This chapter contains sections titled: * Part 14 Background Topics for the Science and Religion Dialogue * Part 15 Stewardship and Economic Harmony: Living Sustainability on Earth * Part 16 Cosmology and Theism * Part 17 Theology and Science in a Postmodern Context * Part 18 Darwin and Intelligent Design * Part 19 The Laws of Physics and Bio-Friendliness * Part 20 Time and Open Theism * Part 21 Science and Scripture * Part 22 The Mutuality of Science and (...) Theology * Part 23 Physics and Scientific Materialism * Part 24 Biotechnology and Human Dignity * Part 25 Science, Emergence, and Religion * Part 26 Theories and Unobservables: The Realist/Nonrealist Debate in Science and Religion * Notes. (shrink)

Hume’s criticisms of divine causation are insufficient because he does not respond to important philosophical positions that are defended by those whom he closely read. Hume’s arguments might work against the background of a Cartesian definition of body, or a Malebranchian conception of causation, or some defenses of occasionalism. At least, I will not here argue that they succeed or fail against those targets. Instead, I will lay out two major deficiencies in his arguments against divine causation. I call these (...) “deficiencies” because Hume does not adequately address live positions. This does not mean, of course, that there are not problems with these views or that Hume could not have given strong arguments against them. Rather, Hume’s arguments, which can seem comprehensive to the twenty-first century reader, are in fact not so. For the deficiencies discussed in this essay, I point to writers from Hume’s near context (many of whom we know he read carefully) who held the views not discussed, and I provide reasons why Hume seems not to have entertained these possibilities. I won’t distinguish between accidentally overlooking and actively ignoring. By drawing attention to these three deficiencies, I have two goals. The first is to demonstrate the diversity of seventeenth and early eighteenth century views on divine causation, especially among philosophers in England, Scotland, and Ireland, who are often ignored by philosophers today who, like Hume, focus on continental Cartesians while ignoring British dualists and vitalists. The second goal is to make today’s readers aware of shortcomings in Hume’s arguments to encourage productively contextual readings of Hume and his contemporaries. (shrink)

Kant’s Dreams of a Spirit Seer has puzzled most of its readers since its publication in 1766. Herder complained in general terms about the lack of unity and coherence of the book as well as Kant’s dialectical method of presenting both sides of a problem without offering his own solution. Mendelssohn was in doubt about whether Kant wanted to ridicule metaphysics or make a case for Swedenborg’s visions. Another exegetical puzzle has not been noted yet: Dreams discusses not one, but (...) three different versions of a ‘metaphysics of spirits’. All of them are mutually incompatible. In other words, the two versions of a metaphysics of spirits that Kant criticises in the first part of the book are both of them different from Swedenborg’s own claims, as they are discussed in the second part. And the two versions discussed within the first part are not homogeneous, either: the metaphysics discussed in the first chapter of the first part (the ‘tangled knot’) and those that seem to form the foundation for the second chapter of the first part (the ‘fragment of occult philosophy’) are again incompatible. And neither of them fits with what Kant analyses as Swedenborg’s metaphysical position in the second part: The position of the ‘tangled knot’ can tentatively be labelled as ‘crypto-materialist’. Swedenborg’s own position is characterised in the text as ‘idealist’. The ‘fragment of occult philosophy’ in contrast is probably best described as ‘dualist’. If this diagnosis is correct, it reinforces Herder’s complaints about the lack of coherence of Dreams as well as Mendelssohn’s worry about its targets. And it adds the additional challenge to explain how there can be a ‘crypto-materialist’ metaphysics of spirit-seeing. I propose to weaken the impact of these problems by identifying a second target of Kant’s scorn in Dreams – a metaphysical position Kant could be sympathetic with as far as its fundamental intentions are concerned, but that draws his ire because of an equally comprehensive failure in the realisation of these intentions. (shrink)

The problem of Kant's first Critique is the problem of pure reason: how are synthetic judgments possible a priori? Many of his readers have believed that the problem depends upon a delimitation within the class of a priori truths of a class of irreducibly synthetic truths—a delimitation whose possibility is doubtful—because absent this it is not excluded that all a priori truths are analytic. I argue, on the contrary, that the problem depends on nothing more than the human knower's everyday (...) consciousness of her own finitude: her dependence in thinking and knowing on what is given to her. The problem is a difficulty about how the concepts which figure in metaphysical judgments could represent reality given that they cannot do so in the way in which concepts figuring in empirical judgments do. Empirical judgment here functions as exemplary of thought and knowledge because it is exemplary of finite thought and knowledge. Mere analysis could not, therefore, dissolve the problem even in principle, because to say that a concept can be analyzed is not yet to explain the possibility of its real representative power. The significance of the analytic-synthetic distinction in the context of the problem of pure reason is that its formulation allows Kant to say this. (shrink)

Technical chronology establishes the structure of calendars and the dates of events; it is, as it were, the foundation of history, particularly ancient history. The chronologer must know enough philology to interpret texts and enough astronomy to compute the dates of celestial phenomena, above all eclipses, which alone provide absolute dates. Joseph Scaliger, so we are told, was the first to master and apply this range of technical skills: Of the mathematical principles on which the calculation of periods rests, (...) the philologians understood nothing. The astronomers, on their side, had not yet undertaken to apply their data to the records of ancient times. Scaliger was the first of the philologians who made use of the improved astronomy of the sixteenth century to get a scientific basis for historical chronology. So Mark Pattison. This verdict can be challenged on a number of grounds. The one relevant at present is simple: Scaliger himself claimed far less. He certainly said that technical chronology had been untouched in modern times — not an entirely fair judgement — but in antiquity it had been practised in exactly the manner he considered proper, or so he believed. In particular he singles out Censorinus, whose De die natali drew extensively on Varro's lost Antiquitates rerum humanarum, books 14–19, for information on chronology. Students of Varro have long appreciated the importance of Censorinus. His dry and compact treatise offers Varronian views on etymology, the human life-span, and the course of history itself, all couched in language so jejune as to suggest that he added little or nothing to what he read. (shrink)

Technical chronology establishes the structure of calendars and the dates of events; it is, as it were, the foundation of history, particularly ancient history. The chronologer must know enough philology to interpret texts and enough astronomy to compute the dates of celestial phenomena, above all eclipses, which alone provide absolute dates. Joseph Scaliger, so we are told, was the first to master and apply this range of technical skills: Of the mathematical principles on which the calculation of periods rests, (...) the philologians understood nothing. The astronomers, on their side, had not yet undertaken to apply their data to the records of ancient times. Scaliger was the first of the philologians who made use of the improved astronomy of the sixteenth century to get a scientific basis for historical chronology. So Mark Pattison. This verdict can be challenged on a number of grounds. The one relevant at present is simple: Scaliger himself claimed far less. He certainly said that technical chronology had been untouched in modern times — not an entirely fair judgement — but in antiquity it had been practised in exactly the manner he considered proper, or so he believed. In particular he singles out Censorinus, whose De die natali drew extensively on Varro's lost Antiquitates rerum humanarum, books 14–19, for information on chronology. Students of Varro have long appreciated the importance of Censorinus. His dry and compact treatise offers Varronian views on etymology, the human life-span, and the course of history itself, all couched in language so jejune as to suggest that he added little or nothing to what he read. (shrink)

Are they needed? To be sure. The Darwinian industry, industrious though it is, has failed to provide texts of more than a handful of Darwin's books. If you want to know what Darwin said about barnacles (still an essential reference to cirripedists, apart from any historical importance) you are forced to search shelves, or wait while someone does it for you; some have been in print for a century; various reprints have appeared and since vanished." -Eric Korn,Times (...) Literary Supplement Charles Robert Darwin (1880-1882) has been widely recognized since his own time as one of the most influential writers in the history of Western thought. His books were widely read by specialists and the general public, and his influence had been extended by almost continuous public debate over the last 130 years. New York University Press' edition makes it possible for the first time to review Darwin's public literary output as a whole, plus his scientific journal articles, his private notebooks, and his correspondence. This is the first complete edition containing all of Darwin's published books, featuring definitive texts recording original paginations with Darwin's indexes retained. All illustrations and plates are presented, inclucing 82 color plates of birds and mammals and several folding maps and plates. The set also features a general introduction and index, and textural introductions in each volume. (shrink)

Are they needed? To be sure. The Darwinian industry, industrious though it is, has failed to provide texts of more than a handful of Darwin's books. If you want to know what Darwin said about barnacles (still an essential reference to cirripedists, apart from any historical importance) you are forced to search shelves, or wait while someone does it for you; some have been in print for a century; various reprints have appeared and since vanished." -Eric Korn,Times (...) Literary Supplement Charles Robert Darwin (1880-1882) has been widely recognized since his own time as one of the most influential writers in the history of Western thought. His books were widely read by specialists and the general public, and his influence had been extended by almost continuous public debate over the last 130 years. New York University Press' edition makes it possible for the first time to review Darwin's public literary output as a whole, plus his scientific journal articles, his private notebooks, and his correspondence. This is the first complete edition containing all of Darwin's published books, featuring definitive texts recording original paginations with Darwin's indexes retained. All illustrations and plates are presented, inclucing 82 color plates of birds and mammals and several folding maps and plates. The set also features a general introduction and index, and textural introductions in each volume. (shrink)

