A First Course in Logic is an introduction to first-order logic suitable for first and second year mathematicians and computer scientists. There are three components to this course: propositional logic; Boolean algebras; and predicate/first-order, logic. Logic is the basis of proofs in mathematics — how do we know what we say is true? — and also of computer science — how do I know this program will do what I think it will? Surprisingly little mathematics is needed to learn and (...) understand logic (this course doesn't involve any calculus). The real mathematical prerequisite is an ability to manipulate symbols: in other words, basic algebra. Anyone who can write programs should have this ability. (shrink)

The Repugnant Conclusion served an important purpose in catalyzing and inspiring the pioneering stage of population ethics research. We believe, however, that the Repugnant Conclusion now receives too much focus. Avoiding the Repugnant Conclusion should no longer be the central goal driving population ethics research, despite its importance to the fundamental accomplishments of the existing literature.

In some of his later contributions Dewey places particular emphasis on the category of organisation. Organisation features prominently both in his later metaphysical writings and in some of his more substantively focussed contributions. Organisation is also a central category for two contemporary ontological projects, namely Tony Lawson’s perspective on social ontology and the interactivist framework developed by Mark Bickhard and his collaborators. In these modern naturalist perspectives, the thorough theorisation of organisation is seen as crucial in accounting for (...) emergent phenomena, resisting ontological and causal reductionism and resolving ambiguities associated with certain formulations of downward causality. This paper compares Dewey’s remarks on organisation in his later writings with these contemporary treatments of organisation and argues that Dewey anticipates some of the insights that have been systematically set out in these modern programmes of research. (shrink)

This volume presents over a decade of work by Mark Schroeder, one of the leading figures in contemporary metaethics. One new and ten previously published papers weave together treatments of reasons, reduction, supervenience, instrumental rationality, and legislation, to explore the nature and limits of moral explanation.

Ansel Adams, Robert Adams, Carlos Almaraz, Robert Arneson, John Baldessari, Lewis Baltz, Robert Bechtle, Jeff Brouws, Laurie Brown, Angela Buenning, Darlene Campbell, Mark Campbell, Gary Carlos, Fandra Chang, Stephane Couturier, Robert Dawson, Joe Deal, Richard Diebenkorn, John Divola, Beth Yarnelle Edwards, Kota Ezawa, William A. Garnett, Jeff Gillette, Joe Goode, Todd Hido, David Hockney, Salomon Huerta, Robert Isaacs, Thomas Lawson, Jean Lowe, Alex MacLean, Richard Meisinger, Jr., Richard Misrach, Rick Monzon, Barrie Mottishaw, Martin Mull, Deborah Oropallo, Bill Owens, (...) Rondal Partridge, John Register, Ed Ruscha, Peter Saul, Mary Snowden, Joel Sternfeld, Larry Sultan, Rudy Vanderlans, Camilo Jose Vergara, Henry Wessel, Amir Zaki. (shrink)

The past fifteen years in France have seen a remarkable flourishing of new work in political philosophy. This anthology brings into English for the first time essays by some of the best young French political thinkers writing today, including Marcel Gauchet, Pierre Manent, Luc Ferry, and Alain Renaut. The central theme of these essays is liberal democracy: its nature, its development, its problems, its fundamental legitimacy. Although these themes are familiar to American and British readers, the French approach to them--which (...) is profoundly historical and rooted in the tradition of continental philosophy--is quite different from our customary one. Included in this collection is a series of reconsiderations of French critics of liberal society and of classical European liberals. The continuing controversies over the nature of the modern era and the place of religion within it play a central role throughout the collection. The book includes a debate on the foundations of human rights and on the nature of a liberal political order. The concluding section presents some of the new sociological writing on modern individualism, its pleasures and its discontents. An introduction by Mark Lilla provides the historical background to the revival of French political thought about liberalism, and offers an analysis of what American and English readers might learn from it. Originally published in 1994. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

According to Nietzsche, drives are the ultimate constituents of virtues and vices. I argue that Nietzsche identifies two blueprints for character construction: a slavish, interpersonal blueprint, and a masterly, reflexive blueprint. When the interpersonal blueprint is implemented, a person becomes what he is called: his drives are shaped by the traits ascribed to him so that he becomes more like the sort of person he’s taken to be. When the reflexive blueprint is implemented, a person becomes more like the sort (...) of person she calls herself: her drives are shaped by the traits she ascribes to herself in a community of peers. The reflexive blueprint shares some surprising similarities with the interpersonal blueprint. I conclude with an account of Nietzschean summoning, which occurs when one person praises a generic type to an audience, implicitly inviting them to identify with that type and thereby to become more like it. (shrink)

