Continued concern for animal welfare may be alleviated when welfare would be monitored on farms. Monitoring can be characterized as an information system where various stakeholders periodically exchange relevant information. Stakeholders include producers, consumers, retailers, the government, scientists, and others. Valuating animal welfare in the animal-product market chain is regarded as a key challenge to further improve the welfare of farm animals and information on the welfare of animals must, therefore, be assessed objectively, for instance, through monitoring. Interviews with Dutch (...) stakeholder representatives were conducted to identify their perceptions about the monitoring of animal welfare. Stakeholder perceptions were characterized in relation to the specific perspectives of each stakeholder. While producers tend to perceive welfare from a production point of view, consumers will use visual images derived from traditional farming and from the animals’ natural environments. Scientists’ perceptions of animal welfare are affected by the need to measure welfare with quantifiable parameters. Retailers and governments (policy makers) have views of welfare that are derived from their relationships with producers, consumers, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and scientists. All interviewed stakeholder representatives stated that animal welfare is important. They varied in the extent to which they weighted economic considerations relative to concern for the animals’ welfare. Many stakeholders emphasized the importance of communication in making a monitoring system work. Overall, the perspectives for the development of a sustainable monitoring system that substantially improves farm animal welfare were assessed as being poor in the short term. However, a reliable system could be initiated under certain conditions, such as integrated chains and with influential and motivated stakeholders. A scheme is described with attention points for the development of sustainable monitoring systems for farm animal welfare in the long term. (shrink)

The concept of natural behavior is a key element in current Dutch policy-making on animal welfare. It emphasizes that animals need positive experiences, in addition to minimized suffering. This paper interprets the concept of natural behavior in the context of the scientific framework for welfare assessment. Natural behavior may be defined as behavior that animals have a tendency to exhibit under natural conditions, because these behaviors are pleasurable and promote biological functioning. Animal welfare is the quality of life as perceived (...) by the animal. Animals have evolved cognitive-emotional systems (“welfare needs”) to deal with a variable environment. Animals do not only have so-called physiological needs such as the need for food, water, and thermal comfort. They also need to exercise certain natural behaviors such as rooting or nest-building in pigs, and scratching or dust-bathing in poultry. All needs must be taken into account in order to assess overall welfare. The degree of need satisfaction and frustration can be assessed from scientific information about the intensity, duration, and incidence of (welfare) performance criteria such as measurements of behavior and/or (patho)physiology. Positive welfare value relates to how animals are inclined to behave under natural conditions, in preference tests, and in consumer-demand studies. Negative welfare value relates to stress, frustration, abnormal behavior, aggression, and reduced fitness. Examples are given to illustrate how the need to perform natural behaviors can be assessed following the general principles for welfare assessment, providing a first approximation of how different natural behaviors affect animal welfare. (shrink)

The Dutch policy objective of a fully sustainable livestock sector without mutilations by 2023 is not compatible with the routine practice of tail docking to minimize the risk of tail biting. To examine farmer attitudes towards docking, a telephone survey was conducted among 487 conventional and 33 organic Dutch pig farmers. “Biting” (of tails, ears, or limbs) was identified by the farmers as a main welfare problem in pig farming. About half of the farmers reported to have no tail biting (...) problems in their own herd. When farmers did report problems, they most often reported figures between 1 and 5 % of the animals. High incidences of tail biting were anticipated when trying to keep undocked pigs. Enrichment materials used in the conventional sector included mainly chains (52–63 % of the farms) and hanging rubber or plastic balls (22–30 %). Straw, sawdust, or wood shavings was hardly provided in conventional pig farming (2–3 %), in contrast to organic farming (88–100 % of farms). Conventional pig farmers feel a curly tail is not very important for sustainable pig farming. They consider enrichment to be less effective and tail docking to be less stressful for them and their piglets than their organic colleagues do. Pig farmers identified climate as a main risk factor for tail biting as opposed to enrichment. The objective of reducing routine tail docking requires solutions for dealing with tail biting problems at the farm level. In this process, transfer of scientific knowledge about enrichment materials and other measures to prevent and cure tail biting is critical, as is a change in farmer attitudes and awareness of the moral issues involved. (shrink)

The Dutch policy objective of a fully sustainable livestock sector without mutilations by 2023 is not compatible with the routine practice of tail docking to minimize the risk of tail biting. To examine farmer attitudes towards docking, a telephone survey was conducted among 487 conventional and 33 organic Dutch pig farmers. “Biting” (of tails, ears, or limbs) was identified by the farmers as a main welfare problem in pig farming. About half of the farmers reported to have no tail biting (...) problems in their own herd. When farmers did report problems, they most often reported figures between 1 and 5 % of the animals. High incidences of tail biting were anticipated when trying to keep undocked pigs. Enrichment materials used in the conventional sector included mainly chains (52–63 % of the farms) and hanging rubber or plastic balls (22–30 %). Straw, sawdust, or wood shavings was hardly provided in conventional pig farming (2–3 %), in contrast to organic farming (88–100 % of farms). Conventional pig farmers feel a curly tail is not very important for sustainable pig farming. They consider enrichment to be less effective and tail docking to be less stressful for them and their piglets than their organic colleagues do. Pig farmers identified climate as a main risk factor for tail biting as opposed to enrichment. The objective of reducing routine tail docking requires solutions for dealing with tail biting problems at the farm level. In this process, transfer of scientific knowledge about enrichment materials and other measures to prevent and cure tail biting is critical, as is a change in farmer attitudes and awareness of the moral issues involved. (shrink)

