In popular articles that play down the genetical differences among human populations, it is often stated that about 85% of the total genetical variation is due to individual differences within populations and only 15% to differences between populations or ethnic groups. It has therefore been proposed that the division of Homo sapiens into these groups is not justified by the genetic data. This conclusion, due to R.C. Lewontin in 1972, is unwarranted because the argument ignores the fact that most of (...) the information that distinguishes populations is hidden in the correlation structure of the data and not simply in the variation of the individual factors. The underlying logic, which was discussed in the early years of the last century, is here discussed using a simple genetical example. (shrink)

This volume captures the individuality, the national and personal identity, the cultural exchange, and the self-consciousness that have long been sensed as peculiarly potent in the Hellenistic world. The fields of history, literature, art, philosophy, and religion are each presented using the format of two essays followed by a response. Conveying the direction and focus of Hellenistic learning, eighteen leading scholars discuss issues of liberty versus domination, appropriation versus accommodation, the increasing diversity of citizen roles and the dress and gesture (...) appropriate to them, and the accompanying religious and philosophical ferment. The result is an arresting view of the incredible and unprecedented diversity of the Hellenistic world. (shrink)

It is well-known that Plato’s Republic introduces a tripartition of the incarnate human soul; yet quite how to interpret his ‘parts’ 1 is debated. On a strong reading, they are psychological subjects – much as we take ourselves to be, but homunculi, not homines. On a weak reading, they are something less paradoxical: aspects of ourselves, identified by characteristic mental states, dispositional and occurrent, that tend to come into conflict. Christopher Bobonich supports the strong reading in his Plato’s Utopia Recast: (...) His Later Ethics and Politics. In his The Brute Within: Appetitive Desire in Plato and Aristotle, Hendrik Lorenz agrees with Bobonich that the parts of the soul are ‘the subjects or bearers of psychological states’. Any ascription to my Mental Conflict of the opposed, weak view needs qualification: my Plato is highly ambivalent.2 But my intention here is less to defend an earlier self – though I predict failing to escape it – than to reconsider tripartition in the Republic in the light of Bobonich’s virtuosity and Lorenz’s lucidity. They persuade me of the inexhaustibility of the text, notably within Book 4 from 436 to 439. About these pages we may indeed disagree: they find them decisive in favour of their view, as I don’t. When Socrates remarks, ‘Let us have our understanding still more precise, lest as we proceed we become involved in dispute’, he was not anticipating the dissensions of interpreters. (shrink)

The task of this article is a two-fold approach to Augustine’s theory of knowledge, often called that of ‘divine illumination’, with particular attention to one of its seminal sources, his Soliloquia. The first approach is historical- and text-critical; we consider the text of the Soliloquia, its meaning and significance, the questions to which Augustine was implicitly responding at the time, and especially how this work broaches themes which are revisited and further developed in Augustine’s later works. In the second part, (...) we take the results of the foregoing analysis and apply to them a systematic-theological and philosophical method. First we contextualize Augustine’s theory of illumination, both in relation to his own works and beyond. We then argue for a distinction between two senses of illumination, namely ‘principal’ and ‘gradual’, which helps to account for the different ways in which illumination is applied by Augustine. Finally, we show how Augustine’s insights can be relevant to contemporary philosophy and theology, and how his ideas are implicated in contemporary debates. The upshot is an historical, philosophical, and theological consideration of Augustine’s theory of divine illumination, which aspires to strike a balance between doing justice to the text from an historical perspective and interpreting and applying it in the present day. (shrink)

In my article I evaluate Searle's account of mental causation, in particular his account of the causal efficacy of unconscious intentional states. I argue that top-down causation and overdetermination are unsolved problems in Searle's philosophy of mind, despite his assurances to the contrary. I also argue that there are conflicting claims involved in his account of mental causation and his account of the unconscious. As a result, it becomes impossible to understand how unconscious intentional states can be causally efficacious. My (...) conclusion will be that if Searle's conception of unconscious intentionality is to play a genuine role in the causal explanation of human action, it needs to be rethought. (shrink)

"These essays make a splendid book. Ignatieff's lectures are engaging and vigorous; they also combine some rather striking ideas with savvy perceptions about actual domestic and international politics.

