What is music, what is its value, and what does it mean? In this stimulating volume, Roger Scruton offers a comprehensive account of the nature and significance of music from the perspective of modern philosophy. The study begins with the metaphysics of sound. Scruton distinguishes sound from tone; analyzes rhythm, melody, and harmony; and explores the various dimensions of musical organization and musical meaning. Taking on various fashionable theories in the philosophy and theory of music, he presents a compelling (...) case for the moral significance of music, its place in our culture, and the need for taste and discrimination in performing and listening to it. Laying down principles for musical analysis and criticism, this bold work concludes with a theory of culture--and a devastating demolition of modern popular music. "A provocative new study."--The Guardian. (shrink)

The earliest Analects yet discovered, this work provides us with a new perspective on the central canonical text that has defined Chinese culture--and clearly illuminates the spirit and values of Confucius.

This is a three-part exchange on the relationship between belief and credence. It begins with an opening essay by Roger Clarke that argues for the claim that the notion of credence generalizes the notion of belief. Julia Staffel argues in her reply that we need to distinguish between mental states and models representing them, and that this helps us explain what it could mean that belief is a special case of credence. Roger Clarke's final essay reflects on the (...) compatibility of the previously discussed views with dualist and monist interpretations of our mental states and our ways of modeling them. (shrink)

Resolving Bertrand’s probability paradox.

Book Description: First published in 1980, this contribution to political thought is a statement of the traditional conservative position. Roger Scruton challenges those who would regard themselves as conservatives, and also their opponents. Conservatism, he argues, has little in common with liberalism, and is only tenuously related to the market economy, to monetarism, to free enterprise or to capitalism. It involves neither hostility towards the state, nor the desire to limit the state's obligation towards the citizen. Its conceptions of (...) society, law and citizenship regard the individual not as the premise but as the conclusion of politics. At the same time it is fundamentally opposed to the ethic of social justice, to equality of station, opportunity, income and achievement, and to the attempt to bring major institutions of society such as schools and universities under government control. (shrink)

It seems odd to say that photography is not a mode of representation. For a photograph has in common with a painting the property by which the painting represents the world, the property of sharing, in some sense, the appearance of its subject. Indeed, it is sometimes thought that since a photograph more effectively shares the appearance of its subject than a typical painting, photography is a better mode of representation. Photography might even be thought of as having replaced painting (...) as a mode of visual representation. Painters have felt that if the aim of painting is really to reproduce the appearances of things, then painting must give way to whatever means are available to reproduce an appearance more accurately. It has therefore been said that painting aims to record the appearances of things only so as to capture the experience of observing them and that the accurate copying of appearances will normally be at variance with this aim. Here we have the seeds of expressionism and the origin of the view that painting is somehow purer when it is abstract and closer to its essence as an art. Roger Scruton is the author of Art and Imagination, The Aesthetics of Architecture, The Meaning of Conservatism, From Descartes to Wittgenstein, and The Politics of Culture and Other Essays. (shrink)

A dazzling treatise, as erudite and eloquent as Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex and considerably more sound in its conclusion - TLS "He is an eloquent and practised writer" - The Independent (UK) When John desires Mary or Mary desires John, what does either of them want? What is meant by innocence, passion, love and arousal, desire, perversion and shame? These are just a few of the questions Roger Scruton addresses in this thought-provoking intellectual adventure. Beginning from purely (...) philosophical premises, and ranging over human life, art and institutions, he surveys the entire field of sexuality; equally dissatisfied with puritanism and permissiveness, he argues for a radical break with recent theories. Upholding traditional morality - though in terms that may shock many of its practitioners - his argument gravitates to that which is candid, serene and consoling in the experience of sexual love. (shrink)

Available for the first time in English, Roger's masterwork of intellectual history situates the life sciences within the larger context of French Enlightenment thought and the history of institutions.

