This dissertation uses the context of the thirteenth-century debate about the natural love of God over self to clarify the difference between the ethical system of Thomas Aquinas and that of John Duns Scotus. Although Thomas and Scotus both believe that such love is possible, they disagree about the reasons for this position. ;Early thirteenth-century thinkers, such as William of Auxerre and Philip the Chancellor, were the first to distinguish between a natural love of God and charity, which is (...) a love assisted by grace. Thomas Aquinas' approach to the issue is original. According to Thomas, since human beings are part of a political whole and also part of a whole whose good is God, it follows that they have a natural inclination to love the common good and God more than themselves. Although Thomas' position and his corresponding interpretation of Aristotle were upheld by Godfrey of Fontaines and Giles of Rome, it was severely criticized by James of Viterbo, who argued that the part always seeks its own good. ;John Duns Scotus makes the same criticism of the part/whole argument, although Scotus emphasizes that the human will is free to act against the natural inclination for self-perfection. Scotus clearly distinguishes between the will and nature. ;The conclusion of the dissertation argues that the debate prefigures the modern shift sway from an ethics based upon natural inclination along with the modern tendency to understand morality as a limitation of self-interest. Moreover, it is argued that modern Thomists need to take into account Thomas' original emphasis on natural inclination and the priority of the common good. (shrink)

The essay on thirteenth-century ethics will trace the history of three major themes in moral philosophy and theology, namely the morality of individual acts, virtue, and happiness. Both Peter Lombard’s rejection of Abelard’s focus on intention and the Fourth Lateran Council’s remarks on confession caused thinkers such as William of Auvergne and Philip the Chancellor to develop a way of classifying acts and determining responsibility for such acts. Thomas Aquinas and clarified and changed the technical vocabulary but adopted much (...) from their views on knowledge and moral responsibility. A similar development took place in the understanding of virtue. Philip and others discussed the nature and unity of the virtues in the context of a patristic inheritance that was largely influence by Stoicism. Thomas Aquinas was among the first to discuss the connection between specifically distinct virtues, bringing to bear Aristotle’s description of prudence in Book VI of the Nicomachean Ethics. Moreover, whereas previous thinkers had primarily distinguished between political and theological virtues, Thomas distinguished more carefully between both infused and acquired moral virtues, and theological virtues that are only infused. He explained that the intellectual virtues, although better in themselves, are inferior to the moral virtues when it comes to making a good human being. Debates over the role of happiness in ethics were related to such distinctions. Early generations had focused primarily on the role that moral and theological virtue plays in its role as leading to happiness in heaven. In contrast, some Aristotelians seem to emphasize the priority of intellectual virtue over moral virtue, and consequently the life of the philosopher over the life of the citizen. Thomas Aquinas distinguished between the different perfections of intellectual and moral virtue, and distinguished carefully between the imperfect happiness of this life and the perfect happiness of the next. Although Thomas brought these issues together in an admirable synthesis, few of his contemporaries thought that he had successfully addressed these issues. (shrink)

This essay reconstructs the place of Marx's thought within Adorno's writings from his 1931 inaugural lecture to his famous 1962 seminar on Marx. It focuses on three areas: the critique and transformation of philosophy; the sociology of the commodification of art; and the social ontology of the objectivity of illusions, derived from the critique of political economy. Adorno, it argues, ended his academic life significantly more of a Marxist than he had entered it, leaving a legacy that was distinctive both (...) for its dialectical appropriation of Marx's critique – and suspended supersession – of philosophy and for its philosophical interpretation of Marx's critique of political economy. (shrink)

Thomas Aquinas produced a voluminous body of work on moral theory, and much of that work is on virtue, particularly the status and value of the virtues as principles of virtuous acts, and the way in which a moral life can be organized around them schematically. Thomas Osborne presents Aquinas's account of virtue in its historical, philosophical and theological contexts, to show the reader what Aquinas himself wished to teach about virtue. His discussion makes the complexities of Aquinas's moral (...) thought accessible to readers despite the differences between Thomas's texts themselves, and the distance between our background assumptions and his. The book will be valuable for scholars and students in ethics, medieval philosophy, and theology. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Communities and Persons A Phenomenological Distinction between Community and Society Community Society The Self and its Social Roles Dispositional Vectors and the Shaping of Personality The Personality The Sociopathic Personality Type Conclusion.