In my reply I focus on three topics: the usefulness of Searle's physical analogies for understanding the relationship between higher-level mental properties and lower-level physical properties, the question of overdetermination and the causal efficacy of unconscious intentional states. I argue that Searle's reply does not refute my arguments against his analogies, while concerns about overdetermination are only taken away because his reply shows that there is no genuine unconscious mental causation in his view. That makes it hard to understand how (...) he can maintain at the same time that we follow rules unconsciously. (shrink)

Monetary intelligence theory asserts that individuals apply their money attitude to frame critical concerns in the context and strategically select certain options to achieve financial goals and ultimate happiness. This study explores the dark side of monetary Intelligence and behavioral economics—dishonesty. Dishonesty, a risky prospect, involves cost–benefit analysis of self-interest. We frame good or bad barrels in the environmental context as a proxy of high or low probability of getting caught for dishonesty, respectively. We theorize: The magnitude and intensity of (...) the relationship between love of money and dishonest prospect may reveal how individuals frame dishonesty in the context of two levels of subjective norm—perceived corporate ethical values at the micro-level and Corruption Perceptions Index at the macro-level, collected from multiple sources. Based on 6382 managers in 31 geopolitical entities across six continents, our cross-level three-way interaction effect illustrates: As expected, managers in good barrels, mixed barrels, and bad barrels display low, medium, and high magnitude of dishonesty, respectively. With high CEV, the intensity is the same across cultures. With low CEV, the intensity of dishonesty is the highest in high CPI entities —the Enron Effect, but the lowest in low CPI entities. CPI has a strong impact on the magnitude of dishonesty, whereas CEV has a strong impact on the intensity of dishonesty. We demonstrate dishonesty in light of monetary values and two frames of social norm, revealing critical implications to the field of behavioral economics and business ethics. (shrink)

I defend Aristotle's account of the motivations of the virtuous agent from criticisms made by Thomas Hurka.

Corruption involves greed, money, and risky decision-making. We explore the love of money, pay satisfaction, probability of risk, and dishonesty across cultures. Avaricious monetary aspiration breeds unethicality. Prospect theory frames decisions in the gains-losses domain and high-low probability. Pay dissatisfaction (in the losses domain) incites dishonesty in the name of justice at the individual level. The Corruption Perceptions Index, CPI, signals a high-low probability of getting caught for dishonesty at the country level. We theorize that decision-makers adopt avaricious love-of-money aspiration (...) as a lens and frame dishonesty in the gains-losses domain (pay satisfaction-dissatisfaction, Level 1) and high-low probability (CPI, Level 2) to maximize expected utility and ultimate serenity. We challenge the myth: Pay satisfaction mitigates dishonesty across nations consistently. Based on 6500 managers in 32 countries, our cross-level three-dimensional visualization offers the following discoveries. Under high aspiration conditions, pay dissatisfaction excites the highest- (third-highest) avaricious justice-seeking dishonesty in high (medium) CPI nations, supporting the certainty effect. However, pay satisfaction provokes the second-highest avaricious opportunity-seizing dishonesty in low CPI entities, sustaining the possibility effect—maximizing expected utility. Under low aspiration conditions, high pay satisfaction consistently leads to low dishonesty, demonstrating risk aversion—achieving ultimate serenity. We expand prospect theory from a micro and individual-level theory to a cross-level theory of monetary wisdom across 32 nations. We enhance the S-shaped Curve to three 3-D corruption surfaces across three levels of the global economic pyramid, providing novel insights into behavioral economics, business ethics, the environment, and responsibility. (shrink)

