Some implications of Tomasello et al.'s theory derive from incorporating a variant of a common assumption that humans are biologically adapted to take an intentional stance in relation to conspecifics. I argue that, rather than being cued, intentions and other dispositional states may be inferred logically from an evolved commitment to determinism and evidence of state-dependent behavior.

As John Henry Newman reflected on 'The Idea of a University' more than a century and a half ago, Bradley C. S. Watson brings together some of the nation's most eminent thinkers on higher education to reflect on the nature and purposes of the American university today. Their mordant reflections paint a picture of the American university in crisis. This book is essential reading for thoughtful citizens, scholars, and educational policymakers.

This book is a collection of secondary essays on America's most important philosophic thinkers—statesmen, judges, writers, educators, and activists—from the colonial period to the present. Each essay is a comprehensive introduction to the thought of a noted American on the fundamental meaning of the American regime.

The Affordable Care Act1 promises to improve access to coverage and care for two vulnerable groups: low-income persons who are excluded by a lack of resources and chronically ill and disabled people who are excluded by the dysfunction of our existing insurance and care delivery systems. ACA’s sprawling provisions raise a wealth of implementation challenges that are exacerbated by the compromises required to move reform through Congress. In particular, the compromise between regulatory/public program advocates and advocates for private, market-driven programs (...) requires thoughtful regulatory coordination between public and private health systems. (shrink)

The Affordable Care Act1 promises to improve access to coverage and care for two vulnerable groups: low-income persons who are excluded by a lack of resources and chronically ill and disabled people who are excluded by the dysfunction of our existing insurance and care delivery systems. ACA’s sprawling provisions raise a wealth of implementation challenges that are exacerbated by the compromises required to move reform through Congress. In particular, the compromise between regulatory/public program advocates and advocates for private, market-driven programs (...) requires thoughtful regulatory coordination between public and private health systems. (shrink)

The excellent quality and depth of the various essays make [the book] an invaluable resource....It is likely to become essential reading in its field.—CHOICE.

Drawing on a landscape analysis of existing data-sharing initiatives, in-depth interviews with expert stakeholders, and public deliberations with community advisory panels across the U.S., we describe features of the evolving medical information commons. We identify participant-centricity and trustworthiness as the most important features of an MIC and discuss the implications for those seeking to create a sustainable, useful, and widely available collection of linked resources for research and other purposes.

The problem of academic dishonesty is as old as it is widespread – dating back millennia and perpetrated by the majority of students. Attempts to promote academic integrity, by comparison, are relatively new and rare – stretching back only a few hundred years and implemented by a small fraction of schools and universities. However, the past decade has seen an increase in efforts among universities to promote academic integrity among students, particularly through the use of online courses or tutorials. Previous (...) research has found this type of instruction to be effective in increasing students’ knowledge of academic integrity and reducing their engagement in academic dishonesty. The present study contributes to this literature with a natural experiment on the effects of the Academic Integrity Course (AIC) at The University of Auckland, which became mandatory for all students in 2015. In 2012, a convenience sample of students (n= 780) had been asked to complete a survey on their perceptions of the University’s academic integrity polices and their engagement in several forms of academic dishonesty over the past year. In 2017, the same procedures and survey were used to collect data from second sample of students (n= 608). After establishing measurement invariance across the two samples on all latent factors, analysis of variance revealed mixed support for the studies hypotheses. Unexpectedly, students who completed the AIC (i.e., the 2017 sample) reported: (1) significantly lower (not higher) levels of understanding, support, and effectiveness with respect to the University’s academic integrity policies; (2) statistically equivalent (not higher) levels of peer disapproval of academic misconduct, and; (3) significantly higher (not lower) levels of peer engagement in academic misconduct. However, results related to participants’ personal engagement in academic misconduct offered partial support for hypotheses – those who completed the AIC reported significantly lower rates of engagement on three of the eight behaviors included in the study. The implications and limitations of these findings are discussed as well as possible future directions for research. (shrink)

