Inspired by the work of intellectual historian J. G. A. Pocock, this 1993 collection explores the political ideologies of early modern Britain.

Quentin Skinner is one of the leading thinkers in the social sciences and humanities today. Since the publication of his first important articles some two decades ago, debate has continued to develop over his distinctive contributions to contemporary political philosophy, the history of political theory, the philosophy of social science, and the discussion of interpretation and hermeneutics across the humanities and social sciences. Nevertheless, his most valuable essays and the best critical articles concerning his work have been scattered in (...) various journals and difficult to obtain. Meaning and Context includes five of the most widely discussed articles by Skinner, which present his approach to the study of political thought and the interpretation of texts. Following these are seven articles by his critics, five of these drawn from earlier publications and two, by John Keane and Charles Taylor, written especially for this volume. Finally, there appears a fifty-seven page reply by Skinner--a major new statement in which he defends and reformulates his method and lays out new lines of research. The editorial introduction provides a systematic overview of the evolution of Skinner's work and of the main reactions to it.Besides James Tully, John Keane, and Charles Taylor, the contributors include Joseph V. Femia, Keith Graham, Martin Hollis, Kenneth Minogue, and Nathan Tarcov. (shrink)

From Bishop Wilberforce in the 1860s to the advocates of "creation science" today, defenders of traditional mores have condemned Darwin's theory of evolution as a threat to society's values. Darwin's defenders, like Stephen Jay Gould, have usually replied that there is no conflict between science and religion--that values and biological facts occupy separate realms. But as James Rachels points out in this thought-provoking study, Darwin himself would disagree with Gould. Darwin, who had once planned on being a clergyman, was (...) convinced that natural selection overthrew our age-old religious beliefs. Created from Animals offers a provocative look at how Darwinian evolution undermines many tenets of traditional philosophy and religion. James Rachels begins by examining Darwin's own life and work, presenting an astonishingly vivid and compressed biography. We see Darwin's studies of the psychological links in evolution (such as emotions in dogs, and the "mental powers" of worms), and how he addressed the moral implications of his work, especially in his concern for the welfare of animals. Rachels goes on to present a lively and accessible survey of the controversies that followed in Darwin's wake, ranging from Herbert Spencer's Social Darwinism to Edward O. Wilson's sociobiology, and discusses how the work of such influential intellects as Descartes, Hume, Kant, T.H. Huxley, Henri Bergson, B.F. Skinner, and Stephen Jay Gould has contributed to--or been overthrown by--evolutionary science. Western philosophy and religion, Rachels argues, have been shaken by the implications of Darwin's work, most notably the controversial idea that humans are simply a more complex kind of animal. Rachels assesses a number of studies that suggest how closely humans are linked to other primates in behavior, and then goes on to show how this idea undercuts the work of many prominent philosophers. Kant's famous argument that suicide reduces one to the level of an animal, for instance, is meaningless if humans are, in fact, animals. Indeed, humanity's membership in the animal kingdom calls into question the classic notions of human dignity and the sacredness of human life. What we need now, Rachels contends, is a philosophy that does not discriminate between different species, one that addresses each being on an individual basis. With this sweeping survey of the arguments, the philosophers, and the deep implications surrounding Darwinism, Rachels lays the foundations for a new view of morality. Vibrantly written and provocatively argued, Created from Animals offers a new perspective on issues ranging from suicide to euthanasia to animal rights. (shrink)

This volume in the Clarendon Edition of the Works of Thomas Hobbes contains A dialogue between a philosopher and a student, of the common laws of England, edited by Alan Cromartie, supplemented by the important fragment on the issue of regal succession, 'Questions relative to Hereditary Right', discovered and edited by Quentin Skinner. The former work is the last of Hobbes's major political writings. As a critique of common law by a great philosopher, it should be essential reading for (...) anybody interested in English political thought or legal theory. Although it was written when Hobbes was at least eighty, it is a lively piece of work that goes beyond a recapitulation of earlier Hobbesian doctrines, not least in applying his central ideas to the details of the English constitution. This edition supplies the extensive annotation on matters of legal and historical detail that is required by non-specialist readers; it also assists students by offering cross-references to other treatises. Cromartie's introduction is an authoritative account of seventeenth-century thinking about the common law and of Hobbes's shifting attitudes towards it. It has often been suspected that the book was motivated by fear of being burned for heresy. Cromartie disentangles the complex evidence that documents this fear's development, and shows why the philosopher's acute anxieties eventually led him to write a legal treatise. In clarifying these questions, the edition casts fresh light upon his attitude to law and sovereignty. The second piece takes the form of a question put to Hobbes about the right of succession under hereditary monarchies, together with Hobbes's response. The question is in the handwriting of the fourth Earl of Devonshire, the son of the third Earl, whom Hobbes had tutored in the 1630s. He asks Hobbes whether an heir can be excluded if he is incapable of protecting his prospective subjects. The question of 'exclusion' became the most burning issue in English politics in the course of 1679, when a bill to exclude the future James II was introduced into the House of Commons. Hobbes answers with a robust defence of hereditary right, in the course of which he also makes some important general observations about the concept of a right. The manuscript is also of special interest as it constitutes Hobbes's last word on politics. It was almost certainly written in the summer of 1679, less than six months before Hobbes's death. (shrink)

