This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Sed quamvis ad tempus corruit in plateis, Deus tamen semper ...

For Nicholas of Cusa, excellence, worship, law and discipline are not the ways to arrive at divine wisdom and eternal life; instead, virtuous life, keeping the commandments, sensible devotion, mortification of the flesh, scorning the world, and everything that shows love and fear of God are the true ways. These points, which were considered essential to strengthening the religious experience for church members and leading the soul to knowledge of God, had been insisted upon already by thinkers before Cusanus, from (...) Wycliffe to Hus, and including the authors of Devotio Moderna.. (shrink)

This book, a reevaluation of a major issue in modern philosophy, explores the controversy that grew out of John Locke's suggestion, in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), that God could give to matter the power of thought.

What is it reasonable to believe about our most successful scientific theories such as the general theory of relativity or quantum mechanics? That they are true, or at any rate approximately true? Or only that they successfully ‘save the phenomena’, by being ‘empirically adequate’? In earlier work I explored the attractions of a view called Structural Scientific Realism (hereafter: SSR). This holds that it is reasonable to believe that our successful theories are (approximately) structurally correct (and also that this is (...) the strongest epistemic claim about them that it is reasonable to make). In the first part of this paper I shall explain in some detail what this thesis means and outline the reasons why it seems attractive. The second section outlines a number of criticisms that have none the less been brought against SSR in the recent (and as we shall see, in some cases, not so recent) literature; and the third and final section argues that, despite the fact that these criticisms might seem initially deeply troubling (or worse), the position remains viable. (shrink)

While it is almost always difficult to identify firm relationships between imaginative works of literature and contemporary philosophy, it seems sure that at any particular time literature and philosophy do not float free of each other. There was a particularly solid basis for the connection in the fourteenth century, when philosophical studies were basic in advanced education and major philosopher-theologians like Walter Burley and John Wycliffe were prominent public figures. Yet significant scholarship that relates Chaucer's poetry to the (...) philosophy of the age is quite limited. A major deterrent to scholars has been a misunderstanding of the philosophical temper of England at the time, especially the influence of nominalism. While it is true that William of Ockham , who is generally thought of as the most typical and influential nominalist, taught at Oxford in the early fourteenth century, it is equally a fact that the great Scholastic realist, John Duns Scotus , also lectured at Oxford shortly after 1300, and that it was mainly realism, not nominalism, that held sway in the English schools in the late fourteenth century. The important philosophers whom we associate with the court of Edward III and with Chaucer's sphere of activity were Scholastic realists: Burley, Thomas Bradwardine, Wycliffe, Ralph Strode. Especially in light of the central position of British philosophers in European Scholastic philosophy during the century, and of Chaucer's learning and wide experience, we may assume that he was exposed to current philosophical thought through his training, personal relationships, and the general cultural climate. In all probability the realist position was dominant in what he heard and learned. (shrink)

An agent-centered, goal-directed, resource-bound logic of human reasoning would do well to note that individual cognitive agency is typified by the comparative scantness of available cognitive resources—information, time, and computational capacity, to name just three. This motivates individual agents to set their cognitive agendas proportionately, that is, in ways that carry some prospect of success with the resources on which they are able to draw. It also puts a premium on cognitive strategies which make economical use of those resources. These (...) latter I callscant-resource adjustment strategies,and they supply the context for an analysis of abduction. The analysis is Peircian in tone, especially in the emphasis it places on abduction’signorance-preservingcharacter. My principal purpose here is to tie abduction’s scarce-resource adjustment capacity to its ignorance preservation. (shrink)

We review the literature on how perceiving an AI making mistakes violates trust and how such violations might be repaired. In doing so, we discuss the role played by various forms of algorithmic transparency in the process of trust repair, including explanations of algorithms, uncertainty estimates, and performance metrics.

