For over a decade, we have watched the state affairs/practitioner constituency within the American Psychological Association move steadily to become the single largest group—clearly a majority—within the membership ranks of the association. Over the same period of time and as the obverse of related demographic phenomena, the research/academic constituency has shrunk to around 30% of the membership. Since power over the affairs of and the destiny of APA has traditionally resided in the hands of the latter, it probably would have (...) been too much to hope that the visionaries in the research/academic community would have made way gracefully for new leadership to be seated in the positions of authority in the association, a leadership more attuned to the needs of APA's majority. So it is not surprising that an orderly transfer of power has not taken place. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Although Sinai 357 is one of the longest and best-preserved early alphabetic inscriptions from Serabit el-Khadem, these characteristics have not made it any easier to interpret. Most scholars read it as a command from a mining foreman to one of his subordinates, but this reading creates logical and contextual problems. To avoid these problems, I read Sinai 357 as a votive inscription to the Hurrian deity Teššob that employs language similar to first-millennium Northwest Semitic dedicatory inscriptions. Such a reading reflects (...) cultural and linguistic contact between speakers of Egyptian, Hurrian, and a Northwest Semitic language at the site of Serabit el-Khadem. (shrink)

German phenomenologist and sociologist Max Scheler accorded sympathy a central role in his philosophy, arguing that sympathy enables not only ethical behaviour, but also knowledge of animate and inanimate others. Influenced by Catholicism and especially St Francis, Scheler envisioned a broad, cosmic sympathy forming the hidden basis for all human values, with the “higher” religious, artistic, philosophic and other cultural values enabled by a more basic regard for non-human nature and insights gained from the human situation within the non-human world. (...) Sympathy for the non-human is thus both integral and fundamental to the cultivation of other values in the development of both the human person and humanity in general. Scheler’s concept of sympathy is valuable for contemporary animal ethics because it insists on acknowledgement of and respect for difference as constitutive for the experience of sympathy. By thus allowing for sympathy to occur in the absence of complete knowledge of other subjectivities, Scheler’s phenomenology of sympathy eliminates the need for complete understanding of the consciousness of other animals as a prerequisite for interspecies sympathy. Despite their inability to completely inhabit non-human perspectives, humans can thus sympathize with other creatures. While Scheler is a foundational thinker and, to a large degree, maintains hierarchical structures contested by many contemporary animal theorists, he remains a valuable source for contemporary theory insofar as he acknowledges a “fundamental basis of connection” between species and affirms that all animal bodies are communicative. The occasioning of sympathy by gestural signification opens a path of insight that can increase human openness to non-human others. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 7, Edition 2 September 2007. (shrink)

In the first chapter of his book Truth and Objectivity (1992), Crispin Wright puts forward what he regards as ‘a fundamental and decisive objection’ to deflationism about truth (p. 21). His objection proceeds by an argument to the conclusion that truth and warranted assertibility coincide in normative force and potentially diverge in extension ( I call this the ‘argument from neutrality’). This argument has already received some attention. However, I do not believe that it has been fully understood yet. (...) In this short paper, I shall assess the cogency of Wright’s objection in some detail. My agenda is as follows. First, I give what I believe to be an adequate rendering of the objection. Secondly, I reveal the real force of the neutrality argument and say thirdly why it does not, as Wright thinks, refute deflationism. Finally, I argue that Wright’s insistence that truth is a ‘substantial property’ is uncongenial to the overall project of his book. (shrink)

Arguing About Language presents a comprehensive selection of key readings on fundamental issues in the philosophy of language. It offers a fresh and exciting introduction to the subject, addressing both perennial problems and emerging topics. Classic readings from Frege, Russell, Kripke, Chomsky, Quine, Grice, Lewis and Davidson appear alongside more recent pieces by philosophers or linguists such as Robyn Carston, Delia Graff Fara, Frank Jackson, Ernie Lepore & Jerry Fodor, Nathan Salmon, Zoltán Szabó, Timothy Williamson and Crispin Wright. Organised (...) into clear sections, readings have been chosen that engage with one another and often take opposing views on the same question, helping students to get to grips with the key areas of debate in the philosophy of language, including: sense and reference definite descriptions linguistic conventions language and behaviour descriptivism and rigidity contextualism vagueness rule-following and normativity fictional discourse. Each article selected is clear, thought-provoking and free from unnecessary jargon. The editors provide lucid introductions to each section in which they give an overview of the debate and outline the arguments of the papers. Arguing About Language is an ideal reader for students looking for a balanced yet up-to-date introduction to the philosophy of language. Darragh Byrne is lecturer in philosophy at the University of Birmingham, UK. Max Kölbel is ICREA Research Professor at the University of Barcelona, Spain. He is the author of Truth without Objectivity (Routledge, 2002) and co-editor of Wittgenstein's Lasting Significance (Routledge, 2004) with Bernhard Weiss, as well as Relative Truth (Oxford, 2008) with Manuel García-Carpintero. (shrink)

