The Wisdom of the Early Buddhists. Geoffrey Parrinder. Sheldon Press, London. 86pp. £1.50.

v. 1. Psychological issues.--v. 2. Structural issues.--v. 3. Awareness and self-awareness.--v. 4. Clinical issues.

A different picture of learning is suggested by Karl Popper's account of knowledge growing through 'conjectures and refutations'. The facts of human language are best explained by taking language acquisition to be a case of Popperian learning.

Recent technical developments in the logic of nominalism make it possible to improve and extend significantly the approach to mathematics developed in Mathematics without Numbers. After reviewing the intuitive ideas behind structuralism in general, the modal-structuralist approach as potentially class-free is contrasted broadly with other leading approaches. The machinery of nominalistic ordered pairing (Burgess-Hazen-Lewis) and plural quantification (Boolos) can then be utilized to extend the core systems of modal-structural arithmetic and analysis respectively to full, classical, polyadic third- and fourthorder number (...) theory. The mathenatics of many structures of central importance in functional analysis, measure theory, and topology can be recovered within essentially these frameworks. (shrink)

This article explores the process of university Ethical Review both as lived experience and as part of institutional governance at an English university. The article uses Blackburn's distinction between ethics and Ethics (Ethics?A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2001) as a framework to examine the themes of ?vulnerability?, ?power? and ?relationships?. These themes are analysed closely both within the institutional and the fieldwork contexts, attempting to include the perspectives of all those involved in the research ethics process. The (...) article does not seek to draw any definitive conclusions but rather to stimulate, and add to the iterative discussion on the process of Ethical Review within institutions. Nonetheless, it does conclude by making some suggestions concerning the way in which the lived experience of ethics could better inform the practice of institutional Ethical Review. (shrink)

'Nobody reads Mill today,' wrote a reviewer in Time magazine a few years ago.! One could scarcely praise Mr Melvin Maddocks, who penned that remark, for his awareness of the present state of Mill studies, for of all nineteenth century philosophers who wrote in English, it is 1. S. Mill who remains the most read today. Yet it would not be so far from the truth to say that very few people pay much serious attention nowadays to Mill's writings about (...) logic and metaphysics (as distinct from those on ethical and social issues), despite the fact that Mill put enormous effort into their composition and through them exerted a considerable influen ce on the course of European philosophy for the rest of his century. But the only sections of A System of Logic (1843) and An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy (1865) to which much reference is now made comprise only a small proportion of those very large books, and the prevailing assumption is that Mill's theories about logical and meta physical questions are, with few exceptions, of merely antiquarian in terest. Bertrand Russell once said that Mill's misfortune was to be born at the wrong time (Russell (1951), p. 2). It can certainly appear that Mill chose an inauspicious time to attempt a major work on logic. (shrink)

A history of the pre-Socratic philosophers, with selected writings and texts.

This book brings together several internationally known authors with conflicting views on the subject, providing a lively and informative overview of this...

In this paper I defend and develop Bernard Williams’ claim that the ‘constitutive thought’ of regret is ‘something like “how much better if it had been otherwise”’. An introductory section on cognitivist theories of emotion is followed by a detailed investigation of the concept of ‘agent-regret’ and of the ways in which the ‘constitutive thought’ might be articulated in different situations in which agents acknowledge casual responsibility for bringing about undesirable outcomes. Among problematic cases discussed are those in which agents (...) have caused harm through no fault of their own, or have been constrained to choose the lesser of two evils or to act against their moral values. R. Jay Wallace’s ‘bourgeois predicament’ and related cases, in which we recognize that our present advantages have flowed from regrettable antecedents, further show that regret is often not a simple emotion, and it is argued that conflicted regrets are sometimes unavoidable. Finally, the paper looks at Descartes’ account of regret as a form of sadness engendered by the recollection of irrecoverable happy experiences, to which the ‘constitutive thought’ does not readily apply. It is suggested that what Descartes is discussing is a different genre of emotion for which ‘nostalgia’ might be a better name. (shrink)

This collection of Geoffrey Hill's criticism spans the length of his career as a pre-eminent poet-critic. Three previously published books of criticism are reprinted, sometimes with substantial revisions, and two new works added.