It has been widely recognized since ancient times that a standard way to resolve disagreement is for one party to extract concessions from the other which he or she is less prepared to give up than his original thesis. Central to this methodology is specifying the various forms of consequence which bear on matters already conceded. Not all disagreements are responsive to this methodology. I shall speak of a class of disagreements as intractable when parties are unwilling to “split the (...) difference” or to “agree to disagree” and yet are unable to agree on procedures to resolve their original disagreement.. When intractable disagreements turn on values that are widely held and widely judged to be of the first importance, intractable disagreements constitute an apparent impediment to social policy formation. An urgent question is this: “Is coherent and supportable public policy possible concerning matters subject to intractable disagreement?”. (shrink)

In his Epistula , Saint Augustine seems to suggest an epistemic position that is antithetical to an evidentialist position on epistemic justification. However, I think it can be shown that even if evidentialism is taken to be the preferred method of epistemic justification, an epistemic position that incorporates a faith which is grounded in the truth and produces knowledge is epistemologically justified. Evidentialist objections to such a faith-grounded position founder on principles that even the staunchest defenders of an evidentialist theory (...) of justification, Richard Feldman and Earl Conee, deem to be epistemically justified. Hence, if I am right, there is no compelling argument from an evidentialist perspective that a “faith in things not yet understood” is inconsistent with a fundamentally evidentialist theory of justification. (shrink)

Since difficult ideas are best understood when they wear a human face, in these six stories the main characters personify several 'isms' the author has written and taught about during his academic career. These 'isms' include German-Americanism, idealism, positivism or realism, and experimentalism. Several 'special relationships' in the stories are based on the author's experiences over many years in the United Kingdom and in teaching the liberal arts."--Back cover.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Concept of Experience in Locke and Hume JOHN W. YOLTON THE EMPIRICISTPROGRAM has been designed to show that all conscious experience "comes from" unconscious encounters with the environment, and that all intellectual contents (concepts, ideas) derive from some conscious experiential component. Some empiricists, but not all, have also argued that experience reports about the world. A strict empiricism would have to reject this latter claim, as Hume (...) did, although even to consider the possibility of knowledge being related to an external world is to operate on a reflective level, to seek to make sense of experience. The distinction between an account of the nature of experience--its structure, relations, and contents-and explanations of experience--its causal antecedents, its reference--is an important one. The phrase "the concept of experience" refers to the use made of some account of experience. The concept of experience need not be restricted to the experiential contents. Thus, Locke sought to show how experience is of the world, Hume tried to show how experience restricts our valid conceptual contents to certain sorts of ideas, eliminating others. Any account of experience will already be a conceptualization of experience: it must be made from the reflective level. But the account need be no more than a careful record of how the organism comes to the conscious level. Of course, such an account cannot be a straightforward description, since we cannot directly observe all of the processes operating in the production of awareness. The psychology of awareness is forced to extrapolate and conjecture. Nevertheless, we can still distinguish the psychological or descriptive account of experience from the metaphysical use made of that account. It is my purpose here to explore the accounts given and the uses made of experience by two representative empiricists, that is, by philosophers whom we look upon as advancing the empiricist metaphysic of experience. Locke's Derivation o[ Ideas From Experience Locke claimed that all mental contents come from two sources, sensory experience of the world and introspective awareness of our mental processes. The program of Book II of his Essay was to exemplify, by reference to a [53] 54 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY number of different ideas and concepts, this derivation of our mental contents. The counter claim for Locke was innatism, the view held by many of his contemporaries and refuted in the first book of his Essay. In order to appreciate what Locke's alternative to innatism was, we must try to discover what the program of derivation of ideas amounts to in his epistemology and what precisely he understood by the term "experience." We must first note that he offers the program of derivation in conjunction with a complex theory of mental operations. H. H. Price has remarked that it is "historically false that the empiricist thought the human mind passive. It would be more just to criticize them for making it more active than it can possibly be.''1 Mental processes play a most active and decisive role in the genesis of all ideas in Locke's account. In the case of simple ideas of sense even, the mind must be attentive to what the senses report, else that report will go unrecorded, or be recorded only at the neural level (II, I, #6, #8, and II, IX, #3). Locke frequently draws the distinction between mental contents or processes and physical processes. In the "Epistle to the Reader," where he defines "idea," he is careful to distinguish idea from the sound we "use as a sign of it." In I, I, #2 he draws a distinction between the "physical consideration of the mind" and the non-physical consideration, although he does not have a name for the latter. He also speaks there of "sensations by our organs" and "ideas in our understanding." Locke disclaimed any intention of going into the physical account of sensation. He simply accepted the current corpuscular theory. But although he is not always as precise as we would be about the physical and physiological levels of encounter, in distinction from the mental levels, he does hold to this division. II, I, #3, for instance, speaks of the senses conveying "into the mind" several "distinct perceptions... (shrink)

One possible challenge for epiphenomenalism arises from the theory of evolution: if the mental has no causal powers, how might it have evolved? The aim of this paper is to argue that, contrary to some arguments advanced by other philosophers, most particularly William Robinson and Joseph Corabi, considerations from the theory of evolution do pose a genuine difficulty for epiphenomenalism.

