This book addresses one of the fundamental topics in philosophy: the relation between appearance and reality. John Yolton draws on a rich combination of historical and contemporary material, ranging from the early modern period to present-day debates, to examine this central philosophical preoccupation, which he presents in terms of distinctions between phenomena and causes, causes and meaning, and persons and man. He explores in detail how Locke, Berkeley and Hume talk of appearances and their relation to reality, and offers (...) illuminating connections and comparisons with the work of contemporary philosophers such as Paul Churchland and John McDowell. He concludes by offering his own proposal for a 'realism of appearances', which incorporates elements of both Humean and Kantian thinking. His important study will be of interest to a wide range of readers in the history of philosophy, the history of ideas, and contemporary philosophy of mind, epistemology and metaphysics. (shrink)

I argue that there is no distinction between allographic and autographic representations. One consequence of this is that replicative forgeries have the same aesthetic and artistic value as originals, and are accurate records of actions. I end with some reflections on the pragmatic structure of forgery.

Thought experiments have a mysterious way of informing us about the world, apparently without examining it, yet with a great degree of certainty. It is tempting to try to explain this capacity by making use of the idea that in thought experiments, the mind somehow simulates the processes about which it reaches conclusions. Here, I test this idea. I argue that when they predict the outcomes of hypothetical physical situations, thought experiments cannot simulate physical processes. They use mental models, which (...) should not be confused with process-driven simulations. A convincing case can be made that thought experiments about hypothetical mental processes are mental simulations. Concerning moral thought experiments, I argue that construing them as simulations of mental processes favours certain moral theories over others. The scope of mental simulation in thought experiments is primarily limited by the constraint of relevant similarity on source and target processes: on one hand, this constraint disqualifies thought from simulating external natural processes; on the other hand, it is a source of epistemic bias in moral thought experiments. In view of these results, I conclude that thought experiments and mental simulations cannot be assimilated as means of acquiring knowledge. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

This article applies Karl Polanyi’s concept of a double movement to the trajectory of rural state policies in China since 1949. It argues that Chinese socialism created a contradictory social contract that has fueled an ongoing struggle between state and peasantry over the surplus generated from rural land. This struggle has shaped a historical oscillation between state policies that facilitate extraction of agricultural surpluses and policies that introduce social protections in the form of household farming and revitalized collective ownership. Based (...) on secondary sources, this article compares the arc of rural policies during the Mao era and in the transition to and during the current state capitalist period. Then, based on original interview-based and ethnographic fieldwork undertaken in rural Sichuan Province, it analyzes the current introduction of urban and agrarian capital into the rural economy, revealing dynamics of a current countermovement from state-led extraction to compromise. (shrink)

The Companion d focusses on the international intellectual movement of the Enlightenment, and the individuals who shaped it. A number of substantial essays survey the main topics of dictionaries, encyclopedias, art, music and theatre, while central philosophical concepts such as human nature are also examined. Specialized topics receive short definitions and there are several hundred biographies. Chronology. 100 halftones. Bibliographies. Index.

_ Source: _Page Count 9 Robert Doran claims that the sublime is all about transcendence transferred from the religious to the aesthetic domain of experience. Taken in this philosophical rather than stylistic sense, it proved crucial for the development of modern subjectivity. Doran traces the issue from Longinus through the decisive reception of Nicolas Boileau, who first distinguished le sublime from le style sublime, on to an extended engagement with Immanuel Kant. In all this he seeks its place in the (...) rise of the modern bourgeois subject. The social-historical connections tend to be a bit overstated, first, with regard to Boileau and the idea of the honnête homme, and especially with the claim that “Burke treats aesthetic concepts as proxies for sociopolitical categories.” It is not fruitful for an understanding of Kant, either. This weakens his powerful argument for the philosophical significance of the sublime in modern thought. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the objections to both doxastic volitionism and doxastic voluntarism fail. Objections to doxastic volitionism and doxastic voluntarism assume a generic notion of belief, a notion which covers both beliefs about things which we know or think we know or are evident to us, as well as beliefs which have some degree of credence but are not clearly evident to the subject. The generic notion of belief includes both sorts of beliefs, but the position against (...) doxastic volitionism is supported only by appeal to beliefs about things which are evident or that we think we know. However, by showing that beliefs which we think we know to be true are not voluntary, the objections leaves open the question whether belief as such is voluntary. Contrary to the opponents of doxastic volitionism, I will show that if what we are after is a generic notion of belief, it ought to be construed as holding true; and if this is what constitutes belief as such, the arguments against doxastic volitionism for faith beliefs fail. The strongest argument against doxastic voluntarism is an evidentialist argument concerning the ethics of belief. That argument is basically that even if choosing belief is psychologically possible, evidentialism rules it out as epistemically irresponsible. In the last section of this article, I will argue that if religious belief is constituted by true propositions of the faith, the evidentialist objection to doxastic voluntarism fails. (shrink)

