An original study of the philosophical problems associated with inductive reasoning. Like most of the main questions in epistemology, the classical problem of induction arises from doubts about a mode of inference used to justify some of our most familiar and pervasive beliefs. The experience of each individual is limited and fragmentary, yet the scope of our beliefs is much wider; and it is the relation between belief and experience, in particular the belief that the future will in some respects (...) resemble the past and the unobserved the observed, which forms the subject of this book. Dr Blackburn's first aim is to state the problem of induction properly, to show that there does exist a genuine problem immune to the solutions in vogue at present, yet no tin principle insoluble. He gives an extended and original account of the concept of a reason and goes on to discuss prediction. In the end Dr Blackburn produces a rationale for belief in certain short-term predictions based on his reinterpretation of the classical principle of indifference. He claims that a justification for induction can be found along the lines he has suggested and must indeed be found there if anywhere. (shrink)

The vacuum is fast emerging as the central structure of modern physics. This collection brings together philosophically-minded specialists who engage these issues in the context of classical gravity, quantum electrodynamics, and the grand unification program. The vacuum emerges as the synthesis of concepts of space, time, and matter; in the context of relativity and the quantum this new synthesis represents a structure of the most intricate and novel complexity. This book is a work in modern metaphysics, in which the concepts (...) of substance and space interweave in the most intangible of forms, the background and context of our physical experience: vacuum, void, or nothingness. (shrink)

Simon Glendinning explores both the difficulty and significance of the work of Derrida, arguing that his challenging ideas make a significant contribution to philosophy."--P. [2] of cover.

Practical philosophy and ethics -- Practical tortise raising -- Truth, beauty, and goodness -- Dilemmas: dithering, plumping, and grief -- Group minds and expressive harm -- Trust, cooperation, and human psychology -- Must we weep for sentimentalism? -- Through thick and thin -- Perspectives, fictions, errors, play -- The steps from doing to saying -- Success semantics -- Wittgenstein's irrealism -- Circles, finks, smells, and biconditionals -- The absolute conception: Putnam vs. Williams -- Julius Caesar and George Berkeley play leapfrog (...) -- The majesty of reason -- Fiction and conviction. (shrink)

This book is the first treatment at length of negative, or apophatic, theology within the analytic tradition. Apophatic theology holds that there is a significant sense in which we cannot say what God is. Important negative theological elements are present in a host of Christian thinkers, from Gregory of Nyssa to Aquinas, and yet apophaticism is neglected in philosophical theology as practiced within the analytic tradition. By contrast, Hewitt shows how apophatic theology is integral to how Christians have thought about (...) God, and how it can be defended against standard attacks in the philosophical literature. Hewitt diagnoses the unease with apophaticism amongst contempory philosophical theologicans as rooted in a certain picture of how language functions, here called referentialism. Arguing that this picture is not compulsory, an account of language which sits more comfortably with negative theology (originating from work of later Wittgenstein) is invoked, and applied to key themes in philosophical theology including divine personhood, the Trinity, the Incarnation and the afterlife. (shrink)

A version of Frege's theorem can be proved in a plural logic with pair abstraction. We talk through this and discuss the philosophical implications of the result.

According to hedonistic act utilitarianism, an act is morally right if and only if, and because, it produces at least as much pleasure minus pain as any alternative act available to the agent. This dissertation gives a partial defense of utilitarianism against two types of objections: action guidance objections and intuitive objections. In Chapter 1, the main themes of the dissertation are introduced. The chapter also examines questions of how to understand utilitarianism, including (a) how to best formulate the moral (...) explanatory claim of the theory, (b) how to best interpret the phrase "pleasure minus pain," and (c) how the theory is related to act consequentialism. The first part (Chapters 2 and 3) deals with action guidance objections to utilitarianism. Chapter 2 defines two kinds of action guidance: doxastic and evidential guidance. It is argued that utilitarianism is evidentially but not doxastically guiding for us. Chapter 3 evaluates various action guidance objections to utilitarianism. These are the objections that utilitarianism, because it is not doxastically guiding, is a bad moral theory, fails to be a moral theory, is an uninteresting and unimportant moral theory, and is a false moral theory. The second part (Chapters 4, 5 and 6) deals with intuitive objections to utilitarianism. Chapter 4 presents three intuitive objections: Experience Machine, Transplant, and Utility Monster. Three defenses of utilitarianism are subsequently evaluated. Chapter 5 and 6 introduces two alternative defenses of utilitarianism against intuitive objections, both of which concern the role that imagination plays in thought experimentation. In Chapter 5, it is argued that we sometimes unknowingly carry out the wrong thought experiment when we direct intuitive objections against utilitarianism. In many such cases, we elicit moral intuitions that we believe give us reason to reject utilitarianism, but that in fact do not. In Chapter 6, it is argued that using the right kind of sensory imagination when we perform thought experiments will positively affect the epistemic trustworthiness of our moral intuitions. Moreover, it is suggested that doing so renders utilitarianism more plausible. In Chapter 7, the contents of the dissertation are summarized. (shrink)