The official model of explanation proposed by the logical empiricists, the covering law model, is subject to familiar objections. The goal of the present paper is to explore an unofficial view of explanation which logical empiricists have sometimes suggested, the view of explanation as unification. I try to show that this view can be developed so as to provide insight into major episodes in the history of science, and that it can overcome some of the most serious difficulties besetting the (...) covering law model. (shrink)

In this work, the prominent political philosopher Philip Pettit embarks on a massive undertaking to offers major new accounts of the foundations of the state and the nature of justice. In doing so Pettit builds a new theory of what the state is and what it ought to be, addresses the normative question of how justice serves as a measure of the success of a state, and the way it should operate in relation to its citizens and other people.

Aquinas thinks that practical reason is distinct but not entirely insulated from speculative reason. Although his description of practical reasoning applies to a variety of human activities, his greatest focus is on that practical reasoning which is involved in human action. Although practical reasoning resembles the speculative in its use of a kind of syllogism, its connection with particular affairs precisely as contingent gives it a special character.

Alasdair MacIntyre’s criticism of contemporary politics rests in large part on the way in which the political communities of advanced modernity do not recognize common goals and practices. I shall argue that although MacIntyre explicitly recognizes the influence of Jacques Maritain on his own thought, MacIntyre’s own views are incompatible not only with Maritain’s attempt to develop a Thomistic theory which is compatible with liberal democracy, but also relies on a view of the individual as a part which is related (...) to the whole in a way that is incompatible with Maritain’s understanding of the spiritual individual or person. (shrink)

Opera, maintains the author of this comprehensive and provocative volume, finds itself in an artistic predicament that goes beyond previous generational disruptions and "is our own, and special." Arguing that we cannot solve the problem unless we recognize and define it, and that we cannot hope to envision the artform's future unless we first come to terms with its past, he examines all elements of recent operatic practice as revealed in performance--"Performance," he declares, "is our text." He asserts that with (...) renewal of the repertory long at a virtual standstill, we have tried to substitute auteurial production methods and cultural revisionism in its place, with disastrous results. Accordingly, Opera as Opera draws on performances encountered over an eighteen-year period to first analyze styles and techniques of production (direction and design), and then to trace, in copious detail, the developments in the performing disciplines of conducting, singing, and acting that have loosened our connection to the canon. "The masterworks," it flatly states, "are not before us." In a central section, it also surveys the more general cultural background of this situation, in particular the influence of modern and postmodern philosophy and literary criticism, and the turn away from the master narrative which in the author's view was the principal generating force behind opera's greatest era. Whether the reader's primary interest is musical or theatrical, whether it lies with intellectual and aesthetic matters or with into-the-weeds discussion of the work of the performers who bring opera to life, he or she will find much that will stimulate and challenge in this deeply informed, incisively written book."--Publisher's description. (shrink)

A person presented with adequate but not conclusive evidence for a proposition is in a position voluntarily to acquire a belief in that proposition, or to suspend judgment about it. The availability of doxastic options in such cases grounds a moderate form of doxastic voluntarism not based on practical motives, and therefore distinct from pragmatism. In such cases, belief-acquisition or suspension of judgment meets standard conditions on willing: it can express stable character traits of the agent, it can be responsive (...) to reasons, and it is compatible with a subjective awareness of the available options. (shrink)

How Galileo created the problem of consciousness -- Is there a ghost in the machine? -- Can physical science explain consciousness? -- How to solve the problem of consciousness -- Consciousness and the meaning of life.

What's the Use of Philosophy? aims to answer the question posed in its title, whether the questioner intends to dismiss philosophy, or seeks a positive answer. The first three chapters explore the grounds for dismissal. Chapter 1 expresses skepticism about the value of much professional Anglophone philosophy, while recognizing virtues in work often viewed as peripheral. Chapter 2 studies a philosophical subfield, the philosophy of science, arguing that, while its condition may be better than the norm, it is far from (...) perfect. In Chapter 3, a more systematic critique is offered, in the form of a pathology report. Its diagnosis identifies six justifiable philosophical impulses that, when pursued obsessively, generate distortions and diseases: clarity becomes a fetish, formalism becomes obfuscation, "intuition" is given burdens it cannot bear, appeals to the a priori sprinkle fairy dust on controversial claims, ideas grabbed from other fields are used in cartoon forms, and questions no longer relevant are treated as if they were "timeless." Chapter 4 attempts to identify the legitimate goals of philosophy. It sees value in attempts to respond to questions arising from the difficulties of the age, in attempts to reform methods of inquiry, and, above all, in the construction of syntheses capable of helping people as they struggle to make sense of their lives. Philosophy is renewed when these traditional goals once again become central to its discussions. The final chapter responds to a frequently voiced worry in a letter to young philosophers who wonder how they can align their aspirations with the hyper-professionalism expected of them. (shrink)

