Is Goodness Without God Good Enough contains a lively debate between William Lane Craig and Paul Kurtz on the relationship between God and ethics, followed by seven new essays that both comment on the debate and advance the broader discussion of this important issue. Written in an accessible style by eminent scholars, this book will appeal to students and academics alike.

O presente trabalho pretende investigar as veredas da estética da crueldade construídas no romance Venenos de Deus, remédios do Diabo, de Mia Couto, a partir da hibridização, desterriorização e dos percursos das identidades diaspóricas criadas e fragmentadas nos discursos existentes na Vila Cacimba, cenário que documenta a história de Bartolomeu Sozinho, sua esposa Dona Munda, o médico Sidónio Rosa e a mulher que este ama e busca reencontrar em Vila Cacimba, Deolinda. Nesse cenário é que os textos acerca da língua (...) enquanto colonização, da suposta epidemia enquanto multietnicidade, da diáspora, das miscigenações vistas com muita resistência, e certas inversões de significados tidos como maniqueísmos e tabus, como sugere o próprio título Venenos de Deus, remédios do Diabo, desvelam estéticas da crueldade nos cruzamentos de fronteiras e nas fronteiras que se cruzam em discursos identitários. (shrink)

Has the Internet changed the pattern of social relations? More specifically, have social relations undergone any systematic change during the recent widespread diffusion of new communications technology? This question is addressed using a unique longitudinal survey that bookends the entire period of Internet diffusion in two African nations and one Indian state. We analyze data on nine professional linkages reported by a population of agricultural and environmental scientists in Kenya, Ghana, and Kerala over a sixteen-year period. Factor analysis reveals two (...) clusters of relationships, one interpretable as traditional scientific exchange, the other indicating mediated forms of collaboration. While collaboration increases in frequency, friendship declines. We interpret this shift as a consequence of communications technology that facilitates formal projects, reducing the affective dimension of professional association. (shrink)

Antoni Domènech was one of Spain’s most important political philosophers of the late twentieth and early twentyfirst centuries. Known primarily as a scholar of republicanism, his work on the concepts of individual liberty and rights complicates standard liberal definitions, which he believed erred in defining these terms independent of institutional context, as pre-political attributes of the individual. He argued that republicanism corrected liberalism’s abstraction by making one’s actually being able to exercise liberty and rights depend on one’s enjoying a sufficiently (...) robust set of material conditions, or on having enough property so that one could always avoid unequal social relationships. (shrink)

In the late nineteenth century, French naturalists were global leaders in microbial research. Louis Pasteur advanced sterilization techniques and demonstrated that dust particles in the air could contaminate a putrefiable liquid. Pasteur’s discoveries prompted a new research program for the naturalists of the Talisman and Travailleur expeditions: to recover uncontaminated water and mud samples from the deep sea. French naturalists Adrien Certes and Paul Regnard both independently conducted experiments to address the question of whether microorganisms inhabited the oceans and (...) whether organic material in the deep sea was subject to decomposition. The experiments of Certes and Regnard have largely been omitted from histories of microbiology and marine science. However, an examination of their work is crucial for understanding the context in which marine microbiology first developed. At the end of the nineteenth century, marine microbiology emerged from the disciplinary melding of terrestrial microbial ecology, experimental physiology, and the then-nascent field of deep-sea biology. (shrink)

Un hilo tenue engarza los ensayos reunidos en este volumen y un leit motiv como el de un bajo continuo surge y se oculta, jugando entre las páginas. El testimonio de Paul Valéry nos ofrece el tema del que este libro constituiría unas variaciones: ®El.

Encounters with art can change us in ways both big and small. This paper focuses on one of the more dramatic cases. I argue that works of art can inspire what L. A. Paul calls transformations, classic examples of which include getting married, having a child, and undergoing a religious conversion. Two features distinguish transformations from other changes we undergo. First, they involve the discovery of something new. Second, they result in a change in our core preferences. These two (...) features make transformations hard to motivate. I argue, however, that art can help on both fronts. First, works of art can guide our attempt to imagine unfamiliar ways of living. Second, they can attract us to values we currently reject. I conclude by observing that what makes art powerful also makes it dangerous. Transformations are not always for the good, and art's ability to inspire them can be put to immoral ends. (shrink)

THIS SURVEY WAS ORIGINALLY COMPOSED FOR (IN US TERMS) SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS WHO ARE PREPARING FOR A NEWLY ESTABLISHED EXAMINATION IN PHILOSOPHY. ONE OF THE SET-BOOKS PRESCRIBED FOR THIS COURSE IS HUME’S FIRST "INQUIRY". "HUME’S PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION" THEREFORE CONTAINS NO MATERIAL NOT ALTERNATIVELY AVAILABLE: EITHER IN "HUME’S PHILOSOPHY OF BELIEF" (LONDON: ROUTLEDGE AND KEGAN PAUL, 1961); OR IN "DAVID HUME": "PHILOSOPHER OF MORAL SCIENCE" (OXFORD: BLACKWELL, 1986).

