Thomas Jefferson and Philosophy: Essays on the Philosophical Cast of Jefferson’s Writings is a collection of essays on topics that relate to philosophical aspects of Jefferson’s thinking over the years. Much historical insight is given to ground the various philosophical strands in Jefferson’s thought and writing on topics such as political philosophy, moral philosophy, slavery, republicanism, wall of separation, liberty, educational philosophy, and architecture.

Physical activity, and likely the motivation for it, varies throughout the day. The aim of this investigation was to create a short assessment (CRAVE: Cravings for Rest and Volitional Energy Expenditure) to measure motivation states (wants, desires, urges) for physical activity and sedentary behaviors. Five studies were conducted to develop and evaluate the construct validity and reliability of the scale, with 1,035 participants completing the scale a total of 1,697 times. In Study 1, 402 university students completed a questionnaire inquiring (...) about the want or desire to perform behaviors “at the present moment (right now).” Items related to physical activity (e.g., “move my body”) and sedentary behaviors (e.g., “do nothing active”). An exploratory structural equation model (ESEM) revealed that 10 items should be retained, loading onto two factors (5 each for Move and Rest). In Study 2, an independent sample (n= 444) confirmed these results and found that Move and Rest desires were associated with stage-of-change for exercise behavior. In Study 3, 127 community-residing participants completed the CRAVE at 6-month intervals over two years- two times each session. Across-session interclass correlations (ICC) for Move (ICC = 0.72–0.95) and Rest (ICC = 0.69–0.88) were higher than when they were measured across 24-months (Move: ICC = 0.53; Rest: ICC = 0.49), indicating wants/desires have state-like qualities. In Study 4, a maximal treadmill test was completed by 21 university students. The CRAVE was completed immediately pre and post. Move desires decreased 26% and Rest increased 74%. Changes in Move and Rest desires were moderately associated with changes in perceived physical fatigue and energy. In Study 5, 41 university students sat quietly during a 50-min lecture. They completed the CRAVE at 3 time points. Move increased 19.6% and Rest decreased 16.7%. Small correlations were detected between move and both perceived energy and tiredness, but not calmness or tension. In conclusion, the CRAVE scale has good psychometric properties. These data also support tenets of the WANT model of motivation states for movement and rest (Stults-Kolehmainen et al., 2020a). Future studies need to explore how desires to move/rest relate to dynamic changes in physical activity and sedentarism. (shrink)

As its title suggests, Mondin’s book is encyclopedic. It treats of theological language from the Greeks—in fact, Plato and Aristotle with very brief mention of others—to the present time. The entries are necessarily short but Karl Barth, Paul Tillich and Rudolf Bultmann among the moderns and Augustine and Aquinas among the classics get complete chapters to themselves. Heidegger does not, perhaps surprisingly, receive separate treatment although he is referred to as the source of both Gadamer and Ricoeur and specifically (...) as the source of the overcoming of the subject-object schema and so of the new hermeneutics. One might have expected more discussion of Bultmann’s relation to Heidegger. The section on linguistic analysis in general and Wittgenstein in particular is quite short but, granted that the book is taken as an encyclopedic reference work, is quite useful for anyone unfamiliar with analysis who wanted to begin a study of the theory of theological language within this school. Indeed, the usefulness of the book as a reference work on the problem is its major merit. The essays or entries do not pretend to achieve more than a swift survey of the author or school treated. As an aid to work the book is worth having. No price is given; there is an index of authors mentioned which in most cases is accurate; the entry on Freud is wrongly noted at 435 instead of 434. The bibliographies are restricted to the footnotes which is perhaps slightly awkward and sometimes only the Italian translation of a book is given e.g. on page 460 footnote 66 there is a reference to MacQuarrie, Ha senso parlare di Dio? which, I presume, is a translation of God-Talk. The book would be a better instrument if the original titles were given as well. (shrink)

© The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Analysis Trust. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: [email protected] article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model...The editors of this interesting collection,1 Stephan Blatti and Paul Snowdon, have placed the various essays, most of which were specially written for this volume, in three categories: Part I contains articles critical of animalism; Part II contains essays defending animalism (...) and Part III contains essays drawing out the consequences and practical applications of animalism. After some introductory remarks, I will discuss two of the essays attacking animalism – those of Derek Parfit and Mark Johnston – and then comment on Paul Snowdon’s essay....First, though, a word on the definition of animalism. In their Introduction, Blatti and Snowdon define animalism as ‘… the... (shrink)

Volume 98, Issue 1, March 2020, Page 205-208.

