This book is a balanced and up-to-date introduction to the philosophy of science. It covers all the main topics in the area, as well as introducing the student to the moral and social reality of science. The author's style is free from jargon, and although he makes use of scientific examples, these should be intelligible to those without much scientific background. At the same time the questions he raises are not merely abstract, so the book will be of interest and (...) concern to scientists as well as philosophers.The author discusses the growth of knowledge of science, the status of scientific theories and their relationship to observational data, the extent to which scientific theories rest on unprovable paradigms, and the nature of scientific explanations. In later chapters he considers probability, scientific reductionism, the relationship between science and technology, and the relationship between scientific and other values. (shrink)

In this article, we will consider how far we might be said to be active in forming our beliefs; in particular, we will ask to what extent we can be said to be free in believing what we want to believe. It is clear that we ought to believe only what is really so, at least in so far as it lies in our power to determine this, but reflection shows that, regrettably, we do not confine our beliefs to what (...) we have evidence for, nor do we always believe in accordance with the evidence we do have. So it is natural to conclude that non-intellectual factors may be at work here; such, at least, was the view of Descartes, who attributed error to the influence of our will in leading us to assent to judgments which go beyond the evidence presented by our infallible intellect. This view has some initial plausibility when we think of cases in which emotional considerations lead people to take up and genuinely believe things they have no evidence for, but it is not a view which has received much support from modern philosophers. So, in Part 1 we will look at criticisms levelled against Descartes' view by J. L. Evans, and in Part 2 we will see how far Descartes can be defended. Our conclusions here will lead us to give in Part 3 a general account of the influence of the will in beliefs. We will suggest that we are always responsible for our explicit beliefs, even though it is not true that we can simply believe what we like. Thus we will reject the idea that a man can consciously know something, and at the same time, by will power, believe the opposite. Belief is not then totally free, but we will argue that people do sometimes form beliefs which go against what they should and could believe, and that this can in a way be put down to the influence of the will. Finally we will consider some of the ways in which it is possible to influence our beliefs by willed acts over a long period of time, though this is not the way that we clami that the will might be said to play a part in every judgment that we make. (shrink)

There is certainly a strong feeling against the use of drugs in sport, even though many sportsmen and women use them and many more undoubtedly would if they thought they could get away with it. In face of what actually goes on in far too many locker rooms, the efforts of sports authorities to stem the use of drugs can seem futile as well as all too often petty and misguided in practice.

We spent a wonderful morning in the van Gogh gallery in Amsterdam. Of course we knew all the paintings, we had seen them all in reproduction, and the building was more like a bank vault than a setting for art. But what art! At first sight how small and uniform the paintings were in reality: yet every blade of grass, every flower in a field, every olive tree, every vibration in the sky, every patch of colour, every brush stroke, testified (...) to life and to a life vibrating beneath the surface form. In a true sense, an artist inspired, an artist breaking convention, artistic and social, but nevertheless an artist transforming life with a vision of the enhancement of life, a vision inviting each one of us to look again at the natural forms around us, to feel the spirit or the gods dwelling in them, a vision of enchantment and of humanity in a disenchanted world. Art—painting—can, then, be a source of spiritual nourishment as Kant and Schiller and Ruskin in their different ways thought it should be. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Popper's attitude to traditions is fundamentally rationalistic. He analyses traditions, along with other institutions and practices, in terms of their efficiency in promoting goals which can be specified independently of the traditions themselves. Hayek, by contrast, looks at traditions in terms of their contributions to the survival of the culture in which they are embedded, something whose evaluation may be opaque even to people within the culture. Both these approaches are flawed compared to Oakeshott's insistence that traditions are not (...) goal‐oriented, and that goals cannot be specified independently of agents’forms of life. Oakeshott's views constitute a via media between Popperian rationalism and Hayekian anti‐rationalism. (shrink)