It is a remarkable feature of most contemporary discussions of emotion that they have been conducted without any reference to what it could mean to talk of the expression of emotion in music. This is a crucial absence, I shall argue, since a proper understanding of music's expression of emotion must lead to a correct view of the nature of emotion itself. Such an understanding will yield the view that emotion is a state of consciousness which is both intentional and (...) affective, and at the same time totally undermine the view that emotions are, or necessarily involve, judgments or evaluations. (shrink)

The neural basis of progress monitoring has received relatively little attention compared to other sub-processes that are involved in goal directed behavior such as motor control and response inhibition. Studies of error-monitoring have identified the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) as a structure that is sensitive to conflict detection, and triggers corrective action. However, monitoring goal progress involves monitoring correct as well as erroneous events over a period of time. In the present research, 20 healthy participants underwent fMRI while playing (...) a game that involved monitoring progress towards either a numerical or a visuo-spatial target. The findings confirmed the role of the dACC in detecting situations in which the current state may conflict with the desired state, but also revealed activations in the frontal and parietal regions, pointing to the involvement of processes such as attention and working memory in monitoring progress over time. In addition, activation of the cuneus was associated with monitoring progress towards a specific target presented in the visual modality. This is the first time that activation in this region has been linked to higher-order processing of goal-relevant information, rather than low-level anticipation of visual stimuli. Taken together, these findings identify the neural substrates involved in monitoring progress over time, and how these extend beyond activations observed in conflict and error monitoring. (shrink)

Chomsky has constructed an empirical theory about syntactic universals of natural language by defining a class of 'possible languages' which includes all natural languages (inter alia) as members, and claiming that all natural languages fall .within a specified proper subset of that class. I extend Chomsky's work to produce an empirical theory about natural4anguage semantic universals by showing that the semantic description of a language will incorporate a logical calculus, by defining a relatively wide class of 'possible calculi', and by (...) specifying a proper subset of that class which, I hypothesize, includes the calculi needed for the semantic description of any natural language. I argue that the special status, with respect to natural languages, of this particular type of logical calculus is an empirical finding which does not follow from any independently-known principles, and I conclude that the question why the laws of human thought have the structure they do is a biological rather than a logical question. (shrink)

This highly original collection of essays, first published in 1989, is concerned with the nature of children and their moral and political status. The international team of contributors explore, and in some cases criticise and revise popular thought on children and their place in society. The book is divided into three parts: the first deals with the historical, social and psychological framework of contemporary perspectives on children and childhood; a second set of papers takes up questions about the position of (...) the young in democracy, the limits of parental authority and the appropriateness of characterising only child-adult relationships in terms of a social contract; the final essays are concerned with adult attitudes toward children's lives and experiences. These essays will interest philosophers, political scientists, as well as all those professionally concerned with the education and care of children. (shrink)

A comprehensive yet concise introduction to central topics, debates, and techniques of moral philosophy in the analytic tradition, this volume combines a thematic, issue-oriented format with rigorous standards of clarity and precision. Thomas introduces fundamental concepts and terms, proceeding through a step-by-step exploration of five general areas of debate: the specification of moral judgment; moral judgment and the moral standard; the justification of moral judgment; logic, reasoning, and moral judgment; and moral judgment and moral responsibility. Key historical and contemporary figures (...) in moral philosophy, including Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hume, Mill, Hare, Ross, Nagel, Foot, Stevenson, and Dancy, are used effectively as a means of examining the topics themselves. (shrink)

Written mainly as a text book, but also for the general reader, this book aims to provide an introduction to the subject of political philosophy. All important past political philosophers make their appearence in the text including Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Hegel, Marx and John Stuart Mill. Contemporary philosophers such as Rawls, Dworkin and Nozick are also included. The book introduces 12 central political concepts - power, the state, sovereignty, law, authority, justice, equality, rights, property, freedom, democracy and the (...) public interest. Each of these topics are analyzed, theories about them explained, and problems discussed. (shrink)

Many recent writers in the virtue ethics tradition have followed Aristotle in arguing for a distinction between virtue and continence, where the latter is conceived as an inferior moral condition. In this paper I contend that rather than seeking to identify a sharp categorical difference between virtue and continence, we should see the contrast as rather one of degree, where virtue is a continence that has matured with practice and habit, becoming more stable, effective and self-aware.

This paper explores the relation between love, learning and knowledge as found in three dialogues of Plato, Symposium, Phaedrus and Republic. It argues that the account of the ascent from carnal desire to the love of beauty, as set out in the Symposium, is best seen in terms of a genealogy of love in which the object of love is transformed into an object of knowledge. The Phaedrus shows us how affection and love between two individuals can help motivate a (...) love of learning. The Republic demonstrates the value of knowledge through the distinction between knowledge and opinion. A love of learning is, therefore, driven by that which is genuinely valuable and worthy of love. Plato helps us today in two respects: first, he reminds us that learning can have an affective quality. Second, he reminds that the value of learning is related to the knowledge and insight it yields. (shrink)

