We often explain by citing an absence or an omission. Apart from the problem of assigning a causal role to such apparently negative factors as absences and omissions, there is a puzzle as to why only some absences and omissions, out of indefinitely many, should figure in explanations. In this paper we solve this ’many absences problem’ by using the contrastive model of explanation. The contrastive model of explanation is developed by adapting Peter Lipton’s account. What initially appears to be (...) only a trivial amendment to Lipton’s Difference Condition enables us both to offer a much more satisfactory solution to the ’many absences problem’ than David Lewis did, and also to explain why explanation in terms of absences and omissions should be so common. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.This work is in the public domain in (...) the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

This volume includes the major works of the British Empiricists, philosophers who sought to derive all knowledge from experience. All essays are complete except that of Locke, which Professor Richard Taylor of Brown University has skillfully abridged.

This article is concerned with developing a philosophical approach to a number of significant changes to academic publishing, and specifically the global journal knowledge system wrought by a range of new digital technologies that herald the third age of the journal as an electronic, interactive and mixed-media form of scientific communication. The paper emerges from an Editors' Collective, a small New Zealand-based organisation comprised of editors and reviewers of academic journals mostly in the fields of education and philosophy. The paper (...) is the result of a collective writing process. (shrink)

George Berkeley (1685-1753) is the superstar of Irish Philosophy. He entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1700 and became a fellow in 1707. In 1724 he resigned his Fellowship to become Dean of Derry, and in 1734 he was made Bishop of Cloyne. He settled in Oxford in 1752 and died the following year. The work of George Berkeley is marked by its diversity and range. His writings take in such topics as mathematics, psychology, politics, health, economics, deism and (...) education, as well as that with which he is most associated - philosophy. Whatever topic he dealt with, his grasp of the subject matter was always impressive and his criticisms of his contemporaries often acute. Among the most noteable of the British Empiricists, he took his starting point from Locke's new 'way of ideas', but he rejected abstract ideas and the possibility of real existence outside perception. It is for this doctrine that he is most known - that there is no such thing as matter, and that things are collections of ideas which can exist only in our minds and only for so long as they are perceived. This philosophy, summed up in his phrase 'to be is to be perceived', he termed 'immaterialism'. A.C. Fraser's collection includes a series of what were previously unpublished notes by Berkeley on all the main topics of his philosophy. This, the 1901 edition, was the first complete edition of his works. (shrink)

This book examines the underlying theoretical issues concerning the nature of political freedom. Arguing that most previous discussions of such freedom have been too narrowly focused, it explores both conservativism from Edmund Burke to its present resurgence, the radical tradition of Karl Marx, as well as the orthodox liberal model of freedom of John Locke, John Stuart Mill and Isaiah Berlin. _Political Freedom_ argues that these three accounts of political freedom - conservative, liberal and radical - all have internal (...) weaknesses which render them unsatisfactory. In the second part of the book George Brenkert develops an alternative theory of political freedom. Using the guiding concept of empowerment, his model explores individual rights, democratic participation in government and workplace, and the need to provide the material and educational resources to allow individuals to effectively exercise their rights to self-determination. It is a clear and bold attack on the view that there is no link between freedom and power. (shrink)

A brilliant and comprehensive history of the creation of the modern Western mind. Soul Machine takes us back to the origins of modernity, a time when a crisis in religious authority and the scientific revolution led to searching questions about the nature of human inner life. This is the story of how a new concept—the mind—emerged as a potential solution, one that was part soul and part machine, but fully neither. In this groundbreaking work, award-winning historian George Makari shows (...) how writers, philosophers, physicians, and anatomists worked to construct notions of the mind as not an ethereal thing, but a natural one. From the ascent of Oliver Cromwell to the fall of Napoleon, seminal thinkers like Hobbes, Locke, Diderot, and Kant worked alongside often-forgotten brain specialists, physiologists, and alienists in the hopes of mapping the inner world. Conducted in a cauldron of political turmoil, these frequently shocking, always embattled efforts would give rise to psychiatry, mind sciences such as phrenology, and radically new visions of the self. Further, they would be crucial to the establishment of secular ethics and political liberalism. Boldly original, wide-ranging, and brilliantly synthetic, Soul Machine gives us a masterful, new account of the making of the modern Western mind. (shrink)

