Like the virtue it purports to explain, St Thomas Aquinas' treatment of modestia in the Summa Theologiae is something that can easily be overlooked. Such neglect is unfortunate, for it is liable to obscure the surprising character of Aquinas' account, departing as it does from many of his philosophical sources , to say nothing of our own contemporary assumptions. This novel treatment is especially significant given its potential value in addressing the social and political needs of the current age, for (...) rather than being the virtue least fitted for contemporary life, the modesty that emerges in Thomas' moral theology may have an enduring civic significance. This essay therefore begins with an exegesis of Aquinas' account of modestia and concludes with an analysis of its political dimensions. (shrink)

What is the principal function of political philosophy? This question has long been the source of discourse and debate, especially amongst those who practise this ancient art. For Ronald Beiner, the primary and proper function of political philosophy is, always has been, and forever will be, to expand our analytical horizons and thereby improve our ability to judge accurately the desirability and subsequent acceptability of our existing social order. Beiner contends, however, that contemporary theorists have so restricted the scope and (...) focus of their investigations that political philosophy is no longer able to fulfil its intended function. This is a theme which has animated much of Beiner’s recent work, and provides the foundation and focus for his book Philosophy in a Time of Lost Spirit: Essays on Contemporary Theory, the subject of this essay. (shrink)

What is the principal function of political philosophy? This question has long been the source of discourse and debate, especially amongst those who practise this ancient art. For Ronald Beiner, the primary and proper function of political philosophy is, always has been, and forever will be, to expand our analytical horizons and thereby improve our ability to judge accurately the desirability and subsequent acceptability of our existing social order. Beiner contends, however, that contemporary theorists have so restricted the scope and (...) focus of their investigations that political philosophy is no longer able to fulfil its intended function. This is a theme which has animated much of Beiner’s recent work, and provides the foundation and focus for his book Philosophy in a Time of Lost Spirit: Essays on Contemporary Theory, the subject of this essay. (shrink)

One of John Locke's most influential discussions in philosophy of religion concerns the relationship between faith and reason. This chapter discusses John Locke's views on arguments for God's existence. It examines his criticisms of Descartes’ ontological argument, and explains Locke's own cosmological argument. The chapter then focuses on the related issue of God's uniqueness and examines Locke's proofs for the unity of God. It considers Locke's views on the ladder of being and man's place in the world. Locke's view that (...) human beings are quite limited with respect to their faculties and knowledge brings up a problem concerning God's goodness and justice, which is discussed in the chapter. The chapter further examines Locke's accounts of the relation between faith and reason, and revelation and miracles. Locke's epistemology comes to the forefront and the chapter explains how his epistemic modesty extends even to matters of faith. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 42.2 (2004) 219-220 [Access article in PDF] Jack Zupko. John Buridan: Portrait of a Fourteenth-Century Arts Master. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003. Pp. xix + 446. Cloth, $70.00. Paper, $40.00. What does the name "John Buridan" call to mind? For many, including medievalists, not much at all—at best, perhaps, a set of apparently unrelated ideas: nominalism; an impetus theory of (...) projectile motion; and a peculiar account of the will (although "Buridan's ass," the indecisive donkey caught between two equally appetizing bales of hay, is not found in Buridan's writing). In correcting this ignorance—an injustice to arguably the most famous and influential philosopher of the early-to-mid-fourteenth century—the temptation might have been to articulate Buridan's "positions" on "the big questions," allowing readers to fit Buridan into received categories. Thankfully, the present work, the first book-length study of Buridan in any language, resists this temptation. The John Buridan that emerges from Jack Zupko's skillful "exercise in philosophical portraiture" doesn't serve to simply fill gaps in our awareness of the historical record, but to enlighten and challenge our understanding of the practice of philosophy and the study of its history.Zupko emphasizes throughout that Buridan was a teacher, a master of arts in Paris. Buridan's pedagogical concerns help make sense of his central work in logic. As the basis for his arts lectures, Buridan chose Peter of Spain's Summulae Logicales, but in commenting on Peter, Buridan moves beyond creative exegisis to comprehensive renovation. Buridan (c. 1300-c. 1361) naturally wanted to accommodate terminist or via moderna supposition theory; but more importantly, he wanted a logic text that would set out a general plan of philosophical inquiry, "a compendium of methods, a 'how-to' book for the philosopher" (135). Buridan thus designed his own Summulae de Dialectica as a new authoritative logic text, and Zupko persuasively argues that its "nominalism" should be understood as less a set of doctrines in theoretical logic, than a program of logical practice, an education in logic as the ars artium, the universal intellectual tool.Zupko's portrait of "Buridan's vision of the philosophical enterprise" is thus appropriately divided into two parts. The first summarizes Buridan's method as described in the individual treatises of his Summulae. The second displays the method in practice, rehearsing and evaluating some of Buridan's arguments on various subjects. Many scholars will gravitate first to the latter part, where Zupko offers important interpretations and clarifications of Buridan's views. In these chapters, Zupko helps us to appreciate, among other things: how the problem of universals served to help Buridan define the scope of philosophy (ch. 10); the philosophical modesty of Buridan's account of the intellectual soul's presence in the body (ch. 11); the relationship between Buridan's epistemology and the skepticism of his Parisian contemporary Nicholas of Autrecourt (ch. 12); the sense in which Buridan is an "empiricist," viz an epistemic naturalist and reliabilist (ch. 13); how Buridan regarded moral psychology as applied physics, treating virtue as a kind of impetus (ch. 14); how Buridan's account of freedom can be regarded as a "perfection" of Thomistic intellectualism (ch. 15).Throughout these discussions, Zupko always keeps in sight his larger purpose of illustrating Buridan's conception of philosophical inquiry. Zupko makes much of the fact that [End Page 219] Buridan never wrote as a theologian, remaining his entire career in the arts faculty, where he wanted logic to organize secular inquiry. As Zupko notes, in this way Buridan's scholastic project seems to prefigure the "modern." But Buridan seems modern in another way as well. As Zupko points out in his "Introduction," though a cleric, Buridan never joined a religious order, so that his ideas developed independently of the Franciscan and Dominican traditions. He was, then, a teacher without a tradition—at least without deliberate allegiance to tradition, although he was in many ways the product of traditional scholastic intellectual discipline.Perhaps this... (shrink)

p-consequence (plausible consequence; see [2]) allows for a formulation of non-deductive reasonings, i.e., such where the conclusion has weaker justification then assumptions and thus when added to the set of assumptions results in its extension. But theoretical modesty of p-consequence operation does not tell the difference between “good” and “worse” conclusions. Therefore the bisconsequence is introduced.

