Introduction: De disciplina scolarium and the Boethian corpus -- Reproduction and philosophical life in the Consolatio philosophiae -- De disciplina and Translatio studii -- Boethian humor -- "Bitwixen game and ernest": contrary Boethianism in Troilus and Criseyde -- Boethius and the humanists: Valla, Badius, and persistence of De disciplina in print.

On 18–19 May 2018, a symposium was held in the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Aberdeen to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the death of Ronald W. Hepburn (1927–2008). The speakers at this event discussed Hepburn’s oeuvre from several perspectives. For this book, the collection of the revised versions of their talks has been supplemented by the papers of other scholars who were unable to attend the symposium itself. Thus this volume contains contributions from (...) eighteen notable scholars of different disciplines, ranging from contemporary aesthetics and art theory through to philosophical approaches to religion, education and social anthropology. It also includes a bibliography of Hepburn’s writings. The essays were first published in two special issues of the Journal of Scottish Thought, vols. 10–11 (2018–2019). -/- Ronald William Hepburn was born in Aberdeen on 16 March 1927. He went to Aberdeen Grammar School, then he graduated with an M.A. in Philosophy (1951) and obtained his doctorate from the University of Aberdeen (1955). His tutor at Aberdeen was Donald MacKinnon (1913– 1994), a Scottish philosopher and theologian, the author of A Study in Ethical Theory (1957) and The Problem of Metaphysics (1974). Hepburn taught as Lecturer at the Department of Moral Philosophy at Aberdeen (1956–60), and he was also Visiting Associate Professor of Philosophy at New York University (1959–60). He returned from the United States as Professor of Philosophy at Nottingham University. In 1964, he was appointed as a Chair in Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh and between 1965 and 1968 he was also Stanton Lecturer in the Philosophy of Religion at the University of Cambridge. From 1975 until his retirement in 1996, he held the Professorship of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh. He died in Edinburgh on 23 December 2008. His philosophical interests ranged from theology and the philosophy of religion through moral philosophy and the philosophy of education to art theory and aesthetics. Notably, Hepburn is widely regarded as the founder of modern environmental and everyday aesthetics as a result of the influence of papers in the 1960s which pioneered a new approach to the aesthetics of the natural world. (shrink)

This paper explores a case example of qualitative research that applied productive hermeneutics and the central concept, fusion of horizons. Interpretation of meaning is a fusing of the researchers’ and subjects’ perspectives and serves to expand understanding. The purpose is to illustrate an exemplar of qualitative research without establishing a rigid recipe of methodology. The illustration is based on in-depth observational and textual data from an applied anthropological study conducted in western Alaska with Yup’ik hunters and fishers and government agency (...) employees as they worked towards collaborative management. The metaphor of the hermeneutical circle is showcased to help the reader understand the philosophical underpinnings and the analytical processes used to realize a meaningful interpretation. A series of organizing systems for the interpretation is described, culminating in a final organizing system to communicate a fully realized understanding of collaborative management at the time. (shrink)

Intent and mitigating circumstances play a central role in moral and legal assessments in large-scale industrialized societies. Al- though these features of moral assessment are widely assumed to be universal, to date, they have only been studied in a narrow range of societies. We show that there is substantial cross-cultural variation among eight traditional small-scale societies (ranging from hunter-gatherer to pastoralist to horticulturalist) and two Western societies (one urban, one rural) in the extent to which intent and mitigating circumstances (...) influence moral judgments. Although participants in all societies took such factors into account to some degree, they did so to very different extents, varying in both the types of considerations taken into account and the types of violations to which such considerations were applied. The particular patterns of assessment characteristic of large-scale industrialized societies may thus reflect relatively recently culturally evolved norms rather than inherent features of human moral judgment. (shrink)

Conspiracy theories are rather a popular topic these days, and a lot has been written on things like the meaning of _conspiracy theory_, whether it’s ever rational to believe conspiracy theories, and on the psychology and demographics of people who believe conspiracy theories. But very little has been said about why people might be led to posit conspiracy theories in the first place. This paper aims to fill this lacuna. In particular, I shall argue that, in open democratic societies, citizens (...) justifiably presuppose that the epistemic authorities—journalists, academics, scientists, and so on—are engaged in a good faith pursuit of the truth. This presupposition generates certain normative expectations on the behaviors of the epistemic authorities—they ought to be open to new evidence, possess a healthy degree of skepticism, be willing to engage with opponents, and so on. So, when an epistemic authority is presented with some putatively anomalous data or an alternative hypothesis for some event or phenomena, people expect the epistemic authority to respond in a way that is consonant with these norms. In some instances, however, the epistemic authorities do not respond in this way and instead are dogmatic, dismissive, and engage in _ad hominem_. From the point of view of the citizen, there’s a tension here between how the epistemic authorities ought to behave and how they have, in fact, behaved which is best resolved either by taking the epistemic authorities less seriously or by positing a conspiracy theory. Put another way, the failure of the epistemic authorities to adhere to the norms by which we take them to be governed when presented with apparent anomalies or alternative hypotheses is one reason for which one might initially posit a conspiracy theory. (shrink)

Developing original accounts of the many aspects of belief, On Believing puts the believer at the heart of the story. Developing a novel account of the normativity of belief, Hunter argues that the ethics of belief concern how a believer ought to be positioned in a world of possibilities.

