This collection of recent articles by leading scholars is designed to illuminate one of the greatest and most influential philosophical books of all time. It includes incisive commentary on every major theme and argument in the Meditations, and will be valuable not only to philosophers but to historians, theologians, literary scholars, and interested general readers.

Conscientious objections (CO) can be disruptive in a variety of ways and may disadvantage patients and colleagues who must step-in to assume care. Nevertheless, nurses have a right and responsibility to object to participation in interventions that would seriously harm their sense of integrity. This is an ethical problem of balancing risks and responsibilities related to patient care. Here we explore the problem and propose a nonlinear framework for exploring the authenticity of a claim of CO from the perspective of (...) the nurse and of those who must evaluate such claims. We synthesized the framework using Rest’s Four Component Model of moral reasoning along with tenets of the International Council of Nursing’s (ICN) Code of Ethics for Nurses and insights from relevant ethics and nursing ethics literature. The resulting framework facilitates evaluating potential consequences of a given CO for all involved. We propose that the framework can also serve as an aid for nurse educators as they prepare students for practice. Gaining clarity about the sense in which the concept of conscience provides a defensible foundation for objecting to legally, or otherwise ethically, permissible actions, in any given case is critical to arriving at an ethical and reasonable plan of action. (shrink)

This book explores the usefulness of major categories of Paul Ricoeur's work, such as "memory, " "narrativity, " and his conception of self, within different ...

ABSTRACT:A wide range of research uses patterns of genetic variation to infer genetic similarity between individuals, typically referred to as genetic ancestry. This research includes inference of human demographic history, understanding the genetic architecture of traits, and predicting disease risk. Researchers are not just structuring an intellectual inquiry when using genetic ancestry, they are also creating analytical frameworks with broader societal ramifications. This essay presents an ethics framework in the spirit of virtue ethics for these researchers: rather than focus on (...) rule following, the framework is designed to build researchers’ capacities to react to the ethical dimensions of their work. The authors identify one overarching principle of intellectual freedom and responsibility, noting that freedom in all its guises comes with responsibility, and they identify and define four principles that collectively uphold researchers’ intellectual responsibility: truthfulness, justice and fairness, anti-racism, and public beneficence. Researchers should bring their practices into alignment with these principles, and to aid this, the authors name three common ways research practices infringe these principles, suggest a step-by-step process for aligning research choices with the principles, provide rules of thumb for achieving alignment, and give a worked case. The essay concludes by identifying support needed by researchers to act in accord with the proposed framework. (shrink)

Thomas Aquinas was first and foremost a Christian theologian. Yet he was also one of the greatest philosophers of the Middle Ages. Drawing on classical authors, and incorporating ideas from Jewish and Arab sources, he came to offer a rounded and lasting account of the origin of the universe and of the things to be found within it, especially human beings.

Sir Anthony Kenny is one of the most distinguished and prolific philosophers of our time. In the wide range and historical breadth of his interests, he has influenced many parts of the philosophical landscape, especially in the philosophy of mind and the theory of human action and responsibility. In contrast to many of his contemporaries, who have played down philosophy's debt to its past, Kenny's work has always been rooted in the great tradition of Western philosophical inquiry. Mind, (...) Method and Morality celebrates Kenny's work by focusing on the four great philosophers to whom Kenny has given special attention, namely Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, and Wittgenstein. It contains sixteen essays written by leading specialists in the relevant area. Strongly linked together by their focus on philosophy of mind, action and responsibility, the papers make a significant contribution to those areas of philosophy that Kenny has made particularly his own, and constitute a timely celebration of his work. While keeping to the highest standards of scholarship and philosophical rigour, the volume aims to be engaging and comprehensible to a wide audience, thus mirroring the clarity and accessibility that are the hallmarks of Kenny's own philosophical writings. A preface by the Editors describes Anthony Kenny's philosophical career, and the volume also includes a complete bibliography of his writings. (shrink)

16 philosophers offer specially written essays on the themes of mind, method and morality in the work of Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, and Wittgenstein.

Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc was een geleerde die niet tot een bepaalde institutie hoorde. Hij streefde naar de vooruitgang van wetenschappelijke kennis, had een netwerk van geleerden, politici, kooplieden en anderen en had contacten in Goa en Ethiopië, in het Ottomaanse Rijk en in christelijk Europa. Hij bewoog zich onder meer op terreinen als astronomie en de kennis van bijbelhandschriften in oosterse talen en werkte samen met protestanten, joden en moslims. Gedachte-experiment: iemand als Peiresc die internet ter beschikking heeft. Peiresc (...) heeft geen publicaties nagelaten en postuum hebben zijn vrienden zijn brieven niet gepubliceerd. Maar de archiefnalatenschap van deze briljante spin in zijn web is in onze tijd beschikbaar. (shrink)

These specialised and annotated papers closely examine a number of Platonic texts including the Republic, Symposium and Gorgias. Extracts are in English translation.

Written by Anthony Kenny, a leading figure in contemporary philosophy, this volume guides the reader through a concise and accessible explanation and assessment of Frege's radical and lasting contributions to our understanding of language, meaning, and the foundations of arithmetic.

This reissue of his collection of early essays, Logico-Linguistic Papers, is published with a brand new introduction by Professor Strawson but, apart from minor ...

A historical investigation of the exclusion of Africa and Asia from modern histories of philosophy.

The first four essays in this guide are devoted to the study of Wittgenstein′s own ideas about philosophy. The remaining six apply his ideas to the work of other thinkers.

First published in 1973, Sir Anthony Kenny’s classic introduction to Wittgenstein was widely praised for offering a lucid and historically informed account of the philosopher’s core concerns. Kenny's study is also remarkable for demonstrating the continuity between Wittgenstein’s early and late writings. Focusing on Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mind and language, Kenny closely examines the works of the middle years. He exposes apparent conflicts and then goes on to reconcile them, providing a persuasive argument for the unity of (...) Wittgenstein’s thought. This revised edition includes an extensive new introduction in which Kenny outlines developments in Wittgenstein scholarship since the book was first published and assesses Wittgenstein’s influence in the latter part of the twentieth century. (shrink)

Naive versions of decision theory take probabilities and utilities as primitive and use expected value to give norms on rational decision. However, standard decision theory takes rational preference as primitive and uses it to construct probability and utility. This paper shows how to justify a version of the naive theory, by taking dominance as the most basic normatively required preference relation, and then extending it by various conditions under which agents should be indifferent between acts. The resulting theory can make (...) all the decisions of classical expected utility theory, plus more in cases where expected utilities are infinite or undefined. Although the theory requires similarly strong assumptions to classical expected utility theory, versions of the theory can be developed with slightly weaker assumptions, without having to prove a new representation theorem for the weaker theory. This alternate foundation is particularly useful if probability is prior to preference, as suggested by the recent program to base probabilism on accuracy and alethic considerations rather than pragmatic ones. (shrink)

