support the positivity theory. (shrink)

Should perfectionist ideals of meaningful work play a significant part in the design of economic systems? In an influential article (Meaningful Work and Market Socialism), Richard Arneson rejected this traditional socialist view. Instead, he maintained, it should be left to the market, as a system that is consistent with the principle of neutrality, to determine the extent to which such work is available, and socialists should restrict their normative concerns primarily to issues of distributive justice. Against this it is argued (...) here that market economies appear to be neutral only if understood in neo-classical, rather than institutionalist terms. From the latter perspective, market economies can be shown to take a number of institutionally distinct forms, which differ significantly in how far they favour the satisfaction of preferences for meaningful work. Collective choices between these alternative systems should take account of these differences, and the adoption of market economies does not avoid the need for perfectionist judgments in politics. (shrink)

As Axel Honneth has recently noted, the critical concerns of social philosophers during the past three decades have been focused primarily on questions of justice, with ethical issues about the human good being largely excluded. In the first section I briefly explore this exclusion in both ‘Anglo-American’ political philosophy and ‘German’ critical theory. I then argue, in the main sections, that despite this commitment to their exclusion, distinctively ethical concepts and ideals can be identified both in Rawls’s Theory of Justice (...) and in Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action, taking these as exemplary, representative texts for each theoretical school. These ethical elements, and their implications for the critical evaluation of economic institutions, have gone largely unnoticed. In the final section I indicate the kinds of debates that might be generated, were these to be given the attention they arguably deserve. I focus especially on the significance of empirical issues, and hence on the role of social science in social criticism. (shrink)

This book presents an up-to-date overview of the main new directions taken by ancient philosophy in the first century BC, a period in which the dominance exercised in the Hellenistic age by Stoicism, Epicureanism and Academic Scepticism gave way to a more diverse and experimental philosophical scene. Its development has been much less well understood, but here a strong international team of leading scholars of the subject reconstruct key features of the changed environment. They examine afresh the evidence for some (...) of the central Greek thinkers of the period, as well as illuminating Cicero's engagement with Plato both as translator and in his own philosophising. The intensity of renewed study of Aristotle's Categories and Plato's Timaeus is an especially striking outcome of their discussions. The volume will be indispensable for scholars and students interested in the history of Platonism and Aristotelianism. (shrink)

Applied naturalism -- Natural rights -- Applied positivism -- A concept of interpretive methodology -- Application of principles of public policy -- Interpretative sources of law -- The formulation of legal principles -- The formulation and application of principles of interpretative construction -- The formulation and application of principles of constructive interpretation -- Application of appropriate equitable principles -- The formulation and application of determinant legal tests and criteria by the courts -- The practical adoption of the jurisprudential process of (...) conceptualisation -- Legal factors and formulae determining correct motion procedures -- The usefulness of templates and principles in maintaining integrity of law in legal practice. (shrink)

While the idea of crisis is prevalent in the post‐war Anglo‐American literature an higher education, it can also be argued that our higher education systems have achieved a great deal during this period. We need to ask, therefore, whether the identified crises are real or not. And, if not, we should consider why academics prefer to see crisis in so muck of what they do.

Scientific discovery is often regarded as romantic and creative - and hence unanalyzable - whereas the everyday process of verifying discoveries is sober and more suited to analysis. Yet this fascinating exploration of how scientific work proceeds argues that however sudden the moment of discovery may seem, the discovery process can be described and modeled. Using the methods and concepts of contemporary information-processing psychology (or cognitive science) the authors develop a series of artificial-intelligence programs that can simulate the human thought (...) processes used to discover scientific laws. The programs - BACON, DALTON, GLAUBER, and STAHL - are all largely data-driven, that is, when presented with series of chemical or physical measurements they search for uniformities and linking elements, generating and checking hypotheses and creating new concepts as they go along. "Scientific Discovery examines the nature of scientific research and reviews the arguments for and against a normative theory of discovery; describes the evolution of the BACON programs, which discover quantitative empirical laws and invent new concepts; presents programs that discover laws in qualitative and quantitative data; and ties the results together, suggesting how a combined and extended program might find research problems, invent new instruments, and invent appropriate problem representations. Numerous prominent historical examples of discoveries from physics and chemistry are used as tests for the programs and anchor the discussion concretely in the history of science. Pat Langley is an Associate Professor in the Department of Information and Computer Science at the University of California, Irvine.Herbert Simon is a Professor in the Departments of Psychology, Computer Science, and Philosophy at Carnegie-Mellon University. Gary L. Bradshaw is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology and Institute of Cognitive Science at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Jan M. Zytkow is an Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department at Wichita State University. (shrink)

