In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Russell's leviathan by Mark S. Lippincott 1. INTRODUCTION BERTRAND RUSSELL'S POLITICAL thought underwent several metamorphoses in his nearly seventy years of political activism and writing. Indeed, many commentators on Russell take this as the overarching attribute ofhis politics. Alan Ryan writes that "Russell's career defies summary analysis; his life was much too long and his activities too various. His philosophical allegiances were no more (...) stable than his emotional allegiances, and his political allegiances no more stable than either."1 Likewise, Benjamin Barber suggests that "Russell had to contend with staying alive; and by the time he was ninety, consistency must have seemed to him less like the hobgoblin of little minds than the hallmark Of a short life."2 Ryan, Barber and others come to different conclusions about Russell's engagements with pacifism, anarcho-syndicalism, socialism and liberalism, but their efforts, taken collectively, signal a growing appreciation for the fluidity of Russell's politics. This essay treats the diversity of Russell's "political allegiances" as a first step 1 Alan Ryan, Bertrand Russell: a Political Life (London: Allen Lane The Penguin Press, 1988), p. l. 2 Benjamin R. Barber, "Solipsistic Politics: Bertrand Russell and Empiricist Liberalism", in his The Conquest ofPolitics: Liberal Philosophy in Democratic Times (Princeton: Princeton U. P., 1988), p. 25. Russell's leviathan 7 toward a new understanding of his political thought. Yet, unlike so much commentary on Russell, the search for the overarching concept or unifying theme is eschewed. The core premise of the argument is that to understand the political Russell, it is necessary to suspend the urge to unify. What is crucial is an openness to the extraordinary variety and range of his political interests and reflections. Once this step is taken, it becomes possible to uncover the degree to which Russell's eclectic activism is reflected in his approach to political theory. It becomes possible to see that his statements on a particular political issue are embedded with concepts selected from various sources within the western tradition ofpolitical discourse. In addition, this approach highlights the conceptual background of some of Russell's more contentious political statements which seem so characteristically out of character. The issue selected for this essay arises from one of the most controversial and least understood acts in Russell's life. It concerns his public statements following World War II that the United States might do well to use its monopoly of atomic bombs to force the Soviet Union into abandoning the development of its own atomic weapons. Past attempts to explain this episode range from cursory denials and dismissals of its importance, to assertions that it was the step-child of Russell's Russophobia.3 If one examines these state3 The argument for threatening the Soviet Union into renouncing nuclear weapons is advanced by Russell in several public statements: "The Bomb and Civilization", Forward, 29 Sept. 1945; "Humanity's Last Chance", Cavalcade, 20 Oct. 1945; speech in the House of Lords, Hansard,_'2,~Nov. 1945; "The Atomic Bomb and the Prevention of War", Polemic, July-Aug. 1946; speech in the House of Lords, Hansard, 30 April 1947; "Still Time for Good Sense", '47 Magazine ofthe Year, Nov. 1947; "International Government", The New Commonwealth, Jan. 1948. Ronald Clark provides an important guide to Russell's statements during this period in Vie Life of Bertrand Russell (London : CapelWeidenfeld & Nicolson, 1975), but he does not examine the philosophical background. Alan Ryan comes closest to seeing Russell's theoretical link with Hobbes, but he leaves it as a passing remark about Russell's attitude towards world government during the First World War: "It is as if Russell had read Hobbes's Leviathan and been carried away by Hobbes's argument that the state of nature and the war of all against all was so dreadful that any rational man would fly to absolute monarchy for protection. Russell generalizes Hobbes's argument to the international sphere, but it fails to ask how men who get themselves into a 'war of all against all' can be expected to get themselves out again, and fails to show how they have done 8 Russell summer 1990 ments with an eye to Russell's... (shrink)

