The relation between morality and religion has often been discussed. However, it is not always recognized that the relation varies greatly according to the variety of religions. I shall here be concerned solely with Christian theism in its traditional form. I take the latter to signify, essentially, belief in a morally perfect Creator who exists in the threefold form of Father, Son and Holy Spirit and who, in the person of the Son, became man in Christ for our salvation. I (...) thus exclude from consideration all non-theistic accounts of God or the Absolute. Also I shall consider, not simply bare theism of the kind that Christians share with Jews and Muslims, but also the distinctively Christian form of theism that is generated by distinctively Christian revelation. Many otherwise sound descriptions of the relation between morality and theism are defective because they fail to consider the distinctively Christian contribution to the theistic concept of God and of his relation to the world. (shrink)

Many writers often generalise about mysticism without a sufficiently close analysis of texts. Consequently the generalisations are often invalid. My present aim is to analyse one text and, in the light of this analysis, to offer some observations concerning mysticism in general and Christian mysticism in particular.

For over thirty years C. A. Campbell has made major contributions to both ethics and metaphysics. Since these do not correspond to the prevailing fashions in philosophy and theology they are in danger of being under-estimated, if not ignored. I hope to summarise and comment on them as impartially as possible. Inevitably I must be selective. In writing for this journal I have, naturally, chosen to stress those elements in Campbell's thought which are directly or indirectly relevant to religion. Even (...) so, there are many points which I have no space to develop. I shall be content if I say enough to indicate the importance of Campbell's writings for the study of the philosophically crucial topics to which they are devoted. (shrink)

Christianity affirms, with Judaism and Islam, that God is the omnipotent Creator of all things. But it diverges from them in also affirming that the Creator assumed a human nature in one figure of history, Jesus of Nazareth. Christ thus differs from other men in kind, not merely in degree; he is absolutely, not just relatively, unique. Admittedly many Christian theologians have held that the difference between Christ and other men is only one of degree. Yet the Church's traditional claim, (...) as expressed in the Chalcedonian Definition, is that Jesus was both creature and Creator, both fully man and fully God. (shrink)

The paper is an examination and critique of the philosophy of science fiction horror of seminal American horror, science fiction and fantasy writer H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937). Lovecraft never directly offers a philosophy of science fiction horror. However, at different points in his essays and letters, he addresses genres he labels “interplanetary fiction”, “horror”, “supernatural horror”, and “weird fiction”, the last being a broad heading covering both supernatural fiction and science fiction. Taken together, a philosophy of science fiction horror emerges. Central (...) to this philosophy is the juxtaposition of the mysterious, unnatural and alien against a realistic background, in order to produce the emotion that Lovecraft calls “cosmic fear”. This background must not only be scientifically accurate, but must accurately portray human psychology, particularly when humans are faced with the weird and alien. It will be argued that Lovecraft’s prescriptions are overly restrictive and would rule out many legitimate works of science fiction horror art. However, he provides useful insights into the genre. (shrink)

Poverty violates fundamental human values through its impact on individuals and on human environments, and it goes against the core values of democratic societies. Drawing on numerous scientific studies as well as his own experience witnessing the systematic poverty in his home country of South Africa, H. P. P. [Hennie] Lötter presents a holistic profile of poverty and its effects on human lives all the while accounting for the complexity of each individual case. He argues that shared ethical values must (...) guide the planning and distribution of aid and that our society must reevaluate our notions of justice and reimagine the role of the state in order to enable collective human responsibility for poverty’s successful eradication. (shrink)

H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) was a great horror writer, correspondent, and philosopher. This book focuses on his stories, texts, and ideas. It attempts to make sense of their underlying unity. The main themes are value nihilism, cosmicism, the language of the unsayable, and the tension between science and magic. Special attention is paid to Lovecraft's style, which is shown to be an essential aspect of his creativity. Lovecraft was also an interesting person whose life is documented in his many letters. (...) This book unifies the biographical, fictional, and philosophical dimensions of Lovecraft's writings. (shrink)

This handbook with exercises reveals the mathematical beauty of formalisms hitherto mostly used for software and hardware design and verification.