There are many reasons to assume that the contents expressible by declarative sentences are generally truth-evaluable. This assumption of global truth-evaluability, however, appears to conflict with the view that the contents of some sentences do not admit of truth or falsehood for lack of objectivity of their subject matter. Could there be a notion of truth on which the truth-evaluability of a content does not rule out the non-objectivity of its subject matter?In this paper, I discuss Crispin Wright's criterion (...) of Cognitive Command as a criterion for objectivity. This criterion faces the Problem of A Priori Error. I reject Wright's response to that problem and propose to solve the problem by relativising truth. This move allows for the possibility of contents that are truth-evaluable yet non-objective. (shrink)

Wright, Ken Review(s) of: Blind spots: Why We Fail to Do What's Right And What to Do about It, by Max H. Bazerman and Ann E. Tenbrunsel Princeton University Press 2011, x, 191pp.

Interviews met wijsgeren en andere wetenschapsmensen over de reden waarom zij zich met de persoon en het werk van de Oostenrijks-Engelse filosoof (1889-1951) bezighouden.

This thesis argues for a reconsideration of the social theories of Max Horkheimer and C. Wright Mills in order to increase our understanding of the ideological forces at play in modern society. Despite clear similarities in their work in terms of both subject matter and perspective, the discipline of political science lacks a critical comparison of their writings. I demonstrate that a comprehensive and comparative reading of Horkheimer and Mills can offer a new way to address many issues that (...) remain at the heart of writings on ideology, the production of knowledge, and the culture industry. Instead of simply studying the concept of ideology as it appears in each theorist's writings, I propose to place their views in dialogue with one another. Taken together, Horkheimer and Mills provide an illuminating and dynamic perspective on the current, and often conflicting approaches to the theory of ideology. ;Much of the current literature on ideology reflects fixed positions with little room for compromise. The impasse in the study of ideology revolves around the conceptualization of ideology as either enabling or constraining critical consciousness. A combination of the writings of Horkheimer and Mills can guide social theorists beyond the present impasse towards a reflexive theory of ideology, one that considers its own social and ethical presuppositions and normative values. (shrink)

The first thorough examination of C. Wright Mills's intellectual roots, this book also is the first to present Mills's full analysis in his unpublished as well as published writings of the work of his precursors, mentors, and critics. Mills' intellectual line of descent is traced from the American institutional economists, especially Thorstein Veblen and Clarence Ayres, and the American pragmatists, especially John Dewey and George H. Mead—an evolution influenced though not determined by ideas from Europe. Always the critic and (...) gadfly, Mills subjected all theories to his special brand of analysis and synthesis. For example, his books on U.S. social stratification are seen by Tilman as a trilogy updating Veblen with ideas from the pragmatists, spiced with a good bit of Max Weber but very little Man. Power, his other chief concern, also was subjected to his creative American eclecticism. As a lifelong seeker of knowledge, Mills studied the great European social thinkers—notably Marx, Mosca, Pareto, Michels, Weber, Mannheim, and Freud—until his untimely death. Explaining Mills's self-description as a "plain Marxist," Tilman writes that it "amounted to little more than a willingness to use Marx's values, vocabulary, and model when these seemed relevant and to ignore them when they did not." Regarding alleged affinities between Freud and Mills, Tilman argues these were "tenuous at best and, although the linkage with the neo-Freudians was stronger, Mills remained critical of Homey and Fromm because they had "not succeeded in entirely overcoming Freud's biological metaphysic." Although the American radical tradition is complex and varied, the heritage that most influenced Mills, Tilman contends, contains elements of evangelical Protestantism and of liberal pragmatism. "It was Charles Wright Mills more than any other thinker in recent years," he concludes, "who synthesized these strands of thought and then wove them into an authentic American radical theory.". (shrink)

The main impetus for my book came from the widespread acceptance of relativistic views about truth and knowledge within the Academy, especially within the humanities and the humanistic social sciences. In its introductory sections, though, I noted that there is one discipline within the humanities in which the influence of relativistic views is quite weak—namely, within analytic philosophy itself. Ironically, no sooner had the ink dried on the final version of my manuscript sometime in mid-2005—although, of course it had been (...) in the works for a number of years prior to that—than I began to become aware of a huge interest in certain kinds of relativistic views that was beginning to build within analytic philosophy. That interest—which is ongoing as I write—has been fueled to a considerable extent by the work of a younger generation of philosophers including John MacFarlane, Max Kölbel and Peter Lasersohn. (shrink)

