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. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Few reference works in philosophy have articles on hope. Few also are systematic or large-scale philosophical studies of hope. Hope is admitted to be important in people's lives, but as a topic for study, hope has largely been left to psychologists and theologians. For the most part philosophers treat hope en passant. My aim is to outline a general theory of hope, to explore its structure, forms, goals, reasonableness, and implications, and to trace the implications of such a theory for (...) atheism or theism. What has been written is quite disparate. Some see hope in an individualistic, often existential, way, and some in a social and political way. Hope is proposed by some as essentially atheistic, and by others as incomprehensible outside of one or another kind of theism. Is it possible to think consistently and at the same time comprehensively about the phenomenon of human hoping? Or is it several phenomena? How could there be such diverse understandings of so central a human experience? On what rational basis could people differ over whether hope is linked to God? What I offer here is a systematic analysis, but one worked out in dialogue with Ernst Bloch, Immanuel Kant, and Gabriel Marcel. Ernst Bloch of course was a Marxist and officially an atheist, Gabriel Marcel a Christian theist, and Immanuel Kant was a theist, but not in a conventional way. (shrink)

Imagining the route -- Four dimensions of trust -- Related approaches and the core of trusting -- Analogy and trust -- Ethics of trusting well -- Epistemology: believing-that and trusting -- Two ontological models -- Ontological models, security-trusting, openness-trusting, and mediation -- Cosmofiducial arguments and God -- Ontofiducial discernments and God -- Religious faith and trust.

In the first comprehensive biography of Ferdinand de Saussure, John E. Joseph restores the full character and history of a man who is considered the founder of modern linguistics and whose ideas have influenced literary theory, philosophy, cultural studies, and virtually every other branch of humanities and the social sciences.

Journal Name: Semiotica Issue: Ahead of print.

The essays which follow, as theological reflections of a Christian the ontological reality of philosopher, are essays of inquiry concerning and underlying truths revealed by God. Divine revelation of course cannot be encompassed within a few dogmatic formulae in any ade quate manner; it is the mysterious plenitude of the historical human encounter with the self-revealing God Who has revealed His salvific designs for men. This revelation can be approached from many view points of scientific study, such as those of (...) religious psychology, histori cal theology, Scriptural study, the history of dogmas, but also that of the philosophical thinker seeking to understand what he has already believed - so far as this be possible in regard to the mysteries of God's inner life and of the new creation that He works in us by His grace. In our rather non-metaphysical age such an inquiry into the underlying ontological reality opened to us by the revelation of God is somewhat unfashionable; but the issues remain, and in fact one can only choose between a rather unconsciously and uncritically accepted attitude about the ontological significance of such dogmatic truths as the existence of the Trinity and the hypostatic union and created grace, and a consciously and critically developed analysis in the light of, and with the help of such understanding of being as the philosophers can offer. Metaphysical theology of this kind is here to stay, regardless of some "prophets" who would cut away the ground on which they stand. (shrink)

There is a growing concern that the voices of athletes, and in particular, athletes from equity-deserving groups, are unaccounted for in the development and advancement of Safe Sport initiatives. The lack of consideration of the needs and experiences of diverse groups is concerning, given the existing literature outside the context of sport indicating that equity-deserving individuals experience more violence. As such, the following study sought to understand how equity-deserving athletes interpret and experience Safe Sport. Grounded within an interpretive phenomenological analysis, (...) semi-structured interviews were used to understand how athletes with marginalised identities conceptualise and experience Safe Sport. Seven participants, including two Black male athletes, two White, gay male athletes, one Middle Eastern female athlete, one White, female athlete with a physical disability and one White, non-binary, queer, athlete with a physical disability, were asked to conceptualise and describe their experiences of Safe Sport. The findings revealed these athletes perceived Safe Sport as an unrealistic and unattainable ideal that cannot fully be experienced by those from equity-deserving groups. This interpretation was reinforced by reported experiences of discriminatory comments, discriminatory behaviours and systemic barriers, perpetrated by coaches, teammates, and resulting from structural aspects of sport. The findings draw on the human rights literature to suggest integrating principles of equity, diversity and inclusion are fundamental to safeguarding equity-deserving athletes. (shrink)