In an attempt to overcome the traditional casual neglect of the study of the informal fallacies, we here treat one fallacy, the ad baculum, at an adequate theoretical level in order to determine how it may best be understood as a fallacy. We conclude, after following through a number of plausible routes of tracking down the essential fallaciousness of the ad baculum, that the type of phenomenon apparently so typically thought to constitute ad baculum by the texts is not, so (...) far as we can tell, an instance of a logical fallacy. (shrink)

The AI revolution provides a neat illustration of C.P. Snow's ideas regarding "the two cultures" and a timely opportunity to reflect on why mutual suspicion persists between those in the natural sciences, on the one hand, and the humanities (and to an extent the social sciences), on the other.

What may be called ‘the comprehensive ideal’ is still powerful both in theory and practice. To put this ideal into a respectable shape requires attention to some basic logical/conceptual points, and awareness of the underlying feelings which inspire it. It is then possible to face questions about how to retain equality whilst catering for individual differences, how to establish a potent and fraternal community in schools and elsewhere, and how to give individuals a sense of worth whilst fully acknowledging criteria (...) of expertise ‐ in virtue of which many people will never shine as performers or achievers. (shrink)

What may be called 'the comprehensive ideal' is still powerful both in theory and practice. To put this ideal into a respectable shape requires attention to some basic logical/conceptual points, and awareness of the underlying feelings which inspire it. It is then possible to face questions about how to retain equality whilst catering for individual differences, how to establish a potent and fraternal community in schools and elsewhere, and how to give individuals a sense of worth whilst fully acknowledging criteria (...) of expertise - in virtue of which many people will never shine as performers or achievers. (shrink)

Given the recent cuts in government budgets, issues such as taxation, welfare, health care, social security, and environmental protection ar e drawing increasing attention to the basic problems of how to divide resources equitably among all members of society. Social Issues provid es a framework for discussing and resolving these current, pressing so cial issues. As each issue is considered, the book clarifies the moral, political, and economic dimensions that must be weighed as current p rograms and reform proposals are (...) evaluated. Throughout, this book prov ides a forum for open discussion in which the moral values and politic al and economic viewpoints from different viewpoints are entertained, discussed, and evaluated. (shrink)

A central feature of Confucianism is the doctrine that an adult child has, for want of a better word, the ‘duty’ to care for his elderly parents1. Whether this doctrine should be framed in terms of an ethic of duties as opposed to an ethic of virtues is a vexed question. It might be argued that the doctrine is best framed in terms of the behaviour and dispositions appropriate to an agent who is, within the Confucian moral vision, good. Nonetheless, (...) in both popular discourse and in much the secondary literature, the doctrine is characterized in terms of a moral ‘ought’. We will adopt this perspective, and talk of the ‘filial duty of care’. We investigate the empirical question of whether Chinese communities still have a strong sense of this duty. We conclude that although there is a widespread perception among Chinese communities that their sense of filial duty of care has been eroded, in fact the adherence to it remains robust. (shrink)

Schellings Mythologie enthalt den Schlussel zum Verstehen seines Spatwerks. Der erste Teil der Arbeit untersucht die Beziehung von Schopfung, Fall, Erlosung und Mythologie; der zweite Teil legt die Mythologie aus; der dritte Teil handelt von der 'Mythologie der Gegenwart'; der letzte Teil bietet eine Ubersicht uber die Mythologie in den fruheren Werken Schellings.

Whiskey Lao -- Fair warning -- Randomness at large -- We the addicted -- The best possible world -- The importance of being doomed -- Moral responsibility -- The upper limit to the value of possible worlds.

The third collection of Msgr. Wippel's essays on the metaphysical thought of Thomas Aquinas, covering topics such as the discovery of metaphysics by a special form of judgment, the relationship between faith and reason in the preambles of faith, the distinction between essence and "esse," and participation.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)