A compelling defense of the sacred by one of today's leading philosophers In The Soul of the World, renowned philosopher Roger Scruton defends the experience of the sacred against today's fashionable forms of atheism. He argues that our personal relationships, moral intuitions, and aesthetic judgments hint at a transcendent dimension that cannot be understood through the lens of science alone. To be fully alive—and to understand what we are—is to acknowledge the reality of sacred things. Rather than an argument (...) for the existence of God, or a defense of the truth of religion, the book is an extended reflection on why a sense of the sacred is essential to human life—and what the final loss of the sacred would mean. In short, the book addresses the most important question of modernity: what is left of our aspirations after science has delivered its verdict about what we are? Drawing on art, architecture, music, and literature, Scruton suggests that the highest forms of human experience and expression tell the story of our religious need, and of our quest for the being who might answer it, and that this search for the sacred endows the world with a soul. Evolution cannot explain our conception of the sacred; neuroscience is irrelevant to our interpersonal relationships, which provide a model for our posture toward God; and scientific understanding has nothing to say about the experience of beauty, which provides a God’s-eye perspective on reality. Ultimately, a world without the sacred would be a completely different world—one in which we humans are not truly at home. Yet despite the shrinking place for the sacred in today’s world, Scruton says, the paths to transcendence remain open. (shrink)

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Univocalist analyses of the modal auxiliary verbs ('ought'/'must'/'can') and the adjective 'right'/'wrong'.

Brings together essays on the philosophy of art in which a philosophical theory of aesthetic judgment is tested and developed through its application to particular examples. Each essay approaches, from its own field of study, what Roger Scruton argues to be the central problems of aesthetics -- what is aesthetic experience, and what is its importance for human conduct? The book is divided into four parts. The first contains a resume of modern analytical aesthetics, which also serves as an (...) introduction to subsequent chapters. It also includes an essay that reviews current theories of literary criticism. The second part is devoted to musical aesthetics and contains the theoretical core of the work. Here Scruton describes the contours of aesthetic understanding, and defends the view that the object of aesthetic experience is inherently significant, even when it has no "content" that can be described in propositional terms. He rebuts the view that music is representational, and in the third part goes on to propose a theory of representation whereby to refute the suggestion that photography is a representational art. This third section also contains a study of film. The final part comprises essays relating aesthetic judgment to the understanding of culture, humor, and design. It covers many subjects, including the prose works of Samuel Beckett and the architecture of Leninism. The essays in this book form parts of a single intellectual enterprise, which is to give analytical foundations to the criticism of literature, visual art, music, and culture. (shrink)

This book introduces student to the three major figures of modern philosophy known as the rationalists. It is not for complete beginners, but it is an accessible account of their thought. By concerning itself with metaphysics, and in particular substance, the book relates an important historical debate largely neglected by the contemporary debates in the once again popular area of traditional metaphysics. in philosophy. (Do Not USE).

Philosopher Roger Scruton offers a wide-ranging perspective on philosophy, from logic to aesthetics, written in a lively and engaging way that is sure to stimulate debate. Rather than producing a survey of an academic discipline, Scruton reclaims philosophy for worldly concerns.

From Botticelli to birdsong, Mozart, and the Turner Prize, Roger Scruton explores what it means for something to be beautiful. This thought-provoking introduction to the philosophy of beauty draws conclusions that some may find controversial, but, as Scruton shows, help us to find greater sense of meaning in the beautiful objects around us.

Embryos, cells, genes, and organisms : reflections on the history of evolutionary developmental biology / Manfred D. Laubichler and Jane Maienschein The organismic systems approach : streamlining the naturalistic agenda / Werner Callebaut, Gerd B. Müller, and Stuart A. Newman Complex traits : genetics, development, and evolution / H. Frederik Nijhout Functional and developmental constraints on life-cycle evolution : an attempt on the architecture of constraints / Gerhard Schlosser Legacies of adaptive development / Roger Sansom Evo-devo meets the mind (...) : toward a developmental evolutionary psychology / Paul E. Griffiths Reproducing entrenchments to scaffold culture : the central role of development in cultural evolution / William C. Wimsatt and James R. Griesemer. (shrink)

Among theories which fit all of our data, we prefer the simpler over the more complex. Why? Surely not merely for practical convenience or aesthetic pleasure. But how could we be justified in this preference without knowing in advance that the world is more likely to be simple than complex? And isn’t this a rather extravagant a priori assumption to make? I want to suggest some steps we can take toward reducing this embarrassment, by showing that the assumption which supports (...) favouring simplicity is far more modest than it first seems. (shrink)

Kant is arguably the most influential modern philosopher, but also one of the most difficult. Roger Scruton tackles his exceptionally complex subject with a strong hand, exploring the background to Kant's work, and showing why the Critique of Pure of Reason has proved so enduring.

