BL With Greek texts and English commentary This anthology fills a gap which has been widely felt. It gives students - at sixth-form, undergraduate, or junior graduate level - the opportunity of sampling a very wide variety of Greek prose texts, chosen to illustrate both development and generic differences. Each of the 100 passages is accompanied by a short introduction, and there are brief notes explaining difficult words and drawing attention to linguistic and stylistic points occurring in the extracts. Full (...) references to grammars are given, and the texts are supplemented with a useful general introduction as well as indexes of words and of grammatical and stylistic features. The extracts cover the entire range from the fifth century BC to the fifth century AD: Herodotus, Thucydides, and other historians; orators from Andocides to Demosthenes; philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle; and many writers from the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Care has been taken to choose pieces of interesting content, so that the book can serve as a reader to stimulate interest in Greek culture generally. A companion volume edited by D. A. Russell, An Anthology of Latin Prose, is also available: 0-19-814746-5, hardback; 0-19-87212-8 paper covers. (shrink)

Are the characteristics and relationships among spatio-temporal entities "real" or are they simply conventional terms that note similarities among things in the world but lack any reality of their own? Or if they are real, what sort of reality do they have? Do we live in a world of causes and effects, or is this relation a useful contrivance for our convenience? What is the nature of this "I" that we invoke when referring to ourselves? Is it body? Mind? Both? (...) Neither? And once its nature is understood, what can be said of the choices it makes? Are they really ours, freely made by an independent will? Or is each choice determined more by the internal makeup of the "I" we happen to be and the social/environmental circumstances in which this "I" finds itself, rather than by any act of will? But if each of us "could not have chosen otherwise" than we have, are we no better than the machines we construct? Then again, maybe some of our more advanced machines should be considered conscious entities? Introduction to Metaphysics: The Fundamental Questions presents these and other intriguing questions, many of which have challenged philosophers from antiquity to the present in their efforts to speculate on the nature of what is real. Often filled with twists and turns, dark corners and hidden recesses, this journey of discovery is an exciting excursion into the depths of human understanding. As guides for this intellectual journey editor Andrew Schoedinger has chosen an impressive array of creative and thought-provoking philosophers: Peter Abelard, Aristotle, Renford Bambrough, George Berkeley, Joseph Butler, Rudolf Carnap, Roderick Chisholm, R.G. Collingwood, Arthur Danto, Donald Davidson, Rene Descartes, C.J. Ducasse, Alvin I. Goldman, Keith Gunderson, David Hume, John Locke, Alasdair MacIntyre, A.I. Melden, John Stuart Mill, D.F. Pears, Hilary Putnam, Anthony Quinton, Bertrand Russell, Michael Scriven, Sydney Shoemaker, P. F. Strawson, Richard Taylor, and others. This volume is a unique invitation to join a distinguished group of theorists as they tackle tough questions concerning the existence of universals, the nature of causation, understanding personal identity, the tangled web of free will, and the challenges posed by the advent of artificial intelligence. (shrink)

We explore the view that Frege's puzzle is a source of straightforward counterexamples to Leibniz's law. Taking this seriously requires us to revise the classical logic of quantifiers and identity; we work out the options, in the context of higher-order logic. The logics we arrive at provide the resources for a straightforward semantics of attitude reports that is consistent with the Millian thesis that the meaning of a name is just the thing it stands for. We provide models to show (...) that some of these logics are non-degenerate. (shrink)

In a challenge to Basic Emotion theories, Ortony suggested in a recent article that the existence of affect-free surprise means that surprise is not necessarily valenced and therefore arguably not an emotion. In an article in response, Neta and Kim argued that surprise is always valenced and therefore is an emotion, with apparent cases of affect-free surprise actually being cases of the cognitive state of unexpectedness rather than surprise. We view Neta and Kim's position as resting on an idiosyncratic stipulation (...) of word usage. We further suggest that rejecting affect-free surprise by appealing to examples of affect-laden surprise has no bearing on whether surprise is always valenced, and propose that when surprise appears to be affect-laden the locus of the experienced valence is a co-occurring emotion. (shrink)