Should we stop spending money on things we do not really need and send the money instead to groups that aid victims of absolute poverty? Garrett Cullity and Peter Unger have given renewed vigor to the well known argument by Peter Singer that we should do this. Like Singer, Cullity and Unger compare our duties to the poor to our duties when we encounter a victim of calamity, such as a child in danger of drowning. Singer and Unger tell (...) us what to do and why we must do it; most starkly, Unger gives us the names, addresses, and toll-free phone numbers of four organizations to which we can donate, and the book cover tells us that the author's royalties are going equally to Oxfam America and the U.S. Committee for UNICEF. Unger dissolves the divide between theory and practice. (shrink)

In The Riddle of Hume’s Treatise, Paul Russell has given us a marvelously good book. I intend that as very strong praise indeed, for as readers of Hume on miracles know, the marvelous constitutes the very upper limit on what can properly be established on the basis of human testimony—which is, of course, what I am offering. What makes the book so marvelous? In defense of what he calls his “irreligious interpretation” of A Treatise of Human Understanding, Russell makes (...) many deep and permanent contributions to our understanding of Hume’s philosophy. His careful tracing of the influence of disputes pitting “speculative atheists” (such as Hobbes, Collins, Toland, Tindal, and Dudgeon) against “religious philosophers” (such as Cudworth, Baxter, Butler, and above all Clarke), in both England and Scotland, helps to reorient our understanding of the context of the Treatise; and his analysis of the early reception of the Treatise from the point of view of its bearing on religion helps to reorient our understanding of its significance. .... Perhaps most importantly, Russell offers original and compelling accounts of the irreligious implications of central arguments of the Treatise on an impressive range of topics—the idea of God, space and time, power and necessary connection, induction, the existence of bodies, the immateriality of the soul, personal identity, liberty and necessity, the moral sense, the artificial virtues, and more—even if some of these implications directly oppose only a more-or-less Clarkean conception of the requirements and proper supports of the Christian religion. ... As Russell says, it should never again be claimed that the Treatise is largely unconcerned with questions of religion. (shrink)

Recent publications by Pogge ( Global ethics: seminal essays. St. Paul: Paragon House 2008 ) and by Singer ( The life you can save: acting now to end world poverty. New York: Random House 2009 ) have resuscitated a debate over the justifiability of famine relief between Singer and ecologist Garrett Hardin in the 1970s. Yet that debate concluded with a general recognition that (a) general considerations of development ethics presented more compelling ethical problems than famine relief; and (...) (b) some form of development would be essential to avoiding the problems of growth noted by Hardin. Better than renewing the debate, we should recognize two points. First, food needs do indeed evoke a moral response that is more direct and compelling than the philosophical positions often generated to rationalize a duty to bring aid. As such the argument for feeding hungry people cannot be generalized into a paradigm for development ethics without distortions that undercut the morally valid elements in Singer’s original argument. Second, contrary to prevailing assumptions in present day development ethics, food aid and famine relief continue to be important priorities for international agencies, notably the World Food Program. Emergency food assistance, the nominal topic of Singer’s original article, thus is an important issue for agricultural as well as development ethics, though one that should indeed be seen as distinct from more complex duties to address the conditions of chronic poverty and underdevelopment. (shrink)

Volume 98, Issue 1, March 2020, Page 205-208.

In many ways, Benedict (Baruch) de Spinoza appears to be a contradictory figure in the history of philosophy. From the beginning, he has been notorious as an "atheist" who seeks to substitute Nature for a personal deity; yet he was also, in Novalis's famous description, "the God-intoxicated man." He was an uncompromising necessitarian and causal determinist; yet his ethical ideal was to become a "free man." He maintained that the human mind and the human body are identical; yet he also (...) insisted that the human mind can achieve a kind of eternality that transcends the death of the body. He has been adopted by Marxists as a precursor of historical materialism, and by Hegelians as a precursor of absolute idealism. He was a psychological egoist, proclaiming that all individuals necessarily seek their own advantage and implying that other individuals were of value to him only insofar as they were useful to him; yet his writings aimed to promote human community based on love and friendship, he had many devoted friends, and even his critics were obliged to acknowledge that his personal conduct was above reproach. He held that the state has the right to do whatever it has the power to do, while at the same time he defended democracy and freedom of speech. He denied supernatural revelation and criticized popular religion as a grave danger to the peace and stability of the state; yet he devoted himself to the careful interpretation of scripture and argued for toleration and freedom of religion. Rarely employing figures of speech or rhetorical flourishes of any kind, his works are nevertheless among the most magisterial and uplifting of all philosophical writings, and they have inspired more poets and novelists than those of any other philosopher of the early modern period. (shrink)