This volume in the Clarendon Edition of the Works of Thomas Hobbes contains A dialogue between a philosopher and a student, of the common laws of England, edited by Alan Cromartie, supplemented by the important fragment on the issue of regal succession, 'Questions relative to Hereditary Right', discovered and edited by Quentin Skinner. The former work is the last of Hobbes's major political writings. As a critique of common law by a great philosopher, it should be essential reading for (...) anybody interested in English political thought or legal theory. Although it was written when Hobbes was at least eighty, it is a lively piece of work that goes beyond a recapitulation of earlier Hobbesian doctrines, not least in applying his central ideas to the details of the English constitution. This edition supplies the extensive annotation on matters of legal and historical detail that is required by non-specialist readers; it also assists students by offering cross-references to other treatises. Cromartie's introduction is an authoritative account of seventeenth-century thinking about the common law and of Hobbes's shifting attitudes towards it. It has often been suspected that the book was motivated by fear of being burned for heresy. Cromartie disentangles the complex evidence that documents this fear's development, and shows why the philosopher's acute anxieties eventually led him to write a legal treatise. In clarifying these questions, the edition casts fresh light upon his attitude to law and sovereignty. The second piece takes the form of a question put to Hobbes about the right of succession under hereditary monarchies, together with Hobbes's response. The question is in the handwriting of the fourth Earl of Devonshire, the son of the third Earl, whom Hobbes had tutored in the 1630s. He asks Hobbes whether an heir can be excluded if he is incapable of protecting his prospective subjects. The question of 'exclusion' became the most burning issue in English politics in the course of 1679, when a bill to exclude the future James II was introduced into the House of Commons. Hobbes answers with a robust defence of hereditary right, in the course of which he also makes some important general observations about the concept of a right. The manuscript is also of special interest as it constitutes Hobbes's last word on politics. It was almost certainly written in the summer of 1679, less than six months before Hobbes's death. (shrink)

"Ludwig Wittgenstein's brief Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is one of the most important philosophical works of the Twentieth Century, yet it offers little orientation for the reader. The first-time reader is left wondering what it could be about, and the scholar is left with little guidance for interpretation. In Tractatus in Context, James C. Klagge presents the vital background necessary for appreciating Wittgenstein's gnomic masterpiece. Tractatus in Context contains the early reactions to the Tractatus, including the initial reviews written in 1922-1924. (...) And while we can't talk with Wittgenstein, we can do the next best thing-hear what he had to say about the Tractatus. Klagge thus presents what Wittgenstein thought about germane issues leading up to his writing the book, in discussions and correspondence with others about his ideas, and what he had to say about the Tractatus after it was written-in letters, lectures and conversations. It offers, you might say, Wittgenstein's own commentary on the book. Key Features: Illuminates what is at stake in the Tractatus, by providing the views of others that engaged Wittgenstein as he was writing it. Includes Wittgenstein's earlier thoughts on ideas in the book as recorded in his notebooks, letters, and conversations as well as his later, retrospective comments on those ideas. Draws on new or little-known sources, such as Wittgenstein's coded notebooks, Hermine's notes, Frege's letters, Hänsel's diary, Ramsey's notes, and Skinner's dictations. Draws connections between the background context and specific passages in the Tractatus, using a proposition-by-proposition commentary"--. (shrink)