In the wake of ethical scandals and close ethical scrutiny throughout business and the accounting professional today, Brooks/Dunn's BUSINESS & PROFESSIONAL ETHICS, 9E provides the ethical insights and strategies you need for corporate and professional success. Learn why ethical behavior is so important and how to recognize potential pitfalls that involve much more than memorizing rules. You master the skills to develop a corporate culture of integrity that maintains stakeholder support and enables directors and auditors to complete their jobs. You (...) also learn how to use ethical strategies to make decisions, as this edition examines the latest information on governance scandals, legal liability and professional accounting and auditing issues. More than 130 cases and readings highlight new and classic cases of fraud, bankruptcy and unprofessional practices to help you better understand appropriate codes of conduct and sound ethical reasoning while strengthening your persuasive and leadership skills for success. (shrink)

This paper argues that it is possible to knowingly believe something while judging that one ought not to believe it and (so) viewing the belief as manifesting a sort of failure. I offer examples showing that such ‘alienated belief’ has several potential sources. I contrast alienated belief with self-deception, incontinent (or akratic) belief and half-belief. I argue that the possibility of alienated belief is compatible with the so-called ‘transparency’ of first-person reflection on belief, and that the descriptive and expressive difficulties (...) it involves stem from well-understood sources. I conclude by speculating that endorsed belief is in important respects like intentional action. Reflection on the possibility of alienated belief may thus help us to see one respect in which an agent can be responsible for her attitudes. (shrink)

_Continues the author’s inquiry into the development of the Chinese philosophical concept Li, concluding in Song and Ming dynasty Neo-Confucianism._.

In this essay, I draw out some implications of a position called “Wittgensteinian Quasi-Fideism” for the theory and practice of interreligious communication. After setting out the main tenets of that position, I articulate what its theoretical and practical implications in this area would be if it were true. I thereby sketch a new, Wittgensteinian model of interreligious communication, concluding with a number of suggestions as to some points of focus for further work in this area.

A movement dedicated to applying neuroscience to traditional philosophical problems and using philosophical methods to illuminate issues in neuroscience began about twenty-five years ago. Results in neuroscience have affected how we see traditional areas of philosophical concern such as perception, belief-formation, and consciousness. There is an interesting interaction between some of the distinctive features of neuroscience and important general issues in the philosophy of science. And recent neuroscience has thrown up a few conceptual issues that philosophers are perhaps best trained (...) to deal with. After sketching the history of the movement, we explore the relationships between neuroscience and philosophy and introduce some of the specific issues that have arisen. (shrink)

#1 New York Times bestselling author David Brooks, a controversial and eye-opening look at how our culture has lost sight of the value of humility - defined as the opposite of self-preoccupation - and why only an engaged inner life can yield true meaning and fulfillment.

_Continues the author’s inquiry into the development of the Chinese philosophical concept Li, concluding in Song and Ming dynasty Neo-Confucianism._.

This compelling new book engages leading theorists to consider how cultivating emotions can impact on social justice. Although the presence of political emotions can appear counterproductive to stability and peace, there is an increasing recognition that emotions can be harnessed to empower community cohesion and social justice. Covering such key issues as adaptive preferences, capabilities, civil religion, compassion, conscience, dignity, feminism, imagination, multicultural citizenship, perfectionism, political liberalism, public sentiments, sympathy, Political Emotions challenges readers to explore the role emotions can and (...) should play in our modern society – and at a time when new ideas about how to foster a decent public sphere and overcome intolerance are urgently needed. Drawing particularly on the work of Martha C. Nussbaum, and including a chapter giving her personal response to the issues raised in the individual essays, this is a fascinating read for all of those interested in social and political philosophy today. (shrink)

This enlightening text analyses the origins of Western complaints, prevalent in the late nineteenth century, that Japan was characterised at the time by exceptionally low standards of ‘commercial morality’, despite a major political and economic transformation. As Britain industrialised during the nineteenth century the issue of ‘commercial morality’ was increasingly debated. Concerns about standards of business ethics extended to other industrialising economies, such as the United States. Hunter examines the Japanese response to the charges levelled against Japan in this (...) context, arguing that this was shaped by a pragmatic recognition that Japan had little choice but to adapt itself to Western expectations if it was to establish its position in the global economy. The controversy and criticisms, which were at least in part stimulated by fear of Japanese competition, are important in the history of thinking on business ethics, and are of relevance for today’s industrialising economies as they attempt to establish themselves in international markets. (shrink)