Dans la première méditation, Descartes a conclu, en regard des songes, « qu'il n'y a point d'indices concluants, ni de marques assez certaines par où l'on puisse distinguer nettement la veille d'avec la sommeil [...] » . À la fin de la sixième méditation, il a conclu qu'il y a de tels indices, mais qu'on a besoin de la garantie de Dieu pour savoir si ces indices sont réellement des indices de la veille. Cottingham a proposé une objection générale contre (...) tels indices de la veille: On peut rêver cet indice. Selon les raisonnements de Cottingham, il s'agit de l'existence de l'indice. Or, chez Leibniz et Descartes il ne s'agit pas de cela, mais il est question de savoir si l'indice est vraiment un indice de la veille. La prétention que l'indice puisse être présent en songe fait une pétition de principe. Notre examen des indices que Leibniz et Berkeley ont proposés révèle cette pétition. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:diacritics 35.1 (2005) 3-6MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]Whispers of the Flesh Essays in Memory of Pierre KlossowskiIan JamesRussell Ford Pierre Klossowski—novelist, essayist, painter, and translator—was one of the most startling, original, and influential figures in twentieth-century French intellectual culture. The older brother of the well-known painter Balthus and a close associate of Georges Bataille, Klossowski's diverse oeuvre includes novels, philosophical essays, and translations, as well as paintings and films. (...) Confined thus far to an undeserved but somehow fitting shadow existence in the margins and notes of theorists who have become mainstays of Anglo-American criticism, Klossowski's own work has increasingly become a focus of critical interest for its decisive contribution to the development of thought and aesthetics in France from the 1950s onward. Born in 1905, the eldest son of Polish émigrés, Klossowski spent his first ten years in Paris in an artistic milieu, heavily influenced by the neoimpressionism of figures such as Bonnard and Derain. His father, Erich Klossowski de Rola, was a painter and art historian, the author of an important monograph on Daumier. His mother, Baladine, was also a painter and trained under Bonnard. While still a teenager Klossowski was introduced to the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, with whom he became close and who in turn introduced him to the novelist André Gide. At eighteen he became Gide's secretary and assisted him with the drafts of his famous novel Les faux-monnayeurs.Not until 1930, however, did Klossowski's own career properly begin, when he translated with Jean-Pierre Jouve a collection of poems by Friedrich Hölderlin. Throughout his life Klossowski was a prolific and influential translator from both German and Latin into French, translating amongst others Nietzsche, Kafka, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein from the German, and Suetonius, Virgil, Augustine, and Tertullian from the Latin. While working for the prominent Parisian psychoanalyst René Laforgue, Klossowski published his first philosophical essay on the Marquis de Sade in 1933 in the Revue française de la psychanalyse. Scandalized by Klossowski's Nietzschean-inflected psychoanalytic interpretation of Sade's writing, Laforgue dismissed Klossowski immediately. Throughout the 1930s Klossowski made a number of key friendships and acquaintances, most importantly with Georges Bataille, but also many others, including Walter Benjamin, André Masson, Jean Wahl, and Maurice Heine. During this period he published several articles and collaborated with Bataille on the review Acéphale and in the avant-garde experiment of the Collège de Sociologie (where, it is said, he would attend meetings dressed in a soutane). During the war years Klossowski trained in a number of Catholic seminaries, a vocation which ultimately failed and led to the writing of his first novel, La vocation suspendue. In the postwar period he married [End Page 3] a war widow, Denise Morin Sinclair, who had been interned in Ravensbrück for her activities in the Resistance and who became the model for Roberte, a key figure in much of Klossowski's fiction and painting. After the war Klossowski began to publish the influential works for which he will chiefly be remembered: literary-philosophical essays on Sade and Nietzsche (among others), as well as six important novels written between 1950 and 1965, La vocation suspendue (1950), the three works, originally published separately, which went on to form the Lois de l'hospitalité trilogy—Roberte ce soir (1954), La révocation de l'Édit de Nantes (1959) and Le souffleur ou le théâtre de société (1960)‚—and, finally, Le Baphomet (1965).Klossowski's seminal 1947 work, Sade mon prochain, was one of the first full-length literary and philosophical studies of Sade's work to be published in France and marked a decisive break from earlier accounts. Whereas earlier treatments of Sade had focused either on biographical detail or on the medical and psychosexual import of his life and writing, Klossowski's reading was concerned with the intertwined figures of law and transgression in Sade's work. After Sade mon prochain French intellectuals and writers... (shrink)