Zillmer shows the benefits of having children act out situations as a way of sparking discussions with 7th and 8th graders in a philosophy class. He writes about an example from his class called "Jim and the Indians.".

Being both ethical and successful is challenging. The rewards of unethical behavior are often greater than the price paid for misbehavior. This book explains why leaders, seeking to run ethical and successful organizations, cannot depend only on the law and their organizations to make moral business decisions. The authors explore why making ethical business decisions is harder than is generally understood, and explores the difficulties leaders face as a result of differences in context, circumstances, and other challenges to ethical behavior, (...) such as misleading rhetoric, inappropriate role models, cognitive dissonance and motivated forgetting. They argue that individuals need to establish ethical baselines that they will not cross when making decisions and explain how to do this systematically. The Challenge of Leading an Ethical and Successful Organization offers ways of handling ethical dilemmas successfully. It explores the need to determine in advance the potential areas of ethical conflict, and the potential costs of such conflicts and provides leaders with a practical ethical framework to reconcile ethics with business success. This book is essential reading for professionals, consultants, and academics interested in the ethics of leadership and management. (shrink)

Dietrich von Hildebrand’s treatise The Nature of Love is set in relation to the theological personalism of the Cappadocian fathers of the Church, and to my own earlier work done in this tradition. Several points of divergence are explored, especially points concerning von Hildebrand’s claim that love exists as a response to the beauty of the beloved person. God’s love for human beings does not always seem to fit the paradigm of value-response; His love seems to be creative of beauty (...) in us rather than to respond to already existing beauty. But at the same time, the deep kinship of von Hildebrand’s personalism with that of the Cappadocian fathers is stressed; he is at one with them in affirming the heart as distinct from the intellect, in affirming love as the supreme act of the person, and in affirming the place of beauty in the existence of persons. (shrink)

John White; The Compulsory Curriculum and Beyond: a reply to Peter Gardner, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 19, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 129–136.

John Wilson. some concerns of his, and from that time up to the present period, he has continued his attention to those concerns, as he says, not in a professional but perfectly gratuitous, and without any emolument. It came to this gentleman's ...

Sir John Templeton challenges the reader to apply the same energy that has been devoted to scientific inquiry to the pursuit of spiritual information. The world is at a state of unprecedented technical expertise, but why has our knowledge and faith in our own spirituality stalled and become obsolete in recent times? Possibilities for Over One Hundredfold More Spiritual Information seeks to address this question. It points out that our spiritual knowledge would also have the capacity to increase dramatically (...) if we were to open our minds to the endless possibilities that await us in terms of our spiritual lives. These include altruistic love for all people, new knowledge of the Divine, and a greater sense of our place in the universe. In order for us as human beings to take advantage of all of the spiritual gifts that we have been given, we need to be open and receptive to our individual spiritual natures, and to open ourselves to the limitless spiritual possibilities available to us. The book acknowledges the ancient scriptures and thinkers who have guided us for centuries. Vastly expanded research and the use of scientific method would only enhance our understanding of the wisdom contained within these wise teachings. The benefits of extending our spiritual knowledge might, in fact, exceed the benefits we have realized thus far from scientific and medical advances. Possibilities seeks to reawaken our desire for spiritual knowledge pushed aside so long ago in our quest for scientific knowledge. When these fields work together, the world will reap greater rewards that we can ever imagine. (shrink)

