Central Works of Philosophy is a major multi-volume collection of essays on the core texts of the Western philosophical tradition. From Plato's Republic to the present day, the five volumes range over 2,500 years of philosophical writing covering the best, most representative, and most influential work of some of our greatest philosophers. Each essay has been specially commissioned and provides an overview of the work, clear and authoritative exposition of its central ideas, and an assessment of the work's importance. Together (...) these books provide an unrivaled companion for studying and reading philosophy, one that introduces the reader to the masterpieces of the western philosophical canon. Much of nineteenth-century philosophy may be viewed as either an affirmation or rejection of Kant. This volume therefore begins with Kant's magnum opus, the Critique of Pure Reason. Michelle Grier provides a masterly distillation of this monumental work. Curtis Bowman explores the central text of the first of the great post-Kantian idealists, Fichte who extended Kantian philosophy in a new direction. Hegel, one of Kant's most formidable critics, is given incisive treatment by Michael Inwood in his presentation of the Phenomenology of Spirit. Schopenhauer's World as Will and Representation, which hoped to solve many of the problems that Kant's philosophy left unsolved is explored in Dale Jacquette's chapter. The moral philosophy of John Stuart Mill, perhaps the only philosopher in this volume to circumvent Kant's influence, is examined in Jonathan Riley's essay on his classic work On Liberty. The philosophical ideas of Kierkegaard, widely credited as the founder of modern existentialism, are explored by Stephen Evans in his essay on Philosophical Fragments. Marx's Capital, one of the most influential books of the modern age, is given expert treatment by Tom Rockmore. The volume closes with Nietzsche, whose appropriation of Kant led to a radical anti-philosophy. Rex Welshon dissects his most philosophical and widely read work, On the Genealogy of Morals. (shrink)

Central Works of Philosophy is a major multi-volume collection of essays on the core texts of the Western philosophical tradition. From Plato's Republic to the present day, the five volumes range over 2,500 years of philosophical writing covering the best, most representative, and most influential work of some of our greatest philosophers. Each essay has been specially commissioned and provides an overview of the work, clear and authoritative exposition of its central ideas, and an assessment of the work's importance. Together (...) these books provide an unrivaled companion for studying and reading philosophy, one that introduces the reader to the masterpieces of the western philosophical canon. Much of nineteenth-century philosophy may be viewed as either an affirmation or rejection of Kant. This volume therefore begins with Kant's magnum opus, the Critique of Pure Reason. Michelle Grier provides a masterly distillation of this monumental work. Curtis Bowman explores the central text of the first of the great post-Kantian idealists, Fichte who extended Kantian philosophy in a new direction. Hegel, one of Kant's most formidable critics, is given incisive treatment by Michael Inwood in his presentation of the Phenomenology of Spirit. Schopenhauer's World as Will and Representation, which hoped to solve many of the problems that Kant's philosophy left unsolved is explored in Dale Jacquette's chapter. The moral philosophy of John Stuart Mill, perhaps the only philosopher in this volume to circumvent Kant's influence, is examined in Jonathan Riley's essay on his classic work On Liberty. The philosophical ideas of Kierkegaard, widely credited as the founder of modern existentialism, are explored by Stephen Evans in his essay on Philosophical Fragments. Marx's Capital, one of the most influential books of the modern age, is given expert treatment by Tom Rockmore. The volume closes with Nietzsche, whose appropriation of Kant led to a radical anti-philosophy. Rex Welshon dissects his most philosophical and widely read work, On the Genealogy of Morals. (shrink)

The paper explores a subclass of ethical judgements that are disturbing in that the strength of moral abhorrence generally associated with such judgements is not remotely matched by any rational moral arguments supporting them, and yet we nevertheless appear to think we have no intellectual obligation to change the said ethical judgments so as to accord with the degree of justification. This may stand as a warning that we should be guarded in holding our ethical beliefs since we may not (...) be as rational as we like to think we are. (shrink)

The purpose here is to cast doubt on some utilitarian non‐rights‐based arguments that are generally thought to be decisive objections to voluntary and non‐voluntary euthanasia. The aim is not to prove that euthanasia is morally vindicated (although I think rights‐based arguments can do this) but rather to contend that such arguments, far from being decisively anti‐euthanasia, can be made to point equally in the opposite direction.

