"G. E. M. Anscombe is one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century. Known primarily for influencing research in action theory and moral philosophy, her work also has relevance in the study of metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, philosophy of religion, and politics. The Anscombian Mind provides a comprehensive survey of Anscombe's thought, not only placing it in its historical context but also exploring its enduring significance in contemporary debates. Divided into three clear parts, 24 chapters (...) by an international team of contributors address the following themes: ancient philosophy metaphysics mind and language Wittgenstein action and ethics politics religion and faith. Also included is Anscombe's 1948 Mary Somerville Fellowship Report, making this fascinating document easily available to readers for the first time. The Anscombian Mind is an indispensable resource for anyone studying and researching Anscombe herself, action theory, ethics, moral philosophy, Wittgenstein, and twentieth-century philosophy"--. (shrink)

'Philosophy in a world of women. I reflected, talking with Mary, Pip and Elizabeth, how much I love them.' Two brilliant young scholars uncover the major philosophical contributions of four women whose ideas could have changed the course of twentieth-century thought. Written with energy, expertise and panache, The Quartet is a page-turning blend of research and recovery, storytelling, and a call to arms. Iris Murdoch, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley and Elizabeth Anscombe were great friends and comrades in the (...) intellectual trenches, rethinking the possibilities of moral philosophy when the men 'left the room' and taking on the establishment, ultimately embodied by President Truman. Mac Cumhaill and Wiseman bring these women out of the shadows and into vivid colour. (shrink)

Elizabeth Anscombe, Mary Midgley, Iris Murdoch and Philippa Foot all studied at Oxford University during the Second World War. One of their wartime tutors was Donald MacKinnon. This paper gives a broad overview of MacKinnon's philosophical outlook as it was developing at this time. Four talks from between 1938 and 1941—‘And the Son of Man That Thou Visiteth Him’ (1938), ‘What Is a Metaphysical Statement?’ (1940), ‘The Function of Philosophy in Education’ (1941) and ‘Revelation and Social Justice’ (1941)—give a (...) foretaste of the conception of moral philosophy that he later articulated in A Study of Ethical Theory (1957). We identify aspects of his philosophical outlook and unusual treatment of method that likely shaped his teaching. We trace his influence in the work of Midgley, Murdoch and Foot, all of whom studied with him from Trinity Term 1940 until their finals in 1942. In the case of Anscombe, though she was briefly his student—he taught her Plato—she and MacKinnon moved in shared intellectual circles, and there is reason to think that some of the forces that shaped MacKinnon's outlook also shaped hers. The sketch we offer is incomplete—in particular, we are not able to do justice to MacKinnon's explicitly theological writings—but we hope to achieve three things. First, to go some way towards indicating the importance of the teacher MacKinnon to understanding the work of his better-known pupils. Second, to introduce a philosopher for whom the teaching of philosophy, practical ethics and metaphysical theory were deeply entwined. Third, to reflect on the relationship between, on the one hand, a conception of the practice and significance of metaphysics and, on the other, a view on the role and nature of philosophical teaching and learning. (shrink)

Rachael Wiseman has argued that we cannot make sense of G.E.M. Anscombe’s Intention unless we recognise that it is an “exemplification of [Wittgenstein’s] grammatical investigation”. While Wiseman is alive to the Wittgensteinian nature of Anscombe’s method, and to her deep Wittgensteinian sympathies, she is not preoccupied with the question of influence. This is the question I am concerned with in the current paper. I argue that in focusing on the concept of intention, Anscombe was homing in on a pivotal (...) concept in Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, and that most of the basic elements of her account were being worked out by Wittgenstein during the period when she was his pupil. However, as Anscombe worked through Wittgenstein’s idea’s afresh, in her own more systematic and analytic mode of philosophical investigation, she often cast ideas that were sometimes merely nascent in Wittgenstein’s work in a new light. Moreover, some of her most seminal ideas had their origin in concerns which she did not share with Wittgenstein and were entirely original to her. (shrink)

Timely and immersive, Metaphysical Animals tells the unlikely story of four young women philosophers. Mary Midgley (neé Scrutton), Iris Murdoch, Elizabeth Anscombe, and Philippa Foot (neé Bosanquet...

