This paper contributes to the recently renewed debate over methodological individualism (MI) by carefully sorting out various individualist claims and by making use of recent work on reduction and explanation outside the social sciences. My major focus is on individualist claims about reduction and explanation. I argue that reductionist versions of MI fail for much the same reasons that mental predicates cannot be reduced to physical predicates and that attempts to establish reducibility by weakening the requirements for reduction also fail. (...) I consider and reject a number of explanatory theses, among them the claims that any adequate theory must refer only to individuals and that individualist theory suffices to explain fully. The latter claim, I argue, is not entailed by the supervenience of social facts on individual facts. Lastly, I argue that there is one individualist restriction on explanation which is far more plausible and significant than one would initially suspect. (shrink)

Advances in molecular biology have generally been taken to support the claim that biology is reducible to chemistry. I argue against that claim by looking in detail at a number of central results from molecular biology and showing that none of them supports reduction because (1) their basic predicates have multiple realizations, (2) their chemical realization is context-sensitive and (3) their explanations often presuppose biological facts rather than eliminate them. I then consider the heuristic and confirmational implications of irreducibility and (...) argue that purely biochemical approaches are likely to be unsound and to be unable to confirm an important range of statements. I conclude by sketching criteria for scientific unity that do not entail reducibility and yet leave an important place for identifying underlying mechanisms. Molecular biology, properly understood, provides an excellent paradigm of non-reductive unity between different explanatory levels. (shrink)

In the recent methodological individualism-holism debate on explanation, there has been considerable focus on what reasons methodological holists may advance in support of their position. We believe it is useful to approach the other direction and ask what considerations methodological individualists may in fact offer in favor of their view about explanation. This is the background for the question we pursue in this paper: Why be a methodological individualist? We start out by introducing the methodological individualism-holism debate while distinguishing two (...) forms of methodological individualism: a form that says that individualist explanations are always better than holist accounts and a form that says that providing intervening individualist mechanisms always makes for better explanations than purely holist ones. Next, we consider four lines of reasoning in support of methodological individualism: arguments from causation, from explanatory depth, from agency, and from normativity. We argue that none of them offer convincing reasons in support of the two explanatory versions of individualism we consider. While there may well be occasions in which individualists’ favorite explanations are superior, we find no reason to think this always must be the case. (shrink)

This Handbook is a major, comprehensive look at the key ideas in the field, is guided by several principles.

Debates about explanation in the social sciences often proceed without any clear idea what an 'account' of explanation should do. In this paper I take a stance - what I will call contextualism - that denies there are purely formal and conceptual constraints on explanation and takes standards of explanation to be substantive empirical claims, paradigmatically claims about causation. I then use this standpoint to argue for position on issues in the philosophy of social science concerning reduction, idealized models, social (...) mechanisms, functional explanations, inference to the best explanation and interpretive understanding. (shrink)

The paper defends Gareth Evan's argument against vague identity "de re" from a criticism that quantum mechanics provides actual counter-examples to its validity. A more general version of Evans's argument is stated in which identity involving properties are not essential and it is claimed that the scientific facts as so far known are consistent with the Evansian thesis that indeterminacy in truth-value must always be due to semantic indecision.

Discourse carries thin commitment to objects of a certain sort iff it says or implies that there are such objects. It carries a thick commitment to such objects iff an account of what determines truth-values for its sentences say or implies that there are such objects. This paper presents two model-theoretic semantics for mathematical discourse, one reflecting thick commitment to mathematical objects, the other reflecting only a thin commitment to them. According to the latter view, for example, the semantic role (...) of number-words is not designation but rather the encoding of cardinality-quantifiers. I also present some reasons for preferring this view. (shrink)

