In this paper, I argue that scholars such as John Braithwaite and Lode Walgrave rely on fictions when presenting their utopian vision of restorative justice. Three claims in particular are shown to be fictitious. Proponents of restorative justice maintain, first, that the offender and the victim voluntarily attend the restorative conference. Second, that the restorative conference enables the offender and the victim to take on active responsibility. Third, that the reparatory tasks on which the parties agree should not be understood (...) in terms of the intentional infliction of harm. These fictions, so I argue, are not merely a mistake, but instead serve an important function: the various parties need to believe that they adequately capture the reality of the restorative conference as they are more likely to acquiesce if they believe the fictions to be true. I conclude that the fictions are the driving force within the restorative endeavour. (shrink)

Attention has been drawn, particularly since Kant, to propositions which can not have negative instances. They used to be called a priori, axioms, first principles. Today, they are usually called postulates—C. I. Lewis uses both the old and new terminology—because there is a growing recognition of the fact that at least some of them are not “necessary” in the traditional sense. Kant placed a limitation on the apriorism of the continental rationalists. Current epistemologists and logicians have outstripped Kant in the (...) direction signalled by him. Both he and they, however, concur in the opinion that apriori propositions are subject to negation of a sort. The Kantian dinge-an-sich, though they can not contradict these propositions by being negative instances of them, do nevertheless stand to them in the relation of insubordination, thereby exerting on them a “negative action” of a sort. And, according to current views, there are instances which, though they fall outside the range of significance of a proposition or system and hence can not contradict it, do nevertheless tend to bring about a revision of it by a negative action of some sort. The purpose of this brief essay is to coin a convenient name for such instances and to describe certain properties of their peculiar negative action. (shrink)

V. C. Chappell; IV*—Stuff and Things, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 71, Issue 1, 1 June 1971, Pages 61–76, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotelia.

Ontology was never Hume's main interest, but he certainly had opinions as to what there is, and he often expressed these in his philosophical works. Indeed it seems clear that Hume changed his ontological views while writing the Treatise, and that not just one but two different ontologies are to be found there. The ontology of Parts I, II, and III of Book I is more or less Lockean. There are minds and their operations and qualities. There are physical entities, (...) bodily actions and qualities if not bodies over and above these. And there are further entities, called ideas by Locke and perceptions by Hume, that represent things other than themselves, both physical and mental, while existing in and being dependent upon minds. In Part IV of Book I, however, and especially in Sections 2 and 6, a new ontology appears, one that differs not only from the doctrine of the earlier sections of the Treatise but also from any that previous philosophers had held. According to this new ontology, there are only perceptions: all other sorts of things are absorbed by or reduced to these, or else simply eliminated. Berkeley had indeed assimilated bodies and the properties of bodies to perceptions, but he had kept minds as a distinct category of entity. Hume went the whole way, making everything perceptions. We might characterise this new ontology as trans-Berkeleyan, or call it, on account of its similarity to later doctrines so named, phenomenalism or neutral monism. (shrink)

The Essay concerning Human Understanding was published at the end of 1689.1 It sold well, and within three years Locke was planning revisions for a second edition. Among those whose “advice and assistance” he sought was the Irish scientist William Molyneux. Locke had begun a correspondence with Molyneux a few months before, after the latter had lavishly praised the Essay and its author in the Epistle Dedicatory of his own Dioptrica Nova, published early in 1692. Here was a man, Locke (...) concluded, whose judgment one could trust. He returned Molyneux’s compliment in the Essay’s new edition, calling him “that very Ingenious and Studious promoter of real Knowledge, ... whom I am proud to call my friend”. (shrink)

Eleven essays, on a variety of topics, most of them first given as lectures or published in periodicals and Festschriften. This is "late" Heidegger --alternately brilliant and mystifying, provocative and exasperating, at least to the uninitiated. Perhaps the best pieces in the book are the three which discuss passages in pre-Socratic philosophers--here, familiar texts are given fresh, if unorthodox, interpretations, and are made to suggest philosophical conclusions of remarkable subtlety and scope. --V. C. C.

The Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) is a measure of analytical reasoning that cues an intuitive but incorrect response that must be rejected for successful performance to be attained. The CRT yields two types of errors: Intuitive errors, which are attributed to Type 1 processes; and non-intuitive errors, which result from poor numeracy skills or deficient reasoning. Past research shows that participants who commit the highest numbers of errors on the CRT overestimate their performance the most, whereas those with the lowest (...) error-rates tend to slightly underestimate. This is an example of the Dunning-Kruger Effect (DKE). The present study examined how intuitive vs. non-intuitive errors contribute to overestimation in the CRT at different levels of performance. Female undergraduate students completed a seven-item CRT test and subsequently estimated their raw score. They also filled out the Faith in Intuition (FI) questionnaire, which is a dispositional measure of intuitive thinking. Data was separated into quartiles based on level of performance on the CRT. The results demonstrated the DKE. Additionally, intuitive and non-intuitive errors predicted miscalibration among low, but not high performers. However, intuitive errors were a stronger predictor of miscalibration. Finally, FI was positively correlated with CRT self-estimates and miscalibration, indicating that participants who perceived themselves to be more intuitive were worse at estimating their score. These results taken together suggest that participants who perform poorly in the CRT and also those who score higher in intuitive thinking disposition are more susceptible to the influences of heuristic-based cues, such as answer fluency, when judging their performance. (shrink)