This study offers a new account of the development of Cartesian Occasionalism. The doctrine of Occasionalism - most famously advocated by Nicolas Malebranche - states that God alone is the cause of every event, and created substances are merely "occasional causes." In the years following René Descartes' death in 1650, several of his followers -- including Arnold Geulincx, Gerauld de Cordemoy and Louis de la Forge - argued for some version of this thesis. My study builds on recent scholarship about (...) these first Cartesian Occasionalists, the motives that led them and Malebranche to adopt Occasionalism, and the connections between Occasionalism and the views of Descartes. I analyze the doctrine of Occasionalism, and examine its relationship to Descartes' philosophy. I argue that Descartes' views in physics and metaphysics are consistent with the claim that corporeal substances have intrinsic causal powers, and reply to arguments by Gary Hatfield, Janet Broughton and Daniel Garber that purport to show otherwise. I examine how Occasionalism relates to several proposed problems with Descartes' claim that the human mind causally interacts with the human body, and argue that Occasionalism is not the "natural" solution to these problems. I conclude by canvassing the arguments of the earliest Cartesian Occasionalists. I argue Cartesian Occasionalism was neither an ad hoc solution to the mindbody problem, nor a logical consequence of Descartes' own views, but rather an attempt to extend and better systematize Cartesian philosophy. (shrink)

PurposeIn Western society, the measurement of weight is prioritized over a person’s bodily experience. Hermeneutic philosopher Gadamer warned against the emphasis on measurement, rather than experience, in the medical sciences. An examination of the complexity of the experience of weight provides the opportunity to shift focus from quantifying the connection between health and weight to the experience of the person being weighed.MethodsThis qualitative hermeneutic study aims to understand people’s experiences of weight from the interviews of professionals and lay experts. Interviews (...) were analyzed using an interpretive hermeneutic method.ResultsThe interviews revealed that weight was experienced as a number imbued with meaning and bias, as a number that could be manipulated, and as a constant and anticipated bodily change. Weight change was expected and often unwelcomed, despite weight being a quality of the body that is always in flux. External measures of weight meant to monitor wellness and health inadvertently became an unhealthy fixation that prevented some participants from fully participating in life events and appreciating the stages their bodies were in.ConclusionWeight change is a necessary condition of being human, and bodies are and will be constantly changing. To achieve health and harmony, one must fit together the acceptance of change and their bodily experience of weight. It is often the preoccupation with weight, not weight itself, that gets in the way of living. (shrink)

This editorial introduces the Journal of Consciousness Studies special issue on "Animal Consciousness". The 15 contributors and co-editors answer the question "How should we study animal consciousness scientifically?" in 500 words or fewer.

The relationship between attitudes towards wealth and the quest for salvation in Theravada Buddhism is examined by authors from various disciplines. The main purpose of the book is to see what light Buddhism, often thought of as an otherworldly religion, can shed on mundane problems.

Published in 1918, _The View of Life_ is Georg Simmel’s final work. Famously deemed “the brightest man in Europe” by George Santayana, Simmel addressed a variety of topics across his essayistic writings, which have influenced scholars in aesthetics, ethics, epistemology, and sociology. Nevertheless, a set of core issues emerged over the course of his career, most centrally the genesis, structure, and transcendence of social and cultural forms and the nature and genesis of authentic individuality. Composed in the years before his (...) death, _The View of Life_ was, according to Simmel, his “testament,” a capstone work of profound metaphysical inquiry intended to formulate his conception of life in its entirety. Now Anglophone readers can at last read in full the work that shaped the argument of Heidegger’s _Being and Time_ and whose extraordinary impact on European intellectual life between the wars was extolled by Jürgen Habermas. Presented alongside these seminal essays are aphoristic fragments from Simmel’s last journal, providing a beguiling look into the mind of one of the twentieth century’s greatest thinkers. (shrink)

Forgiveness theorists focus a good deal on explicating the content of what they take to be a shared folk concept of forgiveness. Our empirical research, however, suggests that there is a range of concepts of forgiveness present in the population, and therefore that we should be folk conceptual pluralists about forgiveness. We suggest two possible responses on the part of forgiveness theorists: (1) to deny folk conceptual pluralism by arguing that forgiveness is a functional concept and (2) to accept folk (...) conceptual pluralism and focus on a revisionary conceptual ethics project. (shrink)