ABSTRACT Paul Russell's ‘Nozick, need and charity’, published in Vol. 4, No. 2 of the Journal of Applied Philosophy develops an attack on Nozick's thesis that “the state may not use its coercive apparatus for the purpose of getting some citizens to aid others’’in order “to contribute to our positive understanding of the nature of distributive justice”. Against Russell the present paper argues: first, that although these kinds of use of the coercive apparatus of the state are indeed justified—even (...) if not necessarily for the reasons which he gives—such justified uses are nevertheless not mandated by any sort of justice; and, secondly, that by collapsing the distinction between justice and the less fundamental virtue of charity Russell detracts from the credit due to the charitable. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:INCONSISTENCY WITHIN A RECONCILING PROJECT There is nothing I wou'd more willingly lay hold of, than an opportunity of confessing my errors; and shou'd esteem such a return to truth and reason to be more honourable than the most unerring judgment. Hume's words in the first sentence of its Appendix referred to Books I and II of A Treatise of Human Nature. I quote them here with a similarly (...) particular but less glorious reference to Chapter VIII of my Hume's Philosophy of Belief (London, and New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, and Philosophical Library, 19 61). The errors to be corrected are in the first instance mine. But, if I am now right, they are also and more importantly to be found in the first Inquiry itself. Hume's purpose in Section VIII is to apply to the long disputed question concerning liberty and necessity what he takes to be his discovery that Our idea... of necessity and causation arises entirely from the uniformity observable in the operations of nature, where similar objects are constantly conjoined together, and the mind is determined by custom to infer the one from the appearance of the other. These two circumstances form the whole of that necessity, which we ascribe to matter (Selby-Bigge, EHU 81-82). In urging what is here offered as the new and only correct interpretation of what others want to distinguish as contingent necessity and contingent impossibility, Hume is in their - and my - terms saying that there is no genuine idea of, and no such thing as, contingent necessity and contingent impossibility. There are, that is to say, no true logically contingent propositions asserting certain necessities and impossibilities whether relative or absolute. There are, on the contrary, only logical necessities and logical impossibilities; and these obtain simply as relations of ideas. They do not and cannot either characterize or determine real existence and matter of fact (EHU 25-26). Now certainly, if Hume were right in maintaining either that we cannot coherently assert, or that we never have due warrant for asserting, that any causes necessitate their effects - that they make these, that is, as a matter of fact inevitable and anything else as a matter of fact impossible - then it would become a short and easy task to effect a Compatibilist resolution of the long disputed question. For, on this assumption, nothing more than profound regularities of human behaviour, and sometimes predictabilities, ever have been or ever could be revealed, whether in the everyday experience of the banausic vulgar, or whether by the elevated investigations of the physical and the human sciences. Discoveries of this sort, however, do not and cannot prejudice the familiar realities of human action; which just requires that, in some sense, agents must always be able to do otherwise than they do. This sense - a sense which allows that both the agent who acts freely and the agent who acts under compulsion act - Hume explicates as Locke had done before him in the great chapter 'Of Power' (Essay, II (xxi) 7 ff.). Action necessarily involves a power of acting or not acting, according to the determinations of the will; that is, if we choose to remain at rest, we may; if we choose to move, we also may (EHU 95). 1. Having thus in Part I drawn Compatibilist conclusions from what is in effect his rejection of all contingent necessity and contingent impossibility, Hume proceeds in Part II to apply his findings to the theological special case: to the equally long disputed question of freewill and predestination, that is, rather than of freewill and determinism. After first considering that all reward and punishment must presuppose that the persons to be so treated are the causes of whatever it is for which they are to be rewarded or punished, Hume entertains what ironically he presents as an objection to this theory, with regard to necessity and liberty... It may be said, for instance, that, if voluntary actions be subjected to the same laws of necessity with the operations of matter, there is a continued chain of necessary causes, pre-ordained and pre-determined, reaching from the original cause of all to... (shrink)