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding is a work by John Locke concerning the foundation of human knowledge and understanding. It first appeared in 1689 (although dated 1690) with the printed title An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding. He describes the mind at birth as a blank slate (tabula rasa, although he did not use those actual words) filled later through experience. The essay was one of the principal sources of empiricism in modern philosophy, and influenced many enlightenment philosophers, such as (...) David Hume and George Berkeley. (shrink)

The paper tries to show the importance of the writings of John Locke in preparing the way for secularism. He provides a theory for disentangling religion and the state for several main reasons, including the avoidance of religious persecution of minorties; the avoidance of civil strife; and the need to leave it to individuals to work out their own salvation by exercising their conscience free of state interference. Locke is a creative theorist; his creativity shows itself in the (...) new arguments he formulates and publishes on behalf of the freedom of religion from the state and the freedom of the state from religion. The influence of his Letter on Toleration and the Second Treatise in Two Treatises of Government has proved worldwide and lasting. The paper also takes up a later work by Locke, The Reasonableness of Christianity, where Locke retreats to some extent from the religious individualism, but not the religious toleration, of his most famous works. But even that retreat gives only a little comfort to those who deplore secularism. (shrink)

George Berkeley (1685-1753) is the superstar of Irish Philosophy. He entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1700 and became a fellow in 1707. In 1724 he resigned his Fellowship to become Dean of Derry, and in 1734 he was made Bishop of Cloyne. He settled in Oxford in 1752 and died the following year. The work of George Berkeley is marked by its diversity and range. His writings take in such topics as mathematics, psychology, politics, health, economics, deism and (...) education, as well as that with which he is most associated - philosophy. Whatever topic he dealt with, his grasp of the subject matter was always impressive and his criticisms of his contemporaries often acute. Among the most noteable of the British Empiricists, he took his starting point from Locke's new 'way of ideas', but he rejected abstract ideas and the possibility of real existence outside perception. It is for this doctrine that he is most known - that there is no such thing as matter, and that things are collections of ideas which can exist only in our minds and only for so long as they are perceived. This philosophy, summed up in his phrase 'to be is to be perceived', he termed 'immaterialism'. A.C. Fraser's collection includes a series of what were previously unpublished notes by Berkeley on all the main topics of his philosophy. This, the 1901 edition, was the first complete edition of his works. (shrink)

'the whole work is remarkably fresh, vivid and attractively written psychologists will be grateful that a work of this kind has been done ... by one who has the scholarship, science, and philosophical training that are requisite for the task' - Mind This renowned three-volume collection records chronologically the steps by which psychology developed from the time of the early Greek thinkers and the first writings on the nature of the mind, through to the 1920s and such modern preoccupations as (...) criminal and animal psychology. It is only in relatively recent times that psychology has been considered an empirical science independent of philosophy. Brett's account is thus concerned with the broadest definition of psychology, taking in such philosophical aspects as the relation of mind and body, thought processes, etc. For each period he gives an account of the state of the sciences which influenced psychology, the state of psychology itself, the influence psychology had on other areas, and the applications of psychological theories. Examining a huge range of figures, he describes their attitudes on fundamental questions and their contribution to the progress of the subject, as well as the history of the different methods of inquiry. The thinkers he discusses range from Aristotle, Democritus, Socrates, Plato, and Xenocrates to Proclus, the Arabian teachers, Magnus, Duns Scotus, and Ockham from Galileo, Descartes, Gassendi, and Cudworth to Locke, Berkeley, Condillac, and Kant from Reid, Stewart, Herbart, and Schopenhauer to Bain, Spencer, Mill and Darwin. Surprisingly clear and easy to read, Brett's account succeeds in illuminating the nature of psychology as well as its history. It remains a classic overview of the subject from its broad roots in philosophy through to the independent empirical science of the modern era. --a scarce work, rarely found as a complete set --a classic work - all historians of psychology and philosophy should have A History of Psychology. (shrink)