Theories of discourse bring to realism new ideas about how knowledge develops and how representations of reality are influenced. We gain an understanding of the conceptual aspect of social life and the processes by which meaning is produced. This collection reflects the growing interest realist critics have shown towards forms of discourse theory and deconstruction. The diverse range of contributions address such issues as the work of Derrida and deconstruction, discourse theory, Eurocentrism and poststructuralism. What unites all of the contributions (...) is a sense that it is essential to provide a realist alternative to the hitherto dominance of social constructionism, hermeneutics and postmodernism, over many of the issues discussed. By developing a realist perspective the different authors attempt to embed discourse within the structured nature of the reality of the world. Realism can situate language, discourse and ideology within context specific, or 'causally efficacious' circumstances. Realism can help to uncover issues of power, representation, and subjectivity and how discursive and other social practices produce real effects. This can help us understand the manner in which social structures are reproduced through various forms of ideology and discourse. And by knowing this, we can start to address questions concerning human emancipation and how the world is to be transformed. (shrink)

Where is language? Answers to this have attempted to 'incorporate' language in an 'extended mind', through cognition that is 'embodied', 'distributed', 'situated' or 'ecological'. Behind these concepts is a long history that this book is the first to trace. Extending across linguistics, philosophy, psychology and medicine, as well as literary and religious dimensions of the question of what language is, and where it is located, this book challenges mainstream, mind-based accounts of language. Looking at research from the Middle Ages to (...) the present day, and exploring the work of a range of scholars from Aristotle and Galen to Merleau-Ponty and Chomsky, it assesses raging debates about whether mind and language are centred in heart or brain, brain or nervous-muscular system, and whether they are innate or learned, individual or social. This book will appeal to scholars and advanced students in historical linguistics, cognitive linguistics, language evolution and the philosophy of language. (shrink)

This anthology of essays on the work of David Kaplan, a leading contemporary philosopher of language, sprang from a conference, "Themes from Kaplan," organized by the Center for the Study of Language and Information at Stanford University.

More than one third of the human brain is devoted to the processes of seeing - vision is after all the main way in which we gather information about the world. But human vision is a dynamic process during which the eyes continually sample the environment. Where most books on vision consider it as a passive activity, this book is unique in focusing on vision as an 'active' process. It goes beyond most accounts of vision where the focus is on (...) seeing, to provide an integrated account of seeing AND looking. The book starts by pointing out the weaknesses in our traditional approaches to vision and the reason we need this new approach. It then gives a thorough description of basic details of the visual and oculomotor systems necessary to understand active vision. The book goes on to show how this approach can give a new perspective on visual attention, and how the approach has progressed in the areas of visual orienting, reading, visual search, scene perception and neuropsychology. Finally, the book summarises progress by showing how this approach sheds new light on the old problem of how we maintain perception of a stable visual world. Written by two leading vision scientists, this book will be valuable for vision researchers and psychology students, from undergraduate level upwards. (shrink)

The papers in this volume were originally presented to the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy during 2007-8. Four colloquia deal directly with major works of Aristotle, while another discusses Aristotle's influence on the Stoics. Three colloquia deal with Plato, discussing the _Philebus_, _Phaedrus_ and _Republic_.

The papers in this volume were originally presented to the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy during 2007-8. Four colloquia deal directly with major works of Aristotle, while another discusses Aristotle's influence on the Stoics. Three colloquia deal with Plato, discussing the _Philebus_, _Phaedrus_ and _Republic_.

This chapter evaluates whether AI systems are or will be rights-holders, explaining the conditions under which people should recognize AI systems as rights-holders. It develops a skeptical stance toward the idea that current forms of artificial intelligence are holders of moral rights, beginning with an articulation of one of the most prominent and most plausible theories of moral rights: the Interest Theory of rights. On the Interest Theory, AI systems will be rights-holders only if they have interests or a well-being. (...) Current AI systems are not bearers of well-being, and so fail to meet the necessary condition for being rights-holders. This argument is robust against a range of different objections. However, the chapter also shows why difficulties in assessing whether future AI systems might have interests or be bearers of well-being—and so be rights-holders—raise difficult ethical challenges for certain developments in AI. (shrink)

John J. Cleary was an internationally recognised authority in ancient Greek philosophy. This volume of penetrating studies of Plato, Aristotle, and Proclus, philosophy of mathematics, and ancient theories of education, display Cleary’s range of expertise and originality of approach.

First published in 1974, J.N. Findlay's classic work on Plato has now been re-issued.