Mugler maintains that interpreters have been mistaken in drawing from the pedagogical plan of Republic VII any general conclusion concerning the relative position which Plato assigned to philosophical speculation and mathematics, that in Plato's own intellectual experience the relation of the two was the reverse of that assigned to them there, mathematics being more often the end of metaphysical reflection than its point of departure, and that he recommended mathematical study to his pupils not merely as a propaedeutic for dialectic (...) but primarily because from his own experience he believed that subsequent philosophical meditation upon the fund of knowledge thus acquired would often lead to mathematical discoveries. Mugler does not say how this thesis is to be reconciled with the fact that at the end of the Laws dialectic is still declared to be the supreme science and that in such a late passage as Philebus 57 D ff. as well as in an early one like Euthydemus 290 C, neither of which is "pedagogical," the supremacy of dialectic and its priority to mathematics are affirmed as emphatically as in Republic VII; he simply says that a close interpretation of the "metaphysical" dialogues and the Timaeus will substantiate his contention, and it is therefore necessary to examine his interpretation in detail. (shrink)

Recently, technology has impacted upon sports umpiring and refereeing. One effect is that the means to make sound judgments has becoe ‘distributed’ to new groups of people such as TV viewers and commentators. The result is that justice on the sports field is often seen not to be done and the readiness to question umpires' decisions that once pertained only to the players and, in some sports, to the crowd, has spread to anyone who has a television. What is more, (...) the questioning can now be done on good grounds. This change is explained and a way of thinking about it is put forward. The aim is to develop a theory of the relationship between human match officials and technology. Toward this end I offer a new terminology for the kinds of justice that are involved in match officiating. I argue that the introduction of new technology should be done in such a way as to maintain the justice of decisions and that justice is not the same as accuracy. Justice is best served with a restrained use of new technology. (shrink)

Personal pronoun revisionism (so-called by Olson, E. 2007. What are We? A Study in Personal Ontology. Oxford: Oxford University Press) is a response to the problem of the thinking animal on behalf of the neo-Lockean theorist. Many worry about this response. The worry rests on asking the wrong question, namely: how can two thinkers that are so alike differ in this way in their cognitive capacities? This is the wrong question because they don't. The right question is: how can they (...) fail to be the same? From the materialist viewpoint shared by the animalist and neo-Lockean they can't. Personal pronoun revisionism is a consequence of their cognitive identity. (shrink)

In the first half of the first century BC the Academy of Athens broke up in disarray. From the wreckage of the semi-sceptical school there arose the new dogmatic philosophy of Antiochus, synthesized from Stoicism and Platonism, and the hardline Pyrrhonist scepticism of Aenesidemus. With his extensive knowledge of the ways in which Plato was read and invoked as an authority in late antiquity Dr Tarrant builds a most impressive reconstruction of Philo of Larissa's brand of Platonism and of its (...) arrival in Middle Platonism, particularly that of Plutarch, long after the Academy's institutional demise. Particularly valuable is his exploitation for this purpose of a text barely discussed since its publication 80 years ago - a commentary on Plato's Theaetetus whose unidentified author Dr Tarrant has cogently argued to be a follower of Philo. Among many other achievements, Dr Tarrant throws much light on the relation of Aenesideman scepticism to the Academy. (shrink)

The paper defends Gareth Evans's argument against vague identity. It appeals to a principle I name the principle of the diversity of the definitely dissimilar to defend the thesis that vague identity statements owe their indeterminacy to vagueness in language.

What is the difference between the complex view of personal identity over time and the simple view? Traditionally, the defenders of the complex view are said to include Locke and Hume, defenders of the simple view to include Butler and Reid. In our own time it is standard to think of Chisholm and Swinburne as defenders of the simple view and Shoemaker, Parfit, Williams and Lewis as defenders of the complex view. But how exactly is the distinction to be characterized? (...) One difference between the two camps is that defenders of the simple view emphasize the difference between diachronic personal identity and the identity of other objects; they insist that in the case of the other familiar types that figure in philosophical puzzle cases about identity – ships, statues, plants and so on – the correct view is the complex one. On the other hand, defenders of the complex view do not hold a simple view of other things; rather they think that the complex view is correct across the board. We therefore need an account of the distinction which allows us to speak generally of ‘the complex/simple view of the diachronic identity of things of sort S’ where ‘S’ is a sortal term. A respectable view about problems of identity in general is that there aren’t any: any genuine philosophical puzzles can be rephrased so that the language of identity drops out . In what follows, I offer an account of the simple/complex contrast which conforms to this Lewisean view. 1 We can begin by distinguishing two types of constraint on personhood. Type , or synchronic constraints, are capturable in the form: If x is a person, then if x exists at t, Fxt where ‘ F represents a term for a non-historical property, a property …. (shrink)