IN 1959 and 1960 I gave the Gifford Lectures in the University of St. Andrews. The lectures were called 'Norms and Values, an Inquiry into the Conceptual Foundations of Morals and Legislation'. The present work is substantially the same as the content of the second series of lectures, then advertised under the not very adequate title 'Values'. It is my plan to publish a revised version of the content of the first series of lectures, called 'Norms', as a separate book. (...) The two works will be independent of one another. (shrink)

The Protestant ethic — a moral code stressing hard work, rigorous self-discipline, and the organization of one's life in the service of God — was made famous by sociologist and political economist Max Weber. In this brilliant study (his best-known and most controversial), he opposes the Marxist concept of dialectical materialism and its view that change takes place through "the struggle of opposites." Instead, he relates the rise of a capitalist economy to the Puritan determination to work out anxiety over (...) salvation or damnation by performing good deeds — an effort that ultimately discouraged belief in predestination and encouraged capitalism. Weber's classic study has long been required reading in college and advanced high school social studies classrooms. (shrink)

The ontic conception of scientific explanation has been constructed and motivated on the basis of a putative lexical ambiguity in the term explanation. I raise a puzzle for this ambiguity claim, and then give a deflationary solution under which all ontically-rendered talk of explanation is merely elliptical; what it is elliptical for is a view of scientific explanation that altogether avoids the ontic conception. This result has revisionary consequences for New Mechanists and other philosophers of science, many of whom have (...) assimilated their conception of explanation to the ontic conception. (shrink)

This book is a defense of the methods of analytic philosophy against a recent empirical challenge to the soundness of those methods. The challenge is raised by practitioners of “experimental philosophy” and concerns the extent to which analytic philosophy relies on intuition—in particular, the extent to which analytic philosophers treat intuitions as evidence in arguing for philosophical conclusions. Experimental philosophers say that analytic philosophers place a great deal of evidential weight on people’s intuitions about hypothetical cases and thought experiments. This (...) book argues that this view of traditional philosophical method is a myth, part of “metaphilosophical folklore.” Analytic philosophy makes regular use of hypothetical examples and thought experiments, but philosophers argue for their claims about what is true or not true in these examples and thought experiments. It is these arguments, not intuitions, that are treated as evidence for the claims. The book discusses xphi and some recent xphi studies; critiques a variety of other metaphilosophical claims; examines such famous arguments as Gettier’s refutation of the JTB theory and Kripke’s Gödel Case argument against descriptivism about proper names, and shows that they rely on reasoning rather than intuition; and finds existing critiques of xphi, the “Multiple Concepts” and “Expertise” replies, to be severely lacking. (shrink)

Philosophy as a way of life (PWOL) places investigations of value, meaning, and the good life at the center of philosophical investigation, especially of one’s own life. This essay argues that PWOL is compatible with general introductory philosophy courses, further arguing that PWOL‐based general introductions have several philosophical and pedagogical benefits. These include the ease with which high‐impact practices, situated skill development, and students’ ability to “think like a disciplinarian” may be incorporated into such courses, relative to more traditional introductory (...) courses, as well as the demonstration of philosophy’s value to students by explicitly tying philosophical investigation to students’ own lives. (shrink)

This book attempts to articulate a contemporary philosophy of life drawing upon Buddhist resources from the Vimalakīrti Sūtra. Among the major themes in this Mahayana Buddhist scripture is the "skillful means" required to live a healthy and undeluded life. The book adopts that theme as a means of developing a practical approach to contemporary Buddhist life. Following many of the brilliant stories in the sutra, this book attempts to provide clear explanations for the primary Buddhist teachings and the relationships that (...) bind them all together into an inspiring way of living. Among the questions addressed are: who is the Buddha, how is a worldview of change and contingency applicable to current life, what does it mean to claim that there is no permanent self, what are the primary characteristics of an admirable Buddhist life, how is freedom conceived in Buddhism, and how do all of these themes help us address contemporary issues such as global warming, gender identities, political dichotomies, the global economy, and more. Although historical questions do arise in the book, its primary purpose if contemporary and practical, an effort to say clearly how this text helps us stake out a way of living for contemporary, global citizens. (shrink)

Author Robert Wright shows how Buddhist meditative practice can loosen the grip of anxiety, regret, and hatred, and deepen your appreciation of beauty and other people." -- Adapted from book jacket.