A school of idealism: meditatio laici, by J. Cappon.--Beati possidentes, by R. M. Wenley.--Moral validity: a study in Platonism, by R. C. Lodge.--Plato and the poet's eidōla, by A. S. Ferguson.--Some reflections on Aristotle's theory of tragedy, by G. S. Brett.--The function of the phantasm in St. Thomas Aquinas, by H. Carr.--The development of the psychology of Maine de Biran, by N. J. Symons.--A plea for eclecticism, by H. W. Wright.--Some present-day tendencies in philosophy, by J. M. MacEachran.--Evolution and personality, (...) J. G. Hume.--Emergent realism, by J. Muirhead.--Bibliography of publications by Dr. John Watson (p. 343-346). (shrink)

In this article I address the ethical implications of the legal issues the U. S. Supreme Court resolved in New York Times v. Sullivan and its progeny. In a ruling with far-reaching moral implications, the Court addressed truthtelling-journalism's primary ethical directive-and undermined it by favoring other moral principles and social goals. Much of this article focuses on the ethical arguments addressed to the Court in legal briefs that sought rulings that would support fundamental principals of ethical journalism. The creation of (...) actual malice as a legal concept in the Sullivan case owes more to the Court's pursuit of other moral and social values than strict legal reasoning, according to the descriptive theory of pragmatic instrumentalism, which informs this analysis. (shrink)

The volume documents, and makes an original contribution to, an astonishing period in twentieth-century philosophy—the progress of Arne Naess's ecophilosophy from its inception to the present. It includes Naess's most crucial polemics with leading thinkers, drawn from sources as diverse as scholarly articles, correspondence, TV interviews and unpublished exchanges. The book testifies to the skeptical and self-correcting aspects of Naess's vision, which has deepened and broadened to include third world and feminist perspectives. Philosophical Dialogues is an essential addition to the (...) literature on environmental philosophy. (shrink)

As John Henry Newman reflected on 'The Idea of a University' more than a century and a half ago, Bradley C. S. Watson brings together some of the nation's most eminent thinkers on higher education to reflect on the nature and purposes of the American university today. Their mordant reflections paint a picture of the American university in crisis. This book is essential reading for thoughtful citizens, scholars, and educational policymakers.

Flesh of My Flesh is a collection of articles by today's most respected scientists, philosophers, bioethicists, theologians, and law professors about whether we should allow human cloning. It includes historical pieces to provide background for the current debate. Religious, philosophical, and legal points of view are all represented.