This paper argues for a Husserlian account of phenomenal intentionality. Experience is intentional insofar as it presents a mind-independent, objective world. Its doing so is a matter of the way it hangs together, its having a certain structure. But in order for the intentionality in question to be properly understood as phenomenal intentionality, this structure must inhere in experience as a phenomenal feature. Husserl’s concept of horizon designates this intentionality-bestowing experiential structure, while his concept of motivation designates the unique phenomenal (...) character of this structure as it is experientially lived through. The way experience hangs together is itself a phenomenal feature of experience. (shrink)

Engineers are traditionally regarded as trustworthy professionals who meet exacting standards. In this chapter I begin by explicating our trust relationship towards engineers, arguing that it is a linear but indirect relationship in which engineers “stand behind” the artifacts and technological systems that we rely on directly. The chapter goes on to explain how this relationship has become more complex as engineers have taken on two additional aims: the aim of social engineering to create and steer trust between people, and (...) the aim of creating automated systems that take over human tasks and are meant to invite the trust of those who rely on and interact with them. (shrink)

An esteemed philosopher discusses his theory of universal freedom, describing how even those who are members of free societies may find their liberties curtailed and includes tests of freedom including the eyeball test and the tough-luck test.

Good reasoning can lead to success; bad reasoning can lead to catastrophe. Yet, it's not obvious how we reason, and why we make mistakes. This new book by one of the pioneers of the field, Philip Johnson-Laird, looks at the mental processes that underlie our reasoning. It provides the most accessible account yet of the science of reasoning.

This paper has two goals: (1) to defend a particular response to the problem of resultant moral luck and (2) to defend the claim that we are only responsible for what we could have avoided. Cases of overdetermination threaten to undermine the claim that we are only responsible for what we could have avoided. To deal with this issue, I will motivate a particular way of responding to the problem of resultant moral luck. I defend the view that one's degree (...) of responsibility is immune to moral luck but the scope of events for which one is responsible is subject to moral luck. I will then argue that this view allows us to explain away certain intuitions about responsibility and overdetermination (as well as similar intuitions regarding Frankfurt Cases). As a result, the claim that we are only responsible for what we could have avoided becomes significantly more plausible. (shrink)

Although Elizabeth Anscombe’s work on causation is frequently cited and anthologized, her main arguments have been ignored or misunderstood as havingtheir basis in quantum mechanics or a particular theory of perception. I examine her main arguments and show that they not only work against the Humean causaltheories of her time, but also against contemporary attempts to analyze causation in terms of laws and causal properties. She shows that our ordinary usage does not connect causation with laws, and suggests that philosophers (...) emphasize laws for mostly historical reasons. Moreover, she argues that the core of causation is derivativeness, which is as neglected now as when she wrote. Her focus on derivativeness indicates to us how we can both avoid the position that the causal “because” is truth-functional and yet still hold that causal statements are really explanatory. (shrink)

Polyhedral functions provide a model for an important class of problems that includes both linear programming and applications in data analysis. General methods for minimizing such functions using the polyhedral geometry explicitly are developed. Such methods approach a minimum by moving from extreme point to extreme point along descending edges and are described generically as simplicial. The best-known member of this class is the simplex method of linear programming, but simplicial methods have found important applications in discrete approximation and statistics. (...) The general approach considered in this text, first published in 2001, has permitted the development of finite algorithms for the rank regression problem. The key ideas are those of developing a general format for specifying the polyhedral function and the application of this to derive multiplier conditions to characterize optimality. Also considered is the application of the general approach to the development of active set algorithms for polyhedral function constrained problems and associated Lagrangian forms. (shrink)

This book is a lucid account of the amazing life of Sai Baba, one of the most revered saints, and one of the most extraordinary of India s holy men. The book discusses the life of this saint, his divine powers, and his teachings which sought to unite people of all creeds and faiths.