What is involved in weighing normative reasons against each other? One attractive answer offers us the following Simple Picture: a fact is a reason for action when it bears to an action the normative relation of counting in its favour; this relation comes in different strengths or weights; the weights of the reasons for and against an action can be summed; the reasons for performing the action are sufficient when no other action is more strongly supported, overall; the reasons are (...) decisive when it is most strongly supported; one ought to perform the action there is most reason to perform; rational deliberation is weighing reasons correctly; and acting rationally is doing what one has sufficient reasons to do. This chapter investigates various ways in which, on examination, this Simple Picture appears to require modification and refinement. It examines some of the ways in which talk of the weight of a reason may need improvement, looks more closely at the relationship between reasons and rationality, and asks whether there are ways in which a reason can be defeated which are not kinds of outweighing. The conclusion is that while in some respects the Simple Picture does need to be corrected, in others the jury is out. (shrink)

In a new interpretation, Garrett Wallace Brown considers Kant's cosmopolitan thought as a form of international constitutional jurisprudence that requires minimal legal demands. He explores and defends topics such as cosmopolitan law, cosmopolitan right, the laws of hospitality, a Kantian federation of states, a cosmopolitan epistemology of culture and a possible normative basis for a Kantian form of global distributive justice.

Game theory involves deliberating about what to do in light of what other people are likely to do. One of the central frameworks of game theory is the prisoner’s dilemma, in which participants who make rational choices end up in suboptimal outcomes. Using the prisoner’s dilemma to model competition between firms sets the stage for a new and promising approach to business ethics: the market failures approach.

This book introduces the field of hermeneutics through a critique of military operations in Afghanistan. Following a brief survey of modern political history of the country, the authors examine the link between cultural factors and the inefficiency of nation-building operations. Additionally, the project discusses contending academic approaches to culture, and identifies shortcomings in their theoretical propositions for military operations in failed states. Ultimately, this volume contextualizes the evolution of hermeneutical thinking and the benefits it provides in assessing the transformation of (...) culture through military intervention. (shrink)

Hume describes “mental geography” as the endeavor to know “the different operations of the mind, to separate them from each other, to class them under their proper heads, and to correct all that seeming disorder, in which they lie involved, when made the object of reflection and enquiry.” While much has been written about his geography of thought in Treatise Book 1, relatively little has been written about his geography of feeling in Books 2 and 3, with the result that (...) there has been considerable puzzlement and disagreement about the meaning and grounds of many of his central theses about the passions, action, and morals. My endeavor in this chapter is to remove some common sources of perplexity about his classification of the operations of feeling “under their proper heads” in that work. I begin by explaining his three highest-level distinctions bearing on this terrain: that between impressions and ideas; that between original impressions and secondary impressions; and that between the passions and the other emotions. In order to understand this third distinction, I explain his three different senses of the term ‘emotion’ and the relations among them. I ill then examine five different kinds of secondary impressions that he recognizes. These are: (1) sensible agitations; (2) feelings of or from mental operations; (3) volitions; (4) the passions (including motives); and (5) sentiments of taste. The broad outlines of the resulting geography are mapped out in a chart at the end. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on the ethical theories of the early modern philosophers Thomas Hobbes, Justus Lipsius, Descartes, Spinoza, Benjamin Whichcote, Lord Shaftesbury, and Samuel Clarke. The discussions include aspects of Hobbes' moral philosophy that posed a challenge for many philosophers of the second half of the seventeenth century who were committed to philosophy as a form of self-help; Lipsius and Descartes' appropriation of ancient and Hellenistic moral philosophy in connection with changing ideas about control of the passions and the happiest (...) and best life; and the maxim or epigram – a literary form used by moralists to counsel readers on how to best know and govern themselves. (shrink)

At the end of a thoughtful article on the future of nuclear war, Wiesner and York concluded that: "Both sides in the arms race are... confronted by the dilemma of steadily increasing military power and steadily decreasing national security. It is our considered professional judgment that this dilemma has no technical solution. If the great powers continue to look for solutions in the area of science and technology only, the result will be to worsen the situation.".