Moje zainteresowanie pracami i dziełem Michaiła Bachtina oraz Eugena Rosenstocka-Huessy bierze swój początek z odkrycia, ze obaj myśliciele zgodnie twierdzili, iż religijna moc języka oraz mowy wyrasta z różnorodnych kryzysów życiowych. Theoria przez nich stworzona zbudowana jest na gruncie praxis i czerpie swą siłę ze zderzenia doświadczeń duchowych i intelektualnych obu filozofów z rewolucyjnym wrzeniem otaczającej ich współczesności. Wykład niniejszy to próba nawiązania dialogu z osobami podzielającymi podobne zainteresowania i troski. Pisząc go kierowałem się także pragnieniem zaabsorbowania uwagi moich słuchaczy (...) przedstawione w nim istoty metalingwistyki głoszonej przez „nieortodoksyjnego" prawosławnego teoretyka literatury i filozofa języka, Michaiła Bachtina, oraz znaczeniem metanomiki opracowanej przez „rewolucyjnie konserwatywnego" chrześcijańskiego myśliciela mowy i filozofa społecznego, Eugena Rosenstocka-Huessy. Zamiarem moim jest przedstawienie roli, jaką społeczno-religijne modele filozofii i socjologii oparte na mowie i języku mogą^ odegrać w dążeniach do zaprowadzenia pokojowego współistnienia na całej naszej planecie. Ten właśnie obszar zainteresowań został określony przez Williama Jamesa, amerykańskiego filozofa pragmatyzmu, mianem „moralnego równoważnika wojny”. Przywołując na pamięć ogromną rzeszę myślicieli, których prace odnoszą się bezpośrednio do wyznaczonego tu obszaru – a w pewnych przypadkach noszą znamiona dzieła prekursorskiego – nie możemy poprzestać na wymienieniu tylko nazwiska Williama Jamesa. Inne wielkie postaci to: Charles Sanders Pierce, George Herbert Mead, a także myśliciele podejmujący zagadnienia, które później stały się treścią filozofii Rosenstocka-Huessy, tj. Giovanni Battista Vico, J. G. Hamann, Comte de Saint-Simon oraz Giuseppe Ferrari. (shrink)

Perhaps the burning issue facing us today is how people from different cultural backgrounds can live together or in close proximity with one another and preserve their identities without destroying one another. This topic is important to me because I believe that new understandings about what we mean by the terms “speech” and “reality”' may contribute towards an improvement in our ability to work together with peoples of diverse backgrounds in order to create a more caring an humane planet. As (...) I approach my three score and ten years of life and think about the importance for future generations of the legacies of my teacher Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, of Mikhail Bakhtin, Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig, two Christians and two Jews, whose lives and writings have also influenced my own life and thinking. I would single out their insights into speech and language as worthy of serious attention by future generations. When asked by students and colleagues if there is a single unifying theme that we should focus our energies on, without hesitation, I say: speech and reality. (shrink)

Bringing together work composed from 1890 to 1924, the nineteen pieces collected in the posthumously published Last Essays serve as a primer to Conrad's wide interests and to the varieties of his style. This edition, supported by an extensive textual apparatus, brings together various prose pieces, including reminiscences, reviews, essays on the sea and politics, as well as several miscellaneous items, including his 'Congo Diary' and the other notebook he kept in Africa in 1890. The introduction situates these writings in (...) Conrad's career, offers new perspectives on Conrad in the marketplace and as a writer of occasional prose and traces the contemporary reception of the volume. The notes explain literary and historical references, identify real-life places and indicate Conrad's main sources. Early drafts and notes for several essays are published here for the first time, making this authoritative critical edition a major contribution to Conrad studies. (shrink)

