The crisis in the meaning of freedom -- What is freedom? -- Limiting freedom -- Freedom and justice -- Why we should accept this view of freedom -- Conditions that make us more free -- Applying the theory to the real world --Conclusion -- Appendix for professional philosophers -- Notes.

The notion of whether people focus on the past, present or future, and how it shapes their behaviour is known as Time Perspective. Fundamental to the work of two of its earliest proponents, Zimbardo and Boyd (2008), was the concept of balanced time perspective and its relationship to wellness. A person with balanced time perspective can be expected to have a flexible temporal focus of mostly positive orientations (past-positive, present-hedonistic, and future) and much less negative orientations (past-negative and present-fatalistic). This (...) study measured deviation from balanced time perspective (DBTP: Zhang, Howell, and Stolarski, 2013) in a sample of 243 mature adults aged 45 to 91 years and explored relationships to Retirement Planning, Depression, Anxiety, Stress, Positive Mood, and Negative Mood. Results indicate that DBTP accounts for unexplained variance in the outcome measures even after controlling for demographic variables. DBTP was negatively related to Retirement Planning and Positive Mood and positively related to Depression, Anxiety, Stress and Negative Mood. Theoretical and practical implications regarding balanced time perspective are discussed. (shrink)

The prefrontal cortex has long been suspected to play an important role in cognitive control, in the ability to orchestrate thought and action in accordance with internal goals. Its neural basis, however, has remained a mystery. Here, we propose that cognitive control stems from the active maintenance of patterns of activity in the prefrontal cortex that represent goals and the means to achieve them. They provide bias signals to other brain structures whose net effect is to guide the flow of (...) activity along neural pathways that establish the proper mappings between inputs, internal states, and outputs needed to perform a given task. We review neurophysiological, neurobiological, neuroimaging, and computational studies that support this theory and discuss its implications as well as further issues to be addressed. (shrink)

Evidentialism is a view about the conditions under which a person is epistemically justified in having a particular doxastic attitude toward a proposition. Evidentialism holds that the justified attitudes are determined entirely by the person's evidence. This is the traditional view of justification. It is now widely opposed. The essays included in this volume develop and defend the tradition. Evidentialism has many assets. In addition to providing an intuitively plausible account of epistemic justification, it helps to resolve the problem of (...) the criterion, helps to disentangle epistemic and ethical evaluations, and illuminates the relationship between epistemic evaluations of beliefs and the evaluation of the methods used to form beliefs. These issues are all addressed in the essays presented here. External world skepticism poses the classic problem for an epistemological theory. The final essay in this volume argues that evidentialism is uniquely well qualified to make sense of skepticism and to respond to its challenge. Evidentialism is a version of epistemic internalism. Recent epistemology has included many attacks on internalism and has seen the development of numerous externalist theories. The essays included here respond to those attacks and raise objections to externalist theories, especially the principal rival, reliabilism. Internalism generally has been criticized for having unacceptable deontological implications, for failing to connect epistemic justification to truth, and for failing to provide an adequate account of what makes basic beliefs justified. Each of these charges is answered in these essays. The collection includes two previously unpublished essays and new afterwords to five of the reprinted essays; it will be the definitive resource on evidentialism for all epistemologists. (shrink)

The past 30 years has seen a theoretical and clinical renaissance in psychoanalysis, as well as a flourishing of Christian engagement in the fields of psychology and anthropology. This volume of essays stages a new conversation between Christianity and psychoanalysis that opens up new ways of thinking about the rich mosaic of human experience.

Evidentialism is a view about the conditions under which a person is epistemically justified in having a particular doxastic attitude toward a proposition. Evidentialism holds that the justified attitudes are determined entirely by the person's evidence. This is the traditional view of justification. It is now widely opposed. The essays included in this volume develop and defend the tradition.Evidentialism has many assets. In addition to providing an intuitively plausible account of epistemic justification, it helps to resolve the problem of the (...) criterion, helps to disentangle epistemic and ethical evaluations, and illuminates the relationship between epistemic evaluations of beliefs and the evaluation of the methods used to form beliefs. These issues are all addressed in the essays presented here. External world skepticism poses the classic problem for an epistemological theory. The final essay in this volume argues that evidentialism is uniquely well qualified to make sense of skepticism and to respond to its challenge.Evidentialism is a version of epistemic internalism. Recent epistemology has included many attacks on internalism and has seen the development of numerous externalist theories. The essays included here respond to those attacks and raise objections to externalist theories, especially the principal rival, reliabilism. Internalism generally has been criticized for having unacceptable deontological implications, for failing to connect epistemic justification to truth, and for failing to provide an adequate account of what makes basic beliefs justified. Each of these charges is answered in these essays. The collection includes two previously unpublished essays and new afterwords to five of the reprinted essays; it will be the definitive resource on evidentialism for all epistemologists. (shrink)