Georges Dicker here provides a commentary on John Locke's masterwork, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding-the foundational work of classical Empiricism. Dicker's commentary is an accessible guide for students who are reading Locke for the first time; a useful research tool for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students; and a contribution to Locke scholarship for professional scholars. It is designed to be read alongside the Essay, but does not presuppose familiarity with it.

Name der Zeitschrift: Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie Jahrgang: 58 Heft: 3 Seiten: 309-324.

In this essay, the author analyses Berkeley’s conformity and inference argument against Locke’s theory of percep tion. Both arguments are not as decisive as traditionally has been perceived and fail to engage in Locke’s actual position. The main reason for this is that Berkeley does not see that Locke’s position is compatible with the non-inferential nature of perceptual knowledge.

In this essay, the author analyses Berkeley’s conformity and inference argument against Locke’s theory of percep tion. Both arguments are not as decisive as traditionally has been perceived and fail to engage in Locke’s actual position. The main reason for this is that Berkeley does not see that Locke’s position is compatible with the non-inferential nature of perceptual knowledge.

This paper explores how whiteness as the transcendental norm shapes the meaning structure of Black-being-in-the-world. If home is a place, a site, a dwelling of acceptance, where one is allowed to feel safe, to relax, to let one’s guard down, then being Black in white supremacist America is anathema to being at home for Black people. Indeed, to be Black is to be a stranger, something “strange,” “scary,” “dangerous,” an “outsider.” To be Black within white America belies what it means (...) to dwell, to reside, to rest. In other words, one’s sense of racialized Black embodiment remains on guard, unsettled, hyperalert. Phenomenologically, there is a profound sense of alienation, where one’s racialized body is ostracized and shunned. On this score, I examine, within the mundane context of an elevator, how the dynamics of intersubjectivity and sociality are strained through the dynamics of the white gaze. The white gaze, among other things, functions to police the meaning of the Black body and attempts to de-subjectify Black embodiment. In this way, the only real perspective is white. Black bodies are deemed devoid of a perspective on the world as there is no subjectivity, no sense of agential meaning making. One might say that Black people, on this view, constitute an essence, a typified mode of being. Unlike the existentialist thesis where existence precedes essence, Black people are locked into an objecthood, a fungible and fixed essence. This racial and racist myth is what, for Schutz, would collapse the importance that he places on intersubjectivity and sociality. Indeed, within this paper, I delineate the threatening, necro-political dimensions of whiteness that I experienced after writing the well-known article “Dear White America.” That experience cemented, for me, and for many other readers, what it means to occupy the residence of whiteness, an abode that can take one’s life in the blink of an eye. The experience of the racialized stranger means walking a tightrope, a precarious situation where one flirts with death, where one’s body is deemed hypersexual, inferior, frightening, and monstrous. Based upon this construction, the white body is deemed the site of virtue, safety, deliverer, protector of all things white and pure. Think here of “the white man’s burden” or the idea of “white manifest destiny.” Stain, blemish, taint, and defilement are indelible markers of the stranger. And based upon the logics of racial purity, one must extinguish the “vermin,” the “criminals,” the “rapists.” While I don’t explore this within the paper, Schutz scholars will immediately recognize the genocidal implications of what would have been at stake for Schutz had he not escaped Adolf Hitler’s anti-Semitic gaze and his Anschluss of Austria. My sense is that Schutz would have understood not just the horrors of white racism but would appreciate the necessity of theorizing the need to rethink home as existentially capacious and intersubjectively vibrant. I conclude this paper by thinking through the concept of “breakdown”, delineating its spatial, phenomenological, and subjectively embodied implications. Breakdown, as I use the term, upends forms of white racialized habituation, creating possible embodied psychic space for what I term un-suturing, which involves undoing the machinations of white safety in the face of alterity, where the stranger invokes wonder and self-critique. (shrink)