Synaesthesia is considered a rare perceptual capacity, and one that is not capable of cultivation. However, meditators report the experience quite commonly, and in questionnaire surveys, respondents claimed to experience synaesthesia in 35% of meditation retreatants, in 63% of a group of regular meditators, and in 86% of advanced teachers. These rates were significantly higher than in nonmeditator controls, and displayed significant correlations with measures of amount of meditation experience. A review of ancient texts found reports suggestive of synaesthesia in (...) advanced meditators from India and China. These findings suggest that synaesthesia may be cultivated by meditation, and that laboratory studies of meditators could be rewarding. (shrink)

Conjecture (1) of [Ma83] is confirmed here by the following result: if $3 \leq \alpha < \omega$, then there is a finite relation algebra of dimension α, which is not a relation algebra of dimension α + 1. A logical consequence of this theorem is that for every finite α ≥ 3 there is a formula of the form $S \subseteq T$ (asserting that one binary relation is included in another), which is provable with α + 1 variables, but not (...) provable with only α variables (using a special sequent calculus designed for deducing properties of binary relations). (shrink)

Discover for yourself the pleasures of philosophy! Written both for the seasoned student of philosophy as well as the general reader, the renowned writer Roger Scruton provides a survey of modern philosophy. Always engaging, Scruton takes us on a fascinating tour of the subject, from founding father Descartes to the most important and famous philosopher of the twentieth century, Ludwig Wittgenstein. He identifies all the principal figures as well as outlines of the main intellectual preoccupations that have informed western (...) philosophy. Painting a portrait of modern philosophy that is vivid and animated, Scruton introduces us to some of the greatest philosophical problems invented in this period and pursued ever since. Including material on recent debates, _A Short History of Modern Philosophy_ is already established as _the_ classic introduction. Read it and find out why. (shrink)

Benedict de Spinoza was at once the father of the Enlightenment and the last sad guardian of the medieval world. In his brilliant synthesis of geometrical method, religious sentiment, and secular science, he attempted to reconcile the conflicting moral and intellectual demands of his epoch, and to present a vision of humanity as simultaneously bound by necessity and eternally free. Roger Scruton presents a clear and systematic analysis of Spinoza's thought, and shows its relevance to today's intellectual preoccupations.

Cognitive and rational assessments of competence do not fully capture the way in which individuals normally make decisions. Human beings have always used stories to explain their experiences and values. Narrative ethics should be used to understand the perspective in context of a patient whose competence is in question, and so avoid a destructive clash. Psychiatry and professionals within it also have a narrative that may join with that of science, but there is no special privilege for these narratives unless (...) survival is at stake. The narrative approach should be used to try to make different stories compatible. This article examines the background to this approach, and indicates some ways in which it could be used in the specific cases addressed in the series. (shrink)

The problems of environmental ethics are so basic that the exploration of an alternative metaphysics or attendant ethical theory is not a sufficiently radical solution. In fact, the assumptions entailed in adefinition of systematic philosophy that gives us a tradition of metaphysics might themselves be the source of the current crisis. We might need to revision the responsibilities of the philosopher and think in terms of the artist rather than the “scientific of first principles.” Taoism proceeds from art rather than (...) science, and produces an ars contextualis: generalizations drawn from human experience in the most basic processes of making aperson, making a community and making a world. This idea of an “aesthetic cosmology” is one basis for redefining the nature of the relatedness that obtains between particular and world-between tao and te. (shrink)

In 2012–13, we signed up for Facebook in seven Middle East and North Africa countries and used Facebook advertisements to encourage young people to participate in our survey. Nearly 18,000 individuals responded. Some of the questions in our survey dealing with attitudes about women’s work and cosmetics were adopted from a survey conducted by the Frankfurt School in 1929 in Germany. The German survey had shown that a great number of men, irrespective of their political affiliation harbored highly authoritarian attitudes (...) toward women and that one sign of authoritarianism was men’s attitude toward cosmetics and women’s employment. We wanted to know if the same was true of the contemporary MENA. Our results suggest that lipstick and makeups as well as women’s employment are not just vehicles for sexual objectification of women. In much of MENA world a married woman’s desire to work outside the house, and her pursuit of the accoutrement of beauty and sexual attractiveness, are forms of gender politics, of women’s empowerment, but also of antiauthoritarianism and liberal politics. Our results also suggest that piety among Muslims per se is not an indicator of authoritarianism and that there is a marked gender difference in authoritarianism. Women, it seems, are living a different Islam than men. (shrink)

