Provides a comprehensive overview and introduction to the Routledge Handbook of Propositions.

This article presents a critical edition from the six surviving witnesses of Landulph Caracciolo’s , Scriptum in I Sententiarum, d. 23, a text that has never appeared in print before. A short introduction begins to set Landulph’s treatment of intentions and intentionality in this text into its historical, philosophical, and theological context, in particular linking it to the positions of John Duns Scotus and Peter Auriol.

This article offers the first critical edition of the most important version of Francis of Marchia's famous question 1 of his commentary on Book IV of the Sentences, in which the Franciscan theologian puts forth his virtus derelicta theory of projectile motion. The introduction attempts to place Marchia's theory in its proper context. The theory might seem to us an obvious improvement on Aristotle, but rather than an immediate and complete break with tradition that all scholastics quickly adopted, Marchia's virtus (...) derelicta was more a stage in a gradual process that had begun many decades before and did not find universal acceptance among his first successors. Moreover, Marchia himself did not take the theory to what might seem the obvious conclusion that Jean Buridan would draw, because Marchia employed the virtus derelicta to explain more phenomena than just projectile motion. (shrink)

Numerous research groups around the world are attempting to build realistic and believable autonomous embodied agents that attempt to have natural interactions with users. Research into these entities has primarily focused on their potential to enhance human–computer interaction. As a result, there is little understanding of the potential for embodied entities to abuse and manipulate users for questionable purposes. We highlight the potential opportunities for abuse when interacting with embodied agents in virtual worlds and discuss how our social interactions with (...) such entities can contribute to abusive behaviour. Suggestions for reducing such risks are also provided, along with suggestions for important future research areas. (shrink)

Numerous research groups around the world are attempting to build realistic and believable autonomous embodied agents that attempt to have natural interactions with users. Research into these entities has primarily focused on their potential to enhance human–computer interaction. As a result, there is little understanding of the potential for embodied entities to abuse and manipulate users for questionable purposes. We highlight the potential opportunities for abuse when interacting with embodied agents in virtual worlds and discuss how our social interactions with (...) such entities can contribute to abusive behaviour. Suggestions for reducing such risks are also provided, along with suggestions for important future research areas. (shrink)

Firms are increasingly personalising their offers and services, leading to an ever finer-grained segmentation of consumers online. Targeted online advertising and online price discrimination are salient examples of this development. While personalisation's overall effects on consumer welfare are expectably ambiguous, it can lead to concentration in the distribution of advertising and commercial offers. Constellations are possible in which a market is generally open to competition, but the targeted consumer is only made aware of one possible seller. For the consumer, such (...) a market could effectively resemble a monopoly. We call such extreme cases ‘targeting pockets’. Competition-law metrics such as the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index and traditional means of public oversight of adverts would not detect this concentration. We, therefore, suggest a novel metric, the Concentration-after-Personalisation Index (CAPI). The CAPI treats every consumer as a separate ‘market’, computes a measure of concentration for personalised adverts and offers for each individual consumer separately, and then averages the result to measure the exposure experienced by an average consumer. We demonstrate how the CAPI can serve as a monitoring tool for regulators and auditors and thus help to enforce existing consumer law as well as proposed new regulations such as the European Union's Digital Services Act and its Artificial Intelligence Act. We further show how adding noise via randomly distributed non-personalised adverts can dilute the potential harm of overly concentrated personalisation. We demonstrate how the CAPI can identify the optimal degree of added noise, balancing the protection of consumer choice with the economic interests of advertisers. (shrink)