This essay explores the legacy of the four philosophers now often referred to as ‘The Wartime Quartet’: G.E.M. Anscombe, Iris Murdoch, Philippa Foot and Mary Midgley. The life and work of the four, who studied together in Oxford during the Second World War, is the subject of two recently published books, The Women Are Up to Something, by Benjamin Lipscomb, and Metaphysical Animals, by Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman. The two books show us how Anscombe, Murdoch, Foot (...) and Midgley became friends united in their hostility to the logical-positivist orthodoxy of the day and its deleterious influence on Oxford moral philosophy. And we see how their friendship had a formative influence on their subsequent—highly distinguished—careers, so that it is possible to discern, if not exactly a school of thought, then various common themes, ideas and concerns, which are expressed and developed in contrasting ways. While Lipscomb represents the work of the Quartet as of largely historical significance, my paper defends what I take to be Mac Cumhaill and Wiseman's position that their legacy is very much a living one, containing insights that are not just of enduring relevance, but can transform how we see ourselves and how we do philosophy. For Mac Cumhaill and Wiseman, the key idea shared by the members of the Quartet is to place the concept of life at the centre of philosophical attention. This commitment has at least four dimensions: (i) an interest in the ordinary; (ii) a focus on virtue, goodness and human flourishing; (iii) an affirmation of our animal nature; (iv) recognition of the normative landscape that structures our lives. I try to bring out the philosophical significance of these themes in a way relevant to the philosophical elucidation of education. (shrink)

This book offers a defence of mathematical fictionalism, according to which we have no reason to believe that there are any mathematical objects. Perhaps the most pressing challenge to mathematical fictionalism is the indispensability argument for the truth of our mathematical theories (and therefore for the existence of the mathematical objects posited by those theories). According to this argument, if we have reason to believe anything, we have reason to believe that the claims of our best empirical theories are (at (...) least approximately) true. But since claims whose truth would require the existence of mathematical objects are indispensable in formulating our best empirical theories, it follows that we have good reason to believe in the mathematical objects posited by those mathematical theories used in empirical science, and therefore to believe that the mathematical theories utilized in empirical science are true. Previous responses to the indispensability argument have focused on arguing that mathematical assumptions can be dispensed with in formulating our empirical theories. This book, by contrast, offers an account of the role of mathematics in empirical science according to which the successful use of mathematics in formulating our empirical theories need not rely on the truth of the mathematics utilized. (shrink)

The Supreme Court seems poised to overrule Roe v. Wade and hold that there is no constitutional right to choose abortion. The reversal of Roe seems to run counter to public opinion in the United St...

Plato famously promised to complement the Sophist and the Statesman with another work on a third sort of expert, the philosopher--but we do not have this final dialogue. Mary Louise Gill argues that Plato promised the Philosopher, but did not write it, in order to stimulate his audience and encourage his readers to work out, for themselves, the portrait it would have contained. The Sophist and Statesman are themselves members of a larger series starting with the Theaetetus, Plato's investigation (...) of knowledge, and the whole series relies on the Parmenides, the second part of which presents a philosophical exercise, introduced as the first step in a larger philosophical program. Gill contends that the dialogues leading up to the missing Philosopher, though they reach some substantive conclusions, are philosophical exercises of various sorts designed to train students in dialectic, the philosopher's method; and that a second version of the Parmenides exercise, closely patterned on it, spans parts of the Theaetetus and Sophist and brings the philosopher into view. This is the exercise about being, the subject-matter studied by Plato's philosopher. Plato hides the pieces of the puzzle and its solution in plain sight, forcing his students (and modern readers) to dig out the pieces and reconstruct the project. Gill reveals how, in finding the philosopher through the exercise, the student becomes a philosopher by mastering his methods. She shows that the target of Plato's exercise is internally related to its pedagogical purpose. (shrink)