Even today, apologists for modernist and post-modernist architecture frequently appeal to what, following Sir Karl Popper, I will call historicist arguments. Such arguments have a particular poignancy when they are used to justify the replacement of some familiar part of an ancient city with some intentionally untraditional structure; as, for example, when a familiar nineteenth century block of offices in a prime city site is swept away to make room for something supposedly more fitting to the ‘new millennium’, a ‘twentieth (...) century contribution to monumental architecture’, a building ‘of substantial importance to the present age’. Similarly, those architects or consumers of architecture who fail to conform to whatever stylistic demands the age is held to demand are marginalized in many supposedly serious discussions of architecture, and made to feel out of place and out of time. (shrink)

In this controversial new book O'Hear takes a stand against the fashion for explaining human behavior in terms of evolution. He contends that while the theory of evolution is successful in explaining the development of the natural world in general, it is of limited value when applied to the human world. Because of our reflectiveness and our rationality we take on goals and ideals which cannot be justified in terms of survival-promotion or reproductive advantage. O'Hear examines the nature (...) of human self-consciousness, and argues that evolutionary theory cannot give a satisfactory account of such distinctive facets of human life as the quest for knowledge, moral sense, and the appreciation of beauty; in these we transcend our biological origins. It is our rationality that allows each of us to go beyond not only our biological but also our cultural inheritance: as the author says in the Preface, "we are prisoners neither of our genes nor of the ideas we encounter as we each make our personal and individual way through life.". (shrink)

In this book Anthony O’Hear examines the reasons that are given for religious faith. His approach is firmly within the classical tradition of natural theology, but an underlying theme is the differences between the personal Creator of the Bible or the Koran and a God conceived of as the indeterminate ground of everything determinate. Drawing on several religious traditions and on the resources of contemporary philosophy, specific chapters analyse the nature of religious faith and of religious experience. They examine (...) connections between religion and morality, and religion and human knowledge – the cosmological, teleological and ontological arguments, process thought, and the problem that evil presents for religion. The final chapter returns to the inherently dogmatic nature of religious faith and concludes that rational people should look beyond religion for the fulfilment of their spiritual needs. (shrink)

This book expounds and analyses notions of transcendence, creation and incarnation reflectively and personally, combining both philosophical and religious insights. Preferring tender-minded approaches to reductively materialistic ones, it shows some ways in which reductive approaches to human affairs can distort the appreication of our lives and activities. In the book's first half it examines a number of aspects of human life and experience in the thought of Darwin, Ruskin, and Scruton with a view to exploring the extent to which there (...) could be intimations of transcendence. The second half is then devoted to outlining an account of divine creation and incarnation, deriving initially, though not uncritically, from the thought of Simone Weil. The text concludes by examining the extent to which grace is needed to engage in religious practice and belief. Taking in art, literature, music and classical Greek writings, this is a multifaceted thesis on transcendence. It will, therefore, will be of keen interest to any scholar of Philosophy of Religion, Theology, Aesthetics and Metaphysics. (shrink)

Few philosophers in this century have had either Karl Popper's range or his influence, inside and outside philosophy. This collection of essays by fifteen distinguished philosophers, several of whom have been closely associated with Popper and his work, provides a timely assessment of Popper's contributions in a number of key areas: the methodology and philosophy of science; probability and determinism; quantum theory; biology; the theory of evolution; and the theory and practice of politics. The volume offers the specialist and the (...) general reader alike fresh insights into the life and work of one of the twentieth century's most original thinkers. (shrink)

Much contemporary philosophical debate centres on the topics of logic, thought and language, and on the connections between these topics. This collection of articles is based on the Royal Institute of Philosophy's annual lecture series for 2000–2001. Its contributors include a number of those working at the forefront of the field, and in their papers they reflect their own current pre-occupations. As such, the volume will be of interest to all philosophers, whether their own work is within the areas of (...) language and thought or not. (shrink)

OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE GROWTH OF KNOWLEDGE: POPPER OR WITTGENSTEIN? by Peter Munz London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985. 353 pp., £17.95.