Paul Draper has recently developed an account of intrinsic probability according to which a theory's intrinsic probability is determined by its modesty and coherence. He employs this account in an argument that Source Physicalism (SP) and Source Idealism (SI) are equally intrinsically probable. Since SP and SI are not exhaustive, and Theism is one very specific version of SI, it follows that the intrinsic probability of Theism is very low. I argue here that considerations of fundamentality show that more work (...) needs to be done to defend the claim that P(SP) = P(SI). (shrink)

Este artigo examina a objeção ao fechamento [dedutivo] que surge no contexto de certos paradoxos epistêmicos, paradoxos cuja conclusão é que a crença justificada pode ser inconsistente. É universalmente aceito que, se essa conclusão é correta, o fechamento deve ser rejeitado, para que se evite a crença justificada em enunciados contraditórios (P, ~P). Mas, mesmo que os argumentos desses paradoxos – o paradoxo da falibilidade (do prefácio) e o paradoxo da loteria – sejam mal-sucedidos, eles, ainda assim, sugerem a existência (...) de evidência independente para uma objeção mais direta contra o fechamento. O exame do argumento da falibilidade revela uma exigência de modéstia epistêmica que viola o fechamento a partir de múltiplas premissas. A reflexão sobre o paradoxo da loteria nos confronta com um dilema em que cada alternativa fornece um contra-exemplo ao fechamento a partir de uma única premissa. Seja ou não possível a inconsistência racional, há uma objeção contra o fechamento. PALAVRAS-CHAVE – Fechamento dedutivo. Falibilidade. Paradoxo da Loteria. Paradoxo do Prefácio. Justificação. Inconsistência. ABSTRACT This paper examines the case against closure that arises in the context of certain epistemic paradoxes, paradoxes whose conclusion is that it is possible for justified belief to be inconsistent. It is generally agreed that if this conclusion is correct, closure must be rejected in order to avoid justified belief in contradictory statements (P, ~P). But even if the arguments of these paradoxes – the fallibility (preface) paradox and the lottery paradox – are unsuccessful, they nonetheless suggest independent grounds for a more direct case against closure. Examination of the fallibility argument reveals a requirement of epistemic modesty that violates multiple premise closure. Reflection on the lottery paradox presents us with a dilemma in which each alternative provides a counterexample to single premise closure. Whether or not rational inconsistency is possible, there is a case against closure. KEY WORDS – Closure. Fallibility. Lottery paradox. Preface paradox. Justification. Inconsistency. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:93 HUME'S PYRRHONISM: A DEVELOPMENTAL INTERPRETATION* Hume's approach to philosophical problems is unique. Whether the issue is causality, external objects, or personal identity, we find the same approach. He begins by launching devastating attacks against popular theories. He then convinces us that his solution to the issue at hand is the only one that makes sense. But, then, he dashes our hopes by arguing that even his solutions contain (...) 'contradictions', 'manifest absurdities', 'obscurities', and 'perplexities '. In short, Hume is a skeptic in the Pyrrhonian tradition in his belief that fundamental aspects of the human understanding are wrought with contradiction. Commentators invariably recognize these contradictions in Hume's writings, but further explanation is desirable. What are these contradictions which Hume finds inevitable, and when do they arise? This is the question I will try to answer. The answer is no less intriguing than Hume himself, for throughout his philosophical career, Hume continually discovered new contradictions. I will be arguing for a developmental interpretation of Hume's Pyrrhonism, the key area of change involving a contradiction with morality. Briefly, I will argue that in the main text of the Treatise. Hume discovers contradictions in areas involving external objects and causality, but denies that contradictions arise with morality. For, insofar as morality involves only the world of mental events, he believes it to be free from contradiction. However, in his discussion of 'the self in the Appendix to the Treatise, he changes his position and asserts that contradictions arise even for the world of mental events. In the conclusion to his second Enquiry, Hume 94 extends this Pyrrhonism even further in the face of another contradiction, this time directly involving morality. Thus, where Hume rejects Pyrrhonian moral skepticism in the Treatise, he comes to affirm it in the second Enquiry. I conclude by comparing Hume's lists of contradictions in the Treatise and first Enquiry showing that, again, Hume expanded the realm of Pyrrhonism. What I have been calling 'Pyrrhonism' (skepticism involving the discovery of contradictions) Hume also calls 'excessive consequential skepticism'. Some background here will be helpful. 'Excessive consequential skepticism' refers to the negative conclusions that skeptics come to at the end of an investigation, because of "either the absolute fallaciousness of their mental faculties, or their unfitness to reach any fixed determination in all those curious subjects of speculation, about which they are commonly employed" (E 150). Here the skeptic is at his strongest since, for a certain class of epistemological Iy foundational propositions P. (such as the existence of external objects), the best evidence supporting P also emplies 'not P.'. Hume notes, though, that this excessive skepticism, even when securely argued, cannot be followed in practice since it runs counter to our common experiences. It is a theoretical enterprise, and Hume objects strongly to those who recommend cynicism in such matters. Hume's excessive consequential skepticism (which is purely theoretical) stands in contrast to what he calls moderate consequential skepticism. This moderate variety involves two practical lessons which can be learned from Pyrrhonism or extreme theoretical skepticism. These lessons are what Flew has recently called Hume's effort at the 95 Containment of his skepticism. First, the philosopher should entertain "a degree of doubt, and caution, and modesty, which, in all kinds of scrutiny and decision, ought for ever to accompany a just reasoner" (E 162). Second, philosophers should limit their inquiries so they will "never be tempted to go beyond common life, so long as they consider the imperfection of those faculties which they employ, their narrow reach, and their inaccurate operations" (E 162). Although Hume opts for moderate skepticism, he makes it quite clear that the moderate variety is "the result of this Pyrrhonism, or excessive scepticism, when its undistinguished doubts are, in some measure, corrected by common sense and reflection" (E 161). In other words, Hume's moderate skepticism must presuppose the theoretical legitimacy of the contradictions that the excessive skeptic uncovers. The moderate skeptic, though, does not carry these problems over into common life. Thus, broadly construed, consequential skepticism involves three features: (1) the discovery of a contradiction within the understanding (excessivetheoretical ), (2) a recommendation for philosophical modesty (moderate-practical), and (3) a recommendation... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:93 HUME'S PYRRHONISM: A DEVELOPMENTAL INTERPRETATION* Hume's approach to philosophical problems is unique. Whether the issue is causality, external objects, or personal identity, we find the same approach. He begins by launching devastating attacks against popular theories. He then convinces us that his solution to the issue at hand is the only one that makes sense. But, then, he dashes our hopes by arguing that even his solutions contain (...) 'contradictions', 'manifest absurdities', 'obscurities', and 'perplexities '. In short, Hume is a skeptic in the Pyrrhonian tradition in his belief that fundamental aspects of the human understanding are wrought with contradiction. Commentators invariably recognize these contradictions in Hume's writings, but further explanation is desirable. What are these contradictions which Hume finds inevitable, and when do they arise? This is the question I will try to answer. The answer is no less intriguing than Hume himself, for throughout his philosophical career, Hume continually discovered new contradictions. I will be arguing for a developmental interpretation of Hume's Pyrrhonism, the key area of change involving a contradiction with morality. Briefly, I will argue that in the main text of the Treatise. Hume discovers contradictions in areas involving external objects and causality, but denies that contradictions arise with morality. For, insofar as morality involves only the world of mental events, he believes it to be free from contradiction. However, in his discussion of 'the self in the Appendix to the Treatise, he changes his position and asserts that contradictions arise even for the world of mental events. In the conclusion to his second Enquiry, Hume 94 extends this Pyrrhonism even further in the face of another contradiction, this time directly involving morality. Thus, where Hume rejects Pyrrhonian moral skepticism in the Treatise, he comes to affirm it in the second Enquiry. I conclude by comparing Hume's lists of contradictions in the Treatise and first Enquiry showing that, again, Hume expanded the realm of Pyrrhonism. What I have been calling 'Pyrrhonism' (skepticism involving the discovery of contradictions) Hume also calls 'excessive consequential skepticism'. Some background here will be helpful. 'Excessive consequential skepticism' refers to the negative conclusions that skeptics come to at the end of an investigation, because of "either the absolute fallaciousness of their mental faculties, or their unfitness to reach any fixed determination in all those curious subjects of speculation, about which they are commonly employed" (E 150). Here the skeptic is at his strongest since, for a certain class of epistemological Iy foundational propositions P. (such as the existence of external objects), the best evidence supporting P also emplies 'not P.'. Hume notes, though, that this excessive skepticism, even when securely argued, cannot be followed in practice since it runs counter to our common experiences. It is a theoretical enterprise, and Hume objects strongly to those who recommend cynicism in such matters. Hume's excessive consequential skepticism (which is purely theoretical) stands in contrast to what he calls moderate consequential skepticism. This moderate variety involves two practical lessons which can be learned from Pyrrhonism or extreme theoretical skepticism. These lessons are what Flew has recently called Hume's effort at the 95 Containment of his skepticism. First, the philosopher should entertain "a degree of doubt, and caution, and modesty, which, in all kinds of scrutiny and decision, ought for ever to accompany a just reasoner" (E 162). Second, philosophers should limit their inquiries so they will "never be tempted to go beyond common life, so long as they consider the imperfection of those faculties which they employ, their narrow reach, and their inaccurate operations" (E 162). Although Hume opts for moderate skepticism, he makes it quite clear that the moderate variety is "the result of this Pyrrhonism, or excessive scepticism, when its undistinguished doubts are, in some measure, corrected by common sense and reflection" (E 161). In other words, Hume's moderate skepticism must presuppose the theoretical legitimacy of the contradictions that the excessive skeptic uncovers. The moderate skeptic, though, does not carry these problems over into common life. Thus, broadly construed, consequential skepticism involves three features: (1) the discovery of a contradiction within the understanding (excessivetheoretical ), (2) a recommendation for philosophical modesty (moderate-practical), and (3) a recommendation... (shrink)