Sir Anthony Kenny's engaging new multi-volume history of Western philosophy now advances into the modern era. The Rise of Modern Philosophy captures the fascinating story of the emergence, from the early sixteenth to the early nineteenth century, of the great ideas and intellectual systems that shaped modern thought. Kenny introduces us to some of the world's most original and influential thinkers and helps us gain an understanding of their famous works. The great minds we meet include Rene Descartes, (...) traditionally seen as the founder of modern philosophy; the great British philosophers Hobbes, Locke, and Hume; continental thinkers such as Spinoza, Liebniz, and Hegel; and the towering figure of Immanuel Kant, who perhaps more than any other made philosophy what it is today. Kenny first tells the story of modern philosophy chronologically: his lively, accessible narrative brings the philosophers to life and fills in the historical and intellectual background to their work. It is ideal as the first thing to read for someone new to this wonderfully creative period. Kenny then backtracks to look closely at each of the main areas of philosophical exploration in this period: knowledge and understanding; the nature of the physical universe; metaphysics (the most fundamental questions there are about existence); mind and soul; the nature and content of morality; political philosophy; and God. The book also features many intriguing and beautiful illustrations which evoke the human and social side of philosophy. Anyone who is interested in the evolution of modern thought will find this a book a treasure. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Books ReceivedAquinas on Being. By Anthony Kenny. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002. Pp. x + 212. Price not given.Before and after Avicenna: Proceedings of the First Conference of the Avicenna Study Group. Edited by David C. Reisman, with the assistance of Ahmed H. al Rahim. Leiden: Brill, 2003. Pp. xix + 302. Price not given.Beside Still Waters: Jews, Christians, and the Way of the Buddha. Edited by Harold Kasimow, (...) John P. Keenan, and Linda Klepinger Keenan. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2003. Pp. 284. Paper $14.95.The Buddhist Unconscious: The ālaya-vijñāna in the Context of Indian Buddhist Thought. By William S. Waldron. London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003. Pp. xvi + 269. Price not given.Comparative Political Philosophy: Studies under the Upas Tree. Edited by Anthony J. Parel and Ronald C. Keith. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2003. Pp. xxxviii + 260. Paper $26.95.The Confucian Quest for Order: The Origin and Formation of the Political Thought of Xun Zi. By Masayuki Sato. Leiden: Brill, 2003. Pp. xviii + 500. Price not given.Gathering the Meanings: The Compendium of Categories: The Arthaviniścaya Sūtra and Its Commentary Nibandhana. Translated from the Sanskrit by N. H. Samtani. Berkeley: Dharma Publishing, 2002. Pp. xxxiv + 390. Price not given.I Have Arrived, I Am Home: Celebrating Twenty Years of Plum Village Life. By Thich Nhat Hanh. Berkeley: Parallax Press, 2003. Pp. 253. Paper $25.00.Identity and the Moral Life. By Mrinal Miri. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. xvii + 132. Hardcover Rs 645.00.Indian Philosophers and Postmodern Thinkers: Dialogues on the Margins of Culture. By Carl Olson. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. xv + 331. Hardcover Rs 950.00.Islamic Humanism. By Lenn E. Goodman. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. xiii + 273. Price not given.Letting Go: The Story of Zen Master Tōsui. Translated by Peter Haskel. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2001. Pp. xv + 167. Hardcover $45.00. Paper $16.95.A Life Journey to the East: Sinological Studies in Memory of Giuliano Bertuccioli (1923-2001). Edited by Antonino Forte and Federico Masini. Kyoto: Scuola Italiana di Studi sull'Asia Orientale, 2002. Pp. xxxv + 280. Price not given.The Measure of Things: Humanism, Humility and Mystery. By David E. Cooper. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002. Pp. ix + 372. Price not given. [End Page 277]Mencius, Hume and the Foundations of Ethics. By Xiusheng Liu. Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2003. Pp. vii + 204. Price not given.Monks and Monarchs, Kinship and Kingship: Tanqian in Sui Buddhism and Politics. By Chen Jinhua. Kyoto: Scuola Italiana di Studi sull'Asia Orientale, 2002. Pp. xiii + 310. Price not given.Music in the Sky: The Life, Art, and Teachings of the 17th Gyalwa Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje. By Michele Martin. Ithaca: Snow Lion Publications, 2003. Pp. 351. Paper $18.95, U.K. £12.95.New Confucianism: A Critical Examination. Edited by John Makeham. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Pp. 262. Hardcover $55.00.On the Boundaries of Theological Tolerance in Islam: Abū Hāmid Al-Ghāzalī's Faysal al-Tafriqa Bayna al-Islām wa al-Zandaqa. By Sherman A. Jackson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. xiv + 156. Hardcover Rs 295.00.Pandita Ramabai's American Encounter: The Peoples of the United States (1889). By Pandita Ramabai and translated and edited by Meera Kosambi. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003. Pp. xi + 284. Hardcover $59.95. Paper $29.95.Parmenides of Elea: A Verse Translation with Interpretative Essays and Commentary to the Text. By Martin J. Henn. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2003. Pp. 147. Hardcover $59.95.Philosophes taoïstes, tome II: Huainan Zi, texte traduit, présenté et annoté sous la direction de Charles le Blanc et de Rémi Mathieu. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2003. Pp. lxxxiii + 1182. Hardcover €56,90.The Philosophy and Ethics of the Vīraśaiva Community. By Dan A. Chekki. Lewiston, New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2003. Pp. xxv + 287. Hardcover $119.95.Poems of Hanshan. Translated by Peter Hobson with introduction by T. H. Barrett. Walnut Creek, California: AltaMira Press, 2003. Pp. viii + 151. Hardcover $65.00. Paper $19.95.Psychoanalysis and Buddhism: An Unfolding Dialogue. Edited by Jeremy D. Safran. Boston... (shrink)

