Less discussed than Hume’s skepticism about what grounds there could be for projecting empirical hypotheses is his concern with a skeptical regress that he thought threatened to extinguish any belief when we reflect that our reasoning is not perfect. The root of the problem is the fact that a reflection about our reasoning is itself a piece of reasoning. If each reflection is negative and undermining, does that not give us a diminution of our original belief to nothing? It requires (...) much attention to detail, we argue, to determine whether or not there is a skeptical problem in this neighborhood. Consider that if we subsequently doubt a doubt we had about our reasoning, that would suggest a restoration of some of the force of our original belief. We would then have instead of runaway skepticism an alternating sequence of pieces of skeptical reasoning that cancel each others’ effects on our justification in the original proposition, at least to some degree. We will argue that the outcome of the sequence of reflections Hume is imagining depends on information about a given case that is not known a priori. We conclude this from the fact that under three precise, explanatory, and viable contemporary reconstructions of what this kind of reasoning about reasoning could be like and how it has the potential to affect our original beliefs, a belief-extinguishing regress is not automatic or necessary. (shrink)

Capturing the lively modernist milieu of Kenneth Burke's early career in Greenwich Village, where Burke arrived in 1915 fresh from high school in Pittsburgh, this book discovers him as an intellectual apprentice conversing with "the moderns." Burke found himself in the midst of an avant-garde peopled by Malcolm Cowley, Marianne Moore, Jean Toomer, Katherine Anne Porter, William Carlos Williams, Allen Tate, Hart Crane, Alfred Stieglitz, and a host of other fascinating figures. Burke himself, who died in 1993 at the (...) age of 96, has been hailed as America's most brilliant and suggestive critic and the most significant theorist of rhetoric since Cicero. Many schools of thought have claimed him as their own, but Burke has defied classification and indeed has often been considered a solitary, eccentric genius immune to intellectual fashions. But Burke's formative work of the 1920s, when he first defined himself and his work in the context of the modernist conversation, has gone relatively unexamined. Here we see Burke living and working with the crowd of poets, painters, and dramatists affiliated with Others magazine, Stieglitz's "291" gallery, and Eugene O'Neill's Provincetown Players; the leftists associated with the magazines The Masses and Seven Arts; the Dadaists; and the modernist writers working on literary journals like The Dial, where Burke in his capacity as an associate editor saw T. S. Eliot's "The Wasteland" into print for the first time and provided other editorial services for Thomas Mann, e.e. cummings, Ezra Pound, and many other writers of note. Burke also met the iconoclasts of the older generation represented by Theodore Dreiser and H. L. Mencken, the New Humanists, and the literary nationalists who founded Contact and The New Republic. Jack Selzer shows how Burke's own early poems, fiction, and essays emerged from and contributed to the modernist conversation in Greenwich Village. He draws on a wonderfully rich array of letters between Burke and his modernist friends and on the memoirs of his associates to create a vibrant portrait of the young Burke's transformation from aesthete to social critic. (shrink)

Mit "propensity" meint Popper die Neigung oder Tendenz einer Versuchsanordnung ein bestimmtes Versuchsergebnis zu produzieren. Sie wird durch die Wahrscheinlichkeit des Ergebnisses gemessen oder ist sogar mit ihr identisch. Zunächst hatte er behauptet, jeder Wahrscheinlichkeitskalkül lasse sich als Axiomatisierung sowohl der Theorie subjektiver Wahrscheinlichkeiten als auch der propensity-Theorie der Wahrscheinlichkeit interpretieren. Ohne diese Position ausdrücklich aufzugeben hat er nun einen Kalkül vorgelegt, der die einzig adäquate Axiomatisierung der propensity-Theorie darstellen soll. Seine Postulate widersprechen aber nicht nur allen herkömmlichen Wahrscheinlichkeitskalkülen. (...) Da die meisten seiner Axiome gleichzeitig für die logische Wahrscheinlichkeit von Sätzen gelten sollen und da er ausdrücklich bestimmte Zusammenhänge zwischen logischer Wahrscheinlichkeit und propensity postuliert, ist seine Axiomatisierung auch inkonsistent, zumal selbst seine Axiome für die logische Wahrscheinlichkeit mit den herkömmlichen Kalkülen logischer Wahrscheinlichkeit nicht vereinbar sind. (shrink)

