This publication arises in a context in which policy makers and educational researchers are increasingly vocal in their demands that educational policy and prac.

This publication arises in a context in which policy makers and educational researchers are increasingly vocal in their demands that educational policy and prac.

This handbook presents a comprehensive introduction to the core areas of philosophy of education combined with an up-to-date selection of the central themes. It includes 95 newly commissioned articles that focus on and advance key arguments; each essay incorporates essential background material serving to clarify the history and logic of the relevant topic, examining the status quo of the discipline with respect to the topic, and discussing the possible futures of the field. The book provides a state-of-the-art overview of philosophy (...) of education, covering a range of topics: Voices from the present and the past deals with 36 major figures that philosophers of education rely on; Schools of thought addresses 14 stances including Eastern, Indigenous, and African philosophies of education as well as religiously inspired philosophies of education such as Jewish and Islamic; Revisiting enduring educational debates scrutinizes 25 issues heavily debated in the past and the present, for example care and justice, democracy, and the curriculum; New areas and developments addresses 17 emerging issues that have garnered considerable attention like neuroscience, videogames, and radicalization. The collection is relevant for lecturers teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in philosophy of education as well as for colleagues in teacher training. Moreover, it helps junior researchers in philosophy of education to situate the problems they are addressing within the wider field of philosophy of education and offers a valuable update for experienced scholars dealing with issues in the sub-discipline. Combined with different conceptions of the purpose of philosophy, it discusses various aspects, using diverse perspectives to do so. Contributing Editors: Section 1: Voices from the Present and the Past: Nuraan Davids Section 2: Schools of Thought: Christiane Thompson and Joris Vlieghe Section 3: Revisiting Enduring Debates: Ann Chinnery, Naomi Hodgson, and Viktor Johansson Section 4: New Areas and Developments: Kai Horsthemke, Dirk Willem Postma, and Claudia Ruitenberg. (shrink)

Perspectives on Consciousness bridges ancient views on consciousness with modern neuroscience, quantum physics and higher-dimensional mathematics, as well as real-world application to raising awareness of consciousness in teaching. Following a description of neurobiological approaches towards understanding the subjective nature of conscious experience in Chapter 1, including the enigma of qualia, the challenging dilemmas of understanding damaged consciousness following brain injury are reviewed in Chapter 2. The nature of qualia is taken up again in Chapter 3, which introduces a Qbit theory (...) of consciousness based on inspirations and insights from quantum mechanics, biology, information theory and thermodynamics. Chapters 4, 5 and 6 bridge ancient and modern views on consciousness, ranging across ancient yet impressively sophisticated Buddhist understandings of perception, feeling and cognition (Chapter 4), the also ancient Jewish mystical tradition of the kabbalistic Zohar (Chapter 6), and insights into brain activity drawn from deep states of meditation (Chapter 5). Chapter 5 also includes a discussion of hierarchies of consciousness including likely interactions at the global-societal level with implications to understanding climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic. Chapter 7 takes readers to the outer reaches of discussions on consciousness to introduce ideas of higher-dimensional structures, and the problem of understanding consciousness within mainstream physics, before the final Chapter 8 sets a refreshing and timely change of pace to consider the need to help children, and their teachers, develop a broader awareness of consciousness as part of life in the global "family." The book will be of interest to a general scientific audience, as well as those with specialized interests in neuroscience and consciousness studies, education and philosophy, as well as Buddhist and Kabbalistic spiritual traditions. (shrink)

In the latter half of this century, there have been two mostly separate threads within ethical theory, one on 'superogation', one on 'common-sense morality'. I bring these threads together by systematically reflecting on doing more than one has to do. A rich and coherent set of concepts at the core of common-sense morality is identified, along with various logical connections between these core concepts. Various issues in common-sense morality emerge naturally, as does a demonstrably productive definition of doing more than (...) one has to do. I then present an interpreted model-theoretic framework with the expressive power to generate truth-conditions for the core concepts, and the explanatory power to predict and explain the independently motivated logical connections between these concepts. The framework also has a certain heuristic power for 'discovering' substantive ethical theories that can derivatively generate the model-theoretic framework for the core concepts. Two theories discussed are expansions of traditional theories; two others, each giving pride of place to justice, are devised to resonate with more recent concerns. Methodologically, it is hoped that the approach within might suggest the possibility of bridging another gap: that between formal and informal studies of moral notions. (shrink)

This book offers a detailed account of the importance of psychoanalysis in Derrida's thought. Based on close readings of texts from the whole of his career, including less well-known and previously unpublished material, it sheds new light on the crucial role of psychoanalysis in shaping Derrida's response to a number of key questions. These questions range from the psyche's relationship to technology to the role of fiction and metaphor in scientific discourse, from the relationship between memory and the archive to (...) the status of the political in deconstruction. Focusing on Freud but proposing new readings of texts by Lacan, Torok and Abraham, Laplanche and Pontalis, amongst other seminal figures in contemporary French thought, the book argues that Derrida's writings on psychoanalysis can also provide an important bridge between deconstruction and the recent materialist turn in the humanities. Challenging a still prevalent 'textualist' reading of Derrida's work, it explores the ongoing contribution of deconstruction and psychoanalysis to pressing issues in critical thought today, from the localizing models of the neurosciences and the omnipresence of digital technology to the politics of affect in an age of terror. (shrink)