This article reflects on context effects in the study of behavioral ethics and organizational justice. After a general overview, we review three key challenges confronting research in these two domains. First, we consider social scientific versus normative approaches to inquiry. The former aims for a scientific description, while the latter aims to provide prescriptive advice for moral conduct. We argue that the social scientific view can be enriched by considering normative paradigms. The next challenge we consider, involves the duality of (...) morally upright versus morally inappropriate behavior. We observe that there is a long tradition of categorizing behavior dichotomously rather than continuously. We conclude by observing that more research is needed to compare the dichotomous versus continuous perspectives. Third, we examine the role of “cold” cognitions and “hot” affect in making judgments of ethicality. Historically speaking, research has empathized cognition, though recent work has begun to add greater balance to affective reactions. We argue that both cognition and affect are important, but more research is needed to determine how they work together. After considering these three challenges, we then turn to our special issue, providing short reviews of each contribution and how they help in better addressing the three challenges we have identified. (shrink)

As teachers leave schools in droves and in disgust, it is time to revisit Bertrand Russell's radical ideas on what constitute a valid education, a man who saw little common ground between those who viewed education as devoted to belief and those who saw it as devoted to independent thought, and who devoted much of his life and thought to encouraging the latter.

According to Manuel Davenport, “The best humorists--Mark Twain, Will Rogers, Bob Hope, and Mort Sahl--share [a] mixture of detachment and desire, eagerness to believe, and irreverence concerning the possibility of certainty. And when they become serious about their convictions--as Twain did about colonialism…they cease to be humorous” (p. 171). I agree with the first part, but not the second. Humor does require disengagement, but not completely such that one has no emotional interest in the subject of the humor. Humor does (...) require some degree of commitment to value, but, as Davenport rightly notes, it “despairs of absolutes.” Following Bertrand Russell, “humorous” and “serious” are not antonyms. Davenport does not provide examples of Twain’s attempts at satire that fail to be humorous due to being serious. I will examine some of the very serious issues Twain addresses through irony and humor, and make the case that his commentary and argument, though serious, is still funny while not falling into frivolity. There is a philosophical thread running through his scathing humor, and it largely centers around his raising awareness about, and then deflating, what I would call a “spirit of seriousness”, borrowing from Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone De Beauvoir. For De Beauvoir, expanding on Sartre’s conception, a spirit of seriousness manifests from serious people who attempt to find comfort in the firm, unchanging foundations and values that are seen to be pre-determined, and thus unquestionable. In Twain’s case, it is arrogance and a presumed sense of certitude. This destructive combination sustains many of the institutions (some of them quite “peculiar”) that he attacks: racism, slavery, colonialism, excesses of capitalism, and the often dogmatic and oppressive nature of organized religion: “What gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know; it’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so.” Complacency, self-satisfaction, disinclination to self-monitoring, all lead to closed mode, or rather, to sustaining a serious mode which can spillover into a “spirit of seriousness” if not checked. The quickest path to a feeling of being certain is cultivated ignorance, where doubt and confusion, ambiguity and fluidity are glossed over. This feeling or attitude, the “spirit of seriousness”, is what Twain confronts with serious humor, motivating his readers to consider where their ideals and reality contradict. (shrink)

In his carefully argued and extensively researched article “The Implications of Recent Work in the History of Analytic Philosophy” (Preston 2005a) Aaron Preston has raised what should surely be the central methodological issue for Russell studies and the history of analytic philosophy more generally.[1] That is, what are the goals of the history of analytic philosophy and by what means can we best try to meet these goals? Preston’s main conclusion is that historical investigation into the origins of analytic (...) philosophy has made the most common answers to these questions untenable. In particular, we are encouraged to conclude that analytic philosophy is not even a genuine philosophical movement, and is in this sense “illusory”. For Preston, then, the history of analytic philosophy should reconcile itself to this fact and adjust its methods dramatically. Once we see that analytic philosophy, as traditionally conceived, never existed, then we are free to apply tools not usually deployed in the history of philosophy, e.g. memetics (Preston 2005b). (shrink)