A theory of human origins that is one-half Charles Darwin and one-half Cain and Abel is bound to entail a lot of rethinking of traditional themes. Rene Girard's thesis of original human violence and the Bible's power to reveal it has been around for more than a generation, but its consequences for Christian theology are still only slowly being unpacked. Anthony Bartlett's book makes a signal contribution, representing an astonishing leap forward in understanding what a biblical disclosure of founding (...) violence means for Christian thought and life. If human language arose directly out of the primal experience of murder, then semiotics becomes a core area for theological examination. Tracing the discipline of semiotics through postmodern thinkers, then back through its birth in the Latin era, Bartlett shows how Girard's thought is itself a semiotic emergence, beyond standard Christian metaphysics. Above all, Girardian theory of human signs demands we see the generative impact of violence in our language and thought, and then, conversely, that the Word of God, crucified without retaliation and risen in the same identity, brings a totally new sign and relation into history, offering a thoroughgoing transformation of human life and meaning. (shrink)

Monetary Intelligence theory asserts that individuals apply their money attitude to frame critical concerns in the context and strategically select certain options to achieve financial goals and ultimate happiness. This study explores the bright side of Monetary Intelligence and behavioral economics, frames money attitude in the context of pay and life satisfaction, and controls money at the macro-level and micro-level. We theorize: Managers with low love of money motive but high stewardship behavior will have high subjective well-being: pay satisfaction and (...) quality of life. Data collected from 6586 managers in 32 cultures across six continents support our theory. Interestingly, GDP per capita is related to life satisfaction, but not to pay satisfaction. Individual income is related to both life and pay satisfaction. Neither GDP nor income is related to Happiness. Our theoretical model across three GDP groups offers new discoveries: In high GDP entities, “high income” not only reduces aspirations—“Rich, Motivator, and Power,” but also promotes stewardship behavior—“Budget, Give/Donate, and Contribute” and appreciation of “Achievement.” After controlling income, we demonstrate the bright side of Monetary Intelligence: Low love of money motive but high stewardship behavior define Monetary Intelligence. “Good apples enjoy good quality of life in good barrels.” This notion adds another explanation to managers’ low magnitude of dishonesty in entities with high Corruption Perceptions Index. In low GDP entities, high income is related to poor Budgeting skills and escalated Happiness. These managers experience equal satisfaction with pay and life. We add a new vocabulary to the conversation of monetary intelligence, income, GDP, happiness, subjective well-being, good and bad apples and barrels, corruption, and behavioral ethics. (shrink)

The paper reiterates the account of Aristotle's conception of eudaimonia to be found in my monograph Virtue and Reason in Plato and Aristotle, and then faces the charge that it makes the agent's motivation unattractively egocentric (viz. on his own eudaimonia).

Girardian anthropology tells us that the birth of human meaning and its signs are the result of a primitive catastrophe. But if these origins are exposed by the biblical record it is because another, transformative semiosis has opened in human existence. Girard’s seminal remarks on the Greek logos and the logos of John, endorsing Heidegger’s divorce of the two, demonstrate this claim and its source in the nonviolence of the gospel logos. In effect, there is a second catastrophe, one embedded (...) in the bible and reaching its full exposition in the cross, generating a new semiosis in humanity. The transformation may be measured by viewing the original semiosis in a Kantian frame, as a transcendental a priori structured by violence. The second catastrophe generates an equivalent new a priori of nonviolence. The work of Charles Peirce illustrates both the way in which interpretants (of signs) open us progressively to new meanings, and how this process may ultimately be conditioned by love. The catastrophe of the gospel, therefore, works both on the dramatic individual level, with Paul of the New Testament as the great example, but also in slow‑motion over semiotic history, changing the meaning of existence from violence to nonviolence. (shrink)