This paper explores the continuing relevance to education of ideas about art and resistance that Jean-François Lyotard signalled in his curated exhibition in 1985 at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris entitled Les Immatériaux. The exhibition was for Lyotard the ‘staging’ of a resistance at the dawning of an information age that challenged the prioritisation of computerised ‘data’ through the very deconstruction of data as presented in artistic form. While the implications of this event for art exhibitions are still being (...) theorised and debated, it is the insight Les Immat​ériaux provides as pedagogical encounter that is the focus of this article. The paper explores the exhibition in the context of the immateriality of art and develops this argument towards a notion of artistic testimony that then culminates in an analysis for the pedagogical significance of the exhibition in the information drenched, highly networked context of contemporary education. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Abstract General Ideas in Hume George S. Pappas Hume followed Berkeley in rejecting abstract general ideas; that is, both of these philosophers rejected the view that one could engage in the operation or activity ofabstraction — a kind ofmental separation ofentities that are inseparable in reality —as well as the view that the alleged products of such an activity — ideas which are intrinsically general — really exist. (...) What has not been clear to commentators on either of these two philosophers has been why they each were so opposed to abstraction and abstract general ideas. The provision of an answer to this question is the main thrust of this paper. The nature of the question should be clarified at the outset. I am notasking the psychological question, whatwere BerkeleyandHume's actual intentions when they were moved to reject abstraction and abstract general ideas. Though I regard this question as one of great interest and importance, I am presently aiming to answer a somewhat different one, viz., what role, what philosophical role, does the rejection of abstraction and abstract general ideas play in the philosophies ofBerkeley and Hume? The answer to this latter question is apt to have some bearing on the right way to answer the first question; but, for present purposes, it is important to keep the two questions distinct. The maincontentionofthe paperis thattherejectionofabstraction and abstract general ideas lies at the very heart of the philosophy of Berkeley, and that pretty much the same may be said for Hume. Berkeley's defense ofa kind ofidealism stands or falls with the success ofhis attack on abstract general ideas, and Hume's critique ofinfinite divisibility in matters pertaining to space and time, along with his destructive critique ofvarious metaphysical notions, crucially depends on the successful denial of abstract general ideas. I. Berkeleyan Idealism Berkeley's most extended treatment of abstract ideas comes in the introduction to the Principles ofHuman Knowledge, first published in 1710. However, since he does not take up the topic in any systematic way later in the same book, nor in the Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Phihnous (1713), it has seemed to many commentators that Berkeley's attack on abstract ideas is a local matter, one having only to do with issues concerning language use and a somewhat isolated criticism of Locke. That this is the wrong way to look at things is Volume XV Number 2 339 GEORGE S. PAPPAS perhaps best indicated by a couple of passages from the Principles. In section 5 ofthat work Berkeley says: If we thoroughly examine this tenet it will, perhaps, be found at bottom to depend on the doctrine of abstract ideas. For can there be a nicer strain of abstraction than to distinguish the existence of sensible objects from there being perceived, so as to conceive them existing unperceived? The tenet Berkeley is here referring to is to the effect that sensible objects such as trees and chairs exist independently ofperception. This allusion is made clear when we notice that in the immediately preceding passage Berkeley says: It is indeed an opinion strangely prevailing among men that houses, mountains, rivers, and in a word all sensible objects, have an existence, natural or real, distinct from their being perceived by the understanding. But, with how great an assurance and acquiescence soever this Principle may be entertained... whoever shall find in his heart to call it in question may... perceive it to involve a manifest contradiction. For, what are the aforementioned objects but the things we perceive by sense? and what do we perceive besides our own ideas or sensations? and is it not plainly repugnant that any one of these, or any combination of them, should exist unperceived? (Principles 4) The claim that sensible objects exist independently ofall perception is the very denial of Berkeley's esse is percipi thesis regarding such objects. For the latter thesis holds that each sensible object is such that it exists if and only if it is perceived. So, in the first-quoted passage from Principles 5, Berkeley is saying that the denial of esse is percipi 'depends on' the doctrine of abstract ideas. Surely, the esse is percipi thesis is part ofthe core ofBerkeley's... (shrink)