Christopher Pincock April 24, 2006 My goal in reviewing Soames’ book was to help readers of this journal evaluate his contribution to the history of analytic philosophy, with a special focus on his discussion of Russell.[1] Soames charges both that I misrepresent the contents of his book and that I make mistakes in the interpretation of various aspects of Russell’s philosophy. If I had committed any errors of the former sort, I would certainly apologize and thank Soames for (...) bringing such a mistake to my attention. After explaining why I do not believe I have misrepresented the contents of his book, I will turn to the one substantive issue that he raises in his reply, namely the need for unperceived sense-data in Russell’s external world program. While disagreement here is more understandable, nothing Soames says in his book or in his reply has led me to revise my original remarks. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:82 Reviews c:\users\arlene\documents\rj issues\type3501\rj 3501 061 red.docx 2015-07-10 4:07 PM LOGICISM BEYOND PRINCIPIA MATHEMATICA Chris Pincock Philosophy / Ohio State U. Columbus, oh 43210–1365, usa [email protected] William Demopoulos. Logicism and Its Philosophical Legacy. Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 2013. Pp. xii, 272. isbn: 9781107029804.£60.00; us$104.99 (hb). his book brings together eight previously published essays along with three new essays and a brief introduction. In one way or another, each (...) essay pursues either logicism or some broader implication of logicism that a major figure like Russell or Carnap explored. In a narrow sense, logicism is just the position that grounds the concepts and claims of arithmetic (or all of mathematics) in logic. However, in Demopoulos’ hands, logicism becomes a project of much greater significance. A note added to Chapter 5, the classic 1985 article “Bertrand Russell’s The Analysis of Matter” (co-authored with Michael Friedman), indicates this broader scope and Demopoulos’ own take on logicism. Originally Demopoulos and Friedman had concluded their article with both the observation that there are serious “intellectual tensions produced by logicism’s attempt to account for both pure mathematics and applied mathematics (mathematical physics)” and the pessimistic conclusion that “it appears that we can account for the distinctive character of the one only at the expense of the other” (p. 107). Now Demopoulos indicates that even though “something close to [this] is true of Carnap’s Ramsey-sentence q= Reviews 83 c:\users\arlene\documents\rj issues\type3501\rj 3501 061 red.docx 2015-07-10 4:07 PM reconstruction of the language of science”, “the four previous chapters are an extended argument against” the earlier conjecture. For Demopoulos, the main problem is to make sense of both pure and applied mathematics in something like the original logicist form found in Frege, Russell and Carnap.The solution to this problem arises only when we have pinpointed exactly where these logicist projects failed and how their failures can be overcome. Chapter 1 focuses on Frege and his logicism for arithmetic. Demopoulos’ main contention is that Frege aims to reduce arithmetic to logic in order to demonstrate the autonomy of arithmetic from geometric intuition and empirical experience. Frege’s worry about intuition is not motivated by scepticism or by a concern about the cogency of our knowledge of arithmetic (p. 11).The point of logicism is to free arithmetic from the obscurity associated with intuition and to get a clearer grasp of the generality that is characteristic of arithmetic. (Chapters 8 and 9 develop this point in more detail and use it to motivate a brand of logicism for arithmetic that is taken to improve on current neo-Fregean approaches.) For this reason Hume’s Principle takes a central role in Frege’s reconstruction of arithmetic for it not only establishes the autonomy of arithmetic, but also secures the core use of arithmetic in application, i.e. in counting (p. 19). Unlike Dummett and other commentators Demopoulos does not think that this aspect of Frege’s logicism is flawed. Instead, flaws arise only with the accounts of applied mathematics offered by later figures like Russell and Carnap.The root of these problems is that they extend a particular logicist strategy to other areas of mathematics, such as geometry, and to our scientific knowledge more generally. Chapter 2 considers “Carnap’sThesis”, which Demopoulos summarizes as “the assertion that certain applied mathematical theories are not factual” (p. 28). Although the thesis is clearly central to Carnap throughout his career, Demopoulos ultimately argues for a non-Carnapian basis for the factual/nonfactual distinction.The root of the difference is the kind of criteria of identity that are appropriate for the objects at the heart of the theory: … the factuality of an applied mathematical theory will be shown to turn on the recognition that the criteria of identity appropriate to its objects are empirically constrained in a way that the criteria of identity appropriate to the objects of a nonfactual theory are not. (P. 28) For arithmetic, the natural numbers associated with two sortal concepts are identical just in case the objects that... (shrink)

The primary aim of this book is to understand how seemings relate to justification and whether some version of dogmatism or phenomenal conservatism can be sustained. It also addresses a number of other issues, including the nature of seemings, cognitive penetration, Bayesianism, and the epistemology of morality and disagreement.

