Panpsychism is the view that every concrete and unified thing has some form of phenomenal consciousness or experience. It is an age-old doctrine, which, to the surprise of many, has recently taken on new life. In philosophy of mind, it has been put forth as a simple and radical solution to the mind–body problem (Chalmers 1996, 2003;Strawson 2006; Nagel 1979, 2012). In metaphysics and philosophy of science, it has been put forth as a solution to the problem of accounting for (...) the intrinsic nature of the physical itself (Strawson 2006, Seager 2006). In this thesis, I show that panpsychism can also be defended on the basis of an argument from our (arguable) acquaintance with the nature of causation in agency. This argument has made frequent appearances throughout the history of philosophy, with philosophers such as Leibniz, Schopenhauer and James, and I construct and defend an updated version of it. Furthermore, I offer a solution to the combination problem: how can complex (human and animal-type) consciousness result from simple (fundamental particle-type) consciousness? This is generally regarded as the most serious problem facing contemporary panpsychism. I propose that mental combination can be construed as kind causal process culminating in a fusion, and show how this avoids the main difficulties with accounting for mental combination. (shrink)

Temporal Logic: From Ancient Ideas to Artificial Intelligence deals with the history of temporal logic as well as the crucial systematic questions within the field. The book studies the rich contributions from ancient and medieval philosophy up to the downfall of temporal logic in the Renaissance. The modern rediscovery of the subject, which is especially due to the work of A. N. Prior, is described, leading into a thorough discussion of the use of temporal logic in computer science and the (...) understanding of natural language. Temporal Logic: From Ancient Ideas to Artificial Intelligence thus interweaves linguistic, philosophical and computational aspects into an informative and inspiring whole. (shrink)

Attempts have been made to prove God's non-existence. Often this takes the form of an appeal to the so-called Argument from Evil: if God were to exist, then he would not permit as much suffering in the world as there actually is. Hence the fact that there is so much suffering constitutes evidence for God's non-existence. In this essay I propose a variation which I shall call ‘The Argument from Non-belief’. Its basic idea is that if God were to exist, (...) then he would not permit as much non-belief in the world as there actually is. Hence the fact that there is so much non-belief constitutes evidence for God's non-existence. (shrink)

For more than fifty years, Sterling M. McMurrin served as one of the preeminent intellectual voices of the LDS community. From his beginnings as an Institute of Religion instructor to U.S. Commissioner of Education, and from a professor of philosophy to U.S. Envoy to Iran, he showed by example how personal and institutional morality can be defended.In a series of candid discussions with Jack Newell, McMurrin reveals his ability to reconcile freedom and conscience. In a spirit of repartee and friendship, (...) writes Boyer Jarvis in the foreword, Newell probes, challenges, and constantly draws McMurrin out as he... reflects upon his wide-ranging ideas and experiences. Rich in insight and humor, this remarkable dialogue captures the sweep and depth of McMurrin's thoughts as Newell engages him in discussing his approaches to philosophy, education, and religion.Among the qualities that characterized McMurrin's life and mind, explains Newell, perhaps the most notable is the freedom with which he has spoken his views on both the sacred and the profane. His intellectual integrity -- coupled as it almost always is with his humane instincts and innate fairness -- has simultaneously confounded and earned the respect of critics. (shrink)

This book brings together an account of the structure of time with an account of our language and thought about time. It is a wide-ranging examination of recent issues in metaphysics, philosophy of language, and the philosophy of science and presents a compelling picture of the relationship of human beings to the spatiotemporal world.

The aim of this paper is to provide a conceptual framework that will help in understanding and evaluating, along social and ethical lines, the issue of killing day-old male chicks and two alternative directions of responsible innovations to solve this issue. The following research questions are addressed: Why is the killing of day-old chicks morally problematic? Are the proposed alternatives morally sound? To what extent do the alternatives lead to responsible innovation? The conceptual framework demonstrates clearly that there is a (...) moral “lock-in”, and why the killing of day-old chicks is indeed an issue. Furthermore, it is shown that both alternative directions address some important objections with regard to the killing of day-old chicks, but that they also raise new dilemmas. It also becomes clear that the framework enables and secures anticipation, reflection, deliberation with and responsiveness to stakeholders, the four dimensions of responsible innovation, in a structured way. (shrink)

