Wesley Salmon is renowned for his seminal contributions to the philosophy of science. He has powerfully and permanently shaped discussion of such issues as lawlike and probabilistic explanation and the interrelation of explanatory notions to causal notions. This unique volume brings together twenty-six of his essays on subjects related to causality and explanation, written over the period 1971-1995. Six of the essays have never been published before and many others have only appeared in obscure venues. The volume includes a section (...) of accessible introductory pieces, as well as more advanced and technical pieces, and will make essential work in the philosophy of science readily available to both scholars and students. (shrink)

In this essay I discuss Abraham Joshua Heschel’s influence in the Chinese-reading world by focusing on the growing list of publications about, and translations of, his works in Chinese. By examinin...

A first impression matters, in particular when encounters are brief as in most doctor-patient interactions. In this study, we investigate how physicians’ body postures impact patients’ first impressions of them and extend previous research by exploring posture effects on the perception of all roles of a physician – not just single aspects such as scholarly expertise or empathy. In an online survey, 167 participants ranked photographs of 4 physicians in 4 postures. The results show that male physicians were rated more (...) positively when assuming open rather than closed postures with respect to all professional physician roles. Female physicians in open postures were rated similarly positive for items related to medical competence, but they tended to be rated less favorably with respect to social skills. These findings extend what is known about the effects of physicians’ body postures on the first impressions patients form to judge physicians’ medical versus social competencies. We discuss practical implications and the need for more research on interaction effects of body postures and physician gender on first impressions. (shrink)

When, after the agreeable fatigues of solicitation, Mrs Millamant set out a long bill of conditions subject to which she might by degrees dwindle into a wife, Mirabell offered in return the condition that he might not thereby be beyond measure enlarged into a husband. With age and experience in research come the twin dangers of dwindling into a philosopher of science while being enlarged into a dotard. The philosophy of science, I believe, should not be the preserve of senile (...) scientists and of teachers of philosophy who have themselves never so much as understood the contents of a textbook of theoretical physics, let alone done a bit of mathematical research or even enjoyed the confidence of a creating scientist. On the latter count I run no risk: Any reader will see that I am untrained (though not altogether unread) in classroom philosophy. Of no ignorance of mine do I boast, indeed I regret it, but neither do I find this one ignorance fatal here, for few indeed of the great philosophers to explicate whose works hodiernal professors of phil osophy destroy forests of pulp were themselves so broadly and specially trained as are their scholiasts. In attempt to palliate the former count I have chosen to collect works written over the past thirty years, some of them not published before, and I include only a few very recent essays. (shrink)

Coleridge has been seen by some not so much as a poet spoiled by philosophy, but as a philosopher who was also a poet. It could be argued that his major endeavor was an attempt to save the life sciences form the mechanistic interpretation which he saw as the outcome of Lockean "mechanico-corpuscularian" philosophy. This contribution describes that endeavour. It shows its connection to the social circumstances of the time. It discussess its relationship to the poetic sensibility of the "Lake (...) poets" and to the German thought which Coleridge absorbed during and after his sojourn in Gottingen in 1798-99. It describes the nature of his "Theory of Life" as seen not only from the posthumous publication itself, but also from the numerous hints and struggles recorded in his voluminous notebooks, letters and lecture notes. It is concluded that, although never adequately assembled, it forms the only serious attempt to construct a profound alternative to the ultimately mechanistic biology of Charles Darwin and the physiologists of the second half of the century. As such it strongly influenced the young Richard Owen and, as is well known, was eventually overwhelmed by the Darwin-Huxley synthesis of the 1860s. Nevertheless, insofar as Coleridge's concept of life ultimately derived from his ambition to find a way of healing the Cartesian divide, we may wonder whether the recent upsurge in consciousness studies may cause us to look again at his panentheistic ideas and, discarding the obsolete and fanciful metaphysics, recast them into a more acceptable form. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Robert C. Solomon IN DEFENSE OF SENTIMENTALITY "A sentimentalist is simply one who desires to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it." —Oscar Wilde, De Profundis. 66TA That's Wrong with Sentimentality?"1 That tide of Mark JefV V ferson's 1983 Mindessay already indicates a great deal notonly about the gist of his article but about a century-old prejudice that has been devastating to ethics and literature alike. (...) According to that prejudice, it goes without saying that there is something wrong with it, even if it is difficult to put one's finger on it. To be called "sentimental" is to be ridiculed, or dismissed. Sentimentality is a weakness, it suggests hypocrisy. Or, perhaps it is the fact that sentimental people are so... so embarrassing. (How awkward it is talking or sitting next to someone weeping or gushing, when one is dry-eyed and somber.) Or, perhaps it is the well-confirmed fact that sentimentalists have such poor taste, and sentimental literature is, above all, literature that is cheap, superficial, and manipulative—in other words, verbal kitsch. Such mawkish literature jerks tears from otherwise sensible readers, and sentimentalists are those who actually enjoy that humiliating experience. Perhaps that is why Oscar Wilde thought that sentimentalists were really cynics ("Sentimentality is merely the bank holiday of cynicism").2 Or, perhaps what bothers us is what bothered Michael Tanner, that sentimental people indulge themselves in their feelings instead of doing what should be done.3 It is often said that the problem is that sentimentality and sentimental literature alike give us a false view of the world, distort our thinking and substitute a "saccharine" portrait of the world in place ofwhat we all know to be the horrible realities. Moreover, as Jefferson more than merely suggests, the "simple-minded sympathies " ofsentimentality might actually promote fascism and racism. Mary Midgley similarly suggests that sentimentality leads to brutality.4 But Philosophy and Literature, © 1990, 14: 304-323 Robert C. Solomon305 even where sentimentality is a harmless diversion—a Daphne du Maurier novel on a sad Saturday afternoon—it seems to be all but agreed that sentimentality is no virtue even ifit is not, like cruelty and hypocrisy, intrinsically vicious. Something is wrong with sentimentality; the only question is, what is it that is wrong? In this essay, I will argue that there is nothing wrong with sentimentality. Of course, like any quasi-ethical category, it admits of unwarranted excesses and hypocritical abuses, and is prone to various pathological distortions. But the prejudice against sentimentality, I want to argue, is ill-founded and in fact is an extension ofthat all-too-familiar contempt for the passions in Western literature and philosophy. Our disdain for sentimentality is the rationalist's discomfort with any display of emotion, warranted as well as unwarranted, appropriate as well as inappropriate. It is as ifthe very word, "sentimentality," has been loaded with the connotations of "too much"—too much feeling and too litde common sense and rationality, as if these were opposed instead of mutually supportive. It is as if sentimentality and its sentiments are never warranted and always inappropriate. The word has come to be used as the name of a deficiency or a weakness if not, as some critics have written, a malaise. But I take sentimentality to be nothing more nor less than the "appeal to tender feelings," and though one can manipulate and abuse such feelings (including one's own), and though they can on occasion be misdirected or excessive, there is nothing wrong with them as such and hence nothing (in that respect) wrong with literature that provokes us, that "moves" us, to abstract affection or weeping. Sentimentality implies no deficiency in one's rational faculties and does not imply any inappropriateness, unwillingness, or lack of readiness to act. Sentimentality does not involve any distortion of the world and it does not impede but rather prepares and motivates us to react in "the real world." It is not an escape from reality or responsibility, but, quite to the contrary, provides the precondition for ethical engagement rather than an obstacle to it. Historically, I want to trace the fate of sentimentality to... (shrink)