ABSTRACT Kierkegaard seeks to inspire transformations. His aim is to get us to devote our lives to God or the Good rather than our own personal enjoyment – to abandon the aesthetic life in favour of the ethical or religious one. Drawing on Laurie Paul and Agnes Callard’s recent work, I maintain that two obstacles stand in Kierkegaard’s way. First, transformations involve adopting a new perspective on the world, one we cannot fully grasp ahead of time. Second, transformations also (...) involve coming to care about something we do not yet care about. On my interpretation, Kierkegaard sees art, especially literature, as central to overcoming both obstacles. Good stories afford us a glimpse into what it would look and feel like to live in ways other than we currently do. In addition, they have the power to attract us to points of view we would ordinarily reject. (shrink)

In this compelling volume, ten distinguished thinkers -- William G. Lycan, Galen Strawson, Jeffrey Poland, Georges Rey, Frances Egan, Paul Horwich, Peter Ludlow, Paul Pietroski, Alison Gopnik, and Ruth Millikan -- address a variety of conceptual issues raised in Noam Chomsky's work. Distinguished list of critics: William G. Lycan, Galen Strawson, Jeffrey Poland, Georges Rey, Frances Egan, Paul Horwich, Peter Ludlow, Paul Pietroski, Alison Gopnik, and Ruth Millikan. Includes Chomsky's substantial new replies and responses to each (...) essay. The best critical introduction to Chomsky's thought as a whole. (shrink)

Hume's compatibilist arguments are generally understood to be arguments about the logic of our notion of moral freedom. It would be illogical to hold an agent responsible for an action with which he is entirely unconnected. Accordingly, it would be illogical to hold an agent responsible for an action which was either uncaused or caused by factors external to the agent. It is logically necessary that a responsible action is one that has been determined by the will of the agent. (...) In short, while it is reasonable to hold an agent who has liberty of spontaneity responsible it is not reasonable to hold an agent responsible for actions that are due to indifference or external violence. This is the gist of what I shall call the 'orthodox' interpretation of Hume's 'reconciling project'. -/- This paper argues that these claims are seriously mistaken. Hume introduces 'the experimental method of reasoning' into this controversy in order to put an end to 'this long disputed question'. His arguments relating to 'liberty' and 'necessity' describe the 'regular mechanism' that governs the operation of our moral sentiments and relies on description rather than on 'logic' or 'conceptual analysis'. In important respects, therefore, Hume's 'general strategy' is very different from that of compatibilism as ordinarily understood (i.e. as per the 'orthodox' or classical interpretation). ________ Replies include: -/- * Antony Flew, "Paul Russell on Hume's `reconciling project' "; Mind 93 (372):587-588 (1984) -/- * Paul Russell, "Hume's `reconciling project': A reply to Flew"; Mind 94 (376):587-590 (1985) -/- . (shrink)

In recent years a number of general studies of Hume’s philosophy have appeared. It is in this rather crowded traffic that Professor Antony Flew’s David Hume must make its way.... Flew claims that “no previous study of Hume’s philosophy has made nearly enough of the fact that almost all his conclusions are, for better or for worse, conditioned and sometimes determined by an interlocking set of Cartesian assumptions”(p. 2). In this way, Flew suggests that earlier interpreters have rarely recognised (...) the “grotesquely paradoxical” nature of Hume’s Cartesian assumptions and have, therefore, “failed to point the strangeness, the often self-frustrating perversity, of some of the positions which Hume was misled to adopt later” (p. 3).... ..... In a short introductory work it is, of course, very difficult to defend particular interpretations and criticisms in much detail. Nevertheless, I find that Flew’s discussion frequently moves at an excessive speed and that too often his claims are not given the care and attention that they require. Flew certainly does have some interesting points to make and, at his best, Flew is an insightful and stimulating commentator. On the whole, however, his claims come across as thinly defended, poorly articulated and, as a result, rather unconvincing.... (shrink)