Poverty is one of the most serious moral issues of our time that does not yet get the appropriate response it deserves. This book first gives an in depth moral analysis and evaluation of the complex manifestations of poverty. It then offers a series of ethical reasons to motivate everyone to engage in the struggle to eradicate poverty. -/- Social science research results are synthesized into a definition and explanation of poverty that provide proper background for moral evaluation. Poverty is (...) defined as a many-faceted phenomenon consisting of tightly interwoven characteristics that play out in a complexity of manners depending on the unique circumstances in individual situations. -/- The following series of claims are defended in the book: (1) Poverty is a complex phenomenon that can have a wide ranging series of negative impacts on individuals and societies; (2) Poverty must be understood from a variety of ethical perspectives and through different metaphors; (3) Poverty and its consequences undermine the dignity of its sufferers and thus must be eradicated for its inhuman consequences; (4) Poverty affects all the networks humans are involved in and thus diminishes the quality of life of all human beings; (5) We must evaluate all possible dimensions of the phenomenon of poverty in terms of values of ethics and justice generally shared in contemporary liberal democracies. (6) Poverty can best be addressed through collective human action after re-imagining the goal and purpose of political institutions and a reformulation of the purposes aid ought to be for. (shrink)

The works of Paul Grice collected in this volume present his metaphysical defense of value, and represent a modern attempt to provide a metaphysical foundation for value. Value judgments are viewed as objective; value is part of the world we live in, but nonetheless is constructed by us. We inherit, or seem to inherit, the Aristotelian world in which objects and creatures are characterized in terms of what they are supposed to do. We are thereby enabled to evaluate by reference (...) to function and finality. The most striking part of Grice's position, however, is his contention that the legitimacy of such evaluations rests ultimately on an argument for absolute value. (shrink)

Ernest Nagel once remarked that it is fortunately not necessary to be clear about scientific philosophy and methodology in order to practice good science. He went on to say, "Even eminent scientists can make unholy spectacles of themselves when they don the mantle of philosophy and attempt to discuss the broad implications of their specialized labors." Feynman's recent venture into the philosophy of science is, unfortunately, a lucid illustration of the validity of Nagel's observations. The book is a rather literal (...) transcription of seven semi-popular lectures delivered by Feynman at Cornell in November of 1964. Feynman is a wonderful iconoclast, a legendary virtuoso of the bongo drums and—by the way—a Nobel laureate and one of the great theoretical physicists. But this is all the more reason to expect something a little more intellectually solid than is offered in this volume. It was obviously Feynman's intent to discuss some compelling problems which lie on the borderline of physics and philosophy with an intelligent lay audience. But few will be enlightened by Feynman's clever, if uninformative, discourse about such issues as the relation of mathematics to physics, symmetry and conservation laws, and probability and uncertainty. Feynman's finest hour undoubtedly comes in the lecture on quantum mechanics, in which some aspects of the wave-particle duality are presented. But the value of much of the rest of the book is severely qualified by the author's penchant for imprecise and confusing statements and, in some cases, outright mystery-mongering. This is a great pity because theoretical physics, especially in the hands of Richard Feynman, is a source of ideas which are most worth discussing.—H. P. K. (shrink)

A small but comprehensive textbook on Boolean algebra, sentential logic, and lattice theory; this book will be of interest to students of logic and foundational studies in mathematics, particularly with respect to algebraic representations of propositional logic and elementary metamathematics of algebra. The book contains a self-dual set of postulates for Boolean algebras, with proofs of its completeness and independence. The book is written on an elementary to intermediate level, contains numerous exercises, a short index, and an even shorter bibliography.—H. (...) P. K. (shrink)