A lesson from cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) is that it is possible for people to change their beliefs and attitudes in ways that enhance mood. This chapter discusses mainly how the ideas from positive psychology combined with the therapeutic methods developed in CBT might provide ways of helping individuals to enhance their mood and increase happiness. The best single perspective from which to gain an understanding of positive psychology is that of evolutionary psychology, even though it is underdeveloped and contentious. (...) Evolutionary psychology bridges the gap between individual history and the general features of the human condition that helps to explain both our capacity for happiness and some of the barriers to achieving it. The modern general evolutionary view of emotions is that they help animals in regulating their effort: how they behave at any one time and how they apportion their time and energy between different types of behavior. (shrink)

Any attempt to describe a "best health service' must make political assumptions. For example, should it help everyone? Do different people have different entitlements to its support? Should its help be offered according to need, value for money or ability to benefit? These assumptions are not always clear to health service decision-makers immersed in clinical and economic technicalities, so HCA invited two philosophers --John Shand and David Seedhouse -- to engage in conversation about the political philosophy of health care.

Philosophy makes no progress. It fails to do so in the way science and mathematics make progress. By “no progress” is meant that there is no successive advance of a well-established body of knowledge—no views are definitively established or definitively refuted. Yet philosophers often talk and act as if the subject makes progress, and that its point and value lies in its doing so, while in fact they also approach the subject in ways that clearly contradict any claim to progress. (...) This article presents evidence for, and a theoretical explanation of, the view that philosophy makes no progress, concluding with an account of what philosophy is and what the point and value of it is. Philosophy should not be shy about being what it is, nor should it pretend to be what it is not. What it is should be reflected in philosophizing and the way it is taught. (shrink)

Philosophy and Philosophers is an important introduction to Western philosophy aimed at those who are unfamiliar with the nature of philosophy and its history. It is organized around the main schools of philosophical thought and ranges from ancient Greece, through the explosion of ideas in the seventeenth century, to the Enlightenment and the challenge of twentieth-century philosophy. In each chapter John Shand assesses the contribution of a single philosopher, paying particular attention to the key areas of the theory of (...) knowledge, the nature of reality, and the nature of philosophy itself. An extensive annotated bibliography serves as a helpful guide to works by and about the philosophers discussed. Accessible and clearly written, this survey of the ideas of the major thinkers of the western world will be invaluable as a reference source. (shrink)

The primary focus here is romantic love, but it may be applied to other cases of love such as those within a family. The first issue is whether love is a non-rational occurrence leading to a state of affairs to which the normative constrains of reason do not apply. If one assumes that reasons are relevant to determining love, then the second issue is the manner in which love is and should be reasonable and governed by the indications of reason. (...) It is contended that our conception of love is inherently contradictory. Depending on circumstances, we want love to be both a non-rational occurrence beyond reason and something normative such that the indications of reasons are relevant to determining and assessing it. We alternate between the two treatments of love and in so doing love can function in our lives. The incoherence is accommodated by each treatment or view of love being one of as if. This allows us to live with love in a manner whereby we do not have to definitively commit to either alternative, so we have a dipolar as if concept of love. Sometimes we view love as if reasons were beside the point and at others we view love as if it were rightly subject to the indications of reason. (shrink)

In this attempt to deal with the problem of free will Tallis identifies intentionality as a feature of our lives that cannot be explained by deterministic, natural, physical, causal laws. Our ability to think about the world, and not merely be objects subject to it, gives us room for manoeuvre for free thought and action. Science, far from being antagonistic to the possibility of free will as it is usually presented through its deterministic explanations, is a manifestation of our freedom (...) and could not exist without it. However, doubts arise for the argument owing to a lack of explanation as to how freedom is possible no matter how persuasively we are shown that it appears to be. That is, what kind of world would it have to be for freedom to exist and be explicable. I conclude with my own view, alluded to by Tallis, but not followed up, that the problem with the scientific worldview is that it is wedded to objectivity as the only stance deemed veridical as to the nature of reality, one which therefore cannot by necessity allow subjects or freedom. As freedom is a property of subjects, the scientific worldview cannot allow for freedom. Once the condition is dropped that only the objectively knowable can be real, freedom also may be real, defined as a knowable property of our subjectivity. There is no need to deny physicalism if the definition of it is released from the epistemic bonds of objectivity and we hold that some physical properties may be known subjectively, namely those that characterize our subjective life. (shrink)