Two inter-linked theses are defended in this paper. One is the Duhemian theme that a rigid distinction between physical and chemical properties cannot be upheld. Duhem maintained this view not because the latter are reducible to the former, but because if physics is to remain consistent with chemistry it must prove possible to expand it to accommodate new features, and a rigid distinction would be a barrier to this process. The second theme is that naturally occurring isotopic variants of water (...) are in fact distinct substances, and naturally occurring samples of water are mixtures of these substances. For most practical purposes it is convenient to treat protium oxide, deuterium oxide, and so on, as the same chemical substance, but to insist on this as a matter of principle would stand in conflict with the first thesis. (shrink)

Part I. Re-discovering a Christian understanding of reality. Two views of reality -- The Christian Platonism of Lewis and Tolkien -- Bridge -- Part II. Christian Platonism and the history of Western ideas. The mythos of modernity -- Platonist ideas in the New Testament -- How Christian is Christian Platonism? -- So what went wrong? -- Is modern truth, without wisdom, believable? -- Part III. Applied Christian metaphysics. Returning to reality.

Ever since Darwin people have worried about the sceptical implications of evolution. If our minds are products of evolution like those of other animals, why suppose that the beliefs they produce are true, rather than merely useful? In this chapter we apply this argument to beliefs in three different domains: morality, religion, and science. We identify replies to evolutionary scepticism that work in some domains but not in others. The simplest reply to evolutionary scepticism is that the truth of beliefs (...) in a certain domain is, in fact, connected to evolutionary success, so that evolution can be expected to design systems that produce true beliefs in that domain. We call a connection between truth and evolutionary success a ‘Milvian bridge’, after the tradition which ascribes the triumph of Christianity at the battle of the Milvian bridge to the truth of Christianity. We argue that a Milvian bridge can be constructed for commonsense beliefs, and extended to scientific beliefs, but not to moral and religious beliefs. An alternative reply to evolutionary scepticism, which has been used defend moral beliefs, is to argue that their truth does not depend on their tracking some external state of affairs. We ask if this reply could be used to defend religious beliefs. (shrink)

An updated version of Plato's Dialogues, this adaptation takes place in contemporary times and is set at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Through the characters' central discussions of Creationist and Materialist theories of evolution, together with their moral and social implications and ramifications, the author defines philosophy and science. This fresh approach to complex philosophical subjects will be an interesting supplement to courses in philosophy.

In their analysis Childress et al. (2023) suggest that withdrawal of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) over a patient’s dissent is not justified by existing ethical arguments. The alternat...

This chapter contains sections titled: Why is there a Third Critique? The Critique of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment The Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment Conclusion.

Despite all the criticism showered on Nagel’s classic account of reduction, it meets a fundamental desideratum in an analysis of reduction that is difficult to question, namely of providing for a proper identification of the reducing theory. This is not clearly accommodated in radically different accounts. However, the same feature leads me to question Nagel’s claim that the reducing theory can be separated from the putative bridge laws, and thus to question his notion of heterogeneous reduction. A further corollary (...) to the requirement that all the necessary conditions be incorporated in an adequate formulation of the putative reducing theory is that the standard example of gas temperature is not reducible to average molecular kinetic energy. As originally conceived, Nagel’s conception of reduction takes no account of approximate reasoning and this failure has certainly restricted its applicability, perhaps to the point of making it unrealistic as a model of reduction in science. I suggest approximation can be accommodated by weakening the original requirement of deduction without jeopardizing the fundamental desideratum. Finally, I turn to briefly consider the idea sometimes raised of the ontological reducibility of chemistry. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Overtones:A CollagePaul Youngquist (bio)Mom leans against the keyboard of the old upright piano in the den. She puckers her lips and gently fingers the valves. A couple of times a month, she frees her trumpet from the purple velveteen lining its case—out of love or frustration I can never tell. She stares hard at the bell, pointed somewhere near my feet. She inhales deeply, pressing the silver mouthpiece to (...) her crumpled lips. A silent moment passes—torn by a noise pitched past the sun, a shrieking flare sound. Another follows and another, bright glissandos blinking out somewhere below middle C. They shatter everything I know about her. Everything I thought I knew. What sound was that, what cry? What aspiration to be free? After those initial stabs, she falls into familiar melodies: "Bugler's Holiday" by Leroy Anderson, maybe, or "When the Saints Go Marching In." I'm unsettled for the rest of the day.Trumpeter Don Cherry's sound unsettled me too. I was much older when I first encountered it on Ornette Coleman's The Shape of Jazz to Come. It took me back to Mom's cries. I heard her sound in his: bright, high, and transient: less pitch than smudge, transmitting unknowable overtones. On "Lonely Woman," for instance. Cherry states the plaintive melody in hazy unison with Coleman, blurs the third note, wavers and plays his peculiar temper, untimely and free to move beyond the platitudes of harmony until, after Coleman's baffled cry, he parts company to play a sixth above (if such language matters, and it doesn't), descending in half steps to resolve (not happily) on a minor third, Cherry now pitched below. Their unison breaks apart to reconverge, and the brief bridge feels like a heaving between sobs. This isn't music. It's too raw for the repartee of bebop or the sociability of swing. But everybody can feel it, which explains the scandal of Coleman and company's extended appearance in late 1959 at the Five Spot in New York's East Village. Writing in the New York Times Magazine years later, Joseph Hooper likened it to the furor erupting after Stravinsky's Paris premier of "The Rite of Spring" in 1913. In an interview with Terry Gross, Cherry remembers everyone who was musically anyone being there—from Leonard Bernstein to Thelonious Monk—to witness the sacrilege. The implacable trickster Charles Mingus appeared one [End Page 133] night with Phineas Newborn, a keyboard virtuoso famous for his perfect pitch. Newborn sat and stared at his cufflinks. He never played a note. After the set, Mingus barreled onto the stage and, with his long arms and big hands, crashed all the keys. "That's where it is," he bellowed. "It's all there." Everywhere and nowhere. Cherry and Ornette decentered intonation. They distempered tradition's scales. Afflicted with perfect pitch, Newborn couldn't follow their cries and whispers. They flew free from the comforting staff. Still you feel them, hear their immeasurable sound.Don Cherry: "I've always been on the outside, and that's a good quality for the music to have, like the wind in your face."Cherry's mother Daisy gave him his first horn when he was fourteen. It breathed life into him, offering a way to express sounds his body harbored. Born in Oklahoma City in 1936 to "Negro-Choctaw Indian parents" (his words—his mother's mother was half native), Cherry heard gospel, blues, and Indian songs from the start. The family's move to the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles in 1940 only multiplied the sounds of diverse ethnicities mixed with the rumble of jazz from the Cherry Blossom, his father's club, where Don and his sister sometimes danced for dimes. His horn funneled all this sound—all the music he'd ever make—through a peculiarly powerful feeling: "that feeling to me, through as much music as I've learned, I still remember just that feeling when I first got that horn." What feeling exactly? "Infant happiness" (in-fant, not speaking). The feeling of life before language: "infant happiness, infant happiness, beautiful! That's what music is really... (shrink)