Open-minded people should endorse dogmatism because of its explanatory power. Dogmatism holds that, in the absence of defeaters, a seeming that P necessarily provides non-inferential justification for P. I show that dogmatism provides an intuitive explanation of four issues concerning non-inferential justification. It is particularly impressive that dogmatism can explain these issues because prominent epistemologists have argued that it can’t address at least two of them. Prominent epistemologists also object that dogmatism is absurdly permissive because it allows a seeming to (...) provide justification even if the seeming was caused in some apparently inappropriate way. I conclude by disarming this objection. (shrink)

It is natural to think that many of our beliefs are rational because they are based on seemings, or on the way things seem. This is especially clear in the case of perception. Many of our mathematical, moral, and memory beliefs also appear to be based on seemings. In each of these cases, it is natural to think that our beliefs are not only based on a seeming, but also that they are rationally based on these seemings—at least assuming there (...) is no relevant counterevidence. This piece is an introduction to a volume dedicated to the question of what the connection is between seemings and justified belief: under what conditions, if any, can a seeming justify its content? (shrink)

First published in 1946, History of Western Philosophy went on to become the best-selling philosophy book of the twentieth century. A dazzlingly ambitious project, it remains unchallenged to this day as the ultimate introduction to Western philosophy. Providing a sophisticated overview of the ideas that have perplexed people from time immemorial, it is 'long on wit, intelligence and curmudgeonly scepticism', as the New York Times noted, and it is this, coupled with the sheer brilliance of its scholarship, that has made (...) Russell's History of Western Philosophy one of the most important philosophical works of all time. (shrink)

Some writers object to logical pluralism on the grounds that logic is normative. The rough idea is that the relation of logical consequence has consequences for what we ought to think and h...

Immensely intelligible, thought-provoking guide by Nobel prize-winner considers such topics as the distinction between appearance and reality, the existence and nature of matter, idealism, inductive logic, intuitive knowledge, many other subjects. For students and general readers, there is no finer introduction to philosophy than this informative, affordable and highly readable edition that is "concise, free from technical terms, and perfectly clear to the general reader with no prior knowledge of the subject."—The Booklist of the American Library Association.

The second edition of Doing Ethics in Media continues its mission of providing an accessible but comprehensive introduction to media ethics, with a theoretical grounding in moral philosophy, to help students think clearly and systematically about dilemmas in the rapidly changing media environment. Each chapter highlights specific considerations, cases, and practical applications for the fields of journalism, advertising, digital media, entertainment, public relations, and social media. Six fundamental decision-making questions - the "5Ws and H" around which the book is organized (...) - provide a path for students to articulate the issues; understand applicable law and ethics codes; consider the needs of stakeholders; work through conflicting values; integrate philosophic principles; and pose a "test of publicity." Students are challenged to be active ethical thinkers through the authors' reader-friendly style and use of critical early-career examples. While most people will change careers several times during their lives, all of us are life-long media consumers, and Doing Ethics in Media prepares readers for that task. Doing Ethics in Media is aimed at undergraduate and graduate students studying media ethics in mass media, journalism, and media studies. It also serves students in rhetoric, popular culture, communication studies, and interdisciplinary social sciences. The book's companion website-doingethicsin.media, or www.doingmediaethics.com-provides continuously updated real-world media ethics examples and collections of essays from experts and students. The site also hosts ancillary materials for students and for instructors, including a test bank and instructor's manual. (shrink)