The workshop – presented by the director of a new center and the coordinator of an alliance intended to amplify and extend the influence of an established center – focused on the challenges involved in founding, growing, and sustaining centers for business ethics within university business schools. The discussion draws on experience at the Center for Business and Society, Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado, and the Center for Business Ethics, Bentley College and Bentley’s Alliance for Ethics & Social (...) Responsibility. (shrink)

The main question that Firestone & Scholl (F&S) pose is whether “what and how we see is functionally independent from what and how we think, know, desire, act, and so forth” (sect. 2, para. 1). We synthesize a collection of concerns from an interdisciplinary set of coauthors regarding F&S's assumptions and appeals to intuition, resulting in their treatment of visual perception as context-free.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 11.2 (2004) 165-173 [Access article in PDF] Professional Judgment, Critical Realism, Real People, and, Yes, Two Wrongs Can Make a Right! K.W.M. Fulford Anthony Colombo Keywords values, values-based practice, models of disorder, concept of mental illness, user-centred practice, patient-centred practice, multidisciplinary teamwork We are grateful to our four commentators for putting much-needed conceptual air and space around the models project. Published originally as an (...) empirical study of the different implicit models of disorder, held by users of services, carers, nurses, psychiatrists, and social workers (Colombo et al. 2003), our paper outlined the philosophical roots of the models project in linguistic analytic philosophy of the "Oxford school" (Fulford and Colombo 2004). Our four commentators provide extra dimensions of understanding, respectively from professional education (Williams 2004), sociology (Bendelow 2004), Heideggerian phenomenology (Heginbotham 2004), and mental health policy and practice (Williamson 2004).Since the original study, the models project has been taken forward as a key contribution to a range of philosophy-into-practice initiatives called, collectively, Values-Based Practice. In this brief response, we outline the key features of Values-Based Practice and indicate how these connect with some of the many thoughtful points about models made by our commentators. Values-Based Practice Values-Based Practice, then, is the theory and skills-base for effective health care decision making where different, and hence potentially conflicting, values are in play (Fulford 2004). Premised on the democratic meta-value of equal respect for all voices, Values-Based Practice relies, much as a political democracy relies, on good process rather than preset outcomes for its practical effectiveness. The ten pointers to good process in Values-Based Practice are summarized in Figure 1. We return to the implications of these for the work on models below.Relying on good process may be thought to be a recipe more for relativism and indecision in clinical decision making than for practical effectiveness. To the contrary, however, the 'values democracy' of Values-Based Practice, again like a political democracy, carries a number of clear and coherent implications for policy and practice in health care. [End Page 165] Click for larger viewFigure 1 10 Pointers to Good Process in VBP [End Page 166]Examples of the implications of Values-Based Practice for policy and practice are given in the Values Framework shown in Figure 2. This is a policy framework for the development of Values-Based Practice in mental health produced by a project group in the National Institute for Mental Health in England (NIMHE), the section of the UK's National Health Service (NHS) responsible for implementing government policy on mental health as embodied in the National Service Framework for Mental Health (Department of Health 1999) and subsequent policies. The framework gives three key principles of Values-Based Practice (the three Rs of recognition, raising awareness, and respect) and then summarizes some of the specific implications of the approach. Racism, for example, is incompatible with Values-Based Practice because racism is by definition intolerant of diversity. Again, we indicate some of the policy implications of Values-Based Practice for the points about models made by our commentators below.Training for mental health practitioners in Values-Based Practice will be rolled out from April 2005, through both voluntary and statutory bodies, in each of the eight regions of the National Health Service of England and Wales. This roll out will be supported by training methods developed and piloted in a unique joint venture between Warwick University's Department of Philosophy and Medical School, and an in-service training provider, the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health (Fulford, Williamson, and Woodbridge 2002; Woodbridge and Fulford 2003). These training methods are the basis of a detailed workbook for Values-Based Practice (Woodbridge and Fulford 2004). The workbook will be launched in July 2004 at a conference in London by the Minister of State with responsibility for mental health, Rosie Winterton. Professional Training and Professional Judgment The models project has been central to the development of... (shrink)