Towards the end of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s fragment ‘The Triumph of Life’ there are some famous lines which raise most of the questions that will concern me in this essay. Never mind, for the moment, the context: the lines I have in mind are these: “I rose; and, bending at her sweet command, Touched with faint lips the cup she raised, And suddenly my brain became as sand “Where the first wave had more than half erased The track of deer (...) on desert Labrador, Whilst the fierce wolf from which they fled amazed “Leaves his stamp visibly upon the shore Until the second bursts—so on my sight Burst a new Vision never seen before.—1[…]Two kinds of things are happening here which I want to point out. The first is that even as the poem is attempting to represent the mind as passive and the experience of the mind as an empty succession of events, it is also making a quite contrary attempt to represent the mind as active and the succession as a structure. The lines dramatise how a play of mental events, as they are represented in language, may be reprocessed in such a way that some of them come to be classified as interruptions or breaks in the otherwise meaningful sequence composed by the others. As my first paraphrase suggested, it seems to make sense to recast Shelley’s narrative into the story of deer chased by a wolf, a story which is then interrupted by the wave which bursts on the shore and which threatens the coherence of the story by threatening to efface all sin that the deer have passed across the beach, have crossed the mind. 1. Percy Bysshe Shelley, ‘The Triumph of Life,’ in Shelley’s Poetry and Prose, ed. Donald H. Reiman and Sharon B. Powers , II. 403-11. The most illuminating reading of these lines is Paul de Man’s in The Rhetoric of Romanticism , pp. 99-100. John Barrell is professor of English at the University of Sussex and author of a number of books on literature and the visual arts, most recently Poetry, Language and Politics . The Infection of Thomas De Quincey and The Birth of Pandora will be published next year. (shrink)

"John Anton introduces the reader to the poetry and poetics of Constantine P. Cavafy from a different perspective. He traces Cavafy's development during the early phases of the poet's creativity, when he was gradually discovering his poetic self, until he finally created his own authentic voice. Autobiographical elements in Cavafy's poems are introduced mainly as guides to explore one aspect of Cavafy's world: how he gradually learned to control the transformation of experience into "work in progress". Professor Anton clearly (...) portrays Cavafy's quality of thought, his originality, the freshness of his imagery and his penetrating commentary on the human condition. The author also provides details of the historical background of ancient Alexandria, which formed one of the key ways whereby Cavafy recreated the city for himself and used it to develop his unique poetic vision."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved. (shrink)

To take a journey, travelers must know where they are, where they are going, and how to get there. Moral theology examines the same three truths. The Christian Moral Life is a handbook for moral theology that uses the theme of a journey to explain its key ethical concepts. First, humans begin with their creation in the image of God. Secondly, the goal of the journey is explained as a loving union with God, to achieve a share in his eternal (...) happiness. Third and finally, the majority of the book examines how to attain this goal. Within the journey motif, the book covers the moral principles essential for attaining true happiness. Based on an examination of the moral methodology in the bible, the book discusses the importance of participating in divine nature through grace in order to attain eternal happiness. It further notes the role of law, virtue, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit in guiding and transforming humans into friends of God, who participate in his happiness. Following this section on moral theology in general, the book analyzes the individual virtues to give more concrete guidance. The entire project builds upon the insights of great Christian thinkers, such as Thomas Aquinas, Thérèse of Lisieux, and John Paul II, to uncover the moral wisdom in scripture and to show people how to be truly happy both in this life and the next. This book will be of great interest to undergraduate students of moral theology, priests and seminarians, parents and teachers seeking to raise and to form happy children, and anyone interested in discovering the meaning of true happiness. (shrink)

Hill, John This is not an essay in deportment, but an effort, at a deeper level, to relate the Catholic priesthood to a changing society, in which its standing has suffered much because of the unacceptable conduct of some priests in recent years. There is a way of understanding style that has been developed by theologians since Vatican II; we shall examine their ideas shortly. While they do not mention him, their ideas are close to the famous declaration of (...) the great French naturalist, the Comte de Buffon, in a discourse on style delivered to the Academie francaise on 25 August 1753: 'Ces choses sont hors de l'homme, le style est l'homme meme'. Many remember this as 'The style is the man'. However you translate it, it is a statement about more than how you wear your wig or bow to a lady. It is about 'the man himself', who reveals himself in his style. (shrink)

