In 2000, a simple, foundational thermodynamic paradox was proposed: a sealed blackbody cavity contains a diatomic gas and a radiometer whose apposing vane surfaces dissociate and recombine the gas to different degrees (A $_{2} \rightleftharpoons $ 2A). As a result of differing desorption rates for A and A $_{2}$ , there arise between the vane faces permanent pressure and temperature differences, either of which can be harnessed to perform work, in apparent conflict with the second law of thermodynamics. Here we (...) report on the first experimental realization of this paradox, involving the dissociation of low-pressure hydrogen gas on high-temperature refractory metals (tungsten and rhenium) under blackbody cavity conditions. The results, corroborated by other laboratory studies and supported by theory, confirm the paradoxical temperature difference and point to physics beyond the traditional understanding of the second law. (shrink)

Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categories and (...) On Interpretation and boethius'S textbook on topical inference. They comprise a freestanding Dialectica (“Logic”; probably c.1116), a set of commentaries (known as the Logica [Ingredientibus], c. 1119) and a later (c. 1125) commentary on the Isagoge (Logica Nostrorum Petititoni Sociorum or Glossulae). In a work Abelard called his Theologia, issued in three main versions (between 1120 and c.1134), he attempted a logical analysis of trinitarian relations and explored the philosophical problems surrounding God's claims to omnipotence and omniscience. The Collationes (“Debates,” also known as “Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew”; probably c.1130) present a rational investigation into the nature of the highest good, in which the Christian and the Philosopher (who seems to be modeled on a philosopher of pagan antiquity) are remarkably in agreement. The unfinished Scito teipsum (“Know thyself,” also known as the “Ethics”; c.1138) analyses moral action. (shrink)

Das »Richtige und das Gute« (1930), das ethische Hauptwerk W. D. Ross’, enthält eine Vielzahl wichtiger moralphilosophischer Thesen und Argumente, die bis in die Gegenwart kontrovers diskutiert werden. Im Mittelpunkt steht seine pluralistische Deontologie, der zufolge sich die richtige Handlung aus einer Abwägung der in der jeweiligen Situation relevanten und unableitbaren Prima-facie-Pflichten ergibt, von denen nur ein Teil auf die Optimierung der Handlungsfolgen bezogen ist. Diese Deontologie wurde zu einem modernen Klassiker unter den normativen ethischen Theorien. Darüber hinaus stellt Ross’ (...) These, dass moralische Intuitionen eine Quelle selbstevidenten Wissens sein können, einen wichtigen Referenzpunkt in Debatten um den erkenntnistheoretischen Fundamentalismus dar. Auch für die Handlungstheorie liefert Ross einflussreiche Argumente, wenn er die Ansicht vertritt, dass Pflichten nie ein bestimmtes Motiv des Handelnden zum Gegenstand haben können. Eine zentrale Stellung nimmt für Ross die Güterlehre ein, in welcher er von vier Grundgütern, Tugend, Wissen, Lust und Gerechtigkeit, ausgeht. Wurde Ross in den ersten Jahrzehnten des 20. Jahrhunderts im damaligen Großbritannien als ein herausragender Ethiker – einer der bedeutendsten des Jahrhunderts, auf Augenhöhe mit G.E. Moore – angesehen, wandelte sich das Meinungsbild in den folgenden Jahrzehnten unter dem Einfluss besonders des Logischen Positivismus und der Philosophie Wittgensteins. In den letzten Jahrzehnten ist jedoch wieder ein wachsendes Interesse an Ross’ Ethik festzustellen. Dabei wird »Das Richtige und das Gute« bisweilen sogar mit der »Nikomachischen Ethik«, Kants »Grundlegung« und Humes »Untersuchung über die Prinzipien der Moral« verglichen. (shrink)