Individual differences related to emotions are typically represented as emotion traits. Although important, these descriptive models often do not address the psychological dynamics that underlie the trait. Appraisal theories of emotion assume that individual differences in emotions can be traced to differences in patterns of appraisal, but this hypothesis has largely gone untested. The present research explored whether individual differences in the emotion of interest, known as trait curiosity, consist of patterns of appraisal. After completing several measures of trait curiosity, (...) participants read complex poems (Experiment 1) or viewed simple and complex pictures (Experiment 2) and then gave ratings of interest and interest's appraisal components. The effect of trait curiosity on interest was fully mediated by appraisals. Multilevel analyses suggested that curious people differ in the amount of appraisal rather than in the kinds of appraisals relevant to interest. Appraisal theories can offer a process-oriented explanation of emotion traits that bridges state and trait emotional experience. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Psychiatric Hospitalization—Bridging the Gap Between Respect and ControlPaul P. ChristopherIntroductionThis issue of Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics offers varied and somewhat unique perspectives on the experience of psychiatric hospitalization. This commentary highlights a number of salient themes that emerge from reading these essays and attempts to explore how they relate to the broader academic literature on psychiatric hospitalization, particularly with regard to ethical considerations. In reading these narratives, each several (...) times, I was repeatedly struck by the courage required of the authors, both to share their stories publicly and to endure the challenges that the writing process no doubt demanded of them—revisiting and suspending themselves in deeply emotional and, at times, traumatic experiences in order to share the most compelling narrative. Their hard work clearly paid off—the stories are at once intimate and indelible. Still, in many instances, I found myself wanting to know more; to enter the story and sit with the individual through these events; to ask what they were thinking or feeling in a particular situation; to see and hear the world in which they found themselves. Such is the nature of good story telling—the reader, left with the lingering vision created in his mind, turns over the last page, eagerly hoping for more.Narrative ThemesI. Loss of Autonomy or ControlPerhaps the most notable theme had to do with the loss of control or freedom that followed from hospitalization. On first consideration, it may seem odd that this issue appears so often since patient autonomy constitutes one of the fundamental principles of medical ethics. Only under specific circumstances—e.g., when there is a risk of imminent harm—may autonomy be curtailed, and even then only to the extent that is minimally necessary. Yet, as these narratives highlight, there are a multitude of ways in which psychiatric hospitalization engenders actual or perceived restrictions in freedom (Newton-Howes & Mullen, 2011).Consistent with prior research (Goodwin et al., 1999), many of the authors describe a fear or the actual experience of not being able to leave the hospital freely, even when the admission seems to have been voluntary. For example, one writer worries, “I was so afraid that if I ever went ‘in,’ I would never get ‘out’... I thought I would never taste freedom again... alive.” Another describes:When it came time for my possible discharge they told me that I might not get discharged because I was ‘acting up the previous evenings.’ My anxiety level at this point went through the roof. The only reason I was discharged was because my father knew some politicians. If not [End Page 29] for him I would have been a patient there for perhaps years and my life would have been ruined.A third gives this example: “When I asked to sign the form to leave after three days, [the psychiatrist] told me if I did that she would have me committed.” Another writer fears not having any control of how the psychiatrist might approach the treatment: “... I was totally vulnerable... would the doctors blame me, drug me, shock me, kill me?”Somewhat surprising, however, was the fact that so few of the narratives take issue with the decision to hospitalize. This omission is especially striking in light of the fact that prior reports consistently note that a substantial minority (up to nearly half) of voluntarily admitted patients nevertheless experience their admission as coerced (Bonsack & Borgeat, 2005; Hiday et al., 1997; Katsakou et al., 2010; Rogers et al., 1993; Sheehan & Burns, 2011). Because many of these narrators had been hospitalized more than once, the relative absence of expressed resistance to being hospitalized seems strange, particularly when earlier hospital experiences or their aftermath are often described as negative. For example, one individual characterized the time after being released from the hospital as, “My sense of self was questioned. I felt as if I lost my soul.” Another put it this way:When I got out of the private hospital, I felt like my soul had been ripped out of me. I felt like I had a gaping hole in the center of my body... I felt psychically raped, dazed, and confused.Given these... (shrink)