The ways citizen participation and democracy are changing are poorly understood due to the dominance of theories inherited from the eighteenth century. Democratic citizenship can be better understood if critical reflection is re-oriented around the games of concrete freedom here and now as recommended by Hannah Arendt, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Michel Foucault and Quentin Skinner.This orientation brings to light two distinctive types of citizen freedom in the present: diverse forms of citizen participation and diverse practices of governance in which citizens (...) participate. (shrink)

This essay is, first, a theoretical and historical study of some classical scientific ways of studying human being in the world. The more readily accessible and more commonly discussed "models" of being human were chosen for review here, but structuralism is included because I believe it will have ,the same impact in America as it has had in France, and I hope that American readers might be forewarned about what may be ideologically at stake before the technical, and fruitful, aspects (...) of the movement become an academic fad in the United States. The subjects included are mainline experimental psychology from Wundt to Skinner, with its relatively shortlived functionalist and Watsonian-behaviorist formulations; holistic psychology from Brentano through Stumpf, Husserl, and Goldstein to Maslow, Rogers, and contemporary "third force" psychology; and the psychoanalytic model, for which the only paradigm is Freud himself. Preeminence is given to psychological paradigms, since their subject matter lies closest to the classical philosophical tradition from which "philosophical anthropology" emerged. (This book is, in the final analysis, a prolegomenon to an articulated philosophical anthropo logy. ) Sociological models are also considered: the "classical" tradition from Comte to the present, and Marxist anthropology from the manu scripts of 1844 to the present. The structuralist model, from Durkheim to Chomsky, is also considered, since it cuts across and gives new dimensions to all the foregoing models. The essay is, second, a phenomenological critique of these historico theoretical considerations. (shrink)

This book provides an analysis of the major educational theories of European culture. It covers the spectrum of educational thought from the traditional positions of Plato and Aristotle, through the opposed progressive positions of Rousseau and Dewey, to recent and contemporary variations and reactions to these viewpoints in the work of the Russian communist educator Makarenko, the behaviourist and social theorist B F Skinner, the apostle of freedom in education A S Neill, the British analytic philosopher R S Peters, (...) and finally the prophet of the deschooled society, Ivan Illich. In this second edition a new section covers developments in educational theory up to the present day, along with a comprehensive bibliography. The book provides an introduction to the theory and philosophy of education for beginning students in the subject. The readings are of sufficient length to give representative coverage of the ideas of the individual theorists and are each introduced by a commentary which provides philosophical and historical context. Central issues in education that recur throughout the book include the nature and aims of education, choice of curriculum content, the teacher pupil relationship, freedom and authority, moral development, and the role of the state in education. (shrink)