In general, there are two main approaches to settling the alleged conflict between religion and science. On the first approach, one argues that there is not even the possibility of such a conflict, since the uses of religious utterances are sufficiently different from those of scientific ones to constitute them a distinct logical type. Thus, if religion appears to conflict with science, either this is merely an appearance, or else one of them, at least, is also performing the function of (...) the other, in which case their conflict is really either a scientific conflict or a religious conflict. In no case, however, can the truth of a scientific utterance be any reason for inferring the falsity of a religious one, and much less can it be any reason for entertaining doubts about the religious utterance's logical propriety. (shrink)

This book is based on Professor Franck's highly acclaimed Hague Academy General Course. In it he offers a compelling view of the future of international legal reasoning and legal theory. The author offers a critical analysis of the prescriptive norms and institutions of modern international law and argues that international law has the capacity to advance, in practice, the abstract social values shared by the community of states and persons. This book is both thought-provoking and original and as such is (...) essential reading for students of international law and legal theory. (shrink)

Jacob (history, New School for Social Research) proposes that the science of the 17th and 18th centuries was eventually accepted because it was made compatible with larger political and economic interests. A celebration of the recently concluded 33 volume edition of the Collected works of John Stuart Mill, produced over a period of nearly 30 years, the last 20 under the guiding genius (and hand) of general editor Robson. Following a tributary history of the project itself, essays cover Mill's career (...) as a thinker and as a bureaucrat and public servant, exploring the effects of the various milieu--domestic, political, administrative, religious, and cultural--in which he moved. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

The claim that faith is creative of its objects resides primarily in the conviction that the richness of the life of faith demands that it shall be subject only to its own laws. Its very diversity of expression is indication that it should not be fettered or confined by a restrictive model that outlaws the marvellously unexpected quality of its explorations. Yet that metaphor itself suggests caution; for exploration is necessarily of a territory that the explorer does not bring into (...) being by his voyage or journey. His travels have their own richness; thus Shackleton's famous boat journey has its place in the records of human endurance. But travel assumes a ground to be traversed, and the journey of Ernest Shackleton and the men who sailed with him was not conjured out of nothing, but an achievement made necessary as response to a situation that was itself in no sense of the explorer's contriving. Yet of course we are impatient with the suggestion that it was a mere, largely passive reaction to natural emergency, and only marginally regarded as humanly creative. (shrink)

Malthus' theological ideas were most clearly presented in the final two chapters of the first edition of his Essay on the Principle of Population. They can be classified under eight main headings. He admitted that the pressure of population causes much misery and evil, but he did not accept that this in any way impugned the benevolence of the Creator. He situated the population problem within the general context of the problem of evil, and argued that population pressure is permitted (...) and ordained by the Creator as a means of stimulating mankind to attain a higher good. He opposed the traditional Christian notion that this world is a state of trial, with population pressure being one aspect of that trial. He believed that this notion of a state of trial is inconsistent with the notion of an omniscient Creator, and that it is therefore necessary to reject the notion of a state of trial in order to save the notion of Divine omniscience. Instead of viewing this world as a state of trial, he viewed it ‘as the mighty process of God, not for the trial, but for the creation and formation of mindr. This notion of the growth of mind is the central aspect of Malthus' theology. He expressed doubts about the omnipotence of the Creator, arguing that God did not have the power to create perfect human beings instantaneously, but required a certain process or a certain time to form beings with ‘exalted qualities of mind’. Malthus seemed to argue that Divine omnipotence and Divine benevolence are incompatible – because a truly benevolent creator would not have subjected mankind to the miseries of this world if He had the power to create a perfect world. Malthus was prepared to sacrifice the notion of Divine omnipotence in order to save the notion of Divine benevolence. He saw the principle of population as part of the Divine plan for the replenishment of the earth, i.e. its full cultivation and peopling. His attitude to worldly pleasures and comforts was distinctly unpuritanical, and leaning towards hedonism. His ethics were world-enhancing, rather than world-denying and retreatist. He gave a naturalistic interpretation of the Biblical doctrine of original sin, describing original sin as the original state of torpor and sluggishness of every human being at the moment of birth. The purpose of the principle of population, and of the other difficulties encountered in life, is to stimulate man to raise himself out of this original state. Finally, Malthus' theology included the doctrine of annihilationism , according to which eternal life is not an essential part of the human soul at birth, but is granted only to those who attain during life on earth an adequate growth of mind. The others are, at death, not condemned to eternal suffering, but are annihilated, body and soul. (shrink)