In this paper, I look at Susan Stebbing’s articles and reviews that critically engage logical positivism. These appeared before the publication of A.J. Ayer’s Language, Truth and Logic and helped shape the early British reception of logical positivism. I highlight Stebbing’s adoption of G.E. Moore’s tripartite distinction between knowing a proposition, understanding it, and giving an analysis of it and, in light of this distinction, her focus on whether the principle of verifiability can ground a plausible account of communication. Stebbing (...) thinks not, and I reconstruct her reasons, as well as her own account of communication. In doing this, I relate her criticisms to her rejection of methodological solipsism and her dissatisfaction with the logical positivist treatment of statements about other minds and the past. I also argue that Stebbing’s work provides a bridge to later criticisms of logical positivism from ordinary language philosophers. Foregrounding Stebbing’s engagement with logical positivism, especially her focus on communication, paints a fuller picture of how the logical positivists came to be part of analytic philosophy despite having different concerns than many of the British philosophers engaging their work. (shrink)

This paper revisits Buridan’s Bridge paradox (Sophismata, chapter 8, Sophism 17), itself close kin to the Liar paradox, a version of which also appears in Bradwardine’s Insolubilia. Prompted by the occurrence of the paradox in Cervantes’s Don Quixote, I discuss and compare four distinct solutions to the problem, namely Bradwardine’s “just false” conception, Buridan’s “contingently true/false” theory, Cervantes’s “both true and false” view, and then the “neither true simpliciter nor false simpliciter” account proposed more recently by Jacquette. All have (...) in common to accept that the Bridge expresses a truth-apt proposition, but only the latter three endorse the transparency of truth. Against some previous commentaries I first show that Buridan’s solution is fully compliant with an account of the paradox within classical logic. I then argue that Cervantes’s insights, as well as Jacquette’s treatment, are both supportive of a dialetheist account, and Jacquette’s in particular of the strict-tolerant account of truth. I defend dialetheist intuitions (whether in LP or ST guise) against two objections: one concerning the future, the other concerning the alleged simplicity of the Bridge compared to the Liar. (shrink)

_Philosophy and the Vision of Language_ explores the history and enduring significance of the twentieth-century turn to language as a specific object of investigation and resource for philosophical reflection. It traces the implications of the access to language in some of the most prominent projects and results of the historical and contemporary tradition of analytic philosophy, including the projects of Frege, Wittgenstein, Sellars, Quine, Brandom, and Cavell. Additionally, it demonstrates the deep and enduring connections between the analytic tradition’s inquiry into (...) language and the parallel inquiries of phenomenology, critical theory, and deconstruction over the course of the twentieth century. Finally, it documents some of the enduring consequences of philosophy’s inquiry into language for contemporary questions of social and political life. The book provides a clear, accessible and widely inclusive introduction to the relevance of language for analytic and continental philosophy in the twentieth century and is readable by non-specialist audiences. It should contribute to a growing historical sense of the location of the analytic tradition in a broader geography of social, political and critical thought. Furthermore, it contributes to building bridges between this tradition and the neighboring continental ones from which it has all too often been estranged. (shrink)

In each of two experiments, college students were assigned to two ad hoc groups that competed in a dart-throwing contest. On each trial, one contestant from each team threw a single dart at a standard dart board, trying to come as close as possible to hitting the bull's-eye. Also on each trial, the other participants judged the likelihood that both the Team A contestant and the Team B contestant would come closer to hitting the bull's-eye. In both experiments, participants exhibited (...) a strong wishful thinking effect. They judged the likelihood that their own team members would come closer to be greater than the likelihood that the opposing team members would come closer. Experiment 2 suggested that it was participants' desires, as opposed to some other variable associated with team membership, that influenced their predictions. Experiment 2 also showed that the size of the effect did not depend on whether participants believed that their predictions had been influenced by their team membership. These results help bridge the gap between previous experimental laboratory studies, which have produced inconsistent results, and correlational field studies of sports fans and voters, which have consistently produced large effects. (shrink)