We analyse the effect of the regulatory T cells (Tregs) in the local control of the immune responses by T cells. We obtain an explicit formula for the level of antigenic stimulation of T cells as a function of the concentration of T cells and the parameters of the model. The relation between the concentration of the T cells and the antigenic stimulation of T cells is an hysteresis, that is unfold for some parameter values. We study the appearance of (...) autoimmunity from cross-reactivity between a pathogen and a self antigen or from bystander proliferation. We also study an asymmetry in the death rates. With this asymmetry we show that the antigenic stimulation of the Tregs is able to control locally the population size of Tregs. Other effects of this asymmetry are a faster immune response and an improvement in the simulations of the bystander proliferation. The rate of variation of the levels of antigenic stimulation determines if the outcome is an immune response or if Tregs are able to maintain control due to the presence of a transcritical bifurcation for some tuning between the antigenic stimuli of T cells and Tregs. This behavior is explained by the presence of a transcritical bifurcation. (shrink)

With the growing interest in Renaissance studies, it is gratifying to see a major scholarly work on a little known philosopher of the Averroistic trend of Aristotelianism that had its seat in his native city of Bologna. Matsen’s study, whose first draft was submitted as a doctoral dissertation at Columbia University, opens with a summary presentation of Alessandro Achillini’s life and works based on archival documents and other first-hand sources. The body of the work focuses on two major themes: the (...) theory of universals and the concept of transcendentals. All students of philosophy are aware of the importance attached to the problem of universals by medieval schoolmen and the consequences that their solution had on their systems of philosophy. It is likewise known that the meaning and value of such transcendental concepts as being, unity, truth, goodness, and the like played a substantial role in the shaping of medieval metaphysics built mainly along Platonic and Aristotelian lines. The fact that a Renaissance man like Achillini carried on the discussion of both topics to such a degree as to devote an entire Quaestio to the study of universals and the first part of his De distinctionibus to the analysis of the transcendentals, shows, among other things, the extent to which Renaissance thought is indebted to medieval philosophy. What is less known, however, is the impact that William of Ockham, whose influence was felt throughout the entire fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, has also had on Renaissance thinkers, and especially on Achillini. A comparison between Ockham’s position on the nature of both the universals and the transcendentals has led Matsen to conclude that there is a striking similarity of view between Ockham and Achillini on many important issues and that the latter was the principal cause of the revival of Ockhamism at Bologna around 1500. (shrink)

A collection of essays written over a period of ten years, this volume reflects a continuing concern with the impact of Kant’s critique upon the study of religion. Kant’s challenge to all subsequent speculation about religion is framed by Dupré in the following questions: "How can we restore the theoretical support of religious faith after Kant’s critique of the arguments for the existence of God? How can a method be conceived for the philosophical study of religion on the basis of (...) experience alone? How can that experience itself be legitimated within the context of human autonomy?". The answer to these questions constitutes the threefold division of the book. In terms of legitimation of religious experience, the author discusses the concept of religion as feeling, freedom, and representation in Schleiermacher, Kierkegaard, and Hegel, respectively. As for the method to be followed in the study of religion based on experience, he presents the theories of Husserl’s intentions of experience, Blondel’s reflection upon this latter, and Duméry’s reductions of experience. Finally, the question of justification of faith is seen in the context of the cosmological, teleological, moral, and ontological arguments of classic philosophy. (shrink)

The ontological argument continues to draw the attention of philosophers of different persuasions. This is one of the latest works on the subject. In it the Anselmian proof as developed in the Proslogion is submitted to careful analysis and placed in relation to Anselm’s approach to God in the Monologion. Thus the title of the book seems to be justified, inasmuch as it is Anselm’s notion of God that is investigated from a rational viewpoint rather than the ontological argument alone. (...) Vuillemin divides his work into four parts, which are followed by a conclusion and seven appendices. In the first two parts he contends that the ontological argument as stated in the Proslogion is a rational proof based on rational data, even though faith may support those data, and that the proof therefore involves an illegitimate transition from the concept of God in our mind to his actual existence, a criticism that the author shares with Kant. The third and fourth parts of the book are Vuillemin’s personal contribution to the understanding of the argument and purport to show the epistemological and mathematical antinomies that result from the "negative" concept of a being than which nothing greater can be thought which is at the basis of the Anselmian proof. It is the author’s contention that reason can prove both the impossibility of conceiving the being in question and the inability of the human mind to argue to the existence of a transcendent being from concepts derived by abstraction from the beings of our experience. Thus Vuillemin would rule out not only the so-called argument a priori of the Proslogion but also the arguments a posteriori presented in the Monologion. To understand Anselm’s ontological argument correctly, it is necessary to view it in the light of Anselm’s belief and in the context of the ideological realism which he shared with the entire Augustinian school. By neglecting such considerations, Vuillemin, like many other interpreters before him, does not seem to have done justice to what has been called "one of the boldest creations of man’s reason and a credit not only to his inventor, but to human reason itself.".—B. M. B. (shrink)