Richard A. Watson - Augustinian-Cartesian Index: Texts and Commentary - Journal of the History of Philosophy 43:3 Journal of the History of Philosophy 43.3 359-361 Zbigniew Janowski. Augustinian-Cartesian Index: Texts and Commentary. South Bend, IN: St. Augustine's Press, 2004. Pp. xv + 275. Cloth, $35.00. This is an English translation and substantial expansion of the French edition . Besides augmenting Augustinian citations, Janowski has added indices and commentaries for Saint Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, Francis Bacon, and Montaigne. (...) The result is a crucial compilation and analysis of the major textual sources of Descartes's philosophy. Janowski demonstrates that Descartes's metaphysics is foundationally Augustinian, particularly in his dependence on the doctrine of God's creation of eternal truths: "the idea that God creates by an act of understanding" . This doctrine was, in fact, left out of the Meditations. Janowski argues that it logically belongs in the fourth Meditation but was deleted because it was almost universally denied by the.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.1 (2001) 142-143 [Access article in PDF] Wright, John P. and Paul Potter, editors. Psyche and Soma: Physicians and Metaphysicians on the Mind-Body Problem from Antiquity to Enlightenment. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp. xii + 298. Cloth, $72.00. The mind-body problem has a long history that begins well before Descartes made it extreme by presenting mind as unextended active thinking (...) and matter as unthinking passive extension. This absolute division was motivated in some part by the desire to present the soul as an entity that can survive the death of the body. This is difficult to maintain if the soul is merely the form or the vital force motivating a human body. But the advance of physiology has led more and more to the conclusion that the functions often attributed to the soul are actually carried out by the brain. Thinking may be as natural (and perhaps as determined) a function of the body as is digestion. And if digestion does not survive the death of the body, maybe thinking does not either.This collection of studies provides a detailed introduction to both medical and metaphysical views and theories concerning the relation of mind to body. In particular, the first article by Beate Gundert on Hippocratic Medicine sets the stage by showing that "mind and body in the Hippocratic writings, while distinguished empirically by being related to different types of phenomena, are both ultimately accounted for by the same explanatory model: Human nature (physis), which embraces the totality of bodily structures, physiological processes, and psychic events" (35). T. M. Robinson shows that Plato admits of no solution as to how mind and body interact, and Philip J. van der Eijk argues that "to detach the essence of man completely from his physical make-up would run counter to Aristotle's biological approach to man as a natural living being, the ultimate implication of his view on the divinity of nous is that the fullest realization of what it is to be a human being is to go beyond the limits of corporeality and mortality, and to become, if only temporarily, a god" (77). Heinrich von Staden covers Epicurus, Herophilus, Erasistratus, the Stoics, and Galen, concluding that "The discovery of the nerves entailed the first significant erosion of the vast territory ruled by the soul in Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy, an erosion accompanied by an expansion of the rule of 'nature,' visible not only in medicine, but also in philosophy" (116). Theo K. Heckel discusses Saint Paul's insistence upon the whole person, and Gareth Matthews shows that, prior to Descartes, Augustine presents "a radically new argument for mind-body dualism... an internalist argument... that proceeds from what, allegedly, the mind can know concerning itself to the conclusion that the mind is incorporeal" (145). Emily Michael discusses Pomponazzi's view that we know the immortality of the soul only by faith and the scholastic attempts to show that the soul is a substantial form. Guillaume Lamy, for example, criticized Descartes for having a soul only of thinking, whereas the soul must be of life. Steven Voss shows how at the end of his life, Descartes did discuss in detail how thinking affects the body, particularly in the management of health and the curing of disease. But Descartes does not solve the problem of how this interaction takes place. Thomas Lennon discusses the views of Bayle on Leibniz's monadic forces and Locke's fideism. And Francois Duchesneu continues the discussion of Stahl and Leibniz, to [End Page 142] conclude that "Leibniz attempts to discover the formal foundation of the organism, which he locates in the capacity of perception-appetition proper to the dominant monad" (235).John P. Wright gives an exposition of a very important distinction between Cartesian dualism and the functional dualism that came to dominate medical thought, that is, the question of how the brain and vital organs interact. Roselyn Rey carries this discussion on to the development of theories... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 25.2 (2001) 353-356 [Access article in PDF] Book Review The Metaphysical Club The Metaphysical Club, by Louis Menand; xii & 546 pp. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001, $27.00. "They didn't just want to keep the conversation going; they wanted to get to a better place" (p. 440). So much for the most prominent contemporary pragmatist, Richard Rorty, who remains unmentioned except in the acknowledgments. (...) That better place is participatory democracy (a phrase that does not appear in the book), which "means that everyone is equally in the game, but it also means that no one can opt out" (p. 441). The true name of the game is skeptical tolerance. There are no unquestionable duties or inalienable rights, no immutable natural laws, no absolute moral rules, no highest principles, no inherent virtues, no absolute standards, no stasis, no absolutely certain truth. There are no individual destinies, because the social comes before the individual, and the individual is embedded within and cannot exist without society. Scientific knowledge is always probabilistic, not necessarily because nature is indeterministic, but because we can never know enough to calculate its regularities if they exist. To wit, there are no Platonic Ideas or unchanging universals. All is change, nothing that happens is ever repeated, our general ideas and laws of nature are merely tools for getting along in the world. Above all, ideas do not refer to things, only to other ideas. What expedites our thinking is true. What expedites our acting is right. Whenever we act according to principle, rule, or law, we are making a bet that events will turn out the way [End Page 353] we think they will. If we keep this always in mind, we will never succumb to violence or war in the name of belief or principle. Whatever we believe, it could be otherwise. Such is a general summary of pragmatism as it has filtered down to the textbooks. It is (again befittingly) more or less accurate. The can-do American seeks out cash value in practical life.Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., William James, Charles Saunders Pierce, and John Dewey crafted the only indigenous philosophy that has so far been produced in America. Its roots are in Laplacean probability theory, Darwinian evolutionism, and Chauncey Wright's indeterminism. While James hoped to save a place for religion (if it works, go with it) and Pierce a place for God (he thought there had to be a designing intelligence to account for order), the pragmatic result is profoundly skeptical and secular. Neither Holmes nor Dewey thought that individuals imbedded in societies had any need of absolutes. Holmes said that people first decide on the basis of experience, then they deduce. Dewey said that people first behave commonsensically, then they rationalize.There is nothing as condensed as the above in Louis Menand's beautiful book on the ideas, personalities, and influence of Holmes, James, Pierce, and Dewey. I know of no clearer exposition of their ideas, and few biographers have made them come so alive. In particular, Menand's coverage of peripheral (but by no means insignificant) figures is very rich. He describes the development of graduate universities in America in detail from their autocratic beginnings to the institution of academic freedom as we know it today. University presidents, trustees, and administrators are presented luxuriously as the villains, and the professors gloriously as the heroes. Menand remarks with slight amazement that society bought the concept that professors were beholden to the public at large and not to the state or private university owners. He could have commented further on the fact that the concept of academic freedom has become virtually irrelevant in today's corporate research universities."It is a remarkable fact about the United States," Menand begins his book, "that it fought a civil war without undergoing a change in its form of government" (p. ix). This is a breathtaking fact, and I don't suppose Menand had any intent to explain it. "The Civil War swept away the slave civilization of the South, but it swept away almost the whole intellectual... (shrink)