A central contention of Quentin Skinner’s Liberty before Liberalism (1998) was that careful examination of parliamentarian political argument during the English revolution of the mid-seventeenth ce...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Saving Persuasion: A Defense of Rhetoric and JudgmentJames Arnt AuneSaving Persuasion: A Defense of Rhetoric and Judgment. Bryan Garsten. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2006. Pp. xii + 276. $45.00, hardcover.Something of what rhetoricians perennially run up against in modern political philosophy is illustrated by a recent article by Jürgen Habermas in Communication Theory. In a searing indictment of contemporary democracy and the mass media, Habermas writes, "Issues (...) of political discourse become assimilated into and absorbed by the modes and contents of entertainment. Besides personalization, the dramatization of events, the simplification of complex matters, and the vivid polarization of conflicts promote civic privatism and a mood of antipolitics" (2006, 422). Any historian of political communication in the Western democracies since the early nineteenth century is bound to be puzzled by this observation, for the emergence of mass democracy in the United States and England, at least, was characterized by intense popular participation in politics, precisely because political campaigns were heavily personalized, dramatized, simplified, and polarized. At the beginning of the article, Habermas praises Aristotle's Politics for its union of normative theorizing and empirical research, forgetting apparently that Aristotle also wrote a normative and empirical Rhetoric.That Habermas distrusts persuasion is obvious, but what is less clear is how the rhetoriphobia he shares with virtually every modern and contemporary philosopher came about. Bryan Garsten's book—the most important work on rhetoric and political philosophy since Ronald Beiner's Political Judgment—makes the startlingly original argument that the anti-rhetorical stance not only is grounded in a suspicion of private judgment, but that it can be traced back to Hobbes's, Rousseau's, and Kant's fear of the persuasive power of post-Reformation religious enthusiasm. Garsten not only provides provocative rereadings of these three fathers of modern liberalism but also extends our understanding of rhetorical and political judgment in Aristotle and Cicero. His analysis of the problems of persuasion and democracy in the twentieth century, while somewhat less satisfying, includes cogent criticisms of Rawls, Habermas, and theorists of deliberative democracy from what might be called a Ciceronian-Madisonian republican stance. [End Page 94]Saving Persuasion began as a doctoral dissertation in Government at Harvard, under the direction of Harvey Mansfield—after Allan Bloom, perhaps the most influential and controversial of the disciples of Leo Strauss. Although Garsten's book displays both the virtues and vices of Straussianism, it would be unfair to dismiss it as a neoconservative manifesto for rhetoric. (An enthusiastic review of the book appeared in the neoconservative Weekly Standard in February 2007, illustrating the curious fact that the Right "gets" rhetoric in ways that liberals and leftists do not (Deneen 2007).) Currently an assistant professor of political science at Yale, Garsten also received an MA from Cambridge in political theory and intellectual history. His book reveals the influence of Quentin Skinner and the Cambridge School of political theory, whose insistence on reading political philosophy in its historical context is the antithesis of the Straussian rejection of historicism. Garsten thus combines the Straussian emphasis on close reading with the contextual-rhetorical perspective of Skinner; this unique synthesis enables Garsten to solve some ongoing problems in textual interpretation (especially the relationship between Academic skepticism and Stoic natural law theory in Cicero) while developing interesting causal arguments about the rise of the public sphere in the eighteenth century, the decline of interest in rhetoric by liberal political theorists, and the pathologies of contemporary democratic politics.The book is divided into two main parts, following an introduction in which Garsten lays out his central thesis: "[A] politics of persuasion—in which people try to change one another's minds by appealing not only to reason but also to passions and sometimes even prejudices—is a mode of politics worth defending. Persuasion is worthwhile because it requires us to pay attention to our fellow citizens and to display a certain respect for their points of view and their judgments" (3). Persuasion rightly understood cannot be reduced either to manipulation or pandering. Rather, persuasion is inextricably linked to judgment, a human faculty threatened by modernity. Judgment is "the mental activity of responding to particular situations" by... (shrink)