Are they needed? To be sure. The Darwinian industry, industrious though it is, has failed to provide texts of more than a handful of Darwin's books. If you want to know what Darwin said about barnacles (still an essential reference to cirripedists, apart from any historical importance) you are forced to search shelves, or wait while someone does it for you; some have been in print for a century; various reprints have appeared and since vanished." -Eric Korn,Times (...) Literary Supplement Charles Robert Darwin (1880-1882) has been widely recognized since his own time as one of the most influential writers in the history of Western thought. His books were widely read by specialists and the general public, and his influence had been extended by almost continuous public debate over the last 130 years. New York University Press' edition makes it possible for the first time to review Darwin's public literary output as a whole, plus his scientific journal articles, his private notebooks, and his correspondence. This is the first complete edition containing all of Darwin's published books, featuring definitive texts recording original paginations with Darwin's indexes retained. All illustrations and plates are presented, inclucing 82 color plates of birds and mammals and several folding maps and plates. The set also features a general introduction and index, and textural introductions in each volume. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Aesthetic Experience and Education:Themes and QuestionsDeborah Kerdeman"Being with" music. Attentive responsiveness in teaching. Scholarly learning as engagement with beauty. Three evocative images of aesthetic experience come to light in the essays by Custodero, Hansen, and Neumann. From the musical play of children conducting imaginary orchestras to the vocational aspirations of adults who gaze through telescopes or study paintings at Chicago's Art Institute, aesthetic experience spans a range of activities (...) and ages. No matter the setting or moment, aesthetic experience vitalizes our lives with meaning and joy. Why this is so and what difference this makes for education emerge as overarching concerns in this set of papers. Addressing these issues, the authors articulate a number of commonthemes and reach similar conclusions about the nature and value of aesthetic experience.I want to identify and analyze key ideas that run throughout these essays. Doing so deepens our appreciation of the authors' insights and underscores the importance of the project they undertake. I also want to examine three questions that the essays suggest but do not develop. Exploring these questions, I hope to further enrich our understanding of aesthetic experience and its place in education.First and foremost, aesthetic experience for all three authors integrates multiple ways of knowing and enables individuals to perceive connections that they might otherwise overlook. According to Custodero, aesthetic experience harmonizes imagination, physicality, and "thinking-in-action." [End Page 88] Thinking-in-action, Custodero says, while "critical and consequential," is nonverbal and nonjudgmental — unifying rather than analytic. Synthesizing bodily movement, imagination, and thought, aesthetic experience reveals "surprise relationships between seemingly disparate phenomena." The theme of integration is echoed in Neumann's description of scholarly learning as aesthetic experience. Scholarly learning does not shun feeling or lived experience, Neumann writes. This way of knowing instead is "deeply emotional and personal." Insight fuses with emotion, enabling scholars to "feel the whole picture," as David the astronomer puts it in his interview with Neumann. For Hansen, aesthetic experience connotes heightened perception, a way of being that attends to nuances of gesture that would otherwise remain invisible. "The aesthetic highlights aspects of wonder and of beauty that emerge, spontaneously and unrehearsed," Hansen explains. A form of creativity, aesthetic perception combines with moral and intellectual understanding to fully embrace "the living dynamic gestalt" of teaching and learning.Aesthetic experience thus integrates mind, body, and emotion. Hansen links aesthetic experience to moral judgment as well. Integrating various ways of knowing, aesthetic experience enables individuals to perceive and understand relationships that pulse throughout the social and natural world. Such understanding is pleasurable, the authors agree.Aesthetic experience not only is integrative. It also is interactive. Custodero's musicians interact with instruments, musical scores, and other individuals. Neumann's scholars interact with ideas and scholarly materials. Hansen's preservice teachers interact with works of art, subject matter, students, and one another. Interacting with people and things, individuals become absorbed in what they are doing. "Being with" music is howCustodero puts it. Carmen, the professor of music in Neumann's essay, says that playing music well "is like a complete focus of oneness."Being absorbed in aesthetic interaction does not discount or dissolve the ability to make decisions or direct action. Aesthetic experience rather presumes and promotes "aesthetic agency," to borrow a phrase from Custodero. "To 'be in the moment,'" Custodero writes, "is to encounter the aesthetic — fully engaged in an activity for which one's individual contributions are perceived as vital." Hansen's description of aesthetic perception combines attentiveness and responsiveness in a "dynamic combination of patience, listening, and initiative." Neumann states that scholarly learning is an experience of "deep engrossment." Such engrossment does not extinguish the self, however. In the words of David the astronomer, feeling "the whole picture... is a combination of both what you see, sort of an instinctive or primal thing, and also your knowledge of what, you know, you put together." [End Page 89]The interactive nature of aesthetic experience thus signifies a kind of "agency-in-situ." Aesthetic experience is shaped or directed by the contribution and initiative of individuals. But individuals cannot act in advance of experience or know what to do, unless they are... (shrink)

Are they needed? To be sure. The Darwinian industry, industrious though it is, has failed to provide texts of more than a handful of Darwin's books. If you want to know what Darwin said about barnacles (still an essential reference to cirripedists, apart from any historical importance) you are forced to search shelves, or wait while someone does it for you; some have been in print for a century; various reprints have appeared and since vanished." -Eric Korn,Times (...) Literary Supplement Charles Robert Darwin (1880-1882) has been widely recognized since his own time as one of the most influential writers in the history of Western thought. His books were widely read by specialists and the general public, and his influence had been extended by almost continuous public debate over the last 130 years. New York University Press' edition makes it possible for the first time to review Darwin's public literary output as a whole, plus his scientific journal articles, his private notebooks, and his correspondence. This is the first complete edition containing all of Darwin's published books, featuring definitive texts recording original paginations with Darwin's indexes retained. All illustrations and plates are presented, inclucing 82 color plates of birds and mammals and several folding maps and plates. The set also features a general introduction and index, and textural introductions in each volume. (shrink)

Are they needed? To be sure. The Darwinian industry, industrious though it is, has failed to provide texts of more than a handful of Darwin's books. If you want to know what Darwin said about barnacles (still an essential reference to cirripedists, apart from any historical importance) you are forced to search shelves, or wait while someone does it for you; some have been in print for a century; various reprints have appeared and since vanished." -Eric Korn,Times (...) Literary Supplement Charles Robert Darwin (1880-1882) has been widely recognized since his own time as one of the most influential writers in the history of Western thought. His books were widely read by specialists and the general public, and his influence had been extended by almost continuous public debate over the last 130 years. New York University Press' edition makes it possible for the first time to review Darwin's public literary output as a whole, plus his scientific journal articles, his private notebooks, and his correspondence. This is the first complete edition containing all of Darwin's published books, featuring definitive texts recording original paginations with Darwin's indexes retained. All illustrations and plates are presented, inclucing 82 color plates of birds and mammals and several folding maps and plates. The set also features a general introduction and index, and textural introductions in each volume. (shrink)

Are they needed? To be sure. The Darwinian industry, industrious though it is, has failed to provide texts of more than a handful of Darwin's books. If you want to know what Darwin said about barnacles (still an essential reference to cirripedists, apart from any historical importance) you are forced to search shelves, or wait while someone does it for you; some have been in print for a century; various reprints have appeared and since vanished." -Eric Korn,Times (...) Literary Supplement Charles Robert Darwin (1880-1882) has been widely recognized since his own time as one of the most influential writers in the history of Western thought. His books were widely read by specialists and the general public, and his influence had been extended by almost continuous public debate over the last 130 years. New York University Press' edition makes it possible for the first time to review Darwin's public literary output as a whole, plus his scientific journal articles, his private notebooks, and his correspondence. This is the first complete edition containing all of Darwin's published books, featuring definitive texts recording original paginations with Darwin's indexes retained. All illustrations and plates are presented, inclucing 82 color plates of birds and mammals and several folding maps and plates. The set also features a general introduction and index, and textural introductions in each volume. (shrink)

