Wittgenstein was one of the most powerful influences on contemporary philosophy, yet he shunned publicity and was essentially a private man. This remarkable, vivid, personal memoir is written by one of his friends, the eminent philosopher Norman Malcolm. Reissued in paperback, this edition includes the complete text of fifty-seven letters which Wittgenstein wrote to Malcolm over a period of eleven years. Also included is a concise biographical sketch by another of Wittgenstein's philosopher friends, Georg Henrik von Wright. 'A reader (...) does not need to care about philosophy to be excited by Mr Malcolm's book; it is about Wittgenstein as a man, and its interest is human interest'. (shrink)

Ludwig Wittgenstein, who died in Cambridge in 1951, is one of the most powerful influences on contemporary philosophy, yet he shunned publicity and was essentially a private man. His friend Norman Malcolm (himself an eminent philosopher) wrote this remarkably vivid personal memoir ofWittgenstein, which was published in 1958 and was immediately recognized as a moving and truthful portrait of this gifted, difficult man.This edition includes also the complete text of the fifty-seven letters which Wittgenstein wrote to Malcolm over a (...) period of eleven years. Apart from the quotations in the Memoir these letters are previously unpublished. They reveal how much friendships mattered to Wittgenstein, and how concerned hewas for the health and well-being of his friends. His human qualities become evident; he advises, warns, jokes. and is grateful and affectionate.The volume also features a concise biographical sketch by another leading philosopher who was a friend of Wittgenstein, Georg Henrik von Wright.Much has been published about Wittgenstein since his death, but nothing brings us closer to the man himself than this modest classic of philosophical biography. (shrink)

We first describe how the concept of “fringe consciousness” can characterise gradations of consciousness between the extremes of implicit and explicit learning. We then show that the NEO-PI-R personality measure of openness to feelings, chosen to reflect the ability to introspect on fringe feelings, influences both learning and awareness in the serial reaction time task under conditions that have previously been associated with implicit learning . This provides empirical evidence for the proposed phenomenology and functional role of fringe consciousness in (...) so-called implicit learning paradigms . Introducing an individual difference variable also helped to identify possible limitations of the exclusion task as a measure of conscious sequence knowledge. Further exploration of individual differences in fringe awareness may help to avoid polarity in the implicit learning debate, and to resolve apparent inconsistencies between previous SRT studies. (shrink)

At a time when interest in the Wittgensteinian tradition has quickened, this volume brings together fourteen essays by Norman Malcolm, a prominent philosopher ...

Arnauld's criticisms as "a model of confusion confounded.” In a review of Wilson's book, R. McRae refers to "the difficult and not too coherent subject of material falsity. '' J. Cottingham describes the Descartes-Arnauld debate on the material falsity of adventitious ideas as "an involved and rather inconclusive exchange " and claims that the example of the material falsity of such ideas espoused by Descartes in Meditation III is "needlessly complicated. " A. Kenny, in turn, notes that several things are (...) "confusing in Descartes' account of false ideas. " Later reference is made to the fact that "Descartes appears confused. [...] and that "Descartes, it seems, cannot give a consistent answer. '' As will become clear, I take issue with each of these assessments. When Descartes' position on material falsity is understood in the light of late Scholastic sources, especially Suarez, whence it draws its strength and inspiration, the alleged confusion and incoherency vanishes. .. (shrink)

This book argues that according to Metaphysics Zeta, substantial forms constitute substantial being in the sensible world, and individual composites make up the basic constituents that possess this kind of being. The study explains why Aristotle provides a reexamination of substance after the Categories, Physics, and De Anima, and highlights the contribution Z is meant to make to the science of being. Norman O. Dahl argues that Z.1-11 leaves both substantial forms and individual composites as candidates for basic constituents, (...) with Z.12 being something that can be set aside. He explains that although the main focus of Z.13-16 is to argue against a Platonic view that takes universals to be basic constituents, some of its arguments commit Aristotle to individual composites as basic constituents, with Z.17’s taking substantial form to constitute substantial being is compatible with that commitment.. (shrink)

High-profile corporate scandals earlier in this decade provoked outrage and legislative action; however, corporate executive-level ethical lapses continue to come to light. This article examines the work of Professor Dunfee and his coauthors on corruption, ethical leadership, and social contracts theory, and relates that literature to corrupt activities by corporate executives. Corruption is defined broadly to encompass executive self-dealing, which harms their firms. The specific example of stock options backdating is used to show the harmful impact on shareholders and the (...) lack of managerial integrity though consequentialist, deontological, and legal analysis, as well as a critique of the practice using social contracts principles. Ultimately, this article utilizes the insights of Dunfee and his coauthors, and the lessons from the backdating example, to propose a framework aimed at improving corporate governance and preventing future executive corruption. The framework includes a strategy of identification and prevention, employing detection and eradication mechanisms, and institutional learning from past instances of corporate corruption. (shrink)

Eleonore Stump argues in her article in this volume that Aquinas’s theory of knowledge is not classical foundationalism, as it has sometimes seemed to be, but, instead, a version of reliabilism. I'm convinced that her thesis is important and well-supported, and it has led me to begin a re-examination of one aspect of Aquinas’s theory of knowledge from the new viewpoint Stump’s work provides. I think the results tend to confirm her account while revealing further details of Aquinas’s reliabilism.My topic (...) is not reliabilism itself. Instead, I am focusing on Aquinas’s account of the reliability of the fundamental operations of the two human cognitive faculties, sense and intellect. Accounts of cognitive reliability have a place in most theories about the justification of belief, of course, and so they are found in more than one sort of epistemology; but reliabilism might be said to need them most. (shrink)

The definitive study of the natural theology of Thomas Aquinas, the greatest medieval philosopher, written by one of the world's most eminent scholars of medieval thought.

