For a serious book of philosophy, where better to begin to canvass various philosophical concepts and arguments than in relation to what is so familiar to every one of us –– the fact that we all have many and varied beliefs. The book is an introduction of philosophy, indeed intended as an introductory textbook. The author, as he wrote it, had both the teacher and the student in mind. He hopes it will prove a worthy contribution in the college, seminary (...) and university classroom, both interesting and serious. As well as thirteen clearly written chapters introducing the various topics, it is also provided with helpful summaries, tutorials, and work sheets. In considering belief we raise raises many of the central problems philosophers have discussed: knowledge, truth, justification, rationality, meaning, explanation, self deception, interpretation, reality, cause and effect, personal identity, theories, laws, hypotheses, the self, survival, God. Since belief is a universal phenomenon, it has unfortunately become common to understand the unqualified term ‘believer’ of the religious person. It seems strange to ask the question, ‘Are you a believer?’ outside the religious context. But we do when we are thinking of a particular theory or ideology or political attitude. We sometimes want to know whether she is ‘one of us!’ The author sometimes finds it convenient to illustrate his exposition by referring to religious beliefs. One does not have to be a religious believer to see that it is relevant and indeed interesting to do so. The history of philosophy provides many classical examples of such discussion. The book is of wide general interest. As well as doing service in the classroom, it will also prove its worth within other contexts. It will serve the aims of serious discussion groups, as well as providing a basis for regular and earnest individual study. We hope also that it will find a place with inquiring people of religious faith. (shrink)

This book presents the methodological framework of combining Multimodal Conversation Analysis (MCA) with Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to interpretively analyse translanguaging practices in educational contexts. Beginning with an overview of the three uses of translanguaging - translanguaging as a theory of language, as a pedagogical practice and as an analytical perspective - the book goes on to critically examine the different methodological approaches for analysing translanguaging practices in multilingual classroom interactions. It explains how MCA and IPA are useful methodologies for (...) understanding how and why translanguaging practices are constructed by participants in the classroom and discusses types of data collected and data collection procedures. The author, Kevin W. H. Tai, shows how combining these approaches enables researchers to study how translanguaging practices are constructed in multilingual classrooms and how teachers make sense of their own translanguaging practices at particular moments of classroom interaction. This detailed and concise guide is indispensable for students, practitioners, policymakers, and researchers from across the globe, particularly those working in the fields of applied linguistics and language education. (shrink)

SummaryEllis, Jardine and Putnam have argued that the would‐be scientific realist can only avoid being a metaphysical realist by becoming an “internal realist” . While metaphysical realism is unattractive, the approaches to truth offered by Ellis, Jardine and Putnam are quite unacceptable. However, the is no reason to think that one who wishes to be a scientific realist is limited to these two options.

The literary criticism of the Greeks and Romans furnishes some of the most baffling documents which have come down to us from antiquity. Nor could it be otherwise. Few elements of language can be at once so ephemeral and so elusive as the overtones of words used in aesthetic contexts; even in our own language it is only with a conscious effort that the appropriate overtones of words used by quite recent critics can be recalled. Such recall must be much (...) more difficult where the reader is concerned with a dead language; in the case of some terms it may well be virtually impossible; but where the ancient critic is discussing ethical criteria for literature, as Aristotle does in Poetics 13, the modern interpreter is in a somewhat better position, for ethical terms are used in wider contexts, contexts which involve action, and there is more opportunity for studying their usage and endeavouring to recapture their elusive overtones. (shrink)

To be satisfactory, a scholarly interpretation of a Greek tragedy must enable the present-day reader to see the play, so far as is possible, through the eyes of the fifth-century audience. If it does not, if it merely substitutes the predilections of a particular scholar for those of the reader, it is useless, and indeed worse than useless; for the reader unassisted by the interpretation of others may well examine the play critically for himself, while the reader with an interpretation (...) at his elbow is likely to make every effort to fit the ideas of the tragedian into the schema provided for him. Certainly, more and more interpretations are of the kind which assist the reader; but a significant number even of the most recent throw more darkness than light on their subject by refusing to acknowledge the whole context of value and belief in terms of which the tragedians wrote, and the audience watched, these dramas. The result of such misinterpretation is frequently, as in the case of the two I shall discuss here, to present for our admiration a more high-minded and uplifting drama than the one which Euripides wrote; but our concern is presumably not to achieve this end, but to understand Euripides and his audience. (shrink)