In this book Anthony O’Hear examines the reasons that are given for religious faith. His approach is firmly within the classical tradition of natural theology, but an underlying theme is the differences between the personal Creator of the Bible or the Koran and a God conceived of as the indeterminate ground of everything determinate. Drawing on several religious traditions and on the resources of contemporary philosophy, specific chapters analyse the nature of religious faith and of religious experience. They examine (...) connections between religion and morality, and religion and human knowledge – the cosmological, teleological and ontological arguments, process thought, and the problem that evil presents for religion. The final chapter returns to the inherently dogmatic nature of religious faith and concludes that rational people should look beyond religion for the fulfilment of their spiritual needs. (shrink)

‘Come on, it's not a matter of life and death’, said some Job-like comforter, following a defeat in a football match. ‘No’, replied Bill Shankly, the granite-like Scot who was manager of Liverpool FC during their days of pre-eminence, whose team had just lost, ‘it is more important than that’.

The Odyssey, Paradise Lost, The Canterbury Tales: great literature can be read by anyone, with a little help. The eminent British philosopher Anthony O’Hear leads the way with this captivating journey through two-and-a-half millennia of books as powerful, thrilling, erotic, politically astute, and awe-inspiring as any modern bestseller. O’Hear begins with Homer, whose poems of epic struggle have made him the father of Western literature. After Greek tragedy, Plato, and Virgil’s Aeneid comes Ovid, whose encyclopedic Metamorphoses is an (...) inexhaustible source for European art and literature. Via Saint Augustine, O’Hear reaches Dante and his terrifying and sublime Divine Comedy. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Milton, Pascal, Racine, and finally Goethe complete the cast list. In each case, O’Hear patiently draws out themes, focuses on key passages, and explains why they are important. Not simply a grand work of reference, The Great Books is also a narrative history shot through with a love of literature and the author’s deeply held belief in its power to enrich and enliven everyone’s world. (shrink)

What sorts of things really exist, in the world or out of it? What can we know about them? How do your thoughts and words relate to reality? What are human beings? What do their freedom and consciousness amount to? How should people act? What would a just society be like? These are the perennial problems of philosophy, which have been examined and debated for thousands of years and are still confronted by philosophers today. In his superb general introduction to (...) contemporary philosophy and its concerns, Anthony O'Hear shows how differing answers to these questions lead to differing conceptions of ourselves and the world. (shrink)

This volume celebrates the centenary of the birth of Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley and Iris Murdoch. These four remarkable women were philosophical colleagues in Oxford in the 1940s, and their careers intertwined and overlapped henceforth. The papers in this book are all by prominent philosophers who spoke at the Royal Institute of Philosophy's annual lecture series from 2018-9. Together they cover the philosophical careers of Anscombe, Foot, Midgley and Murdoch, focusing on their thinking on morality, human nature and (...) action and the place of humanity in the animal and natural world, all areas to which they made notable and distinctive contributions. Connexions are drawn to the thought of Wittgenstein, Aquinas and Aristotle. This book demonstrates the way these four philosophers individually and collectively changed the direction of philosophy in the English speaking world in the mid-twentieth-century and how they continue to influence it one hundred years after their birth. (shrink)

This paper considers Mary Midgley's views on evolution, especially as developed in her book Evolution as a Religion. In this she continues the critical campaign she waged against Dawkins’ notion of the selfish gene, but broadens her attack out to encompass many other thinkers, who are predicting dramatic and revolutionary futures for humanity, based supposedly on what evolutionary science tells us. Midgley argues that no such conclusions are scientifically warranted – hence evolution as a religion. Her own attempts to absolve (...) Darwin himself from this sort of scientism, and to remove from him any taint of social Darwinism are criticised, particularly by reference to The Descent of Man. Something is then said about Midgley's own alternative view of nature and humanity, a more holistic view, which itself has religious overtones. (shrink)

Discussions of value play a central role in contemporary philosophy. This book considers the role of values in truth seeking, in morality, in aesthetics and also in the spiritual life. The distinguished contributors include Simon Blackburn, Jonathan Dancy, Paul Horwich, John Leslie, Timothy Sprigge, and David Wiggins.