Authority in Morals: An Essay in Christian Ethics. By Gerard J. Hughes On Human Nature. By Edward O. Wilson Democracy and Ethical Life. By Claes G. Ryn The Foundations of Modern Political Thought. By Quentin Skinner. 2 vols. Phenomenology and the Social World: the Philosophy of Merleau‐Ponty and its Relation to the Social Conscience. By Laurie Spurting Philosophical Foundations of the Three Sociologies. By Ted Benton Christianity and the World Order. By Edward Norman. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1979, £3.50. (...) The Stoics. Edited by John M. Rist Descartes. By Margaret D. Wilson Physicalism. By K.V. Wilkes Kierkegaard as Educator. By R.J. Manheimer Two Ages: The Age of Revolution and the Present Age. By Søren Kierkegaard, translated and edited by Howard and Edna Hong Parables of Kierkegaard. Edited by Thomas C. Oden Thomas Carlyle: ‘Cahinist without the Theology’. By Eloise M. Behnken The Praise of 'Sons of Bitches’. By James V. Schall The Inner Eye of Love. By William Johnston The River Within. By Christopher Bryant The Religious Imagination and the Sense of God. By John Bowker Old Testament Theology: A Fresh Approach. By Ronald E. Clements What is a Gospel? By Charles H. Talbert Urchristliche Prophetic. By Gerhard Dautzenberg Amphttochii Icontensis Opera. Edited by Cornells Datema Man and Nature in the Renaissance. By Allen G. Debus The Church in Late Victorian Scotland 1874–1900. By Andrew L. Drummond and James Bullock. Ppix, 342, Edinburgh, The St Andrew Press, 1978, £10.50. From Office to Profession: The New England Ministry 1750–1860. By Donald M. Scott Bemard‐Lazare: Anti‐Semitism and the Problem of Jewish Identity in Late Nineteenth Century France. By Nelly Wilson. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Cambridge Companion to the Scottish EnlightenmentJames A. HarrisAlexander Broadie, editor. The Cambridge Companion to the Scottish Enlightenment. Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. xvi + 366. Cloth, $65.00.A Cambridge Companion can be expected to attempt to do two different things at the same time: to provide a clear and concise introduction to the existing scholarly literature on all the principal topics discussed by the philosopher or (...) school of philosophy to which the Companion is devoted; and to advance the discussion in ways that will be of interest to those already working in the field. Alexander Broadie's Cambridge Companion to the Scottish Enlightenment succeeds admirably at both tasks. Excellent introductions are provided to eighteenth-century Scottish writing on religion, the philosophy of mind and its engagement with scepticism, the history of the human species and the basis of human sociability, mathematics and natural science, moral philosophy, political philosophy and theories of justice, economic theory, legal theory, historiography, and aesthetics. In the process, familiar figures such as Hutcheson, Hume, Smith, Robertson and Reid are placed amid a huge range of writers no longer very often taught at the undergraduate level, and the result provides a rich resource for those who want to begin to broaden and deepen textbook accounts of what was achieved in Scotland during le Siècle des lumières. In fact, as a single-volume introduction to the wealth of ideas bestowed to posterity by the Scottish Enlightenment, this book has no serious competition. It is almost entirely free of the overblown rhetoric and blatant chauvinism characteristic of some recently published accounts of what the Scots contributed to the modern world.In addition, many of the chapters contain information and arguments that will stimulate and sometimes provoke those who need no introduction to the Scottish Enlightenment. M. A. Stewart, for example, reminds us how easy it is to exaggerate the damage Hume did to religious belief in his own time. His Scottish contemporaries did their best to minimize Hume's impact and to downplay his significance; and, Stewart shows, for the most part they succeeded. Aaron Garrett describes the various ways, some rather less-than-enlightened, in which historians used animals, women, and racial difference in order "to get at the original of man." The editor of the volume takes important steps toward placing Scottish writing on the arts and aesthetic judgment in the context of what he terms "the general [End Page 479] programme of improvement that characterised the Scottish Enlightenment from its earliest days" (295).In his Preface, Alexander Broadie sets out three rival large-scale interpretations of the Scottish Enlightenment considered as a whole: one that gives priority to political economy and the disciplines which form its intellectual foundation (moral philosophy, jurisprudence, and the historical study of social institutions); another which sees the cultivation of mathematics and the natural sciences as central to the process of enlightenment in Scotland; and a third which portrays the Scottish Enlightenment as being a cultural phenomenon as much as a purely intellectual one, using just enough of both the "political economic" interpretation and the "natural scientific" interpretations as is necessary to understand how the Scottish "literati" worked within and transformed the institutions that shaped the Scotland of their day: the law, the Kirk, and the universities. My judgment is that the reader of this volume will find himself leaning toward the first of these three approaches. This is partly because the chapters both on the disciplines on which political economy was built and on economics itself are the strongest in the book: Fania Oz-Salzberger on political theory, Knud Haakonnsen on natural jurisprudence, Andrew Skinner on economics, John Cairns on legal theory, and Christopher Berry on "sociality and socialisation". Ironically, perhaps, these chapters work so well because they build on a brilliant account of "The Contexts of the Scottish Enlightenment" provided by one of the chief exponents of the "natural scientific" approach, Roger Emerson.Broadie claims that it is "arguable that science is crucially important to the Scottish Enlightenment, perhaps more important than were moral philosophy, historiography and political economy" (4). It is to be regretted, then, that so little space... (shrink)

Discusses similarities and differences between James and Skinner and criticizes Skinner for failing to provide an adequate description of complex behaviors. Similarities include opposition to a dualistic approach in which mind and body are seen as qualitatively different, and to the notion that mental phenomena are causal entities. In addition, there is agreement that mental events are actions and not copies of external reality. Skinner is criticized for providing an over-simplified account of complex phenomena and translating (...) such a description to operant terms. James is seen as being more painstaking in his description and more cautious in applying general principles. In particular, James's account of the concept of interest is seen as being more cognizant of the subtleties and complexities involved, whereas Skinner's translation of the concept to operant reinforcement is faulted as too narrow. (shrink)

Annabel Brett and James Tully, ed., Rethinking the Foundations of Modern Political Thought, and D. N. DeLuna, ed., The Political Imagination in History: Essays Concerning J. G. A. Pocock.