Sidney Hook is considered by many to be America's most influential philosopher today. An earlier defender of Marxism, he became its most persistent critic, especially of its totalitarian and revolutionary manifestations. A student of John Dewey's pragmatism, Sidney Hook has written extensively about most of the live moral, social and political issues of the day. He has known and debated many of the leading thinkers of the twentieth century, such as Max Eastman, Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein, Jacques Maritain, Mortimer Adler, (...) Robert Hutchins, Paul Tillich, Noam Chomsky, and John Kenneth Galbraith. Throughout his career, which spans a half a century, Sidney Hook has been a stalwart defender of the social democratic philosophy of freedom. At a time when secular humanism has been under heavy criticism from the New Right, he stands out as the leading philosophical representative of the position. Virtually all of the essays in this volume were written especially for it. The list of contributors includes Irving Kristol, Antony Flew, Nathan Glazer, Lewis Feuer, Daniel Bell, Richard Rorty, Ernest Nagel, Edward Shils, Seymour Martin Lipset, Ernest van den Haag, and others, all of whom testified that their thinking has been profoundly influenced by Sidney Hook's wisdom and insight. These original essays are wide-ranging in scope, but all are focused on Hook's philosophy or on subjects in which he has shown an abiding interest: socialism, democracy, equality, quotas, higher education, academic freedom, humanism, liberal education, natural and human rights, and pragmatism. The book also contains a complete up-to-date bibliography of the writings of Sidney Hook. (shrink)

Offering a unique and wide-ranging examination of the theory of knowledge, the new edition of this comprehensive collection deftly blends readings from the foremost classical sources with the work of important contemporary philosophical thinkers. Human Knowledge: Classical and Contemporary Approaches, 3/e, offers philosophical examinations of epistemology from ancient Greek and Roman philosophy (Plato, Aristotle, Sextus Empiricus); medieval philosophy (Augustine, Aquinas); early modern philosophy (Descartes, Locke, Leibniz, Berkeley, Hume, Reid, Kant); classical pragmatism and Anglo-American empiricism (James, Russell, Ayer, Lewis, Carnap, Quine, (...) Rorty); and other influential Anglo-American philosophers (Chisholm, Kripke, Moore, Wittgenstein, Strawson, Putnam). Organized chronologically and thematically, Human Knowledge, 3/e, features exceptionally broad coverage and nontechnical selections that are easily accessible to students. An ideal text for both undergraduate and graduate courses in epistemology, it is enhanced by the editors' substantial general introduction, section overviews, and up-to-date bibliographies. The third edition offers expanded selections on contemporary epistemology and adds selections by Thomas Reid, Richard Rorty, David B. Annis, Richard Feldman and Earl Conee, Ernest Sosa, Barry Stroud, and Louise M. Antony. Human Knowledge, 3/e, offers an unparalleled introduction to our ancient struggle to understand our own intellectual experience. (shrink)

My discussion in this paper proceeds in four stages. First, Iprovide a brief description of Nozick’s entitlement theory and I raise some general questions about it. Secondly, I argue, contrary to Nozick, that we are justified in distributing some goods on the basis of need. More specifically, I argue that we must distinguish between the claim that goods ought to be distributed on the basis of need and the claim that goods which are essential needs ought to be distributed on (...) the basis of need. In the third section I consider the objection that such distributions will inevitably lead to the violation of individuals’ property rights. I argue that individuals are obliged to be charitable and that this obligation places limits on what they are entitled to. What charity requires of us, I maintain, we have no rights over and we must relinquish. In the fourth and final section I point out the general significance of these arguments. _______________ Replies include : -/- * Antony Flew, Meeting Needs: charity or justice?: Journal of Applied Philosophy 5 (2): 225-231. 1988. -/- * Tony Skillen, "Flew on Russell on Nozick: uncharitable interpretations of justice and unjust views of charity"; Journal of Applied Philosophy 7 (1): 87-89. 1990. (shrink)

_Mini-set E: Radical Politics/The Socialist Tradition_ re-issues works by H B Acton, George Brenkert, Tom Campbell, Antony Cutler, Barry Hindess, Paul Hirst, Athar Hussain, Amlan Datta, J Jupp, Dennis Kavanagh, Norman MacKenzie, Patricia Pugh and Paul Thomas among others which discuss the history of socialism and the marxist and anarchist traditions.

Offering a unique and wide-ranging examination of the theory of knowledge, the new edition of this comprehensive collection deftly blends readings from the foremost classical sources with the work of important contemporary philosophical thinkers. Human Knowledge: Classical and Contemporary Approaches, 3/e, offers philosophical examinations of epistemology from ancient Greek and Roman philosophy ; medieval philosophy ; early modern philosophy ; classical pragmatism and Anglo-American empiricism ; and other influential Anglo-American philosophers. Organized chronologically and thematically, Human Knowledge, 3/e, features exceptionally broad (...) coverage and nontechnical selections that are easily accessible to students. An ideal text for both undergraduate and graduate courses in epistemology, it is enhanced by the editors' substantial general introduction, section overviews, and up-to-date bibliographies. The third edition offers expanded selections on contemporary epistemology and adds selections by Thomas Reid, Richard Rorty, David B. Annis, Richard Feldman and Earl Conee, Ernest Sosa, Barry Stroud, and Louise M. Antony. Human Knowledge, 3/e, offers an unparalleled introduction to our ancient struggle to understand our own intellectual experience. (shrink)

The options in a decision problem generally have outcomes with common features. Putting aside the common features simplifies deliberations, but the simplification requires a philosophical justification that this book provides.