Traditional inflationary approaches that specify the nature of truth are attractive in certain ways; yet, while many of these theories successfully explain why propositions in certain domains of discourse are true, they fail to adequately specify the nature of truth because they run up against counterexamples when attempting to generalize across all domains. One popular consequence is skepticism about the efficaciousness of inflationary approaches altogether. Yet, by recognizing that the failure to explain the truth of disparate propositions often stems from (...) inflationary approaches' allegiance to alethic monism, pluralist approaches are able to avoid this explanatory inadequacy and the resulting skepticism, though at the cost of inviting other conceptual difficulties. A novel approach, alethic functionalism, attempts to circumvent the problems faced by pluralist approaches while preserving their main insights. Unfortunately, it too generates additional problems---namely, with its suspect appropriation of the multiple realizability paradigm and its platitude-based strategy---that need to be dissolved before it can constitute an adequate inflationary approach to the nature of truth. (shrink)

One possible challenge for epiphenomenalism arises from the theory of evolution: if the mental has no causal powers, how might it have evolved? The aim of this paper is to argue that, contrary to some arguments advanced by other philosophers, most particularly William Robinson and Joseph Corabi, considerations from the theory of evolution do pose a genuine difficulty for epiphenomenalism.

The book "Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience" is an engaging criticism of cognitive neuroscience from the perspective of a Wittgensteinian philosophy of ordinary language. The authors' main claim is that assertions like "the brain sees" and "the left hemisphere thinks" are integral to cognitive neuroscience but that they are meaningless because they commit the mereological fallacy—ascribing to parts of humans, properties that make sense to predicate only of whole humans. The authors claim that this fallacy is at the heart of Cartesian (...) dualism, implying that current cognitive neuroscientists are Cartesian dualists. Against this claim, we argue that the fallacy cannot be committed within Cartesian dualism either, for this doctrine does not allow for an intelligible way of asserting that a soul is part of a human being. Also, the authors' Aristotelian essentialistic outlook is at odds with their Wittgensteinian stance, and we were unconvinced by their case against explanatory reductionism. Finally, although their Wittgensteinian stance is congenial with radical behaviorism, their separation between philosophy and science seems less so because it is based on a view of philosophy as a priori. The authors' emphasis on the a priori, however, does not necessarily commit them to rationalism if it is restricted to conceptual or analytical truths. (shrink)

This article proposes a theological emphasis to the definition of προσλαμβάνω in Romans 14–15. Previous accounts have emphasised the domestic and social implication of Paul's imperative—‘welcome one another’ (Rom. 15:7a). The result has been that what Paul might have meant by God's and Christ's ‘welcome’ (Rom. 14:3 and 15:7b) has been governed by the ethical imperative. In order to investigate the ‘welcome’ of God and Christ, this article proposes a context of three important Septuagintal antecedents as yet unconsidered: 1 Samuel (...) 12, Psalm 18, and Psalm 65: In this context, God's and Christ's ‘welcome’ in Rom. 14–15 incorporates notions of justification, election, salvation, and unified worship. A theological reading of προσλαμβάνω, using these intertextual resources, therefore provides a stronger position from which to understand Paul's imperative—‘welcome one another’. (shrink)

This is the first critical edition of a fascinating medieval work on music, written in Iraq in the tenth century. It is accompanied by an English translation and full annotation. The Epistle examines not just the technical, scientific, and mathematical aspects of music, but its cosmic, psychological, and spiritual dimensions.

Functionalists about truth employ Ramsification to produce an implicit definition of the theoretical term _true_, but doing so requires determining that the theory introducing that term is itself true. A variety of putative dissolutions to this problem of epistemic circularity are shown to be unsatisfactory. One solution is offered on functionalists' behalf, though it has the upshot that they must tread on their anti-pluralist commitments.

I explore physics implications of the External Reality Hypothesis (ERH) that there exists an external physical reality completely independent of us humans. I argue that with a sufficiently broad definition of mathematics, it implies the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis (MUH) that our physical world is an abstract mathematical structure. I discuss various implications of the ERH and MUH, ranging from standard physics topics like symmetries, irreducible representations, units, free parameters, randomness and initial conditions to broader issues like consciousness, parallel universes and (...) Gödel incompleteness. I hypothesize that only computable and decidable (in Gödel’s sense) structures exist, which alleviates the cosmological measure problem and may help explain why our physical laws appear so simple. I also comment on the intimate relation between mathematical structures, computations, simulations and physical systems. (shrink)