Scholars have detected hostility to technology in Daoist thought. But is this a problem with any machine or only some applications of some machines by some people? I show that the problem is not with machines per se but with the people who introduce them, or more exactly with their knowledge. It is not knowledge as such that causes the disorder Laozi and Zhuangzi associate with machines; it is confused, disordered knowledge—superficial, inadequate, unsubtle, and artless. In other words the (...) problem is not with machines but with the ethics of engineering and the government of technology. The Daoist argument does not devalue machines or knowledge of them; instead, it sets a new goal, defining an alternative ideal—alternative to techniques held hostage to despotic ideas about efficiency and profit. (shrink)

picture and image of the universe? How much can he mirror of the illimitable cosmos, material and spiritual, knowable or unknowable? How much can he realize the abstruse relation between its two antithetical but complementary sides? That is how to judge in any deeper and wider sense of a brain and its capacity. I was talking once in a London drawing-room with Cotter Morison and a famous and able literary hostess. I happened to say, as I say now, that Spencer (...) seemed to me by far the greatest mind I had ever met with. “What?” cried the lady surprised; “would you put him above George Eliot?” To me, I confess, the question seemed almost ludicrous. Imaginative work is beautiful and attractive, just as artistic work is; but to suppose it can be put on a par, so far as the measure of intellect is concerned, with scientific or philosophic work seems to me to betoken a certain lack of just standards of capacity. “Vanity Fair” is great in its way; and its way is just as incommensurate with the greatness of the “Principia” or of the “Principles of Biology” as is the greatness of the Transfiguration or the Venus of Milos. But if we want to measure minds, as minds, one against another, I say fearlessly that scientific and philosophic grasp is the one true standard of the highest attainment, and that no man who ever yet trod our planet gave proof of such mastery in both these lines as Herbert Spencer. (shrink)