This commentary contributes to philosophical reflection on the growing challenge of digital distraction and the value of attention in the digital age. It clarifies the nature of the problem in conceptual and historical terms; analyzes “freedom of attention” as an organizing ideal for moral and political theorizing; considers some constraints of political morality on coercive state action to bolster users’ attentional resources; comments on corporate moral responsibility; and touches on some reform ideas. In particular, the commentary develops a response to (...) an anti-paternalistic line of argument rooted in Mill’s Harm Principle that would oppose state regulation on the grounds that securing attentional capacities is a matter of personal responsibility alone. The commentary engages throughout with James Williams’s recent work on the attention economy by identifying areas of agreement and difference. (shrink)

J. L. Schellenberg has constructed major arguments for atheism based on divine hiddenness in two separate works. This paper reviews these arguments and highlights how they are grounded in reflections on perfect divine love. However, Schellenberg also defends what he calls the ‘subject mode’ of religious scepticism. I argue that if one accepts Schellenberg's scepticism, then the foundation of his divine-hiddenness arguments is undermined by calling into question some of his conclusions regarding perfect divine love. In other words, if his (...) scepticism is correct, then Schellenberg's case for atheism cannot stand. Finally, I demonstrate how my argument avoids the many defences that Schellenberg has employed thus far in defending these particular atheistic arguments. (shrink)