In this volume the author discusses the major trends in the philosophy of religion from Kant to the beginning of the twentieth century. The work is divided into three parts dealing respectively with the methods of study of the religious phenomenon, the nature of religion, and the approach to religion from experience and the principle of immanence. In Part I the theological method, based on revelation and authority, is first discussed; and then the rationalistic method emphasizing the approach to religion (...) from natural reason and having its chief exponents in Kant, Fries, Hegel, Feuerbach and Schleiermacher. Both methods are called aprioristic in contrast with the empirical method adopted by philologists, anthropologists, sociologists and, more recently, by psychologists such as Ribot, Delacroix, Starbuck and William James. Important as it is, the empirical method cannot attain to the essence of religion, which is the chief objective of Lamanna's study. Hence a distinction must be made between science of religion characteristic of the empirical method and philosophy of religion to which the author directs his attention in the second part of his work. Taking as starting point the threefold aspect of psychic life in its dynamic activity, Lamanna groups the various trends in the study of the essence of religion under the following headings: 1) religion as a product of the cognitive function, where both the idealistic doctrines of Hegel, Caird, Vacherot and Spir and the naturalistic doctrines of Gratry, Max Müller, Wundt, and Spencer are analyzed; 2) religion as a product of practical function, where the idealistic theories of Kant, Ritschl, Herrmann, and others are contrasted with the positivistic views of Comte, Durkheim and Nietzsche; 3) religion as a product of the contemplative function, where again idealistic trends as represented by Fries and Schleiermacher are opposed to the naturalistic trends of Schopenhauer, Hartmann and Guyau. The last part of the work is devoted to the study of those theories of religion which stress the approach to God through the inner activity of the self. This may take the form of immediate experience of the divine in the consciousness of the moral ideal ; experience and affirmation of the Absolute immanent in action ; experience and affirmation of the Absolute in the intuition of becoming ; and finally, experience of the divine in the unconscious. In summarizing the results of his inquiry, the author points out the need for an Absolute Reality as the objective goal toward which the inner tendencies of the life of the spirit are directed and as the actualization of the supreme ideals of truth, goodness and beauty. Lamanna's work is a very thorough and extremely informative study that has few equals in the field of philosophy of religion.--B. M. B. (shrink)

In 1967 Paul L'Archevêque published an analytical Index of the works of Teilhard de Chardin which has become an invaluable reference source for the thought of the renowned French scientist. This new Index is to a great extent a continuation and implementation of the former one. While it makes up for some of its deficiencies, it contains many additional references to Teilhard’s works which appeared after 1967, including some unpublished letters and pertinent material from the "Cahiers" of the "Editions du (...) Seuil." A simple look at some of the entries, such as "Christ" with 119 references, "Homme" with 277, "Matière" with 145, and "Vie" with 198, gives an idea of the thoroughness and practical value of this new Index. Thus one can only wholeheartedly agree with Claude Cuénot, the well-known Teilhard scholar and biographer, who, in addition to admitting that both he and the "Fondation Teilhard de Chardin" have greatly profited from the 1967 Index, recommends very highly the Nouvel Index Analytique and expresses the wish that at some future date the two Indexes be combined into one volume with an additional Index of Names. Cuénot’s suggestion has been favorably accepted by the author, who intends to carry out the project as soon as all Teilhard’s works are published.—B. M. B. (shrink)

The many conflicting views that have given rise to the contemporary crisis in religious thought can be traced to certain figures who have played a major role in the shaping of present-day thinking. An exploration of the ideas of these philosopher-theologians, from Schleiermacher and Kierkegaard to Barth, Tillich, Maritain, Berdyaev, Buber, and such lesser figures as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Harvey Cox, Thomas Altizer, and Richard Rubenstein, has been the chief objective of the author of this work. His survey of modern and (...) contemporary religious thinking, which he conducted within a predominantly Protestant framework, has convinced him that a common theme runs through the writings of the men examined by him: the problem of God is inseparable from the problem of modern man. "In the minds of theologians," the author asserts, "the loss of certainty about God is at base a loss of a sense of ultimacy which gives depth and purpose to everyday living.... And so, in responding to the loss of ultimacy, modern theology has reintroduced the question of man himself: his life and death, his experiences of tragedy, joy, guilt, acceptance, loss, and love." While pointing to the radical differences among theologians in their explanations of man's loss of faith, Idinopulos suggests that the theological options offered by such men as Barth, Tillich, Maritain, Berdyaev, and Buber are of paramount importance for the understanding of today's religious thinking. In his final chapter, the author makes a critical appraisal of the chief representatives of "secular theology," such as Bonhoeffer, Cox, and Altizer; and analyzes Rubenstein's peculiar theory of Holy Nothingness, or "Sacred Void out of which we came and to which we return." The author's analysis makes clear the extreme confusion, and even outright absurdity, into which men have been led by the self-styled "Theologians in a World Come of Age," which is the title of the chapter. The volume closes with a selected bibliography for each of the authors discussed and a comprehensive index.--B. M. B. (shrink)

This massive volume is a collection of essays on the concept of God in ancient cultures, the Christian tradition, and a selected number of contemporary thinkers, philosophers and otherwise. It also contains a series of studies on specific problems concerning the relationship between God, man, and the world. Among the ancient religious beliefs discussed in the volume, those have been selected by the editor which play a more important role on the contemporary scene, as far as the knowledge of God (...) is concerned. Thus a prominent place is assigned to Asiatic religions, such as Hinduism, Taoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, and Shintoism, even though the actual influence of some of them has diminished considerably in recent years because of open antireligious policies by the governments of certain countries and a growing secularistic mentality among the people of certain others. The concept of God among the native Africans and in Islam, one of the largest religious bodies in the world, is the subject of two distinct essays, while Judaism is featured in two articles dealing with God in the Biblical-Rabbinic tradition and God in the witness of Israel's election, respectively. (shrink)