The now-global phenomenon of Asian martial arts traces back to something that began in China. The idea the Chinese communicated was the dual cultivation of the spiritual and the martial, each perfected in the other, with the proof of perfection being an effortless mastery of violence. I look at one phase of the interaction between Asian martial arts and Chinese thought, with a reading of the Zhuangzi 莊子 and the Daodejing 道德經 from a martial arts perspective. I do not (...) claim that the authors knew about martial arts. It was not Daoist masters who took up martial arts, but martial arts masters who, at a specific time, turned to Daoism to explain the significance of their art. Today, though, Daoist concepts are ubiquitous in martial arts literature, and a reading of these classics from a martial arts perspective shows how they lend themselves to philosophical thinking about this practice. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:504 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Earle's position, needless to say, is a radical one. If taken seriously it appears to commit him either to a private language doctrine or, more likely, to silence. If the concepts embodied in our language are public, intersubjective concepts, then either a minimal characterization of singular human existence is possible or Earle is stranded in a hopeless, speechless solipsism. I shall mention just one other (...) paper, Natanson's "Alienation and Social Role." Natanson distinguishes role-taking from the more basic activity which he refers to as the intentionality of role-taking or, as he terms it, "role-action." He attempts to give a phenomenological grounding to the notion of role-taking, thereby showing the relevance of phenomenology to problems in social philosophy and sociology. Though a difficult paper, "Alienation and Social Role" is a helpful study of various structures presupposed in social interaction. Natanson's analyses go a long way toward dispelling the view that a phenomenological starting point commits one to subjectivism. I might have mentioned other, equally instructive essays. These, however, give some indication of the diversity of concerns inherent in the American phenomenological tradition. Phenomenology in America documents these concerns well. STEPHEN A, ERICKSON Pomona College Heimkehr ins Eigentliche. By Walter Robert Corti. (Amriswil, Switzerland, Amriswiler BiichereL 1969. Pp. 152. n.p.) This collection of essays written between 1935 and 1966 gives a fine example of the changes in the concern for the meaning of human existence during these thirty years both in the mind and emotions of an individual philosopher and in Western culture generally. The essay from which the title is taken dates from 1958. It is a charming, poetic autobiography, describing the growth of philosophic and scientific wonder from the author's childhood, when he was thrilled by the wonders of biology and chemistry, to his more general wonder at being in and of the world of wonders, culminating in a self-conscious wonder about the implications of a wondering being in a wonderful world. The early essay of 1935, entitled Zu den Dingen is a vivid statement of a Heidegger-inspired existentialism, which analyses the difference between the attempt of Husserl to understand Sachen by his search for the essence of an object ;rod his formulation of phenomenology, and the very different appreciation of things in nature, which demands a non-verbal familiarity or "communion" with another natural being in existential terms, not in terms of the concept of "essence." The later essay of 1958 contains a critical history of the relations between the theories of explication, evolution, and development as cosmologies. After the historical survey it describes the physiological and mental restlessness of man. In this context, the problem of the meaning of existence is explored, not as a question to be answered, but as a significant form of human restlessness which has implications for a kind of restlessness in nature and in cosmic process. Beside these essays which are contributions to the history of recent philosophy, there are several other essays related to the varied and remarkable interests and BOOKS RECEIVED 505 achievements of Dr. Corti, partly in his activities as a distinguished Swiss public leader, partly in connection with his work as director of the Archly fiir genetische Philosophie in Winterthur. HERBERT W. SCHNEIDER Claremont, California BOOKS RECEIVED First Editions Adler, Mortimer. The Time of Our Lives: The Ethics of Common Sense. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, I970. Pp. xiii+361. $7.95. Allen, Gay Wilson. William lames. Pamphlets on American Writers, Number 88. Minneapolis : University of Minnesota, 1970. Pp. 48. $.95. Bahm, Archie. Directory o[ American Philosophers. V 1970-71. Alburquerque: Archie I. Bahm, I970. Pp. 436. $I4.95. Brown, Peter. Augustine of Hippo: A Biography. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969. Pp. 463. Paper. $2.95. A review of this book appeared in the Journal, ~ 4, Vol. 6. Cailliet, Emile. Journey Into Light. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1968. Pp. 117. $3.95. Cantore, Enrico. Atomic Order: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Microphysics. (~mbridge (Mass.): The MIT Press, 1969. Pp. xi+334. $12.50. Caponigri, A. Robert. Philosophy from the Renaissance to the Romantic Age. A History of... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:504 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Earle's position, needless to say, is a radical one. If taken seriously it appears to commit him either to a private language doctrine or, more likely, to silence. If the concepts embodied in our language are public, intersubjective concepts, then either a minimal characterization of singular human existence is possible or Earle is stranded in a hopeless, speechless solipsism. I shall mention just one other (...) paper, Natanson's "Alienation and Social Role." Natanson distinguishes role-taking from the more basic activity which he refers to as the intentionality of role-taking or, as he terms it, "role-action." He attempts to give a phenomenological grounding to the notion of role-taking, thereby showing the relevance of phenomenology to problems in social philosophy and sociology. Though a difficult paper, "Alienation and Social Role" is a helpful study of various structures presupposed in social interaction. Natanson's analyses go a long way toward dispelling the view that a phenomenological starting point commits one to subjectivism. I might have mentioned other, equally instructive essays. These, however, give some indication of the diversity of concerns inherent in the American phenomenological tradition. Phenomenology in America documents these concerns well. STEPHEN A, ERICKSON Pomona College Heimkehr ins Eigentliche. By Walter Robert Corti. (Amriswil, Switzerland, Amriswiler BiichereL 1969. Pp. 152. n.p.) This collection of essays written between 1935 and 1966 gives a fine example of the changes in the concern for the meaning of human existence during these thirty years both in the mind and emotions of an individual philosopher and in Western culture generally. The essay from which the title is taken dates from 1958. It is a charming, poetic autobiography, describing the growth of philosophic and scientific wonder from the author's childhood, when he was thrilled by the wonders of biology and chemistry, to his more general wonder at being in and of the world of wonders, culminating in a self-conscious wonder about the implications of a wondering being in a wonderful world. The early essay of 1935, entitled Zu den Dingen is a vivid statement of a Heidegger-inspired existentialism, which analyses the difference between the attempt of Husserl to understand Sachen by his search for the essence of an object ;rod his formulation of phenomenology, and the very different appreciation of things in nature, which demands a non-verbal familiarity or "communion" with another natural being in existential terms, not in terms of the concept of "essence." The later essay of 1958 contains a critical history of the relations between the theories of explication, evolution, and development as cosmologies. After the historical survey it describes the physiological and mental restlessness of man. In this context, the problem of the meaning of existence is explored, not as a question to be answered, but as a significant form of human restlessness which has implications for a kind of restlessness in nature and in cosmic process. Beside these essays which are contributions to the history of recent philosophy, there are several other essays related to the varied and remarkable interests and BOOKS RECEIVED 505 achievements of Dr. Corti, partly in his activities as a distinguished Swiss public leader, partly in connection with his work as director of the Archly fiir genetische Philosophie in Winterthur. HERBERT W. SCHNEIDER Claremont, California BOOKS RECEIVED First Editions Adler, Mortimer. The Time of Our Lives: The Ethics of Common Sense. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, I970. Pp. xiii+361. $7.95. Allen, Gay Wilson. William lames. Pamphlets on American Writers, Number 88. Minneapolis : University of Minnesota, 1970. Pp. 48. $.95. Bahm, Archie. Directory o[ American Philosophers. V 1970-71. Alburquerque: Archie I. Bahm, I970. Pp. 436. $I4.95. Brown, Peter. Augustine of Hippo: A Biography. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969. Pp. 463. Paper. $2.95. A review of this book appeared in the Journal, ~ 4, Vol. 6. Cailliet, Emile. Journey Into Light. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1968. Pp. 117. $3.95. Cantore, Enrico. Atomic Order: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Microphysics. (~mbridge (Mass.): The MIT Press, 1969. Pp. xi+334. $12.50. Caponigri, A. Robert. Philosophy from the Renaissance to the Romantic Age. A History of... (shrink)