Cognitive neuroscience aims to map mental processes onto brain function, which begs the question of what “mental processes” exist and how they relate to the tasks that are used to manipulate and measure them. This topic has been addressed informally in prior work, but we propose that cumulative progress in cognitive neuroscience requires a more systematic approach to representing the mental entities that are being mapped to brain function and the tasks used to manipulate and measure mental processes. We describe (...) a new open collaborative project that aims to provide a knowledge base for cognitive neuroscience, called the Cognitive Atlas, and outline how this project has the potential to drive novel discoveries about both mind and brain. (shrink)

This paper describes a network of three interconnected, multidisciplinary research projects designed to investigate environmental health issues faced by First Nations in Canada. These projects, developed in collaboration with academia, used a participatory approach meant to build capacity, raise awareness, and initiate change. The first project, which began in British Columbia in 2008, gathered information on the traditional diet; for example, its composition, nutritional quality, and potential for chemical exposure. This 10-year, Canada-wide project served as a model for two follow-up (...) projects: one on biomonitoring and another on indoor air quality. All three projects provided community ownership over the data and communicated results in a culturally sensitive manner to encourage interest in research and initiate risk reduction activities. The Assembly of First Nations, a national advocacy organization representing over 630 First Nations communities across Canada, participated in all aspects of the research while coordinating communications and arranging timely dissemination of results. These projects showed how properly executed, community-based research can be a valuable tool for stimulating interest in scientific studies while promoting self-reliance, components often missing from academic research. (shrink)

Breath, the ephemeral materialization of air at the interface of body and world, engages with and alters the quality of both. As a process of inhalation and exhalation that signals its physiological universality, breath is an invisible prerequisite for life, an automated and functional necessity. Yet it is more than simply a reflexive action and can at times be controlled or manipulated. It can also affect or be affected by experiences, environments and relationships. In this essay, like the contributors to (...) the special issue it prefaces, we aim to address the lacuna that exists in the examination of the meanings and embodiment of breath as a central theme in the humanitics and social sciences. Interdisciplinary perspectives that explore breath as a multifaceted phenomenon, both intrinsically shared and contextually distinct, open new directions in the field of breath and body studies. (shrink)

It is hard to gauge the significance of Jacques Rancière’s conception of politics for contemporary political theory without addressing his attempt to break with the Habermasian linguistic-pragmatic paradigm and to set up an alternative model of political speech (“dissensus”) which “has the rationality of disagreement as its very own rationality.” But Rancière’s departure from Habermas’s theory of communicative action is subtle and difficult to assess. In this essay we aim to explicate and examine their disagreement. In doing so we also (...) seek to measure the distance between the two thinkers. We argue that Rancière’s critique of Habermas is cogent and represents an innovative and provocative contribution to the theory of democracy. (shrink)

