Previous research suggests that children can infer causal relations from patterns of events. However, what appear to be cases of causal inference may simply reduce to children recognizing relevant associations among events, and responding based on those associations. To examine this claim, in Experiments 1 and 2, children were introduced to a “blicket detector,” a machine that lit up and played music when certain objects were placed upon it. Children observed patterns of contingency between objects and the machine's activation that (...) required them to use indirect evidence to make causal inferences. Critically, associative models either made no predictions, or made incorrect predictions about these inferences. In general, children were able to make these inferences, but some developmental differences between 3- and 4-year-olds were found. We suggest that children's causal inferences are not based on recognizing associations, but rather that children develop a mechanism for Bayesian structure learning. Experiment 3 explicitly tests a prediction of this account. Children were asked to make an inference about ambiguous data based on the base rate of certain events occurring. Four-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds were able to make this inference. (shrink)

In locating friendly fire in contemporary philosophy of religion, D.Z. Phillips shows that more harm can be done to religion by its philosophical defenders than by its philosophical despisers. Friendly fire is the result of an uncritical acceptance of empiricism, and Phillips argues that we need to examine critically the claims that individual consciousness is the necessary starting point from which we have to argue: for the existence of an external world and the reality of God; that God is a (...) person without a body, a pure consciousness; and that to assent to a religious belief is essentially to assign a truth value to a proposition independent of any confessional context. When these products of friendly fire are avoided, we arrive at a new understanding of belief, trust and the soul, and refuse to say more or less than we know about the realities of human life in the service of religious apologetics. (shrink)

Giuseppina D'Oro explores Collingwood's work in epistemology and metaphysics, uncovering his importance beyond his better known work in philosophy of history and aesthetics. This major contribution to our understanding of one of the most important figures in history of philosophy will be essential reading for scholars of Collingwood and all students of metaphysics and the history of philosophy.

D. N. MacCormick; XI*—The Obligation of Reparation, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 78, Issue 1, 1 June 1978, Pages 175–194, https://doi.org/10.

D.W. Hamlyn presents a history of the great philosophical thinkers and their responses to the profound problems involved in trying to understand the world and our place in it.

Pour un arbitrage entre la théorie cognitive de l’esprit et la phénoménologie de l’intersubjectivité la technologie simule une situation de croisement perceptif dans un espace virtuel, où la reconnaissance par un agent de la présence d’un autre repose uniquement sur l’interaction comportementale. À la justification de Merleau-Ponty et Varela quant au caractère non représentationnel ni inférentiel de la reconnaissance d’autrui, en dissociant celle-ci d’avec une détermination spatiale, on ajoutera un analogon technologique de l’expérience du « visage » comme halo de (...) présence non objectivable, d’après Levinas. (shrink)

The work of Michèle Le Dœuff creatively disrupts established notions of what philosophy might be. Far from being a discipline about the leader and the disciple, a hierarchy of knowledge and paternalism, Le Dœuff proposes a philosophy of dialogue and friendship. The conversations in this book explore how this philosophy can be enacted and explored, and show how openness and generosity can be the starting point of truly rigorous thinking. Introduced and curated by the late philosopher, Pamela Sue Anderson, In (...) Dialogue with Michèle Le Dœuff explores themes like contemporary feminism, joy in philosophy, memory, the significance of friendship to thinking and a key Le Dœuffian concept, the imaginary. Le Dœuff's interlocutors, including Penelope Deutscher, Elizabeth Fallaize and Meenda Dhanda, are some of the most significant thinkers in the fields of feminism and continental thought and provide insights and ways into considering philosophy as a profoundly dialogical exercise. (shrink)

D.O. Thomas; VI*—The Duty to Trust, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 79, Issue 1, 1 June 1979, Pages 89–102, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotelian.