Friedrich Nietzsche is one of the most popular and controversial philosophers of the last 150 years. Narcissistic, idiosyncratic, hyperbolic, irreverent--never has a philosopher been appropriated, deconstructed, and scrutinized by such a disparate array of groups, movements, and schools of thought. Adored by many for his passionate ideas and iconoclastic style, he is also vilified for his lack of rigor, apparent cruelty, and disdain for moral decency. In Living with Nietzsche, Solomon suggests that we read Nietzsche from a very different point (...) of view, as a provocative writer who means to transform the way we view our lives. This means taking Nietzsche personally. Rather than focus on the "true" Nietzsche or trying to determine "what Nietzsche really meant" by his seemingly random and often contradictory pronouncements about "the Big Questions" of philosophy, Solomon reminds us that Nietzsche is not a philosopher of abstract ideas but rather of the dazzling personal insight, the provocative challenge, the incisive personal probe. He does not try to reveal the eternal verities but he does powerfully affect his readers, goading them to see themselves in new and different ways. It is Nietzsche's compelling invitation to self-scrutiny that fascinates us, engages us, and guides us to a "rich inner life." Ultimately, Solomon argues, Nietzsche is an example as well as a promulgator of "passionate inwardness," a life distinguished by its rich passions, exquisite taste, and a sense of personal elegance and excellence. (shrink)

Harsh blame can be socially destructive. This article examines how harsh blame can be “civilized.” A core construct here is the historicist narrative, which is a story-like account of how a person came to be the sort of person she is. We argue that historicist narratives regarding immoral actors can temper blame and that this happens via a novel mechanism. To illuminate that mechanism, we offer a novel theoretical perspective on lay beliefs about free will. We distinguish 2 senses of (...) free will: (a) Freedom of action, which portrays the will as a dynamic choice-making mechanism and concerns whether the actor can exert volitional control via that mechanism at the time of action, and (b) Control of self-formation, which portrays the will as an enduring disposition (e.g., persistent desire to humiliate) and refers to whether the actor is truly the source of that disposition. Six experiments show that historicist narratives have no effect on perceived freedom of action, but rather temper blame by reducing perceived self-formative control. We also provide evidence against several additional theoretically derived alternative mediators (e.g., intentionality, perceived suffering). Further underlining the need to distinguish free will concepts, we show that biological narratives—unlike historicist narratives—temper blame via reductions in perceived freedom of action. Finally, to illuminate the meaning of “civilized” blame,” we show that historicist narratives specifically reduce the urge to inflict spiteful punishments on offenders, but leave intact the urge to nonviolently guide the offender toward moral improvement. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Virtue as "Likeness to God" in Plato and SenecaDaniel C. Russell (bio)In The Center Of Raphael's Famous Painting"The School of Athens," Plato stands pointing to the heavens, and Aristotle stands pointing to the ground; there stand, that is, the mystical Plato and the down-to-earth Aristotle. Although it oversimplifies, this depiction makes sense for the same reason that Aristotle continues to enjoy a presence in modern moral philosophy that Plato (...) does not: quite simply, Plato's ethics looks too fantastic. And Plato's ethics never looks more fantastic than in the claim that our highest good is to be like God.We find this view, in various forms, in the Phaedrus, Timaeus, Laws, Republic, and Theaetetus, as well as in the Phaedo and Philebus,1 and the ancient Platonist Alcinous in his Handbook of Platonism tells us that likeness to God () is Plato's "official" position on our final end.2 Nonetheless, this view receives very little press today: many philosophers are unaware of it; some have simply ignored it or dismissed it as an idle metaphor; and most of those who have taken it more seriously have also tended to find it too otherworldly to be of much relevance to us. This latter response is due in large measure to viewing likeness to God from the perspective of the ancient Neoplatonist Plotinus.3 But there is certainly no guarantee that Plotinus's perspective on likeness to God gives us an especially accurate reconstruction of Plato's view; indeed, the interpretation of this idea was a matter of considerable controversy among Neoplatonists, some of whom offered far less other-worldly interpretations than Plotinus's.4 [End Page 241]In any event, unraveling likeness to God in Plato requires a fresh approach that makes the greatest sense of it within Plato's larger moral philosophy. And in fact we find just such a promising understanding of likeness to God when we take a fresh look at it through Stoic lenses, and through the lens of Plato's Philebus: in both we find the idea that virtue is part of the divine realm right alongside the down-to-earth idea that virtue is rational activity in relation to the world as we find it. This is not to suppose that the Stoic conception of likeness to God is an interpretation of, or descended from, Plato's conception.5 It is simply that the Stoics also found it helpful to think of virtue as likeness to God, and it will be enough if the Stoic conception opens up the range of possibilities for understanding such an idea, allowing us to see philosophical alternatives that might take us some distance towards interpreting Plato, and that may have remained otherwise out of view. Such an understanding of the idea that virtue is likeness to God as we find in the Stoics, I argue, offers just this sort of promising and unexplored alternative in Platonism.One thing that is quite clear is that Plato means for likeness to God to offer us some insight into the nature of virtue. We see this in the Timaeus, where Plato offers a model of the three-part soul, in which mastery of the parts is justice (42 a-b) and happiness (90b-d), and is what likeness to God comes to (42b-d, 47a-c); clearly, then, the virtue in question is moral virtue. Rather curiously, Plato depicts this constitution of soul as a sort of motion which is of the same kind as the motion of the universe itself (90c-d):6 as the universe consists in orbits which are orderly and reconciled in their motion, so the human soul consists in the different orbits (44d) of reason, passion, and desire, which are out of harmony when we start life, but become more orderly as we mature (43a-44d). Although this is difficult talk, it is clearly meant to depict a self-mastery of the whole soul under [End Page 242] the leadership of reason (43a-44d), which is the same as justice, and which consists in the reconciliation of one's inner motions by reason (42b-d).7 Thus we "stabilize the... (shrink)

