We argue that current discussions of criteria for actual causation are ill-posed in several respects. (1) The methodology of current discussions is by induction from intuitions about an infinitesimal fraction of the possible examples and counterexamples; (2) cases with larger numbers of causes generate novel puzzles; (3) “neuron” and causal Bayes net diagrams are, as deployed in discussions of actual causation, almost always ambiguous; (4) actual causation is (intuitively) relative to an initial system state since state changes are relevant, but (...) most current accounts ignore state changes through time; (5) more generally, there is no reason to think that philosophical judgements about these sorts of cases are normative; but (6) there is a dearth of relevant psychological research that bears on whether various philosophical accounts are descriptive. Our skepticism is not directed towards the possibility of a correct account of actual causation; rather, we argue that standard methods will not lead to such an account. A different approach is required. Once upon a time a hungry wanderer came into a village. He filled an iron cauldron with water, built a fire under it, and dropped a stone into the water. “I do like a tasty stone soup” he announced. Soon a villager added a cabbage to the pot, another added some salt and others added potatoes, onions, carrots, mushrooms, and so on, until there was a meal for all. (shrink)

All these specialist aspects of one life are different facets of the intellectual diamond which scintillates in the huge quarry of The Bertrand Russell Archives at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario. This is the quintessential man, the bundle of contradictions passionately dedicated to intellect, at times carrying the rational argument to irrational extremes; the natural-born emotional adventurer forever hampered by orphaned youth and too-early marriage. This Russell in the round is greater than the sum of his constituent parts, a man of (...) epic proportions, struggling through a lifetime beset with frustration and near-disaster; in youth the constitutional sceptic, in old age the sometimes splendid figure with "courage never to submit or yield.". (shrink)

Words have determinable sense only within a complex of unstated assumptions, and all interpretation must therefore go beyond the given material. This book addresses what is man's place in the Aristotelian world. It also describes man's abilities and prospects in managing his life, and considers how far Aristotle's treatment of time and history licenses the sort of dynamic interpretation of his doctrines that have been given. The ontological model that explains much of Aristotle's conclusions and methods is one of life-worlds, (...) in which the material universe of scientific myth is no more than an abstraction from lived reality, not its transcendent ground. (shrink)

The Man Who Tapped the Secrets of the Universe (1946) by Glenn Clark is a work of biography and philosophy, exploring the life and ideas of the versatile artist, writer, and philosopher Walter Russell. New Thought writer and professor Glenn Clark (b. 1882, d. 1956) was a fervent believer in the power of prayer and the Light of God to reveal the secrets of the universe. As he explains in Chapter One: We Go Seeking, he had been searching (...) "...for a man who has discovered the universal law which lies back of the Sermon on the Mount, and who consciously uses that law with full awareness of its meaning, and full obedience to its principles." He believed that he had found that man in Walter Russell. Walter Russell (b. 1871, d. 1963) was a man who seemed preternaturally adept at everything he wished to try. After being removed from school at the age of nine and sent to work at a dry goods store, he worked a number of low-paying jobs. But he had "absolute faith...that anything can come to one who trusts to the unlimited help of the Universal Intelligence that is within so long as one works within the law and always gives more to others than they expect, and does it cheerfully and courteously." Throughout his life, he found success as a musician, painter, sculptor, writer, ice skater, philosopher, and lecturer. He was commissioned to sculpt a 28-figure Mark Twain Memorial just a few years after he began sculpting. And in 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked him to sculpt the Four Freedoms Monument. He designed several buildings in New York City and invented the cooperative ownership model (aka the co-op). And most of these pursuits were undertaken with no formal education. By the time Clark met with Russell, he had achieved success in his artistic, literary, architectural, physical, and even scientific pursuits. So when Clark was searching for a man who knew the secrets of the universe and was referred to Russell on more than one occasion, he knew that he had to meet him. Large portions of the book, particularly in the chapters We Meet the Man, We Meet the Man of Action, and The Five Laws of Success, are presented as an interview with Russell, giving us insight into his beliefs straight from the source. "Every successful man or great genius has three particular qualities in common," he says. "The most conspicuous of these is that they all produce a prodigious amount of work. The second is that they never know fatigue. And the third is that their minds grow more brilliant as they grow older, instead of less brilliant. Great men's lives begin at forty, where the mediocre man's life ends. The genius remains an ever-flowing fountain of creative achievement until the very last breath he draws." At the heart of Russell's philosophy is a belief that every man "has consummate genius within him. Some appear to have it more than others only because they are aware of it more than others are, and the awareness or unawareness of it is what makes each one of them into masters or holds them down to mediocrity..." To know that we have genius inside of us, and to have absolute faith in our inner voice and in the Universe, is to unlock that genius. Through the story of Russell's brilliant life and his Five Personal Laws of Success (humility, reverence, inspiration, deep purpose, and joy), the reader gets a plain-language example of genius-in-action. He demonstrated his great energy, lack of fatigue, and "ever-flowing fountain" of genius throughout his long life, maintaining his creativity until his death in 1963 at the age of 92. (shrink)