This study argues that to understand Socrates we must uncover and analyze his religious views, since his philosophical and religious views are part of one seamless whole. Mark McPherran provides a close analysis of the relevant Socratic texts, an analysis that yields a comprehensive and original account of Socrates' commitments to religion. McPherran finds that Socrates was not only a rational philosopher of the first rank, but a figure with a profoundly religious nature as well, believing in the existence (...) of gods vastly superior to ourselves in power and wisdom and sharing other traditional religious commitments with his contemporaries. However, Socrates was just as much a sensitive critic and rational reformer of both the religious tradition he inherited and the new cultic incursions he encountered. McPherran contends that Socrates saw his religious commitments as integral to his philosophical mission of moral examination and, in turn, used the rationally derived convictions underlying that mission to reshape the religious conventions of his time. As a result, Socrates made important contributions to the rational reformation of Greek religion, contributions that incited and informed the theology of his brilliant pupil, Plato. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:RUSSELLS ARGUMENT AGAINST FREGE'S SENSE-REFERENCE DISTINCTION PAWEL TURNAu Philosophy I Jagiellonian University Cracow, Poland I n "On Denoting"l Russell argued that Frege's theory of sense and reference was an "inextricable tangle", but, ironically, many readers found the argument even more knotry. In an effort to make sense of it, commentators were often driven to attribute to Russell quite obvious and simple fallacies. A different approach was taken (...) by Peter Geach, who suggested that Russell's argument could be given a consistent reading if it were construed as arguing, not against Frege's theory, but against Russell's own earlier theory, which he put forward in The Principles of Mathematics. It is not an implausible hypothesis, considering how prone Russell was to misrepresent' other philosophers' views and read his own powerful ideas into their writings. In order to justifY Geach's hypothesis properly, one would have to show the crucial difference between Russell's and Frege's theories that made only one of them susceptible to the attack in "On Denoting ". Russell explicitly considered the two theories to be "very nearly the same"; this self-interpretation would have to be questioned. Geach's hypothesis would be further strengthened by providing an actual exegesis of the "On Denoting" argument as directed against The Principles ofMathematics theory. In this paper 1 will try to accomplish both of these tasks. Russell is often accused of confusing use and mention. The accusation is not fair, however. It is true that he does not insist on this distinction; he does not employ it extensively. But he is certainly Russell's Argument against Frege's Distinction 53 aware of it; he simply does not think that it is an important logical distinction. Today this view may seem almost incomprehensible, but that only shows the strength of Frege's influence on our ideas. There are two striking symptoms of Russell's lack of concern for the use-mention distinction: firstly, he does not observe the convention which says that putting an expression in quotation marks produces a name of that expression; secondly, he does not feel any need to employ the pair of terms "sentence" and "proposition", but contents himself with the latter only. The claim about Russell's use of inverted commas needs to be proved; I will come to that later. Russell's assertions are often ambiguous between use and mention of expressions. For example, he asserts that "propositions do not contain words" (PaM, p. 47). However, a few pages later, he speaks of propositions that contain the phrase "any number" (p. 53). If this is not to be self-contradictory, then either the term "proposition" must sometimes signifY a linguistic expression, or the term "phrase" must sometimes be understood without implying that a phrase consists of words. This ambiguity is openly admitted in a later article, where he writes: [we shall be concerned with] the distinction between verbs and substantives, or, more correctly, between the objects denoted by verbs and the objects denoted by substantives. Since this more correct expression is long and cumbrous, I shall generally use the shorter expression to mean the same thing. Thus, when I speak of verbs, I mean the object denoted by verbs, and similarly for substantives.2. Russell's attitude towards the distinction between use and mention is not unjustified. It has its reason in his view oflanguage and the subject -matter of logic. In Russell's view, the subject-matter of logic has nothing to do with language. Words, both spoken and written, are entirely outside its realm. Logic, just as other sciences (except linguistics ), is concerned with the entities indicated by words, and not with words themselves. Even the relation of indicating, which holds between words and things in the world, is of no interest to it: "mean1 In Lf(, pp. 39-56. russ.lI: the Journal of the Bertrand Russell Archives McMaster Univecsity Library Press n.s. 11 (summer 1991): 51- 66 ISSN 0036-o16~ 2 B. Russell, "On the Relations of Universals and Particulars", Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, n.s. 12 (r9II-12): 1-24; in Lf(, pp. 103-24 (at 107-8). 54 PAWEL TURNAU Russell's Argument... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Russell's Naturalistic Turn 37 INTRODUCTION L RUSSELL'S NATURALISTIC TURN RUSSELI.?S NATURALISTIC TURN NED S. GARVIN Philosophy I Albion College Albion, MI 49224 I Quine, Ontological Relativity (New York: Columbia U. P., 1969), p. 83. 1 Russell advocated this hypothetical acceptance of science much earlier, e.g., in AMa, pp. 398-9. Here we have many of the hallmarks of naturalized epistemology: (I) fallibilism, (2) the "best theory" account (...) of science, (3) the view that "knowing" is a natural phenomenon not confined to humans, and (4) the embedding of epistemology in behavioural psychology. But in 1940 Russell was a foundationalist (though an increasingly moderate one) who insisted that normative, or as he called it, "critical" epistemology must be distinguished from natural epistemology, and that critical epistemology is philosophically more important: "Within its limitations, theory of knowledge of the above sort is legitimate and In the nrst form of theory of knowledge, we accept the scientific account of the world, not as certainly true, but as the best at present available. The world, as presented by science, contains a phenomenon caIled "knowing", and theory of knowledge, in its first form, has to consider what sort of phenomenon this is. Viewed from the outside, it is, to begin with, a characteristic of living organisms, which is (broadly speaking) increasingly displayed as the organism becomes more complex. (Pp. 12-13)2 Both knowledge and error, at this stage, are observable relations between the behaviour of the organism and the facts of the environment. (P. 14) Quine argued that traditional justification requires non-scientific propositions that are more secure than scientific propositions, and we see there are none: science is providing the best account of the world and our knowledge of it. Though we abandon the attempt to justify science, we still attempt to understand it for nearly the same reasons that always motivated epistemology: "in order to see how evidence relates to theory, and in what ways one's theory of nature transcends any available evidence".I Russell contemplated a naturalistic turn of his own in 1943, shortly after writing An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth and nearly twentyfive years before Quine's landmark address. In the introduction to his Inquiry Russell claims that there are "two different inquiries, both important, and each having a right to the name 'theory of knowledge '" (IM~, p. 12). The first is recognizably natural epistemology: n.s. 11 (summer 1991): 36-S1.SSN 0036-016p ru•••II: the Journal of the Bertrand Russell Archives McMaster University Library Press w. V. Quine's address to the Fourteenth International Congress of Philosophy in 1968, published a year later as "Epistemology Naturalized " in Ontological Relativity and Other Essays, is a landmark of recent epistemology, marking the turn from traditional critical epistemology to a descriptive epistemology firmly embedded within natural science. I n 1943 Bertrand Russell wrote a little-known, three-page document he titled "Project of Future Work". It outlines the descriptive project of examining non-demonstrative inference that eventually becomes the focal point of Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits. More remarkably, this document anticipates many salient features of naturalized epistemology, e.g., Russell argues that (I) an answer to scepticism is futile, we cannot justify scientific method; (2) the Humean Predicament arises from a traditional insistence on an unrealistic, demonstrative canon of justification; (3) non-demonstrative, fallible inference is already firmly embedded in scientific practice as a canon of inference, and should augment the demonstrative canon; and (4) the primary epistemic· problem is descriptive: in what circumstances does scientific method allow us to infer the existence of something unobserved from what we observe. These claims, in the wake of An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth, suggest that Russell was on the verge of his own naturalistic turn. I argue that, despite striking anticipations of naturalized epistemology, Russell develops his descriptive project within a more traditional, critical epistemic perspective. 38 NED S. GARVIN important. But there is another kind of theory of knowledge which goes deeper and has, I think, much greater importance" (IMT;., p. 14). Russell observes that behavioural psychologists omit that they are fallible observers, and this fallibility introduces doubt into their results. Further, naive... (shrink)