Both as historian and as theoretician, Quentin Skinner has contributed brilliantly to our understanding of the tradition of political thinking and to the renewed interest in a genuinely historical reading of the texts of that tradition. Until now, however, Skinner's methodological articles have not been conveniently available under one cover. James Tully's excellent volume remedies that deficiency. Tully brings together five of Skinner's most important writings on interpretation, his own fine introduction to Skinner's work, seven (...) essays by critics, and a long reply by Skinner, in which he responds to virtually all the criticisms of his work that have appeared in print. No one seriously interested in intellectual history, the history of philosophy, or the history of political thought can afford to miss this book. (shrink)

Structural realism is considered by many realists and antirealists alike as the most defensible form of scientific realism. There are now many forms of structural realism and an extensive literature about them. There are interesting connections with debates in metaphysics, philosophy of physics and philosophy of mathematics. This entry is intended to be a comprehensive survey of the field.

This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.

Human behavior is the joint product of (i) contingencies of survival responsible for natural selection, and (ii) contingencies of reinforcement responsible for the repertoires of individuals, including (iii) the special contingencies maintained by an evolved social environment. Selection by consequences is a causal mode found only in living things, or in machines made by living things. It was first recognized in natural selection: Reproduction, a first consequence, led to the evolution of cells, organs, and organisms reproducing themselves under increasingly diverse (...) conditions. The behavior functioned well, however, only under conditions similar to those under which it was selected.Reproduction under a wider range of consequences became possible with the evolution of processes through which organisms acquired behavior appropriate to novel environments. One of these, operant conditioning, is a second kind of selection by consequences: New responses could be strengthened by events which followed them. When the selecting consequences are the same, operant conditioning and natural selection work together redundantly. But because a species which quickly acquires behavior appropriate to an environment has less need for an innate repertoire, operant conditioning could replace as well as supplement the natural selection of behavior.Social behavior is within easy range of natural selection, because other members are one of the most stable features of the environment of a species. The human species presumably became more social when its vocal musculature came under operant control. Verbal behavior greatly increased the importance of a third kind of selection by consequences, the evolution of social environments or cultures. The effect on the group, and not the reinforcing consequences for individual members, is responsible for the evolution of culture. (shrink)

Moral philosophy is the study of what morality is and what it requires of us. As Socrates said, it's about "how we ought to live"-and why. It would be helpful if we could begin with a simple, uncontroversial definition of what morality is. Unfortunately, we cannot. There are many rival theories, each expounding a different conception of what it means to live morally, and any definition that goes beyond Socrates's simple formula-tion is bound to offend at least one of them. (...) This should make us cautious, but it need not paralyze us. In this chapter, I will describe the "minimum conception" of morality. (shrink)

Although the literature on the logic of historical enquiry is already vast and still growing, it continues to polarise overwhelmingly around a single disputed point—whether historical explanations have their own logic, or whether every successful explanation must conform to the same deductive model. Recent discussion, moreover, has shown an increasing element of agreement—there has been a marked trend away from accepting any strictly positivist view of the matter. It will be argued here that both the traditional polarity and the recent (...) trend in this debate have tended to be misleading. The positiviste have been damagingly criticised. But their opponents have produced no satisfying alternative. They have tended instead to accept as proper historical explanations whatever has been offered by the historians themselves in the course of trying to explain the past. But a further type of analysis must be required if some account is to be given of the status, and not merely the function, of the language in which these explanations are offered. Such an analysis, moreover has implications of some importance in considering the appropriate strategy for historical enquiries. (shrink)

For this 1897 publication, the American philosopher William James brought together ten essays, some of which were originally talks given to Ivy League societies. Accessible to a broader audience, these non-technical essays illustrate the author's pragmatic approach to belief and morality, arguing for faith and action in spite of uncertainty. James thought his audiences suffered 'paralysis of their native capacity for faith' while awaiting scientific grounds for belief. His response consisted in an attitude of 'radical empiricism', which deals (...) practically rather than ideologically with real-world phenomena. When facing a 'momentous' decision about belief, he says, we both can and must choose the best hypothesis. The first four essays apply this principle to religious faith, and the rest explore the pragmatic approach to such topics as determinism, ethics and individual achievement. James developed his ideas further in The Varieties of Religious Experience and Pragmatism, both of which are reissued in this series. (shrink)

"Sponsored by the Quadrant Global Cultures group... and by the Institute for Global Studies at the University of Minnesota.".