Are they needed? To be sure. The Darwinian industry, industrious though it is, has failed to provide texts of more than a handful of Darwin's books. If you want to know what Darwin said about barnacles (still an essential reference to cirripedists, apart from any historical importance) you are forced to search shelves, or wait while someone does it for you; some have been in print for a century; various reprints have appeared and since vanished." -Eric Korn,Times (...) Literary Supplement Charles Robert Darwin (1880-1882) has been widely recognized since his own time as one of the most influential writers in the history of Western thought. His books were widely read by specialists and the general public, and his influence had been extended by almost continuous public debate over the last 130 years. New York University Press' edition makes it possible for the first time to review Darwin's public literary output as a whole, plus his scientific journal articles, his private notebooks, and his correspondence. This is the first complete edition containing all of Darwin's published books, featuring definitive texts recording original paginations with Darwin's indexes retained. All illustrations and plates are presented, inclucing 82 color plates of birds and mammals and several folding maps and plates. The set also features a general introduction and index, and textural introductions in each volume. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 25.2 (2001) 353-356 [Access article in PDF] Book Review The Metaphysical Club The Metaphysical Club, by Louis Menand; xii & 546 pp. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001, $27.00. "They didn't just want to keep the conversation going; they wanted to get to a better place" (p. 440). So much for the most prominent contemporary pragmatist, Richard Rorty, who remains unmentioned except in the acknowledgments. (...) That better place is participatory democracy (a phrase that does not appear in the book), which "means that everyone is equally in the game, but it also means that no one can opt out" (p. 441). The true name of the game is skeptical tolerance. There are no unquestionable duties or inalienable rights, no immutable natural laws, no absolute moral rules, no highest principles, no inherent virtues, no absolute standards, no stasis, no absolutely certain truth. There are no individual destinies, because the social comes before the individual, and the individual is embedded within and cannot exist without society. Scientific knowledge is always probabilistic, not necessarily because nature is indeterministic, but because we can never know enough to calculate its regularities if they exist. To wit, there are no Platonic Ideas or unchanging universals. All is change, nothing that happens is ever repeated, our general ideas and laws of nature are merely tools for getting along in the world. Above all, ideas do not refer to things, only to other ideas. What expedites our thinking is true. What expedites our acting is right. Whenever we act according to principle, rule, or law, we are making a bet that events will turn out the way [End Page 353] we think they will. If we keep this always in mind, we will never succumb to violence or war in the name of belief or principle. Whatever we believe, it could be otherwise. Such is a general summary of pragmatism as it has filtered down to the textbooks. It is (again befittingly) more or less accurate. The can-do American seeks out cash value in practical life.Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., William James, Charles Saunders Pierce, and John Dewey crafted the only indigenous philosophy that has so far been produced in America. Its roots are in Laplacean probability theory, Darwinian evolutionism, and Chauncey Wright's indeterminism. While James hoped to save a place for religion (if it works, go with it) and Pierce a place for God (he thought there had to be a designing intelligence to account for order), the pragmatic result is profoundly skeptical and secular. Neither Holmes nor Dewey thought that individuals imbedded in societies had any need of absolutes. Holmes said that people first decide on the basis of experience, then they deduce. Dewey said that people first behave commonsensically, then they rationalize.There is nothing as condensed as the above in Louis Menand's beautiful book on the ideas, personalities, and influence of Holmes, James, Pierce, and Dewey. I know of no clearer exposition of their ideas, and few biographers have made them come so alive. In particular, Menand's coverage of peripheral (but by no means insignificant) figures is very rich. He describes the development of graduate universities in America in detail from their autocratic beginnings to the institution of academic freedom as we know it today. University presidents, trustees, and administrators are presented luxuriously as the villains, and the professors gloriously as the heroes. Menand remarks with slight amazement that society bought the concept that professors were beholden to the public at large and not to the state or private university owners. He could have commented further on the fact that the concept of academic freedom has become virtually irrelevant in today's corporate research universities."It is a remarkable fact about the United States," Menand begins his book, "that it fought a civil war without undergoing a change in its form of government" (p. ix). This is a breathtaking fact, and I don't suppose Menand had any intent to explain it. "The Civil War swept away the slave civilization of the South, but it swept away almost the whole intellectual... (shrink)

This paper discusses internal dynamics of the firm that contribute to the failure of knowledge conditions, using the Enron scandal as a case study. Ability of the board to effectively monitor conduct at operational levels includes various dynamics: senior management being isolated from those at operational levels; individuals pursuing subgoals that are contrary to overall corporate goals; information flow along a narrow linear channel that effectively forecloses adverse information from getting to senior management; a corporate culture of intimidation, discouraging open (...) expressions of doubt or skepticism, resulting in reluctance to challenge senior officials, and pushing the limits of ethics and the law.Elements of information blockage in the corporation include: the "law of diminishing control"; deliberate concealment of information by officers; motivation to report to the boss what one perceives the boss wants to hear; theory of "bounded rationality" that explains surprising role of irrationality in decisionmaking – unconscious emotions and motivations. Discussion of behavioralist studies of cognitive dissonance, belief perseverance, confirmatory bias, entity effect, motivated reasoning, group cohesion or "groupthink," and the false consensus effect. Problem of overoptimism – tendency of many people to overrate their own abilities, contributions and talents – and tendency toward puffery and dismissal of risks in formulating disclosures and press releases. (shrink)

I want this morning to reflect with you on the Cross of Jesus. In first Corinthians, the Apostle Paul makes a remarkable claim about the Cross. He writes: I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified. 1 Cor 2:1-2 Why did the Apostle Paul, in coming to the Corinthians, (...) focus so exclusively on the Cross? Why has the Cross played such a preeminent role in Christian theology? Even in the iconography of the Church, the Cross is absolutely central. Why is that? In the Cross, the eternal Son of God enters fully into the human condition, takes on himself the totality of human sin and 1 pain, and once and for all extinguishes the power of evil over our lives. To accomplish so great a redemption, the Lord Jesus paid the ultimate cost. Truly, there is no greater suffering than what Christ experienced on the Cross. But do we really believe that? Consider a diary entry by Anna Williams, a scientist active in the early part of the twentieth century. The Cross gave her no comfort. As she saw it, Jesus knew that his anguish would be momentary and that in exchange he would save the world. As she wrote in her diary, “This knowledge... if we were sure, oh! what would we not be willing to undergo.” [[See John Barry, The Great Influenza, p. 273]] How should we respond to Anna Williams? Does it help to note that the cross was the ultimate instrument of torture in the ancient world? Was Anna Williams therefore taking the sufferings of our Lord too lightly? As a cosseted ivory-tower intellectual, what did she know about suffering anyway? Didn’t Christ on the Cross suffer more than she ever did in her bourgeois little world? Instead of whining about the Cross not being enough, shouldn’t 2 she have gratefully accepted the redemption that could be hers only through the Cross? But this response misses the point. (shrink)

A position has been advanced by a number of philosophers, notably by Burnham and Skilleås, that certain knowledge is required to aesthetically appreciate a fine wine. They further argue that pleasure is not an integral part of aesthetically appreciating wine. Their position implies that a novice cannot aesthetically appreciate a fine wine. This paper draws on research into tasting and psychology to rebut these claims. I argue that there is strong evidence from both the average consumer and from wine experts (...) that they are unable to separate enjoyment from aesthetic evaluation; secondly, I argue that wine knowledge may actually preclude tasting of the wine as it exists in the glass due to perceptual bias. I conclude by arguing that it is unclear how exactly knowledge of things like terroir is supposed to affect the taste, as well as question what role conforming to a certain style plays in aesthetic success, as arguments that require knowledge for appreciation typically emphasize knowledge of styles of wine. (shrink)

In the philosophy of art, one of the most important debates concerns the so-called ‘cognitive value’ of literature. The main question is phrased in various ways. Can literary narratives provide knowledge? Can readers learn from works of literature? Most of the discussants agree on an affirmative answer, but it is contested what the relevant notions of truth and knowledge are and whether this knowledge and learning influence aesthetic or literary value. The issue takes on a wider, not only philosophical, importance (...) as it is one of the central tenets of humanistic education that art and literature are valuable not only because the pleasure they afford. This paper offers a new line of argument in departing from propositional truth, arguing that literary narratives provide aesthetically significant knowledge, however, this knowledge cannot be captured in propositional form. My position depends crucially on Frank Jackson's influential knowledge argument. The paper describes a modified ‘What Mary Didn't Read’ case. In doing so, it is argued that the knowledge literary works provide should be understood as a type of experiential knowing of ‘what it is like’ analogous to what Mary acquires in the original case of seeing a new colour for the first time. (shrink)