In his Critical Aesthetics and Postmodernism, Paul Crowther argued that art and aesthetic experiences have the capacity to humanize. In Art and Embodiment he develops this theme in much greater depth, arguing that art can bridge the gap between philosophy's traditional striving for generality and completeness, and the concreteness and contingency of humanity's basic relation to the world. As the key element in his theory, he proposes an ecological definition of art. His strategy involves first mapping out and (...) analyzing the logical boundaries and ontological structures of the aesthetic domain. He then considers key concepts from this analysis in the light of a tradition in Continental philosophy (notably the work of Kant, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Hegel) which--by virtue of the philosophical significance that it assigns to art--significantly anticipates the ecological conception. On this basis, Crowther is able to give a full formulation of his ecological definition. Art, in making sensible or imaginative material into symbolic form, harmonizes and conserves what is unique and what is general in human experience. The aesthetic domain answers basic needs intrinsic to self-consciousness itself, and art is the highest realization of such needs. In the creation and reception of art the embodied subject is fully at home with his or her environment. (shrink)

Paul Crowther argues that art can bridge the gap between philosophy's traditional striving for generality and completeness, and the concreteness and contingency of humanity's basic relation to the world. He proposes an ecological definition of art: by making sensible or imaginative material into symbolic form, it harmonizes and conserves what is unique and what is general about human experience.

In recent works Nancy Fraser has developed a model of ?metademocracy? that promises to reconcile the competing claims of universal justice (grounded in human rights) and localized democracy (grounded in popular sovereignty). By instituting a global democratic procedure in which all enjoy participatory parity, Fraser hopes to ensure that some people are not denied standing as ?subjects of justice? simply because of their territorial location while keeping faith with the democratic commitment to autonomy and self-legislation. Despite the compelling nature of (...) this model, I argue that Fraser fails to bridge the gulf between justice and democracy because her model of metademocracy is built on the ?metanorm? of ?participatory parity?. Drawing on the work of Hannah Arendt, I claim that this foundationalist move re-asserts the priority of justice over democracy because it takes equality as a moral given rather than the ever-precarious achievement of human organization. (shrink)

The Big Bang is a myth, says Paul Brockelman in this fascinating look at the spiritual side of modern cosmology. But it is a myth in the best sense--a fully realized creation story, one that, for all its scientific origins, has the power to transform us spiritually. In Cosmology and Creation, philosopher and religious scholar Brockelman seeks to bridge the gap between the scientific and the spiritual, to bring together the head and the heart. We have isolated the (...) two realms from each other for so long, he argues, that we have begun to lose a mystical sense of our place in the universe. But Brockelman believes that contemporary physics has advanced far beyond the mechanical view of nature, as propagated in the Enlightenment; the cosmology of the Big Bang has fostered a new way of understanding existence itself. To illustrate, he examines creation myths of the past, showing how they transcend simple explanations of the world to provide a deeper understanding of what our lives mean. And the fifteen-billion-year tale of the universe embraced by scientific cosmology serves precisely the same purpose, Brockelman claims; it bears a close resemblance to classic creation myths--and, indeed, it can transform our inner relationship with nature. The new scientific cosmology, Brockelman argues, offers something never before seen in human history: a scientifically accurate understanding of the entire universe and a spiritual vision of a "wider order of being" to which we all belong. Passionate and provocative, Cosmology and Creation promises to spark a lively debate about the new links between science and religion. (shrink)

A Hebbian model for speech generation opens a number of paths. A cross-linguistic scheme of functional relationships (inspired by Aristotle) dispenses with distraction by the “parts of speech” distinctions, while bridging the gap between “content” and “structure” words. A gradient model identifies emotional and rational dynamics and shows speech generation as a process where a speaker's dissatisfaction gets minimized.