Aquinas, Aristotle, and the Promise of the Common Good, first published in 2006, claims that contemporary theory and practice have much to gain from engaging Aquinas's normative concept of the common good and his way of reconciling religion, philosophy, and politics. Examining the relationship between personal and common goods, and the relation of virtue and law to both, Mary M. Keys shows why Aquinas should be read in addition to Aristotle on these perennial questions. She focuses on Aquinas's Commentaries (...) as mediating statements between Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and Politics and Aquinas's own Summa Theologiae, showing how this serves as the missing link for grasping Aquinas's understanding of Aristotle's thought. Keys argues provocatively that Aquinas's Christian faith opens up new panoramas and possibilities for philosophical inquiry and insights into ethics and politics. Her book shows how religious faith can assist sound philosophical inquiry into the foundation and proper purposes of society and politics. (shrink)

This 1997 book was the first English translation of all of Kant's writings on moral and political philosophy collected in a single volume. No other collection competes with the comprehensiveness of this one. As well as Kant's most famous moral and political writings, the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, the Critique of Practical Reason, the Metaphysics of Morals, and Toward Perpetual Peace, the volume includes shorter essays and reviews, some of which have never been translated before. The volume has (...) been furnished with a substantial editorial apparatus including translator's introductions and explanatory notes to each text by Mary Gregor, and a general introduction to Kant's moral and political philosophy by Allen Wood. There is also an English-German and German-English glossary of key terms. (shrink)

This book explores a fundamental tension in Aristotle's metaphysics: how can an entity such as a living organisma composite generated through the imposition of form on preexisting matterhave the conceptual unity that Aristotle demands of primary substances? Mary Louise Gill bases her treatment of the problem of unity, and of Aristotle's solution, on a fresh interpretation of the relation between matter and form. Challenging the traditional understanding of Aristotelian matter, she argues that material substances are subverted by matter and (...) maintained by form that controls the matter to serve a positive end. The unity of material substances thus involves a dynamic relation between resistant materials and directive ends. Aristotle on Substance offers both a general account of matter, form, and substantial unity and a specific assessment of particular Aristotelian arguments. At every point, Gill engages Aristotle on his own philosophical ground through the detailed analysis of central, and often controversial, texts from the Metaphysics, Physics, On Generation and Corruption, De Anima, De Caelo, and the biological works. The result is a coherent, firmly grounded rethinking of Aristotle's central metaphysical concepts and of his struggle toward a fully consistent theory of material substances. (shrink)

This 1997 book was the first English translation of all of Kant's writings on moral and political philosophy collected in a single volume. No other collection competes with the comprehensiveness of this one. As well as Kant's most famous moral and political writings, the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, the Critique of Practical Reason, the Metaphysics of Morals, and Toward Perpetual Peace, the volume includes shorter essays and reviews, some of which have never been translated before. The volume has (...) been furnished with a substantial editorial apparatus including translator's introductions and explanatory notes to each text by Mary Gregor, and a general introduction to Kant's moral and political philosophy by Allen Wood. There is also an English-German and German-English glossary of key terms. (shrink)

How can we critique political theory when all we have to use are its own conceptual tools? As Hannah Arendt observed, it can only be done through leaps, inversions, and the turning of concepts upside-down. But this twisting operation must be done in order to turn those who philosophize back to the hard work of real life change. In Turning Operations, renowned theorist Mary G. Dietz challenges specific contemporary modes of theorizing politics-from feminist theory to Habermasian discourse- -while appropriating (...) some of political theory's own approaches and some of its most striking figures, including Aristotle, Nietzsche, Weber, Beauvoir, and Arendt in order to foment some leaps, inversions, reversals and turns on politics along the way. Dietz confronts a number of current debates, arguing that most are filled with artificial division and empty terms. She argues that we must abandon commonly supported dichotomies-masculine versus feminine, speech versus action, liberty versus community -to create abetter discourse, and a better world. Turning Operations is an essential new contribution to democratic and feminist political thought. (shrink)