This massive study of the history of ancient philosophy is the result of the author's twenty-five years of research while teaching at the Catholic University of Milan, Italy. The importance and popularity of the work is shown by the fact that at the time of the completion of the fifth volume in January of 1979, the first four volumes had already gone through either two or three editions. Reale's work has been preceded by many scholarly studies in the field of (...) ancient Greek philosophy, including the translation into Italian of Aristotle's Metaphysics and, for the first time ever, of Theophrastus's Metaphysics. One of Reale's works has been translated into English by John R. Catan under the title, The Concept of First Philosophy and the Unity of the Metaphysics of Aristotle. The general plan of Reale's. (shrink)

The purpose of this book is to present some of the critical moral issues that confront contemporary society and to evaluate them in the light of ethical principles aiming to preserve and enhance the dignity of human life. The volume opens with a discussion of the nature and implications of conjugal love, the purpose of domestic society, and the role of sex in marriage, where the author relies heavily on Dietrich von Hildebrand "whose writings for half a century have given (...) us so many invaluable insights into these areas of knowledge". Marriage problems involving impotency, homosexuality, hermaphroditism, and transsexualism are considered and a lengthy section is devoted to the comparatively new field of genetic engineering. Here the author discusses the moral implications of such issues as the process of cloning, sperm and ovary banks, test-tube babies, amniocentesis, artificial insemination, genetic screening, and genetic therapy, each issue being treated with cautious reserve. Following a chapter on family planning, where natural and artificial means of birth control are analyzed, the author approaches the complex topic of abortion, which he sets against the background of the latest biological data and the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court’s decree legalizing abortion. (shrink)

The study of the origin and nature of life can be a problem, especially for a scientist whose method precludes any conclusion that would transcend the realm of empirical evidence. A scientist, and more specifically a biologist, can ascertain the characteristics that distinguish a living from a non-living being, but he is unable to attain to the source of those characteristics or life itself, which defies all empirical analysis. Here science must surrender to philosophy and let reason draw conclusions that (...) go beyond the data of experience and reach out into an area that many philosophers consider as their exclusive domain. (shrink)

Marsilio Ficino is the best representative of Renaissance Platonism as well as the most prominent member of the Florentine Academy that he organized at the request of Cosimo de’ Medici. After he had given to the Western world the first complete Latin translation of the works of Plato and Plotinus, he wrote numerous commentaries, dialogues, and treatises, but his major work is the Theologia Platonica in eighteen books. In this treatise Ficino portrays the universe as a harmonious system of beings (...) where man occupies a central position and serves as a bond between spiritual and material substances. The main theme of the treatise is the immortality of the soul, as the subtitle De immortalitate animorum indicates. Ficino proves this doctrine by man’s inner tendency to union with God and other arguments of scholastic philosophy. Ficino’s primary concern in this treatise, however, is to reconcile Plato’s philosophy with Christian doctrine. (shrink)

The book opens with an article on the chronology and life of St. Thomas, which was written originally in 1920 by the well-known Thomistic scholar, Pierre Mandonnet, for the Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques. In a critical study, written in 1932 and reproduced here in its German version, Palémon Glorieux challenges Mandonnet's conclusions with regard to Thomas's Quaestiones disputatae, while in another essay, also appearing in this volume, he advances hypotheses and clarifies certain points about Aquinas's treatise, De regimine (...) Judaeorum. Many penetrating insights into Thomas's life and personality are furnished by Martin Grabmann in his essay on Aquinas's relationship to the civil and religious authorities of his time, while Heribert Scheeben discusses Thomas's sojourn in Cologne and his personal rapport with his master, Albert the Great. Aquinas's helpers and secretaries are also the subject of a special study by Antoine Dondaine. (shrink)

Due to increasing empiricalinformation on farm animal welfare since the1960s, the prospects for sound decisionmakingconcerning welfare have improved. This paperdescribes a strategy to develop adecision-making aid, a decision support system,for assessment of farm-animal welfare based onavailable scientific knowledge. Such a decisionsupport system allows many factors to be takeninto account. It is to be developed accordingto the Evolutionary Prototyping Method, inwhich an initial prototype is improved inreiterative updating cycles. This initialprototype has been constructed. It useshierarchical representations to analysescientific statements and statements (...) describingthe housing system. Welfare is assessed fromwhat is known about the biological needs of theanimals, using a welfare model in the form of atree that contains these needs as welfarecomponents. Each state of need is assessedusing welfare relevant attributes of thehousing system and weighting factors.Attributes are measurable properties of thehousing system. Weighting factors are assignedaccording to heuristic rules based on theprinciple of weighting all components(attributes and needs) equally, unless thereare strong reasons to do otherwise. Preliminarytests of the prototype indicate that it may bepossible to perform assessment of farm-animalwelfare in an explicit way and based onempirical findings. The procedure needs to berefined, but its prospects are promising. (shrink)