First published in 1983. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Social and Moral Aspects of the WarBertrand Russell and Introduced by Andrew G. BoneAmong nine loose-leaf folders of typed transcriptions of Russell's History of Western Philosophy lectures at the Barnes Foundation1 are two copies of a fourteen-page stenographic record of a political talk he gave there on 2 March 1941.2 The bulk of this significant new accrual to the Russell Archives, bearing as it does (...) on Russell's most successful philosophical work, could stimulate much further research and textual study. But his isolated Barnes lecture, about the politics of American neutrality, Nazi Germany's brutal and expansionist dictatorship, and the causes and possible consequences of the war against it, is also of considerable interest.The transcription reads more like detailed notes than a verbatim account, and there is no evidence that Russell approved this text.3 The stenographer initially recorded Russell in the third person, dispensed with this device before the second [End Page 52] paragraph, but then occasionally returned to it.4 There is also more enumeration of Russell's points than he would have supplied in a prepared script. Even the title may not be his: there is nothing in the text on any social changes wrought by the war. But this title has been retained in the absence of a more plausible alternative in a short report of the speech (quoting sixteen sentences) in the next day's Philadelphia Evening Bulletin.5 Russell's hour-long address on the "Social and Moral Aspects of the War" appears to have been the only occasion when he "laid philosophy aside"6 at the Barnes Foundation. It was delivered on a Sunday to an audience of 160 students (and possibly some invitees, although none are mentioned in the newspaper article), sandwiched between two of his weekly philosophical lectures (on Socrates and Sparta7) in the series scheduled for each Thursday.In opening his case for the United States joining the Allied war effort, Russell challenged the arguments for the "policy of conciliation" which, by his own recent admission in the New York Times,8 he had earlier endorsed. Published two weeks before Russell spoke on a similar topic at the Barnes Foundation, this 2,000-word letter to the editor served as a very detailed and public renunciation of the pacifist viewpoint—neutrality for national governments combined with non-resistance for individuals—which Russell had promoted in Which Way to Peace? (1936) and continued to condone after the Munich Agreement (September 1938) and even the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia (March 1939).Yet Russell the "relative political pacifist"9 also admitted in this most programmatic statement of his prewar position that "In other times and other circumstances, I should be prepared to consider gains and losses, and to concede that war might be worth while" (WWP, pp. 151–2).That moment had obviously arrived and may have done so already when on 15 October 1939 Russell confided to Constance Malleson that his passionate desire for a British victory made a "thorough-going pacifism difficult" (ra Rec. Acq. 596). But six months later he still did "not feel sufficiently sure of the opposite to say anything publicly by way of recantation"—before adding in this letter to Gilbert Murray that "it may come to that" (21 April 1940, ra Rec. Acq. 71g). It clearly did shortly afterwards—when the "phoney war" in Western Europe was dramatically ended by the invasion of France and the [End Page 53] Low Countries. On 13 May Russell asked the editor of the New Statesman and Nation to notify its readers that he had abandoned his once strongly held pacifist convictions.10In his lecture to the Barnes Foundation, Russell turned next to the defence of American non-intervention by Robert M. Hutchins (see n. 16 below)—which he had already critiqued in the New York Times. Although rather precariously situated as a resident alien in the United States, Russell was hardly circumspect about pushing a policy that so sharply divided American opinion.11 He also listed the faults of the League of Nations and the most grievous diplomatic mistakes made since the end of the last war and the fatally... (shrink)

The use of Big Data—however the term is defined—involves a wide array of issues and stakeholders, thereby increasing numbers of complex decisions around issues including data acquisition, use, and sharing. Big Data is becoming a significant component of practice in an ever-increasing range of disciplines; however, since it is not a coherent “discipline” itself, specific codes of conduct for Big Data users and researchers do not exist. While many institutions have created, or will create, training opportunities to prepare people to (...) work in and around Big Data, insufficient time, space, and thought have been dedicated to training these people to engage with the ethical, legal, and social issues in this new domain. Since Big Data practitioners come from, and work in, diverse contexts, neither a relevant professional code of conduct nor specific formal ethics training are likely to be readily available. This normative paper describes an approach to conceptualizing ethical reasoning and integrating it into training for Big Data use and research. Our approach is based on a published framework that emphasizes ethical reasoning rather than topical knowledge. We describe the formation of professional community norms from two key disciplines that contribute to the emergent field of Big Data: computer science and statistics. Historical analogies from these professions suggest strategies for introducing trainees and orienting practitioners both to ethical reasoning and to a code of professional conduct itself. We include two semester course syllabi to strengthen our thesis that codes of conduct can be harnessed to support the development of ethical reasoning in, and a sense of professional identity among, Big Data practitioners. (shrink)

Review of Serge Robert, Les révolutions du savoir, 1979.

Fifty years after his death in 1965 the essays in this collection return to Paul Tillich to investigate his theology and its legacy, with a focus on contemporary British scholarship. Originating in a conference held in Oxford in 2014, the book contains 16 original contributions from a mixture of junior and more established scholars, most of whom have a connection to Britain. The contributions are diverse, but four themes emerge throughout the volume. Several essays are concerning with a characterisation of (...) Tillich's theology. In dialogue with recent emphases on the radical Tillich, some essays suggest a more conservative estimation of Tillich's theology, rooted in the Idealist and classical Christian platonic traditions, whilst in constant engagement with changing existential situations. Secondly, and perhaps reflecting the context of religious diversity and theories of religious pluralism in Britain, many essays engage Tillich's approach to non-Christian religions. Thirdly, some essays address the importance of existentialist philosophy for Tillich, notably via an engagement with Sartre. Finally, a number of essays take up the diagnostic potential of Tillich's theology as a resource for engaging contemporary challenges. (shrink)