_Strange Wonder_ confronts Western philosophy's ambivalent relationship to the Platonic "wonder" that reveals the strangeness of the everyday. On the one hand, this wonder is said to be the origin of all philosophy. On the other hand, it is associated with a kind of ignorance that ought to be extinguished as swiftly as possible. By endeavoring to resolve wonder's indeterminacy into certainty and calculability, philosophy paradoxically secures itself at the expense of its own condition of possibility. _Strange Wonder_ locates a (...) reopening of wonder's primordial uncertainty in the work of Martin Heidegger, for whom wonder is first experienced as the shock at the groundlessness of things and then as an astonishment that things nevertheless _are_. Mary-Jane Rubenstein traces this double movement through the thought of Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Jacques Derrida, ultimately thematizing wonder as the awesome, awful opening that exposes thinking to devastation as well as transformation. Rubenstein's study shows that wonder reveals the extraordinary in and through the ordinary, and is therefore crucial to the task of reimagining political, religious, and ethical terrain. (shrink)

_Strange Wonder_ confronts Western philosophy's ambivalent relationship to the Platonic "wonder" that reveals the strangeness of the everyday. On the one hand, this wonder is said to be the origin of all philosophy. On the other hand, it is associated with a kind of ignorance that ought to be extinguished as swiftly as possible. By endeavoring to resolve wonder's indeterminacy into certainty and calculability, philosophy paradoxically secures itself at the expense of its own condition of possibility. _Strange Wonder_ locates a (...) reopening of wonder's primordial uncertainty in the work of Martin Heidegger, for whom wonder is first experienced as the shock at the groundlessness of things and then as an astonishment that things nevertheless _are_. Mary-Jane Rubenstein traces this double movement through the thought of Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Jacques Derrida, ultimately thematizing wonder as the awesome, awful opening that exposes thinking to devastation as well as transformation. Rubenstein's study shows that wonder reveals the extraordinary in and through the ordinary, and is therefore crucial to the task of reimagining political, religious, and ethical terrain. (shrink)

Mary Midgley argues in her powerful new book that far from being the opposite of science, myth is a central part of it. In brilliant prose, she claims that myths are neither lies nor mere stories but a network of powerful symbols that suggest particular ways of interpreting the world.

We know we have thoughts, but are we aware that we have styles of thought? This book, written by one of the most gifted and celebrated social thinkers of our time, is a contribution to understanding the rules of the different styles of thinking. Author Mary Douglas takes us through a range of thought styles from the vulgar to the refined. Throughout this fascinating journey, Thought Styles shows us how the different styles work and how outsiders can learn the (...) styles of insiders. The discussion ranges from the style of folklore to the styles of therapy, shopping, religion, and animal rights. The result is a book full of insight. Readers will find themselves thinking in new ways about the mechanics of communication in everyday life. Professionals and researchers in sociology, communication, and anthropology will especially appreciate this auspicious new book. (shrink)

Published in 1982, Carol Gilligan's _In a Different Voice_ proposed a new model of moral reasoning based on care, arguing that it better described the moral life of women. ____An Ethic of Care__ is the first volume to bring together key contributions to the extensive debate engaging Gilligan's work. It provides the highlights of the often impassioned discussion of the ethic of care, drawing on the literature of the wide range of disciplines that have entered into the debate. _Contributors:_ Annette (...) Baier, Diana Baumrind, Lawrence A. Blum, Mary Brabeck, John Broughton, Owen Flanagan, Marilyn Friedman, Carol Gilligan, Catherine G. Greeno, Catherine Jackson, Linda K. Kerber, Mary Jeanne Larrabee, Zella Luria, Eleanor E. Maccoby, Linda Nicholson, Bill Puka, Carol B. Stack, Joan C. Tronto, Lawrence Walker, Gertrud Nunner-Winkler. (shrink)

For many philosophers not automatically inclined to Platonism, the indispensability argument for the existence of mathematical objectshas provided the best (and perhaps only) evidence for mathematicalrealism. Recently, however, this argument has been subject to attack, most notably by Penelope Maddy (1992, 1997),on the grounds that its conclusions do not sit well with mathematical practice. I offer a diagnosis of what has gone wrong with the indispensability argument (I claim that mathematics is indispensable in the wrong way), and, taking my cue (...) from Mark Colyvan''s (1998) attempt to provide a Quinean account of unapplied mathematics as `recreational'', suggest that, if one approaches the problem from a Quinean naturalist starting point, one must conclude that all mathematics is recreational in this way. (shrink)