Certains auteurs ont avancé que le premier confinement de 2020 avait profondément remis en cause nos manières d’appréhender le temps. Cette affirmation est ici discutée à partir de l’étude empirique des variations d’une dimension des rapports au temps – le sentiment de manquer de temps – avant la crise sanitaire, pendant le premier confinement, et pendant le second confinement. L’analyse statistique de données de quatre enquêtes en population générale met en évidence une atténuation d’ensemble du sentiment de manquer de temps (...) pendant le premier confinement, puis un retour partiel à la normale pendant le second confinement. La complainte du manque de temps n’a donc connu qu’une éclipse de deux mois avant de reprendre une place plus centrale dans le quotidien des Français. La rémanence des rapports au temps se manifeste également dans la remarquable stabilité de la polarisation sociale du sentiment de manque de temps, qui concerne, aussi bien en confinement qu’en temps « normal », davantage les classes supérieures, les âges médians et les femmes. Ces résultats prennent sens dans une approche sociologique des rapports au temps, saisis comme une des composantes premières du rapport au monde des individus, ancrée dans des rapports sociaux, notamment de classe et de genre. (shrink)

The proposal that there is an illusion of conscious will has been supported by findings that priming of stimulus location in a task requiring judgements of action-authorship can enhance participants’ experience of agency. We attempted to replicate findings from the ‘Wheel of Fortune’ task [Aarts, H., Custers, R., & Wegner, D. M. . On the inference of personal authorship: enhancing experienced agency by priming effect information. Consciousness and Cognition, 14, 439–458]. We also examined participants’ performance on this task in relation (...) to self-reported passivity experiences and hallucination-proneness. We found a significant effect of priming, with primes being found to increase the experience of agency. An interaction between gender and priming was also found, with priming enhancing feelings of agency in women but not in men. There were no significant correlations between levels of self-reported passivity experiences or hallucination-proneness and participants’ susceptibility to the priming effect on ratings of agency. Implications of these findings are discussed with regard to a prominent model of passivity experiences. (shrink)

This paper looks at the current wave of protests and demonstrations and asks whether what we are witnessing is the emergence of a new movement against austerity and in favour of democracy, as many suggest. The wider context is the crisis of representative politics, which is in turn transforming the nature of mobilisation, contestation and politics more generally. In place of traditional organisational structures, we are seeing the emergence of cloud, swarm and connective initiatives with characteristics that challenge and supplant (...) traditional organisational politics. We are seeing the emergence of a politics that is resistant to ‘politicians’ of whatever ideology, seeking to recuperate power and agency from representatives. This creates an interesting tension at the heart of democracy: whether and to what extent democracy needs to ‘reboot’ or whether new political parties and movements can ally the connective to representational styles of politics to provide a way in which democracy can evolve.Este artículo examina la ola de protestas y manifestaciones, preguntándonos si, como muchos sugieren, lo que estamos presenciando es el surgimiento de un nuevo movimiento contra la austeridad y a favor de la democracia. El contexto político está marcado por una generalizada crisis de la política representativa, hecho que a su vez marca la transformación de la naturaleza de la movilización, de la contestación y de la política en general. Estamos presenciando el surgimiento de iniciativas con características cloud, swarm y conectivas que desafían y suplantan a las estructuras organizativas tradicionales. En la actualidad está emergiendo una forma de política que es resistente a los “políticos” de cualquier tipo de ideología y que trata de recuperar el poder de los representantes. Esto crea una tensión interesante en el corazón de la democracia: si, y en qué medida, la democracia necesita ‘resetearse’ o si los nuevos partidos y los nuevos movimientos políticos pueden aliar lo conectivo a estilos de representación política capaces de proporcionar una manera en la que la democracia pueda evolucionar. (shrink)

Deconstruction and pragmatism constitute two of the major intellectual influences on the contemporary theoretical scene--influences personified in the work of Jacques Derrida and Richard Rorty. The purpose of this volume is to bring deconstruction and pragmatism into critical confrontation with one another through staging a debate between Derrida and Rorty, itself based on discussions that took place at the College International de Philosophie in Paris in 1993.

This volume comprises the complete proceedings of the 1999 Ratio Conference at which Derrida made significant contributions on various topics, including the relation of his work to analytical philosophy, the logic of argument, truth ineffability, meaning, animal life, and the appeal to the ordinary in the work of Wittgenstein and J.L. Austin.