In his philosophy, William of Ockham (1285-1347) offered an important and detailed response to the classical argument from the truth of a statement regarding the future to the necessity (unpreventability) of the statement. In this paper, Ockham’s solution and the possible formalisation of it are discussed in terms of modern tense and modal logic. In particular, the famous branching time formalisation suggested by A.N. Prior (1914-19) is discussed. Weaknesses and problems with this suggestion are pointed out, and an alternative formalisation (...) of Ockham’s solution without the use of branching time is presented. (shrink)

A selection of important writings which together suggest that legal philosophy is the nerve of legal reasoning.

This book is a specialized monograph on interpolation and definability, a notion central in pure logic and with significant meaning and applicability in all areas where logic is applied, especially computer science, artificial intelligence, logic programming, philosophy of science and natural language. Suitable for researchers and graduate students in mathematics, computer science and philosophy, this is the latest in the prestigous world-renowned Oxford Logic Guides, which contains Michael Dummet's Elements of intuitionism, J. M. Dunn and G. Hardegree's Algebraic Methods in (...) Philosophical Logic, H. Rott's Change, Choice and Inference: A Study of Belief Revision and Nonmonotonic Reasoning, P. T. Johnstone's Sketches of an Elephant: A Topos Theory Compendium: Volumes 1 and 2, and David J. Pym and Eike Ritter's Reductive Logic and Proof Search: Proof theory, semantics and control. (shrink)

"M. F. Simone Roberts's A Poetics of Being-Two is animated by a lively and engaging voice, drawing readers in with a sense of serious purpose working (delightfully) in tandem with a sense of humor. Roberts's aesthetics and her close readings of Yves Bonnefoy, St-John Perse, and Jorie Graham clearly demonstrate the literary effectiveness of Irigarayan sexual difference as an analytic trope, even as they emphasize the philosophical and political possibilities sexual difference opens up for feminism, environmentalism, and all levels of (...) contemporary cultural critique and activism."—Gail M. Schwab, Hofstra University -/- In An Ethics of Sexual Difference, Irigaray calls for a new poetics in the sense of both art and life. Rather than a critique from within philosophy, A Poetics of Being-Two tests Irigaray's ethics by extending it to other sites of cultural production. Where Irigaray's method finds stirrings and repressions of sexual difference in philosophy, this project explores that tension in poetics. Building from Irigaray's ethics, the book describes a poetics of being-two as concerns gendered subjectivity in literary poetics and then traces the on-going emergence of a poetics of being-two in the post-symbolist poetic tradition. Irigaray scholars will be interested in the sustained interpolation of Irigaray's ethical concepts as principles for a critical aesthetics and in their hermeneutic application in reading a literary tradition. Readers in comparative literature will find the first sustained feminist engagements with the major French poets Bonnefoy and Perse and an elucidation of their influence on the Pulitzer Prize winning poet Jorie Graham. (shrink)

Malthus did not leave us with a systematic treatment of colonization, but from remarks scattered throughout his publications and correspondence it is possible to assemble a fairly coherent account of his views on the advantages and disadvantages of colonies, and on the reasons why some have failed and others succeeded. Included in these scattered remarks are some comparisons between his own views on colonies and those of Adam Smith. The question of the relationship between Malthus and Adam Smith is a (...) rather complex and subtle one, and cannot be given the full consideration it deserves in one short paper. But, as a general summary, it can be said that Malthus had a high regard for Smith and considered himself a follower and disciple of Smith, by contrast with Ricardo, James Mill, and McCulloch etc., whom he considered as exponents of a ‘New System of Political Economy”. His own Principles of Political Economy was conceived as a collection of ‘tracts or essays”, not as a new systematic treatise replacing the Wealth of Nations, Joseph Gamier in his article ‘Malthus” in the Dictionnaire de l'Economie Politique, 1852, saw that the title of the Principles was in fact a misnomer: ‘Malgré son titre, le livre sur les Principes n'est point un traité complet, mais seulement une collection de dissertations.” In what was probably intended as a criticism of Ricardo's Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, 1817, Malthus stated that the ‘present period … seems to be unpropitious to the publication of a new systematic treatise on political economy”, and, referring to Smith's work, stated that ‘the treatise which we already possess is still of the very highest value”. Nevertheless, despite professing his affiliation, Malthus did not hesitate to criticize Smith when he disagreed with him. He recognized that the Wealth of Nations contained ‘controverted points” and that it would require some ‘additions … which the more advanced stage of the science has rendered necessary”. (shrink)