Moral philosophers have often felt the need of a concept which would cover all those cases where we are prevented from achieving our ends through no fault of our own: a criterion for saying when failure is not blameworthy. The deontologists thought we were not to blame for actions done in genuine ignorance of the facts. Kant declared in a famous passage that we were not morally responsible for failures due to the “niggardliness of stepmother nature.” In this article I (...) want to introduce into moral philosophy a new concept for clarifying the failures for which we are not to blame: the notion of scarcity, taken from economic theory. (shrink)

Some bold speculations about the sources of cancer, relying heavily upon such notions as "Primordial energy," "destiny," and "autonomous growth."--V. C. C.

A volume of philosophical essays, somewhat similar in format to J. H Muirhead's two collections of thirty years ago. Instead of offering general summaries of their thinking, however, most of the present contributors exhibit their conceptions of philosophy and its problems by dealing with particular questions, as if writing for a professional journal. Biographical material has been compressed and placed in an appendix at the book's end. The result is less personal and perhaps less historically informative than the earlier volumes, (...) but it is probably also more productive of genuine philosophizing. One exception to the new pattern is H. J. Paton's informal survey, with personal asides, of British philosophy since the early 1900's. This makes a good introduction to the volume as a whole.--V. C. C. (shrink)

A warm and sympathetic reconstruction, by an obvious admirer, of the life, times and work of K'ung Ch'iu, based upon the Confucian Classics and a variety of historical sources, including the works of recent scholars. A helpful bibliography is included.--V. C. C.

A new edition of the Introduction to the Philosophie der Weltgeschichte, one of a number now being published in the Neue kritische Ausgabe of Hegel's works. The editor has made a comprehensive review of the scattered sources from which Hegel's text has been reconstructed, and of the previous editions. The result is the most complete and best arranged text yet to appear, marking a considerable improvement upon the 1930 edition of Lasson.--V. C. C.

An exceptionally lucid account, intended for students and the "general" reader, of the "new ways of theology." Mr. Hutchinson declares himself in sympathy with the work of the Protestant "existential" or "dialectical" theologians, including Barth, Brunner, Tillich, and Niebuhr, but he also sets contemporary problems in traditional contexts and defends his own views in the light of their significant alternatives, both ancient and modern. Religion, he maintains, is primarily a matter of faith, but the rational or philosophical articulation of faith, (...) far from being irrelevant to religion, is actually required, since faith by itself is not autonomous. In this Mr. Hutchinson sets himself against the "radicals" like Brunner and Barth, as well as against sceptics, rationalists, and Thomists. The book as a whole is sound, comprehensive, balanced, and informed.--V. C. C. (shrink)

The distinctive feature of this new edition is its inclusion of the handwritten marginal notes in Hegel's own copy of the Rechtsphilosophie. These were published separately by Lasson in 1914 and again in 1930, but have been re-edited for the present volume, with a number of mistakes corrected. A second volume, now in preparation, is to contain a re-edited set of the Zusätze to Hegel's lectures on Rechtsphilosophie, gathered from the notes of his students. The two volumes together will certainly (...) stand as the definitive source of Hegel's teaching in this area for a long time to come.--V. C. C. (shrink)

The thesis of this brief but suggestive essay in interpretation is that Kant's critical works express a unified "Weltanschauung" whose determining principles are ethical rather than epistemological. The argument is subtle and complex, and is supported by references more to the spirit than to the letter of the Kantian writings; its consequent difficulty, however, is more than outweighed by its breadth and illuminatory power. In his concern with the relations between morals and religion for Kant, and in his emphasis upon (...) the voluntaristic and subjective element in the Critical philosophy, Kroner draws a Kant who often looks like Kierkegaard. The result is challenging and, if nothing else, provides a useful contrast to the predominant "piecemeal" interpretations of the epistemologically oriented Marburg school.--V. C. C. (shrink)

The author seeks, through an examination of the characters of Dostoevsky, to interpret the nature of man and his fate. A "Christian existentialist," he sees man's life as essentially tragic, torn between the "dialectical opposites," God and nature. Man's only hope for harmony and synthesis lies in the total "surrender of his autonomy to the demands of God." Sometimes obscure in meaning, the book contains nevertheless a number of interesting suggestions.--V. C. C.

Maritain's Walgreen Foundation Lectures on political philosophy, given in 1949, in a handsomely produced paperbound edition.--V. C. C.