The ‘hard’ problem of consciousness is the seemingly intractable one of explaining the properties of consciousness in terms of the properties of physical objects. This is often seen mistakenly as a metaphysical problem, whereby the properties of physical things are of such a nature and so unlike mental properties that it is difficult to understand how the physical could ever explain consciousness. This view of the physical is not however the true reason for the hardness of the problem, rather it (...) is epistemic, that of defining the physical as those features of the world that may be known objectively, coupled with the contention that only those objectively known properties are real. This makes the explanation of subjective consciousness in terms physical properties not just hard but impossible. The answer is to hold that the world is indeed all physical, but have the physical no longer defined as what may be known only objectively, and hold that some physical properties may be known subjectively. This eliminates the hard problem of consciousness as it is no longer required that the explanation of subjective properties of physical things be in terms of the objective properties of physical things. (shrink)

Imagine a universe without human beings. Now imagine a universe devoid of any creatures like human beings, beings who could think about the universe and in so doing consider it as divided up into different kinds of things that could be objects of understanding. Now imagine – this is harder – your not being there, or anyone else, to imagine such a universe. Next think about setting about describing in physical laws such a universe in line with a completist physicalist (...) program: that all the facts about the world are physical facts. But where would one begin? Why would one begin? Remember there is no-one around to take more interest in any part of the universe than any other. This contrasts with what we do now. What we do now is take chunks of the universe – stars, planets, water, trees, air, particles – and demarcate the physical laws in such a way as to explain how these objects behave against a background of other objects and ultimately the universe as a whole. But what if we were not around? Why would we there be any reason to demarcate groups of physical laws in this or any other way? My suggestion is that there would be none. The grouping of the physical laws to form complex classes and layers of explanations is parasitic upon creatures having particular interests giving them a perspective upon the universe or world, which in turn derives from the kind of limited creatures they happen to be. But the perspective itself is not a physical fact about the universe. Rather it is a way of coming to form a system of facts about the universe. Further, not only might the perspective have been otherwise, there might be none at all. In which case the demarcation of physical laws, given meaning by their application to entities picked out as having a certain significance to us, would not get off the ground. At best there might be a random bunching of laws covering regions of the universe. But such random bunchings would have no meaning; they would be unintelligible; they wouldn't really be about anything. For laws to be about things you have to have limited creatures who differentiate between parts of the universe, and for whom different parts have a variable significance and value. Things stand out for them; they literally exist . Without such creatures, things we take for granted would, in the literal sense, not exist. It is the very limitedness of our perspective and capabilities, such that things are problems for us, and wherefore we literally or metaphorically bump into things, that brings objects into existence for us. Otherwise the universe would be utterly ‘flat’ and undifferentiated. A limitation of perspective is required for there to be objects of thought, and thus for thought itself. Thus, the intelligibility of the laws of physics is logically parasitic upon our having varying interests in different segments of the universe. (shrink)

According to the ambitious Predictive Theory of the Mind the brain generates models that it tests against experience and corrects to makes them evermore probably accurate of encountered experience. It neatly explains why we cannot tickle ourselves. The convincingness of that example is compromised by its essentially non-cognitive nature whereby an explanation not involving predictive models might do just as well. More telling confirmation of the theory is the essentially cognitive phenomenon of our inability to play chess against ourselves. This (...) may stand as a paradigm of the power of the theory in explaining the central mental phenomenon of abstract cognition. (shrink)

Abstract:Human and animal research both operate within established standards. In the United States, criticism of the human research environment and recorded abuses of human research subjects served as the impetus for the establishment of the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, and the resulting Belmont Report. The Belmont Report established key ethical principles to which human research should adhere: respect for autonomy, obligations to beneficence and justice, and special protections for vulnerable individuals and (...) populations. While current guidelines appropriately aim to protect the individual interests of human participants in research, no similar, comprehensive, and principled effort has addressed the use of (nonhuman) animals in research. Although published policies regarding animal research provide relevant regulatory guidance, the lack of a fundamental effort to explore the ethical issues and principles that should guide decisions about the potential use of animals in research has led to unclear and disparate policies. Here, we explore how the ethical principles outlined in the Belmont Report could be applied consistently to animals. We describe how concepts such as respect for autonomy and obligations to beneficence and justice could be applied to animals, as well as how animals are entitled to special protections as a result of their vulnerability. (shrink)

The answer to the question of why there is Something rather than Nothing is that there has to be Something and that Nothing is impossible. There cannot not be Something so there cannot be Nothing. The paper justifies this conclusion, while also explaining why we might believe there may be Nothing. In the course of this, the so-called subtraction-argument is shown to be inadequate and question-begging.