Perhaps the greatest challenge to an existential phenomenological account of perception is that posed by the argument from illusions. Recent developments in research on the behaviour of subjects suffering from illusions together with some seminal ideas found in Merleau-Ponty''s writings enable us to develop and corroborate an account of the phenomenon of illusions, one, which unlike the empiricist account, does not undermine our conviction that in perception we reach the things themselves. The traditional argument from illusions derives its force from (...) an uncritical assumption that the process of experience takes place in time conceived as an infinite series of distinct moments. Once this assumption has been bracketed we are able to recognise the paradoxical truth that in the disillusion something can become that which it has always been and can cease to be that which it has never been. Furthermore, through a reflection on our experience of others overcoming their illusions, and on psychological evidence, we are able to show that there is nothing to suggest that this description of the disillusion is a description of a private or subjective event. (shrink)

_A leading thinker asks why “faster” is synonymous with “better” in our hurried world and suggests how to take control of our runaway lives_ We live in an ever-accelerating world: faster computers, markets, food, fashion, product cycles, minds, bodies, kids, lives. When did everything start moving so fast? Why does speed seem so inevitable? Is faster always better? Drawing together developments in religion, philosophy, art, technology, fashion, and finance, Mark C. Taylor presents an original and rich account of a great (...) paradox of our times: how the very forces and technologies that were supposed to free us by saving time and labor now trap us in a race we can never win. The faster we go, the less time we have, and the more we try to catch up, the farther behind we fall. Connecting our speed-obsession with today’s global capitalism, he composes a grand narrative showing how commitments to economic growth and extreme competition, combined with accelerating technological innovation, have brought us close to disaster. Psychologically, environmentally, economically, and culturally, speed is taking a profound toll on our lives. By showing how the phenomenon of speed has emerged, Taylor offers us a chance to see our pace of life as the product of specific ideas, practices, and policies. It’s not inevitable or irreversible. He courageously and movingly invites us to imagine how we might patiently work towards a more deliberative life and sustainable world. (shrink)

Friedrich Nietzsche is one of the most popular and controversial philosophers of the last 150 years; his popular appeal surpasses any philosopher who came after him. Yet as Robert Solomon shows, never has a thinker been more misunderstood. Solomon shows us that in fact the 'real' Nietzsche has tremendous value for the modern seeker and is not the dark figure some have made him. Solomon brings out Nietzsche's view of a successful inner life, the notion of 'passionate inwardness', deep emotions, (...) exquisite taste, and personla virtue, energy, vibrancy, and enthusiasm, overturning long-heldviews of the seminal thinker in the process. (shrink)

Methodological reductionists practice ‘wannabe reductionism’. They claim that one should pursue reductionism, but never propose how. I integrate two strains in prior work to do so. Three kinds of activities are pursued as “reductionist”. “Successional reduction” and inter-level mechanistic explanation are legitimate and powerful strategies. Eliminativism is generally ill-conceived. Specific problem-solving heuristics for constructing inter-level mechanistic explanations show why and when they can provide powerful and fruitful tools and insights, but sometimes lead to erroneous results. I show how traditional metaphysical (...) approaches fail to engage how science is done. The methods used do so, and support a pragmatic and non-eliminativist realism. (shrink)

Whatever we take “life” to mean, it must involve an attempt to describe the objective reality beyond scientists’ biases. Traditionally, this is thought to involve comparing our scientific categories to “natural kinds.” But this approach has been tainted with an implicit metaphysics, inherited from Aristotle, that does not fit biological reality. In particular, we must accept that biological categories will never be specifiable in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions or shared underlying physical structures that produce clean boundaries. Biology blurs (...) all lines and failure to embrace this unique feature has blocked attempts to reach consensus on the meaning of “life.” Thus, while the three classical accounts all fall short of offering a complete definition, their advocates fail to realize that they share the same view of life’s ultimate, functional hallmark: its uniquely rich adaptive capacity. I develop an account of life as adaptive capacity that sidesteps debates about the relative importance of specific mechanisms and the precise location of boundaries to bring the three classical accounts together under a shared conceptual framework. (shrink)