Tradition II Hermeneutics, Ethics, and the Dispensation of the Good Stephen H. Watson Examines concepts of tradition in 20th-century Continental philosophy. In Tradition II, Stephen H. Watson engages post-Kantian Continental philosophy in his continuing investigation into the concept of tradition which he began in his work, Tradition. According to Watson, the problem of tradition became explicit in 20th-century philosophy, and is especially apparent in the work of Heidegger, Gadamer, Husserl, Benjamin, Adorno, Levinas, Kristeva, and Derrida, among others. (...) By formulating a series of dialogues between these philosophers and their predecessors, Watson articulates the issues and concerns surrounding tradition and traditionality. Taking on topics such as the hermeneutics of the self, the rationality of tradition, the pluralistic nature of historical interpretation, and the question of the "other," Watson emphasizes the importance of classical accounts of ethical and political discourse for contemporary philosophy and today’s multicultural world. Watson extends his analysis of tradition to include the problems of meaning and narrative and the nature of the self. He also considers the meaning of the Good and how Good is dispensed in the world. By questioning past philosophical narratives and their influence on modern and postmodern philosophy, Watson brings fresh perspective to the complex meanings of tradition for a pluralistic world. Stephen H. Watson is Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Philosophy Department at the University of Notre Dame. He is author of Extensions: Essays on Interpretation, Rationality, and the Closure of Modernism and Tradition: Refiguring Community, Remembrance, and Virtue in Classical German Thought. Studies in Continental Thought—John Sallis, general editor June 2001 320 pages, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4, index cloth 0-253-33900-6 $35.00 s / £26.50. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Descartes’ Meditations: Background Source Materials ed. by Roger Ariew, John Cottingham, and Tom SorellRichard A. WatsonRoger Ariew, John Cottingham, and Tom Sorell, editors. Descartes’ Meditations: Background Source Materials. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp. xviii + 170. Cloth, $54.95. Paper, $18.95.This volume includes primarily source materials from authors who were contemporary to Descartes’s composition of the Meditations. Thus there are no selections from Augustine, Aquinas, and (...) Montaigne, for example, who were more influential on the Meditations than some of the authors excerpted. Of course their influence is already amply documented by such scholars as Gilson and Gouhier. Probably the most important source included is Suárez, whose role is championed by Jean-Luc Marion in several works. Readers should look for the forthcoming Index Augustino-Cartèsian: Textes et Commentaire by Zbigniew Janowski (Paris: J. Vrin) for a startling challenge to the view that Descartes is Suárezian.In the volume under review, Eustachius a Sancto Paulo is of special interest because Descartes thought of refuting him item by item (but decided exposition of his own view would be adequate). In his youth Descartes had a definite interest in Petrus Ramus, although Beeckman told him his method consisted of tired old tricks. Francisco Sanches and Pierre Charron are important for their expositions of sceptical arguments and attitudes. Christopher Clavius is Descartes’s direct predecessor in mathematical analysis, and none of Descartes’s protests that he never read the man has convinced anyone. Scipion Dupleix is a fine example of how the Old Philosophy appeared to the New Philosophers, and Marin Mersenne, of course, compiled material on every subject Descartes ever had an interest in. Pierre Gassendi exercised Descartes’s ire more than any other commentator on the Meditations, and Descartes again probably read Gassendi’s continuing criticisms even though he claimed he wouldn’t. [End Page 366]Of special interest is Jean de Silhon, an old friend of Descartes’s who published a book containing a proto-cogito three years before the Meditations appeared. François de la Mothe le Vayer represents the libertine strain many detect in Descartes’s writings, while Jean-Baptiste Morin provides fodder for those who detect Descartes’s piety, although Descartes asserts that the man is an idiot for defending the immobility of the earth. Finally, Charles Sorel provides an example of the deductive mode of exposition in a text that shows that the notion of a unified science was more than Cartesian. One contemporary who was left out and should have been included was the Augustinian Guillaume Gibieuf.But overall, this is an interesting and useful collection of works Descartes doubtless knew. [End Page 367]Richard A. WatsonWashington UniversityCopyright © 1999 Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