Throughout his work, from the logic which first brought him to prominence, through Our Social Inheritance, to the last book he lived to see through the press, Lewis was concerned with what he calls "the whole question of validity at large... the relation between valid knowing and justified self-direction of our activities." Lange, who was Lewis' student, has selected several lectures and papers from the last years of Lewis' life. Because Lewis had been working toward a major statement on ethics, (...) these ten late essays are all on ethical themes. Because Lewis was a constructive, systematic philosopher, his ethical position is grounded in his logic, metaphysics, and epistemology. For example, Lewis characterizes 'truth' as a semantic word designating a relation between the conception in question and existant actuality, NOT a relation between the conception and the evidence. Only two of these papers have already appeared in print; the rest were delivered as public lectures. Some were deliberately not published while he still hoped to improve on them. Acknowledging this is probably only fair to Lewis, but it is not the whole story. Over the years, Lewis has delineated the spheres of the valid, the right, the good, and the imperative, and has worked on capturing the relations between the right and the good, the valid and the imperative, the rational, the consistent and the normative. These papers contain new insights as well as older insights elegantly polished.--M. B. M. (shrink)

Since the introduction of the computer in the early 1950's, the investigation of artificial intelligence has followed three chief avenues: the discovery of self-organizing systems; the building of working models of human behavior, incorporating specific psychological theories; and the building of "heuristic" machines, without bias in favor of humanoid characteristics. While this work has used philosophical logic and its results may illustrate philosophical problems, the artificial intelligence program is by now an intricate, organized specialty. This book, therefore, has a quite (...) specialized audience of its own although it can be very valuable to those philosophers who are interested and competent in using this pioneering material. Five scientific papers report attempts to solve five different kinds of problems. Bertram Raphael describes an attempt to build a memory structure that converts the information input into a systematic model by "understanding" the informational statements as they are made. Daniel Bobrow's machine can set up algebraic equations from informal verbal statements. M. Ross Quillan asks: "What sort of representational format can permit the 'meanings' of words to be stored?" Thomas Evans' machine, Analogy, serves as a model for "pattern-recognition" rather than the "common-property" method of semantic memory. Fischer Black has developed a logical deduction mechanism for question-answering which keeps track of where we are and avoids endless deduction. The editor and John McCarthy contribute more general chapters, providing the historical background of cybernetics, and dealing with the problem of formalizing a concept of causality. Minsky ends the volume with his view that our convictions on dualism, consciousness, free will, and the like are used in the attempt to explain the complicated interactions between parts of our model of ourselves.--M. B. M. (shrink)

The body of this book consists of facing English and Latin versions of Scotus' treatise prepared by Father Wolter from study of existing manuscripts. Textual variants are marked in frequent notes, but, perhaps because he doubts that one correct or personally written version ever existed, inconsistencies in the argument or apparent errors in the text are unremarked by the editor. Included as a 30 page appendix is Wolter's translation of Scotus' commentary on Peter Lombard's work, Two Questions from Lectures on (...) Book I of the Sentences. Wolter considers this to be an early version, of which the Treatise is the definitive argument. Scotus' demonstration intends to overcome two classical problems afflicting other proofs of the existence of God: the conclusion that the universe is eternal, and that either God's omnipotence or man's moral freedom is limited by His necessary inclusion in the causal order of the world. These metaphysical difficulties are avoided through Scotus' skilled use of modal logic. The book should be of great interest to students of logic and analytic philosophy on account of the display of technique in the logic of contingency and necessity, as well as to medievalists, for reasons of its substance. Wolter performs a real service in making available this workmanlike edition of a powerful and ingenious original.—M. B. M. (shrink)

This is one of a series providing modest introductions to philosophers and their work. There are some two dozen writers treated in the series, from Lucretius to Sartre. Sarocchi gives a brief biography, stressing Camus' early illness and other experiences which are important for the longer evaluative essay which follows. Camus is considered as a philosopher, a moralist, and a lyrical writer. Because of Camus' character, rather than for philosophical reasons, Sarocchi finds nostalgia to be the secret destination of Camus' (...) "orphic itinerary." About 50 pages are given to excerpts. Passages from various works are grouped by subject matter, giving ten pages or so each to the absurd, Hellenism and Christianity, political thought, art, myth and symbol. Most selections are under two pages long. In light of the brevity of Camus' books, and their wide availability in both English and French, readers might receive a better introduction in comparable compass by reading The Myth of Sisyphus or one of the novels.--M. B. M. (shrink)

The vitality of Peirce's ideas has recently stimulated the writing of several books and articles. This is not strictly a revival, but rather the first systematic presentation to the philosophic public of what Peirce hoped was an architectonic philosophy. While some commentators find Peirce's work to consist merely of brilliant fragments of an ultimate failure, Potter believes that Peirce "has achieved a partial synthesis with gaps and inconsistencies, some of which at least can be remedied." In this book Potter distinguishes (...) for study five aspects of Peirce's philosophy, and some of their relations to one another and to the whole Peirce had in mind. The aspects considered are the categories: Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness, which can be very roughly characterized as potentiality, actuality, and necessity, or mediating law; the normative sciences of logic, ethics, and esthetics; pragmatism, of which the exposition in the 1870's was only the as yet unconnected beginning; synechism, the cosmology which Peirce thought proved pragmatism; and the Scotistic realism which Peirce felt to be essential to any authentic pragmatism. Peirce's divisions of philosophy correspond to his categories--phenomenology to Firstness and normative science to Secondness. Metaphysics, corresponding to Thirdness, attempts to comprehend the reality of the data of phenomenology and their interpretation by normative sciences. Although in no sense polemical, this careful study contains replies to most standard criticisms of the pragmatic theories of meaning and truth in its explication of the relation of pragmatism to the rest of Peirce's philosophy. In his second section Potter deals with synechism, the principle of continuity, and law, including a strong chapter on "Law as Living Power." The final section treats Peirce's accommodation of continuity and Darwinian evolutionary theory. If growth and development are fundamental throughout the cosmos, Peirce saw that we must admit real chance and its important implications for questions of determinism and mind. Potter makes a close study of Peirce which he shares with the reader, giving insights, and also a glimpse of the process which leads up to them. The concentration on norms and ideals, perhaps less familiar aspects of Peirce's philosophy, may encourage wider investigation of his writings by those who considered him only as a logician or the founder of pragmatism. This is a superior study, and an addition to the scholarly literature on one of America's major thinkers.--M. B. M. (shrink)