Aristotle holds that it was Socrates who first made frequent, systematic use of epagôgç in his elenctic investigations of various definitions of the virtues . Plato and Xenophon also target epagôgç as an innovative, distinguishing mark of Socratic methodology when they have Socrates' interlocutors complain that Socrates prattles on far too much about "his favorite topic" —blacksmiths, cobblers, cooks, physicians, and other such tiresome craftspeople—in order to generate and test general principles concerning the alleged craft of virtue. It is (...) remarkable, then, how little secondary literature exists on this subject—moreover, several of the few accounts we do have naively assume that epagôgç is the same as modern inductive generalization. Others are in conflict as to whether, for example, we can find any legitimate instances of probabilistic inductive epagôgç in the Socratic dialogues. This paper addresses these and other issues by offering a new, critical account of Socratic epagôgç—one tied to its occurrences in several key Socratic elenchoi. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Piety, Justice, and the Unity of VirtueMark L. McPherranNo doubt the Socrates of the Euthyphro would be delighted to encounter many of its readers, offering as they do an audience of piety-seeking interlocutors, eager to mend the dialogical breach created by Euthyphro’s sudden departure. Socrates’ enthusiasm for this pursuit is at least as intense and comprehensible as theirs. We are told, after all, that he will never abandon his (...) quest for knowledge of “what the pious is” (15c–16a), since not only is this enterprise both pious and “inconceivably happy” (cf. Ap. 41c3–4) in itself,1 but coming to understand piety would allow one to “live better the rest of one’s life,” (15e7–16a4), especially should its continuation be threatened by a charge of impiety (3b–d, 5a–c, 12e, 15e–16a).2 My own search here is no less happy and ambitious, since I wish to uncover Socrates’ own, implicit understanding of piety and its relation to his claim elsewhere that “the virtues are one.”3 The account of this I shall provide will also touch on Platonic piety, although this notion obviously rests on a tendentious distinction. Nevertheless, there do seem to be some interesting differences between the way piety is treated in elenctic dialogues such as the Euthyphro and Protagoras, and the more explicitly theory-laden, constructive works such as the Republic and Laws. I shall later characterize [End Page 299] these differences, primarily in terms of the more carefully articulated, internalist moral psychology of the Republic.42. SOCRATIC PIETYThe distinct phenomena the term “religion” popularly designates for us were for the Greeks seamlessly integrated into everyday life. Thus, it is natural that the term “piety”—εὐσέβεια—carried a wider sense than our English equivalent commonly does: it concerned not only one’s immediate relation to the gods—emphasizing proper religious conduct and carrying a sense of respect and fear towards divinity (concomitant with a grasp of one’s own mortal limits)—but also often designated appropriate behavior towards parents, native land, and the dead.5 It is to this rough, inclusive conception of piety that Euthyphro appeals when confronted by Socrates on the Porch of the King (2a–6a). Moreover, and despite his own shockingly irreverent attempt at father-bashing and the subsequent elenctic drubbing he then receives from Socrates, toward the close of the dialogue Euthyphro still manages to envision piety in the quasi-traditionalist fashion with which he began—as “a knowledge of how to ensure the preservation of families and states by gratifying the gods through proper prayer and sacrifice” (14b; cf. 14c–15c).6 It is, however, precisely [End Page 300] at this dramatic juncture (14a–c) that we find—arguably—the final elements of a Socratically-acceptable conception of piety; one that builds upon Euthyphro’s initial concession to Socrates that piety and “human justice” are to be distinguished from one another (11e–12e). This, in turn, is a move that in principle forces Euthyphro to disengage from those aspects of the traditional conception of piety which would—from Socrates’ perspective—conflate the two.7 Recent challenges to this reading, however, have seen in Euthyphro’s initial holism not the heterogeneous presumptions of popular thought, but a semi-sophisticated grasp of the Socratic unity of the virtues.8 And since it does appear that the character Euthyphro is designed to serve not only as a hubristically-inflated, Homeric “fundamentalist,” but as an odd and Sophistically-influenced doppelgänger of Socrates as well—a lesson, that is, in what Socrates both is and is not—it now seems worthwhile to reexamine the view that Socratic piety is but a part and not the whole of justice.9Turning to our text, then, we discover that following the failure of Euthyphro’s initial definitional attempts to specify the nature of pious action and the resulting aporetic interlude, Socrates is willing to offer Euthyphro renewed assistance (11e1–4). This he does by asking whether all the just is pious, or whether justice is broader than piety such that piety is then merely a “part” (μóϱιον) of justice (11e4–12e5). Subsequent to his explanation of these alternatives, Socrates... (shrink)