Sensibility, in any of its myriad realms – moral, physical, aesthetic, medical and so on – seems to be a paramount case of a higher-level, intentional property, not a basic property. Diderot famously made the bold and attributive move of postulating that matter itself senses, or that sensibility (perhaps better translated ‘sensitivity’ here) is a general or universal property of matter, even if he at times took a step back from this claim and called it a “supposition.” Crucially, sensibility is (...) here playing the role of a ‘booster’: it enables materialism to provide a full and rich account of the phenomena of conscious, sentient life, contrary to what its opponents hold: for if matter can sense, and sensibility is not a merely mechanical process, then the loftiest cognitive plateaus are accessible to materialist analysis, or at least belong to one and the same world as the rest of matter. This was noted by the astute anti-materialist critic, the Abbé Lelarge de Lignac, who, in his 1751 Lettres à un Amériquain, criticized Buffon for “granting to the body [la machine, a common term for the body at the time] a quality which is essential to minds, namely sensibility.” This view, here attributed to Buffon and definitely held by Diderot, was comparatively rare. If we look for the sources of this concept, the most notable ones are physiological and medical treatises by prominent figures such as Robert Whytt, Albrecht von Haller and the Montpellier vitalist Théophile de Bordeu. We then have, or so I shall try to sketch out, an intellectual landscape in which new – or newly articulated – properties such as irritability and sensibility are presented either as an experimental property of muscle fibers, that can be understood mechanistically (Hallerian irritability, as studied recently by Hubert Steinke and Dominique Boury) or a property of matter itself (whether specifically living matter as in Bordeu and his fellow montpelliérains Ménuret and Fouquet, or matter in general, as in Diderot). I am by no means convinced that it is one and the same ‘sensibility’ that is at issue in debates between these figures (as when Bordeu attacks Haller’s distinction between irritability and sensibility and claims that ‘his own’ property of sensibility is both more correct and more fundamental in organic beings), but I am interested in mapping out a topography of the problem of sensibility as property of matter or as vital force in mid-eighteenth-century debates – not an exhaustive cartography of all possible positions or theories, but an attempt to understand the ‘triangulation’ of three views: a vitalist view in which sensibility is fundamental, matching up with a conception of the organism as the sum of parts conceived as little lives (Bordeu et al.); a mechanist, or ‘enhanced mechanist’ view in which one can work upwards, step by step from the basic property of irritability to the higher-level property of sensibility (Haller); and, more eclectic, a materialist view which seeks to combine the mechanistic, componential rigour and explanatory power of the Hallerian approach, with the monistic and metaphysically explosive potential of the vitalist approach (Diderot). It is my hope that examining Diderot in the context of this triangulated topography of sensibility as property sheds light on his famous proclamation regarding sensibility as a universal property of matter. (shrink)

This study points out the importance and meaning of apologizing as a moral value in compensating the imperfections committed by individuals in social relations and correcting the deteriorating relationships. Accepting that every person can make mistakes is the most essential element that paves the way for the emergence of apology as a virtue. It teaches one to accept that he/she may be wrong, not to consider himself superior to anyone, and arouses the will and will not to make such mistakes. (...) Apology tells the necessity to be respectful and to value other people as well as to be honest. Apologizing is like forcing a person to be honest, and it tells you about the need to care about other people and to be respectful. It is seen that different kinds of apologies are made according to the culpable, guilty person, the environment, the victim, and the situation of the defect. This study discusses the meaning of the words used in apologizing whether they mean full apology or not, the meaning of the apology, its moral dimension, and its relationship with repentance. It also discusses the reasons for the apology, apologizing strategies, accountability, assuming responsibility, proposing repairs, and making promises on not doing something wrong again. The similarity of repentance in religious traditions with apologizing was emphasized, and the relationship between forgiveness and apology was evaluated in terms of the attitudes that the parties should adopt. Finally, as a rule of value and courtesy, suggestions were made on how to provide apologies education in the family.Summary: This study draw attention to the meaning and importance of apologizing as a moral value in compensating for the imperfections that individuals have committed against each other in social relations and in correcting broken relationships. Acknowledging that every person can make mistakes is the most important element that paves the way for the emergence of an apology as a virtue. Accepting that one can be wrong teaches that one should not think of himself as superior to anyone and arouses the will and desire not to make such mistakes. Apologizing leads people to be honest and tells them about the need to care about other people and be respectful.Apologizing is admitting that the rhetoric, actions, and practices that lead to apologies are not fair, accurate, and legitimate. First, apologizing means that the person to whom we made a mistake is a human being. It means that accepting anyone can make a mistake, and we can be wrong. It gives this person the understanding that s/he should not be superior to anyone else. It also arouses a desire and will not make such mistakes anymore. Apologizing tells you the necessity of caring and respecting other people as well as forcing people to be honest. The person who apologizes to him is undoubtedly respectable. The respected person will surely appreciate to others. The basis of social order and life is mutual respect. Being able to apologize draws the individual's point of view to the end where he or she should be and provides the basis for the healthy functioning of the social order by gaining the understanding of respect for other people. Also, being able to apologize is an expression of confession, honesty, and sincerity. Apologizing in this respect is a virtue and merit. The society that values are lost and surrounded by selfishness and nihilism must be turned into virtues, and people who know the value of human beings.The good and virtuous person is not without fault, s/he is the one who apologizes for the mistakes, s/he has committed or seeks ways to redeem that mistake, s/he is the one who returns from his/her mistake. Apologizing should be not only a responsibility but also an indicator of self-confidence. It should not be forgotten that conscientious accounting is a self-judgment. S/he can quickly apologize for stepping on someone else's feet, soiling his clothes, but s/he does not think of a full apology consisting of remorse, compensation, and repair for the person who has taken away a person's right, poisoned his life and tarnished his future.When the parent says that the child should apologize, a process will be initiated for the child to consider. If the child apologizes in front of his or her parent, who points to the necessity of this, it is an important step in the child's moral education, and this indicates that the child internalizes these norms and engages in independent moral accounting. Because s/he now realizes that a value s/he defends without dictating from the outside has been violated, and therefore, has the motivation to make an apology.Arrogance is the biggest obstacle to apologizing. In men-women relations, it can be seen that women are more easily able to apologize, they do not consider apologizing as an indicator of as powerlessness and insulted as men. A manager, a boss, a leader, or a president can delay or fail to realize that his/her authority and dignity will diminish when s/he apologizes to his/her subordinate and those under his/her command. Men in the family, teachers at school, managers in the institution, boss and so on leader and authority persons refrain from apologizing by going to show and bless what they say and do to legitimize the past, to forget or reject mistakes, to prevent them from being questioned morally. This tells us the importance of internalizing the understanding of apologetics as a social culture starting with the family.Individual mistakes should be apologized for in daily life, institutional errors, as well as for some unfortunate incidents. Apologies have the potential for establishing a suitable basis for the establishment of a culture of dialogue in inter-communal relations and sharing some common values and interests. Apologies can contribute significantly to the development of a culture of tolerance, cooperation, and peaceful coexistence among communities.When a defect requiring a committed apology, the event must be evaluated not only from a unilateral perspective, but from a whole context and sides so that the perpetrator can adopt the feelings and understanding of the victim.In the apology, there should be a strategy such as an expression of regret, accountability, taking responsibility, offering repairs, and making promises on not happening again. Repentance in religious traditions is similar to an apology. In the face of apology, the victim reduces negative feelings towards the offender by forgiving and repairs the relationship. Apologies are a reputation-protecting action for the victim, while a discreditable step is taking place for the wrong person. It is also important to forgive and protect the reputation of the person who made a mistake. Like the cultural past, gender causes men and women to choose different apology strategies. Various forms of apology are also influenced by factors such as age, income status, occupation, and ethnicity. The time to apologize, the environment, the mood of the interlocutor must be well calculated. If enough care is not given to them, the apology may not reach its purpose, and thus, there is no possibility of correcting the broken relationship. Since childhood, it is important to teach individuals that a person may have been guilty by making mistakes towards others, society and the environment. Also, individuals should be educated on apologizing from others when needed. The child should apologize when he/she makes a mistake by taking the model in his / her family and the people around him and should be forgiving in cases made against him/her. (shrink)