Traditionally formulated, the problem of free will cannot be solved. We may nevertheless be justifiably confident that we have free will. The traditional formulation makes a solution impossible by juxtaposing contradictory objective and subjective accounts of whether there is free will, between which accounts there is no third way to choose. However, the objective stance inherently denies the conditions under which free will is possible, namely that there are subjects, and is thus question-begging. It gives us no good reason for (...) our not having free will without our also accepting that there are no subjects. As subjects we may not deny that there are subjects, and that as subjects we have good reason, through our experience of free will, to hold that we have free will. The problem of free will is a footnote to how there may be subjects. In order to understand what free will is we need to look at how it is experienced, that is, at the phenomenology of free will. (shrink)

Arguing Well is a lucid introduction to the nature of good reasoning, how to test and construct successful arguments. It assumes no prior knowledge of logic or philosophy. The book includes an introduction to basic symbolic logic. Arguing Well introduces and explains: * The nature and importance of arguments * What to look for in deciding whether arguments succeed or fail * How to construct good arguments * How to make it more certain that we reason when we should The (...) book is ideal for any student embarking on academic study where presenting arguments are what matters most; in fact, for all people who want to understand the nature and importance of good reasoning and awaken their ability to argue well. (shrink)

John Shand also critically discusses Sandis' preceding paper.

Kerstein and Bognar (2010) and Persad, Wertheimer, and Emanuel (2009) defend specific principles for the allocation of health care resources, but their choice of principles is influenced by the exa...

About the Author:John Shand is an associate lecturer in philosophy at The Open University.

About the Author:John Shand is an associate lecturer in philosophy at The Open University.

About the Author:John Shand is an associate lecturer in philosophy at The Open University.

Whether John Shand is discussing the slow separation of philosophy and theology in Augustine, Aquinas and Ockham, the rise of rationalism, British empiricism, German idealism, or the new approaches opened up by Russell, Sartre, and Wittgenstein, he combines succinct but insightful exposition with crisp critical comment. This new edition will continue to provide students with a valuable work of initial reference.

This revised and updated edition of a standard work provides a clear and authoritative survey of the Western tradition in metaphysics and epistemology from the Presocratics to the present day. Aimed at the beginning student, it presents the ideas of the major philosophers and their schools of thought in a readable and engaging way, highlighting the central points in each contributor's doctrines and offering a lucid discussion of the next-level details that both fills out the general themes and encourages the (...) reader to pursue the arguments still further through a detailed guide to further reading. Whether John Shand is discussing the slow separation of philosophy and theology in Augustine, Aquinas and Ockham, the rise of rationalism, British empiricism, German idealism or the new approaches opened up by Russell, Sartre and Wittgenstein, he combines succinct but insightful exposition with crisp critical comment. This new edition will continue to provide students with a valuable work of initial reference. (shrink)

Investigate the challenging and nuanced philosophy of the long nineteenth century from Kant to Bergson Philosophy in the nineteenth century was characterized by new ways of thinking, a desperate searching for new truths. As science, art, and religion were transformed by social pressures and changing worldviews, old certainties fell away, leaving many with a terrifying sense of loss and a realization that our view of things needed to be profoundly rethought. The Blackwell Companion to Nineteenth-Century Philosophy covers the developments, setbacks, (...) upsets, and evolutions in the varied philosophy of the nineteenth century, beginning with an examination of Kant’s Transcendental Idealism, instrumental in the fundamental philosophical shifts that marked the beginning of this new and radical age in the history of philosophy. Guiding readers chronologically and thematically through the progression of nineteenth-century thinking, this guide emphasizes clear explanation and analysis of the core ideas of nineteenth-century philosophy in an historically transitional period. It covers the most important philosophers of the era, including Hegel, Fichte, Schopenhauer, Mill, Kierkegaard, Marx, Nietzsche, Bradley, and philosophers whose work manifests the transition from the nineteenth century into the modern era, such as Sidgwick, Peirce, Husserl, Frege and Bergson. The study of nineteenth-century philosophy offers us insight into the origin and creation of the modern era. In this volume, readers will have access to a thorough and clear understanding of philosophy that shaped our world. (shrink)

There can be no such thing as the meaningful life, but only a meaningful life for a particular life as it is lived. Thus, there are meaningful lives, which are lives that make sense and are sufficiently aligned, these two characteristics being honed successively by the limits of a particular contingent form of life, a particular individual of that form of life, and a particular time in the life of that individual. Only the form of a meaningful life may be (...) given, which is sense and alignment, whereas its content may only be determined by the individual whose life it is. (shrink)