This paper extends an ongoing discussion about establishing a sharper way to conduct ethical investigations into managerial virtue. It does so by relying on Alasdair MacIntyre's moral philosophy in place of those more dominant approaches taken by scholars who make up the field of positive social science. A connection is drawn herein between a MacIntyrean “narrative approach” to investigating managerial virtue and the idea of “work as a calling.” Specifically, it will be argued that the MacIntyrean‐influenced idea of “work as (...) a calling” provides a substantive moral vision that supports an understanding of how virtuous managers ought to narrate their primary workplace motivations. Ultimately, virtuous managers fulfill a “political calling” to support and sustain (a) good work, (b) the good of individual lives, and (c) the common good of communities that their organization reaches. To do this, they must rely on the “shepherd virtue” of practical wisdom (phronesis). Practical wisdom aids virtuous managers’ thinking about achieving the ends of their “calling” as well as any necessary course‐corrections that ought to be made toward the better achievement of those good and worthy ends. (shrink)

Philosophy is thinking critically about questions that matter. But many people find philosophy intimidating, so they never discover how it can help them engage ideas, culture, and even their faith. In this second edition of a classic text, Garrett DeWeese and J. P. Moreland use straightforward language with plenty of everyday examples to help to make philosophy a little less difficult.

Commentators have offered interpretations over many years of the nature and status of the attributes in Spinoza's metaphysics, but attributes are best understood as diverse manners of existence, so that a substance having more than one attribute exists in more than one manner. Spinoza's monistic metaphysics of substance and mode allows him to offer an appealing conception of the nature of space. Spinoza's monistic metaphysics provides the basis for a positive account of how particular things constitute things at all. All (...) the philosophers of the seventeenth century, arguably none has more direct bearing on recent work in metaphysics than Spinoza. In Spinoza's monism, there is only one perfectly real being, which grounds and is more real than all of the other existing things, and in which they inhere. Spinoza's panpsychism at the same time provides a model of cosmopsychism, in which the mental character of the cosmos grounds the mental character of each particular thing. (shrink)

We present a self-organizing approach to sentence processing that sheds new light on notional plurality effects in agreement attraction, using pseudopartitive subject noun phrases. We first show that notional plurality ratings predict verb agreement choices in pseudopartitives, in line with the “Marking” component of the Marking and Morphing theory of agreement processing. However, no account to date has derived notional plurality values from independently needed principles of language processing. We argue on the basis of new experimental evidence and a dynamical (...) systems model that the theoretical black box of notional plurality can be unpacked into objectively measurable semantic features. With these semantic features driving structure formation, our model reproduces the human verb production patterns as a byproduct of normal processing. Finally, we discuss how the self-organizing approach might be extended to other agreement attraction phenomena. (shrink)

The significance of Friedrich Nietzsche for twentieth century culture is now no longer a matter of dispute. He was quite simply one of the most influential of modern thinkers. The opening essay of this 1996 Companion provides a chronologically organised introduction to and summary of Nietzsche's published works, while also providing an overview of their basic themes and concerns. It is followed by three essays on the appropriation and misappropriation of his writings, and a group of essays exploring the nature (...) of Nietzsche's philosophy and its relation to the modern and post-modern world. The final contributions consider Nietzsche's influence on the twentieth century in Europe, the USA, and Asia. New readers and non-specialists will find this the most convenient, accessible guide to Nietzsche currently available. Advanced students and specialists will find a conspectus of recent developments in the interpretation of Nietzsche. (shrink)

Among theories of human language comprehension, cue‐based memory retrieval has proven to be a useful framework for understanding when and how processing difficulty arises in the resolution of long‐distance dependencies. Most previous work in this area has assumed that very general retrieval cues like [+subject] or [+singular] do the work of identifying (and sometimes misidentifying) a retrieval target in order to establish a dependency between words. However, recent work suggests that general, handpicked retrieval cues like these may not be enough (...) to explain illusions of plausibility (Cunnings & Sturt, 2018), which can arise in sentences like The letter next to the porcelain plate shattered. Capturing such retrieval interference effects requires lexically specific features and retrieval cues, but handpicking the features is hard to do in a principled way and greatly increases modeler degrees of freedom. To remedy this, we use well‐established word embedding methods for creating distributed lexical feature representations that encode information relevant for retrieval using distributed retrieval cue vectors. We show that the similarity between the feature and cue vectors (a measure of plausibility) predicts total reading times in Cunnings and Sturt’s eye‐tracking data. The features can easily be plugged into existing parsing models (including cue‐based retrieval and self‐organized parsing), putting very different models on more equal footing and facilitating future quantitative comparisons. (shrink)

If the quasi-realist wants to earn the right to talk like a moral realist, he needs to be able to make sense of moral error. A special form of error—fundamental moral error—is often thought to be u...