This paper discusses two features of the "morally responsible self." The first has to do with the preconditions of personal identity assumed to inhere in a morally responsible self. The paper argues that it is not a requirement of moral responsibility that the self held responsible for some action is one and the same individual as the self that performed it. the second feature involves what's known as the "deep self" theory of responsibility. The paper discusses the history of the (...) theory, as well as some critical contemporary exchanges about it. (shrink)

Causal theories of content, a popular family of approaches to defining the content of mental states, commonly run afoul of two related and serious problems that prevent them from providing an adequate theory of mental content—the misrepresentation problem and the disjunction problem. In this paper, I present a causal theory of content, built on information theoretic tools, that solves these problems and provides a viable model of mental content. This is the greatest surprise reduction theory of content, which identifies the (...) content of a signal as the event the surprisal of which is most reduced by that signal. Conceptually, this amounts to the claim that the content of a signal is the event the probability of which has increased by the largest proportion, or the event that the signal makes the most less surprising to us. I develop the greatest surprise reduction theory of content in four stages. First, I introduce the general project of causal theories of content, and the challenges presented to this project by the misrepresentation and disjunction problems. Next, I review two recent and prominent causal theories of content and demonstrate the serious challenges faced by these approaches, both clarifying the need for a solution to the misrepresentation and disjunction problems and providing a conceptual background for the greatest surprise reduction theory. Then, I develop the greatest surprise reduction theory of content, demonstrate its ability to resolve the misrepresentation and disjunction problems, and explore some additional applications it may have. Finally, I conclude with a discussion of a particularly difficult challenge that remains to be addressed—the partition problem—and sketch a path to a potential solution. (shrink)

D W Hamlyn; Need Philosophy of Education be so Dreary?, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 19, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 159–165, https://doi.org/10.1.

D. Z. Phillips; III—Does it Pay to be Good?, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 65, Issue 1, 1 June 1965, Pages 45–60, https://doi.org/10.1093/aris.

D. W. Hamlyn; I*—The Presidential Address: Focal Meaning, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 78, Issue 1, 1 June 1978, Pages 1–18, https://doi.org/.

La doctrine du ‘contrat social’ a fait récemment une réapparition dans l'ouvrage A Theory of Justice de John Rawls. D'un avis unanime, chacun reconnaît l'importance de ce livre. Et cependant son contenu est objet de critiques divergentes. Le présent article est conçu comme une modeste contribution aux débats en cours. Après une rapide esquisse des idées maîtresses de Rawls, l'auteur dresse un bilan synoptique des conceptions du contrat social de Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau et Kant. Sont mis en évidence : 1° (...) le fait que ces quatre philosophes parlent d'un droit naturel immuable 2° le fait que, tout en étant révolutionnaires sur le plan des idées politiques, ils ne sont pas parvenus à déceler les problèmes sociaux. Rawls a intégré l'inspiration socialiste -la préoccupation de la justice sociale -dans la théorie du contrat social. Il insiste sur le dialogue impartial, base de la recherche des principes de justice politique et sociale. Son ouvrage souffre néanmoins d'une profonde incohérence. Rawls s'est tourné vers la tradition du contrat social pour sortir de l'utilitarisme, sa pensée est en effet dirigée par une inspiration toute différente. Pourtant, dans sa déduction des principes de justice, il retombe dans l'utilitarisme qu'il voulait éviter. L'ambiguïté qui en résulte le place dans l'impossibilité de répondre valablement à une critique venue de divers côtés. (shrink)

L'intention fondamentale de la métaphysique de l'Ecole peut-elle encore être reprise dans le contexte de la philosophie actuelle ? Cette intention est double. D'abord elle vise à parler de la réalité elle-même ou du réel tel qu'il est en soi. Ensuite elle prétend découvrir quelque chose concernant le fondement ultime de cette réalité. La phénoménologie semble condamner cette entreprise à un échec inévitable en prétendant que le réel ne se manifeste que dans la rencontre de l'homme avec lui. Ce que (...) nous connaissons portera donc toujours l'empreinte de notre présence et ne sera donc jamais le réel en lui-même. Heidegger ne semble pas moins nous éloigner de l'ancien problème de la métaphysique. Dans son intention de l'approfondir, il semble plutôt en écarter le problème pour le remplacer par un autre. Sa méditation porte en effet sur la lumière originelle -toujours oubliée -dans laquelle le monde se révèle à nous, mais il ne semble pas en arriver à réfléchir sur ce qui devient visible grâce à cette lumière. Il semble pourtant que, tant l'idée de rencontre que celle de lumière originelle élimine si peu l'affirmation du réel lui-même, qu'elles le supposent plutôt, aussi longtemps qu'on veut éviter l'idéalisme le plus radical. Or, c'est sur le sens de cette affirmation implicite et sur le réel visé par elle que la métaphysique de l'Ecole veut réfléchir. Mais un second obstacle risque de faire échouer cette tentative. Le réel n'est-il pas individuel, temporel, irréductible ? N'est-ce pas dès lors impossible d'en parler, puisque notre langue n'est faite que de concepts généraux et intemporels ? A cette question, on peut d'abord répondre que tout notre appareil de concepts généraux est soutenu par un moment de contact avec le réel lui-même. Seulement ceci ne semble pas encore nous avancer beaucoup. En effet, cette saisie intuitive n'est-elle pas condamnée à rester implicite et muette ? Une issue à ce problème nous semble possible en poursuivant la ligne de réflexion de l'ancienne théorie de l'illumination. C'est en réfléchissant sur les caractéristiques de la vérité telle qu'elle nous est accessible, que nous pourrions arriver à dire quelque chose du concret lui-même. En effet, il se manifeste à nous comme étant inséré dans la totalité du réel qui nous est ouverte dans une sorte d'ouverture antécédente et constitutive de notre existence. Or ces deux aspects, qu'on ne saurait nier sans totalement exclure l'homme du royaume de la vérité, semblent postuler la Présence Totale de l'Origine dans la moindre parcelle du réel. Cette présence devient consciente et éclairante dans l'existence humaine. (shrink)