This book is a philosophical study of the relations between hearing and thinking about music. The central problem it addresses is as follows: how is it possible to talk about what a listener perceives in terms that the listener does not recognize? By applying the concepts and techniques of analytic philosophy the author explores the ways in which musical hearing may be described as nonconceptual, and how such mental representation contrasts with conceptual thought. The author is both philosopher and musicologist (...) and uniquely combines the perspectives of both disciplines. Exploring the philosophical questions of mental representation in the relatively neglected, nonverbal domain of music, this study is a major contribution to the philosophical understanding of music perception and cognitive theory. (shrink)

Strawson argues that we should understand moral responsibility in terms of our practices of holding responsible and taking responsibility. The former covers what is commonly referred to as backward-looking responsibility, while the latter covers what is commonly referred to as forward-looking responsibility. We consider new technologies and interventions that facilitate assignment of responsibility. Assigning responsibility is best understood as the second- or third-personal analog of taking responsibility. It establishes forward-looking responsibility. But unlike taking responsibility, it establishes forward-looking responsibility in someone (...) else. When such assignments are accepted, they function in such a way that those to whom responsibility has been assigned face the same obligations and are susceptible to the same reactive attitudes as someone who takes responsibility. One family of interventions interests us in particular: nudges. We contend that many instances of nudging tacitly assign responsibility to nudgees for actions, values, and relationships that they might not otherwise have taken responsibility for. To the extent that nudgees tacitly accept such assignments, they become responsible for upholding norms that would otherwise have fallen under the purview of other actors. While this may be empowering in some cases, it can also function in such a way that it burdens people with more responsibility that they can manage. (shrink)

I propose an account of how our forward-looking moral and epistemic responsibility practices arose, how they related to backward-looking responsibility practices, and what makes them stable. This account differs in several ways from prominent theories already in the literature. Traditionally, forward-looking accounts of responsibility are framed third-personally in terms of social control and neglect the perspective and agency of the responsible person. The account I develop allows that there are third-personal, control-based aspects of our responsibility practices, but it also makes (...) room for the first-personal perspective of the responsible agent and emphasizes the role of partner choice and cooperative planning and action. Whereas existing research focuses on forward-looking accounts of the practice of holding others responsible, I offer an account of forward-looking practices of taking responsibility and assigning responsibility. I hope thereby to provide a richer and more plausible framework in which to think about responsibility and our practices related to it. (shrink)

An exciting introduction to the contribution which the later Wittgenstein made to the philosophy of religion. Although his writings on the subject have been few, Wittgenstein developed influential and controversial theories on both religion which emphasize the distinctive nature of religious discourse and how this nature can be misunderstood when viewed in direct competition with science. The contributors of this collection shed new light on the perennial debate between faith and reason. The result is a collection that is both informative (...) and stimulating. (shrink)

I give reasons to suggest that the various ‘homogeneous substance’ objections to perdurance theory should not be regarded as raising serious difficulties. The main strategy is to show that there are equally exotic possibilities involving extended mereological simples that may turn the tables on the endurance theorist, insofar as she will have difficulties with these cases analogous to those she raises for the perdurantist. I conclude that such exotic cases are less useful that we might suppose in adjudicating between these (...) competing doctrines of persistence. (shrink)

In Austin's Way with Skepticism, Mark Kaplan argues that J. L Austin's 'ordinary language' approach to epistemological problems has been misread. Contrary to the consensus view, Kaplan presents Austin's methods as both a powerful critique of the project of constructive epistemology and an appreciation of how epistemology needs to be done.