In this volume Geoffrey Galt Harpham argues for a deeply original view of the relations among ethics, literary study, and critical theory. In thirteen lucid, provocative and often witty essays, Harpham rejects both the optimism of those who see ethics as a way of solving problems about values or principles and the pessimism of those who regard ethics as primarily a cover story for politics. Ethics, he claims, has been seen by its most powerful theorists as a discourse of (...) “shadows,” a characteristic disturbance of thought in the presence of the other, a source of doubts rather than certainty. At the same time, however, ethics includes an element of violence, even blindness and “fundamentalism,” a crushing drive to clarity and resolution. Contemporary thinkers, Harpham argues, have been unwilling to accept this account of ethics and the obligations it would impose, and have, as a consequence, cultivated social and intellectual marginality as the only site of virtue, the only position in which critical intelligence is at home. They have, he contends, failed to “imagine the center,” to take up the true intellectual and worldly challenge of ethics. Tracking these issues and energies in debates about enlightenment, the politics of the aesthetic, the nature of rationality, and the worldly contexts of theory, Harpham demonstrates in compelling detail the ubiquity and true difficulty of ethics. _Shadows of Ethics_ also revives a neglected genre, the intellectual portrait, with extended meditations on Jacques Derrida, Martha Nussbaum, Fredric Jameson, Geoffrey Hartman, and Noam Chomsky. The book will interest literary critics, philosophers, cultural critics, and all those interested in the ethical character of intellectual work. (shrink)

Science and Christianity Content Type Journal Article Category Book Review Pages 1-4 DOI 10.1007/s11016-011-9544-2 Authors Geoffrey Cantor, Science and Technology Studies, University College London, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT UK Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.

This essay argues that the overuse of the idiom of forgiveness has distorted our understanding of the nature and requirements of political reconciliation, and proposes its supplementation by a notion of grace. This is a mode of response to wrongs that is less hedged around by conventions and conditions, and grace complements forgiveness in contexts in which the latter is inappropriate; it is also more serviceable for maintaining inter-community harmony in the long term. Following a detailed analysis of grace in (...) the political environment, the paper concludes by tracing a concept of grace in the Sermon on the Mount. (shrink)

Widely regarded as the most influential proponent of the truth of original sin in the twentieth century, Reinhold Niebuhr worked hard to excise any "literalistic" element from his interpretation of the doctrine. In his attempt to "correct" the Augustinian tradition on original sin by purging it of all "literalistic errors," however, Niebuhr assumed as his starting point the most characteristically modern objection to the doctrine: that birth is a thoroughly natural, animal, and morally meaningless event. As a result, Niebuhr unnecessarily (...) constrained his vision of the dimensions of human freedom, and hence his description of the dynamic of anxiety and freedom that energizes sin. Through a careful reading of Reinhold Niebuhr's writings on original sin, in light of the truth that the end of human life is inseparable from its origins, a reappraisal and recovery of the meaningfulness of the assertion of original sin as a literal inheritance is possible. The result of such a reappraisal and recovery is an amplified insight into the existential anxiety that Niebuhr otherwise described so convincingly. (shrink)

Subtle-body practices are found particularly in Indian, Indo-Tibetan and East Asian societies, but have become increasingly familiar in Western societies, especially through the various healing and yogic techniques and exercises associated with them. This book explores subtle-body practices from a variety of perspectives, and includes both studies of these practices in Asian and Western contexts. The book discusses how subtle-body practices assume a quasi-material level of human existence that is intermediate between conventional concepts of body and mind. Often, this level (...) is conceived of in terms of an invisible structure of channels, associated with the human body, through which flows of quasi-material substance take place. Contributors look at how subtle-body concepts form the basic explanatory structure for a wide range of practices. These include forms of healing, modes of exercise and martial arts as well as religious practices aimed at the refinement and transformation of the human mindbody complex. By highlighting how subtle-body practices of many kinds have been introduced into Western societies in recent years, the book explores the possibilities for new models of understanding which these concepts open up. It is a useful contribution to studies on Asian Religion and Philosophy. (shrink)

In this book an international and multidisciplinary team addresses significant ethical questions about the rights to access, manage and interpret the material remains of the past.

Following a brief preface, the second section of this paper discusses Mill's early reflections on the problem of how deductive inference can be illuminating. In the third section it is suggested that in his Logic Mill misconstrued the feature that the premises of a logically valid argument contain the conclusion as the ground of a charge that deductive proof is question-begging. The fourth section discusses the nature of the traditional petitio objection to syllogism, and the fifth shows that Mill had (...) a theory capable of answering it. The final section cites the confusion described in section 3 to explain why Mill nevertheless continued to think that syllogistic proofs beg the question. (shrink)

This is a critical examination of Quine's "Two Dogmas" that leaves nothing much of Quine's paper still standing. It concludes with a short study of a bit of bad work in philosophy that results from following the doctrines of "Two Dogmas".