The central role played by Darwin's analogy between selection under domestication and that under nature has been adequately appreciated, but I have indicated how important the domesticated organisms also were to other elements of Darwin's theory of evolution-his recognition of “the constant principle of change,” for instance, of the imperfection of adaptation, and of the extent of variation in nature. The further development of his theory and its presentation to the public likewise hinged on frequent reference to domesticates.We (...) have seen that Darwin's reliance on the analogy between domesticated varieties and wild species was a bold and original step, in light of contemporary views on the nature of domesticates. However, as Darwin undoubtedly foresaw, his reliance on the analogy created difficulties as well as solving problems, and these began with his Malthusian codiscoverer of the principle of natural selection, Alfred Russel Wallace. Wallace's paper “On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type,” presented to the Linnean Scoiety along with the first public unveiling of Darwin's theory, states: We see, then, that no inferences as to varieties in a state of nature can be deduced from the observation of those occurring among domestic animals. The two are so much opposed to each other in every circumstance of their existence, that what applies to the one is almost sure not to apply to the other. Domestic animals are abnormal, irregular, artificial; they are subject to varieties which never occur and never can occur in a state of nature.62Much has been made of the similarity of views of Darwin and Wallace, but this quotation surely reveals how utterly different their views were on what to Darwin was an important matter. Several critics of the Origin saw Darwin's reliance on the domesticates as his Achilles heel. As Young has pointed out, Samuel Wilberforce included the following passage in his attack on the Origin: Nor must we pass over unnoticed the transference of the argument from the domesticated to the untamed animals. Assuming that man as the selector can do much in a limited time, Mr. Darwin argues that Nature, a more powerful, a more continuous power, working over vastly extended ranges of time, can do more. But why should Nature, so uniform and persistent in all her operations, tend in this instance to change? Why should she become a selector of varieties?63Another critic, Fleeming Jenkin, found the analogy a weakness in Darwin's theory because of the limited extent of variation in any one direction in domestic animals and plants.64 We have already seen that Darwin had confided a similar view to his notebook thirty years earlier, but changed his mind as a result of his profound study of domesticates. De Beer's reference to “an English country gentleman's knowledge of domestic plants and animals and their breeding”65 fails totally to recognize the originality and depth of Darwin's knowledge of domesticates.Why did Darwin, against the currents of his time, rely so heavily on mankind's experience with domesticated organisms to shape his theory about species in nature? On reason is that only with domesticates was an approach that came close to experimental verification possible. Darwin fully realized the inadequacies of the experiment, as is emphasized by his repeated contrasting of selection under nature and selection by man. Yet the extensive experience and data of plant and animal breeders offered the only reliable base against which Darwin could continually challenge his views. As he wrote in the introduction to Variation, with domestication, “man ... may be said to have been trying an experiment on a gigantic scale.”66 Given Darwin's high opinion of the quantitative work of Malthus and Quetelet (as emphasized by Schweber),67 and his unremitting efforts to secure data by which to test his theories, it was inevitable that he should attach high significance to domesticated varieties. John Tyndall, in his Belfast address of 1874, said: “The strength of the doctrine of Evolution consists, not in experimental demonstration (for the subject is hardly accessible to this mode of proof), but in its general harmony with scientific thought.”68 Darwin would have agreed with the latter thought, but I think he would have challenged the preceding one on the grounds that long experience with domesticated varieties did provide an element of experimental demonstration. It gave him confidence in his theory, and he used his vast knowledge of artificial selection boldly and creatively. (shrink)

Students of the history of ethics sometimes find themselves tempted by moderate or extreme versions of an approach that might roughly be called ‘historicist’. This temptation may result from the difficulties of approaching historical texts from a ‘narrowly philosophical’ point of view. We may begin, for instance, by wanting to know what Aristotle has to say about ‘the problems of ethics’, so that we can compare his views with those of Aquinas, Hume, Kant, Sidgwick, and Rawls, and then decide (...) what is true or false in each theorist's position. But this narrowly philosophical attitude soon runs into difficulties, and writers on the history of ethics often warn us against it. (shrink)

This chapter offers a general outline of Schopenhauer’s peculiarly named concept of the 'acquired character’ and explains its basic function in his ethical thought. For Schopenhauer, a person of acquired character is someone who knows the ways of acting (Handlungsweise) that are most expressive of their individuality and who allows that self-knowledge to structure their practical and emotional life. In keeping with certain elements of his psychological determinism, acquired character is not the acquisition of a ‘new’ character; rather, it is (...) the acquisition of self-knowledge of one’s essentially fixed empirical character. It is part of the argument of this chapter that by introducing the acquired character into his reflections on human action and agency Schopenhauer weaves a certain view of individual flourishing (eudaimonia) into his ethics. There are two central ingredients of Schopenhauer’s conception of eudaimonia, and both are linked to the acquired character. The first is self-knowledge; the second is a sense of personal autonomy that follows in the wake of the first. The chapter ends with a brief attempt to connect Schopenhauer’s concept of acquired character to contemporary debates in ethics concerning autonomy, practical identity, and what some call the ‘normative significance of self’. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Hegel on Pseudo-Philosophy: Reading the Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit by Andrew Alexander DavisPaul T. WilfordDAVIS, Andrew Alexander. Hegel on Pseudo-Philosophy: Reading the Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit. London: Bloomsbury, 2023. ix + 214 pp. Cloth, $125In Hegel on Pseudo-Philosophy, Andrew Davis makes a convincing argument that just as the problem of how to distinguish sophistry from philosophy is a recurrent theme of Plato's dialogues, so (...) too is the problem of sophistry or "pseudo-philosophy" central to the preface to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Indeed, the problem of how to recognize and guard against pseudo-philosophy is the common theme linking the prefaces to the Phenomenology of Spirit, the Science of Logic, the Encyclopedia, and the Philosophy of Right, each of which endeavors "to reveal something about the essence of philosophy... by highlighting the ways pseudo-philosophy fails to do justice to philosophical content." Such an undertaking is especially important to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, however, because the subject matter [End Page 543] of the work is nothing but the logos of the appearances of spirit. To arrive at knowledge of spirit requires attending to all the various ways in which spirit (or Geist) can appear, but, as Davis remarks, "like life, Geist may be thought as a source of appearances, but not as an appearance itself. It is always 'behind' what appears." As a result, the Phenomenology is an exercise in trying "to grasp what does not appear through appearances alone." Thus, just as the Phenomenology approaches the truth of spirit by considering spirit's partial, abstract, and one-sided modes of appearing, so too does the preface to the Phenomenology approach the truth of philosophy by investigating forms of pseudo-philosophy.As Hegel himself states, there are two principal tasks pursued in the preface: (1) to offer a preliminary sketch of what it would mean for "the cognition of absolute actuality to become perfectly lucid about its own nature;" and (2) to eliminate some "habitually accepted forms of thought" that prove obstacles to philosophic cognition. While most commentators take their bearings from the former, Davis's approach to the preface is unique (to my knowledge) in foregrounding the latter. Yet, as his book unfolds, it becomes clear that the latter is the route into the former. Indeed, one of the central lessons of the book is that, although the elimination of erroneous habits of thought may seem to be merely negative and therefore principally propaedeutic to the positive task of leading the reader toward "absolute knowing," the examination of error is an integral component of grasping the true. If the Phenomenology as a whole is a "highway of despair"—a comprehensive refutation of natural consciousness's pretensions to knowledge that is simultaneously a dialectical ascent to conceptually comprehending knowing (begreifende Wissen)—the preface initiates the reader into the via negativa that philosophic cognition must travel to attain self-knowledge.Davis's book is structured around seven forms of pseudo-philosophy, each of which is treated as a discrete, distinguishable problem in its own right and also as emblematic of the common failure to recognize that the form of philosophy is inseparable from the content of philosophy. As Davis argues, this failure lies at the root of the attempt (common to much of modern philosophy since Descartes) to establish a priori a universal method for thinking (what Leibniz called a mathesis universalis) that will secure certain and indubitable knowledge. But this effort proves self-undermining, always ultimately engendering the very skepticism it seeks to master. Through observing the aporiai generated by forms of pseudo-philosophy, we learn that "the method of philosophy is inseparable from the subject matter of philosophy. Method cannot be isolated and discussed on its own. Philosophy is thinking (form) about thinking (content)."Davis thus gradually discloses Hegel's positive answer to the question "what is philosophy?" through a series of determinate negations of philosophy's imitations. We learn that philosophy is the recollective, self-comprehending, self-moving thinking of thinking by attending to a set of tendencies that impede philosophy: "a tendency to explain rather than [End Page 544] present (chapter 1), a... (shrink)

The idea of doing something for its own sake interests me for two reasons. First, I should like to understand better two opposing reactions that I have felt on coming across the phrase ‘for its own sake’ used in earnest. When told that knowledge is worth pursuing for its own sake and that this is what the study of science at a university ought to be like—not an adjunct to commercially motivated research in a product I design and development team (...) funded by local industry—I, and others, feel that something pure and noble, holy, good and true is being said. On the other hand, I recognize that to some, who would probably describe themselves as more realistic than myself, the claim that knowledge should be, and is being, pursued for its own sake has a hollow ring. Nowadays, academics themselves feel uneasy when they hear this sort of thing being said in public in mixed company. But they do continue to say such things to each other, at least occasionally in private, among consenting adults. Furthermore, I do attach impor- tance to the thought that to do the right thing for its own sake is a shining example of moral goodness. At the same time I acknowledge that the idea of a good deed done for its own sake is less than crystal clear I and that, to many, the person who claims to be doing something for its own sake sounds like someone who smiles at himself in the mirror in the morning in order to find one approving face before setting out to commit his next crime against humanity. I should like to know whether this phrase ‘for its own sake’ will bear the weight I want to place on it or whether a more sceptical attitude is called for. (shrink)