Understanding Experience: Psychotherapy and Postmodernism is a collection of innovative interdisciplinary essays that explore the way we experience and interact with each other and the world around us. The authors address the postmodern debate in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis through clinical and theoretical discussion and offer a view of the person that is unique and relevant today. The clinical work of Binswanger, Boss, Fromm, Fromm-Reichmann, Laing, and Lacan is considered alongside the theories of Buber, Heidegger, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre and others. Combining (...) clinical data from psychotherapy and psychoanalysis with insights from European philosophy, this book seeks to fill a major gap in the debate over postmodernism and bridges the paradigmatic divide between the behavioural sciences and the human sciences. It will be of great interest to clinicians and students of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis who wish to come to terms with postmodernism, as well as those interested in theinteraction of psychoanalysis, philosophy and social theory. experience. (shrink)

THE MARKET AS AN ECONOMIC PROCESS by Ludwig M. Lachmann New York: Basil Blackwell, 1986. 173 pp., $29?95.

Despite 40 years of dialogue, debate still continues over whether psychedelics are capable of inducing genuine mystical experiences. This paper first reviews the arguments against this possibility and shows that all of them contain shortcomings. One reason the debate still continues is that there has been no adequate theory of mystical states and their relationship to the factors which produce them. Consequently a theory of mystical states based on Charles Tart’s systems model of consciousness is proposed. This theory suggests how (...) identical states of consciousness can be induced by very different means, including contemplative practices and chemical substances, and yet have different after-effects. Taken together, these ideas lead to the cautious conclusion that some psychedelics can induce genuine mystical experiences sometimes in some people, and that the current tendency to label these chemicals as entheogens may be appropriate. (shrink)

Unter Berücksichtigung von Ishiguros Gegenargumenten untersucht dieser Aufsatz erneut die traditionelle Interpretation von Leibniz' These, daß es keine kausale Wechselwirkung zwischen den Substanzen gebe und daß die kausalen Erklärungen für die Eigenschaften einer Substanz völlig in ihrer Natur lägen. Ishiguros Argumente benutzen die Unterscheidung zwischen dem Begriff einer Substanz und ihrer Natur, und in der Tat kann die Philosophie von Leibniz ohne diese Unterscheidung nicht voll gewürdigt werden. Aber sie lassen nicht erkennen, daß für Leibniz keine eindeutige Entsprechung zwischen ihnen (...) besteht. Sie lassen nicht erkennen, daß die kausale Erklärung für die Eigenschaften einer Substanz nicht völlig in ihrer eigenen Natur liegt. Die traditionelle Interpretation der prästabilierten Harmonie wird von allem, was Leibniz sagt, unterstützt und sollte wieder zur Geltung kommen. (shrink)

According to Kuhn a new scientific discipline comes into existence when a group of scientists adopt a common paradigm within which to conduct research. The adoption of this paradigm senes to focus the attention of the group’s members on a common explanatory task-at-hand and leads them to adopt similar methods and aims, thus making possible the standard puzzle solving activities that allow normal science to advance rapidly. However, Kuhn argues, in pre-paradigm periods and during revolutionary phases, scientists do not engage (...) in such singleminded, puzzle-solving behavior, as the paradigm itself is put into question. Instead, during these periods, they become at least partially self-reflective in that they become interested in understanding the nature of their discipline and its relationships to other disciplines. In this paper, I argue that Philosophical Counseling is in a pre-paradigm period and is in need of a paradigm centered definition if it is to develop an identity and advance rapidly. In an Aristotelian mood, I seek this definition though an examination of the related fiends of psychotherapy and pastoral counseling. (shrink)

The opposition of science and religion is a recent phenomenon; in the middle ages, and indeed until the middle of the nineteenth century, there was almost no conflict. In the Middle Ages the objective study of nature - the activity we now call science - was largely the province of religious men. This book looks at the origins of western science and the central role played by the Dominican and Franciscan friars. It explains why these two groups devoted so much (...) intellectual effort to the study of physical and biological phenomena, and distinguishes ’Natural Philosophy’ from ’science’ as presently understood. Though the friars were recognisably ’scientific’ in their approach their motives were religious - they wished to understand the mind of God and the beauty of God’s nature. Even so, as this study makes clear, the roots of western science lie in the monasteries and refuges of the medieval friars - the direct forebears of the anti-scientific Popes of the age of Copernicus and Galileo. Contents: Introduction 1. Philosophy and true philosophy 2. Town air 3. Sapienta and scientia: the cloister and the school 4. nature and the twelfth century 5. Heresy and Dominic 6. The evil and good world 7. Conquest and re-education 8. Dominican re-education 9. Fiat lux! Let there be light! 10. Et facta est lux! And there was light 11. Epilogue. (shrink)