This volume celebrates the remarkable career of Dr. Preston King, an African American political philosopher with an international reputation. King's first degree was from Fisk University (1956). He moved directly to the London School of Economics (LSE), completing his M.Sc. (Econ) in 1958 with a Mark of Distinction. He taught at LSE for the next two years. A scrap with Jim Crow America kept him in exile for the next 40 years. Major friends and influences at LSE were Professors (...) Sir Karl Popper, Michael Oakeshott, and Dr Bernard Crick. King took up subsequent lectureships at the Universities of Keele, Ghana, and Sheffield. He was Senior Research Assistant at the Acton Society Trust (London), then professor at the Universities of Nairobi, New South Wales (Sydney), Lancaster, returning at last to the USA as joint Woodruff Professor at Emory and Distinguished Professor at Morehouse. The essays comprising this volume are by internationally renowned figures. They creatively explore History, Toleration, and Friendship, as three seminal themes running through Preston King's sizeable oeuvre. This book's first third consists of essays on Time and History, with brilliant contributions by Professors Browning, Lawson, Moore, and Cherribi. The second third consists of essays on Time and Toleration, with memorable and penetrating analyses by Professors Jones, Read, Modood/Dobbernak, and Brown. The third part consists of essays on Time and Friendship, with offerings - both charming and insightful - by Professors Devere, Smith, and Coleman. The book concludes with a novel and captivating chapter by King himself, on the philosophy of time, which constitutes the substratum of so much of his work and reflection. (shrink)

The central issue that I consider in this paper is the use of the so‐called ‘Rule of Rescue’ in the context of resource allocation. This ‘Rule’ has played an important role in resource allocation decisions in various parts of the world. It was invoked in Ontario to overturn a decision not to fund treatment for Gaucher's Disease and it has also been used to justify resource decisions in Israel concerning the same condition. -/- In the paper I consider the nature (...) of the Rule of Rescue and its moral justification. The latter involves consideration of the distinction between agent‐relative and agent‐neutral obligations. If the Rule of Rescue is to be justified, it is plausible to think that it will be in the context of agent‐relative obligations. Two problems with this suggestion are considered: the role of identifiability in the Rule of Rescue and the extent to which policy makers in a health care system can be taken to have such obligations. It is argued that in both cases these problems can be overcome and hence that there is a prima facie obligation to follow the Rule of Rescue. (shrink)

Michael Hardimon’s new book is a valuable study of Hegel’s social and political philosophy. Hardimon takes seriously Hegel’s intention to offer a social philosophy that can reconcile people to the modern social world. Since Hegel’s own presentation of his philosophy is motivated by a number of competing concerns, Hardimon’s admirable success at reconstructing Hegel’s view in accordance with this fundamental intention offers an important and insightful perspective on Hegel’s project. The focal points of Hardimon’s reconstruction—the aim of reconciliation and the (...) problem of alienation it is meant to overcome—are explained and interpreted with considerable clarity in a way that shows their significance to the tradition of modern political philosophy. Hardimon deliberately resists using Hegel’s technical terminology and engaging in detailed scholarly disputes in a successful effort to avoid obscurity and distraction. The result is a book that should be prized by anyone seeking an accessible presentation of Hegel’s social philosophy, particularly as a vehicle for teaching Hegel’s political thought without having to devote an entire course to the task. (shrink)

All normal human beings alive in the last fifty thousand years appear to have possessed, in Mark Turner's phrase, 'impressively atful minds'. Cognitively modern minds produced a staggering list of behavioural singularities - science, religion, mathematics, language, advanced tool use, decorative dress, dance, culture, art - that seems to indicate a mysterious and unexplained discontinuity between us and all other living things. This brute fact gives rise to some tantalizing questions: How did the artful mind emerge? What are the (...) basic mental operations that make art possible for us now, and how do they operate? These are the questions that occupy the distinguished contributors to this book, which emerged from a year-long Getty-funded research project hosted by the Centre for Advanced Study in the Behavioural Sciences at Stanford. (shrink)

Therehasbeenevidencefortheverybrief,temporalquantizationofperceptualexperienceatregularintervalsbelo w100msforseveraldecades.Webrieflydescribehowearlierstudiesledtotheconceptof“psychologicalmoment”ofbe tween50and60msduration.Accordingtohistoricaltheories,withinthepsychologicalmomentalleventswouldbepro cessedasco-temporal.Morerecently,alinkwithphysiologicalmechanismshasbeenproposed,accordingtowhichthe 50–60mspsychologicalmomentwouldbedefinedbytheupperlimitrequiredbyneuralmechanismstosynchronizeandthe rebyrepresentasnapshotofcurrentperceptualeventstructure.However,ourownexperimentaldevelopmentsalsoid entifyamorefine-scaled,serializedprocessstructurewithinthepsychologicalmoment.Ourdatasuggeststhatnot alleventsareprocessedasco-temporalwithinthepsychologicalmomentandinstead,someareprocessedsuccessivel y.Thisevidencequestionstheanalogrelationshipbetweensynchronizedprocessandsimultaneousexperienceandop ensdebateontheontologyandfunctionof“moments”inpsychologicalexperience.