The idea of doing something for its own sake interests me for two reasons. First, I should like to understand better two opposing reactions that I have felt on coming across the phrase ‘for its own sake’ used in earnest. When told that knowledge is worth pursuing for its own sake and that this is what the study of science at a university ought to be like—not an adjunct to commercially motivated research in a product I design and development team (...) funded by local industry—I, and others, feel that something pure and noble, holy, good and true is being said. On the other hand, I recognize that to some, who would probably describe themselves as more realistic than myself, the claim that knowledge should be, and is being, pursued for its own sake has a hollow ring. Nowadays, academics themselves feel uneasy when they hear this sort of thing being said in public in mixed company. But they do continue to say such things to each other, at least occasionally in private, among consenting adults. Furthermore, I do attach impor- tance to the thought that to do the right thing for its own sake is a shining example of moral goodness. At the same time I acknowledge that the idea of a good deed done for its own sake is less than crystal clear I and that, to many, the person who claims to be doing something for its own sake sounds like someone who smiles at himself in the mirror in the morning in order to find one approving face before setting out to commit his next crime against humanity. I should like to know whether this phrase ‘for its own sake’ will bear the weight I want to place on it or whether a more sceptical attitude is called for. (shrink)

Darwin proclaimed his own work revolutionary. His revolution, however, is still in progress, and the changes that are going on are reflected in the contemporary historical and philosophical literature, including that written by scientists. The changes have taken place at different levels, and have tended to occur at the more superficial ones. The new ontology that arose as a consequence of the realization that species are individuals at once provides an analytical tool for explaining what has been happening and (...) an example of the kind of changes that seem in order. It provides a clear distinction between the roles of history and of laws of nature. Pre-Darwinian "evolution" was superficial in the sense that it treated change as either as something pre-ordained or else due to timeless laws of nature, rather than historical contingency. Darwinism puts the ontological emphasis upon concrete, particular things (individuals) and therefore delegitimizes both essentialistic and teleological ways of thinking. However, traditional ways of thinking have persisted, if not explicitly, then often as assumptions and procedures that are merely implicit or even unconscious. As a result, anti-evolutionary attitudes continue to influence the practice of evolutionary biology as well as the study of its history and philosophy. (shrink)

What Aphorism Does Nietzsche Explicate in Genealogy of Morals, Essay III ? JOHN T. WILCOX A picture held us captive. Wittgenstein ~ AS EVERYONE KNOWS, the dominant opinion is not always correct. Current scholarship, in all likelihood, makes assumptions which have not yet been questioned; and probably some of them will be seen to be false, once they have been examined. I will argue here that there is a dominant but erroneous assumption concerning the Third Essay in Nietzsche's On the (...) Genealogy of Morals. It will be obvious that correcting this error has some serious implica- tions for almost all current interpretations of the essay. After acknowledging, at the end of his Preface to the Genealogy, that some might find his new book "incomprehensible," Nietzsche warns that "the fault.., is not necessarily mine." He assumes, he says, that readers have already worked hard at his earlier writings, themselves "not easy to pene- trate," and have been "wounded" and "delighted" by his Zarathustra. Then he begins one of several passages we must examine carefully: In other cases, people have difficulty with the aphoristic form: this arises from the fact that today this form is not taken seriously enough. An aphorism, properly stamped and molded, has not been "deciphered" when it has simply been read; rather, one has then to begin its exegesis, for which is required an art of exegesis. I have offered in the third essay of the present book an example of what I.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:First Order Relationality and Its Implications:A Response to David ElsteinRoger T. Ames (bio)David Elstein has asked a series of important questions about Human Becomings that provide me with an opportunity to try to bring the argument of the book into clearer focus. Let me begin by thanking David for his always generous and intelligent reflection on not only my new monograph [End Page 181] but also on Henry Rosemont's (...) and my best efforts to expand upon the idea of "role ethics" as a productive way to read Confucian ethics.David asks: Is relationality truly a part of original Confucian thought? Does relationality rule out any notion of essential human nature, and does it necessarily imply or entail role ethics? Is relationality true or merely a useful way of thinking (if these can be distinguished)? Do we know that it's useful?I think the answer to these questions turns on two very different ways of understanding relationality, namely the doctrines of first and second order relationality. The term 'ontology' as "the science of being per se or in itself" gives us a doctrine of external, second order relations. Ontology was introduced into our philosophical vocabulary as a new term for an old way of thinking at the beginning of the seventeenth century by two German philosophers.1 For the classical Greeks, "the science of being per se" (to on he on) was posited as their "first philosophy" with all of its implications for metaphysics, epistemology, logic, ethics, philosophy of religion, and so on. Ontology is that branch of metaphysics that seeks to classify and explain the things that exist, with its underlying assumption that there are unchanging substances or essences internal to things that are available to us to classify them as this and not that. Ontology privileges "being per se" with its categorical language and its "substance" and "attribute" dualism, giving us a grammar of substances as property-bearers and properties that are borne, respectively.Such ontological thinking animates Plato's pursuit of formal, "real" definitions in his quest for certainty (that is, definitions not of words but of what really is), and underlies Aristotle's taxonomical science of knowing "what is what." For these classical Greek philosophers, only what is real and is thus true can be the proper object of knowledge, giving us a logic of the changeless. Corollary to ontology is causal thinking, formal definitions, and, important for David's question, a doctrine of external, second order relationality in which relations conjoin discrete and self-sufficient things, such as human "beings." As the contemporary philosopher Zhao Tingyang 趙汀陽 avers, this kind of substance ontology defining the real things that constitute the content of an orderly and structured cosmosprovides a "dictionary" kind of explanation of the world, seeking to set up an accurate understanding of the limits of all things. In simple terms, it determines "what is what," and all concepts are footnotes to "being" or "is."2In the Book of Changes, we find a vocabulary making explicit cosmological assumptions that stand in stark contrast to this substance ontology and that brings with it a doctrine of first order, constitutive relations. This alternative "first philosophy" has prompted me to create the neologism "zoetology," with the Greek zoe- "life" and -logia "discourse," as my own new term for an old way of thinking that we might translate into modern Chinese as shengshenglun 生生論: "the art of living." The starting point in this zoetological cosmology, then, is that nothing does anything by [End Page 182] itself; association is a fact. Since the very nature of life is associative and transactional, the vocabulary appealed to in defining Confucian cosmology is irreducibly dyadic and collateral: always multiple, never one.And further, it is the nature of life itself that it seeks to optimize the available conditions for its continuing growth, where such growth has a persistent existential and thus intentional aspect. "Life" is the productive correlation between organism and environment that gives rise to correlative, relational, ecological thinking that many of our best sinologists (Marcel Granet, David Keightley, Tang Junyi, K. C. Chang, A. C. Graham, and many others) would ascribe to the earliest semblances of Chinese... (shrink)

Intellectual history still quite commonly distinguishes between the episode we know as the Scientific Revolution, and its successor era, the Enlightenment, in terms of the calculatory and quantifying zeal of the former—the age of mechanics—and the rather scientifically lackadaisical mood of the latter, more concerned with freedom, public space and aesthetics. It is possible to challenge this distinction in a variety of ways, but the approach I examine here, in which the focus on an emerging scientific field or cluster (...) of disciplines—the ‘life sciences’, particularly natural history, medicine, and physiology —is, not Romantically anti-scientific, but resolutely anti-mathematical. Diderot bluntly states, in his Thoughts on the interpretation of nature, that “We are on the verge of a great revolution in the sciences. Given the taste people seem to have for morals, belles-lettres, the history of nature and experimental physics, I dare say that before a hundred years, there will not be more than three great geometricians remaining in Europe. The science will stop short where the Bernoullis, the Eulers, the Maupertuis, the Clairauts, the Fontaines and the D’Alemberts will have left it.... We will not go beyond.” Similarly, Buffon in the first discourse of his Histoire naturelle speaks of the “over-reliance on mathematical sciences,” given that mathematical truths are merely “definitional” and “demonstrative,” and thereby “abstract, intellectual and arbitrary.” Earlier in the Thoughts, Diderot judges “the thing of the mathematician” to have “as little existence in nature as that of the gambler.” Significantly, this attitude—taken by great scientists who also translated Newton or wrote careful papers on probability theory, as well as by others such as Mandeville—participates in the effort to conceptualize what we might call a new ontology for the emerging life sciences, very different from both the ‘iatromechanism’ and the ‘animism’ of earlier generations, which either failed to account for specifically living, goal-directed features of organisms, or accounted for them in supernaturalistic terms by appealing to an ‘anima’ as explanatory principle. Anti-mathematicism here is then a key component of a naturalistic, open-ended project to give a successful reductionist model of explanation in ‘natural history’, a model which is no more vitalist than it is materialist—but which is fairly far removed from early modern mechanism. (shrink)