Tradition must rank as one of the ten most important works within the hermeneutic tradition to be published in the 1990s, alongside recent books by Jean-Luc Nancy, Drucilla Cornell, Simon Critchley, John Caputo, Paul Ricoeur, and Jacques Derrida. In Tradition, Stephen Watson, who is influenced by Heidegger, Gadamer, Merleau-Ponty, Derrida, and Alasdair MacIntyre, works out a historical hermeneutics with obvious connections to their views, but that also stakes out a different position "between" their respective accounts of reason, interpretation, (...) and tradition. This work builds on themes introduced in Watson's earlier collection of essays, such as his paper on "Between Truth and Method: Gadamer, Traditionality, and the Problem of Justification in Interpretative Practices." In the process, Watson also develops his innovative approaches to many particular figures in the history of modern philosophy, to their influence on and significance for one another, and most importantly, to an array of fundamental questions concerning the canons of reason, the status of personal subjects, and basic ethical concepts like friendship, character, and the good. It is in his treatment of these themes especially—and his general suspicion of transcendental methodology and universal principles—that we perhaps see the Aristotelian influences most clearly in this text. At the same time, Watson's is always a deconstructive version of Aristotelianism, refracted through his reading of Heidegger, whose notion of Erwiderung, or "reciprocal rejoinder" with past thinkers in the formation of new ideas is introduced on the first page and becomes the schema both for his analysis of tradition and his treatment of individual authors. (shrink)

A detailed review essay discussing reason, hermeneutics, and understanding through the lens of Steven Watson's two-volume work, Tradition(s). It offers a transcendental for constitutive commitments of reason in dialog with Watson's more Gadamerian views.