In this paper the scholastic question 'On the Subject of Virtues' is taken as starting point for a discussion of the vision of man that supports Thomas Aquinas' moral doctrine. According to Thomas not the will, but the sensualitas itself must be the subject of moral virtues. For a virtuous action the right decision and the right intention in the will do not suffice, there must also exist „a perfect disposition in the sensitive appetite to follow the judgement of reason”. (...) If the principle of all virtues is the will, their perfection and completion is in the emotional life which makes someone act with pleasure and spontaneously. Thomas' ethical doctrine is confronted with the sharp criticism of William of Ockham. According to Ockham only dispositions of the will can be moral virtues. It is even questionable whether the sensitive faculties may acquire any habits, and certainly those habits are never intrinsically good, but only good „denominatione extrinseca”. In Ockham's view it is superfluous to postulate habitus in the irrational soul besides the corporeal qualities (which we may acquire through drugs or physical training). Ockham's vision about man is dichotomic. Morality is situated exclusively on the level of reason and will. The body with its sensitive functions is the realm of the passionate life, the indifferent material that must be ordered by the virtuous man. The ethical life is understood as a struggle, requiring will power and firmness. In this context, the difference between temperance and continence disappears. In Thomas' view the sensitive appetite is much more than a biological function, because it can be integrated in a rational desire. The relation between nature and morality is understood als 'participation'. When this metaphysics of participation is abandoned we find a rigoristic voluntarism, as is evident in Ockham. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Our Best RhetorologistWayne C. BoothAristotle’s Rhetoric: An Art of Character, by Eugene Garver; 328 pp. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994, $53.95.Eugene Garver’s new book is not only an original and challenging account of Aristotle’s Rhetoric. It is one of the fullest and most responsible encounters ever with philosophical, political, and ethical issues raised by the theory and practice of rhetoric. I’ll go even further. Because Garver grapples so (...) well with how Aristotle’s problems differ from ours, and how his solutions do not quite fit what we most need, I hereby confer upon him, without irony, the title of supreme “rhetorologist” (a term he needs but does not use).A rhetorologist is not just “rhetorician” or “rhetorical theorist” or “philosopher of rhetoric.” Garver’s work dramatizes our need for a term for the “comparativist of rhetorics,” the thinker who probes how disparate rhetorical practices and theories compete and are finally, inescapably related. In earlier times when all philosophers were trained to think about rhetoric the term “genuine philosopher” might have served the trick. But it won’t work today.Garver has spent decades on this masterwork of rhetorology, and he thus joins those rare masters-of-interrelated-rhetorics—Kenneth Burke, Richard McKeon, who else?—those who do justice both to the importance and the complexities of a subject that Aristotle has led us into but himself could never have dreamed of, since he had available no fully developed alternative “rhetorics” to do a “-logy” on. [End Page 116]The book is too ambitious and complex to allow full justice here. It is a book not just to read but to study; it is a book to teach from. All attentive readers will find themselves drawn into issues previously dodged, or engaged in quarrels about theses they’ve never met before. Those like me whose interests overlap strongly with Garver’s will of course dispute about some points. What will prove important, as the book gets discussed, will be our recognition of just why the project itself has led Garver, and leads us, into some inescapable juggling with several different and potentially contradictory theses, each of them so important that it must at moments have invited Garver to consider it as primary. Indeed, when an original thinker bites off more than anyone can chew, let alone fully digest, we should not be surprised if we have a hard time deciding just what the main point is. Several times in my first reading I thought, “Garver has mistitled this book: it should be called...”—and then I’d try out a title that fit the argument at that point but would not fit precisely what came next.The result is that different sympathetic readers will find different books here, with at least the following ambiguously related purposes—all of them to my mind either firmly achieved or at least pursued so effectively that refutation will prove difficult. Some of them are the overt theses of particular chapters, but all are found echoed or implied in every chapter. And all are finally and impressively interrelated.IFirst, Garver works, as he must, to show the faults of past readings of the Rhetoric. The chief of these has been the reduction to a handbook for rhetors; it is not a technical handbook, though it can be used as that, but an effort to “construct a civic relation between argument and ethos, so between techn̄e and phron̄esis [prudence]” (p. 77). “Aristotle’s political project is to maximize the active—energeia—side of rhetoric and so civilize the activity of influencing beliefs and judgments and convert into a minor irritant the role played by disreputable tactics such as playing on irrelevant emotions in the hearers” (p. 40). “I have... assumed that instead of doing that job [the ‘handbook’ job] badly, Aristotle is in fact trying to accomplish something else. I see him exhibiting the internal values and standards of rhetorical argument to legislators and citizens” (p. 235), [and thus making possible] “a new conception of the ethical, and of the relation of logos and ethos” (p. 16). “Aristotle’s Rhetoric is about a civic art... (shrink)

Autobiographical memory and the self are closely linked. AM retrieval in depression is characterized by a lack of specificity, suggesting an impairment of episodic AM. Autonoetic consciousness and self-perspective, which are critical to episodic AM, have never been addressed in depression. Twenty-one depressed inpatients and 21 matched controls were given an episodic AM task designed to assess positive and negative memories regarding specificity, autonoetic consciousness , and self-perspective . For specificity, “remember”, and “field” responses, ANOVAs revealed a main group effect (...) and a group × valence interaction. Between groups, patients showed lower scores than controls for positive memories. Within groups, patients showed greater scores for negative memories, and controls showed greater scores for positive memories. There is a global episodic AM impairment of positive memories in depression regarding specificity, autonoetic consciousness, and self-perspective. Our results suggest new cognitive interventions to improve the self-relevance of positive memories in depression. (shrink)

Out of the ferment of recent debates about the intellectual virtues, Roberts and Wood have developed an approach they call 'regulative epistemology'. This is partly a return to classical and medieval traditions, partly in the spirit of Locke's and Descartes's concern for intellectual formation, partly an exploration of connections between epistemology and ethics, and partly an approach that has never been tried before. Standing on the shoulders of recent epistemologists - including William Alston, Alvin Plantinga, Ernest Sosa, and Linda Zagzebski (...) - Roberts and Wood pursue epistemological questions by looking closely and deeply at particular traits of intellectual character such as love of knowledge, intellectual autonomy, intellectual generosity, and intellectual humility. Central to their vision is an account of intellectual goods that includes not just knowledge as properly grounded belief, but understanding and personal acquaintance, acquired and shared through the many social practices of actual intellectual life. This approach to intellectual virtue infuses the discipline of epistemology with new life, and makes it interesting to people outside the circle of professional epistemologists. It is epistemology for the whole intellectual community, as Roberts and Wood carefully sketch the ways in which virtues that would have been categorized earlier as moral make for agents who can better acquire, refine, and communicate important kinds of knowledge. (shrink)