Philosophical accounts of perception in the tradition of Kant and Reid have generally supposed that an event of making a judgment is a key element in every perceptual experience. An alternative very austere view regards perception as an event containing nothing judgmental, nor anything conceptual. This account of perception as nonconceptual is discussed first historically as found in the philosophies of Locke and (briefly) Berkeley, and then examined in the contemporary work of Chisholm and Alston.

The Hegel Lectures SeriesSeries Editor: Peter C. Hodgson Hegel's interpretation of the history of philosophy not only played a central role in the shaping of his own thought, but also has had a great influence on the development of historical thinking. In his own view the study of the history of philosophy is the study of philosophy itself. This explains why such a large proportion of his lectures, from 1805 to 1831, the year of his death, were about history of (...) philosophy. The text of these lectures, presented here in the first authoritative English edition, is therefore a document of the greatest importance in the development of Western thought: they constitute the very first comprehensive history of philosophy that treats philosophy itself as undergoing genuine historical development. And they are crucial for understanding Hegel's own systematic works such as the Phenomenology, the Logic, and the Encyclopedia, for central to his thought is the theme of spirit as engaged in self-realization through the processes of historical change. Furthermore, they played a crucial role in one of the determining events of modern intellectual history: the rise of a new consciousness of human life, culture, and intellect as historical in nature. This third volume of the lectures covers the medieval and modern periods, and includes fascinating discussion of scholastic, Renaissance, and Reformation philosophy, and of such great modern thinkers as Descartes, Locke, Leibniz, and especially Kant. (shrink)

In her essay , 82–111), Shell wants to demonstrate that 1. Kant's theory of the right of nations ‘can furnish us with some much needed practical help and guidance’, and 2. ‘Kant is less averse to the use of force, including resort to pre-emptive war… than he is often taken to be’ . The first claim is unconvincing. The second one is in need of clarification. Shell turns Kant into a kind of realist and just-war theorist, into a liberal who (...) is prejudiced against illiberal regimes. In the end, her Kant is closer to Locke, Vattel and other early liberal international lawyers than to himself. Almost all that is unique in Kant's theory of the right of nations gets lost. In this, Shell follows a general trend among some Kant interpreters: the interpretation is only loosely based on Kant; it claims to follow his ‘spirit’ and offers creative ‘Kantian perspectives’. Amidst interpretational creativity, Kant's texts more or less disappear in the mist. (shrink)

The history of philosophy is replete with attempts at invoking rationality as a means of directing and even subduing human desire and emotion. Understood as that which moves human beings to action, desire and emotion come to be associated with human freedom and rationality as a means of curbing that freedom. Plato, for instance, takes for granted a separation between thought and action that drives a wedge between our rational ability to exercise self-discipline and the free expression of desire and (...) emotion. Hobbes, on the other hand, replaces our internal ability for rational self-control with the external authority of the political State. So long as freedom and control are pitted against one another, human beings are incapable of attaining a symbiosis of these two elements of human action so essential to realizing true democracy. Unlike Plato, John Dewey sees in democracy the greatest potential for individual and social life. The purpose of this dissertation is to demonstrate how the educational philosophy of Dewey, which culminates in an educational aesthetic, appeals to and makes the most of the symbiosis of freedom and self-control, emotion and reason. Dewey’s educational aesthetic not only offers an alternative to traditional methods of education, but also demonstrates how the goal of a democratic way of life is made feasible by means of intelligently guided self-discipline—a form of self-control guided by intelligence that is not a constraint upon freedom, but instead embodies greater opportunity for freedom. I trace the basis for this synthesis, in the social-political and pedagogical principles of John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Both Locke and Rousseau offer educational theories that begin turning our attention toward the essential partnership required of rationality and emotion. Dewey's educational aesthetic is then considered as a response to alienating forms of education that continue to pit control and freedom against one another, and which thwart the intellectual and emotional development necessary for autonomy and democratic forms of social organization. (shrink)