Introduction A Brief Conceptual Framework for Biology PART ONE: UNDERSTANDING NATURE 1. The Antecedents of Scientific Thought Animism, Totemism, and Shamanism The Paleolithic View Mesopotamia Egypt 2. Aristotle and the Greek View of Nature The Science of Animal Biology The Parts of Animals The Classification of Animals The Aristotelian System Basic Questions 3. Those Rational Greeks? Theophrastus and the Science of Botany The Roman Pliny Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine Erasistratus Galen of Pergamum The Greek Miracle 4. The Judeo-Christian Worldview (...) The Bishop of Hippo Scholastic Thought Islamic Science Books on Beasts Antecedents of a Revolution 5. The Revival of Science Andreas Vesalius and the Study of Structure William Harvey and the Study of Function Sir Francis Bacon’s Great Instauration Induction, Hypothesis, Deduction The Very Small--Animalcules Robert Hooke and the Discovery of Cells 6. Figur’d Stones and Plastick Virtue Marine Life on Mountain Tops? Figured Stones of Unknown Creatures Baron Cuvier Quarries of the Paris Basin Catastrophism and Uniformitarianism William Smith and the Geological Column Understanding Nature in 1850 PART TWO: THE GROWTH OF EVOLUTIONARY THOUGHT 7. The Paradigm of Evolution First Questions The Paradigm of Natural Theology First Answers 8. Testing Darwins Hypotheses Have Life Forms Changed over Time? Do Species Evolve into Different Species over Time? Has There Been Time Enough for Evolution? Is Natural Selection the Mechanism of Change? The Genetic Basis of Natural Selection Accounting for the Diversity of Life 9. In the Light of Evolution Comparative Anatomy Embryonic Development Classification Microstructure Molecular Processes 10. Life over Time The Origin of Life The Rise of Multicelled Organisms What Is a Phylum? Burgess Shale Metazoans Early Evolution of the Vertebrates The Age of Dinosaurs Birds, Mammals, and Flowering Plants The Rancho La Brea Tar Pits Human Evolution The Role of Extinction in Evolution PART THREE: CLASSICAL GENETICS 11. Pangenesis What Is the Question? Hippocrates and Aristotle The Darwinian Answer Assembling the Data Formulating the Hypothesis by Induction Galton’s Rabbits 12. The Cell Theory The Discovery of Cells: Robert Hooke Schwann and Cells in Animals Gametes as Cells Omnis cellula e cellula? The Technology of Cell Research 13. The Hypothesis of Chromosomal Continuity The Ephemeral Nucleus Schneider, Flemming, and Cell Division The Chromosomes and inheritance Gamete Formation Fertilization 14. Mendel and the Birth of Genetics Model for Monohybrid Crosses Model for Dihybrid Crosses Mendel’s Laws Initial Opposition to Mendelism 15. Genetics + Cytology: 1900-1910 Sutton’s Model The Cytological Basis of Mendel’s Laws Boveri and Abnormal Chromosome Sets Variations in Mendelian Ratios The Discovery of Sex Chromosomes 16. The Genetics of the Fruit Fly Morgan’s First Hypothesis Morgan’s Second Hypothesis The Fly Room Linkage and Crossing-Over The Cytological Proof of Crossing-Over Mapping the Chromosomes The Final Proof The Determinants of Sex The Conceptual Foundations of Classical Genetics 17. The Structure and Function of Genes One Gene, One Enzyme The Substance of Inheritance The Watson-Crick Model of DNA Genes and the Synthesis of Proteins The Genetic Code PART FOUR: THE ENIGMA OF DEVELOPMENT 18. First Principles The Peripatetic Stagirite The Death and Rebirth of Scientific Thought Harvey and Malpighi A Two-Millennial Summing Up Preformation versus Epigenesis 19. The Century of Discovery Von Baer’s Discovery of the Mammalian Ovum Darwin’s Contribution to Embryology Haeckel and Recapitulation 20. Descriptive Embryology Germ Layers The External Development of the Amphibian Embryo The Internal Development of the Amphibian Embryo 21. The Dawn of Analytical Embryology His, Roux, and Mosaic Development Driesch and Regulative Development Novelty in Development Cell Lineage Nucleus or Cytoplasm? Fin de Siècle 22. Interactions during Development Amphibian Organizers Secondary Organizers The Reacting Tissue The Chemical Nature of the Organizer Putting It All Together Conclusion Further Reading References Illustration Credits Index. (shrink)

This book is a reprint of Watson's earlier The Downfall of Cartesianism, with some minor changes and expansions, plus a reprint of several later articles. Some of the same material has been incorporated in the introductions that Watson has written for facsimile reprints of Foucher, Regis, and Le Grand. Thus, there is little that is new in the Breakdown. Since the publication of the Downfall, there have been a number of articles and books dealing with the figures and (...) issues discussed by Watson. Very few of these later publications have been noticed in this reprint, nor do they inform Watson's discussion. A few of these more recent publications do appear on the expanded bibliography, but that seems more window-dressing than an indication of any serious attention being paid to them. A few examples will indicate the scope of this missed chance at updating the Downfall into the Breakdown. (shrink)