Most whistleblowers talk as if they never had a choice about whether to blow the whistle. This doesn't mean they acted suddenly, or impulsively, only that they believe they could not have done otherwise. Trying to make sense of this near universal answer to the question "Why did you do it?" the essay draws on narrative theory. Narrative theory distinguishes between actant and sender—that is, between actor and his or her values. This distinction helps to explain what it means to (...) face a difficult choice over something about which one feels one never had a choice. (shrink)

Incompatibilism, the view that free will and determinism are incompatible, subsists on two widely accepted, but deeply confused, theses concerning possibility and causation: (1) in a deterministic universe, one can never truthfully utter the sentence "I could have done otherwise," and (2) in such universes, one can never really take credit for having caused an event, since in fact all events have been predetermined by conditions during the universe's birth. Throughout the free will.

The more one reads about the topic of natural kinds, the more one is reminded of that famous scene in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in which Deep Thought—after a mere 7.5 million years of doing calculations—reveals that the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything was 42. Faced with bewildered reactions from the eager audience, Deep Thought explains: “I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you’ve never actually known what (...) the question is” .In the case of the growing literature on natural kinds, it is easy to get a feeling that something similar is going on. While philosophers keep advancing novel accounts of natural kinds, at the same time there is considerable disagreement about what exactly the problem is that such accounts should solve. To some, natural kinds are real kinds in nature that exist in the world independently of human interests and practices. At the very least, they are human-made kinds that correspon .. (shrink)

Otte :165–177, 2009) and Pruss :400–415, 2012) have produced counterexamples to Plantinga’s famous free will defence against the logical version of the problem of evil. The target of this criticism is the possibility of universal transworld depravity, which is crucial to Plantinga’s defence. In this paper, we argue that there is a simpler and more plausible free will defence that does not require the possibility of universal transworld depravity or the truth of counterfactuals of creaturely freedom. We assume only that (...) libertarianism is possibly true and that God’s existence is consistent with the existence of free agents who never go wrong. We conclude the paper by explaining how our defence may be able to succeed without assuming, in a way that is consistent with compatibilism. (shrink)

Understanding Objectivism was Leonard Peikoff’s first major teaching endeavor following Ayn Rand’s death in 1982. Like Nathaniel Branden’s 1971 book The Disowned Self—written after his break with Rand— the lectures addressed complaints reported by students of the philosophy, subject matter Rand may not have approved. Peikoff faults the common mistake of looking at Objectivism through the lens of traditional philosophy. He clarifies the distinct nature of objective methodology and shows how traditional philosophy is hostage to the pernicious mind-body dichotomy. Despite (...) Peikoff’s gracious display of empathy, the promise of a more benign nascent Objectivist vanguard was short-lived. (shrink)

Widely hailed as one of the most significant works in modern political philosophy, John Rawls's _Political Liberalism_ defended a powerful vision of society that respects reasonable ways of life, both religious and secular. These core values have never been more critical as anxiety grows over political and religious difference and new restrictions are placed on peaceful protest and individual expression. In her introduction to the volume, Martha Nussbaum discusses the main themes of _Political Liberalism _and puts them into the context (...) of contemporary philosophical debates. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:154. 1 HUME AND THE GOD-HYPOTHESIS Interpretation of Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion has always been contentious. While some think it obvious that Philo is Hume's spokesman, others think it is Cleanthes. Whether or not Philo is Hume's spokesman, he certainly produces the better argument. Nonetheless, that argument is flawed by an assumption which I doubt Hume ever questioned. I want to consider that assumption, but want to make (...) it clear that it is not my intention to defend Cleanthes' position. The second thing I want to do in this paper, which I have not seen done elsewhere, is to connect Hume's arguments in the Dialogues with his anthropological account of religiosity. Perhaps the least contentious thing about the Dialogues is that Demea's a priori position is not taken too seriously, nor is much time spent on the first cause argument, so important from Aristotle to Leibniz. What is given serious attention is what might be described as the 'God-hypothesis', which is more or less the Argument from Design. Philo rejects the argument for reasons we shall review below, but makes a concession. The concession is basically that it is intelligible to contend that the cause or causes of order in the world bear some resemblance to human intelligence. The catch, which is the point driven home against Cleanthes, is that, while intelligible, the idea is utterly pointless. Philo says: If the whole of Natural Theology... resolves itself into one simple...proposition, That_ the cause or causes of order in the universe probably bear some remote analogy to human intelligence : If this proposition be not capable of extension...If it affords no inference that affects human life... if the analogy... can be carried no farther... (203) then it is without point. Hume is willing to let the theist have his vague analogy, for it serves no point. In fact, the theist cannot 155. win, for to the extent that the God-hypothesis might have explanatory power, it approaches the status of an empirical hypothesis, and as such loses theological import. The Dialogues should be devastating, yet seem to miss the mark. Suppose we look a bit more closely at what is going on. The position Cleanthes elaborates is an hypothesis to the effect that the world exhibits order and that that order is best explained by the postulation of an orderer. Cleanthes' moves are a bit more complicated, as we shall see in a moment, but this is the essential point. The hypothesis is conceived by Hume as either competing with or completing science. In the Enquiry we read that The religious hypothesis...must be considered only as a particular method of accounting for the visible phenomena of the universe : but no.just reasoner will ever presume to infer from it any single fact, and alter or add to the phenomena, in any single particular. (237) The passage is virtually a summary of Philo's thesis. There can be no move from an inferred cause to anything further in terms of either facts or properties. Cleanthes may be grudgingly granted his causal supposition, but he is not allowed to use it. Again: And what can you say more, allowing all your suppositions and reasonings?... (0)ur conduct and deportment in life is still the same... You persist in imagining, that, if we grant that divine existence,...you may safely infer consequences from it... You seem not to remember, that all your reasonings... can only be drawn from effects to causes... (238) The crucial failure is that All the philosophy...and all the religion... will never be able to carry us beyond the usual cause of experience, or give us measures of conduct and behaviour different from those which are furnished by reflections on common life. (244) God, as putative cause simply makes no difference, so long as we conform to the standards of rational thought. 156. It is important to be clear that what is being rejected is God as "a fruitful rival to scientific explanatory notions, such as gravity". The rejection of God as explanatory principle turns on the illegitimacy of Cleanthes' moves. As Peter Jones puts it, Cleanthes makes two inferences... (shrink)