The twentieth century has witnessed an unprecedented 'crisis in the foundations of mathematics', featuring a world-famous paradox (Russell's Paradox), a challenge to 'classical' mathematics from a world-famous mathematician (the 'mathematical intuitionism' of Brouwer), a new foundational school (Hilbert's Formalism), and the profound incompleteness results of Kurt Gödel. In the same period, the cross-fertilization of mathematics and philosophy resulted in a new sort of 'mathematical philosophy', associated most notably (but in different ways) with Bertrand Russell, W. V. Quine, and Gödel himself, (...) and which remains at the focus of Anglo-Saxon philosophical discussion. The present collection brings together in a convenient form the seminal articles in the philosophy of mathematics by these and other major thinkers. It is a substantially revised version of the edition first published in 1964 and includes a revised bibliography. The volume will be welcomed as a major work of reference at this level in the field. (shrink)

Die MISCELLANEA MEDIAEVALIA präsentieren seit ihrer Gründung durch Paul Wilpert im Jahre 1962 Arbeiten des Thomas-Instituts der Universität zu Köln. Das Kernstück der Publikationsreihe bilden die Akten der im zweijährigen Rhythmus stattfindenden Kölner Mediaevistentagungen, die vor über 50 Jahren von Josef Koch, dem Gründungsdirektor des Instituts, ins Leben gerufen wurden. Der interdisziplinäre Charakter dieser Kongresse prägt auch die Tagungsakten: Die MISCELLANEA MEDIAEVALIA versammeln Beiträge aus allen mediävistischen Disziplinen - die mittelalterliche Geschichte, die Philosophie, die Theologie sowie die Kunst- und (...) Literaturwissenschaften sind Teile einer Gesamtbetrachtung des Mittelalters. (shrink)

Schelling und Hegel benutzen in ihren philosophischen Texten mathematische und naturwissenschaftliche Modelle wie Unendlichkeit oder Gleichgewicht. Die Strukturen dieser Begriffe liefern einen Massstab fur den Vergleich der Positionen Schellings und Hegels, der fur Schellings Identitatsphilosophie und Hegels erste Jenaer Schriften durchgefuhrt wird. Als wichtigstes Resultat kann eine grundlegende Differenz zwischen beiden Positionen bereits um 1801 nachgewiesen und gezeigt werden, dass diese auf einer unterschiedlichen Auffassung der Rolle des Absoluten beruht.

Descartes is widely portrayed as the arch proponent of “the epistemological transparency of thought” (or simply, “Transparency”). The most promising version of this view—Transparency-through-Introspection—says that introspecting (i.e., inwardly attending to) a thought guarantees certain knowledge of that thought. But Descartes rejects this view and provides numerous counterexamples to it. I argue that, instead, Descartes’s theory of self-knowledge is just an application of his general theory of knowledge. According to his general theory, certain knowledge is acquired only through clear and distinct (...) intellection. Thus, in his view, certain knowledge of one’s thoughts is acquired only through clear and distinct intellection of one’s thoughts. Introspection is a form of intellection and it can be clear and distinct. Ordinarily, however, introspection isn’t clear and distinct but is instead confused with dubitable perceptions of bodies. To make introspection clear and distinct, we need to “sharply separate” it from all perceptions of bodies by doubting all perceptions of bodies. Without such radical doubt, introspection remains confused and we lack certain knowledge not just of the specific features of our thoughts, but even of the minimal claim that a thought exists. Far from being the high priest of Transparency, Descartes is radically opposed to it. (shrink)

Zusammenfassungen der Referate in französischer Sprache.

An agent often does not have precise probabilities or utilities to guide resolution of a decision problem. I advance a principle of rationality for making decisions in such cases. To begin, I represent the doxastic and conative state of an agent with a set of pairs of a probability assignment and a utility assignment. Then I support a decision principle that allows any act that maximizes expected utility according to some pair of assignments in the set. Assuming that computation of (...) an option's expected utility uses comprehensive possible outcomes that include the option's risk, no consideration supports a stricter requirement. (shrink)