According to proper functionalist theories of warrant, a belief is warranted only if it is formed by cognitive faculties that are properly functioning according to a good, truth-aimed design plan, one that is often thought to be specified either by intentional design or by natural selection. A formidable challenge to proper functionalist theories is the Swampman objection, according to which there are scenarios involving creatures who have warranted beliefs but whose cognitive faculties are not properly functioning, or are poorly designed, (...) or are not aimed at truth. In this paper, we draw lessons from cognitive science in order to develop a novel argument for the conclusion that the Swampman objection fails against proper functionalist theories of warrant. Our argument not only shows that the underlying, central intuition motivating Swampman-like scenarios is false but also motivates proper function as a necessary condition for warrant, thereby lending support to the claim that any theory of knowledge that lacks a proper function requirement is false. (shrink)

We introduce a family of rules for adjusting one's credences in response to learning the credences of others. These rules have a number of desirable features. 1. They yield the posterior credences that would result from updating by standard Bayesian conditionalization on one's peers' reported credences if one's likelihood function takes a particular simple form. 2. In the simplest form, they are symmetric among the agents in the group. 3. They map neatly onto the familiar Condorcet voting results. 4. They (...) preserve shared agreement about independence in a wide range of cases. 5. They commute with conditionalization and with multiple peer updates. Importantly, these rules have a surprising property that we call synergy - peer testimony of credences can provide mutually supporting evidence raising an individual's credence higher than any peer's initial prior report. At first, this may seem to be a strike against them. We argue, however, that synergy is actually a desirable feature and the failure of other updating rules to yield synergy is a strike against them. (shrink)

Anthony Kenny on his personal struggles with belief.

Mental or computer simulation of cause and effect of certain behaviors is a recognized approach to changing one’s attitude or triggering an action. Meanwhile, psychology research results suggest that frequency of simulation may affect the corresponding persuasiveness. This paper argues that with always-on sensing and data-driven visualization technologies, interactive tangible systems can be designed to simulate hypothetical outcomes of real-life behaviors in everyday contexts, which repeatedly stimulate users’ imagination of behavioral consequences and thereby behavioral intentions. To investigate the effect, a (...) working prototype of Incingarette, including a smart ashtray in connection with a digital picture frame, was built. When the ashtray is used for smoking, the digital picture is incrementally covered by virtual dust. Field trials involved participants in five daily smoking sessions. Post-session surveys show increasingly stronger perceived causality between smoking and the simulated outcomes, increasingly more vivid mental imagery of consequences, and increasingly intense intention to reduce smoking. Results suggest that repeatedly presenting simulated outcomes cognitively linked to real-life behaviors can increase behavioral intentions. (shrink)

A complete system of classical Aristotelian logic intended for honors high school and college.

What is mind? This book attempts to give a philosophical answer to that question in language accessible to the layperson, but with a rigor acceptable to the specialist. Published on the centenary of the birth of Wittgenstein and the 40th anniversary of the publication of Gilbert Ryle 's classic The Concept of Mind, this work testifies to the influence of those thinkers on Kenny's own work in the philosophy of mind, and assembles Kenny's ideas on philosophical psychology into (...) a systematic whole. (shrink)

Ohne Rücksicht auf disziplinäre Schranken bringt dieses Buch verschiedene nicht-reduktionistische Lerntheorien miteinander ins Gespräch. In einem offenen Diskurs, der die Konzepte zueinander in Beziehung setzt, werden die unterschiedlichen Perspektiven kritisch abgewogen und hinsichtlich ihrer Stärken und Schwächen diskutiert.