Cognitive neuropsychiatry (CN) is the explanation of psychiatric disorder by the methods of cognitive neuropsychology. Within CN there are, broadly speaking, two approaches to delusion. The first uses a one-stage model, in which delusions are explained as rationalizations of anomalous experiences via reasoning strategies that are not, in themselves, abnormal. Two-stage models invoke additional hypotheses about abnormalities of reasoning. In this paper, I examine what appears to be a very strong argument, developed within CN, in favor of a twostage explanation (...) of the difference in content between the Capgras and Cotard delusions. That explanation treats them as alternative rationalizations of essentially the same phenomenology. I show, however, that once we distinguish the phenomenology (and the neuroetiology), a one-stage model is adequate. In the final section I make some more general remarks on the oneand two-stage models. (shrink)

When viewed in its historical context, Ockham’s moral psychology is distinctive and novel. First, Ockham thinks that the will is free to will for or against any object, and can choose something that is in some sense not even apparently good. The will is free from the intellect’s dictates and from natural inclinations. Second, he emphasizes the will’s independence not only with respect to passions and habits, but also with respect to knowledge, the effects of original sin, grace, and God. (...) Third, Ockham consequently argues that someone is even able to will to be unhappy, and can will another’s happiness more than or even instead of his own. (shrink)

Wisdom is peculiarly abstract, ineffable, and yet perennial. It is also temporal, stretching forwards as well is backwards in time. Wisdom is often treated as the outcome of life experience, reflection, discipline, and equanimity. Capturing the Ineffable aims to establish wisdom as an area if inquiry within anthropology and an analytic account of wisdom and its role and focus in anthropology. In addition to developing theories for an anthropology (and excavation) of wisdom, this volume argues collectively that anthropology is especially (...) well suited to engage in questioning what it is that is called wisdom, and how wisdom, as a concept, and an enacted activity, functions in metaphysical and interpersonal experiences, values, and judgements. The contributors include many key US and UK thinkers. (shrink)

This is the first complete English translation of Gottlob Frege's Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, with introduction and annotation. The importance of Frege's ideas within contemporary philosophy would be hard to exaggerate. He was, to all intents and purposes, the inventor of mathematical logic, and the influence exerted on modern philosophy of language and logic, and indeed on general epistemology, by the philosophical framework.

The early nineteenth century saw the demise of the Italian-Atlantic tradition of republicanism and the rise of classical liberalism. A distinct Franco-German tradition of republicanism emerged from the time of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant, which differs from the older way of thinking associated with neo-republicanism. This chapter examines the key differences between the Italian-Atlantic and Franco-German traditions of republicanism and places them in a historical context. It first considers classical republicanism and how the ideological ideal of equal freedom as (...) nondomination differs from the twin institutional ideals of a mixed constitution and a contestatory citizenry. It then looks at the classical liberal opposition that arose in response to Italian-Atlantic republicanism. It also discusses the views of Kant and Rousseau about freedom and the role of the citizenry, as well as their theory of the constitution. The absolutist opposition in Jean Bodin and Thomas Hobbes to the institutional ideals of republicanism is also explored. (shrink)

Trusting someone in an intuitive, rich sense of the term involves not just relying on that person, but manifesting reliance on them in the expectation that this manifestation of reliance will increase their reason and motive to prove reliable. Can trust between people be formed on the basis of Internet contact alone? Forming the required expectation in regard to another person, and so trusting them on some matter, may be due to believing that they are trustworthy; to believing that they (...) seek es teem and will be rationally responsive to the good opinion communicated or promised by an act of trust; or to both factors at once. Neither mechanism can rationally command confidence, however, in the case where people are related only via the Internet. On the Internet everyone wears the ring of Gyges; everyone is invisible, in their personal identity, to others. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Rawls's Anti‐Cosmopolitanism Rawls's Ontology of Peoples Reconstructing Rawls's Rejection of Cosmopolitanism Acknowledgments Notes.