The premise of this volume, which collects the work of thirteen contributors, is that Chinese philosophy has plenty to say to the problems that occupy current philosophers. Turns out that means plenty to say in their terms and by their standards. For many—not all—of the contributors, the only “challenge” Chinese thought poses is assimilation, how same can they make it. Part of the problem is that the philosophy asked to receive this challenge is our insipid, directionless, imaginatively exhausted, institutionally sclerotic, (...) late, late analytic philosophy. Why consider it an accomplishment to show that Zhuangzi can be reconciled with Quine? Surely the interesting question is how reading Zhuangzi might take us somewhere Quine never imagined. Why does Quine set the measure of the philosophically serious when Zhuangzi might as readily make Quine seem benighted? Maybe what Mencius called the sprout of compassion is really the function of the brain’s anterior insula. Maybe Rawls’s principles of justice would work in Confu-China. Maybe epistemology can welcome data from China’s ancient texts. But such readings crave more of the same, not something unimaginably different. The challenge, mostly dodged in these papers, is to let philosophy be challenged, which is more challenging than the contributors consistently ken. Unless the interaction with Chinese material exposes what is limited in our philosophy it is a mere exercise in colonization. (shrink)

Newell was a founder of artificial intelligence and a pioneer in the use of computer simulations in psychology. In collaboration with J. Cliff Shaw and Herbert A. Simon, Newell developed the first list-processing programming language as well as the earliest computer programs for simulating human problem solving. Over a long and prolific career, he contributed to many techniques, such as protocol analysis and heuristic search, that are now part of psychology and computer science. Colleagues remembered Newell for his deep (...) commitment to science, his care for details, and his inexhaustible energy. (shrink)

In this book, Newell makes the case for unified theories by setting forth a candidate.

This masterful work on Kant's Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason explores Kant's treatment of the Idea of God, his views concerning evil, and the moral grounds for faith in God. Kant and Religion works to deepen our understanding of religion's place and meaning within the history of human culture, touching on Kant's philosophical stance regarding theoretical, moral, political, and religious matters. Wood's breadth of knowledge of Kant's corpus, philosophical sharpness, and depth of reflection sheds light not only on (...) Kant, but also on the fate of religion and its relation to philosophy in the modern world. (shrink)

Aesthetics and the Environment presents fresh and fascinating insights into our interpretation of the environment. Traditional aesthetics is often associated with the appreciation of art, but Allen Carlson shows how much of our aesthetic experience does not encompass art but nature--in our response to sunsets, mountains or horizons or more mundane surroundings, like gardens or the view from our window. Carlson argues that knowledge of what it is we are appreciating is essential to having an appropriate aesthetic experience and (...) that a scientific understanding of nature can enhance our appreciation of it, rather than denigrate it. (shrink)

With a new chapter This new edition of Herbert Fingarette's classic study in philosophical psychology now includes a provocative recent essay on the topic by ...