An ideal choice for undergraduate students of science and engineering, this book presents a thorough exploration of the basic concepts of relativity. The treatment provides more than the typical coverage of introductory texts, and it offers maximum flexibility since many sections may be used independently, in altered order, or omitted altogether. Numerous problems -- most with hints and answers -- make this volume ideal for supplementary reading and self-study. Nearly 300 diagrams illuminate the three-part treatment, which examines special relativity in (...) terms of kinematics and introductory dynamics as well as general relativity. Specific topics include the speed of light, the relative character of simultaneity, the Lorentz transformation, the conservation of momentum and energy, nuclei and fundamental particles, the principle of equivalence and curved space-time, Einstein's equations, and many other topics. (shrink)

We owe most scientific knowledge to methods of inquiry that are never formally analyzed. The analysis of behavior does not call for hypothetico-deductive methods. Statistics, taught in lieu of scientific method, is incompatible with major features of much laboratory research. Squeezing significance out of ambiguous data discourages the more promising step of scrapping the experiment and starting again. As a consequence, psychologists have taken flight from the laboratory. They have fled to Real People and the human interest of “real life,” (...) to Mathematical Models and the elegance of symbolic treatments, to the Inner Man and the explanatory preoccupation with inferred internal mechanisms, and to Laymanship and its appeal to “common sense.” An experimental analysis provides an alternative to these divertissements.The “theories” to which objection is raised here are not the basic assumptions essential to any scientific activity or statements that are not yet facts, but rather explanations which appeal to events taking place somewhere else, at some other level of observation, described in different terms, and measured, if at all, in different dimensions. Three types of learning theories satisfy this definition: physiological theories attempting to reduce behavior to events in the nervous system; mentalistic theories appealing to inferred inner events; and theories of the Conceptual Nervous System offered as explanatory models of behavior. It would be foolhardy to deny the achievements of such theories in the history of science. The question of whether they are necessary, however, has other implications.Experimental material in three areas illustrates the function of theory more concretely. Alternatives to behavior ratios, excitatory potentials, and so on demonstrate the utility of rate or probability of response as the basic datum in learning. Functional relations between behavior and environmental variables provide an account of why learning occurs. Activities such as preferring, choosing, discriminating, and matching can be dealt with solely in terms of behavior, without referring to processes in another dimensional system. The experiments are not offered as demonstrating that theories are not necessary but to suggest an alternative. Theory is possible in another sense. Beyond the collection of uniform relationships lies the need for a formal representation of the data reduced to a minimal number of terms. A theoretical construction may yield greater generality than any assemblage of facts; such a construction will not refer to another dimensional system. (shrink)

Advances in neuroscience are changing how mental health issues such as addiction are understood and addressed as a brain disease. Although a brain disease model legitimizes addiction as a medical condition, it promotes neuro-essentialist thinking and categorical ideas of responsibility and free choice, and undermines the complexity involved in its emergence. We propose a “biopsychosocial systems” model where psychosocial factors complement and interact with neurogenetics. A systems approach addresses the complexity of addiction and approaches free choice and moral responsibility within (...) the biological, lived experience and sociohistorical context of the individual. We examine heroin-assisted treatment as an applied case example within our framework. We conclude with a discussion of the model and its implications for drug policy, research, addiction health care systems and delivery, and treatment of substance use problems. (shrink)

Responses are strengthened by consequences having to do with the survival of individuals and species. With respect to the provenance of behavior, we know more about ontogenic than phylogenic contingencies. The contingencies responsible for unlearned behavior acted long ago. This remoteness affects our scientific methods, both experimental and conceptual. Until we have identified he variables responsible for an event, we tend to invent causes. Explanatory entities such as “instincts,” “drives,” and “traits” still survive. Unable to show how organisms can behave (...) effectively under complex circumstances, we endow them with special abilities permitting them to do so.Behavior exhibited by most members of a species is often accepted as inherited if all members were not likely to have been exposed to relevant ontogenic contingencies. When contingencies are not obvious, it is perhaps unwise to call any behavior either inherited or acquired, as the examples of churring in honey guides and following in imprinted ducklings show. Nor can the relative importance of phylogenic and ontogenic contingencies be argued from instances in which unlearned or learned behavior intrudes or dominates. Intrusions occur in both directions.Behavior influenced by its consequences seems directed toward the future, but only past effects are relevant. The mere fact that behavior is adaptive does not indicate whether phylogenic or ontogenic processes have been responsible for it. Examples include the several possible provenances of imitation, aggression, and communication. The generality of such concepts limits their usefulness. A more specific analysis is needed if we are to deal effectively with the two kinds of contingencies and their products. (shrink)