It is now commonly accepted that N. Goodman's predicate "grue" presents the theory of confirmation of C. G. Hempel (and other such theories) with grave difficulties. The precise nature and status of these "difficulties" has, however, never been made clear. In this paper it is argued that it is very unlikely that "grue" raises any formal difficulties for Hempel and appearances to the contrary are examined, rejected and an explanation of their intuitive appeal offered. However "grue" is shown to raise (...) an informal, "over-arching" difficulty of great magnitude for all theories of confirmation, including Hempel's theory. (shrink)

She was intensely sympathetic. She was immensely charming. She excelled in the difficult arts of family life. She sacrificed herself daily. If there was chicken, she took the leg, if there was a draught, she sat in it—in short, she was so constituted that she never had a mind or wish of her own, but preferred to sympathise always with the minds and wishes of others. — Virginia Woolf (1979, 59).

Rosenberg (1983), in his comments on our article (Sober and Lewontin 1982) concerning the units of selection controversy, has matters precisely backwards. We suggest Rosenberg alludes to a quite different view of the units of selection controversy, one that he never shows to have mattered to any biologists engaged in the dispute. We also reject Rosenberg's remark that the hypothesis of genic selection is currently predictively vacuous.

The main object of this impressive study is to lay the groundwork, in contemporary terms, for a systematic and philosophically respectable "apology for poetry." The author finds that most of the so-called New Critics agree in rejecting both the "sugar-coated pill" and "l'art pour l'art" views of poetry; their efforts to formulate a workable third view form the basis for his elaboration of the requirements of an acceptable theory, one which will accord with--and do justice to--the unique and irreducible aesthetic (...) experience to which poetry gives rise. The details of such a theory, unfortunately, are never made entirely clear, owing in part to the diverse and often conflicting demands which must be met, but its main points are as follows: poems, though mainly self-contained, their meanings determined contextually rather than referentially, yet "reveal life," "illuminate human experience"; in poetic creation, though the poet's intentions somehow control the outcome, yet the language of the evolving poem itself determines its own final nature; and poetry, though it neither merely instructs or informs nor merely pleases, yet does provide a kind of "truth" and does produce an experience in some sense pleasurable. The strength of Mr. Krieger's study lies in the clarity and force with which he states the various issues, and in the scholarly care with which he examines the views of individual critics. The book, however, lacks tight organization and sustained, clearly directed argumentation, and its final outcome is rather inconclusive.--V. C. C. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe known works of the medieval astronomer/astrologer Henry Bate include a set of planetary mean motion tables for the meridian of his Flemish hometown Mechelen. These tables survive in three manuscripts representing two significantly different recensions, but have never been examined for their principles of construction or underlying parameters. Such analysis reveals that Bate employed an unusual value for the length of the tropical year, which was probably derived by comparing ancient and contemporary observations of the vernal equinox. In addition, (...) there are clear signs that Bate kept revising his parameters for the mean motions of Venus and the three superior planets, none of which can be traced back to earlier sources. Together with some of Bate’s preserved statements, these findings support the conclusion that the Tabule Machlinenses were unique among the astronomical tables produced in medieval Latin Christendom for using independently derived parameters that were the result of new observations. Bate’s achievement connects him to a wider milieu of astronomers operating in late-thirteenth-century Paris, who put an increased emphasis on observation and the critical examination of received data. (shrink)

The boundaries of psychology have never been very distinctly defined and, as a consequence, science has witnessed frequent border incidents. But it obviously is not psychology alone which suffers from such lack of delineation, but its neighbors, the biological and social sciences, do as well. Cooperation between sciences becomes difficult under these conditions. All agree that psychology is the science of mind, but few agree to what “mind” is. At least within our century “mind” has been taken to be “behavior”, (...) for the present day outlook is that mind is behavior rather than that which is responsible for behavior. The metaphysical dynamism of a prime mover has been replaced by an experimental concept, i.e., one that is susceptible to scientific investigation. There is no need to review the complex history of behavioristic psychology in its many ramifications, ranging from Watson's mechanism to the various vitalistic teleologies. We turn instead to a fundamental problem on which there is little agreement: “What kind of behavior should be called mind?”. (shrink)

Those aspects of language use that are crucial to an understanding of language as a system, and especially to an understanding of meaning, are the acknowledged concern of linguistic pragmatics. Yet until now much of the work in this field has not been easily accessible to the student, and was often written at an intimidating level of technicality. In this textbook, however, Dr Levinson has provided a lucid and integrative analysis of the central topics in pragmatics - deixis, implicature, presupposition, (...) speech acts, and conversational structure. A central concern of the book is the relation between pragmatics and semantics, and Dr Levinson shows clearly how a pragmatic approach can resolve some of the problems semantics have been confronting and simplifying semantic analyses. The complexity of these issues is not disguised, but the exposition is always clear and supported by helpful exemplification. The detailed analyses of selected topics give the student a clear view of the empirical rigour demanded by the study of linguistic pragmatics, but Dr Levinson never loses sight of the rich diversity of the subject. An introduction and conclusion relate pragmatics to other fields in linguistics and other disciplines concerned with language usage - psychology, philosophy, anthropology and literature. Many students in these disciplines, as well as students of linguistics, will find this a valuable textbook. (shrink)