A reading of Heidegger's philosophy out of Girard's mimetic anthropology is warranted by the problem of violence in Heidegger's text and context, and by the relationship of his thought to biblical revelation. The formative anthropology underlying Heideggerean ontology is the permanent sacrificial crisis unleashed by the figure and message of the Crucified. Heidegger responds to this in his existential analytic in respect of the pivotal death of Dasein and the futural temporality governed by this death, and then in the essential (...) thinking of being and its event (Ereignis) of appropriation and withdrawal. Dasein is understood as the victim of sacrificial crisis. The event is the crisis itself. Heidegger's thought and language are then recruited to enable a more profound reflection on the meaning of biblical revelation, removing it from a metaphysical framework, placing it in an abyssal dynamic of giving that goes beyond the violence of being. /// O presente artigo defende que uma leitura da filosofia de Heidegger a partir da antropologia mimética de R. Girard está justificada pelo problema da violência tanto no texto de Heidegger como no seu contexto, bem como pela relação do seu pensamento com a revelação bíblica. A antropologia formativa subjacente à ontologia heideg-geriana consiste na crise sacrificial permanente despoletada pela figura e a mensagem do Crucificado. Heidegger responde a isto na sua analítica existencial a propósito da morte pivotal do Dasein e da temporalidade futura governada por esta morte, e depois no pensamento essencial do ser e do evento (Ereignis) de apropriação e retirada. O Dasein é entendido como vítima da crise sacrificial. O evento é a crise propriamente dita. Neste sentido, o artigo recruta o pensamento e a linguagem de Heidegger em ordem a possibilitar uma reflexão mais profunda acerca do sentido da revelação bíblica, removendo-a de um contexto metafísico e colocando-a numa dinâmica abissal de doação que vai para além da violência do ser. (shrink)

Recent judicial reforms after democratic transition have been substantial and relatively successful in Chile, but much less so in Argentina and Brazil. This article traces this variation in outcomes to the legal strategies of the prior authoritarian regimes. The Brazilian military regime of 1964–1985 was gradualist in its approach to the law, and had a high degree of civilian-military consensus in the legal sphere. It was not highly repressive in its deployment of lethal violence, and this combination of factors contributed (...) to a gradualist and consensual transition in which judicial reform was not placed high on the political agenda. The Argentine case of military rule between 1976 and 1983 was almost the opposite. The military sidestepped and even attacked the judiciary, engaging in almost entirely extrajudicial violence. This generated a “backlash” reform movement after the transition to democracy that was mostly retrospective and only partially successful. In Chile, in contrast, the military engineered a radical break with previous legality, engaged in violent repression, but made considerable efforts to reconstruct a judicial order. It was in the aftermath of this situation that reformers were able to push through a prospective and relatively successful judicial reform. This article's findings suggest that judicial reform may be more likely to succeed where the prior authoritarian regime was both repressive and legalistic, as in Chile, Poland, and South Africa, than where high degrees of repression were applied largely extrajudicially, as in Argentina, Cambodia, and Guatemala, or where the authoritarian regime was legalistic but not highly repressive, as in Brazil, Mexico, and the Philippines. (shrink)

This essay is the journal editor's introduction to part 3 of an ongoing symposium on quietism. With reference to writings of James Joyce, Francis Picabia, J. M. Coetzee, Charles Taylor, Alasdair MacIntyre, Elaine Pagels, and Karen King—and with extended reference to Jonathan Lear's study of “cultural devastation,” Radical Hope—Jeffrey Perl explores the possibility that the fear of anomie is misplaced. He argues that, in comparison with the violence and narrowness of any given social order, anomie may well be preferable, and, (...) in any case, may be no more than another name for quietism. (shrink)