In this paper, we outline a theory of the nature of self-directed agents. What is distinctive about self-directed agents is their ability to anticipate interaction processes and to evaluate their performance, and thus their sensitivity to context. They can improve performance relative to goals, and can, in certain instances, construct new goals. We contrast self-directedness with reactive action processes that are not modifiable by the agent, though they may be modified by supra-agent processes such as populational adaptation or external design.Self-directedness (...) lies at the nexus of issues concerning the evolution and nature of intentionality, intelligence, and agency. It provides some insight into the evolution of intelligence because it helps explain how organisms are able to manage variable interaction processes, e.g., a hunting strategy that varies with prey type, ground condition, and hunger level. Simple self-directed organisms like bumblebees manage variability in one or a few dimensions. (shrink)

This is the fourth of five chapters on good, and looks at the question of whether goods are commensurable—measurable in degrees. As a preliminary, the question is asked as to whether pleasures are commensurable, and as a preliminary to that question, whether pleasures are comparable, and whether one pleasure can be said to be greater or more pleasant than another. The chapter examines two of three aspects of degrees of goodness: the commensuration of pleasures against one another; and the commensuration (...) of different states of knowledge against one another, including the dependence of the value of a state of knowledge on the nature of the state of mind, and the value of a state of opinion ; the third aspect, the balancing of virtuous actions and dispositions against one another, is examined in the next chapter. The question is then addressed as to whether virtue, knowledge, and pleasure can be compared in value—measured against one another; here, evidence is put forward to support Ross's view that pleasure is inferior in value to virtue and knowledge. The last part of the chapter looks at the relative value of moral goodness and value as ends in themselves. (shrink)

This first chapter of Ross's book is devoted to an inquiry into the meaning of right. The interest throughout is ethical, with value only being discussed as far as it seems relevant. The first aspect addressed is the ambiguity inherent in any definition of the meaning of right. G. E. Moore's three definitions of a horse are discussed: these may be designated the arbitrary verbal definition, the verbal definition proper, and the definition that involves the sense of being reduced to (...) elements simpler than itself. These three types of definition are applied to the subsequent discussion of the meaning of right, which includes looking at the difference between right and duty, at moral goodness, at the reduction of right to elements simpler than itself, at right definable as productive of a certain outcome, at ethical principles, at hedonistic utilitarianism, and at the sociological school. (shrink)

The Right and the Good, a classic of twentieth-century philosophy by the eminent scholar Sir David Ross, is now presented in a new edition with a substantial introduction by Philip Stratton-Lake, a leading expert on Ross. Ross's book is the pinnacle of ethical intuitionism, which was the dominant moral theory in British philosophy for much of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Intuitionism is now enjoying a considerable revival, and Stratton-Lake provides the context for a proper understanding of Ross's great (...) work today. (shrink)

What connexion is there between factual statements concerning God or man and moral judgments? That is the question which occasions this paper. Not long ago moral philosophers were wont to say that there is a logical gap between the two sorts of utterance to which I have just referred: that nothing follows in terms of moral value from a statement of fact, no ‘ought’ from any ‘is’. They recognised only one restriction on what may be said in terms of ‘ought’ (...) by what has been said in terms of ‘is’, namely that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’. It is manifest nonsense to say that anyone ought to do what he cannot do. But, this apart, they thought it possible without contradiction or anomaly to hold any conceivable factual belief and at the same time subscribe to any conceivable moral judgment. They would have held that it makes perfectly good sense to say, for example, ‘This is God’s will but it ought not to be done’ or ‘Men are not pigs but a good man will live like a pig’. Bizarre such judgments may be, they would have said, but nonsensical they are not. They conceived it to be their main business, as moral philosophers, to erect warning notices along the edge of the is-ought gap so that contemporary moralists would not fall headlong into it as so many of their predecessors, in less enlightened ages, had done. (shrink)

At the beginning of his book, Principles of Christian Theology, John Macquarrie says that theology ‘implicitly claims to have its place in the total intellectual endeavour of mankind’. The question I want to discuss is this: in what terms, if any, can that claim be justified?

