In this chapter, Dorothy Walsh argues that any ethical theory requires an underlying speculative metaphysics.

This paper is an attempt to exhibit the contrast between the primitive notion of causality, simply as efficacy, and the restricted meaning of the expression "causal explanation" as associated with the application of a methodology of causal "inquiry". there can be differences of opinion on whether or not a single general methodology of causal inquiry is appropriate for natural phenomena and for human intentional actions. philosophers who reject a "methodology" of causal explanation for intentional actions are not rejecting causality. the (...) basic primitive experience of causal efficacy, of power exerted and received, is inescapable. a little attention to the phenomenology of experience can bring this out. (shrink)

But what is thus presented is something additional to a study in the history of ideas. The author courageously undertakes not simply to recount but to interpret the story and, indeed, to point out the lesson to be learned from it. This lesson is not that we have gone astray and that our business is to discover where we took the wrong turning and who is chiefly responsible for this misdirection. On the contrary, the slow and difficult development of a (...) value-free mode of scientific thought is accounted a positive gain. But though this is so, we have no grounds for complacency. Indeed our present situation is described as one of crisis and predicament. This is because scientific success in the independent treatment of fact has not been matched by a comparable success in the independent treatment of value. The latter is our most pressing intellectual task and we are warned that it will be exceedingly difficult, requiring, indeed, the development of nothing less than a whole new logic and methodology. (shrink)

This question does not mean: what has a philosopher to learn from paintings? Rather it is: what metaphysical implications can be derived from the consideration of the art of painting? Since, however, this consideration is not a contemplation but a theorizing, we must understand Gilson's question to be: what metaphysical implications can be suggested by a theory about the creative activity of painters and about the kind of entity a painting is?

In this chapter, Dorothy Walsh examines the nature of historical inquiry.

In this chapter, Dorothy Walsh examines the natures of the language of science and logic, the language of poetry, and the language of philosophy. She argues that each of these languages has its own distinct form of excellence.

There can be no doubt about the boldness of the claim presented in Icon and Idea. It is to the effect that art is not simply an essential aspect of human culture, but the essential instrument in the development of human consciousness. Everything that appears as idea in philosophy, science or religion has first appeared in art as icon or image. The artist is the pioneer, the original discoverer; it is he who extends the frontiers of consciousness. He is the (...) most indispensable maker of human culture and, if we are to take certain passages in this book at face value, the artist is in some sense the maker of the world--of "reality.". (shrink)