Words have determinable sense only within a complex of unstated assumptions, and all interpretation must therefore go beyond the given material. This book addresses what is man's place in the Aristotelian world. It also describes man's abilities and prospects in managing his life, and considers how far Aristotle's treatment of time and history licenses the sort of dynamic interpretation of his doctrines that have been given. The ontological model that explains much of Aristotle's conclusions and methods is one of life-worlds, (...) in which the material universe of scientific myth is no more than an abstraction from lived reality, not its transcendent ground. (shrink)

This book presents a straightforward account of disease, the problems of practice, and the moral, legal and financial questions in the field.

“Against nature man can claim no right, but once society is established, poverty immediately takes the form of a wrong done to one class by another.”.

The author examines "the prelude" by wordsworth in order to illuminate precisely how wordsworth believed the spirit, Particularly as it manifested itself in the works of nature, Could influence and shape the mind of man. (staff).

A rather cheeky philosopher, I think it was Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, said that there were a lot of things in heaven and on earth that were not in our textbooks. If this simpleminded man, who as known was out of his mind, so sneered at our textbooks, then one might answer him, consoled: Good, but there are also a lot of things in our textbooks that are neither in heaven nor on earth.

Technology, according to Derry and Williams's Short History, ‘comprises all that bewilderingly varied body of knowledge and devices by which man progressively masters his natural environment’. Their casual, and unconscious, sexism is not unrelated to my present topic. Women enter the story as spinners, burden bearers and, at long last, typists. ‘The tying of a bundle on the back or the dragging of it along upon the outspread twigs of a convenient branch are contributions [and by implication the only contributions] (...) to technology which probably had a feminine origin’. Everything else was done by men, and what they did was master, conquer, and control. It is also significant that Derry and Williams take it for granted that ‘the men [sic] of the Old Stone Age, few and scattered, developed little to help them to conquer their environment’: until the advent of agriculture, and settled civilization, there was, they say, neither leisure nor surplus. (shrink)

On the text and translation of the De mysteriis -- Iamblichus the man -- The De mysteriis : a defence of theurgy, and an answer to Porphyry's letter to Anebo -- Iamblichus's knowledge of Egyptian religion and mythology -- The nature and contents of De mysteriis -- Iamblichus, De mysteriis : text and translation.

Few diagnoses present as great a challenge to one's life as cancer. Many men each year are confronted with a diagnosis of early stage prostate cancer and find themselves making decisions about treatment in the face of side effects that present often devastating effects, including problems controlling one's urine and an inability to perform sexually. In this paper, we explore the narratives of men who, having chosen and undergone treatment for early stage prostate cancer, are living with the consequences. Faced (...) with what Charmaz calls an ‘identity dilemma’, how do these men linguistically construct their identities in the face of challenges to their bodily, personal, and social integrity? Drawing upon theories of social languages and Discourses, we examine how men linguistically resolve the identity dilemmas they encounter and in turn construct an identity in response to a question about the quality of their lives in the face of the adverse event of prostate cancer. We present an analysis of the interview narratives of two men and show how they ‘re-collage’ an identity in the face of fundamental changes in their functioning as men. We argue that these men draw upon alternative discourses to construct themselves as whole, competent, and ‘no less a man'. (shrink)