Truth happens to an idea." So wrote William James in 1907; and twenty-four years later John Dewey argued that artistic experience entailed a process of "doing and undergoing." But what do these ideas have to do with music, or with research conducted in and through music - that is, with "artistic research?" In this collection of essays, fourteen very different authors respond with distinct and challenging perspectives. Some report on their own experiments and experiences; some offer probing analyses of noteworthy (...) practices; some view historical continuities through the lens of pragmatism and artistic experiment. The resulting collection yields new insights into what musicians do, how they experiment, and what they experience - insights that arise not from doctrine, but from diverse voices seeking common ground in and through experimental discourse: artistic research in and of itself. (shrink)

Uses modernist and postmodernist theoretical perspectives to examine the formation and reformation of states throughout history and around the globe.

Drawn from the authors' experiences in the UK, Australia and mainland Europe and with contributions from across the globe, this clear and accessible book includes a wide range of examples. The authors show the reader how to: identify ethical issues which may arise with any research project, gain informed consent, provide information in the right way to participants, and present and disseminate findings in line with ethical guidelines.

The figure of the mistress is undoubtedly controversial provoking intense reactions, ranging from fear, to disgust and revulsion, to excitement and titillation, to sadness and perhaps to some, love. The mistress is conventionally depicted as a threat to moral living and someone whose sexuality is 'defective' and 'toxic'. Of course, she is a woman that you would not have as your friend, and certainly not your wife, since her 'ethical sense', if she even has one, is dubious at best. This (...) book subverts these traditional judgements offering an unflinching look at the lived experience of the mistress and recasts her as a potentially loving, free, intimate 'other' woman. Drawing upon feminist philosophy, contemporary sexual ethics and the current cultural moment of #MeToo, Mistress Morality moves beyond a narrative of 'infidelity', conventional judgment, the safeguarding of monogamy and conventional heterosex that permeates our society. It asks what happens when we let go of our insecurities, judgments and moralistic relationship philosophies and opt, instead, for an ethics of kindness. A kindness underpinned by engaging with those deemed 'other' and learning from mistresses, both straight and queer, new ways of thinking about ethics and sex, meaning we have better sex, and can be better to each other. (shrink)

In this paper, I plan to show that the use of a specific population concept—Millstein’s Causal Interactionist Population Concept (CIPC)—has interesting and counter-intuitive ramifications for discussions of the reality of biological race in human beings. These peculiar ramifications apply to human beings writ large and to individuals. While this in and of itself may not be problematic, I plan to show that the ramifications that follow from applying Millstein’s CIPC to human beings complicates specific biological racial realist accounts—naïve or otherwise. (...) I conclude with the notion that even if biological races do exist—by fulfilling all of the criteria needed for Millstein’s population concept (which, given particular worries raised by Gannett (Synthese 177:363–385, 2010), and Winther and Kaplan (Theoria 60:54–80, 2013) may not)—the lower-bound limit for the scope of biological racial realism is at the level of populations, and as such they cannot say anything about whether or not individual organisms themselves have races. (shrink)

Explores the development of Chinese thought, highlighting its concern with questions of coherence. Providing a bracing expansion of horizons, this book displays the unsuspected range of human thinking on the most basic categories of experience. The way in which early Chinese thinkers approached concepts such as one and many, sameness and difference, self and other, and internal and external stand in stark contrast to the way parallel concepts entrenched in much of modern thinking developed in Greek and European thought. Brook (...) Ziporyn traces the distinctive and surprising philosophical journeys found in the works of the formative Confucian and Daoist thinkers back to a prevailing set of assumptions that tends to see questions of identity, value, and knowledge—the subject matter of ontology, ethics, and epistemology in other traditions—as all ultimately relating to questions about coherence in one form or another. Mere awareness of how many different ways human beings can think and have thought about these categories is itself a game changer for our own attitudes toward what is thinkable for us. The actual inhabitation and mastery of these alternative modes of thinking is an even greater adventure in intellectual and experiential expansion. Brook Ziporyn is Professor of Chinese Philosophy, Religion, and Comparative Thought at the University of Chicago Divinity School and Visiting Professor of Philosophy at the National University of Singapore. His books include The Penumbra Unbound: The Neo-Taoist Philosophy of Guo Xiang, also published by SUNY Press. (shrink)