This historical study of early 19th-century opposition to vivisection suggests that the moral persona of the vivisector was an important theme. Vivisectors claimed they deliberately suppressed their feelings to perform scientifically necessary experiments: Where there was reason, there could be no cruelty. Their critics argued they were callous and indifferent to suffering, which was problematic for medical practitioners, who were expected to be merciful and compassionate. This anthropocentric debate can be located within the virtue ethics tradition: Compassion for animals signified (...) a humane character. The 1876 Vivisection Act facilitated experimentation by separating the practice of vivisection from that of medicine. (shrink)

New musicology's rejection of formalist precepts eclipses how the subjectivization of aesthetics institutes the schema of music's opposition to reality. Social Werktreue—fidelity to the work and to the faithful reproduction of an original intent—replaces ideals of aesthetic transcendence with analyses of a work's socially constructed meaning. Hence, absolute music's social demystification positions music criticism within a system of oppositions ratified by bourgeois culture. The power individual works exercise in contesting reality deconstructs formalist dogma and social Werktreue. The temporality evinced when (...) works address us in new situations attests to the work's independent afterlife. By confronting formalist criticism and social critique with the schema Kant initiated when he legitimated aesthetic judgment's transcendental function, this independent afterlife argues against transposing the principle of interpretive fidelity onto the social plane. Works reveal dimensions of experience in the midst of existing social and historical conditions, thereby opening new horizons for music criticism. (shrink)

This is an original and stimulating collection of articles by scholars trained in classics, moral philosophy, political science, literature, and intellectual history. Its principal objective is to convey to the modern reader a sophisticated understanding of Homeric and Classical Greek morality and how it differs from our own. Some of the articles focus primarily on Greek value concepts, especially the concept of arete. Others compare those concepts to modern notions of virtue and tolerance, as well as to the work of (...) contemporary literary figures and philosophers, including T.S. Eliot, Alasdair Macintyre, John Wallace, and Philippa Foot. Throughout, the juxtaposition of ancient and modern ideas and the worldviews they presuppose makes these readings both intellectually exciting and revealing. (shrink)

In this article, I relate the demand that Paul Ricoeur suggests mimesis places on the way we think about truth to the idea that the work of art is a model for thinking about testimony. By attributing a work’s epoché of reality to the work of imagination, I resolve the impasse that arises from attributing music, literature, and art’s distance from the real to their social emancipation. Examining the conjunction, in aesthetic experience, of the communicability and the exemplarity of a (...) work reveals how Ricoeur’s definition of mimesis as refiguration relates to the “rule” that the work summons. This “rule” constitutes the solution to a problem or question for which the work is the answer. In conclusion, as a model for thinking about testimony, the claims that works make have a counterpart in the injunctions that issue from exemplary moral and political acts.  . (shrink)

In this paper, faculty librarians at an academic institution explore the ethical dimensions of conducting research with user-generated social networking service (SNS) data. In an effort to guide librarian-researchers, this paper first offers a background discussion of privacy ethics across disciplines and then proposes a library-specific ethical framework for conducting SNS research.,By surveying the literature in other disciplines, three key considerations are identified that can inform ethical practice in the field of library science: context, expectation, and value analysis. For each (...) of these considerations, the framework is tailored to consider ethical issues, as they relate to libraries and our practice as librarian-researchers.,The unique role of the librarian-researcher demands an ethical framework specific to that practice. The findings of this paper propose such a framework.,Librarian-researchers are at a unique point in our history. In exploring SNSs as a source of data to conduct research and improve services, we become challenged by conflicting and equally cherished values of patron privacy and information access. By evaluating research according to context, expectations, and value, this framework provides an ethical path forward for research using SNS data.,As of this paper’s publication, there is no existing ethical framework for conducting SNS research in libraries. The proposed framework is informed both by library values and by broader research values, and therefore provides unique guidelines for the librarian-researcher. (shrink)

These suggestions for the betterment and elucidation of the text of the De Beneficiis are additional to those already published in the Classical Quarterly in January, 1934. They are based on a conviction much deepened since that time that Buck1 is right when he says: N allein, und zwar ohne seine Ueberarbeitungen von späteren Händen, darf die Grundlage des Textes von de beneficiis bilden. Préchac3, the latest critical editor in this field, substantially confirms Buck's sweeping conclusion by an independent survey (...) of the evidence. The readings designated in the Teubner text3 as N2 and N3 are themselves conjectures, not readings drawn from independent sources of testimony, and as conjectures they must be judged. Gertz4 had long before discerned the truth even if he seemed somewhat cavalier in his attitude toward other manuscripts than N. (shrink)