Some years ago, without realizing what it might mean, I accepted a dinner invitation from a Jewish colleague for dinner on Friday night. I should say that my colleague had never appeared particularly orthodox, and he would have known that I am an atheist. However, in the course of the meal, some kind of observance was put in train, and it turned out I was expected to play along—put on a hat, or some such. I demurred, saying that I felt (...) uncomfortable doing something that might be the expression of some belief that I do not hold, or of joining a “fellowship” with which I felt no special community, and with which I would not have any particular fellow-feeling beyond whatever I feel for human beings in general. I was assured that what it would signify, if I went through with the observance, was not that I shared the world views or beliefs of my host, or wished myself to identify uniquely with some particular small subset of humanity, but only that I respected his beliefs, or perhaps his stance. I replied that in that case, equally, I could not in conscience do what was required. (shrink)

In several works, Holmes Rolston, III has argued that a satisfactory environmental ethic cannot be built on a virtue ethical foundation. His first argument amounts to the charge that because virtue ethics is by nature “self-centered” or egoistic, it is also inherently “human-centered” and hence ill suited to treating environmental matters. According to his second argument, virtue ethics is perniciously human-centeredsince it “locates” the value of a thing, not in the thing itself, but in the agent who is “ennobled” by (...) valuing it. These charges, though illuminating, are not in the final analysis compelling. The first misconceives the role of motivation in virtue ethics, while the second ultimately rests on a misunderstanding of the place of the human perspective in ethical considerations. (shrink)

Polemon of Laodicea's Physiognomy explains how to detect someone's character from their appearance. The original 2nd-century text has been lost, but this collection of essays presents translations of the surviving Greek, Latin, and Arabic versions together with a series of masterly studies on the Physiognomy's origins, function, and legacy.

In their article “Three Kinds of Decision-Making Capacity for Refusing Medical Interventions,” Navin et al. (2022) argue that we should recognize two forms of decision-making capacity (DMC) besides...

Cognitive scientists have long noted that automated behavior is the rule, while consciousness acts of self-regulation are the exception to the rule. On the face of it automated actions appear to be immune to moral appraisal because they are not subject to conscious control. Conventional wisdom suggests that sleepwalking exculpates, while the mere fact that a person is performing a well-versed task unthinkingly does not. However, our apparent lack of conscious control while we are undergoing automaticity challenges the idea that (...) there is a relevant moral difference between these two forms of unconscious behavior. In both cases the agent lacks access to information that might help them guide their actions so as to avoid harms. In response it is argued that the crucial distinction between the automatic agent and the agent undergoing an automatism, such as somnambulism or petit mal epilepsy, lies in the fact that the former can preprogram the activation and interruption of automatic behavior. Given that, it is argued that there is elbowroom for attributing responsibility to automated agents based on the quality of their will. (shrink)

. Genuine Reality is recommended reading for all soul-searchers."—George Gurley, Chicago Tribune "Ms. Simon . . . has provided an ideal pathway for James's striding. . . . [Y]ou become engaged in his struggles as if they were your own. ...

A volume of studies in philosophical logic by a group of younger philosophers in the UK. There is a core of problems in the theory of meaning which have been accorded a central importance by philosophers, logicians and theoretical linguists, and which have stimulated some of the most powerful and original work in these subjects. The contributors to the volume have a common interest in these topics, insist on their continuing and fundamental importance, and offer here a distinctive and original (...) contribution to them. (shrink)

_On Being With Others_ is an outstanding exploration of this key philosophical question. Simon Glendinning shows how traditional positions in the philosophy of mind can do little to rebuff the accusation that in fact we have little claim to have knowledge of minds other than our own. _On Being With Others_ sets out to refute this charge and disentangle many of the confusions in contemporary philosophy of mind and language that have led to such scepticism. Simon Glendinning explores (...) why early attempts by J.L. Austin and Martin Heidegger to refute scepticism about other minds failed and argues that we must turn to Wittgenstein in order to build a solid theory of other minds. Drawing on the celebrated debate between John Searle and Jacques Derrida, Simon Glendinning establishes fascinating and important links between controversies in the philosophy of mind, language and epistemology. (shrink)

In his works on argumentation, Aristotle develops three main forms: apodeictical, dialectical, and rhetorical argumentation; dialectic is subdivided into several subspecies. The purpose of this paper is to discuss all of the forms described by Aristotle, to examine their differences and to point out their interrelations. This leads to an examination of the differentiating criteria and their applicability in the case of each argumentation form—and in particular to the question regarding the number of criteria that are necessary to describe each (...) form clearly and unambiguously. It is argued that Aristotle’s works on argumentation contain an implicit system of argumentation forms that is based on no more than three criteria. (shrink)

Theodor Adorno was a German philosopher, sociologist and musicologist and was a leading member and eventually director of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research. Adorno studied an extraordinary range of subjects during his lifetime – from dialectical logic and the syntax of poetry to newspaper astrology columns and the Hollywood studio system – and he left a significant mark on each of the many disciplines in which he worked. His philosophically sophisticated rethinking of Marxian materialism has been central to much (...) European and American social theory in the latter half of the twentieth century and his studies of mass culture, radio and television were foundational documents for the discipline of cultural studies. This collection charts the most important moments in the international reception of Adorno's thinking, covering the wide range of disciplines his studies touched upon, including literary criticism, musicology, aesthetics, epistemology and metaphysics. There is also a great deal of important scholarship and commentary on Adorno in German that remains untranslated into English. This set will therefore provide Anglophone scholars with the first English translations of these important works. (shrink)