Do we have the right to defend ourselves against innocent aggressors? If I amattacked in a lift by a knife‐wielding lunatic, may I kill or maim him to protect my own life? On one view the insane man’s plight is his bad luck and I am under no obligation to let it be transferred to me. On the opposing view it is my bad luck to be under attack and I have no right to transfer it to an innocent man (...) by killing him to protect myself. It is perhaps becauseneither of these opposing viewpoints is obviously preferable to the other that there is no consensus about the question. Nevertheless we can find considerations for favouring the first view over the second. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Timothy Clark HEIDEGGER, DERRIDA, AND THE GREEK LIMITS OF PHILOSOPHY The question "What is philosophy?" is not simply one question among others. Its status involves the questioner at once in a series of peculiar problems. The question "What is chemistry?" (for instance) would surely seem to admit of an answer. Even if there were a dispute about the wording of a definition, the general region to which the (...) question directs us seems relatively secure. "What is chemistry?" asks about the essence of a physical science and, as a consequence, the questioner will be situated in the realm of the philosophy of science. "What is philosophy?" however, can make no such leap. A "philosophy of philosophy " is simply tantamount to more philosophy. The question of philosophy 's essence can only be posed within philosophy. Moreover, would not this very question of an essence ofphilosophy be determined in advance by an understanding of "essence" by philosophy, which thus seems remorselessly to encompass the borders of that which might try to enclose it? The mode of questioning on the (impossible?) borders of philosophical discourse is the site of Martin Heidegger's so-called overcoming of Western Metaphysics. More recently, Jacques Derrida has intensified the mode of borderline questioning, engaging himself in both a radicalization and displacement of Heideggerian questions. Derrida writes, in "Violence and Metaphysics" (1964), "The entirety of philosophy is conceived on the basis of its Greek source. As is well known, this amounts neither to an occidentalism, nor a historicism. It is simply that the founding concepts of philosophy are primarily Greek, and it would not be possible to philosophize, or to speak philosophically, outside this medium."1 Derrida continues to discuss Husserlian phenomenology and the thought of Heidegger in terms of their insistence on 75 76Philosophy and Literature conceiving philosophy according to its Greek impetus. If something is to transpire in the traditions of philosophy, its origin "will have to be summoned forth and adhered to as rigorously as possible" (p. 81). The specific "event" to be attended to will be what Derrida, after Heidegger, describes as the determination ofbeing as presence. This, it is argued, is constitutive in respect of philosophy and all the regional disciplines it governs. Needless to say "the determination of being as presence" demands considerable explication. The Greek nature of philosophy is discussed by Heidegger in the lecture, "What is Philosophy?"2 The question raises the problem of philosophy 's relation to its limits. Tb ask the question "What is Philosophy?" is not to step outside thought to some "metaphilosophical" realm. It is to be already standing in Greece. What is specifically Greek and decisive, in fact, is the very mode of the question ''What is XT' itself: "But not only what is in question —philosophy— is Greek in origin, but how we question, the manner in which we question even today, is Greek. We ask, "what is that—" (p. 35). The Greek mode of questioning something as to its whatness {ti estin?, "what is it?") has now become thoroughly familiar. Its novelty and Greek source have become obscured: "It is this form of questioning which Socrates, Plato, and Aristode developed. They ask, for example, What is the beautiful? What is knowledge?'..." (p. 37). Heidegger's characterization of the question, ti estin?, as decisively Greek must be distinguished from Edmund Husserl's apparently similar description of the fundamentally Greek nature of philosophy. Husserl characterized the theoretical relation to the world as a legacy which has largely determined Western Europe and, indeed, the modern world itself, a determination most palpable in the proliferation of the various sciences. The theoretical attitude is one of pure curiosity towards entities : "man becomes the disinterested spectator, overseer of the world, he becomes a philosopher."3 Moreover, the devotion to pure theoria builds up a body of disinterested knowledge in which others may participate and to which they may add. A universal culture, a project traversing individual and national difference, comes into being. The Greek philosopher embodied, for the first time, a type ofhumanity and culture to which the European world still belongs. Husserl thus underlines the huge stakes in so little a question as the "What is it?"//i estin... (shrink)

Preface.--Novius organum.--The world as habit.--Cosmogony.--Vertebrate evolution.--On phyletic affinities.--The difficulties of evolution.--"Extruding the subject."--Affection and conation.--The illusion of immediate experience.--The biogenic psychoses.--The social psychosis.--The nature of man.