Correspondence theories are frequently charged with being either implausible—metaphysically troubling and overly general—or trivial—collapsing into deflationism's “‘P’ is true iff P.” Philip Kitcher argues for a “modest” correspondence theory, on which reference relations are causal relations, but there is no general theory of denotation. In this article, I start by showing that, understood this way, “modest” theories are open to charges of triviality. I then offer a refinement of modesty, and take the first steps toward articulating a modest correspondence theory, (...) giving a particular account of the relation between predicates, properties, and extensions. Finally, I argue that my account does not collapse into a deflationary one. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 28.2 (2004) 393-405 [Access article in PDF] Decency and Its Discontents Richard Freadman La Trobe University In The Beginning of the Journey, Diana Trilling makes this rather shocking claim about her husband, Lionel: "In the dark recesses of his heart where unhappiness was so often his companion, he was contemptuous of everything in his life that was dedicated to seriousness and responsibility."1 Lionel had been dead (...) almost 20 years when a near blind Diana dictated this comment in her controversial auto/biography in the early 1990s. Of course he was revered for—among other things—precisely his qualities of intellectual "seriousness and responsibility." But Diana argued that Lionel had in effect settled for such sober virtues because for temperamental and other reasons he could not live the life he really craved—the life of a swashbuckling novelist, with all its recklessness, its refusal of compromise, even its moral waywardness. When Hemingway died Lionel wrote in his notebook: "who would suppose how much he haunted me? How much he existed in my mind—as a reproach? He was the only writer of our time I envied" (Beginning, p. 371). Lionel's critical discussions of Hemingway's fiction are judicious and qualified.2 He admired the uncompromising short story writer who was "passionately and aggressively concerned with truth" (SLS, p. 127), but found the work of the self-conscious "legend" (p. 125), writing in the first-person, ponderous and disappointing. It was not the prose that Lionel so wanted to emulate. It was the life; in particular, its power to release and nurture creativity. Diana continues: "It was to decency that Lionel felt he had sacrificed his hope of being a writer of fiction—conscience had not made a coward of him, it had made him a critic" (Beginning, p. 372). [End Page 393]Decency—how often we use the word. How seldom we ask what we mean by it. Usually it functions as a sort of guarantor term, like the caged canary in the coal mine. If the canary lives, the miners are judged to have fair air to breathe; if a person possesses certain qualities, or a society provides certain requisite conditions, we say the person is "decent," or that this is a "decent society." Yet remarkably few virtue ethicists have countenanced the possibility that decency might be counted among the virtues; that it might be the subject of substantive intellectual reflection; that we might investigate its relation to other virtues, its internal structure, its characteristic patterns and possibilities of existential investment. As John Kekes, one of the very few philosophers to have paid the notion serious philosophical attention, says: "Decency is generally admitted to be a good thing, but is not generally supposed to be particularly important."3In this short essay I attempt two linked undertakings: first, to offer a characterization of Decency—the term henceforth accorded a capital "D" to indicate its status as a moral virtue; second, to read aspects of Lionel Trilling's life and work, and Diana's late assessment of him, in the light of Decency, as I understand the term. I "Decent" seems to refer to a "state," a sort of moral condition a person is "in," and to a resultant orientation towards others. The "state" is one of modesty, even humility. The ego doesn't loom large or get in the way. The orientation is one of solicitude towards others. Decent people of this kind genuinely care about, feel for others. Unless they are given good reason to behave otherwise, their disposition towards others tends to be respectful; they bring to most situations an assumption that the other person is worthy, deserves to be taken seriously. Decency of this kind tends to be associated with receptiveness, relatedness, a patient openness to others, though it need not be passive.The word "decent" derives from the Latin, deceré—to become, to be fitting. It's been used in English since about the 1530s. From that period to the early twentieth century "decent" has generally indicated that something is fitting, appropriate, with respect to social rank... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Terry Comito NOTES ON PANOFSKY, CASSIRER, AND THE "MEDIUM OF THE MOVIES" The modesty of my title is not feigned. Panofsky's essay on "Style and Medium in the Motion Pictures"1 is more often quoted than understood, and much of it proves upon examination to be curiously elusive. The notes and hypotheses offered here are tentative ones, meant only to point us in the direction of answers to two questions. (...) How might Panofsky's well-known formulation ("the medium of the movies is physical reality as such") most usefully be construed?—useful for us as viewers and then perhaps as critics of movies. And what might he plausibly be supposed to have intended? It is to be hoped that these two points are not impossibly remote from one another. In a recent discussion of "Fact and Fiction in Literature," Roger Shattuck takes Panofsky's essay as an extreme instance of a "belief in the basically documentary nature of film." According to Shattuck, Panofsky supposes that a "film grows naturally out of material things," that it is generated spontaneously, without the intervention of authorial consciousness, from the "undifferentiated reality" before which a camera needs only to be set in motion. Now this is a familiar enough parody of "realist" theories of cinema. But it would be a curious position for anyone really to assert, and particularly curious for a writer so committed as Panofsky to idealist aesthetics. There is, to be sure, a puzzle about the way such an aesthetic might take account of an art that is said somehow to "do justice" to a materialistic interpretation of the world (p. 31). (We would presumably want to know if the justice in question is distributive or commutative: rendering unto Caesar or robbing Peter to pay Paul?) But does a disciple of Cassirer really need to be lectured at about the priority of the whole to the parts, or to be informed that what we call "reality" is constituted in the act of perception? There 229 230Philosophy and Literature are confusions enough in Shattuck's essay to suggest that he is not our best guide over an admittedly strenuous terrain. He informs his readers that Panofsky (and apparently Bazin and Kracauer too) "anticipate " the views of "many structuralists and semioticians," as if there were not a fundamental difference between the autonomy of écriture and the "animistic" view of physical reality Shattuck attributes to Panofsky and his followers. He then introduces a distinction between documentary and fiction films that makes Panofsky the prophet of Warhol, Wiseman, and South American snuff-films, when in fact he talks about Disney, the Marx Brothers, and the derivation of movies from comic strips and dime novels. All this is worth bringing up because Shattuck does raise some crucial issues, if only by so noticeably fudging them. Like most of us who have responded to Panofsky's essay, he has chiefly in mind the assertion that "the medium of the movies is physical reality as such" (p. 31). He wants to construe this as saying that movies "document" or certify the world of external objects and thereby encourage certain sorts of naivete: the belief that we are secure in our knowledge of the world "out there," and that the world really is "out there," independent of our hypotheses and untainted by our uncomfortable consciousness. That movies have often fueled some such nostalgia for the world seems undeniable, but the question elided in Shattuck's discussion is the critical one. To what extent and in what ways does a statement about the "medium" of the movies commit us to a position as to their proper content, or to a specific social program, or to a particular metaphysical understanding of the world? Shattuck cuts through these knotty matters rather than unraveling them. He talks as if Panofsky claims that physical reality as such is the subject matter of movies—which is where Warhol and cinéma vérité come in, as the inheritors of the tradition of Balzac. But this is not what Panofsky says, and it does not accurately describe the parameters of his taste. He objects to "artistic prestylization" in the manner of Caligari, and he thinks... (shrink)