The Alcibiades purports to offer us the very first conversation between Socrates and Alcibiades. Previously, it seems, Socrates has just lingered at the back of a crowd of lovers looking rather stupid. This is hardly surprising. Socrates did look stupid, and both Aristophanes and his rival Ameipsias thought that he was good enough material for a laugh to present him on stage in their comedies at the Dionysia of 423 BC. The only slight surprise here is that Alcibiades, though he (...) is mentioned in other Aristophanic comedies, is never actually named in the Clouds. One might suspect that the young man Pheidippides, whom Socrates exposes to the corrupting influence of philosophic argument and the ensuing amoral attitudes, bears some relationship to Alcibiades. He shares with him a partially Alcmaeonid background, a passion for horse-racing, and an interesting lisp, but as the play stands Pheidippides is never seen as having been in any way close to Socrates.1 Their relationship is in fact akin to one between the principal of a college and an individual first-year student, with no sinister overtones whatever. I doubt that the relationship with Alcibiades had by that stage been seen as in any way unusual; either its bizarre nature was a well-kept secret, or it was not seen as very unusual after all. Alcibiades had experienced the attentions of a host of would-be lovers, so what would have made Socrates special? (shrink)

In The Neoplatonic Socrates, leading scholars in classics and philosophy address this gap by examining Neoplatonic attitudes toward the Socratic method, Socratic love, Socrates's divine mission and moral example, and the much-debated issue of moral rectitude. Collectively, they demonstrate the importance of Socrates for the majority of Neoplatonists, a point that has often been questioned owing to the comparative neglect of surviving commentaries on the Alcibiades, Gorgias, Phaedo, and Phaedrus, in favor of dialogues dealing explicitly with metaphysical issues. Supplemented with (...) a contextualizing introduction and a substantial appendix detailing where evidence for Socrates can be found in the extant literature, The Neoplatonic Socrates makes a clear case for the significant place Socrates held in the education and philosophy of late antiquity. (shrink)

Functionalism is a dominant but widely criticized perspective in social theory; my goal in this paper is to help clarify what functionalists claim, identify what would count as evidence for those claims and evaluate some standard criticisms. Functionalism relies essentially on functional explanations of the form "A exists in order to B." I point out problems with previous accounts of such explanations, offer an improved account, and discuss in detail evidence that might confirm such explanations and its difficulties. I argue (...) that some functionalist accounts can be confirmed and that, contra the critics, functionalism's problems are not inherent errors, "only" practical ones. (shrink)

Thoughts have content; for instance, the content of the thought that Plato is a great philosopher is that a certain person, Plato, has a certain property, the property of being a great philosopher. In thinking this thought, I become related in a certain manner to this person, Plato, and to the property of being a great philosopher. In this dissertation, I begin to develop a theory of how such relations come to obtain. ;In chapter 1, I examine and ultimately reject (...) the two approaches to intentionality most popular today: eliminativism and reductionistic physicalism. In chapter 2, I begin to present my own theory of intentionality, the starting point of which is the familiar idea that experience is a necessary condition for thought. In motivating this familiar idea, I explain the sense in which experience can be said to have a qualitative character, and I describe those specific aspects of qualitative character that figure in my subsequent account of how we succeed in forming concepts of material objects. Finally, I end the chapter by presenting the principal challenge for my theory: given that experience is a necessary condition for concept formation, how do we succeed in forming concepts of things other than our experiences? ;In chapter 3 I begin to meet this challenge. I oppose empiricism by arguing that the content of our concepts derives from two sources: experience, and the syntactic features of our thought. In chapter 4 I explain how by referring to phenomenal features with two-place rather than one-place predicates, we can form concepts of objects that exist independently of experience . In chapter 5 I defend naive realism. The account of demonstrative thought I present in chapter 4 presupposes a kind of naive realist theory of perception, and in chapter 5 I defend this theory against such familiar arguments as the argument from hallucination, the causal argument, and the time-gap argument. (shrink)