Animals, like humans, experience different levels of well-being depending on decisions made by others. As a result, the well-being of animals must be included in any full accounting of the well-being consequences of decisions. However, this is almost never done in large-scale policy and investment analyses, even though it is common to quantify the consequences for human welfare in these decision analyses. This is partly due to prejudice, but increasingly also because we do not currently have good methods for quantifying (...) animal well-being consequences and putting them on the same scale as quantified human well-being consequences. We might call this ‘the problem of interspecies comparisons.’ This important barrier to including animal well-being in decision-making is the result of an insufficiently developed theory and practice of animal well-being and its relation to human well-being. This chapter explains the problem of interspecies comparisons, explains recent research that develops methods to overcome this problem. (shrink)

The somatic integration definition of life is familiar from the debate on the determination of death, with some bioethicists arguing that it supports brain death while others argue that some brain‐dead bodies exhibit sufficient somatic integration for biological life. I argue that on either interpretation, the somatic integration definition of life implies that neither the preimplantation embryo nor the postimplantation embryo meet the somatic integration threshold condition for organismal human life. The earliest point at which a somatic integration determination of (...) life could be made would be the beginning of the fetal stage, 9 weeks postfertilization. Bioethical implications are considered, specifically with respect to the moral status of the postimplantation embryo in embryo research and abortion. (shrink)

Huston Smith has argued that the universal source of wholeness, which he refers to as the primordial tradition, is essential to a meaningful life. Indeed embracing this tradition is, said Smith, an act of rejoining the human race. Our current forms of organized religion offer us ritualized expressions of this tradition, yet often fail to provide us with transpersonal growth; it is this transpersonal growth that reconnects us with the source of religion. This essay differentiates mainstream religion from a way (...) that we can begin to construct a physical theory of the primordial tradition–a necessary first step toward reclaiming the source of religion. (shrink)

The claim that a functional kind is multiply realized is typically motivated by appeal to intuitive examples. We are seldom told explicitly what the relevant structures are, and people have often preferred to rely on general intuitions in these cases. This article deals with the problem by explaining how to understand the proper relation between structural kinds and the functions they realize. I will suggest that the structural kinds that realize a function can be properly identified by attending to the (...) context of functional explanation. *Received June 2006; revised June 2009. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, Seton Hall University, 400 South Orange Ave., South Orange, NJ 07079; e‐mail: mark[email protected]. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.2 (2001) 259-288 [Access article in PDF] Substitutes for Wisdom:Kant's Practical Thought and the Tradition of the Temperaments Mark Larrimore [Appendix]For much of Western history, the theory of the four temperaments played a vital part in medicine, anthropology, and moral reflection. The Hippocratic foursome of sanguine, choleric, melancholy, and phlegmatic survives on the margins of modernity, but its role in moral theory (...) and practice has been largely forgotten. Premodern understandings of human diversity based in climate, temperament, and politics collapsed with the Galenic medical tradition with which they harmonized. Yet temperament continued to be a feature of moral philosophies and philosophical anthropologies even into the twentieth century, and arguably has had a symbiotic relationship with the egalitarian aspirations of modern moral and political thought. This essay surveys the development and practical consequences of the theory of the temperaments developed by one of the greatest prophets of modern values, Immanuel Kant.Temperament was a feature in Kant's course in anthropology from the 1760s until the end of his life. Kant's teachings on temperament are by turns creative and conservative, and bespeak a deep understanding of the logic and rationale of humoral characterology in ethics. But as Kant moves from an ethics based in feeling to an ethics based on the possibility of autonomy, his theory of temperament also changes. In 1764's Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime, Kant eloquently celebrates the melancholy as the temperament capable of "genuine virtue" (Obs2:217-18/60); by the time of Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798), he is commending instead "phlegma as strength" (a variant of a temperament he had earlier dismissed), which can serve as a "substitute for wisdom" (Ant7:290/155). 1 Both of these [End Page 259] positions are distinctive, especially for an eighteenth-century thinker. As we will see, however, they are not without precedent in the tradition of temperament theory. Whether Kant knew he was developing countertraditions of temperament or not, his arguments in each case creatively exploit tensions in the humoral system which go back to its origins in ancient Greece.The mature Kant defended the classic foursome at a time when it had come under fire from many quarters. The early nineteenth century historian of temperament theories Harro Wilhelm Dircksen thought Kant played a decisive role in saving the classical theory from oblivion. 2 Why did Kant think it worth retrieving? One would expect him to reject a category which eighteenth-century German Popularphilosophie understood as a proto-psychological category bridging the gap between body and mind, nature and freedom. Yet, as I shall argue, the very things which might seem to render a theory of temperament incompatible with his mature ethics of autonomy make it important to [End Page 260] Kant. An understanding of human embodiment and diversity like that of the tradition of the temperaments forms part of the background to Kant's practical thought, and ethical formalism makes more rather than less sense if difference is taken seriously. For the same reason, it is important to have the right account of diversity. The complicated view of temperament in the Anthropology furnishes a microcosm of Kant's understanding of the fraught role of empirical considerations in recognizing and promoting freedom in rational agents embodied in human form(s).In this essay I will (1) provide a brief survey of the tradition of temperament theorizing before Kant, and expound Kant's (2) early and (3) mature views of temperament in the context of this tradition, as well as in the context of his emerging practical philosophy. 3 Some well-known parts of Kant's ethics make a new kind of sense when read in the light of the fact that their author thought humanity subdivided into temperaments. 1. The Tradition of the Temperaments 1.1. The history of moralizing about and through the temperaments is complex and—once one moves beyond the melancholy—largely uncharted. Here I will... (shrink)