This paper is devoted to the task of exploring just what there is in man's nature which makes it possible for him to be open to religious experience, to be positively disposed to receive it. By ‘natural’ here I mean only that which all men are in fact endowed with when they enter this present world of human history before they enter into any particular religious context. Hence I am not going to get involved in the difficult theological controversy as (...) to whether this initial endowment includes only what is due to human nature as a created nature or also some supernatural extra gift of God as orienting man in a special way towards himself in this existential historical order, which could have been otherwise. What he begins life with in the present historical order I shall call natural, whatever its origin.What I mean by ‘religious experience’ must be left somewhat vague, so as to include its many varieties. Let us describe it roughly as any direct existential awareness of the presence or activity of an ultimate, absolute, transcendent dimension of reality, especially the more intense forms of unitive awareness of this Transcendent which have traditionally been called ‘mystical experience’. Before beginning our exploration, let me stress that my purpose here is not to establish or validate that there is such a thing as authentic religious experience. I presuppose that as known or accepted from elsewhere, at least as a hypothesis for discussion. (shrink)

Confusing modern poetry with philosophy is a common fault of literary criticism. Yet, the work of some poets can benefit critically from philosophical interpretations. Wallace Stevens is a poet who manifested an abiding interest in philosophy. His poems consistently display, in both their syntax and modulation of thought, philosophical parallels. Stevens’ dominant mode of thought is phenomenological. This can be shown by analyzing parallels between phenomenological methodology and Stevens’ poetry. Particularly three poems---“Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” (1917), “The (...) Snow Man” (1921), and “The Latest Freed Man” (1938)---embody, respectively, the poem as doing phenomenology, the poem as a description of the phenomenological mind, and the poem as a portrait of the phenomenologist. (shrink)

What does it mean to be black in America, to exist as a dark physical body, a "colored" voice, a stigmatized being in a society that sees, hears, and acts according to a set of bleaching assumptions? Versions of that question have echoed across our historical landscape ever since James-town, but rarely have they figured so forcibly as in the 1890s, when the Supreme Court upheld Ferguson over Plessy, Jim Crow laws spread through the South, degenerationists elaborated the "problem of (...) the Negro," imperialists hoisted the "white man's burden" of "little brown brothers" abroad, and racial lynching peaked at an all-time high that incited a national scandal. Any radical hopes for Reconstruction after the Civil War had long since vanished by the years of the fin de siècle. And a century later, the gains of a "Second Reconstruction" movement for civil rights have likewise eroded, with unparalleled "hypersegregation" accentuating new patterns of black poverty, unemployment, family disintegration, homelessness, and addiction.1 Being black, in other words, has meant—and, to a considerable degree, continues to mean—being excluded from white society, white prerogatives, even white discourse itself, in a process whose effects insidiously appear to legitimate the very causes that produce them. 1. C. Vann Woodward first warned of this unsettling repetition of nineteenth-century patterns in his 1965 suggestion that the civil rights movement might constitute a "Second Reconstruction" . In his recent reassessment of the troubling implications of that prediction, he notes how ghetto speech is growing more distinct from standard English: "The result is a vicious circle in which the longer blacks are made victims of the white stereotypes that foster hypersegregation, the more they appear to conform to the stereotypes that were used to justify segregation in the first place, and the deeper victims sink in isolation" . Lee Clark Mitchell, professor of English at Princeton University, is the author of Witnesses to a Vanishing America: The Nineteenth-Century Response and Determined Fictions: American Literary Naturalism . He is currently working on the formula western in a book tentatively titled "Writing Westward: Imagining America beyond the Frontier.". (shrink)

William Kirby and William Spence’s Introduction to Entomology is generally recognized as one of the founding texts of entomological science in English. This essay examines the ideological allegiances of the coauthors of the Introduction. In particular, it analyzes the ideological implications of their divergent opinions on animal instinct. Different vocational pursuits shaped each man’s natural history. Spence, a political economist, pursued fact‐based science that was shorn of references to religion. Kirby, a Tory High Churchman, placed revelation at the very heart (...) of his natural history. His strong commitment to partisan sectarianism cautions against reference to a homogeneous “natural theology” that was an agent of mediation. Fissures in the “common intellectual context” reached beyond the clash between natural theologians and radical anatomists to render the intellectual edifice of natural theology structurally less sound for the future. (shrink)