This collection of essays from the Royal Institute of Philosophy shows the connections and interrelations between the analytic and hermeneutic strains in German philosophy since Kant, partly to challenge the idea that there are two separate, non-communicating traditions. The distinguished contributors include Robert Solomon writing on Nietzsche, Michael Inwood on Heidegger, P. M. S. Hacker on Frege and Wittgenstein, Christopher Janaway on Schopenhauer, Thomas Uebel on Neurath and the Vienna Circle, and Jay Bernstein on Adorno. The collection is rounded off (...) by a paper by Jürgen Habermas specifically on hermeneutic and analytic philosophy. (shrink)

This collection brings together the primary assessments of and reactions to the work and abiding influence of this revolutionary thinker, as well as the controversy he caused across many academic and political fields. The set includes early responses to Popper's work from sources difficult to obtain, and also two early reviews (by Carnap and Grelling) in translations specially prepared for this set. It is organized thematically, and includes a substantial new introduction by the editor.

This is not the first time the title ‘Art and Technology’ has been used, but to distinguish what I have to say from Walter Gropius's Bauhaus exhibition of 1923, I am subtitling my paper ‘an old tension’, where the architect spoke of ‘a new unity’. In a way, Gropius has been proved right; the structures of the future avoiding all romantic embellishment and whimsy, the cathedrals of socialism, the corporate planning of comprehensive Utopian designs have all gone up and some (...) come down. We have a mass media culture also largely made possible by technology. Corporatist architecture, whether statist ‘social housing’ or freemarket inspired, films, videos, modern recording and musical techniques are all due to technological advances made mostly this century. Only in a very puritanical sense could what has happened be thought of as inevitably bringing with it enslavement. All kinds of possibilities are now open to artists and architects, which would have been imaginable a few decades ago. No one is forced to use these possibilities in any specific way. (shrink)

A series of nine major articles by eminent philosophers on the life and work of some of the most important twentieth-century philosophers at Cambridge. All these essays originally appeared in the journal Philosophy from the Royal Institute of Philosophy.

A deep concern with consciousness and intentionality is one of the several things that has lately moved into the centre of the philosophy of mind. The issue of consciousness is often treated as something distinct from intentionality, but – as Tim Crane notes in his incisive new Foreword – there is now something of a sea-change. This classic volume may be at least partly responsible for the shift in how philosophy of mind is starting to be understood. Before its first (...) appearance, discussions of consciousness and intentionality in the context of perception were in their infancy. The book was a departure from the way this part of philosophy was conceived. It pointed to new ways to look at the discipline, addressing both the epistemology of mind, and intentionality and consciousness, especially in connection with perception. Showcasing many leading figures in the field, it offers a splendid overview of the issues at stake. (shrink)

It is appropriate that a lecture in a series on ‘Philosophy and Practice’ should open by considering Bentham's ideas on imprisonment. For Bentham, incontestably a philosopher, was equally incontestably a practical reformer. This, indeed, is a received idea among philosophers; that is to say, most philosophers know that Bentham designed ‘a model prison of novel design’ (Mary Warnock), but few have actually considered the design, its implications or its effects. Most are content, like Warnock, with observing that the panopticon plan (...) was formally rejected, before passing on to the abstraction of Bentham's felicific calculus, his notion of utility, and his ideas about the foundations of law. Yet, strange as it may seem, the underlying idea of the panopticon has never been completely abandoned. One aspect of the idea pervades penal thinking, even while prison practice is still influenced by Bentham's practical proposals; moreover, the panoptic ideal has taken root far beyond the walls of actual prisons. Here is philosophy in practice, and yet, in many ways, practically and intellectually a failure. (shrink)