In this article I discuss two questions with relation to Spinoza’s Christology. The first question is: how can we bring Spinoza’s thesis of the separation of theology and philosophy in agreement with his understanding of Christ as a philosophical figure in a book of revelation, the Bible? The second question is: how must we interpret Spinoza’s faith in Christ as a person, who has adequately understood the central message of prophetic revelation, a message of salvation through good works? The first (...) question is discussed by means of a comparison between Maimonides’ prophetology in The Guide of the Perplexed on the one hand and Spinoza’s prophetology and christology in the Theological Political Treatise on the other hand. I show that Spinoza’s figure of Christ has the same kinds of knowledge as Maimonides’ prophet. A difference between Spinoza’s Christ and Maimonides’ prophet is that the first has no political ambitions while the last is – especially in the person of Mozes – evidently a political figure. The second question is discussed by an investigation of Spinoza’s conception of the subject of incarnation in his correspondence with Henry Oldenburg. It is argued that Spinoza understands incarnation as an expression of God’s wisdom in all things. Incarnation is not an exclusive but an all including principle of divine production of and manifestation in different modes of being. Nevertheless, we can distinguish hierarchies of modes of being. In this respect God’s wisdom is more incarnated in human beings than in non-human modes of being, and among human beings it is most incarnated in Christ. However, the question how Christ as a human being can understand adequately the message of revelation, which cannot be cleared up by philosophical reason, remains unanswered. In the concluding remarks it is argued that Spinoza with his christology tried to build a bridge to the enlightened parts of the christian communities of his time. Moreover, this christology functions for himself as a guarantee that the sphere of revelation and faith is ultimately included in the intuitive knowlegde sub specie aeternitatis. So the thesis of separation of faith and reason can only be understood as provisional. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 477 (p. 32), although some might consider him to have been an important historian of logic. I am not certain that citing Carnap and Heideggar (p. 75) can do much to clarify Vires. When one reads 'Henrique Estienne' and "Hipotiposes pirronicas" (p. 266) in an Italian book he is a bit taken aback and wonders whether the author has done his homework. The writer missed a golden (...) opportunity to connect Galileo to the tradition, for his still unpublished Quaestiones on logic and the De motu (both written before 1600) have many interesting comments which tie in directly with the material developed in this volume. This could have provided an excellent bridge to the next'century, when the analytic method began to take a more central role in scientific and methodological discussions. There is still room for a number of studies on the evolution of the analytic method during the Renaissance. Unfortunately Crescini's study barely scratches the surface of this immense subject. Let us hope that his book will at least have the effect of encouraging others to treat the matter with more care, in greater depth, and more exhaustively. The volume is provided with a preface by Giorgio Radetti, who claims more for it than it actually provides, as well as noting that it is the first part of a more comprehensive study by the same author on the formation of the analytic method in Cartesian philosophy (p. 5). The book has a useful index, but unfortunately no bibliography. CHARLESB. ScxiMrrr The University of Leeds Le thomisme et la pens#e italienne de la Renaissance. By Paul Oskar Kristeller. Conference Albert-le-Grand 1965. (Montr6ah Institut d'~tudes m~di~vales, and Paris: Vrin, 1967. Pp. 287. $6) Surprisingly little is known about the later history of Thomism. This brief but very rich lecture by Professor Kristeller, renowned historian of Italian Renaissance philosophy, examines one period in the later career of St. Thomas' thought. This study, based chiefly on unpublished source material, shows that Thomas was very much present to both the humanists and to the academic philosophers during the Renaissance. Such leading humanists as Lorenzo Valla, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, and Marsilio Ficino, quote St. Thomas frequently and with approval. Even the unfavorable attitudes of Ermolao Barbaro or Baptista Mantuanus show that Thomas was already the most celebrated of mediaeval philosophers. The professors of philosophy at Italian universities, such as Pierre Pomponazzi, speak of Thomas with great respect and regard his theology as in conformity with the truths of faith, even when they reject his philosophy as being in disaccord with the authentic teaching of Aristotle. St. Thomas made a continuous contribution to the development of Renaissance theology and philosophy. Yet the principal Italian thinkers did not follow him strictly nor fall under his exclusive influence. Thomas is merely one of the most important sources, not the prevailing influence, in Renaissance thought. Ficino, for example, is,178 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY in accord with Thomas on certain important points, but his own theology is more in the spirit of Plato and Augustine. Professor Kristeller's vast learning is at the service of admirably balanced conclusions. Not everyone will agree with all his interpretations; Ficino perhaps did not imagine himself to be "constructing a system of philosophy" (p. 96) since the very title of his work, Theologia platonica, suggests that he continues, with new materials, the labor of mediaeval theolo#ans. And Ficino's doctrine of the continuity of the supernatural life of the soul in this world and the next (p. 120) seems to be completely in accord with Thomas. But the author's very careful scholarly method and sound general conclusions are beyond criticism. Two hitherto unpublished Latin texts are printed in critical edition at the end of the French lecture, the Opus aureum in Thomistas by Baptists Mantuanus, which is anti-Thomas, and the Opusculum ad Laurentium Medicem on beatitude, by Vincentius Bandellus, which is pro-Thomas. Like Professor Kristeller's fine lecture, these new texts are a permanent contribution to scholarship. PAUL J. W. MILLER University of Colorado The Anatomy of Leviathan. By F. S. McNeilly. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1968. Pp... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Prelude to Tackling Contemporary Crises: William James and a Psychological Springboard to Political ChangePaul Croce (bio)“That selective industry of the mind,... incessantly deciding, among many things,... which ones for it shall be realities.”—William James, 1892 (PBC, 167)“[N]either the whole of truth, nor the whole of good, is revealed to any single observer.”—William James, 1899 (TT, 149)The modern world has witnessed tremendous increases in prosperity, and that material abundance has (...) spurred great achievements. But these successes have also brought enormous and troubling side effects. Climate change, biodiversity loss, social inequality, and more problems have grown into crises with potential to challenge the achievements themselves. Alongside these challenges, many outstanding proposals have also emerged for dealing with our present crises. The crises and the insights for addressing them are in a harrowing competition, reminiscent of what H. G. Wells called “a race between education and catastrophe.” During recent chapters of this contest, especially in the United States, sound suggestions for halting or reversing environmental deterioration and for reducing class and racial inequities have gained some public and political support but have also met considerable resistance.1 While direct work to [End Page 26] address the crises is important, those efforts can be supported with understanding of the people and ideologies resisting that work. In fact, neglect of these impediments, which can further enable them to reduce abilities or willingness to address problems or even notice them, may be the biggest crisis of all.Just as medication can directly heal an illness while rest and self-care can build up general strength to support recovery, so coping with crises calls for both grappling with them directly and also consideration of the impediments that reduce the strength of those steps toward social healing. The inquiry here serves as a complement to sound proposals for immediate action by diagnosing what has hindered their realization. Outcries against injustice and creative interventions address the acute conditions of current crises, while cultural assessments of ways those responses gain or lose attention serve as prescriptions for addressing the chronic conditions that have exacerbated the crises through distraction. As with medical issues, long-term and preventive care of chronic problems can support acute treatment, even as they do not displace the need for immediate action.This article confronts a puzzle about why so many people do not pay attention to such large problems in nature and society and what steps can be taken to bridge that divide between the committed and the distracted. The emphasis here on attention shifts focus away from ideological differences and toward the values selections that drive the ideological differences. This article portrays James’s own path as he learned from differences before explaining how his theories offer insights on how selective choices shape the assumptions supporting ideologies that so often form into hostile contrasts.2 In addition to these alerts about the challenges of disagreement, he also presents methods to encourage listening across differences for chances to turn some of those commitments into constructive possibilities rather than treating them as reasons [End Page 27] to fight. These ways to evaluate cultural and political debates and increase understanding about selective choices can shed light on how so many people have been unwilling or unable to pay attention to the mounting problems, and through encouragement of more listening with respect, these methods can encourage more support for addressing the crises themselves.I. Jamesian Ways to Listen Across DifferencesCharles Taylor calls William James (1842–1910) “our great philosopher of the cusp.” This brief, elegant expression depicts a borderland thinker adept at mediating contrasting ideas. James’s often-difficult experiences in development toward that way of thinking and that reputation provide more depth about the contrasts that he experienced on the way toward his creative syntheses in psychology and philosophy.3 His wrestling with different interpretations serves as a microcosm for the challenges and rewards of listening for potential insights on each side of even hostile contrasts. He designed deliberate ways to reckon with differences, considering each to be a partial yet valuable window into the human condition. In his youth, he was torn between the competing perspectives of religious thought... (shrink)