Correspondence theories are frequently charged with being either implausible -- metaphysically troubling and overly general -- or trivial -- collapsing into deflationism's "'P' is true iff P." Philip Kitcher argues for a "modest" correspondence theory, on which reference relations are causal relations, but there is no general theory of denotation. In this paper, I start by showing that, understood this way, "modest" theories are open to charges of triviality. I then offer a refinement of modesty, and take the first steps (...) toward articulating a modest correspondence theory, giving a particular account of the relation between predicates, properties, and extensions. Finally, I argue that my account does not collapse into a deflationary one. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Testament of the Other: Abraham and Torok’s Failed Expiation of GhostsChristopher Lane (bio)Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok. The Shell and the Kernel. Vol. 1. Ed., trans., and intro. Nicholas T. Rand. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1994.Nicholas Rand and Maria Torok. Questions à Freud: Du Devenir de la Psychanalyse. Paris: Belles Lettres-Archimbaud, 1995.Nicholas Rand and Maria Torok. “Questions to Freudian Psychoanalysis: Dream Interpretation, Reality, Fantasy.” Trans. Rand. Critical (...) Inquiry 19.3 (1993): 567–94. [“QFP”]Truly the universe is full of ghosts, not sheeted churchyard spectres, but the inextinguishable and immortal elements of life, which, having once been, can never die, though they blend and change and change again for ever.—H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon’s MinesWhat haunts are not the dead, but the gaps left within us by the secrets of others.—Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok, The Shell and the Kernel1. PrologueNicolas Abraham and Maria Torok may be best known for advancing a theory of transgenerational haunting. According to this theory, repressed secrets are passed from one generation to the next if they are “encrypted” as unprocessed and traumatic information. Before Abraham’s death in 1975, he and Torok saw their analytic role as reparative: Encouraging their analysands to mourn repressed secrets, they hoped to transform their analysands’ perspectives on family history.Abraham and Torok quickly became known for expanding Freud’s emphasis on the subject’s conflicting desires and identifications. From 1968 on, when Abraham published “L’écorce et le noyau” (“The Shell and the Kernel”) as an extended review of Laplanche and Pontalis’s The Language of Psychoanalysis, he and Torok published their claims in cheerful defiance of Freudian orthodoxy, acquiring a reputation in France—and, later, in England and the United States—for shattering such “doctrinaire” elements of psychoanalysis [End Page 3] as the Oedipus complex and death drive, penis envy, and the primal scene, as well as for criticizing Lacan’s alleged stranglehold on psychoanalysis in France and much of Europe. 1 After publishing L’écorce et le noyau (1987), a collection of their essays (many coauthored), and a radically new interpretation of Freud’s patient “the Wolf Man,” Cryptonymie: Le verbier de l’homme aux loups (1976; trans. The Wolf Man’s Magic Word: A Cryptonomy), Abraham and Torok were championed in Europe and the United States by theorists delighted to see a “poststructuralist” critique of Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis. Ironically, Abraham and Torok’s work received almost comparable support from analytical philosophers eager to denounce Freud’s “unscientific” precepts.Now that the first volume of Abraham and Torok’s essays has appeared in translation, non-Francophone readers have an opportunity to assess what Abraham and Torok contributed to psychoanalysis and to revisit the debates they staged with Freud and Lacan in the 1970s and—posthumously for Abraham—in the ‘80s. Reviewing this collection is not a simple task, however, because its conceptual interests are so diverse and because Torok’s coauthored work with Abraham differs radically from the essays and book she published recently with Nicholas Rand, editor and translator of The Shell and the Kernel. Rand’s interventions confirm Torok’s latest arguments but they also, occasionally, misleadingly frame the older work in terms of the new. Readers may therefore see Rand’s editorial notes and introduction as guides to how he and Torok now view Torok’s collaboration with Abraham. We can only speculate whether Abraham would have interpreted the collaboration the same way. 2How does Abraham and Torok’s account of psychic “encryptment” differ from Freud’s model of repression? Assessing their revision of Freud’s metapsychological project, Abraham and Torok declare, “It would be presumptuous indeed to allege that we have reached our goal. Yet it would be false modesty to deny our suspicion that we are finally entering an open road” [140]. 3 Echoing Freud’s conviction that in dreams he had discovered “the royal road to the unconscious,” Abraham and Torok encourage a comparative reading of their psychoanalytic “road” and Freud’s. The following essay undertakes this reading, but it also speculates on what Freud’s and Lacan’s emphasis on [End Page 4] psychic... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Questions of Evidence: An Anonymous Tract Attributed to John TolandRhoda RappaportIn 1695 there was published in London a tract with the unprepossessing title, Two Essays sent in a Letter from Oxford, to a Nobleman in London, by “L. P. Master of Arts.” Because the larger part of this work attacks John Woodward’s theory of the earth, published earlier that year, historians of geology have long been familiar with the (...) Two Essays, even if none has managed to identify L. P. In 1975 Giancarlo Carabelli offered evidence for a conjectural attribution of the Two Essays to John Toland (1670–1722), the famous deist who established his notoriety the next year with his Christianity Not Mysterious (1696). 1 Carabelli’s cautious attribution would require no comment, were it not for the fact that what began as conjecture has evolved into a strong probability and even into an established fact—all this without any notable addition to Carabelli’s evidence. It is surely time to look more closely at that evidence.Carabelli first presents the main points of the Two Essays: a rejection of Woodward’s supernaturalism, a preference for natural causes to explain even the origins of the earth, and a reduction of the Bible to the level of ancient myth and legend. We have here a pronounced free-thinker and materialist, and Toland’s later writings make him a plausible candidate as author. (Whether this interpretation of the Two Essays is accurate will be discussed later in this study.) Carabelli then provides three pieces of evidence, without discussion or evaluation. The next paragraphs rehearse that evidence, with commentary. [End Page 339]The Rumor in OxfordAccording to Edward Lhwyd (or Lhuyd), Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford rumor had it that Toland was L. P. Lhwyd denied the rumor, chiefly because L. P. seemed to have had the aid of “some good naturalist”—this did not fit Lhwyd’s notion of Toland’s temperament. 2 In truth, although Lhwyd did not yet know it, L. P. did indeed get such aid from Tancred Robinson, F.R.S., but Robinson declined to identify L. P. 3 Thus far Carabelli.A rumor is no secure basis for attribution, especially when it is contradicted by someone who knew Toland reasonably well. In the small community of Oxford, Lhwyd quickly knew about Toland even before meeting him, because the two had common antiquarian interests. Toland had gone to Oxford with the intention of compiling an Irish dictionary, and fragmentary evidence shows that the two then met to discuss their Celtic researches. 4 A distinguished naturalist, Lhwyd also was consulted by Toland on matters of natural history—at least, the surviving text on this issue shows Toland asking one question of a trivial sort. Lhwyd then comments that Toland is “not conversant in these studies” but yet has ideas about them. 5 As the latter phrase indicates, Lhwyd learned much about the temper and opinions of Toland. He knew that Toland was “railing in coffee houses” about matters religious and political, but he did not associate religious radicalism with the Two Essays. Instead, Lhwyd assessed Toland’s fitness to deal with Woodward entirely in terms of temperament and personality: Toland was a man “of excellent parts, but as litle [sic] a share as may be of modesty or conscience; and one of the best scolds I ever met with.” In the same letter Lhwyd assessed Woodward as Toland’s presumed equal in stubbornness and egotism. 6In saying that L. P. must have had the advice of “some good naturalist,” Lhwyd seems to imply that Toland was too ignorant (of natural history) and too intemperate to profit from or perhaps even to seek advice. [End Page 340] Despite these doubts, is it not possible that Toland could have acquired sufficient knowledge of natural history, in a period of about four months (between the publication of Woodward’s book and that of the Two Essays), to display the expertise shown by L. P.? Any British virtuoso could surely have done so, and the Two Essays actually include a good little bibliography of suitable publications that would provide a working knowledge of the latest ideas... (shrink)