Martin Foss tells us that the job of the mature man is to use his gifts of reason and imagination to confront the world and death, and the job of philosophy is to replace for adults the myths which satisfy children. In our times, when, "absurdity, loneliness, death and isolation are the sinister themes," our lack of reflective insight into life and our failure to understand the interplay of process and structure result in a despair for which modern man must (...) blame himself. Foss is replying directly to the message of the poets and artists of the absurd, and to the challenge of existentialism that death is indispensible to authentic existence. His philosophical position owes much to Hegel, even more to the Christian mythos and symbolism. The author calls on a lifetime of familiarity with Western philosophy and literature to provide the vocabulary and illustrations of his theses: Emptiness and meaninglessness are the only death we can possibly experience; the essence of mortality is the exhaustion of the physical in spiritual sublimation; the free decision of the sacrificial act as the destiny of man has changed self and world; sacrifice as a creative element in human life is of fundamental importance.—M. B. M. (shrink)

This is one of three books edited or written by Rescher to be published in one year's time. Primarily a collection of material from professional literature of the past decade, there are five new pieces. All the essays use logical and conceptual analysis: there is a historical and a systematic section. Some of the historical essays draw on Rescher's scholarship in the history of logic, including Arabic logic. One chapter discusses some logical difficulties of Leibniz' metaphysics. The systematic section opens (...) with two articles written with Carey Joynt on the epistemology of history. New pieces are an analysis of "control," and one on welfare economics. There are essays on innate ideas, truth, and metaphysics. The most recent articles involve probability and the logic of decision; there is an article dealing with Markov Chains and Discrete State Systems. Attractive minor contributions are included as well, giving the book a wide range both of subject-matter and significance.--M. B. M. (shrink)

Reid was the founder of Scottish common sense realism, a branch of empiricism which avoids the skepticism inherent in the tradition of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. Reid did not attempt to justify the beliefs which fall victim to Humean skepticism--the belief in an external world, in the identity of the self, or in the efficacy of human will and planning--concepts which he found to be present in men's minds from the start of their rational lives. "Men may dispute about things (...) which have no existence," he writes, but "they cannot dispute about things of which they have no conception." The job of philosophy is therefore not to justify beliefs which men cannot help but hold, but rather to clarify what problems are involved in holding these "common sense" beliefs, and to improve upon the assumptions underlying empiricist conclusions when these are antithetical to common sense. Thus, much of Reid's work consists of conceptual analysis, and critical examination of the role of language in creating philosophical problems. As examples: in the fourth essay in this book, he challenges Hume's analysis of "cause," and in his work on the Intellectual Powers he objects to Berkeley's use of one term, "smell," to refer both to the object of thought, and to the object thought of. The Essays on the Active Powers contain Reid's work in theory of action, freedom of the will, and ethics, especially meta-ethics. Reid finds that reason not only can determine the ends to be aimed at in morality, but the ends in other areas of human endeavor as well. M.I.T. has reproduced an American edition of the Essays from 1815. This is an appropriate choice, as Reid's epistemology and ethics had wide and prolonged influence in American philosophy, and both their spirit and substance have been incorporated in pragmatism. Besides their historical interest, the detailed replies of Reid to Hume offer students an instructive example of philosophical argument.--M. B. M. (shrink)

Freedom and unity are the values James most wanted to protect and to extend. Roth agrees with this choice, and recommends James to his readers as the moral philosopher who can best show us how. James is presented as combining a principled morality with the responsiveness to particular cases characteristic of existentialism and situational ethics, and his ethics is found to yield what John Wild would call a "primary existential norm": Act so as to maximize freedom and unity. While the (...) philosophical foundations of James' theory are generally secondary to Roth's advocacy of it, the author shows how the norm is based on the following Jamesian concepts: human consciousness is selective and efficacious; the universe is unfinished; value is rooted in consciousness and choice; and the goal of ethics is to achieve unity or harmony among personal and communal choices. Roth mentions problems for James--for example, pointing out that the principle of satisfying as many value demands as possible while frustrating a few as necessary does not handle qualitative differences in demands, and showing how James' later work emends this principle. He also touches on the tough problem, developed by others following James, of "unity" as an ideal in a system in which both meaning and value are rooted in feeling, and feelings are "owned" by individual selves. The book is simply written and should present no difficulty for the reader with little background in philosophy.--M. B. M. (shrink)