In his attack on the notion of immediate experience, Hans-Georg Gadamer argues that aesthetic experience should be absorbed into hermeneutics because alone it cannot account for the historical nature of experience ; predicated on an ontological theory of art, the unfathomable, therefore, is the sense we have of these infinite hermeneutic depths. I argue that this account is methodologically and existentially unacceptable: methodologically because it is overly speculative, and existentially because it betrays authentic existence. I critique Gadamer from the perspective (...) of William James’ Pragmatism and argue, inverting Gadamer’s main thesis, that hermeneutics should be reduced to aesthetic experience. The meaning that emerges in aesthetic experience does not ‘rise up’ from the depths but is immanent in what James calls ‘pure experience’. The unfathomable, therefore, is not a glimpse into the metaphysical abyss but a phenomenological insight into the immanent structure of experience. (shrink)

This text provides an analysis of the life and works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, an area often overlooked in accounts of 18th-century heritage. Mark Hulliung restores Rousseau to his historical context, the world of the philosophes, and shows how he employed the arsenal of Voltaire, Diderot and others to launch a powerful attack on their vision of the Enlightenment.

Rumelhart and McClelland's chapter about learning the past tense created a degree of controversy extraordinary even in the adversarial culture of modern science. It also stimulated a vast amount of research that advanced the understanding of the past tense, inflectional morphology in English and other languages, the nature of linguistic representations, relations between language and other phenomena such as reading and object recognition, the properties of artificial neural networks, and other topics. We examine the impact of the Rumelhart and McClelland (...) model with the benefit of 25 years of hindsight. It is not clear who “won” the debate. It is clear, however, that the core ideas that the model instantiated have been assimilated into many areas in the study of language, changing the focus of research from abstract characterizations of linguistic competence to an emphasis on the role of the statistical structure of language in acquisition and processing. (shrink)

Reviews the book "Science, Truth, and Democracy," by Philip Kitcher.

Wie geartet ist das Verhältnis zwischen den zentralen Begriffen „Bewußtsein“ und „Reflexion“ in Lockes Essay? Sind diese Begriffe für Locke identisch oder voneinander verschieden? Falls sie verschieden sind, wie ist der Unterschied genau zu bestimmen? Diese Arbeit untersucht die Fragen, unter Berücksichtigung der unterschiedlichen Deutungen in der Sekundärliteratur; sie sichtet und prüft den Text des Essays sorgfältig und breitet ein breites Spektrum philosophischer Implikationen von Lockes Ausführungen über das „Bewußtsein“ und „Reflexion“ aus. Der abschließende Teil legt dar, daß Locke niemals (...) eine feste Position gegenüber dem Verhältnis zwischen den beiden Begriffen eingenommen hat, sondern daß er zwischen verschiedenen Positionen schwankte -als Resultat der starken philosophischen Kräfte, die ihn bald in die eine, bald in die andere Richtung zogen. (shrink)