First published in 1987. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The argument template used to generate the new sceptical arguments is presented. In doing so, what it means for a hypothesis to be “live”, what it means for someone to be a “mere mortal” with regard to a live hypothesis, what it means to be able to “rule out” a hypothesis are explained. The key premises of the argument: the Modesty Principle, the Live Hypothesis Principle, and the Mere Mortal Premiss are formulated. Roughly put, if one is a mere mortal (...) with regard to a live hypothesis H, then in order for one to know something P obviously inconsistent with H, one needs to be able to rule out or neutralize H. But since one is a mere mortal, one can’t neutralize H; so one does not know P. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 25.2 (2001) 371-373 [Access article in PDF] Book Review French Fiction in the Mitterrand Years: Memory, Narrative, Desire French Fiction in the Mitterrand Years: Memory, Narrative, Desire, by Colin Davis & Elizabeth Fallaize; 160pp. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, $24.95. Like the Mitterrand era itself, Davis and Fallaize's French Fiction in the Mitterrand Years is somewhat uneven. The election of François Mitterrand in 1981 as the (...) President of the Fifth Republic was a milestone in modern French history. After the conservative politics of the 1960s and 70s, the election of a socialist president and legislature seemed to offer the possibility of a new political and intellectual atmosphere. Indeed, the first two years of Mitterrand's presidency brought sweeping reforms. However, several scandals, continued economic problems and later "cohabitation" with a right-wing legislative majority muted the original verve. Mired in partisan politics, the government often appeared ineffectual.As with the political arena, French fiction of the 1980s was produced under the shadow of another long-standing French institution--the nouveau roman. Again we find a new direction, a turning-away from the past during the 1980s. Yet there was no outright refusal. There were no manifestos or polemical articles written by budding novelists, no claim to Literature. As Annie Ernaux describes her work Une Femme (1987): "Mon projet est de nature littéraire [...]. Mais je souhaite rester, d'une certaine façon, au-dessous de la littérature" (My project is of a literary nature [...]. But I wish to remain, in a certain way, beneath literature (p. 144).This lack of pretension is important, for it helps us better understand the writing of the period. As Davis and Fallaize point out, in the fiction of the Mitterrand years we find a return to history, to the subject, and to storytelling, three areas disdained by the new novelists of the 1950s and 60s (pp. 12-15). But at the same time, there is not an elegiac return to the conventions of the past. There are no didactic tales of Lucien de Rubempré's lost illusions. A good example of this is Patrick Roegiers's Beau Regard (1990), the account of a dinner during which hardly anyone speaks, told by a narrator who knows no one else at the table. Davis and Fallaize note: "In these novels the event is merely an incident, the story no more than an anecdote, and the anecdote merely a fait divers" (p. 147). Although not inconsequential, argue Davis and Fallaize, there is an unquestionable modesty to these texts.In the introduction to their work Davis and Fallaize write: "The aim of the current book is to analyze some of the most important and interesting directions in French fiction through detailed discussions of a selection of texts, all published during François Mitterrand's period as President of the Fifth Republic (1981-95)" (p. 1). This is exactly what they accomplish, selecting six novels--Duras's L'Amant (The Lover, 1984), Pennac's Au bonheur des ogres (The Scapegoat, 1985), Semprun's La Montagne blanche (1986), Echenoz's Lac (Lake, 1989), Guilbert's A l'ami qui ne m'a pas sauvé la vie (To the Friend Who Did Not Save [End Page 371] my Life, 1990), and Ernaux's Passion simple (Simple Passion, 1991)--and spending one chapter on each. They also discuss some of the important features of the era's fiction including memory, especially of World War II, contemporary culture and postmodernism, and autofiction.However, the book's limited goal also leads to some of its problems. As a whole, the work lacks cohesion. Chapters often read like individual essays. Moreover, although some chapters are well-grounded critically and contextually, others are not. Finally, the conclusion is too brief to synthesize aptly the various topics discussed in the previous chapters. The reader does not have a solid grasp of the fictional landscape of the Mitterrand years, but rather, as the introduction indicated, knowledge of "some of the [...] interesting directions in French fiction."One of the most illuminating chapters considers Daniel... (shrink)