The philosopher and critic George Henry Lewes published this work in two volumes in 1845–6. This is a reissue of an 1892 printing, which brought the volumes into one book. Lewes wrote widely on literature, science and philosophy, and was also the long-term intimate companion of George Eliot. This book is a narrative history, rather than an encyclopedia, of key philosophers. It is, therefore, a partial and personal study instead of an exhaustive textbook. The first volume concentrates solely (...) on Greek philosophy, beginning with the Pre-Socratics and ending with the Neo-Platonists. The second volume jumps to Francis Bacon, concentrating on British, German and French philosophy, and addressing, among others, Spinoza, Locke, Hume and Kant, and ending with Auguste Comte. Containing both historical anecdotes and pithy analyses of ideas, this book reflects the expertise and intellectual sympathies of a Victorian polymath. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Perception of the Self George S. Pappas Differences of detail aside, we may think ofboth Locke and Berkeley as accepting the same view of the mind. They agree that there are minds, and that each mind is a simple, immaterial substance. Sometimes the word 'soul' is used instead of'mind'; but in this context, the different terminology is not consequential. Moreover, Locke and Berkeley employ essentially the (...) same argument for their shared view about minds. More exactly, they use the same argument for the limited thesis that there is something distinct from perceptions and from ideas perceived, and that this somethingis aperceiver, or that which perceives. The argument, given in more detail below, claims that we are aware ofour own minds in, or while we are engaged in, perception. The kind ofawareness is said to be or to involve a reflex act, a concept we associate with Berkeley, though I think it is one he appropriated from Locke. Hume, ofcourse, rejects the view ofLocke and Berkeley. He rejects the very notion of an immaterial mind or soul, finding it to be meaningless. And he rejects as well the limited thesis that there is something which perceives and which is distinct from all perceptions. In this paper I will restrict attention to Hume's arguments for rejecting the limited thesis. 1. Rejection ofthe limited thesis Hume investigates the limited thesis of Locke and Berkeley in the well-known section ofthe Treatise which deals with personal identity (Treatise 1.4.6). Here is how he expresses the view of "some philosophers": Theke are some philosophers, who imagine we are every moment intimately conscious of what we call our SELF; that we feel its existence and continuance in existence; and are certain, beyond the evidence of a demonstration, both of its perfect identity and simplicity. The strongest sensation, the most violent passion, say they, instead of distracting us from this view, only fix it the more intensely, and make us consider their influence on selfeither by their pain or pleasure.1 Thus, Hume represents the argumentofthosehe opposes as containing two premises: Volume XVIII Number 2 275 GEORGE S. PAPPAS (1)In perception, one is aware ofone's self, and aware ofthe simplicity of the self. (2)In being thus aware of the self and its simplicity one gains an idea of a simple self. These premises, in turn, support a double conclusion: (3)There are simple selves (minds). (4)We have an idea of a simple self(mind). Hume does not take the trouble to cite the second premise given here in the passage I have quoted, butitis clear that he has it in mind, since he proceeds directly to a criticism of it. The criticism is quite familiar inform, encapsulatingwhat I call aderivabilityargument. Here is what Hume says: all these positive assertions are contrary to that very experience, which is pleaded for them, nor have we any idea of self, after the manner it is here explain'd. For from what impression cou'd this idea be deriv'd?... It must be some one impression, that givesrise toeveryreal idea. But selfor person is not any one impression, but that to which our severahmpressionsandideas are suppos'd to have areference. Ifany impression gives rise to the idea ofself, that impression must continue invariably the same, thro' the whole course of our lives; since self is suppos'd to exist after that manner. (T 251) He is also sharply critical ofthe first premise. Hume says: when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particularperception orother, ofheatorcold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myselfat any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception. (T 252) So, minimally, Hume's arguments amount to this: (1) is false; hence, we have nogroundforclaiming(3). Similarly, (2) is false, so that we have no ground for claiming (4). Actually, of course, Hume asserts stronger claims, maintaining that (3) and (4) arefalse, and not merely that we lack adequate support forthem. Buttoshowtheirfalsityrequires additional argumentbeyond whatis providedin the above-quoted passages. Here I will not consider those additional arguments, except to note... (shrink)