In both The Right and the Good and The Foundations of Ethics, W. D. Ross maintains that any amount of the non-instrumental value of virtue outweighs any amount of the non-instrumental value of pleasure or avoidance of pain. The chapter raises two challenges to the status that Ross accords the value of virtue relative to the value of pleasure (pain). First, it argues that Ross fails to provide a good argument for thinking that virtue is always better than pleasure and (...) that it is in any case implausible to think that any amount of virtue (or avoidance of vice) is better than the avoidance of any amount of pain or suffering. Second, it argues that the inflexibility of Ross’s value theory exhibited in his claim about the relative value of virtue produces tension with and mars the attractive heterarchical structure of his theory of rightness or prima facie duties. (shrink)

W. E. B. Du Bois never felt so at home as when he was a student at the University of Berlin. But Du Bois was also American to his core, scarred but not crippled by the racial humiliations of his homeland. In Lines of Descent, Kwame Anthony Appiah traces the twin lineages of Du Bois' American experience and German apprenticeship, showing how they shaped the great African-American scholar's ideas of race and social identity. At Harvard, Du Bois studied with (...) such luminaries as William James and George Santayana, scholars whose contributions were largely intellectual. But arriving in Berlin in 1892, Du Bois came under the tutelage of academics who were also public men. The economist Adolf Wagner had been an advisor to Otto von Bismarck. Heinrich von Treitschke, the historian, served in the Reichstag, and the economist Gustav von Schmoller was a member of the Prussian state council. These scholars united the rigorous study of history with political activism and represented a model of real-world engagement that would strongly influence Du Bois in the years to come. With its romantic notions of human brotherhood and self-realization, German culture held a potent allure for Du Bois. Germany, he said, was the first place white people had treated him as an equal. But the prevalence of anti-Semitism allowed Du Bois no illusions that the Kaiserreich was free of racism. His challenge, says Appiah, was to take the best of German intellectual life without its parochialism--to steal the fire without getting burned. (shrink)

Presents and argues for a novel interpretation of Ross's distinctive contribution to moral theory and meta-ethics.

A magisterial exploration of poetry’s place in the fine arts by one of the twentieth century's leading poets In this book, eminent poet Anthony Hecht explores the art of poetry and its relationship to the other fine arts. While the problems he treats entail both philosophic and theoretical discussion, he never allows abstract speculation to overshadow his delight in the written texts that he introduces, or in the specific examples of painting and music to which he refers. After discussing (...) literature’s links with painting and music, Hecht investigates the theme of paradise and wilderness, especially in Shakespeare’s The Tempest. He then turns to the question of public and private art, exploring the ways in which all the arts participate in balances between private and public modes of discourse, and between an exclusive or elitist role and the openly political. Beginning with a discussion of architecture as an illustration of a more general theme of discord and balance, the penultimate lecture probes the inner contradictions of works of art and our reactions to them, while the final piece concerns art and morality. (shrink)

A. G. Greenwald and H. G. Shulman (1973) found that 2 tasks characterized by ideomotor (IM) compatibility could be perfectly timeshared (i.e., performed simultaneously without mutual interference). The 2 tasks were pronouncing “A” or “B” in response to hearing those letter names, and making a manual left or right response to seeing a left- or right-positioned arrow. M.-C. Lien, R. W. Proctor, and P. A. Allen (2002) did not replicate Greenwald and Shulman’s result, and concluded that their finding of perfect (...) timesharing of 2 IM-compatible tasks might not be replicable. In the present research, Experiment 1 replicated Greenwald and Shulman’s 1973 finding while also supporting the conclusion that Lien et al.’s nonreplication was due to their not instructing subjects to make 2 responses simultaneously in their timeshared task. Experiment 2 again replicated the perfect timesharing finding, using an alternative control procedure that mixed manual and vocal tasks in the same block. (shrink)