... 243-) INTRODUCTION §§243- constitute the eighth 'chapter' of the book. Its point of departure is a natural query with respect to the conclusion of the ...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Skeptical Selves: Empiricism and Modernity in the French NovelDaniel GordonSkeptical Selves: Empiricism and Modernity in the French Novel, by Elena Russo; 225 pp. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996, $35.00.Skeptical Selves explains how linguistic relativism has shaped French literature from the Enlightenment to the present. Elena Russo provides three cases: Prévost’s Histoire d’une Grecque moderne (1740), Constant’s Adolphe (1816), and des Forêts’s Le Bavard (1946). Her fascinating scholarly goal (...) is to portray the inexorable decline of the novel in a climate of ever growing doubt about the truthfulness of narration. Her remarkably ambitious philosophical goal is to save the novel by refuting skepticism!More precisely, Russo’s target is not every form of doubt but rather a specific current of French skeptical consciousness. In recent years, the representatives of this current have been Derrida and Blanchot. Its main feature is a denial of the correspondence notion of the language-truth relationship combined—paradoxically—with an intense nostalgia for a perfectly mimetic language that has allegedly been lost. The seemingly most radical critics of the sign, Russo claims, never overcome the perverse yearning for the very mimesis whose possibility they deny (p. 3).Russo is getting at an interesting distinction here, the distinction between epistemological modesty, which she upholds, and French skepticism, which she deplores. Epistemological modesty means the redefinition of truth according to some criterion other than perfect representation of the external world. French skepticism for her means the insistence on an absolute standard of mimetic reliability and a simultaneous denial that this standard can ever be reached. “Much of the language of negativity we have grown accustomed to in contemporary criticism rests upon the following syllogism: to know is to know directly and without mediation; this is not possible; therefore, the world is unknowable. Any conceptualization is ipso facto viewed as suspect, hence the flight towards nonverbal forms of expression, such as music and silence” (p. 13).After suggesting in her first chapter that French skepticism is a specific style of thought, not a final answer to our epistemological queries, Russo goes on to illustrate the impact of this skepticism on the novel. Prévost’s text, she observes, is one of the first novels built around the distorted point of view of a fallible [End Page 179] narrator. The narrator is the French ambassador to Constantinople who falls in love with a woman, Théophé, recently freed from a seraglio. Both his love and his comprehension are frustrated by the woman’s apparent simplicity and virtue. “Signs acquire a meaning opposite to their manifest one,” Russo notes. “It is precisely the discourse that should have made Théophé look credible that makes her appear suspicious. She is cunning and deceptive because she appears ‘naive’ and ‘innocent’; she is opaque because of her ‘simplicity’ and ‘openness’” (p. 42). The whole point of the novel is to show that we are imprisoned in subjectivity and there is no way out. For a time the narrator attempts to resolve his doubts regarding Théophé’s words by concentrating instead on her body. But here as well he can discover only ambiguity: nothing reveals clearly whether she is conquerable and whether she already has another lover.The novel ends with the unexplained death of Théophé, and Russo comments: “we are given the impression that, rather than ending his text, Prévost is ridding himself of an intractable problem” (p. 66). Artfully, the rest of the book helps us see that the tendency to thematize philosophical problems that have no solutions is intensified in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—to the point where not merely the ending of novels but novels themselves disappear. (Of course, Russo means not that people no longer write novels but that the genre has succeeded in diminishing its own stature by so frequently decrying the limits of language.)The chapter on Constant did not strike me as the strongest part of the book. The problem is due perhaps to the fact that Constant was a truly great thinker, a brilliant political theorist and philosopher of religion as well as a romantic novelist. One chapter does not... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:From the Perspective of the Self: Montaigne’s Self-PortraitPatrick HenryFrom the Perspective of the Self: Montaigne’s Self-Portrait, by Craig B. Brush; 321 pp. New York: Fordham University Press, 1994, $32.50.In a note to Chapter One, the author explains that his is the third book to center on the self-portrait of Montaigne but, unlike one—Miroirs d’encre by Michel Beaujour—his deals only with Montaigne and, unlike both—the other is Montaigne’s Essays (...) as the Book of the Self by Richard Regosin—his is not geared toward literary theory and offers no theoretical approach to self-portraiture or autobiography. What we have, then, is a close textual analysis of the essayist’s self-portrait which is shown to coexist with the ubiquitous voice of the moraliste, whose subject is mankind in general, and a third voice, particularly pronounced in the 1588 and 1595 editions of the Essays, that of the “essayer,” “whose topic is his own book, its aim, its method of inquiry, and its production” (p. 120). Throughout his study, even as he scrutinizes the self-portrait, Brush demonstrates that these three voices are interrelated, interdependent, and virtually inseparable. [End Page 173]Brush’s exhaustive enterprise: to depict “how Montaigne came to the project [of self-portraiture], how he conceived it, how he practiced it, what he had to say about it, what he learned from the strange practice, how it became a way of life for him” (p. 8) takes him into areas that have been well-debated by Montaigne scholars. Thus we find lengthy discussions of the sense of the word “essay,” authorial modesty, the role of the reader, titles, beginnings, digressions, additions, endings, skepticism, nominalism, Catholicism, dialogue, ethics, evolution, the use of personal pronouns, the structure of individual chapters and of the book as a whole, the link between La Boétie’s death and the self-portraiture project, and the interplay between self and other.On each topic, however, Brush inevitably offers a fresh insight, a quirky intuition, or a new departure that makes the discussion worthwhile. He paints the history of both domestic and official portraiture at the moment when Montaigne began writing; he explains why a self-portrait is not an autobiography; he opposes the treatise and the essay; he differentiates clearly between self-study, self-knowledge, and self-portraiture; he depicts what is missing from the portrait that the essayist deemed relatively complete, and he weighs carefully the opposed proclivities of the essayist toward self-improvement and self-acceptance. In addition, he points out how the impossibility of finding a “pure self” forced Montaigne “to paint himself in context” (p. 107) and argues forcefully that the essayist’s “love of life was a profoundly religious experience” (p. 210). In a particularly rich commentary on “Of practice” (pp. 82–83), Brush stresses the importance of writing for the author of the Essays. In this case, the writing of the essay may in fact have been more significant for him than the event that the writing narrates, thus underscoring the essayist’s claim that this book has made him as much as he has made it. Finally, Brush’s tenth chapter, “Study Without a Book,” eloquently elucidates the originality that Montaigne brought to his reading of the ancient adage “Know Thyself.”It was inevitable that Brush would cover much familiar material but by keeping his encyclopedic knowledge of the history of Montaigne criticism in the end notes and by rigorously analyzing the Essays, he has written an eminently readable, jargon-free study that will serve both the beginning student and the seasoned Montaigne scholar. Having no theory to impose, he is free to chart the amazingly rich variety and diversity of the Essays, aspects of the human condition that the essayist always underscored. His book, clearly the product of years of ruminating on the Essays, contains hundreds of quotations from Montaigne’s Travel Journal and from seventy-seven of the one-hundred-seven chapters penned by the essayist. By giving us, in the main, nothing but his own personal reflections on the Essays, he has also curiously and interestingly provided us with his... (shrink)