Olthuis makes a singular contribution in bringing the "Philosophy of the Law-Idea" to the attention of philosophers who lack other access to this development in contemporary Dutch thought. His presentation concentrates on applications to ethics. He begins with a thorough exposition of G. E. Moore's ethical theory, to which he applies "history's critique"--a resumé of Ayer and Stevenson, of Oxford meta-ethics, and of the "new wave" of naturalism set in motion by Anscombe and Foot in 1958. Olthuis finds that neither (...) Moore nor the subsequent philosophers could long stave off the irreconcilable extreme of absolute value or absolute relativism. "... the main source of difficulty in the constrictive nature of the... ontological schema," and, underlying that, in the claim that theoretical thought is neutral. In a valuable final chapter, he presents a "perspective for a way out" based on work by H. Dooyeweerd and D. H. Th. Vollenhoven. One key to their Philosophy of the Law-Idea lies in "norm-laws." Like "natural" laws, what is subject to them cannot withdraw. Unlike "natural" laws, they demand human acknowledgment to be fulfilled. He rejects both "ought" and "goodness" as adequate primitive concepts for ethics in favor of stress upon its irreducible "sphere-sovereignty." The cosmos stands under a structural law-order, made up of many modal laws determining the many modalities of reality. Within the normative, ethics is only one special modal science. Its job is to investigate the ethical norm-law, that which is subject to it, and the correlations between these two.--M. B. M. (shrink)

Sr. Garcia wants to bring readers the image of Marx they might draw from his 1844 economic-philosophical manuscripts which were not published until 1932, on the initiative of the Marx-Engels Institute of Moscow, under the title Zur Kritik der Nationaloeconomie mit einem Schlusskapitel über die Hegelsche Philosophie. He feels the tardy discovery of this work is as significant for the understanding of Marx as the belated discovery of the epistles of Saint John would have been to an understanding of Jesus. (...) Garcia sees his task to be that of "cleaning the coin" of Marxism in order for both of its true faces to be seen. Marx used the word "transubstantiation" to refer to the transformation of the substance of the history of philosophy by the socialist revolution. This is much more than reinterpretation. He likens the socialist transubstantiation of philosophy and Catholicism to the absorption of primitive explanations in science into modern theoretical physics. As the transformation of the son of man into the Son of God was the task of Christianity, the transformation of natural man into the creator and creature of society is the task of socialism. The author is thus trying to show that the atheism attributed to Marx is not inimical to the true values of the Christian myth, but absorbs and transforms them into Humanism, which is the "very theme of our time."—M.B.M. (shrink)

Danto contends that a subject matter exists which is irreducibly and autonomously philosophical. That subject matter is the relation between the world and men, when men are functioning as knowers of the world. Put another way, the locus of philosophy is the space between language and the world. This point is obscured for two large classes of philosophers by the frames of reference within which they work. The bulk of the book provides an original discussion in terms of which presuppositions (...) of the philosophy of knowledge can be fruitfully reassessed. It is an important book, written with a conscious effort to unite intellect and sense. Furthermore, Danto is one of the finest stylists in the business today. His theory of knowledge criticizes both Naturalism and the whole line of philosophers who do epistemology by the Cartesian ground-rules, whether these latter are of the variety who are searching for an incorrigible basis for knowledge, or the hardy sort who believe the only intellectually responsible position is irresoluble doubt. Although he challenges the vast number of philosophers who fall into one or the other of these positions, Danto provides support for a deeply held intuition of each tradition--of the Naturalists, the feeling that knowledge of the external world is possible, and the tortured arguments of the skeptics are somehow corruptions--and of the post-Cartesians, the feeling that no amount of scientific evidence can solve the philosophical problems of knowledge. Danto's own theory combines these insights. His concept of semantical vehicle helps him keep clear distinctions between 'descriptive' and 'semantical' notions, and assign a role to experience which avoids the classical impasse. He presents a provocative alternative not only to post-Cartesian epistemology and to the Naturalism which has held out against it only by collapsing philosophy and science, but also to the sad state of affairs in which various active practitioners of philosophy can not talk to each other.--M. B. M. (shrink)

Levinson presents a biographical sketch and selects eight themes from Plato's thought, giving a short exposition of each, and illustrating the points he makes with quite substantial selections of Plato's work. There is a bibliography of secondary material, an appendix each on translation and transliteration, but no index. The order of the themes approximates that of the dialogues in which they are illustrated, with some overlapping and cross-references. They are: Saint Socrates, The Eternal Ideas, The Psyche, Love and Beauty, The (...) Re-formed State, Education, Knowing, Naming, Non-Being, and finally the Cosmic Frame. The Plato selections include all of the Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo, most of the Symposium, half the Phaedrus, much of the Republic, and substantial consecutive portions of Cratylus, Parmenides, Theaetetus, Sophist, Timaeus, and Book X of the Laws. Levinson is not aiming at the specialist, and he advises the beginner not to venture immediately or on his own into the strange world of the dialogues. For teachers who share this position, and also share Levinson's preference for the homogeneity and literary qualities of an anthology drawn entirely from Jowett, this book has several virtues as a text. It is readable, contains a brief, useful section on the influence of Plato in Western culture, and gives a lot of Plato for the money.—M. B. M. (shrink)