The strange and fascinating philosophical problems associated with the quantum theory are brought within the grasp of the nonspecialist by this brilliant and lucid little book. The author is one of the outstanding Soviet theoretical physicists. By a judicious use of drawings and diagrams he has been able to present some high-powered physics without reliance upon equally potent mathematical methods. In fact, anyone with a fertile imagination, intellectual curiosity, and a background in high-school algebra can read this book with profit. (...) At the same time, the chapters on the uncertainty principle, quantized fields, and Dirac's theory of the electron will surely give philosophically sensitive readers a good deal to mull over; e.g., "The uncertainty principle in no way denies the existence of momentum and position as precise quantities; it merely asserts that they cannot exist simultaneously as precise quantities." The book may even be of value to sophisticated students of physics as an aid in "visualizing" some of the rather abstract concepts of quantum theory.—H. P. K. (shrink)

This book is a contribution to both the study of the logical and philosophical foundations of physics, and the investigation of applied formal axiomatic systems. Basri uses the techniques of logic and set theory in order to construct a rigorous physical theory whose theorems turn out to be those of the general theory of relativity or else arbitrarily close approximations thereof. Whether Basri's approach turns out to be fruitful for the analysis of foundational problems in physics remains to be seen, (...) but he has clearly rendered an important service in providing at least one rigorously unified way of talking about such things as particles, events, signals, clocks, rigid measuring instruments, etc. A novel feature of the book is that the basis of Basri's system is rather phenomenalistic: he uses primitives like "the class of unbiased human observers" and "the class of simultaneous sensations of observer H." The obvious philosophical problems about perception and the external world which are consequent upon this sort of approach are not treated by Basri, but he is certainly not to be faulted on this account. There are, however, a number of errors and imprecisions in the underlying logistic system, some of which are more serious than others. But in general, this book deserves to be read and its thesis considered by all students interested in serious and responsible efforts in the philosophy of physics.—H. P. K. (shrink)

Yet another introductory text of symbolic logic and a very good one, at that. The four principal chapters of this book treat propositional logic and predicate calculus, devoting two chapters to each. Each of these subsections is roughly organized as follows: An initial chapter presents the basic notational devices, translation methods, and intuitive discussion of arguments and validity. The subsequent chapter gives exact formation and transformation rules, proofs and metalinguistic considerations of questions of consistency and completeness. Lemmon's notation is similar (...) to that of Suppes, and his system bears some similarity to the rules of inference in Fitch's 1951 text, although Lemmon's system is a "standard" one. Two appendices, dealing with normal forms and elementary set theory, and an annotated bibliography of relevant works complete this high-quality text. An obviously promising career was cut tragically short by the premature death of the author in 1966.—H. P. K. (shrink)

Dilthey is a figure of real importance in European philosophy and social theory. He exerted a significant influence on Husserl, Heidegger and Weber through his work on the nature of philosophy and the methodology and epistemology of human and social studies. He was also a distinguished and original historian of ideas and, indeed, many of his philosophical interests arose from the insights and practical difficulties he encountered as a historian. He produced a monumental biography of Schleiermacher, and a series of (...) shorter, but no less striking studies of Hegel, Dickens, Shakespeare, Schiller and many others. (shrink)

This book is a clear, concise, and conceptually unified treatment of various problems, both formal and philosophical, of inductive logic and probability. Ackermann's main concern throughout the book is the problem of adducing inductive support for various hypotheses, and of deciding between two competing hypotheses which is more reasonable given the available evidence. The author begins with a general consideration of the criteria to be met by satisfactory rules of inductive inference: accordance with intuitive notions of reasonableness in simple cases, (...) sensitivity to the given evidence, capacity for unambiguous intersubjective application. Ackermann quickly disposes of the argument that valid inductive rules must be made to rest upon a "postulate of the uniformity of nature": "If past projections of regularities suddenly begin to go wrong, nondeductive rules satisfying the criteria suggested above will begin to select regularities other than the ones which have failed." This clears the way for a consideration of the general problem of evidential support or confirmation, with its well-known paradoxes and difficulties. Ackermann, like Goodman, locates the source of these in problems bearing on the semantics of scientific language, and cautiously points to Goodman's theory of projection and entrenchment as the way out of most of the muddle. Succeeding chapters deal with the notion of probability of hypotheses, statistical inference, and the application of Bayesian techniques and decision theory to science. A well-chosen bibliography completes this modest but rewarding little book.—H. P. K. (shrink)