Polanyi belongs to a tradition which is neither modernist nor postmodernist, but which affirms speculative philosophy as an alternative to both and as an important form of public discourse. With his origins in the philosophical culture of central Europe, he may well emerge as a bridge between continental and Anglo-American analytic philosophy. He was a moral philosopher in the Aristotelian tradition who anticipated the turn in recent years away from the modern ethics of rules to the classical ethics of (...) virtue. Within this context he espoused a new kind of liberalism and a different understanding of liberty. (shrink)

Few philosophers of science have influenced as many readers as Thomas S. Kuhn. Yet no comprehensive study of his ideas has existed--until now. In this volume, Paul Hoyningen-Huene examines Kuhn's work over four decades, from the days before The Structure of Scientific Revolutions to the present, and puts Kuhn's philosophical development in a historical framework. Scholars from disciplines as diverse as political science and art history have offered widely differing interpretations of Kuhn's ideas, appropriating his notions of paradigm shifts (...) and revolutions to fit their own theories, however imperfectly. Hoyningen-Huene does not merely offer another interpretation--he brings Kuhn's work into focus with rigorous philosophical analysis. Through extended discussions with Kuhn and an encyclopedic reading of his work, Hoyningen-Huene looks at the problems and justifications of his claims and determines how his theories might be expanded. Most significantly, he discovers that The Structure of Scientific Revolutions can be understood only with reference to the historiographic foundation of Kuhn's philosophy. Discussing the concepts of paradigms, paradigm shifts, normal science, and scientific revolutions, Hoyningen-Huene traces their evolution to Kuhn's experience as a historian of contemporary science. From here, Hoyningen-Huene examines Kuhn's well-known thesis that scientists on opposite sides of a revolutionary divide "work in different worlds," explaining Kuhn's notion of a world-change during a scientific revolution. He even considers Kuhn's most controversial claims--his attack on the distinction between the contexts of discovery and justification and his notion of incommensurability--addressing both criticisms and defenses of these ideas. Destined to become the authoritative philosophical study of Kuhn's work, Reconstructing Scientific Revolutions both enriches our understanding of Kuhn and provides powerful interpretive tools for bridging Continental and Anglo-American philosophical traditions. (shrink)

This study of the Confessions engages with contemporary philosophers and psychologists antagonistic to religion and demonstrates the enduring value of Augustine's journey for those struggling with theistic incredulity and religious narcissism. Paul Rigby draws on current Augustinian scholarship and the works of Paul Ricœur to cross-examine Augustine's testimony. This analysis reveals the sophistication of Augustine's confessional text, which anticipates the analytical mindset of his critics. Augustine presents a coherent, defensible response to three age-old problems: free will and grace; (...) goodness, innocent suffering, and radical evil; and freedom and predestination. The Theology of Augustine's Confessions moves beyond commentary and allows present-day readers to understand the Confessions as its original readers experienced it, bridging the divide introduced by Kant, Hegel, Freud, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and their descendants. (shrink)