This is Thomas Reid's greatest work. It covers far more philosophical ground than the earlier, more popular Inquiry. The Intellectual Powers and its companion volume, Essays on the Active Powers of Man, constitute the fullest, most original presentation of the philosophy of Common Sense. In the process, Reid provides acutely critical discussions of an impressive array of thinkers but especially of David Hume. In Reid's eyes, Hume had driven a deep tendency in modern philosophy to its ultimate conclusions by creating (...) a phantom-world of so-called 'ideas' that sprang from objects of observation; the self was a conglomeration of perceived ideas; and the will as the source of action was nothing but the balance of passionate impulses. -/- Reid's Common Sense philosophy answers these problems by suggesting that sceptics, such as Hume, unavoidably affirm what they purport to deny, namely the existence of a stable external world, of other minds, of the continuity of their own minds, and of their own and other people's ability to ascribe and accept responsibility for actions. We can understand all of this by proper empirical observation and philosophical analysis of the activity of the mind. Reid's major positive contribution to philosophy is a detailed account of the various innate powers of the mind. While particularly influential in the first half of the nineteenth century, Reid's work has retained a significant role in philosophy, not least in recent years. At the same time, his role in the Scottish Enlightenment is becoming much better understood. -/- This is the only properly established text. It is accompanied by manuscript lectures on the nature and immortality of the soul, as well as helpful editorial annotation and introduction, making it useful to a wide variety of readers. -/- Key Features: -/- Accurate, reliable and critically established text; The Introduction explains the work's genesis and its place in Reid's system; Annotations provide an understanding of Reid's context; An Appendix contains manuscript material covering an important topic not represented in the hitherto published work. (shrink)

This is a précis of David Hunter’s On Believing: being right in a world of possibilities, which is the topic of an author-meets-critics symposium with comments by Daniel Drucker, Miriam Schleifer McCormick, and Mark Richard.

The most comprehensive collection on Hegel's Philosophy of Right available Features new essays by leading international Hegel interpreters divided in sections ...

Four essays, three on the philosopher Jacques Derrida, whose writings have so influenced our time (one on his breakfast, one on his cat, one on his relationship with a snake, and one (on the killing of doves) on the great early twentieth century poet Rilke - each of them examining key failures and challenges in the relationship of poetry, philosophy and 'the animal', and each entertaining, absorbing, and thought-provoking well beyond its given subject. A book that crosses with apparent ease (...) the boundaries of philosophy, literary criticism (there are passages on Coleridge, on D.H. Lawrence, on Henry Lawson) and human-animal relations, by a writer recently described as 'one of the most skilful, unusual and versatile of Australian writers' (Sydney Morning Herald, January 2016). (shrink)

An urgent call for everyone to find inventive ways to question the ethics of sexuality.

Drawing from the fields of psychology and neuroscience and from the worlds of theater, philosophy, history and education, one of the nation's leading writers and commentators helps us become more understanding and considerate toward others, and to find the joy that comes from being seen.

The ways in which Wittgenstein was directly influenced by William James (by his early psychological work as well his later philosophy) have been thoroughly explored and charted by Russell B. Goodman. In particular, Goodman has drawn attention to the pragmatist resonances of the Wittgensteinian notion of hinge propositions as developedand articulated in the posthumously edited and published work, On Certainty. This paper attempts to extend Goodman’s observation, moving beyond his focus on James (specifically, James’s Pragmatism) as his pragmatist reference point. (...) It aims to articulate the affinity between Wittgenstein’s thought on the topic of certainty and that of the neglected pragmatist thinker, George Santayana. -/- The paper draws on Duncan Pritchard’s recent reading of Wittgenstein’s On Certainty in order to articulate the concept of certainty involved in the notion of hinge propositions. It identifies two important and related points of affinity between this Wittgensteinian line of thought on certainty and the line of thought on the same topic articulated in Santayana’s Scepticism and Animal Faith. The paper argues, firstly, that, both lines of thought reflect a pragmatist concept of certainty, according to which our most fundamental certainties are not conceived as purely theoretical objects of belief or knowledge but rather as thearational presuppositions of beliefs and practical action. Secondly, it examines the way inwhich the pragmatist concept of certainty functions, for the two thinkers as a response to scepticism. It argues that although the two thinkers’ responses are very different, they are mutually compatible and, together, point towards the possibility of a distinctively pragmatist response to scepticism, which involves an anti-epistemological model of the intimate relation of the human self to the world. (shrink)

The Law of Civilization and Decay is an overview of history, articulating Brooks' critical view of capitalism. A civilization grows wealthy, and then its wealth causes it to crumble upon itself due to greed.

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction 1. Heidegger's Phenomenology 2. Heidegger on Teaching/Learning 3. Authenticity and the Phenomenon of Teaching Conclusion Notes References.

This chapter contains sections titled: What Counts as a Garden How Gardening Improves the Land How Gardening Improves Us Notes.

This chapter contains sections titled: Coffee or Tea? The American Coffeehouse Individual Choice, Social Meaning.