This is undoubtedly one of the most well-conceived and nicely executed introductory books on special relativity ever written. The authors take the view that relativity theory is no longer an advanced and esoteric branch of physics, but ought to be part of the basic intellectual equipment of any bright college student. To this end, the theory of special relativity is presented as a complete and unified set of concepts and not merely as a kind of gloss on classical Newtonian mechanics. (...) This is accomplished in a manner which captures the flavor and excitement of theoretical physics and makes it available to persons of modest mathematical means, and at the same time avoids the overpopularizing and lack of rigor which so often afflict works of this kind. The text is accompanied by numerous non-trivial problems, many with solutions, and a large number of helpful drawings. There is also a reasonable amount of discussion of matters of philosophic interest, and of the most recent experimental inquiries, including a section on the significance of the Mössbauer effect. Altogether, a first-rate job.—H. P. K. (shrink)

The issues treated in this book derive a certain degree of unification from their relation to the general theme of the completeness of scientific theories. Unfortunately, when a philosopher addresses himself to the question of the completeness of an empirical theory, it is far from clear at the outset just what the problem is. Schlegel, to be sure, explicates three different notions of completeness which may be relevant here: the logical, physical, and pragmatic aspects. By the first, Schlegel means the (...) usual set of issues having to do with the deductive and semantic structure of formal theories, the second refers to "the problems that are to be answered in terms of what is discovered by science about the natural world," and the third refers to "the factors in the completeness of science that seem to be chiefly dependent on the interests of scientists." As these formulations suggest, the level of logical and philosophical rigor is hardly commensurate with the kind of investigation one would expect. An early chapter deals with an epistemology of physics in which a class of entities called "constructs" plays the central role. Unfortunately, it is never clear whether constructs denote objects, properties, facts, sentences, or something else. On the other hand, the materials in this chapter are largely irrelevant to the subsequent discussion. Schlegel does an admirable job of scientific exegesis on the present state of quantum physics and cosmology. With regard to the former, he is an advocate of the "Copenhagen view," and he argues that a sort of natural limit of description and explanation has been reached. As to cosmology, Schlegel looks forward to a narrowing of the range of alternate theories as more data become available. In the chapter on purely formal questions a number of oversights seem to have been committed. The exposition of Gödel's incompleteness theorem is inaccurate in that it is not shown that provability can be defined intra-systematically. Schlegel's discussion of how the theorem might apply to scientific theories is suggestive, but also confusing. The chapter on infinity treats the continuum hypothesis as a proven fact, thus ignoring the very important questions raised by the work of Paul Cohen and others. Finally, and most distressingly, the Hebrew letter aleph is printed upside down at all of its occurrences.--H. P. K. (shrink)

The publication of this book constitutes a real service to students of logic and of the foundations and philosophy of mathematics. Here, "under one roof," are translations of seventeen of the most important papers on logic and metalogic by Ajdukiewicz, Chwistek, Jaskowski, Jordan, Lesniewski, Lukasiewicz, S upecki, Sobocinski, and Wajsberg. All but two of them appear in English for the first time. Notably absent are papers by Alfred Tarski, but this omission is fully justified in view of the publisher's well-known (...) companion volume devoted exclusively to this most important logician. Within the contents of this volume, the major topics covered are various systems of sentential logic ; philosophically-motivated foundational studies ; miscellaneous papers on logical syntax, intuitionism and metalogic; and historical studies of the development of Polish logic. One cautionary note: the protothetic notation of Lesniewski is extremely difficult to read. Before undertaking that author's articles, the reader will do well to turn to the explanatory footnotes in the subsequent articles by Sobocinski. The book has a bibliography, but no index. In general, this is a worthwhile and long overdue book.—H. P. K. (shrink)