The “asymmetry myth” is that war crimes are committed by one's enemies but never, or hardly ever, by one's own combatants. The myth involves not only a common failure to acknowledge our own actual war crimes but also inadequate reactions when we are forced to recognize them. It contributes to the high likelihood that wars, just or unjust in their causes, will have a high moral cost. This cost, moreover, is a matter needing consideration in the jus ante bellum circumstances (...) of preparedness for war as well as of conduct within it. As part of the symposium on Ned Dobos's book, Ethics, Security, and the War-Machine, I will argue that the strength of the asymmetry myth is sustained by certain forms of romantic nationalism linked to the glamorization of military endeavor. (shrink)

IN HIS EARLY, UNPUBLISHED WRITINGS ON ETHICS, Schleiermacher sketched the framework for a theory of human agency in which he defends a soft determinist view of freedom. He developed his theory as an alternative to noumenal causality, which he had come to reject as inconsistent with a comprehensive scientific conception of the world. Even as a young student, Schleiermacher was convinced that some form of naturalism is inescapable—we are firmly rooted within nature and history—and that, accordingly, our conceptions of morality (...) and religion, to some extent, must be carved out within a naturalistic framework. Naturally, Schleiermacher found transcendental freedom to be an indefensible exception to natural causation and to our interconnectedness with the natural world. Equally important, he found it to be unnecessary for and an obstacle to a sound moral theory. In his early notebooks we find the following entry: “Speculative reason’s concept of transcendental freedom is indispensable only for an otherworldly subject.” Yet, on the first page of his treatise on freedom, Schleiermacher highlights the impasse between Kantian and Leibnizian conceptions of freedom and intimates his dissatisfaction with both theories. The dissatisfaction with Leibniz, though never directly stated, stems from Leibniz’s atomistic conception of causality and inspires Schleiermacher to think seriously about issues in moral psychology which had been ignored or left undeveloped in the Leibnizian and, as it turns out, Kantian views. As we shall see, Schleiermacher discerned that human action originates from a complex constellation. (shrink)

Should laws about sex and pornography be based on social conventions about what is disgusting? Should felons be required to display bumper stickers or wear T-shirts that announce their crimes? This powerful and elegantly written book, by one of America's most influential philosophers, presents a critique of the role that shame and disgust play in our individual and social lives and, in particular, in the law.Martha Nussbaum argues that we should be wary of these emotions because they are associated in (...) troubling ways with a desire to hide from our humanity, embodying an unrealistic and sometimes pathological wish to be invulnerable. Nussbaum argues that the thought-content of disgust embodies "magical ideas of contamination, and impossible aspirations to purity that are just not in line with human life as we know it." She argues that disgust should never be the basis for criminalizing an act, or play either the aggravating or the mitigating role in criminal law it currently does. She writes that we should be similarly suspicious of what she calls "primitive shame," a shame "at the very fact of human imperfection," and she is harshly critical of the role that such shame plays in certain punishments.Drawing on an extraordinarily rich variety of philosophical, psychological, and historical references--from Aristotle and Freud to Nazi ideas about purity--and on legal examples as diverse as the trials of Oscar Wilde and the Martha Stewart insider trading case, this is a major work of legal and moral philosophy. (shrink)

THE importance of understanding Aquinas’ metaphysical method before attempting a reconstruction of his metaphysical thought is evident. Unfortunately, however, his only clear statement of that method is found in his Commentary on the Metaphysics, a work whose nature has never been definitively established. Hence, prior to any discussion of the method employed in Thomist metaphysics, a few words are needed on the intentions which led Aquinas to compose his Commentary, and on the goal he wished to reach through that exposition.

The near-interface region of an epitaxial Ba 0.3 Sr 0.7 TiO 3 thin film grown on LaAlO 3 was found to consist of a high density of stacking faults bounded by partial dislocations. The stacking faults can extend over large distances . Various possible atomic configurations of the faults were considered. The atomic structures of the faults were identified using high-resolution electron microscopy and simulation as well as energy-filtered imaging. The and faults were found to lie predominately on the {100} (...) and {110} planes. The faults on , or have never been observed before in perovskites. The stacking faults on {100} have a structure consisting of a double layer of edge-sharing TiO 6 octahedra. The excess of Ti was detected by energy-filtered imaging. The formation of the extended stacking faults is probably related to a small amount of excess Ti during the film deposition, which may originate from the non-stoichiometry of the ceramic targets BaTiO 3 and SrTiO 3 . It is also enhanced by the misfit-induced compressive strain in the early stages of the film growth. (shrink)

Previously we saw that racist prejudice is supported by false history. The false history of the Greek origins of mathematics is reinforced by a bad philosophy of mathematics. There is no evidence for the existence of Euclid. The “Euclid” book does not contain a single axiomatic proof, as was exposed over a century ago. Such was never the intention of the actual author. The book was brazenly reinterpreted, since axiomatic proof was a church political requirement, and used in church rational (...) theology adopted during the Crusades, as a counter to Islamic rational theology. Deductive proofs are MORE fallible than inductive or empirical proofs. Even a validly proved mathematical theorem, such as the “Pythagorean” theorem, is invalid knowledge in the real world. There is no concept of approximate truth in formal mathematics. Nevertheless, the myth of “superior” axiomatic proofs in the “Euclid” book continues to be reiterated by Western historians, and colonial education teaches axiomatic mathematics. Actually, superior practical value comes from the two “Pythagorean” calculations well known toIndian/Egyptian tradition, but unknown to Greeks. The advantage of related decolonized courses in mathematics has been pedagogically demonstrated. But understanding and political will are needed to change colonial/church education. (shrink)

In this paper we consider some axiomatic systems of set theory related to the system NF (New Foundations) of Quine. In particular we discuss the possible relations of cardinality between a finite set x and its subset class SC(x) = {y | y ∩ x} and also between x and its unit set class USC(x) = {{y} | y ε x}. Specker [5] has shown that in NF the cardinal of a finite set x can never be the same as (...) the cardinal of SC(x). (shrink)