The paper begins with an account of the emergence of analytic philosophy of language in the twentieth century in the context of the development of logic and the linguistic turn. Subsequently, it describes two examples of analytic philosophy of language in its heyday when the discipline was conceived as first philosophy. Finally, it provides, by way of conclusion, a succinct outline of the current state of philosophy of language, marked by modesty and fragmentation. It is claimed that even if one (...) retains optimism about the prospects of philosophy of language in the first century of the new millennium, it would be unreasonable to disagree with the opinion that the present-day philosophy of language is a highly specialized and diversified discipline and no longer so central for philosophical enterprise as it used to be. (shrink)

A range of empirical findings is first used to more precisely characterize our distinctive tendency to objectify or externalize moral demands and obligations, and it is then argued that this salient feature of our moral cognition represents a profound puzzle for evolutionary approaches to human moral psychology that existing proposals do not help resolve. It is then proposed that such externalization facilitated a broader shift to a vastly more cooperative form of social life by establishing and maintaining a connection between (...) the extent to which an agent is herself motivated by a given moral norm and the extent to which she uses conformity to that same norm as a criterion in evaluating candidate partners in social interaction generally. This connection ensures the correlated interaction necessary to protect those prepared to adopt increasingly cooperative, altruistic, and other prosocial norms of interaction from exploitation, especially as such norms were applied in novel ways and/or to novel circumstances and as the rapid establishment of new norms allowed us to reap still greater rewards from hypercooperation. A wide range of empirical findings is then used to support this hypothesis, showing why the status we ascribe to moral demands and considerations exhibits the otherwise puzzling combination of objective and subjective elements that it does, as well as showing how the need to effectively advertise our externalization of particular moral commitments generates features of our social interaction so familiar that they rarely strike us as standing in need of any explanation in the first place. (shrink)

Originally published in 1969. This book explains what is wrong with the traditional methodology of "inductive" reasoning and shows that the alternative scheme of reasoning associated with Whewell, Pierce and Popper can give the scientist a useful insight into the way he thinks.