It is appropriate that a lecture in a series on ‘Philosophy and Practice’ should open by considering Bentham's ideas on imprisonment. For Bentham, incontestably a philosopher, was equally incontestably a practical reformer. This, indeed, is a received idea among philosophers; that is to say, most philosophers know that Bentham designed ‘a model prison of novel design’ (Mary Warnock), but few have actually considered the design, its implications or its effects. Most are content, like Warnock, with observing that the panopticon plan (...) was formally rejected, before passing on to the abstraction of Bentham's felicific calculus, his notion of utility, and his ideas about the foundations of law. Yet, strange as it may seem, the underlying idea of the panopticon has never been completely abandoned. One aspect of the idea pervades penal thinking, even while prison practice is still influenced by Bentham's practical proposals; moreover, the panoptic ideal has taken root far beyond the walls of actual prisons. Here is philosophy in practice, and yet, in many ways, practically and intellectually a failure. (shrink)

There is a country where teachers have high status, and in which they have qualifications on a par with members of other respected profession. Parents and children have high aspirations and high expectations from education. Children are fully aware of the importance of hard and consistent work from each pupil. Schools open on 222 days in the year, and operate on the belief that all children can acquire the core elements of the core subjects. It is not expected that a (...) class will have a tail. Those in danger of becoming part of an incipient tail have to make up work in their breaks or after school. If the worst comes to the worst poor pupils have to repeat a year, while those who are exceptionally able will move up a year. In the primary schools, children are kept as one large group whatever their individual ability. The teacher teaches the whole group, largely from a text book, though interspersing exposition with focused questioning and discussion, so as to ensure the matter in hand has been properly assimilated by all. Lessons last 40 minutes each, with frequent breaks for letting off steam, after which it is down to work again. Pupils are frequently tested and the school Principal makes a couple of unannounced checks on homework books each term. Secondary schools are selective , allowing whole class teaching and whole class progression to predominate up to the end of schooling. The teacher indeed is in contact with the whole class for up to 80 per cent of the lesson time. While the school certainly does have non-academic aims, the focus is clearly on academic work. There is a conviction, shared by all involved, that the social and moral dimensions of the curriculum will tend to look after themselves and emerge as by-products of a properly conducted academic study. (shrink)

In this volume a group of distinguished aestheticians consider the distinctive ways painting, sculpture, music, poetry and the cinema approach their subject matter and add to our aesthetic understanding. In addition these are discussions of artistic value and artistic truth, of the value of performance and of the problem of fakes, all of which contribute to a volume which will be of interest both to aestheticians and philosophers more generally.

In this volume a group of distinguished aestheticians consider the distinctive ways painting, sculpture, music, poetry and the cinema approach their subject matter and add to our aesthetic understanding. In addition these are discussions of artistic value and artistic truth, of the value of performance and of the problem of fakes, all of which contribute to a volume which will be of interest both to aestheticians and philosophers more generally.

As we stand on the brink of the third millennium, a large part of the human race may feel justified in a certain complacency. We are very much in thrall to the idea that history is moving forward in a desirable - or progressive - direction. In much of the world - and certainly in its most prosperous parts - we are all basically liberal, fundamentally pacific and reasonably affluent.

During the recent Iraq war there was a great deal of discussion of the desirability of bringing democracy to Iraq, and indeed to other countries which were suffering under ruthless and oppressive dictatorships. There was also the thought that if Iraq had a flourishing democratic system, its benefits would become evident within the Middle East, and other peoples in the area would be encouraged to press for more democracy in their own countries. And critics who expressed doubts about any of (...) this were accused of treating the people of the Middle East in a patronising way, implying that they were not able to do what we in the West have managed for some time. (shrink)

Based on the London Lecture Series of the Royal Institute of Philosophy for 2006–7, this collection brings together essays from leading figures in a rapidly developing field of philosophy. Contributors include: Alvin Goldman, Timothy Williamson, Duncan Pritchard, Miranda Fricker, Scott Sturgeon, Jose Zalabardo, and Quassin Casay.

Based on the London Lecture Series of the Royal Institute of Philosophy for 2006–7, this collection brings together essays from leading figures in a rapidly developing field of philosophy. Contributors include: Alvin Goldman, Timothy Williamson, Duncan Pritchard, Miranda Fricker, Scott Sturgeon, Jose Zalabardo, and Quassin Casay.