Presents a collection of essays by philosophers about the television program "How I Met Your Mother," analyzing the personalities and behavior of its various characters from a moral and philosophical point of view.

The best philosophical account of human rights regards them as protections of the values we attach to human agency. The international law of human rights is embodied in a large number of declarations, conventions, covenants, charters, and judicial decisions. There are many discrepancies between the lists of human rights that emerge from these two authoritative sources. This lecture explores the significance of these discrepancies.

Russell brought three arguments forward against Meinong's theory of objects. None of them depend upon a misinterpretation of the theory as is often claimed. In particular, only one is based upon a clash between Meinong's theory and Russell's theory of descriptions, and that did not involve Russell's attributing to Meinong his own ontological assumption. The other two arguments were attempts to find internal inconsistencies in Meinong's theory. But neither was sufficient to refute the theory, though they do require some revisions, (...) viz. a trade-off between freedom of assumption and unhmited characterization. Meinong himself worked out the essentials of the required revisions. (shrink)

The paper defends Meinong's theory of objects against criticism by Reinhardt Grossmann. In particular, it is argued that Grossmann fails to show that non-existent objects may not be constituents of states of affairs and fails to provide an adequate alternative analysis of states of affairs which putatively contain nonexistent items. Grossmann, in fact, is guilty of a pervasive psychologistic misinterpretation of Meinong according to which Meinong believed that objects have all the properties with which they appear before the mind. Once (...) this error is avoided, Meinong's theory not only escapes Grossmann's criticisms but has a highdegree of plausibility. (shrink)

These lines come from the passage describing the mourning of the natural world following the death of Orpheus. A. D. Melville translates as follows:[‘ … ] and naiads wore,and Dryads too, their mourning robes of blackAnd hair dishevelled.’.

Regardless this will have the following points: if we want to solve global problems , we need to - the global ethics. The ethics can not be the last of the modern world view provided by the world view to the material - the ultimate energy as the true occasion of the universe, because the view is nihilism, the denial code of ethics is part of the universe was constructed. The ethics can not learn from the Western tradition provide nervous, (...) because the traditional occasion of neural science regarded as the ultimate truth is only one never to create the world nervous. According to this view, apart from the scientific method and with the fact that malignant evil conflict, and promote individual traditional classic can correct the flexibility to stimulate the heart, resulting in another of its special moral admonition should be universal. a global ethics of the philosophical foundation provided by Whitehead's view of the world, because the argument for God and the creation of the ultimate. I will argue the following theses: If we are to solve our global problems , we need a global ethic. Such an ethic cannot be provided by the late modern worldview, according to which matter-energy is the only ultimate reality, because this view is nihilistic, denying that moral norms belong to the fabric of the universe. Such an ethic also cannot be provided by traditional Western theism, according to which the only ultimate reality is a deity who created the world ex nihilo, because this view, besides conflicting with scientific method and the fact of evil, promotes the idea that the scriptures of one's tradition are infallibly inspired, so that its particularistic moral injunctions should be universally enforced. The philosophical foundation for a global ethic can be provided by Whitehead's worldview, with its two ultimates: God and creativity. (shrink)

A reply to Risjord's defense of the view that there is no conflict between non-Euclidean geometry and Kant's philosophy of geometry because, while the form of intuition restricts which systems of concepts may be accepted as a geometry, it does not do so uniquely ("Stud Hist Phil Sci, 21", 1990). I argue that under these circumstances it is difficult to sustain the synthetic "a priori" status of geometrical propositions. Two broad ways of attempting to do so are considered and criticized.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca was a Roman Stoic philosopher, dramatist, statesman, and advisor to the emperor Nero, all during the Silver Age of Latin literature. The Complete Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca is a fresh and compelling series of new English-language translations of his works in eight accessible volumes. Edited by world-renowned classicists Elizabeth Asmis, Shadi Bartsch, and Martha C. Nussbaum, this engaging collection restores Seneca—whose works have been highly praised by modern authors from Desiderius Erasmus to Ralph Waldo Emerson—to his (...) rightful place among the classical writers most widely studied in the humanities. _ On Benefits_, written between 56 and 64 CE, is a treatise addressed to Seneca’s close friend Aebutius Liberalis. The longest of Seneca’s works dealing with a single subject—how to give and receive benefits and how to express gratitude appropriately—_On Benefits _is the only complete work on what we now call “gift exchange” to survive from antiquity. Benefits were of great personal significance to Seneca, who remarked in one of his later letters that philosophy teaches, above all else, to owe and repay benefits well. (shrink)