John Meinert outlines Aquinas's historical predecessors, then provides an exposition and interpretation of the full scope of Aquinas's thought on peace: metaphysics, Trinitarian theology, Christology, Pneumatology, ecclesiology, natural theology, ethics, and sacramental theology. What emerges from this extended study is a new vision of Aquinas's work. Peace in the Thought of Thomas Aquinas establishes Aquinas as an indispensable dialogue partner for anyone thinking rigorously about the theology, philosophy, and ethics of peace. As Aquinas himself says, "observe peace and you (...) will come to salvation.". (shrink)

In 1974, John P. "Jack" Murtha became the first Vietnam combat veteran elected to Congress. In the nearly three decades since then, Congressman Murtha has been intimately involved with governmental decisions about America's national security and foreign policy, adding his unique perspective to international affairs while faithfully representing Pennsylvania's twelfth district. _From Vietnam to 9/11 _combines personal memoir with thoughtful analysis to provide a behind-the-scenes account of the formation and conduct of U.S. foreign policy in the last quarter-century. At (...) the same time, it tells the story of a man committed to service and community. (shrink)

John Searle's forthcoming book ‘Rationality in Action’ presents a sophisticated and innovative account of the rationality of action. In the book Searle argues against what he calls the classical model of rationality. In the debate that follows Barry Smith challenges some implications of Searle's account. In particular, Smith suggests that Searle's distinction between observer-relative and observer–independent facts of the world is ill suited to accommodate moral concepts. Leo Zaibert takes on Searle's notion of the gap. The gap exists between (...) the reasons that we have for acting and our actions. According to Searle, whenever there is no gap, our actions exhibit irrationality. Zaibert points out a certain obscurity in Searle's treatment of the gap, particularly in connection with Searle's notion of ‘recognitional rationality’. Finally, Josef Moural examines the interactions between Searle's theory of institutions and his theory of rationality, with emphasis on the connections between intentionality and Searle's notion of the ‘background’. (shrink)

John Skorupski; I *—The Presidential Address: The Legacy of Modernism**, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 91, Issue 1, 1 June 1991, Pages 1–20, h.

John Stapleford interacts with seven standard introductory economics texts to show how ethics are inextricably intertwined with economic life and analysis. This revised and expanded edition includes discussions of entitlements, global poverty, government debt, healthcare reform and immigration reform.

John Tucker; III—Constructivity and Grammar, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 63, Issue 1, 1 June 1963, Pages 45–66, https://doi.org/10.1093/aris.

John Tucker; X—Constructivity, Consistency, and Natural Languages, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 67, Issue 1, 1 June 1967, Pages 145–168, http.

Ordered social life requires rules of conduct that help generate and preserve peaceful and cooperative interactions among individuals. The problem is that these social rules impose costs. They prohibit us from doing some things we might see as important and they require us to do other things that we might otherwise not do. The question for the contractarian is whether the costs of these social rules can be rationally justified. I argue that traditional contract theories have tended to underestimate the (...) importance of evaluating the cost of enforcement and compliance in the contract procedure. In addition, the social contract has been understood narrowly as a method of justifying specifically moral or political rules. I defend a broader version of contractarianism as a justificatory model that can be used to evaluate any set of social rules or institutions that impose costson agents. In so doing, I argue that contractarianism is a general method of evaluating and justifying the rules that order the structure of social life. (shrink)

Essays on philosophy and intellectual history, focusing in particular on John Locke.

In Reshaping Reason, John McCumber breathes new life into American philosophy. Moving past the tired divide between "analytic" and "continental" camps, he proposes new directions to unite a discipline which has become more unfocused and invisible. McCumber recommends a new set of rational tools to enable philosophers and then puts these tools to work to redefine epistemology, ontology, and ethics. Reshaping Reason explores philosophy's achievements and failures in a cold light and paves the way for the discipline to become (...) more meaningful and relevant to society at large. (shrink)