This somewhat unusual introductory logic text has been clearly designed to bring the student into contact with the mathematical aspects and problems of logical systems as quickly and naturally as possible, at the expense of "fundamental" discussions of logical theory, language and philosophy. In the introductory chapter, the student is introduced to elementary logical technique via Gentzen-type rules of inference, given the requisite set-theoretical background, given a preliminary orientation with respect to the concept of an axiomatic theory, and then shown (...) the full first-order language of the basic predicate calculus. The following chapter develops an axiomatic version of first-order logic with identity, and exhibits proofs of the deduction theorem, completeness theorem, and various applications of equivalence and replacement theorems and other materials to formal number theory. Finally, in what is undoubtably the most valuable part of the book, a good treatment of first-order mathematical theories is given in the third chapter. This includes an extensive discussion of Tarski's semantical theory of truth and a detailed version of Henkin's completeness theorem. Sections on decidability and Gödel's theorem complete this fine introduction to basic mathematical logic. There are numerous exercises throughout the book.—H. P. K. (shrink)

This recent addition to the well-known "Studies in Logic" series is sure to be of first importance to serious students of inductive logic, confirmation theory, and related issues. The book is an anthology of fourteen papers, which are classified under five different headings: "Extensions of Inductive Logic," "Induction and Information," "Prospects of Confirmation Theory," "The Paradoxes of Confirmation," and "Probability and Foundational Problems." Needless to say, all of the papers are of uniformly high quality. Especially worthy of mention are two (...) papers by Hintikka and Hilpinen which deal with an interesting generalization of Carnap's continuum of inductive methods, and which lead to a somewhat more plausible treatment of non-logically-true closed sentences. Suppes contributes two papers dealing with the recently revived Bayesian methods and their significance for concept formation in psychology and confirmation theory in the philosophy of science. Also under the heading of confirmation theory, one might mention Max Black's paper, "Notes on the Paradoxes of Confirmation," a lucid and rather novel approach to this problem. There is also an important paper by Dana Scott and Peter Krauss entitled "Assigning Probabilities to Logical Formulas." This piece of work presents a set-theoretical method for bridging the gap between the standard treatment of probability by means of axioms defining a real measure over a Boolean algebra and the usual logical inquiries into "degree of confirmation" and the like. The reference value of the book is enhanced by a subject index of terms and concepts dealt with in the various papers.—H. P. K. (shrink)

One would like to be able to say that a large part of the material in this book is so obvious as to be unnecessary. Unfortunately, this book is worthwhile precisely because one cannot. Bandman's problem may be stated as follows: By what canons and criteria does one evaluate arguments in the philosophy of education? How, in particular, do we correctly evaluate arguments about what ought to be taught? The book is thus an exercise in the "metaphilosophy" of education. In (...) the first, polemical half of the volume the author convincingly demonstrates that numerous and typical patterns of argument employed in the philosophy of education by many authors violate some of the most basic and pervasive logical rules. The really striking thing here is that Bandman persuasively charges numerous well respected educational thinkers with informal fallacies that a freshman logic student would not commit. The constructive side of Bandman's work is a bit more dubious. Initially, he distinguishes between two senses of "argument": Sense I and Sense II. These are, respectively, a "special evaluative type of argument, which does not intend to demonstrate the conclusion, and is used in giving intellectual backing to [it]," and the usual sense of argument common to formal logic. Bandman's thesis is that arguments in Sense I are "capricious," inconclusive, and typically unsound, while educational arguments in Sense II are either unsound or irrelevant. He proposes a middle way between the horns of this dilemma by urging a third sense of "argument" as the provision of "good enough" and "cogent" reasons. At least two lines of attack on Bandman's position are available. In the first place, in dismissing the utility of Sense II arguments, he makes rather facile use of the noncognitivist view that moral statements are neither true nor false. Secondly, Bandman does not adequately spell out his Sense III notion of "argument," and the few necessary conditions that he does provide fail to clarify in what sense the premisses support the conclusion and how Sense III really differs from Sense I. Despite these criticisms, the merits of the book are many, and it deserves a wide reading by philosophers and educators alike.—H. P. K. (shrink)