One of the most influential physics books of the twentieth century was actually about biology. In a series of lectures, Erwin Schrödinger described how he believed that quantum mechanics, or some variant of it, would soon solve the riddle of life. These lectures were published in 1944 under the title What is life? and are credited by some as ushering in the age of molecular biology. In the nineteenth century, many scientists thought they knew the answer to Schrödinger’s rhetorical question. (...) Life, they maintained, was some sort of magic matter. The continued use of the term ‘organic chemistry’ is a hangover from that era. The belief that there is a chemical recipe for life led to the hope that, if only we knew what it was, we could mix up the right stuff in a test tube and make life in the lab. Most research on biogenesis has followed that tradition, by assuming that chemistry was a bridge — and a long one at that — linking matter with life. Elucidating this chemical pathway has been a tantalizing goal, spurred on by the famous Miller–Urey experiment of 1952, in which amino acids were made by sparking electricity through a mixture of water and common gases. But the concept has turned out to be something of a blind alley, and further progress with prebiotic chemical synthesis has been frustratingly slow. The origin of life remains one of the great outstanding mysteries of science. To take up Schrödinger’s suggestion, a radical solution to the problem, ‘What is life?’ could be that quantum mechanics enabled life to emerge directly from the atomic world, without the need for complex intermediate chemistry. Life must have a chemical basis: organic molecules provide the hardware for biology. But what about the software? When Schrödinger asked, ‘What is life?’ he could already glimpse the central significance of the cell’s information storage and replication processes, even though the role of DNA and the genetic code was yet to be discovered.. (shrink)

This commentary focuses on the parts of psychological game theory dealing with preference, as illustrated by team reasoning, and supports the conclusion that these theoretical notions do not contribute above and beyond existing theory in understanding social interaction. In particular, psychology and games are already bridged by a comprehensive, formal, and inherently psychological theory, interdependence theory (Kelley & Thibaut 1978; Kelley et al. 2003), which has been demonstrated to account for a wide variety of social interaction phenomena.

The arrow of time has been invoked to bridge all gaps between the 'two cultures'. Would time also help to mediate between the sphere of cognition (epistemic meaning) and the sphere of Bedeutsamkeit (meaning-as-relevance) when taking ritual to be a strongly idiosyncratic representative of the latter? What is the role of time in the modes of meaning in the realm of scientific concepts in their most rigorous shape (the mathematical) on the one hand, in ritual on the other hand? (...) Taking an external point of view, surprising connections can be laid, especially when focussing on the relations of form and materiality or content in the respective fields. Ritual can be considered — according toits formal structure — as an embodiment of the notion of an algorithm. When looking at the temporal structure of the respective symbolic practices from an internal point of view however, their contrasting modes of creating meaning become irreducible. In particular, the algorithmic-sequential mode in ritual is a shell for another time, constitutive of a proper Bedeutsamkeit. This is analyzed in terms of the role of the past in ritualized meaning (and illustrated via the art of time in the Japanese tea ceremony). Whereas a paradoxical creation of a past as something lost and nevertheless to be recollected is constitutive for the meaning of the ritual gesture, the proper element of the concept is time's arrow always pointing forward, to the next stage. Here the past, while embodied in the scientist's gesture as trace of epistemic styles and traditions, at the same time has to be suppressed in the interest of the creation of the new. (shrink)

This essay offers a critical assessment of environmental virtue ethics (EVE). Finding an environmental ethical analogy with Hume’s critique of the sensible knave, I argue that EVE is limited in much the same way as morality is on the Humean view. Advocates of nonanthropocentrism will find it difficult to engage those whose virtues comport them to anthropocentrism. Nonetheless, EVE is able to ground confidence in nonanthropocentric virtues by explicating specific key virtues, thereby holding open the possibility of bridging the motivational (...) gap between anthropocentrism and nonanthropocentrism. (shrink)

A major event in the history of twentieth-century thought, Notebooks for a Ethics is Jean-Paul Sartre's attempt to develop an ethics consistent with the profound individualism of his existential philosophy. In the famous conclusion to Being and Nothingness , Sartre announced that he would devote his next philosophical work to moral problems. Although he worked on this project in the late 1940s, Sartre never completed it to his satisfaction, and it remained unpublished until after his death in 1980. Presented (...) here for the first time in English, the Notebooks reveal Sartre at his most productive, crafting a masterpiece of philosophical reflection that can easily stand alongside his other great works. Sartre grapples anew here with such central issues as "authenticity" and the relation of alienation and freedom to moral values. Exploring fundamental modes of relating to the Other--among them violence, entreaty, demand, appeal, refusal, and revolt--he articulates the necessary transition from individualism to historical consciousness. This work thus forms an important bridge between the early existentialist Sartre and the later Marxist social thinker of the Critique of Dialectical Reason . The Notebooks themselves are complemented here by two additional essays, one on "the good and subjectivity," the other on the oppression of blacks in the United States. With publication of David Pellauer's lucid translation, English-speaking readers will be able to appreciate this important contribution to moral philosophy and the history of ethics. Jean-Paul Sartre (1906-1980) was offered, but declined, the Nobel Prize for literature in 1964. His many works of fiction, drama, and philosophy include the monumental study of Flaubert, The Family Idiot , and The Freud Scenario , both published in translation by the University of Chicago Press. (shrink)