This is the first of a three-volume anthology intended as a companion to The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy. Volume 1 is concerned with the logic and the philosophy of language, and comprises fifteen important texts on questions of meaning and inference that formed the basis of Medieval philosophy. As far as is practicable, complete works or topically complete segments of larger works have been selected. The editors have provided a full introduction to the volume and detailed introductory headnotes (...) to each text; the volume is also indexed comprehensively. (shrink)

Recent research has focused on business as a mediating institution that can influence society while engaging in the traditional profit-making and value generation functions. This work includes Professors Fort's and Schipani's arguments about how business may be able to play a role in promoting more peaceful societies, and other research addressing how businesses might serve a role in reducing violence in society and the workplace. Although there is a significant body of scholarship on the role of business in reducing violence (...) in society, there is little research on concrete steps for businesses to take to achieve this goal. This article attempts to begin to fill that void. As identified by Fort and Schipani, business may promote more peaceful societies by encouraging a sense of community. We argue that one way to reach that goal is for business to provide what we denote as complementary alternative benefits (CABs), to its workforce. In this article, we advocate for businesses to offer CABs which focus on sustaining the health, reducing the stress, and improving the camaraderie of its workforce. We argue that business can use these benefits to promote a healthy, less-stressed, and collegial workforce that is less prone to resolve conflicts by violence. Further, we examine the role business plays in promoting more peaceful societies and how employer-initiated stress reduction programs are consistent with both business ethics and peace-building principles. Finally, using case studies we demonstrate how CABs may also reduce costs related to absenteeism and turnover, and thus improve the bottom line. (shrink)

Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure makes ironically secular use of the imagery of the New Jerusalem and of unregenerate Babylon in the Book of Revelation. His purchase on the text is mediated both by Bunyan's Pilgrim’s Progress, a childhood favourite, and hymns such as ‘Jerusalem the Golden’ translated from Bernard of Cluny's De Contemptu Mundi. Avoiding the traditions of anti-Catholic interpretation, and of explicitly political readings which identify Babylon and the mysterious ‘number of the beast’ with particular historical adversaries and (...) tyrants, Hardy uses the biblical text sardonically to demonstrate the inadequacy of escapist dreams and institutional religion and to explore problems of poverty and ambition complicated by sexuality and its cynical exploitation. (shrink)

Suppose it were known, by someone else, what you are going to choose to do tomorrow. Wouldn't that entail that tomorrow you must do what it was known in advance that you would do? In spite of your deliberating and planning, in the end, all is futile: you must choose exactly as it was earlier known that you would. The supposed exercise of your free will is ultimately an illusion. Historically, the tension between foreknowledge and the exercise of free will (...) was addressed in a religious context. According to orthodox views in the West, God was claimed to be omniscient (and hence in possession of perfect foreknowledge) and yet God was supposed to have given humankind free will. Attempts to solve the apparent contradiction often involved attributing to God special properties, e.g. being 'outside' of time. However, the trouble with such solutions is that they are generally unsatisfactory on their own terms. Even more serious is the fact that they leave untouched the problem posed not by God's foreknowledge but that of any human being. Do human beings have foreknowledge? Certainly, of at least some events and behaviors. Thus we have a secular counterpart of the original problem. A human being's foreknowledge, exactly as would God's, of another's choices would seem to preclude the exercise of human free will. Various ways of trying to solve the problem – e.g. by putting constraints on the truth-conditions for statements, or by 'tightening' the conditions necessary for knowledge – are examined and shown not to work. Ultimately the alleged incompatibility of foreknowledge and free will is shown to rest on a subtle logical error. When the error, a modal fallacy, is recognized, and remedied, the problem evaporates. (shrink)

THE nature of the self and of self knowledge is a problem that has not ceased to intrigue and perplex philosophers since the day that Socrates made his own the Delphic precept ‘Know Thyself’. It has been of particular interest to philosophers, however, since Descartes took the Cogito as the basis of his philosophy. In modern times we have only to think of Hume’s vain search for the self, of Kant’s transcendental apperception, and of Fichte’s Ego. And in contemporary times (...) we have before us the descriptions that Husserl and Sartre have given of the constitution of the ego, and the enigmatic remarks that Wittgenstein makes in his Tractatus about the subject being the limit of the world. (shrink)

Searle's Chinese room argument is analyzed from a cognitive point of view. The analysis is based on a newly developed model of conceptual integration, the many space model proposed by Fauconnier and Turner. The main point of the analysis is that the central inference constructed in the Chinese room scenario is a result of a dynamic, cognitive activity of conceptual blending, with metaphor defining the basic features of the blending. Two important consequences follow: (1) Searle's recent contention that syntax is (...) not intrinsic to physics turns out to be a slightly modified version of the old Chinese room argument; and (2) the argument itself is still open to debate. It is persuasive but not conclusive, and at bottom it is a topological mismatch in the metaphoric conceptual integration that is responsible for the non-conclusive character of the Chinese room argument. (shrink)

Tye argues that visual mental images have their contents encoded in topographically organized regions of the visual cortex, which support depictive representations; therefore, visual mental images rely at least in part on depictive representations. This argument, I contend, does not support its conclusion. I propose that we divide the problem about the depictive nature of mental imagery into two parts: one concerns the format of image representation and the other the conditions by virtue of which a representation becomes a depictive (...) representation. Regarding the first part of the question, I argue that there exists a topographic format in the brain but that does not imply that there exists a depictive format of image representation. My answer to the second part of the question is that one needs a content analysis of a certain sort of topographic representations i n order to make sense of depictive mental representations, and a topographic representation becomes a depictive representation by virtue of its content rather than its form. (shrink)