William Uttal's The new phrenology is a broad attack on localization in cognitive neuroscience. He argues that even though the brain is a highly differentiated organ, "high level cognitive functions" should not be localized in specific brain regions. First, he argues that psychological processes are not well-defined. Second, he criticizes the methods used to localize psychological processes, including imaging technology: he argues that variation among individuals compromises localization, and that the statistical methods used to construct activation maps are flawed. Neither (...) criticism is compelling. First, as we illustrate, there are behavioral measures which offer at least weak constraints on psychological attribution. Second, though imaging does face methodological difficulties associated with variation among individuals, these are broadly acknowledged; moreover, his specific criticisms of the imaging work, and in particular of fMRI, misrepresent the methodology. In concluding, we suggest a way of framing the issues that might allow us to resolve differences between localizationist models and more distributed models empirically. (shrink)

This paper pr o vides an o v e r vi e w of the themes presented in Bentha m ' s w ork Scotch Reform -a n e w w ork being prepared for pu b lication from Bentha m ' s manuscripts b y Oxford Un i v ersity Press as pa r t of the Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham. Attention is focused on the relationship bet w een the system of l e g al procedure proposed (...) and the under l ying principle of utili t y . T w o issues are highlighte d , the nature of Bentha m ' s anti-nomian thesis for c i vil cou r ts and the parad o x of requiring restraint on the judicial control of c i vil procedure, w hilst simultaneous l y rem o ving all r ules of action and all o wing increased judicial discretion. (shrink)

Stanovich & West (S&W) appear to overlook the adaptivity of variation. Behavioral variability, both between and within individuals, is an absolute necessity for phylogenetic and ontological adaptation. As with all heritable characteristics, inter-individual behavioral variation is the foundation for natural selection. Similarly, intra-individual variation allows a broad exploration of potential solutions. Variation increases the likelihood that more optimal behaviors are available for selection. Four examples of the adaptivity of variation are discussed: (a) Genetic variation as it pertains to behavior and (...) natural selection; (b) behavioral and cognitive aspects of mate selection which may facilitate genetic diversity; (c) variation as a strategy for optimizing learning through greater exploration; and (d) behavioral variation coupled with communication as a means to propagate individually discovered behavioral success. (shrink)

Despite F. W. J. Schelling’s relative exclusion from the ongoing German idealist renaissance in Anglophone scholarship, recent critical and historical engagement with idealist texts affords an unprecedented opportunity to discover the richness and value of his thinking. This volume provides a wide-ranging presentation of Schelling’s original contribution to and internal critique of the basic insights of German idealism, his role in shaping the course of post-Kantian thought, and his sensitivity and innovative responses to questions of lasting metaphysical, epistemological, ethical, aesthetic, (...) and theological importance. The contributing authors offer compelling reasons to regard Schelling as one of Kant’s most incisive interpreters, a pioneering philosopher of nature, a resolute philosopher of human finitude and freedom, a nuanced thinker of the bounds of logic and self-consciousness, and perhaps Hegel’s most effective critic. (shrink)

Michael McKinsey has argued that content externalism has the absurd consequence that one can know a priori that water exists. Richard W. Miller responds that when a prioricity is properly understood, McKinsey's argument should not be seen as a _reductio of externalism. This paper disputes Miller's understanding of a prioricity.

According to John Martin Fischer and Anthony Brueckner’s unique version of the deprivation approach to accounting for death’s badness, it is rational for us to have asymmetric attitudes toward prenatal and posthumous nonexistence. In previous work, I have defended this approach against a criticism raised by Jens Johansson by attempting to show that Johansson’s criticism relies on an example that is incoherent. Recently, Duncan Purves has argued that my defense reveals an incoherence not only in Johansson’s example but also (...) in Fischer and Brueckner’s approach itself. Here I argue that by paying special attention to a certain feature of Fischer and Brueckner’s approach, we can dispense of not only Johansson’s criticism but also of Purves’s objection to Fischer and Brueckner’s approach. (shrink)