One of our most brilliant evolutionary biologists, Richard Lewontin has also been a leading critic of those--scientists and non-scientists alike--who would misuse the science to which he has contributed so much. In The Triple Helix, Lewontin the scientist and Lewontin the critic come together to provide a concise, accessible account of what his work has taught him about biology and about its relevance to human affairs. In the process, he exposes some of the common and troubling misconceptions that misdirect and (...) stall our understanding of biology and evolution.The central message of this book is that we will never fully understand living things if we continue to think of genes, organisms, and environments as separate entities, each with its distinct role to play in the history and operation of organic processes. Here Lewontin shows that an organism is a unique consequence of both genes and environment, of both internal and external features. Rejecting the notion that genes determine the organism, which then adapts to the environment, he explains that organisms, influenced in their development by their circumstances, in turn create, modify, and choose the environment in which they live.The Triple Helix is vintage Lewontin: brilliant, eloquent, passionate, and deeply critical. But it is neither a manifesto for a radical new methodology nor a brief for a new theory. It is instead a primer on the complexity of biological processes, a reminder to all of us that living things are never as simple as they may seem. (shrink)

To say ‘mysticism versus philosophy’ in the context of Islamic civilization means something far different from what it has come to signify in the West, where many philosophers have looked upon mysticism as the abandonment of any attempt to reconcile religious data with intelligent thought. Certainly the Muslim mystics and philosophers sometimes display a certain mutual opposition and antagonism, but never does their relationship even approach incompatibility.

The Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius deals with a band of heroes one generation before the great warriors at Troy, and the narrative does not really concern itself directly with the later generation. Some of the familiar heroes of Homer may never seem very far from Apollonius' narrative, but they tend not to appear in the poem themselves. One who does is Achilles, twice in fact: once in the first book and once in the last. Both of these passages deal with (...) his early life: the first when he is in the care of Chiron and his wife , the second when he is in the family home with Peleus and Thetis . In the former the gods of heaven and nymphs of Pelion are described as watching the departure of the Argo from Thessaly bound for Colchis. Chiron then comes down from Pelion and waves the heroes goodbye. His wife meanwhile holds Achilles on her arm and shows the child to his father Peleus as he departs with the Argonauts. The later passage describes the failed attempt of Thetis to make her son immortal. In this account Thetis addresses Peleus for the first time since their separation , and then vanishes into the depths of ocean. Their separation occurred some time earlier when she disappeared in anger after her failure to make the young Achilles immortal. She tried to do this by placing him in the fire during the night, and anointing him with ambrosia during the day :The attempt fails when Peleus happens to see his son's immersion in the flames, and gives out a terrible cry, whereupon Thetis throws the boy down, goes away herself, and does not return. (shrink)

A recent article on ‘The Number of Speaking Actors in Old Comedy’ by D. M. MacDowell has argued that to perform the plays of Aristophanes required the use of four, but never five, speaking actors.1 Systematically argued, MacDowell presents a cogent case against Henderson , who has suggested that at times five actors were permitted. MacDowell also presents some very sensible observations on the nature of any prescription which might limit the number of actors. The final paragraphs, however, express considerable (...) discomfort at the earliest work in the extant corpus: 'Akharnians, however, remains problematic, since it has two scenes which may be thought to require five actors' . A tentative solution is offered by MacDowell, which is that 'these scenes were actually performed without a fifth actor, by making very quick changes in the scene with Amphitheos and the Envoy, and by using dolls for the Megarian's Daughters' . Unspeaking performers for the Megarian's Daughters are more likely than dolls, since they must follow orders for movement . Apart from this, I have no doubt that this is indeed how Akharnians was performed, and an examination of the specific comic techniques employed by Aristophanes in the two problematic scenes in Akharnians demonstrates not only the comic desirability of their use, but their applicability to other plays by Aristophanes. (shrink)

This paper begins from the observation that in the Meditations, Descartes never achieves the 'pure', thoroughly decontextualized kind of thinking he famously promoted. Some commentators have used this observation to promote pure inquiry more diligently and to criticize Descartes for failing to achieve it. Other commentators have simply called for greater historical fairness and urged that we renew our efforts to understand how Descartes's inquiry actually does operate. This paper, although sympathetic with this second group of commentators, argues that in (...) revisiting the tensions between what Descartes actually accomplished and what he said he was trying to accomplish, we should see a contemporary lesson, not just better historical understanding. It is argued that in spite of the strong presence in his writings of the imagery of the 'Cartesian' ideal of a perfectly presuppositionless philosophical standpoint, not only does Descartes himself never become a Cartesian, but his own practice provides perhaps the best evidence against the very possibility of the Cartesian 'project of pure inquiry' to which he aspired. (shrink)

The coronavirus pandemic has necessitated extraordinary human resilience in order to preserve and prolong life and social order. Risks to health and even life are being confronted by workers in health and social care, as well as those in roles previously never defined as “frontline,” such as individuals working in community supply chain sectors. The strategy adopted by the United Kingdom government in facing the challenges of the pandemic was markedly different from other countries. The present study set out to (...) examine what variables were associated with resilience, burnout, and wellbeing in all sectors of frontline workers, and whether or not these differed between the UK and Republic of Ireland. Individuals were eligible if they were a frontline worker in the UK or RoI during the pandemic. Part of a larger, longitudinal study, the participants completed an online survey to assess various aspects of their daily and working lives, along with their attitudes toward their government’s handling of the crisis, and measurement of psychological variables associated with heroism. A total of 1,305 participants provided sufficient data for analysis. UK-based workers reported lower wellbeing than the RoI-based participants. In multivariate models, both psychological and pandemic-related variables were associated with levels of resilience, burnout, and wellbeing in these workers, but which pandemic-related variables were associated with outcomes differed depending on the country. The judgment of lower timeliness in their government’s response to the pandemic appeared to be a key driver of each outcome for the UK-based frontline workers. These findings provide initial evidence that the different strategies adopted by each country may be associated with the overall wellbeing of frontline workers, with higher detriment observed in the UK. The judgment of the relatively slow response of the UK government to instigate their pandemic measures appears to be associated with lower resilience, higher burnout, and lower wellbeing in frontline workers in the UK. (shrink)