Some scientific realists suggest that scientific communities have improved in their ability to discover alternative theoretical possibilities and that the problem of unconceived alternatives therefore poses a less significant threat to contemporary scientific communities than it did to their historical predecessors. I first argue that the most profound and fundamental historical transformations of the scientific enterprise have actually increased rather than decreased our vulnerability to the problem. I then argue that whether we are troubled by even the prospect of increasing (...) theoretical conservatism in science should depend on the position we occupy in the ongoing debate concerning scientific realism itself. (shrink)

Social evolution theory conventionally takes an externalist explanatory stance, treating observed cooperation as explanandum and the positive assortment of cooperative behaviour as explanans. We ask how the circumstances bringing about this positive assortment arose in the first place. Rather than merely push the explanatory problem back a step, we move from an externalist to an interactionist explanatory stance, in the spirit of Lewontin and the Niche Construction theorists. We develop a theory of ‘social niche construction’ in which we consider biological (...) entities to be both the subject and object of their own social evolution. Some important cases of the evolution of cooperation have the side-effect of causing changes in the hierarchical level at which the evolutionary process acts. This is because the traits that act to align the fitness interests of particles in a collective can also act to diminish the extent to which those particles are bearers of heritable fitness variance, while augmenting the extent to which collectives of such particles are bearers of heritable fitness variance. In this way, we can explain upward transitions in the hierarchical level at which the Darwinian machine operates in terms of particle-level selection, even though the outcome of the process is a collective-level selection regime. Our theory avoids the logical and metaphysical paradoxes faced by other attempts to explain evolutionary transitions. (shrink)

Originally published in 1957, The Uniqueness of the Individual is a collection of 9 essays published from the ten years preceding publication. The essays deal with some of the central problems of biology. These are among the questions put and answered from the standpoint of modern experimental biology. What is ageing and how is it measured? What theories have been held to account for it, and with what success? Did ageing evolve, and if so how? Is Lamarckism and adequate explanation (...) of evolutionary process? Does evolution sometimes go wrong? Do human beings evolve in a way peculiar to themselves? Other essays touch upon the problems of scientific method and of growth and transformation. This book will be of interest to natural historians, evolutionists and anthropologists. (shrink)

1. The Tractatus doctrine of saying and showing In a letter to Russell dated 19.4.1919, written shortly after he had finished the Tractatus, Wittgenstein told Russell that the main contention of the book, to which all else, including the account of logic, is subsidiary, ‘is the theory of what can be expressed (gesagt) by prop[osition]s -- i.e. by language -- (and, which comes to the same, what can be thought) and what cannot be expressed by prop[osition]s, but only shown (gezeigt); (...) which I believe is the cardinal problem of philosophy’ (CL 68). This was emphasized in both preface and conclusion of the book. The preface observes that the whole sense of the book can be summed up in the following words: ‘what can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence’ (TLP p.3). The conclusion of the book (TLP 7) simply repeats this. The preceding three remarks, however, are noteworthy. They make three claims. First, ‘There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical’ (TLP 6.522). This reiterates the leitmotif of the book, namely that there are things that cannot, by the very nature of representation, be said. But though they cannot be said, they are shown by features of the relevant system of representation. Secondly, the correct method in philosophy would really be to say nothing except what can be said, i.e. empirical propositions that have nothing to do with philosophy, and then, when someone wanted to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had failed to give meaning to certain signs in his propositions (TLP 6.53). This method, of course, is not the method that has been followed throughout the book, which consists almost exclusively of modal assertions concerning what must, can or cannot be thus and so in reality, in language and in the relation between language and reality.. (shrink)

This paper considers ethical decision making by blending three streams of related research: cognitive moral development of the decision maker, rational choice theory and a subjective expected utility model. Ethical dilemmas can be defined as situations where moral certainty is compromised by rational cognition. In this paper, the authors assume that some people use a morality-first perspective and others a rationality-first perspective. Ethical scenarios were written and used to test hypotheses derived from this perspective. The instrument developed was shown to (...) be in need of further refinement. Results are discussed in terms of relationships between participant-characteristics variables overall and subscale responses to the ethical scenarios. (shrink)

Knowing Persons is an original study of Plato's account of personhood. For Plato, embodied persons are images of a disembodied ideal. The ideal person is a knower. Hence, the lives of embodied persons need to be understood according to Plato's metaphysics of imagery.For Gerson, Plato's account of embodied personhood is not accurately conflated with Cartesian dualism. Plato's dualism is more appropriately seen in the contrast between the ideal disembodied person and the embodied one than in the contrast between mind or (...) soul and body.This study argues that Plato's analysis of personhood is intended to cohere with his two-world metaphysics as well as a radical separation of knowledge and belief. Gerson demonstrates that Plato's account of persons plays a key role not just in his theory of mind, but in his theory of knowledge, his metaphysics, and his ethics. A proper understanding of Plato's account of persons must therefore place it in the context of his doctrines in these areas. Knowing Persons fills a significant gap by showing the way to such an understanding. (shrink)

Berent (this issue) critiques one of the three main proposals put forward by Carruthers (this issue), who suggests that cognitive scientists are biased against innateness-claims by the tacit assumptions of the mentalizing faculty. Berent proposes, instead, that the bias results from dissonance produced by a conflict between our innate dualism and our innate essentialism. The present response raises a number of difficulties for her argument.

The author is critical of russell's theory in that his "analysis of sentences containing definite descriptions is very defective" and has too many complications to serve as a "convention for a symbolic language.".