The aim of this paper is to take the first steps toward providing a refurbished consent theory of political authority, one that rests in part on a reconception of the relationship between the surrender of judgment and the authoritativeness of political institutions. On the standard view, whatever grounds political authority implies that one ought to surrender one's judgment to that of one's political institutions. On the refurbished view, it is the surrender of one's judgment ndash which can plausibly be considered (...) a form of consent ndash that makes political institutions practically authoritative. (shrink)

Despite many reservations, Transition to an Ordinal Metaphysics is interesting because it continues a tradition which takes the metaphysical enterprise seriously, which attempts to examine the nature and function of metaphysics, and which attempts to communicate the insights and conceptual power of what Ross terms the ordinal approach to that enterprise.

It is a well-known and documented fact that the primary influence on Dewey’s thought in its early, pre-Chicago, years was the neo-Hegelianism of his Hopkins mentor and later Michigan colleague, G. S. Morris. It was Morris’ thought that suggested to Dewey that if the world evinces any order, purposefulness, and beauty it cannot be accounted for empirically or mechanistically; it must be the expression of mind and spirit in history. Hegelianism was the first philosophy adopted by Dewey, and in a (...) sense it was his abiding vision, influential even in his mature naturalism and instrumentalism. (shrink)