Does infantile amnesia exist? Can children accurately recall traumatic events? Do memory's organizing, storage, and retrieval mechanisms change during childhood development? Through a thorough examination of recent scientific evidence, The Fate of Early Memories divorces fact from fiction regarding the nature, durability, and fallibility of memory.

Plato's Republic has proven to be of astounding influence and importance. Justly celebrated as Plato's central text, it brings together all of his prior works, unifying them into a comprehensive vision that is at once theological, philosophical, political and moral. The essays in this volume provide a picture of the most interesting aspects of the Republic, and address questions that continue to puzzle and provoke, such as: Does Plato succeed in his argument that the life of justice is the most (...) attractive one? Is his tripartite analysis of the soul coherent and plausible? Why does Plato seem to have to force his philosopher-guardians to rule when they know this is something that they ought to do? What is the point of the strange and complicated closing Myth of Er? This volume will be essential to those looking for thoughtful and detailed excursions into the problems posed by Plato's text and ideas. (shrink)

Cultural influences are pervasive throughout human behaviour, and as human–robot interactions become more common, roboticists are increasingly focusing attention on how to build robots that are culturally competent and culturally sustainable. The current treatment of culture in robotics, however, is largely limited to the definition of culture as national culture. This is problematic for three reasons: it ignores subcultures, it loses specificity and hides the nuances in cultures, and it excludes refugees and stateless persons. We propose to shift the focus (...) of cultural robotics to redefine culture as an emergent phenomenon. We make use of three research programmes in the social and cognitive sciences to justify this definition. Consequently, cultural behaviour cannot be explicitly programmed into a robot, rather, a robot must be designed with the capability to participate in the interactions that lead to the arising of cultural behaviour. In the final part of the paper, we explore which capacities and abilities are the most salient for a robot to do this. (shrink)