It is characteristic of A. to use words that occur only once in Homer, and such a word is ρρητος. In Od. 14. 466 it describes the remark that is better left unspoken, πέρ τ' ρρητον μεινον. But it has the distinction of occurring once also in Hesiod, and this time it is used of men without fame, ητοί τ' ρρητοί τε Διòς μεγάλοιο κατι . It is clearly this line in Hesiod's proem that A. is echoing in his own, (...) and in the same kind of sense, though, as Martin points out, A. ‘renverse en quelque sorte une expression d'Hésiode’. In the Phaenomena it is Zeus who is always being celebrated by men. The idiom with ν and negative is used by Plato, Lg. 793 b, οτε νόμους δε προσαγορεύειν ατ οτε ρρητα ν, and it may have been a familiar expression. But here in A., with the emphatic οδέποτε, it does seem rather contrived, and this may account for the fanciful explanation in the scholia that Zeus here represents the air we use every time we speak. The phrasing is certainly designed to give the maximum emphasis to ρρητον, which comes in enjambement at the beginning of the second line and is then followed by a strong sense pause. It is tempting, therefore, to suggest that the poet is indulging in a kind of pun on the sound of his own name, which usually has a long α in its first syllable and sometines η in its second: e.g. Call. Epigr. 27. 4 ρήτου σύντονος γρυπνίη, and Leonidas, A.P. 9. 25. 1 γράμμα τόδ' ρήτοιο δαήμονος. Other Hellenistic poets have contrived puns on the derivation oftheir names: Philodemusin A.P. 5. 115, Meleager in A.P. 12. 165, and Crates in A.P. 11. 218. 4. Closer to A. is the story recorded in the ancient biographical tradition of Antigonus complimenting the poet with the pun εδοξóτερον ποιες τòν Eδοξον. (shrink)

Our Book Review Editor, James Keller, invited William Hasker to write a review of the Book by D. Z. Phillips, "The Problem of Evil and the Problem of God" and then in consultation with the Editor-in-Chief invited Phillips to respond. Aware of both their respect for each other and their philosophical differences we planned that Hasker's review and Phillips' response would appear in the same issue of the "International Journal for Philosophy of Religion." Unfortunately that was not to be. Dewi, (...) as he was known to his many friends throughout the world, collapsed at his desk on 25 July, 2006 in the library of his beloved University of Wales, Swansea. Although we were not able to have the review and response appear in the same issue as we had all planned, we are now printing his response to Hasker's review, "D. Z. Phillips's Problems with Evil and with God," which appeared in IJPR, Vol. 61,3. Dewi had completed the review and thanks to the efforts of Helen Baldwin who prepared the manuscript and Dewi's wife, Monica, and family we are able to print it here. Since Dewi was responding to an earlier version of Hasker's review, a few minor editorial changes have been made. Dewi's death is a great loss to the philosophical community and a deep personal loss to his family and friends, but I am confident that he would be pleassed to have this response appear. He might even have a story to tell, a comment that those who knew him well will fully understand. Eugene Thomas Long. (shrink)