Professor Findlay in this book, originally published in 1961, set out to justify, and to some extent carry out, a ‘material value-ethic’, ie. A systematic setting forth of the ends of rational action. The book is in the tradition of Moore, Rashfall, Ross, Scheler and Hartmann though it avoids altogether dogmatic intuitive methods. It argues that an organised framework of ends of action follows from the attitude underlying our moral pronouncements, and that this framework, while allowing personal elaboration, is (...) not a matter for individual decision. The relations connecting our fundamental value-judgements with one another, and the frames of mind behind them, are not rigorously deductive but are sufficiently compelling to be called logical. Something of a ‘transcendental deduction’ of a well-ordered family for our basic heads of valuation is both possible and necessary. The work is further critical of the notion of obligation which has been extended far beyond legal contracts and understandings. The book also contains a chapter on religion. (shrink)

How far has the Darwinian revolution come? To what extent have evolutionary ideas penetrated into the social sciences and humanities? Are the “science wars” over? Or do whole blocs of disciplines face off over an unbridgeable epistemic gap? To answer questions like these, contributors to top journals in 22 disciplines were surveyed on their beliefs about human nature, culture, and science. More than 600 respondents completed the survey. Scoring patterns divided into two main sets of disciplines. Genetic influences were emphasized (...) in the evolutionary social sciences, evolutionary humanities, psychology, empirical study of the arts, philosophy, economics, and political science. Environmental influences were emphasized in most of the humanities disciplines and in anthropology, sociology, education, and women's or gender studies. Confidence in scientific explanation correlated positively with emphasizing genetic influences on behavior, and negatively with emphasizing environmental influences. Knowing the current actual landscape of belief should help scholars avoid sterile debates and ease the way toward fruitful collaborations with neighboring disciplines. (shrink)

Philosophers wanted commonsense to fight skepticism. They hypostasized and destroyed it. Commonsense is skeptical--Bound by a sense of proportion and of limitation. A scarce commodity, At times supported, At times transcended by science, Commonsense has to be taken account of by the critical-Realistic theory of science. James clerk maxwell's view of today's science as tomorrow's commonsense is the point of departure. It is wonderful but overlooks the value of the sense of proportion.

During active vision, the eyes continually scan the visual environment using saccadic scanning movements. This target article presents an information processing model for the control of these movements, with some close parallels to established physiological processes in the oculomotor system. Two separate pathways are concerned with the spatial and the temporal programming of the movement. In the temporal pathway there is spatially distributed coding and the saccade target is selected from a Both pathways descend through a hierarchy of levels, the (...) lower ones operating automatically. Visual onsets have automatic access to the eye control system via the lower levels. Various centres in each pathway are interconnected via reciprocal inhibition. The model accounts for a number of well-established phenomena in target-elicited saccades: the gap effect, express saccades, the remote distractor effect, and the global effect. High-level control of the pathways in tasks such as visual search and reading is discussed; it operates through spatial selection and search selection, which generally combine in an automated way. The model is examined in relation to data from patients with unilateral neglect. (shrink)

Wolfgang Stegmüller, the leading German philosopher of science, considers the status of scientific revolutions the central issue in the field ever since "the famous Popper-Lakatos-Kuhn discussion" of a decade and a half ago, comments on "almost all contributions to this problem", and offers his alternative solutions in a series of papers culminating with, and summarized in, his recent "A Combined Approach to Dynamics of Theories. How To Improve Historical Interpretations of Theory Change By Applying Set Theoretical Structures", published in Gerard (...) Radnitzky and Gunnar Andersson, editors, The Structure and Development of Science, issued in the Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science series, volume 59, 1979, pp. 151-86. Popper views scientific revolutions as rational and due to empirical refutations, but there are no refutations in science. Lakatos agrees and assumes that research programs are refutable and their replacements to be revolutions, but the same arguments he launches against Popper apply to him; moreover, applying his philosophy to itself makes it collapse anyway . Kuhn's view was interpreted to be one of scientific revolutions as quite irrational and as arbitrary as mob action. Stegmüller presents revolution in another interpretation of Kuhn - as non-rational, as based on hopes and value judgment but not on facts. He thinks there are big and small revolutions. And he uses his own modifications of J. D. Sneed's famous formal analysis of scientific theory to make his point. After presenting a summary of Stegmüller's ideas in our own way, which seems to us a clarification of presentation with no change of content, especially due to our stressing all differences of opinion, we apply Stegmüller's idea to itself, the way Stegmüller has done with the view of Lakatos, and with similar results. (shrink)