I want to put forward a certain view of the logical foundation of religious belief. It is, in a sentence, the view that religious belief is constituted by the concept of god. This view will be discussed under three headings. First, I shall explain as clearly as I can what I mean by it. Secondly, I shall indicate what seem to me to be interesting parallels, both with regard to universes of discourse in general and to religious belief in particular, (...) between my idea of a constitutive concept and Wittgenstein's ideas of a fundamental proposition and a religious ‘picture’. Thirdly, I shall try to substantiate the view I take of the logical foundation of religious belief by rebutting three conceivable objections to it: namely, that it rests on an illegitimate craving for generality, that it is at variance with common usage, and that it consigns religious belief to an intellectual ghetto. (shrink)

In this paper I shall explain what I take to be the nature of justice; and the method which I shall follow is that of attempting to infer the essential nature of justice from an examination of its actual practical operation. Perhaps the reader will be able to follow the drift of the argument more easily, and be more on his guard against possible misstatements of fact or erroneous inferences, if I mention at the outset the main conclusions to which (...) I hope to lead him. (shrink)

This study is an unusual contribution to the philosophy of mind in that it argues for the sometimes unfashionable view of dualism: that mind and matter are distinct and separate entities as Descartes believed. The author takes as his point of departure the imaginative hypothesis of disembodiment, which establishes the possibility of the mind's being a quite non-material thing. There are clear casual correlations between what is physical and what is mental, and the most serious issue confronting dualism since Descartes (...) has been how such an interaction is possible. Dr Hart sets out to answer this question by showing that the issue is as much about the nature of causation as it is about the natures of mind and matter. (shrink)

It is sometimes suggested that the logic of religious language differs from other kinds of language. Or it is said that each ‘language-game’ has its own ‘logic’ and that, whatever usual language-games are played in the context of religion, there is something that could be called the ‘religious language-game’ which does not correspond to any other and, therefore, has its own peculiar logic. In either case, religious people are urged to make clear what this logic is, so that their utterances (...) may be understood and evaluated. (shrink)

Arthur Fine's use of prism models to provide local and deterministic accounts of quantum correlation experiments is presented and analyzed in some detail. Fine's claim that "there is... no question of the consistency of prism models... with the quantum theory" (forthcoming, p. 16) is disputed. Our criticisms are threefold: (1) consideration of the possibility of additional analyzer positions shows that prism models entail unacceptably high rejection rates in the relevant experiments; (2) similar considerations show that the models are at best (...) only superficially local and deterministic; and (3) in any case, Fine extracts the quantum correlation statistics from prism models only by resurrecting conceptual problems similar to those that his models were to designed to solve. (shrink)

One would hardly be a human being if the good of others, or of society at large, could not weigh with one as a cogent reason for doing what will promote goodness. So one has not fully learned about living like a rational and moral being unless one has learned to appreciate that one ought to do things out of regard for others, and not only out of regard for oneself. In the first place, not everything done for oneself is (...) done for reasons of prudence. That one ought to insure one's house, save for one's old age, not put all one's money into one venture, are precepts of prudence. But it is not a precept of prudence, though it may be a good precept that someone ought to undergo a dangerous operation as a long shot to restoring his health rather than linger under a disability forever after. (shrink)

This is the third of five chapters on good, and inquires into what kinds of things are intrinsically good. The first thing claimed as intrinsically good is virtuous disposition and action; the second is pleasure in itself. These two approaches are briefly analysed, with the goodness or badness of pleasure given particular attention. Ross concludes that four things can be seen to be intrinsically good—virtue, pleasure, the allocation of pleasure to the virtuous, and knowledge. He is unable to discover anything (...) that is intrinsically good that is not either one or a combination of these. (shrink)

The twentieth century was dominated by political ideologies such as Communism and Fascism. This book argues that these secular ideologies have in the twenty-first century been replaced by religiously-based movements who may prove to be as epoch making to this century as their predecessors were to the last.

Did Wittgenstein think that language-games have presuppositions? He sometimes speaks as if he thought that they do, at other times as though he thought that they do not. For examples, in On Certainty 110, after pointing out that the business of giving grounds for what we say has to come to an end sometime, he remarks, ‘but the end is not an ungrounded presupposition’; whereas, in 115, after warning us that if we try to doubt everything we shall not get (...) as far as doubting anything, he gives as his reason ‘the game of doubting itself presupposes certainty’. It is of some importance for a correct understanding of Wittgenstein to clear up this apparent contradiction. (shrink)