Berkeley's philosophy has been much studied and discussed over the years, and a growing number of scholars have come to the realization that scientific and mathematical writings are an essential part of his philosophical enterprise. The aim of this volume is to present Berkeley's two most important scientific texts in a form which meets contemporary standards of scholarship while rendering them accessible to the modern reader. Although editions of both are contained in the fourth volume of the Works, these lack (...) adequate introductions and do not provide com plete and corrected texts. The present edition contains a complete and critically established text of both De Motu and The Analyst, in addi tion to a new translation of De Motu. The introductions and notes are designed to provide the background necessary for a full understanding of Berkeley's account of science and mathematics. Although these two texts are very different, they are united by a shared a concern with the work of Newton and Leibniz. Berkeley's De Motu deals extensively with Newton's Principia and Leibniz's Specimen Dynamicum, while The Analyst critiques both Leibnizian and Newto nian mathematics. Berkeley is commonly thought of as a successor to Locke or Malebranche, but as these works show he is also a successor to Newton and Leibniz. (shrink)

Philosophical accounts of perception in the tradition of Kant and Reid have generally supposed that an event of making a judgment is a key element in every perceptual experience. An alternative very austere view regards perception as an event containing nothing judgmental, nor anything conceptual. This account of perception as nonconceptual is discussed first historically as found in the philosophies of Locke and (briefly) Berkeley, and then examined in the contemporary work of Chisholm and Alston.

The Hyde Amendment and Roman Catholic attempts to put restrictions on Title X funding have been criticized for being intolerant. However, such criticism fails to appreciate that there are two competing notions of tolerance, one focusing on the limits of state force and accepting pluralism as unavoidable, and the other focusing on the limits of knowledge and advancing pluralism as a good. These two types of tolerance, illustrated in the writings of John Locke and J.S. Mill, each involve an (...) intolerance. In a pluralistic context f where the free exercise of religion is respected, John Locke's account of tolerance is preferable. However, it (in a reconstructed form) leads to a minimal state. Positive entitlements to benefits like artificial contraception or nontherapeutic abortions can legitimately be resisted, because an intolerance has already been shown with respect to those that consider the benefit immoral, since their resources have been coop ted by taxation to advance an end that is contrary to their own. There is a sliding scale from tolerance (viewed as forbearance) to the affirmation of communal integrity, and this scale maps on to the continuum from negative to positive rights. Keywords: church and state, Hyde Amendment, Locke, Mill, religious liberty, Title X funding, toleration CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

This article brings to light some of the characteristics of the pervasive parental overpermissiveness and hyper-protectionism that unfortunately have made their way into our culture. With the aid of philosophers of education, such as Locke, Rousseau, and Dewey, I expose the corrosive effects that parental overindulgence has on the potential happiness of those in their charge, as well as on those who share their social space. As these philosophers warned long ago, by overindulging their desires, parents either overextend their (...) children’s expectations well beyond the reality of their capabilities or they squash their initiative by usurping their independence. In either case, parents cripple their children’s autonomy and thereby detract from the real work needed to develop habits and dispositions necessary to plan and carry out achievable accomplishments that are integral for sustained and enduring happiness. Put more simply, overindulgence, to the extent this impedes the development of requisite skills for achieving happiness and developing a sense of social responsibility, becomes a disguised form of child abuse. (shrink)