There has recently been a revival of interest in panpsychism as a theory of consciousness. The hope of the contemporary proponents of panpsychism is that the view enables us to integrate consciousness into our overall theory of reality in a way that avoids the deep difficulties that plague the more conventional options of physicalism on the one hand and dualism on the other. However, panpsychism comes in two forms — strong and weak emergentist — and there are arguments that seem (...) to show that weak emergentist panpsychism faces problems analogous to those of physicalism whilst strong emergentist panpsychism faces problems analogous to those of dualism. In this paper, I will develop a new hybrid of the strong and weak emergentist forms of panpsychism, a view according to which subjects of experience are strongly emergent but their phenomenal properties are weakly emergent. I will argue that this hybrid view manages to avoid the challenges facing both physicalism and dualism, and the analogues of those challenges that seem to undermine standard forms of panpsychism. (shrink)

The deposition of the political -- From paradox to partage : on citizenship and teletechnologies -- The disposition of being -- Being communist -- Seattle and the space of exposure.

Abstractionism, which is a development of Frege's original Logicism, is a recent and much debated position in the philosophy of mathematics. This volume contains 16 original papers by leading scholars on the philosophical and mathematical aspects of Abstractionism. After an extensive editors' introduction to the topic of abstractionism, the volume is split into 4 sections. The contributions within these sections explore the semantics and meta-ontology of Abstractionism, abstractionist epistemology, the mathematics of Abstractionis, and finally, Frege's application constraint within an abstractionist (...) setting. (shrink)

Transplantation continues to push the frontiers of medicine into domains that summon forth troublesome ethical questions. Looming on the frontier today is human facial transplantation. We develop criteria that, we maintain, must be satisfied in order to ethically undertake this as-yet-untried transplant procedure. We draw on the criteria advanced by Dr. Francis Moore in the late 1980s for introducing innovative procedures in transplant surgery. In addition to these we also insist that human face transplantation must meet all the ethical requirements (...) usually applied to health care research. We summarize the achievements of transplant surgery to date, focusing in particular on the safety and efficacy of immunosuppressive medications. We also emphasize the importance of risk/benefit assessments that take into account the physical, aesthetic, psychological, and social dimensions of facial disfiguration, reconstruction, and transplantation. Finally, we maintain that the time has come to move facial transplantation research into the clinical phase. (shrink)

This essay explores some of the similarities and differences between the views of several Western and Chinese thinkers on the metaphysical status of moral qualities and how we come to perceive and appreciate them. It then uses this comparative analysis to identify and address some remaining problems in regard to these two issues. The essay offers a brief sketch of and introduction to the history of the study of moral qualities and moral perception in modern Western philosophy and takes the (...) views of John McDowell, W ang Yangming, and Mencius as the primary focus of its comparative component. It seeks to understand the views of these thinkers by a careful examination of the metaphors as well as the arguments they employ. (shrink)

It is intuitive that free action depends on consciousness in some way, since behavior that is unconsciously generated is widely regarded as un-free. But there is no clear consensus as to what such dependence comes to, in part because there is no clear consensus about either the cognitive role of consciousness or about the essential components of free action. I divide the space of possible views into four: the Constitution View (on which free actions metaphysically consist, at least in part, (...) in phenomenally conscious episodes of a special sort), the Causal-Dependence View (on which free actions are necessarily caused by conscious episodes), the Counterfactaul-Dependence View (on which free actions necessarily counterfactually dependent on conscious episodes of certain types), and the Independence View (on which there are no necessary dependence-relations that hold between free action and conscious episodes). After surveying recent empirical literature that purports to show that consciousness plays a smaller role in generating action than is usually supposed, I conclude that it is plausible that free action depends on consciousness in two ways. First, free action causally depends on consciousness control. Second, free action counterfactually depends on the agent's being responsive to certain reasons. (shrink)

Doing Right: A Practical Guide to Ethics for Medical Trainees and Physicians is a concise and practical guide to ethical decision-making in medicine. The text is aimed at second- and third-year one-semester ethics courses offered in medical schools, health sciences departments, and nursing programs. By taking an applied approach rather than a theoretical approach, this text serves the needs of medical and nursing students, residents, and practicing physicians by sorting through questions of moral principles relevant to the diverse and growing (...) number of healthcare professionals. The many topics covered include truth telling, refusal of treatment, assisted suicide, managing error, and reproductive choice. (shrink)