Intellectual history still quite commonly distinguishes between the episode we know as the Scientific Revolution, and its successor era, the Enlightenment, in terms of the calculatory and quantifying zeal of the former—the age of mechanics—and the rather scientifically lackadaisical mood of the latter, more concerned with freedom, public space and aesthetics. It is possible to challenge this distinction in a variety of ways, but the approach I examine here, in which the focus on an emerging scientific field or cluster (...) of disciplines—the ‘life sciences’, particularly natural history, medicine, and physiology —is, not Romantically anti-scientific, but resolutely anti-mathematical. Diderot bluntly states, in his Thoughts on the interpretation of nature, that “We are on the verge of a great revolution in the sciences. Given the taste people seem to have for morals, belles-lettres, the history of nature and experimental physics, I dare say that before a hundred years, there will not be more than three great geometricians remaining in Europe. The science will stop short where the Bernoullis, the Eulers, the Maupertuis, the Clairauts, the Fontaines and the D’Alemberts will have left it.... We will not go beyond.” Similarly, Buffon in the first discourse of his Histoire naturelle speaks of the “over-reliance on mathematical sciences,” given that mathematical truths are merely “definitional” and “demonstrative,” and thereby “abstract, intellectual and arbitrary.” Earlier in the Thoughts, Diderot judges “the thing of the mathematician” to have “as little existence in nature as that of the gambler.” Significantly, this attitude—taken by great scientists who also translated Newton or wrote careful papers on probability theory, as well as by others such as Mandeville—participates in the effort to conceptualize what we might call a new ontology for the emerging life sciences, very different from both the ‘iatromechanism’ and the ‘animism’ of earlier generations, which either failed to account for specifically living, goal-directed features of organisms, or accounted for them in supernaturalistic terms by appealing to an ‘anima’ as explanatory principle. Anti-mathematicism here is then a key component of a naturalistic, open-ended project to give a successful reductionist model of explanation in ‘natural history’, a model which is no more vitalist than it is materialist—but which is fairly far removed from early modern mechanism. (shrink)

Uexküll’s 1917 critique of what he calls the “English morality”, written during World War I, points the contemporary reader toward important implications of the translation of descriptive scientific models to normative ethical theories. A key figure motivating biosemiotics, Uexküll presents here a darker side: one where his Umwelt theory seems to motivate a bio-cultural hierarchy of value and worth, where some human beings are worth more than others precisely because of the constraints of their Umwelten. The first English translation of (...) this essay, introduced here, gives scholars access to Uexküll’s lines of thought, historical context, and normative interpretations. It is particularly pertinent for contemporary attempts to develop a biosemiotic ethics based, among other things, on the Umwelt theory. (shrink)

In a highly conscious break with what is termed "orthodox Darwinism," i.e., evolution by natural selection of individual adaptive character, the author presents his forceful and suggestive attempt to recast evolutionary theory by taking Darwin's later concept of the reproductive mode of genetic groups as fundamental. The goal of this reorientation is a "descriptive behavioral science" of evolution from the most primitive clusters of inorganic matter to human societies. The book is "Blakean" in its scope and tone of vision, (...) but suffers from heaviness of style and its misplaced messianic pretensions and prophetic wrath. However, in arguing for a continuity of cosmological, natural and human evolution, and in suggesting a synthesis of the insights of Darwin and Freud, the book is powerful and convincing.—T. R. H. (shrink)

Perhaps the most readable and accessible of the great works of scientific imagination, The Origin of Species sold out on the day it was published in 1859. Theologians quickly labeled Charles Darwin the most dangerous man in England, and, as the Saturday Review noted, the uproar over the book quickly "passed beyond the bounds of the study and lecture-room into the drawing-room and the public street." Yet, after reading it, Darwin's friend and colleague T. H. Huxley had a (...) different reaction: "How extremely stupid not to have thought of that." Based largely on Darwin's experience as a naturalist while on a five-year voyage aboard H.M.S. Beagle, The Origin of Species set forth a theory of evolution and natural selection that challenged contemporary beliefs about divine providence and the immutability of species. A landmark contribution to philosophical and scientific thought, this edition also includes an introductory historical sketch and a glossary Darwin later added to the original text. Charles Darwin grew up considered, by his own account, "a very ordinary boy, rather below the common standard of intellect." A quirk of fate kept him from the career his father had deemed appropriate--that of a country parson--when a botanist recommended Darwin for an appointment as a naturalist aboard H.M.S. Beagle from 1831 to 1836. Darwin is also the author of the five-volume work Zoology of the Voyage of the Beagle (1839) and The Descent of Man (1871). (shrink)

Nietzsche did his philosophizing while he was coming apart at the seams. His writing is hard for readers to find their way around because he was all over the place when he produced it. But it's philosophy of coming apart at the seams and being all over the place, and also philosophy as a way of coping with that predicament-which makes it both fascinating and important. Why Didn't Nietzsche Get His Act Together? has three main tasks on its agenda. Nietzsche (...) is hard to make sense of; this is a guide, a book that shows you how to read him for yourself. Second, Nietzsche coped with his disintegrating self by philosophizing, and so this is a work that takes up disunified agency through Nietzsche's own engagement with the topic. Third and finally, Nietzsche managed his fragmenting personality by inventing one after another meaning of life for himself; examining those inventions and the job they did for him is an occasion to ask what a meaning of life is for. (shrink)

This new edition of Darwin’s work is due, says the introduction, to the interest felt in the new science of kinesics, viz., the non-verbal aspects of human communication. Darwin felt that the genetic approach to the problem should throw light on the emotional expressions to be observed in animals, children, the insane and normal adults and he crystallized his findings in a number of definite laws. More recent attention to these problems however shows the danger of dogmatism in (...) this department. For scientific knowledge concerning emotion is neither comprehensive nor overly exact; the nature of emotions, their meaning, their physiological aspects and external manifestations are still obscure. When knowledge of the situation to which the emotion is a response is withheld, there is little agreement among observers as to what specific emotion is being depicted, e.g., in a photograph. When that knowledge is supplied the agreement grows; it further helps the observer to be acquainted with the person depicting the emotion for it appears that the individual has only two or three expressions which appear in the great majority of his responses to widely different situations. And many of these responses are acquired rather than innate, social rather than emotional in character, as can be seen in the manner in which they vary from one people to another. (shrink)

Progressive specialisation in psychology has necessitated the provision of symposia to let the expert know what is happening in other branches of his subject. Present-day Psychology, although planned in a different way, continues the work begun in Psychologies of 1925 and Psychologies of 1930. It contains some forty original contributions and while it cannot tell all that is happening in the different fields of psychology it can claim to be a fair survey of all trends and topics. It is (...) not perhaps as cosmopolitan as its predecessors; the contributors are predominantly American and those who are not have concerned themselves principally with the problems of clinical and dynamic psychology. (shrink)

In a highly conscious break with what is termed "orthodox Darwinism," i.e., evolution by natural selection of individual adaptive character, the author presents his forceful and suggestive attempt to recast evolutionary theory by taking Darwin's later concept of the reproductive mode of genetic groups as fundamental. The goal of this reorientation is a "descriptive behavioral science" of evolution from the most primitive clusters of inorganic matter to human societies. The book is "Blakean" in its scope and tone of vision, (...) but suffers from heaviness of style and its misplaced messianic pretensions and prophetic wrath. However, in arguing for a continuity of cosmological, natural and human evolution, and in suggesting a synthesis of the insights of Darwin and Freud, the book is powerful and convincing.—T. R. H. (shrink)

Our appreciation and appropriation of Augustine's thought is hindered by assumptions which serious engagement with his thought makes both visible and dubious. His account of the dynamics of human knowing seems, at first glance, a jumble of confusions, but, once better understood, it helps transform both the terms and the framework of our epistemology. His account of human agency seems similarly confused, but also works, once rightly understood, to transform our vision of what agency is. Further-more, Augustine's different anthropological and (...) metaphysical assumptions provide not only a platform for criticizing what modernity takes for granted but also resources for reconstructing three important issues in Christian ethics. A proper appreciation of Augustinian anthropology offers benefits, then, beyond the merely exegetical. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 125 to such a future contingent event, not only does such an event not exist now, it does not even exist in its causes now, and this for the reason that no sufficient causes of the event exist now. Accordingly, if someone were merely to make a guess to the effect that the sea-fight will occur tomorrow, and the fight actually does occur, it still could not (...) be maintained that the original guess at the time it was made was therefore true. It simply could not have been true, because at the time of its assertion there literally was no evidence of any kind that could have rendered it true. Nevertheless, modern logicians have generally been so dead set against the notion that the truth or falsity of a proposition could ever be relative to the time when the proposition was uttered that they seem scarcely to have taken account of a consideration such as the foregoing. Nor is it likely that with the publication of this excellent translation of St. Thomas's commentary, such critics will begin to take account of this Thomistic argument even now. Somehow, one is reminded of Dr. Johnson's purported remark, "Sir, I can only give a man a reason, not an intelligence!" HENRY VEATCtt Northwestern University Pascal e Nietzsche. Scritti di E. Castelli, H. Gouhier, A. del Noce, H. Birault, K. Takeno, K. LSwith, J. D~lhomme, G. Vattimo, R. Boehm, G. Morra. (Padova: Cedam; Casa Editrice Dott. Antonio Milani, 1962. Pp. 218. = Archivio di Filosofia. Organo dell'Istituto di Studi Filosofici. Anno 1962. No 3. L. 2000.) This issue of the Archivio di Filosofia offers essays by the various authors indicated in the title above. Pascal and Nietzsche are here brought together because of what they have in common, that is, suffering, restlessness, dissatisfaction with the human condition, the historical sorrow of post-Copernican man, a paradoxical and chaotic thought. Both Pascal and Nietzsche urge man to measure the real by the possible and not the possible by the real and to risk the present certainties for the uncertainty of the future. They dislodge man from his ordinary seat and launch him on the risky adventure and great experiment of real existence. PA~L T. FUHRMANN Columbia Theological Seminary Pierre Bayle and Voltaire. By H. T. Mason. (Cambridge: Oxford University Press, 1963. Pp. xv -k 163.) Pierre Bayle and Voltaire confronts the ideas of the two philosophers and formulates some prudent conclusions about their relationship. Since Bayle's works run to nine long folio volumes and Voltaire's come to fifty quartos in the Moland edition, one cannot help but be impressed by the magnitude of Professor Mason's undertaking and by his ability to reduce his findings to a book of just over one hundred and fifty pages. In the case of Bayle and Voltaire, the basic facts concerning influence are readily available. We know what works of Bayle's were in the library at Ferney; we can see the pages the Enlightenment philosopher marked as he read; we have almost two hundred references to Bayle in Voltaire's works and letters (listed chronologically by Mason in an appendix); and critical editions, such as Morize's Candide and Lanson's Lettres philosophiques, have disclosed how consistently Voltaire turned to the Dictionnaire historique et critique or other works from Bayle's pen for information. Yet, when dealing with passages that seem to rely on Bayle for factual content, a scholar runs into many hazards. Voltaire may draw his data from Bayle, from Bayle's source, from an intermediary, or from an outside source. We know that he consulted Richard Simon, Spinoza, Dora Calmet, and Dr. Astruc as well as Bayle for his Biblical criticism. Therefore, it is very frequently impossible to be sure just how much Bayle's thinking... (shrink)