This text is designed to introduce undergraduates to metaphysics, but the authors suggest that with supplementary readings, it can be adapted for higher level courses as well. As a method aiming at both academic objectivity and personal engagement, the authors confront the students with the problems of metaphysics as formulated by Heidegger, Marcel, and Camus, and then, accompanied by these contemporary spokesmen, set their readers to the task of historical "retrieve" of the problems and convictions of ages past. There are (...) three chapters and a long appendix. The first chapter identifies metaphysics as "man's search for the meaning of being," stressing that meaning will include both descriptive and evaluative elements. It deals with the role of freedom in human life and in the origin of metaphysics. The existentialist position contributes these points: the rejection of the simplistic dichotomizing of reality into subject and object, the incorporation of affective, nonintellectual elements into metaphysics, and a use of elements from phenomenology successfully blended with a sense of historicity and dialogue in man's achieving of truth. The second chapter, drawing on Heidegger, poses metaphysics' double problem, the search for a unifying value, and speculation about the nature of being. For the former we are offered an answer in terms of communicable personality, inviting one to authenticity through spiritual love. Chapter three brings in Marcel, beginning with his distinction between the notion of "problem" and the notion of "mystery." The problem approach has three characteristics: the model of the relationship between investigator and data is that of subject and object; the influence of the investigator is minimized and his role reduced to passive observer and annotator; the problem is to be overcome. A "mystery" on the other hand, "is a problem which encroaches upon its own data, invading them... and thereby transcending itself." Since metaphysics falls within the scope of mystery, no problem-solving technique would be appropriate. The authors recommend instead Marcel's reflective philosophizing, to which the remainder of the text is devoted. The appendix consists of excerpts from Jowett's Platonic dialogues, and sets of questions of two kinds: the first aims at eliciting accurate understanding and stimulating critical reflection on the thought of Plato. The second set gives an example of the process of reflective philosophizing.--M. B. M. (shrink)

Short, immediately engaging, vigorously competent in analytic technique, this book could be used profitably in a "problems" format introduction to philosophy, as well as for a text in the philosophy of religion. Knowledgeable and at ease with the Judeo-Christian tradition which provides the religious subject matter of his analysis, Ross writes as a philosopher, not an apologist. He does show that certain attacks on religious positions are instances of general philosophical trends, and can best be met with specialized philosophical argument. (...) He treats such classical topics as the existence and nature of God, non-theoretical knowledge of God, the problem of evil, and the current debate, characteristic of 20th century philosophy, on whether religious discourse is cognitively meaningful, examining the claim that religious belief and phenomena can not be taken seriously at all. Besides concise and well-marshalled use of traditional material, Ross includes original material from his recent more technical study Philosophical Theology. In addition to its obvious usefulness for the needs of students, the attention of scholars is warranted by a sketch of a theory of analogy.--M. B. M. (shrink)

Rescher has prepared this book for use as a text in upper level courses in value theory, and as supplementary reading in courses in normative ethics, methodology in economic theory, and methodology in the social sciences. Some sections have been published previously. More than half the chapters are new material. Reference tools are provided in 50 pages of bibliography and indexes. The values studied are the ordinary ones of life situations. Rescher takes an essentially objectivist view of values; they are (...) either well- or ill-founded, they are shot through with factual considerations, and they are either right or wrong. After treating the nature and role of values, in the middle third of the book, he deals with problems of axiology; the grounding of a generic conception of Value to provide a unified basis for the wide diversity of contexts in which evaluation takes place, the study of the phenomenon of valuing, and a codification of the rules of valuation. There is some quite technical material, especially the chapter on Evaluation and the Logic of Preference, and the two appendices. Rescher's intent is to bridge the logico-philosophical, and the mathematico-economic traditions. The final third of the book concerns value and social change.--M. B. M. (shrink)

Erikson is Professor of Human Development at Harvard, a psychoanalyst, and the author of the widely influential books, Young Man Luther, and Childhood and Society. What is the relevance of his latest book to philosophy? One answer is that Erikson deals with several concepts of personal identity which philosophers will recognize as corresponding to historical philosophic positions. He does not choose between these disparate views, but correlates them, treating each as partial, and learning about his complex subject from the habits (...) of syntax appropriate to each. Erikson divides personal identity into the "I," the "selves," and the "ego," on the grounds that these terms provide a way to distinguish roles and "counterplayers" of various functionings of human personality. We need these various terms to designate identity as viewed from without and from within. Erikson's "selves" are what the "I" reflects on when it views the body, the personality, or the social roles to which it is attached. The counterplayers of the "selves" are the "others" of Existentialism. Erikson's reflective "I," like the subject of Descartes' cogito, is "the center of awareness in a universe of experience in which I have a coherent identity... am in possession of my wits and able to say what I see and think." With Descartes, Erikson finds the unique counterplayer to the "I" in the Deity; the repository of the vitality which is being affirmed of itself in each awareness of the "I." Erikson's "ego" corresponds to the Self of Hume's Treatise, undiscoverable beneath its particular perceptions. The "ego" is necessarily unconscious; we are aware of its work but never of it. As of Hume's self, we can say of it that it has the task of turning passive into active, screening and organizing the impositions of the internal and external environment in such a way that they bring about volitions. Like Hume, Erikson feels philosophers and psychologists have "created nouns such as the 'I' or the 'self', making imaginary entities out of a manner of speaking" and that we would be mistaken to give ontological status to these particles. Perhaps Erikson would accept a statement of the contemporary philosophical form: "The several designations of 'selves', etc., are instrumental in explaining complex personal identity feelings or events." In other parts of the book Erikson uses William James as an example of creative identity, discusses the concept of "negative identity", and in the last three chapters discusses aspects of personal identity in the disequilibrium of the young, the races, and women. The book contains Erikson's writings on identity over a twenty-year period. However, in areas of common interest to psychoanalytic theory and philosophy, the requirements of Erikson's clinical work have suggested relationships between concepts different from the relationships often assumed by philosophers. Thus, on personal identity, criteria of ideological soundness of a society, and the determinants of empirical perception, the addition of Erikson's insights may give the philosopher a multidimensional glimpse of the field wherein he labors.--M. B. M. (shrink)