The past two decades have seen an outpouring of work in legal theory that is self-consciously critical of aspects of American law and the institutions of the liberal state. In this lively volume, eminent scholars in philosophy, law, and political science respond to this recent scholarship by exploring what constitutes a "radical" critique of the law, examining such theories as critical legal studies, feminist theory and theories of "difference," and critical race theory. The authors consider whether the critiques advanced in (...) recent legal theory can truly be called radical and what form a radical critique of American law should take. Writing at the cutting edge of the critique of critical legal theory, they offer insights first on critical legal scholarship, then on feminist political and legal theory. A third group of contributions questions the radicalness of these approaches in light of their failure to challenge fundamental aspects of liberalism, while a final section focuses on current issues of legal reform through critical views on criminal punishment, including observations on rape and hate speech. Each major essay describes the underlying principles in the development of a radical legal theory and addresses unresolved questions relating to it, while accompanying commentaries present conflicting views. The resulting dialogue explores wide-ranging issues like equity, value relativism, adversarial and empathic legal advocacy, communitarianism and the social contract, impartiality and contingency, "natural" law, and corrective justice. A common thread for many of the articles is a focus on the social dimension of society and law, which finds the individualism of prevailing liberal theories too limiting. Radical Critiques of the Law is particularly unique in presenting critical and feminist approaches in one volume-along with skeptical commentary about just how radical some critiques really are. Proposing alternative critiques that embody considerably greater promise of being truly radical, it offers provocative reading for both philosophers and legal scholars by showing that many claims to radicalism are highly problematic at best. (shrink)

For a long time it was widely believed that meinong held that every object of reference had being. this has since come to be recognized as a 'horrible travesty' (findlay's phrase) of meinong's position. however, a new horrible travesty has grown up: namely, that the original misinterpretation of meinong was due to russell's early discussions of his work. while it is conceded that russell's later writings contained travesties of meinong, it is shown (using unpublished documents in the bertrand russell archives (...) as well as russell's published writings) that, in his early critical discussions of meinong, russell was fully aware that for meinong some objects had no kind of being at all. (shrink)

For a long time it was widely believed that meinong held that every object of reference had being. this has since come to be recognized as a 'horrible travesty' (findlay's phrase) of meinong's position. however, a new horrible travesty has grown up: namely, that the original misinterpretation of meinong was due to russell's early discussions of his work. while it is conceded that russell's later writings contained travesties of meinong, it is shown (using unpublished documents in the bertrand russell archives (...) as well as russell's published writings) that, in his early critical discussions of meinong, russell was fully aware that for meinong some objects had no kind of being at all. (shrink)

A century after ‘On Denoting’ was published, the debate it initiated continues to rage. On the one hand, there is a mass of new historical scholarship, about both Russell and Meinong, which has not circulated very far beyond specialist scholars. On the other hand, there are continuing problems and controversies concerning contemporary Russellian and Meinongian theories, many of them involving issues that simply did not occur to the original protagonists. This work provides an overview of the latest historical scholarship on (...) the two philosophers as well as detailed accounts of some of the problems facing the current incarnations of their theories. (shrink)

This book takes a genuinely new spiritual stance reflecting the emergence of a post-modern science and differing from the relativistic nihilism that calls itself postmodern but is really modernism extended to its limit. Based on a direct experience of reality as divine, this postmodern spirituality transcends modernity's individualism and patriarchy, its forced choices between dualism and materialism, anthropocentrism and relativism, supernaturalism and atheism, intolerance and nihilism. Bringing moral and ethical values back into rational discourse, this book provides a critique of (...) various aspects of modern society--political, economic, social, agricultural, and technological aspects. This criticism, informed by the postmodern worldview, points toward a more satisfying form of personal existence and a sustainable form of global order. (shrink)

Mommsen invented the notion that the ancient sources provide clear evidence for placing the pre-Sullan laws affecting the iudicia publica in two distinct categories, i.e. laws affecting courts in general and laws affecting one court. Fraccaro demolished it, arguing that the term lex iudiciaria had no such precise meaning in the ancient authors and that all the laws to which it was applied, before the Lex Aurelia of 70, were, in fact, leges repetundarum.