In this paper, we examine recent critiques of the debate about defining disease, which claim that its use of conceptual analysis embeds the problematic assumption that the concept is classically structured. These critiques suggest, instead, developing plural stipulative definitions. Although we substantially agree with these critiques, we resist their implication that no general definition of “disease” is possible. We offer an alternative, inductive argument that disease cannot be classically defined and that the best explanation for this is that the concept (...) is structured as a cluster. We further argue that we do not need to reject the possibility of defining the general concept “disease” to legitimate developing stipulative definitions of disease that are relative to particular purposes. A cluster definition of disease is compatible with contextually motivated definitions, which may be considered précisifications of the more general cluster concept. (shrink)

Defends an account of mathematical knowledge in which mathematical knowledge is a kind of modal knowledge. Leng argues that nominalists should take mathematical knowledge to consist in knowledge of the consistency of mathematical axiomatic systems, and knowledge of what necessarily follows from those axioms. She defends this view against objections that modal knowledge requires knowledge of abstract objects, and argues that we should understand possibility and necessity in a primative way.

This discussion note responds to Mark Colyvan’s claim that there is no easy road to nominalism. While Colyvan is right to note that the existence of mathematical explanations presents a more serious challenge to nominalists than is often thought, it is argued that nominalist accounts do have the resources to account for the existence of mathematical explanations whose explanatory role resides elsewhere than in their nominalistic content.

Published in 1982, Carol Gilligan's _In a Different Voice_ proposed a new model of moral reasoning based on care, arguing that it better described the moral life of women. ____An Ethic of Care__ is the first volume to bring together key contributions to the extensive debate engaging Gilligan's work. It provides the highlights of the often impassioned discussion of the ethic of care, drawing on the literature of the wide range of disciplines that have entered into the debate. _Contributors:_ Annette (...) Baier, Diana Baumrind, Lawrence A. Blum, Mary Brabeck, John Broughton, Owen Flanagan, Marilyn Friedman, Carol Gilligan, Catherine G. Greeno, Catherine Jackson, Linda K. Kerber, Mary Jeanne Larrabee, Zella Luria, Eleanor E. Maccoby, Linda Nicholson, Bill Puka, Carol B. Stack, Joan C. Tronto, Lawrence Walker, Gertrud Nunner-Winkler. (shrink)

This chapter is Mary Whiton Calkins’ articulation and defense of the personalistic conception of reality.

We hypothesize that effective collaboration is facilitated when individuals and environmental components form a synergy where they work together and regulate one another to produce stable patterns of behavior, or regularity, as well as adaptively reorganize to form new behaviors, or irregularity. We tested this hypothesis in a study with 32 triads who collaboratively solved a challenging visual computer programming task for 20 min following an introductory warm‐up phase. Multidimensional recurrence quantification analysis was used to examine fine‐grained (i.e., every 10 (...) s) collective patterns of regularity across team members' speech rate, body movement, and team interaction with the shared user interface. We found that teams exhibited significant patterns of regularity as compared to shuffled baselines, but there were no systematic trends in regularity across time. We also found that periods of regularity were associated with a reduction in overall behavior. Notably, the production of irregular behavior predicted expert‐coded metrics of collaborative activity, such as teams' ability to construct shared knowledge and effectively negotiate and coordinate execution of solutions, net of overall behavioral production and behavioral self‐similarity. Our findings support the theory that groups can interact to form interpersonal synergies and indicate that information about system‐level dynamics is a viable way to understand and predict effective collaborative processes. (shrink)

When deciding what disorders to screen newborns for, we should be guided by evidence of real effectiveness, take opportunity cost into account, distribute costs and benefits fairly, and respect human rights. Current newborn screening policy does not meet these requirements.