_''Philosophy' is a word which has been used in many ways, some wider, some narrower. I propose to use it in a very wide sense, which I will now try to explain.'_ - _ Bertrand Russell Nearly forty years since its first publication, History of Western Philosophy_ remains unchallenged as the ultimate introduction to its subject, while claiming classic status in its own right. It is the bestselling philosophy book of the twentieth century and one of the most important (...) philosophical works of all time. This compact and affordable paperback edition makes this comprehensive and brilliantly-written text readily available for a new generation of readers. As part of our commitment to Russell publishing, the delux version of this bestselling title will continue to be available. 1961: 848pp: Pb: 0-145-07854-7: £16.99. (shrink)

First published in 1946, _History of Western Philosophy_ went on to become the best-selling philosophy book of the twentieth century. A dazzlingly ambitious project, it remains unchallenged to this day as the ultimate introduction to Western philosophy. Providing a sophisticated overview of the ideas that have perplexed people from time immemorial, it is 'long on wit, intelligence and curmudgeonly scepticism', as the _New York Times_ noted, and it is this, coupled with the sheer brilliance of its scholarship, that has made (...) Russell's _History of Western Philosophy_ one of the most important philosophical works of all time. (shrink)

Does inferential justification require the subject to be aware that her premises support her conclusion? Externalists tend to answer “no” and internalists tend to answer “yes”. In fact, internalists often hold the strong higher-level requirement that an argument justifies its conclusion only if the subject justifiably believes that her premises support her conclusion. I argue for a middle ground. Against most externalists, I argue that inferential justification requires that one be aware that her premises support her conclusion. Against many internalists, (...) I argue that this higher-level awareness needn’t be doxastic or justified. I also argue that the required higher-level awareness needn’t be caused in some appropriate way, e.g. by a reliable or properly functioning faculty. I suspect that this weaker higher-level requirement is overlooked because, at first glance, it seems absurd to allow nondoxastic, unjustified, and unreliably-caused higher-level awareness to contribute to inferential justification. One of the central goals of this paper is to explain how such weak awareness can make an essential contribution to inferential justification. (shrink)

First published in 1946, _History of Western Philosophy_ went on to become the best-selling philosophy book of the twentieth century. A dazzlingly ambitious project, it remains unchallenged to this day as the ultimate introduction to Western philosophy. Providing a sophisticated overview of the ideas that have perplexed people from time immemorial, it is 'long on wit, intelligence and curmudgeonly scepticism', as the _New York Times_ noted, and it is this, coupled with the sheer brilliance of its scholarship, that has made (...) Russell's _History of Western Philosophy_ one of the most important philosophical works of all time. (shrink)

"Feminism, Theory and the Politics of Difference" looks at the question of difference across the full spectrum of feminist theory from liberal, radical, lesbian ...

This brilliant and controversial work investigates the relationship between 'individual' and 'scientific' knowledge.

The chapter introduces and characterizes the notion of fittingness. It charts the history of the relation and its relevance to contemporary debates in normative and metanormative philosophy and proceeds to survey issues to do with fittingness covered in the volume’s chapters, including the nature and epistemology of fittingness, the relations between fittingness and reasons, the normativity of fittingness, fittingness and value theory, and the role of fittingness in theorizing about responsibility. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of issues to (...) do with fittingness that aren’t covered extensively by the volume’s chapters in order to indicate avenues for further research. (shrink)

JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY PRIZE for the best published book in the history of philosophy [Awarded in 2010] _______________ -/- Although it is widely recognized that David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40) belongs among the greatest works of philosophy, there is little agreement about the correct way to interpret his fundamental intentions. It is an established orthodoxy among almost all commentators that skepticism and naturalism are the two dominant themes in this work. The difficulty has been, (...) however, that Hume's skeptical arguments and commitments appear to undermine and discredit his naturalistic ambition to contribute to "the science of man". This schism appears to leave his entire project broken-backed. The solution to this riddle depends on challenging another, closely related, point of orthodoxy: namely, that before Hume published the Treatise he removed almost all material concerned with problems of religion. Russell argues, contrary to this view, that irreligious aims and objectives are fundamental to the Treatise and account for its underlying unity and coherence. It is Hume's basic anti-Christian aims and objectives that serve to shape and direct both his skeptical and naturalistic commitments. When Hume's arguments are viewed from this perspective we can solve, not only puzzles arising from his discussion of various specific issues, we can also explain the intimate and intricate connections that hold his entire project together. This "irreligious" interpretation provides a comprehensive fresh account of the nature of Hume's fundamental aims and ambitions in the Treatise. It also presents a radically different picture of the way in which Hume's project was rooted in the debates and controversies of his own time, placing the Treatise in an irreligious or anti-Chrisitan philosophical tradition that includes Hobbes, Spinoza and freethinking followers. Considered in these terms, Hume's Treatise constitutes the crowning achievement of the Radical Enlightenment. (shrink)

Classical acquaintance theory is any version of classical foundationalism that appeals to acquaintance in order to account for non-inferential justification. Such theories are well suited to account for a kind of infallible non-inferential justification. Why am I justified in believing that I’m in pain? An initially attractive (partial) answer is that I’m acquainted with my pain. But since I can’t be acquainted with what isn’t there, acquaintance with my pain guarantees that I’m in pain. What’s less clear is whether, given (...) classical acquaintance theory, it’s possible to have non-inferential justification to believe something false. Classical acquaintance theorists try to make room for such a possibility, but I argue that the attempts of Richard Fumerton, Ali Hasan, and Evan Fales are inadequate. I’ll focus on introspective justification, but similar issues arise for a priori justification as well. (shrink)

This chapter explores whether and when experience can be evidence. It argues that experiences can be evidence, and that this claim is compatible with just about any epistemological theory. It evaluates the most promising argument for the conclusion that certain experiences (e.g., seeming to see) are always evidence for believing what the experiences represent. While the argument is very promising, one premise needs further defense. The argument also depends on a certain connection between reasonable belief and the first person perspective.

This book develops an Aristotelian account of the virtue of practical intelligence or "phronesis"--an excellence of deliberating and making choices--which ...

This article contends that we can learn much about how Coetzee tells stories by examining how he treats the subject of disgust. Coetzee represents disgust so often in his fiction, I argue, because disgust figures the subject’s relation to the object as both embodied and contemplative. Staging scenes of disgust enables Coetzee to do two apparently contradictory things at once: (1) represent the immediacy of a focalizing character’s physical reaction to the world and (2) establish a reflective distance between the (...) focalizing character and object that encourages both character and reader to contemplate the ignoble aspect of human mortality. (shrink)

This essay aims to provide a self-contained introduction to time in relativistic cosmology that clarifies both how questions about the nature of time should be posed in this setting and the extent to which they have been or can be answered empirically. The first section below recounts the loss of Newtonian absolute time with the advent of special and general relativity, and the partial recovery of absolute time in the form of cosmic time in some cosmological models. Section II considers (...) the beginning and end of time in a broader class of models in which there is not an analog of Newtonian absolute time. As we will see, reasonable physical assumptions imply that the universe is finite to the past, and Section III turns to consideration of the “beginning” itself. We critically review conventional wisdom that a “singularity” reveals flaws in general relativity and briefly assess ways of avoiding the singularity. (shrink)

_'Philosophy, from the earliest times, has made greater claims, and acheived fewer results than any other branch of learning... I believe that the time has now arrived when this unsatisfactory state of affairs can be brought to an end'_ - _Bertrand Russell_ So begins _Our Knowledge of the Eternal World_, Bertrand Russell's classic attempt to show by means of examples, the nature, capacity and limitations of the logico-analytical method in philosophy.