The hundred years covered by this book, from the death of Hegel to the establishment of the Third Reich, is often regarded as the heyday of German philosophy, of metaphysics in the grand style and of what J. S. Mill characterised as 'the German or a priori view of human knowledge'. Yet apart from selective attention to individual figures, such as Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Husserl or Heidegger, little is known by English-speaking philosophers of most of the animating concerns and continuing traditions (...) of German philosophy of the time. This book sets out to present a detailed history of the period, adopting a thematic approach which emphasises the more distinctive German approach. It is hoped that the growing but piecemeal interest in German philosophy will be both stimulated and consolidated by this book, which should also interest individuals working in related areas such as the history of ideas, religious studies and the history of science. (shrink)

The struggle against liberalism in the totalitarian view of the state.--The concept of essence.--The affirmative character of culture.--Philosophy and critical theory.--On hedonism.--Industrialization and capitalism in the work of Max Weber.--Love mystified; a critique of Norman O. Brown and a reply to Herbert Marcuse by Norman O. Brown.--Aggressiveness in advanced industrial society.

This volume consists of a collection of articles published by Spencer in leading Victorian periodicals, such as The Westminster Review, The Fortnightly Review and Mind. The wide range of subjects explored includes science, philosophy, aesthetics, ethics, psychology and politics.

This volume provides a guide to the discussion among biologists and philosophersabout the role of concepts such as function and design in an evolutionary understanding oflife.

Epistemic akrasia arises when one holds a belief even though one judges it to be irrational or unjustified. While there is some debate about whether epistemic akrasia is possible, this paper will assume for the sake of argument that it is in order to consider whether it can be rational. The paper will show that it can. More precisely, cases can arise in which both the belief one judges to be irrational and one’s judgment of it are epistemically rational in (...) the sense that both are supported by sufficient evidence. (shrink)

Herbert Clark argues that language use is more than the sum of a speaker speaking and a listener listening. It is the joint action that emerges when speakers and listeners, writers and readers perform their individual actions in coordination, as ensembles. In contrast to work within the cognitive sciences, which has seen language use as an individual process, and to work within the social sciences, which has seen it as a social process, the author argues strongly that language use (...) embodies both individual and social processes. (shrink)

This volume of new essays energizes a growing movement in film theory which questions and seeks to overturn many of the assumptions that have governed film theory for the last twenty years. The book brings together film scholars and philosophers in a united commitment to the standards of argumentation that characterize analytic philosophy rather than a single doctrinal approach. The essays address such topics as authorship, emotion, ideology, representation, and expression in film.

Karl Popper is one of the greatest and most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. Originally published in German in 2000, Herbert Keuth's book is a systematic exposition of Popper's philosophy covering the philosophy of science (Part 1); social philosophy (Part 2); and metaphysics (Part 3). More comprehensive than any current introduction to Popper, it is suitable for courses in the philosophy of science and the philosophy of social science.

This book articulates a systematic vision of an international legal system grounded in the commitment to justice for all persons. It provides a probing exploration of the moral issues involved in disputes about secession, ethno-national conflict, "the right of self-determination of peoples," human rights, and the legitimacy of the international legal system itself. Buchanan advances vigorous criticisms of the central dogmas of international relations and international law, arguing that the international legal system should make justice, not simply peace among states, (...) a primary goal, and rejecting the view that it is permissible for a state to conduct its foreign policies exclusively according to what is in the "national interest." He also shows that the only alternatives are not rigid adherence to existing international law or lawless chaos in which the world's one superpower pursues its own interests without constraints. This book not only criticizes the existing international legal order, but also offers morally defensible and practicable principles for reforming it. Justice, Legitimacy, and Self-Determination will find a broad readership in political science, international law, and political philosophy. (shrink)

Ideal for students and scholars alike, this edition of _Zhuangzi _ includes the complete Inner Chapters, extensive selections from the Outer and Miscellaneous Chapters, and judicious selections from two thousand years of traditional Chinese commentaries, which provide the reader access to the text as well as to its reception and interpretation. A glossary, brief biographies of the commentators, a bibliography, and an index are also included.

This book is the most comprehensive treatment available of one of the most urgent - and yet in some respects most neglected - problems in bioethics: decision-making for incompetents. Part I develops a general theory for making treatment and care decisions for patients who are not competent to decide for themselves. It provides an in-depth analysis of competence, articulates and defends a coherent set of principles to specify suitable surrogate decisionmakers and to guide their choices, examines the value of advance (...) directives, and investigates the role that considerations of cost ought to play in decisions concerning incompetents. Part II applies this theoretical framework to the distinctive problems of three important classes of individuals, many of whom are incompetent: minors, the elderly and psychiatric patients. The authors' approach combines a probing analysis of fundamental issues in ethical theory with a sensitive awareness of the concrete realities of health care institutions and the highly personal and individual character of difficult practical problems. Its broad scope will appeal to health professionals, moral philosophers and lawyers alike. (shrink)