Transparency’s importance as an administrative norm seems self-evident. Prevailing ideals of political theory stipulate that the more visible government is, the more democratic, accountable, and legitimate it appears. The disclosure of state information consistently disappoints, however: there is never enough of it, while it often seems not to produce a truer democracy, a more accountable state, better policies, and a more contented populace. This gap between theory and practice suggests that the theoretical assumptions that provide the basis for transparency are (...) wrong. This article argues that transparency is best understood as a theory of communication that excessively simplifies and thus is blind to the complexities of the contemporary state, government information, and the public. Taking them fully into account, the article argues, should lead us to question the state’s ability to control information, which in turn should make us question not only the improbability of the state making itself visible, but also the improbability of the state keeping itself secret. (shrink)

Questions of how we claim to know the things that we know and whose claims to knowledge are treated as authoritative are inescapable in reaching legal judgments. I want to illustrate this generalization by referring to a pair of hypothetical self-defense cases that, I argue, require fact finders to judge both how “accurately” each defendant understood the situation in which he found himself and how accurately policymakers can assess the consequences of alternative legal rules.The first case I will deal with (...) is one in which the defendant shoots and kills her sleeping husband. The husband had physically abused her over a long period. While the defendant will of course acknowledge that she was in no immediate danger at the moment she killed the man, her preliminary claim is that she needed to act self-defensively at that moment for fear that she subsequently would be incapable of defending herself against life-threatening attacks that she was convinced would inevitably be made.The second case is one in which a white defendant shoots and kills a black teenager who has confronted him on the subway, in a situation in which the teenager’s “threats” were ambiguous. The shooting victim had brandished no weapon and made no physical contact with the defendant, but he had “asked” the defendant for money and, in the defendant’s mind, displayed a generally threatening demeanor. I will presuppose that this defendant—unlike Bernhard Goetz, the defendant in the notorious New York subway vigilante case on which I partly base this hypothetical model—overtly acknowledges that the race of the victim played a substantial role in his assessment of the danger of the situation. Mark Kelman, professor of law at Stanford University, is the author of A Guide to Critical Legal Studies as well as a number of articles on law and economics, taxation, criminal law, and legal theory. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Argument ofthe Natural History Mark Webb In the NaturalHistoryofReligion Hume claims there are two principal questions concerning religion: one "concerning its foundation in reason," and the other "concerning its origin in human nature." He forthrightly states that his concern here is to determine "[w]hat those principles are, which give rise to the original belief, and what those accidents and causes are, which direct its operation."1 That is (...) to say, his express intentis, via an empirically based study, to determine and elucidate the causal or natural origin of religion—its beliefs and practices. These are among his first remarks. Consider now his very last remarks: The whole is a riddle, an aenigma, an inexplicable mystery. Doubt, uncertainty, suspence of judgment appear the only result ofour most accurate scrutiny, concerning this subject. But such is the frailty of human reason, and such the irresistible contagion of opinion, that even this deliberate doubt could scarcely be upheld; did we not enlarge our view, and opposing one species ofsuperstition to another, set them a quarrelling; while we ourselves, during their fury and contention, happily make our escape, into the calm, though obscure, regions ofphilosophy. (NHR 4:363) These last remarks should strike one as enigmatic: for, given that his purported aim is to offer a naturalistic account ofwhy humans hold religious beliefs, it is strange that he should be content to end in mystery—particularly sosince theworkitselfonersaplausible account ofsuch origins. Still, even ifHume should have felt the project to have failed, what does that have to do with "suspense of judgment," "quarrelling superstitions," and especially his "happy escape"? But of course he is up to much more in the Natural History than he lets on. Indeed,he offersnotonly acausal accountofreligiousbeliefbutamoral critique ofitas well. Why shouldhe doboth in the same work? I suggest that the causal account and the moral critique are intimately connected; and that the work is first and foremost a moral critique intended to sever allegiance to "traditional religion"—traditional theism in general, and Christianityin particular. One aim ofthis paper Volume XVII Number 2 141 MARKWEBB is to offer a unified reading of the Natural History, while the other is to assess the cogency ofHume's project on this reading. To this end we should first situate the Natural History among Hume's other works. It follows the firstEnquiry which addresses inter alia the credibility of "revealed" religion (particularly section 10, "Of Miracles"), and the second Enquiry which advances a naturalistically based morality. It was completed about the time he began the Dialogues, the main contention ofwhich is that natural theology offers minimal if any support for most traditional religious claims. In the Natural History, then, it is reasonable to suppose he is assuming the cogency of his claims against revealed religion, the viability of a naturalistically based morality, and the utter inability of natural theology to ground either traditional religious tenets or morality. The Dialogues in particular illuminate Hume's thought: after concluding that a posteriori arguments offer absolutely no grounds for ascribing the traditional moral attributes to the Deity, Philo goes on to counter Cleanthes' claim—that "[r]eligion, however corrupted, is still better than noreligion atall"2—bycontendingthattraditional religion simply is unessential andeven harmful to the needs ofsociety. Hume advances his causal account because he believes both that traditional religion lacks any basis in reason, and that recourse to a supernatural origin is untenable. And it will become evident in the course of this paper that the Natural History is most accurately understood against the backdrop of his moral theory as expounded in the second Enquiry—indeed the former is an exercise in applied ethics. The Strategy ofthe Natural History The sceptical tone ofmany ofits passages should strike one as out of place. For the scepticism is directed not towards providing a causal account of the origin ofreligious beliefs and practices (the purported aim), but rather towards their plausibility. Yet one might well expect such passages if Hume is assuming that religion has no tenable basis in reason nor for its revelational claims, and that he intends the work to be more than merely a natural history—as indeed he does. Speaking of polytheism and the... (shrink)