Delo se loteva vprašanja aktualnosti pojma subjekta v filozofiji in politiki skozi analizo tistih avtorjev, ki so ga domnevno najbolj radikalno pokopali: pokaže, da vznik radikalno novega in problematika subjekta zavzema osrednje mesto v Deleuzovi filozofiji, kakor tudi v Lyotardovi pozni misli posvečeni praznini, v Foucaultovi obravnavi biopolitike in biooblasti, v delu Negrija in Hardta o Imperiju, ter nazadnje v Badioujevi predelavi temeljnih filozofskih kategorij biti, resnice in subjekta, na osnovi katerih je dandanes znova možna renesansa filozofije. Ta ima po (...) Badiouju štiri razsežnosti, ki se v delu Vznik subjekta nenehno prepletajo: »V osnovi želja filozofije implicira razsežnost upora: ni filozofije brez nezadovoljstva mišljenja v njegovem soočenju s svetom, kakršen je. Pa vendar želja filozofije vključuje tudi logiko: to je, prepričanje v moč argumenta in uma.«. (shrink)

Many philosophers have argued that "degree of belief" or "credence" is a more fundamental state grounding belief. Many other philosophers have been skeptical about the notion of "degree of belief", and take belief to be the only meaningful notion in the vicinity. This paper shows that one can take belief to be fundamental, and ground a notion of "degree of belief" in the patterns of belief, assuming that an agent has a collection of beliefs that isn't dominated by some other (...) collection in terms of the overall balance of truth and falsity that it could contain. (shrink)

This popular selection of Wittgenstein’s key writings has now been updated to include new material relevant to recent debates about the philosopher. Follows the evolution of Wittgenstein’s philosophical thought from the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus through to the Philosophical Investigations. Excerpts are arranged by topic and introduce readers to all the central concerns of Wittgenstein’s philosophy. Now includes a new chapter on ‘Sense, Nonsense and Philosophy’ incorporating material relevant to recent debates about Wittgenstein.

Bill D'Alessandro talks to Kenny Easwaran about fractal music, Zoom conferences, being a good referee, teaching in math and philosophy, the rationalist community and its relationship to academia, decision-theoretic pluralism, and the city of Manhattan, Kansas.

Many philosophers have become worried about the use of standard real numbers for the probability function that represents an agent's credences. They point out that real numbers can't capture the distinction between certain extremely unlikely events and genuinely impossible ones—they are both represented by credence 0, which violates a principle known as “regularity.” Following Skyrms 1980 and Lewis 1980, they recommend that we should instead use a much richer set of numbers, called the “hyperreals.” This essay argues that this popular (...) view is the result of two mistakes. The first mistake, which this essay calls the “numerical fallacy,” is to assume that a distinction that isn't represented by different numbers isn't represented at all in a mathematical representation. In this case, the essay claims that although the real numbers do not make all relevant distinctions, the full mathematical structure of a probability function does. The second mistake is that the hyperreals make too many distinctions. They have a much more complex structure than credences in ordinary propositions can have, so they make distinctions that don't exist among credences. While they might be useful for generating certain mathematical models, they will not appear in a faithful mathematical representation of credences of ordinary propositions. (shrink)

Cross-situational learning is a mechanism for learning the meaning of words across multiple exposures, despite exposure-by-exposure uncertainty as to the word's true meaning. We present experimental evidence showing that humans learn words effectively using cross-situational learning, even at high levels of referential uncertainty. Both overall success rates and the time taken to learn words are affected by the degree of referential uncertainty, with greater referential uncertainty leading to less reliable, slower learning. Words are also learned less successfully and more slowly (...) if they are presented interleaved with occurrences of other words, although this effect is relatively weak. We present additional analyses of participants’ trial-by-trial behavior showing that participants make use of various cross-situational learning strategies, depending on the difficulty of the word-learning task. When referential uncertainty is low, participants generally apply a rigorous eliminative approach to cross-situational learning. When referential uncertainty is high, or exposures to different words are interleaved, participants apply a frequentist approximation to this eliminative approach. We further suggest that these two ways of exploiting cross-situational information reside on a continuum of learning strategies, underpinned by a single simple associative learning mechanism. (shrink)

The relationship of part to whole is one of the most fundamental there is; this is the first and only full-length study of this concept. This book shows that mereology, the formal theory of part and whole, is essential to ontology. Peter Simons surveys and criticizes previous theories, especially the standard extensional view, and proposes a more adequate account which encompasses both temporal and modal considerations in detail. 'Parts could easily be the standard book on mereology for the next (...) twenty or thirty years.' Timothy Williamson, Grazer Philosophische Studien. (shrink)