The present essay is a response to Keith Ward’s recent book, Christ and the Cosmos. While deeply appreciative of this fine book, I raise two criticisms of it: Ward’s claim that we can know nothing of the divine essence has disturbing implications, the main one of which is that there may be large disjunctions between what God has revealed to us about the divine nature and the divine nature in itself. Ward’s criticisms of the social theory of the Trinity (...) are not compelling and indeed edge his own view close to modalism. (shrink)

On the very first page of Spinoza's Ethics we find the perplexing definition of ‘attribute’: ‘By an attribute I mean what the understanding perceives in regard to a substance as constituting its essence’. Each attribute of a substance by itself thus constitutes the essence of a substance; if there are many attributes of the same substance, it does not take all of them together to constitute its essence. Spinoza, as we all know, in fact held that there is only (...) one substance, God, but there are infinitely many attributes, of which only two, Thought and Extension, are accessible to the human mind. Each attribute, we further learn, has to be conceived on its own account ; being conceived on its own account is, however, a distinguishing mark of the one substance, so how is it that the many attributes, which Spinoza says are really distinct, are not so many distinct substances, so many gods? That is the ontological side of the puzzle. Now for the logical or grammatical side — about which writers on Spinoza have, I think, said a great deal less, though it has been much discussed as regards less deviant theology than Spinoza's. Each attribute is clearly meant to be a concrete, active, individual entity; yet the attributes are designated by abstract nouns — ‘Thought’ and ‘Extension’. Now can we make sense of such a sentence as ‘God is Thought’ or ‘God is Extension’, as opposed to ‘God thinks’ or ‘God is extended’? What does it mean to predicate an abstract noun of a concrete individual? And if this ‘is’ here is not a bare copula of predication but an identity sign, then how can we avoid passing from ‘God is Thought’ and ‘God is Extension’ to ‘Thought is Extension’? Spinoza would deny the conclusion, and it is quite essential to his system to do so. For if Thought just is Extension, identically so, then any mode of the attribute Thought is a mode of the attribute Extension and vice versa. But for Spinoza, the last is diametrically opposite to the truth: no mode is a mode of more than one attribute, and indeed no causal relations link modes of different attributes — a causal linkage is always confined to one attribute. (shrink)

On the very first page of Spinoza's Ethics we find the perplexing definition of ‘attribute’: ‘By an attribute I mean what the understanding perceives in regard to a substance as constituting its essence’. Each attribute of a substance by itself thus constitutes the essence of a substance; if there are many attributes of the same substance, it does not take all of them together to constitute its essence. Spinoza, as we all know, in fact held that there is only (...) one substance, God, but there are infinitely many attributes, of which only two, Thought and Extension, are accessible to the human mind. Each attribute, we further learn, has to be conceived on its own account ; being conceived on its own account is, however, a distinguishing mark of the one substance, so how is it that the many attributes, which Spinoza says are really distinct, are not so many distinct substances, so many gods?That is the ontological side of the puzzle. Now for the logical or grammatical side — about which writers on Spinoza have, I think, said a great deal less, though it has been much discussed as regards less deviant theology than Spinoza's. Each attribute is clearly meant to be a concrete, active, individual entity; yet the attributes are designated by abstract nouns — ‘Thought’ and ‘Extension’. Now can we make sense of such a sentence as ‘God is Thought’ or ‘God is Extension’, as opposed to ‘God thinks’ or ‘God is extended’? What does it mean to predicate an abstract noun of a concrete individual? And if this ‘is’ here is not a bare copula of predication but an identity sign, then how can we avoid passing from ‘God is Thought’ and ‘God is Extension’ to ‘Thought is Extension’? Spinoza would deny the conclusion, and it is quite essential to his system to do so. For if Thought just is Extension, identically so, then any mode of the attribute Thought is a mode of the attribute Extension and vice versa. But for Spinoza, the last is diametrically opposite to the truth: no mode is a mode of more than one attribute, and indeed no causal relations link modes of different attributes — a causal linkage is always confined to one attribute. (shrink)

Not long ago, I received an email from a man who had been trying to get his seven-year-old son interested in science, and teach him a little bit about the workings of the brain. He had been showing his son one of those diagrams of a brain with various regions labeled as "speech center," vision center," and the like (something similar to this, I suppose), when the little boy suddenly asked, "Daddy, which part of the brain does imagination come from?". (...) It was not on the diagram, and the father, although he studied human biology at college, realized he did not know the answer. As we do these days, he got on the internet to try to find out. It was not as easy as he might have expected. "Imagination" is certainly a word that is found on a lot of web pages, and there are plenty that seem to be devoted to celebrating or promoting it, but very few of them seem to have anything at all to say about what it is, how it works, or where in the brain it might be implemented. Eventually, he found his way to this site. Even here, however, he could find no straightforward answer to his son's apparently straightforward question. (The truth is, the question is not nearly as straightforward as it appears.) He thought I might be a good a person to ask, however, and sent me an email. What follows is a lightly revised version of the reply I sent. It is not written in terms that a seven-year-old could understand (I am not clever enough to do that), but neither is it pitched at the professional, academic level of most of the material on this site. I would like to think that it answers the question (inasmuch as it can be answered in the current state of scientific knowledge) in a way that a layperson should be able to understand, and that they might then be able to explain to a curious and intelligent child. If you want to know the detailed reasons, and see the citations to the scientific literature, that justify the claims made here, you can find them in the other articles on this site.. (shrink)

Hume? Yes, David Hume, that's who Jerry Fodor looks to for help in advancing our understanding of the mind. Fodor claims his Treatise of Human Nature as the foundational document of cognitive science: it launched the project of constructing an empirical psychology on the basis of a representational theory of mind. Going back to this work after more than 250 years we find that Hume is remarkably perceptive about the components and structure that a theory of mind requires. Careful study (...) of the Treatise helps us to see what's amiss with much twentieth-century philosophy of mind, and to get on the right track. Hume says in the Treatise that his main project is to construct a theory of human nature and, in particular, a theory of the mind. Hume Variations examines his account of cognition and how it is grounded in his 'theory of ideas'. Fodor discusses such key topics as the distinction between 'simple' and 'complex' ideas, the thesis that an idea is some kind of picture, and the roles that 'association' and 'imagination' play in cognitive processes. He argues that the theory of ideas, as Hume develops it, is both historically and ideologically continuous with the representational theory of mind as it is now widely endorsed by cognitive scientists. This view of Hume is explicitly opposed to recent discussions by critics who hold that the theory of ideas is the Achilles heel of his philosophy and that he would surely have abandoned it if only he had read Wittgenstein carefully.You don't have to know much about Hume to enjoy this inventively argued, provocative, and stimulating defence of the representational theory of mind--which is looking increasingly hard to resist.LINES OF THOUGHTPhilosophy books don't need to be hundreds of pages long to make a substantial contribution to the subject. This new series presents original works by leading philosophers at an affordable price and a readable length. Series EditorsPeter Ludlow Scott Sturgeon. (shrink)