Sir Richard Phillips was a London-born author and publisher of educational textbooks who used a vast array of pseudonyms, including that of Reverend C. C. Clarke. Phillips' marketing techniques - the systematic borrowing of famous authors' names for his textbooks, along with the multiplication of easy to produce related educational products - were key to his success. No doubt meant as an accessible encyclopaedia, this 40th edition of 1834 - attributed to Phillips himself - is a surprisingly vast and heterogeneous (...) survey, which compiles natural and man-made curiosities across the world. The Himalayas and Mont Blanc share a chapter with the Peak of Derbyshire; famous rivers lead to mysterious subterranean forests; and Stonehenge is closely followed by St Paul's cathedral. Halfway between reference book and textbook, this richly illustrated volume is a fascinating catalogue of the world's wonders as perceived in the early nineteenth century. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Arrows of Apollo BROOKE CLARK To Aachchi If thou beest he; But O how fallen, how changed From him who in the happy realms of light Clothed with transcendent brightness didst outshine Myriads though bright— —Milton, Paradise Lost i. Today, slumped at my desk, I glimpsed the sun. I wasn’t certain how long I had sat facing my own face’s dim reflection in my computer screen—chin ringed (...) with fat, the sharp-lined contours of my youth long gone, my cheekbones hidden, my bright gaze gone flat— and then—there—on the left side of my face a glow my slightest movement would erase. How that stippling brought me back to life: I felt like I was walking once again through woods where sunlight touched the trees in leaf. I felt warmth prickle up beneath my skin as though the flesh responded to the brief caress of light which brought hope rushing in, as though Apollo had reached down and laid his brilliant fingertips on what he’d made. A sharp, metallic rattle cut the air; Helen had stood up to close the blinds— Helen, too devoid of soul to care that some of us might greet the sun as friends. Her only comment was, “Jeez, what a glare!” arion 27.2 fall 2019 Sweet moments often come to such harsh ends: some people are too coarse for fragile joys, and spoil light with darkness, peace with noise. Helen was such a woman: lumpy, heavy, seemingly formed exclusively of fat, barely mobile yet constantly sweaty, like some malevolent Buddha, she sat and meditated acts of petty cruelty; each time she closed the blinds I heard, “Take that!” in their harsh snap, and felt as if she knew I longed for light, so wouldn’t let it through. Another bitter, desk-bound endomorph (although she would have seemed an Aphrodite to those who carved the Venus of Willendorf), and fated by her own obesity to be struck down and swiftly carried off by a sudden, massive coronary, in line at some all-you-can-eat buffet— she wasn’t worth my notice anyway, although she kept impinging on my sight, but then I caught the slight trace of a smirk when I turned back towards the vanished light (instead of going quietly back to work) and said, “The blinds were fine—it’s not too bright for me—without a window, it feels dark.” Helen snorted: “No thanks—too hot out there. I’m roastin’ like a turkey over here.” Who would not hate the court from which there lies no avenue or hope for an appeal? Her desk was on the coveted window side while mine sat boxed against an inside wall, and that gave Helen power over blinds and sunlight—that was office protocol. 64 the arrows of apollo I longed to feel Apollo’s fingertips but this slug-goddess ruled in grim eclipse. I felt like Milton’s Satan when he fell, plumbing so great a depth from such a height and measuring the lowest pits of Hell, prostrate, near dead—I sat, deprived of light, walled in by my grey-sided cubicle, and sank beneath my own despair’s dead weight. But why should Helen have the power to plunge me into darkness? I deserved revenge— revenge for all the time I’d wasted here, revenge for every hope that slowly died, revenge for every minute of every year, revenge for every bold attempt untried, revenge for every lonely, bitter tear I’d swallowed, choked back, or held in, uncried. Helen became, in that one poisoned moment, the symbol and the source of all my torment. Brooke Clark 65 ii. Boredom was my soul mate; the days slid by unused and empty; I sat and watched them go, hardly recalling that once even I had clung to aspirations—but it was so uncomfortably easy to let them die. I’d turned into a man I didn’t know: in youth, I’d never compromise or settle— so it seemed now—but memory gilds the nettle. Instead of working, I listened to the flies that mobbed the windows, struggling to get out; freedom stretched away... (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Warning: Plot Spoiler! Mediums: The Seen and the Felt Competing Messages: “Man was in the Forest” vs. “There is Another” Challenging Bambi Bambi's Counter‐Charge Re‐gifting Bambi Notes.