In the wake of Citizens United v. the Federal Elections Commission, more companies are spending heavily on political speech, but the moral implications of doing so are not clear. Few business ethicists have directly addressed the moral legitimacy of corporate political speech and the conditions under which it may be morally permissible. My goal here is to outline the moral hazards associated with engaging in corporate political speech. I argue that whether one takes a narrow Friedman-style shareholder primacy view of (...) managerial duty, a broader stakeholder view, or an even more wide-ranging political corporate social responsibility view of the moral duties of business, various moral hazards must be taken into account in determining the moral legitimacy of corporate political speech. I discuss a number of moral hazards endemic to corporate political speech and suggest ways in which business practitioners might avoid those moral hazards. (shrink)

"Multiverse" cosmologies imagine our universe as just one of a vast number of others. While this idea has captivated philosophy, religion, and literature for millennia, it is now being considered as a scientific hypothesis--with different models emerging from cosmology, quantum mechanics, and string theory. Beginning with ancient Atomist and Stoic philosophies, Mary-Jane Rubenstein links contemporary models of the multiverse to their forerunners and explores the reasons for their recent appearance. One concerns the so-called fine-tuning of the universe: nature's constants (...) are so delicately calibrated that it seems they have been set just right to allow life to emerge. For some thinkers, these "fine-tunings" are evidence of the existence of God; for others, however, and for most physicists, "God" is an insufficient scientific explanation. Hence the allure of the multiverse: if all possible worlds exist somewhere, then like monkeys hammering out Shakespeare, one universe is bound to be suitable for life. Of course, this hypothesis replaces God with an equally baffling article of faith: the existence of universes beyond, before, or after our own, eternally generated yet forever inaccessible to observation or experiment. In their very efforts to sidestep metaphysics, theoretical physicists propose multiverse scenarios that collide with it and even produce counter-theological narratives. Far from invalidating multiverse hypotheses, Rubenstein argues, this interdisciplinary collision actually secures their scientific viability. We may therefore be witnessing a radical reconfiguration of physics, philosophy, and religion in the modern turn to the multiverse. (shrink)

Neuropalliative care developed to address the needs of patients living with life‐limiting neurologic disease. One critical consideration is that disease‐related changes to cognition, communication, and function challenge illness experiences and care practices. We conducted an ethnography to understand neuropalliative care as a phenomenon; how it was experienced, provided, conceptualized. Personhood served as our conceptual framework; with its long philosophical history and important place in nursing theory, we examined the extent to which it captured neuropalliative experiences and concerns. Personhood contextualized complex (...) losses, aligning the impact of functional and relational changes. Cognition, communication, and functional alterations stretched conceptions of personhood, insinuating it can be relational, fluid, adaptive. Although normative conceptions of personhood guided research and decision‐making, ethical considerations suggested personhood could be transformed, remade. We consider the implications of our findings through three themes. First, we examine how literature on illness experience fails to integrate the realities of people living with and dying from neurologic disease; we counter this by interrogating the concept of experience. Second, we turn to Ricoeur's work on recognition to illuminate relational conceptions of personhood to inform care practices. Finally, we reflect on how personhood can bridge the gap left by functional changes, enhance relational engagement, and promote dignity at the end of life. (shrink)

Ornaments are the most common and ubiquitous art form of the Late Pleistocene. This fact suggests a common, fundamental function somewhat different to other kinds of Paleolithic art. While the capacity for artistic expression could be considerably older than the record of preserved art would suggest, beads signal a novel development in the efficiency and flexibility of visual communication technology. The Upper Paleolithic was a period of considerable regional differentiation in material culture, yet there is remarkable consistency in the dominant (...) shapes and sizes of Paleolithic beads over more than 25,000 years and across vast areas, even though they were made from diverse materials and, in the case of mollusc shells, diverse taxonomic families. Cultural and linguistic continuity cannot explain the meta-pattern. The evidence indicates that widespread adoption of beads of redundant form was not only about local and subregional communication of personal identity or group affinity, but also an expansion in the geographic scale of social networks. The conformity of the beads grew spontaneously and in a self-organizing manner from individuals’ interest in tapping into the network as a means for spreading social and environmental risk. (shrink)