I examine Fox’s tripartite characterization of deep ecology. His assessment abandons Naess’s emphasis upon the pluralism of ultimate norms by distilling what I refer to as the deep ecology approach to “Self-realization!” Contrary to Fox, I argue that his popular sense is distinctive and his formal sense is tenable. Fox’s philosophical sense, while distinctive, is neither necessary nor sufficient to adequately characterize the deep ecology approach. I contend that the deep ecology approach, as a formal approach to environmental philosophy, is (...) not dependent upon and embodies much more than any single ultimate norm. I discuss how Naess’s deep ecology approach supports a wide diversity of ultimate norms. The only stipulation placed upon ultimate norms, to make them deep ecological ultimate norms, is that the so called deep ecology platform be derivable from them. The deep ecology approach is distinguished, in part, through its focus on diminishing environmentally degrading practices and policies by addressing root causes and by highlighting pseudo-conflicts. I present an interpretation of the deep ecology approach that hightlights Naess’s emphasis upon assisting individuals to arrive at thoroughly reasoned, consistent, and ecologically sound concrete decisions by supporting them in the articulation of their own personal ecological total views (ecosophies). (shrink)

Our knowledge of the Academy between the death of Plato and the first century BC is not extensive, though covered both by Philodemus' Academica, a history of the School on damaged papyrus, and by brief biographies in the fourth book of Diogenes Laertius' Lives of the Philosophers. These biographies cover the main school leaders down to the time of Clitomachus (d. 110/09 BC). It would be usual to see the Academy as having built on Plato's work and maintained his traditions (...) for about eighty years after the death of Plato in 347 BC, where upon Arcesilaus drew on the precedent of Socratic ignorance to move in a new, more sceptical direction. (shrink)

A profoundly inspiring yet practical guide to well-being from one of modern Judaism's most beloved sages.As a congregational rabbi for half a century and the bestselling author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People and twelve other books on faith, ethics, and how to translate the timeless wisdom of religious thought into dealing with everyday challenges, Harold Kushner knows a thing or two about living a good life. In this compassionate new work, Kushner distills nine essential lessons from (...) the sum of his teaching, study and experience, offering a lifetime's worth of spiritual food for thought, pragmatic advice, inspiration for better living, and strength for trying times. With vital, original insights into everything from belief ("there is no commandment in Judaism to believe in God"), to conscience (the Garden of Eden story as you've never heard it), to mercy ("forgiveness is a favor you do yourself, not a favor to the person who offended you"), grounded in Kushner's brilliant readings of Scripture, history and popular culture, Nine Essential Things I've Learned About Life is a capstone addition to Kushner's oeuvre. (shrink)

This article presents evidence over which we stumbled while investigating a completely different part of the Platonic Corpus. While examining the ordinary working vocabulary of the doubtful dialogues and of those undisputed dialogues most readily compared with them, it seemed essential to have a representative sample of Plato's allegedly 'middle' and 'late' dialogues also. The real surprise came when the Critias was included, showing some frequencies not previously observed in Platonic dialogues. This prompted treatment of the Timaeus also, some of (...) which showed comparable peculiarities. The most distinctive feature was the increase in the rate of the definite article from around 8% of total vocabulary in dialogues assumed to be early, or around 10% in Laws, to some 14% in sizeable parts of the Timaeus-Critias, where Plato seemed no less interested in the literary credentials of his creations than elsewhere. Tests intended for application to our original set of problems were yielding results that appeared to bear on a number of problems central to the interpretation of the Timaeus-Critias. (shrink)