In a culture of the Self that has become progressively more skeptical and materialistic, we spare little thought for the great ideals—courage, contemplation, and compassion—that once gave life meaning. Here, Mark Edmundson makes an impassioned attempt to defend the value of these ancient ideals and to resurrect Soul in the modern world.

My objective in this paper is to write a pharmacology of the university by thinking about its relationship to systemic stupidity, intelligence, and the possibility of becoming. Starting with an exploration of the contemporary dystopia of drive-based stupidity imagined by the French philosopher Bernard Stiegler, which I seek to capture through the idea of the humiliation of thought, I look to deepen his response to this situation by suggesting a return to the work of two of his key sources, Martin (...) Heidegger and Gilles Deleuze. My objective here is to use their work in relation to Stiegler’s in order to suggest a utopia of educational becoming. Following my exploration of Stiegler’s dystopia, in the second part of the article I read Heidegger’s philosophy in order to formulate a utopian theory of education becoming, which is sensitive to the possibility of authoritarianism contained in his catastrophic decision to become a member of the Nazi party. Against the dystopic humiliation of thought Heidegg... (shrink)

We defend the reliability of Hurlburt's Descriptive Experi-ence Sampling method against some of Schwitzgebel's attacks. But we agree with Schwitzgebel that the method could be used much more widely than it has been, helping to answer questions about the nature and structure of consciousness in addition to cataloguing the latter's contents. We sketch a number of potential lines of further enquiry.

Mark Morford provides a lively, succinct, and comprehensive survey of the philosophers of the Roman World, from Cato the Censor in 155 BCE to the death of Marcus Aurelius in 180 CE. These men were asking philosophical questions whose answers had practical effects on people's lives in antiquity--and still do today--yet this is an era of philosophy somewhat neglected in recent decades. Morford puts this right by discussing the writings and ideas of numerous famous and lesser-known figures. Using extensive (...) and fully-translated quotations from their works, he illuminates each of the philosopher's meanings within the historical, political, and cultural contexts of their day. This book serves as the ideal introduction to the newcomer to Roman philosophy. (shrink)

Imagine you are driving up a long and winding road in the mountains. It is nighttime; there are no streetlights or traffic lights, no moon illuminating the sky, and barely shining through a few clouds, the faint, flickering stars above grant you only a fraction of light to see the path ahead. The quiet, serene scene of this moonless, cool night coupled with the sweet scent of pine reminds you of the wonders and beauty of nature. Then, unexpectedly, as you (...) begin to steer around a sharp turn in the lane, flashing red and blue lights of emergency vehicles and police cars temporarily blind you. Once your eyes adjust to this onslaught of light, you see that rescue workers are quickly descending into the.. (shrink)