Written for advanced undergraduates, physicists, and historians and philosophers of physics, this book tells the story of the development of our understanding of quantum phenomena through the extraordinary years of the first three decades of the twentieth century. Rather than following the standard axiomatic approach, this book adopts a historical perspective, explaining clearly and authoritatively how pioneers such as Heisenberg, Schrodinger, Pauli and Dirac developed the fundamentals of quantum mechanics and merged them into a coherent theory, and why the mathematical (...) infrastructure of quantum mechanics has to be as complex as it is. The author creates a compelling narrative, providing a remarkable example of how physics and mathematics work in practice. The book encourages an enhanced appreciation of the interaction between mathematics, theory and experiment, helping the reader gain a deeper understanding of the development and content of quantum mechanics than any other text at this level. (shrink)

Arneson says that he disagrees both with the main claims of Arneson (1987) and with my criticisms of these in Keat (2009). What is arguably the most important of the former disagreements is left until the final paragraphs, where he declares that he (now) rejects the principle of state neutrality and that we are comrades in believing that good perfectionist arguments for the promotion of meaningful work can be constructed (and may legitimately provide a basis for state action). I am (...) more than happy to be counted a comrade in this respect. But otherwise I disagree with much of what he says in his response: I not only continue to support the criticisms I made in Keat (2009), but also disagree with another of Arneson’s main criticisms of Arneson (1987). So I shall both defend myself from his objections, and defend Arneson from his own. (shrink)

Presented in the popular Cambridge Texts format are three early Platonic dialogues in a new English translation by Tom Griffith that combines elegance, accuracy, freshness and fluency. Together they offer strikingly varied examples of Plato's critical encounter with the culture and politics of fifth and fourth century Athens. Nowhere does he engage more sharply and vigorously with the presuppositions of democracy. The Gorgias is a long and impassioned confrontation between Socrates and a succession of increasingly heated interlocutors about political rhetoric (...) as an instrument of political power. The short Menexenus contains a pastiche of celebratory public oratory, illustrating its self-delusions. In the Protagoras, another important contribution to moral and political philosophy in its own right, Socrates takes on leading intellectuals (the 'sophists') of the later fifth century BC and their pretensions to knowledge. The dialogues are introduced and annotated by Malcolm Schofield, a leading authority on ancient Greek political philosophy. (shrink)

Resetting the agenda -- The conflict motif in historical perspective -- From conflict to concordism -- Integration under the microscope : historical perspective -- Integration : contemporary views -- Insights from n neuropsychology : an overview -- Insights from neuropsychology about spirituality -- Insights about conversion, morality, wisdom, and memory -- Insights from evolutionary psychology -- Insights about human needs and motivation -- Social psychology and faith : stories of conflict, concordism, and authentic congruence (by David G. Myers) -- The (...) way ahead for psychological science and Christian faith. (shrink)

Wittgensteins "Philosophische Untersuchungen," von N. Malcolm.--Kritische Notiz zu einigen Begriffen in Wittgensteins Philosophie, von P. F. Strawson.--Wittgenstein über die Privatsprache, von N. Garver.--Der Zugang zu Wittgensteins Spätphilsophie, von S. Cavell.--Ausgewählte Bibliographie der Schriften über Ludwig Wittgenstein, zusammengestellt von Ulrich Steinvorth (p. 157-[171]).