Summary The Copernican system was condemned as heretical by a decree of the Roman Inquisition in 1633. This decree was effectively, though not officially, withdrawn in 1757, after which date Catholic astronomers felt themselves free to accept and propagate the system without reserve. Between these dates their attitudes varied greatly. In France the decree was never promulgated and was legally unenforceable. Astronomers could be Copernican without any fear of consequences and most of them were, though some, out of respect for (...) the Church, refrained from declaring themselves publicly. In Italy the possible risks were greater, but a few Copernican or near-Copernican works were published without hostile reactions. The ecclesiastical authorities were tolerant and made little positive effort to enforce conformity. By 1744, the system was being freely propagated in Rome itself. (shrink)

Scientific concepts are defined by metaphors. These metaphors determine what attention is and what count as adequate explanations of the phenomenon. The authors analyze these metaphors within 3 types of attention theories: (a) “cause” theories, in which attention is presumed to modulate information processing (e.g., attention as a spotlight; attention as a limited resource); (b) “effect” theories, in which attention is considered to be a by-product of information processing (e.g., the competition metaphor); and (c) hybrid theories that combine cause and (...) effect aspects (e.g., biasedcompetition models). The present analysis reveals the crucial role of metaphors in cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and the efforts of scientists to find a resolution to the classic problem of cause versus effect interpretations. (shrink)

Evidence does not support the claim that observers universally recognize basic emotions from signals on the face. The percentage of observers who matched the face with the predicted emotion (matching score) is not universal, but varies with culture and language. Matching scores are also inflated by the commonly used methods: within-subject design; posed, exaggerated facial expressions (devoid of context); multiple examples of each type of expression; and a response format that funnels a variety of interpretations into one word specified by (...) the experimenter. Without these methodological aids, matching scores are modest and subject to various explanations. (shrink)

Things that don't exist -- Fictional object nominalism -- Fictional object realism -- Meinongianism -- God's existence and nonexistence -- Contingency and nonexistence -- Perfection and divine existence -- Nonexistence and creatures -- Ex nihilo and nonexistence -- Infinite existence and countless nonexistents -- Providence and freedom -- Nonexistents and middle knowledge -- Evil as nonexistence.

This article explains and assesses a particular method of loving others that is espoused by Søren Kierkegaard. In his later works, Kierkegaard advocates a kind of deceptive love whereby one mystifies or deceives another person for that other person's own good. The theological underpinning of this mode of love is found in the imitation of Christ. In other words, just as Jesus adopted an incognito, so also Christians should, at times, appear different or lowlier in order to help others by (...) meeting them where they are. After explaining this form of love, I argue that there are considerable reasons not to follow Kierkegaard in his support of outright deception within personal relationships. I conclude with some brief reflections on whether the deceptive structure of Kierkegaard's own authorship is thereby condemned or whether it can be exonerated. (shrink)

Robert Merrihew Adams argues that it is permissible for a perfectly good moral agent to create a world less good than the best one she could create. He argues that God would exhibit the important virtue of grace in creating less than the best and that this virtue is incompatible with the merit considerations required by the standard of creating the best. In this paper I give three arguments for the compatibility of merit consideration and graciousness of God toward creation. (...) I conclude that grace would not release a perfect agent from responsibility to create the best. (shrink)

In this article, we focus on two issues, namely, the nature and onset of very early personal memories, especially for traumatic events, and the role of stress in long-term retention. We begin by outlining a theory of early autobiographical memory, one whose unfolding is coincident with emergence of the cognitive self. It is argued that it is not until this self emerges that personal memories will remain viable over extended periods of time. We illustrate this with 25 cases of young (...) children′s long-term retention of early traumatic events involving emergency room treatment. On the basis of both qualitative and quantitative analyses, we conclude that very young children retain limited memories for events which they commonly express behaviorally, coherent autobiographical memories are not constructed until the child develops a cognitive sense of self , autobiographical memories for traumatic events are essentially no different from those for nontraumatic events, stress is only related to long-term retention inasmuch as it is one variable that serves to make an event unique, and like nontraumatic events, traumatic memories lose peripheral details during the retention interval and retain the central components of the event. These results are discussed both in terms of their implications for theories of early autobiographical memory as well as the ways in which we might differentiate implanted memories and authentic memories for traumatic events. (shrink)