The purpose of this article should become plain during the reading of it, but perhaps some prior explanation is needed. Almost from the beginning of my study of the paṭiccasamuppāda I have had the notion that it could not have come into existence in the form the usual twelvefold formulation takes. For reasons which I try to make clear this twelvefold formulation is not a satisfactory statement of what it is supposed to explain, namely the reasons for each individual's continued (...) rebirths. I feel - and sadly I have to emphasize, before someone else does it for me, that in the final analysis I am relying more or less on intuition for my attitude towards the twelvefold formulation - that if one person alone had been responsible for the usually referred to formulation, and especially if that one person had been the Buddha, then those anomalies that now prevail would never have existed. (shrink)

Problem: The inclusion of the observer into scientific observation entails a vicious circle of having to observe the observer as dependent on observation. Second-order science has to clarify how its underlying circularity can be scientifically conceived. Method: Essayistic and conceptual analysis, sporadically illustrated with agent-based experiments. Results: Second-order science - implying science in general - is fundamentally and ineluctably circular. Implications - The circularity of second-order science asks for analytical methods able to cope with phenomena of complex causation and “synchronous (...) asynchrony,” such as tools for analyzing non-linearly interacting dynamics, decentralized, clustered networks and in general, systems of complex interacting components. Key Words: Observer dependency, second-order science, complexity, information, intentionality. (shrink)

Self-esteem and self-respect refer to a way through which one relates to oneself, although they can be used as a synonymous expressions. On the basis of long tradition, since Kant ties self-respect to morality, all reference to self-respect has to be based on morality. Self-respect has a deeper root than self-esteem which is used to indicate a simple feeling of satisfaction with oneself without any value meaning. Self-respect is not a duty in itself but rather an acknowledgment of moral law (...) which means the recognition of all moral duties. In Kantian ethics self-esteem comes from duty to treat oneself considering mankind in his person. From self-respect derive duties to oneself which are the foundation of duties to other people. Honesty has been understood as a commitment to find the truth and to live according to it. Honesty as a virtue means refusing any falsification of facts. Honesty is the most remarkable expression of self-respect and other-respect, without any concessions to self-deception or other-deception. The aim of the paper is to establish the differences between self-respect and self-esteem and to relate the two with the virtue of honesty. (shrink)

Scott Soames argues that interpreted in the light of Quine's holistic verificationism, Quine's thesis of underdetermination leads to a contradiction. It is contended here that if we pay proper attention to the evolution of Quine's thinking on the subject, particularly his criterion of theory individuation, Quine's thesis of underdetermination escapes Soames' charge of paradoxicality.

Anyone teaching in theological schools or university departments of religion in the West should be struck by two related factors which seem to influence the attitude and thinking, of today's students. The first is the preoccupation with ‘experience’, while the second is the openness toward Eastern religious insights as well as their meditation techniques. In this paper, the writer intends to reflect on these two factors both as the causes and the effects of the significant change that has taken place (...) in Western man's world of meaning in our time. (shrink)

The first comprehensive introduction to cover the entire span of Kierkegaard’s authorship. Explores how the two strands of his writing—religious discourses and pseudonymous literary creations—influenced each other Accompanies the reader chronologically through all the philosopher’s major works, and integrates his writing into his biography Employs a unique “how to” approach to help the reader discover individual texts on their own and to help them closely examine Kierkegaard’s language Presents the literary strategies employed in Kierkegaard’s work to give the reader insight (...) into subtext. (shrink)