Supernaturalism is a philosophical position used in modernity that employs the “supernatural” to explain certain “natural” phenomena. The supernatural is defined by circumscription from the natural. But the line that is supposed to delineate the supernatural from the natural is porous and tenuous, to the point that the distinction between the two becomes a matter of no import. This renders vacuous the concept of the supernatural as well as the concept of the natural. Supernaturalism ends up naturalizing what is supposed (...) to be supernatural. But there is a conception of the supernatural that predates the modernist one. Benchmarked against this conception, the God posited by supernaturalism in the modern sense is not supernatural. (shrink)

In this book, Earl Mac Cormac presents an original and unified cognitive theory of metaphor using philosophical arguments which draw upon evidence from psychological experiments and theories. He notes that implications of this theory for meaning and truth with specific attention to metaphor as a speech act, the iconic meaning of metaphor, and the development of a four-valued system of truth. Numerous examples of metaphor from poetry and science are presented and analyzed to support Mac Cormac's theory. A Cognitive (...) Theory of Metaphortakes up three levels of explanation—metaphor as expressed in surface language, the semantics of metaphor, and metaphor as a cogitive process—and unifies these by interpreting metaphor as an evolutionary knowledge process in which metaphors mediate between minds and culture. Mac Cormac considers, and rejects, the radical theory that all use of language is metaphorical; however, this argument also recognizes that the theoryof metaphor may itself be metaphorical. The book first considers the computational metaphor often adopted by cognitive psychology as an example of metaphor requiring analysis. In contrast to three well-known philosophical theories of metaphor—the tension theory, the controversion theory, and the grammatical deviance theory—it develops a semantical anomaly theory of metaphor based on a quasi-mathematical hierarchy of words. In developing the theory, Mac Cormac makes much-needed connections between theories of metaphor and more orthodox analytic philosophy of meaning, including discussions of speech acts and the logic of fuzzy sets. This semantical theory of explanation is then shown to be compatible with contemporary psychological theories of memory. (shrink)

Being a player with an F. A. Premier football academy is very prestigious for young players, but it can also be very stressful too. Coping with stress is particularly important given that one of the undesirable consequences linked to chronic stress is athlete burnout, which may also negatively impact psychological well-being. Understanding the most effective ways to cope with stress, therefore, is important for optimizing academy athlete education. Consequently, the aim of the present study was to examine whether coping predicted (...) changes in athlete burnout, and whether athlete burnout predicted changes in well-being across 14 weeks of the competitive season. A sample of 26, under-18 and under-23, male F.A. Premier academy athletes completed weekly assessments of coping, athlete burnout, and psychological well-being on 14 separate occasions. The results of within-person analyses revealed that task-oriented coping predicted decreases in athlete burnout, which in turn predicted decreased well-being. Teaching high-level academy athletes task-oriented coping strategies may be useful in reducing athlete burnout, which may additionally protect athletes' well-being. (shrink)

The account in Part I of this essay posited two related but distinct sequences of development: of literary systems proper and of critical systems. Or, more simply, we must recognize that literary practices and systematic ideas about them develop in different ways. Today we can see in retrospect that lyric, narrative, and lyric-narrative or narrative-lyric begin literary cultures. Systematic ideas about literature develop, however, more by accident, what seems to be the result of conditions producing important critical minds at times (...) propitious for reflection. Any full account would have to consider such things as bipropertied conceptions. This has been mentioned before, but a specific example can be given here. Chinese wen designated not merely poetry but also prose historical writing: the fu established a kind of middle ground between them. In any event, such combinations, such bipropertied conceptions, do exist in very sophisticated times. Another matter of crucial importance involves the difference between the actual or descriptive existence of a literary variety and normative or valued critical consideration of a given kind. Various evidence shows that ancient Greece had lyrics as well as narrative, and preliterary Japan, narrative as well as lyrics. In the case of Greece, we tend today to think of narrative normatively as the early literature, although Plato and Aristotle lumped it with lyric and concerned themselves almost entirely with their crucial genre, drama. As for early Japan, the narrative was largely a possession of reciters, and so few heroic cycles are left from the nondominant peoples that narrative poetry is more a supposition that a presence. But there is in what remains from early times a mixture of lyric poetry with narrative prose. That combination did not prove crucial for a systematic poetics, although it is of utmost significance for later developments. It can hardly be said emphatically enough that the literary system comes first and the critical system after some interval. But the various complexities in different cultures are such that to get our bearings we may well consider the course of literary development in a single culture. Earl Miner is Townsend Martin, Class of 1917, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Princeton University. "That Literature is a Kind of Knowledge," his previous contribution to Critical Inquiry, appeared in the Spring 1976 issue. His works include Literary Uses of Typology from the Middle Ages to the Present and Japanese Linked Poetry. Part I of the present essay appeared in the Winter 1978 issue of Critical Inquiry. (shrink)

Readers of “lives” of the famous know well the tendency of biography, and especially autobiography, to become steadily less interesting as the subject grows older. A predictable record of challenges met, enemies shafted, honours received and great men encountered often succeeds an account of a childhood that is a highly-coloured and unique emotional drama. Often the best pages are those on the subject’s schooldays, when the personality first tangles with the public realm. As Barry Oakley says of school in a (...) piece quoted in the book’s preface: “Like the stage, it’s an image of life: life accelerated, life concentrated, life more formidable.” The project of selecting just the highlights of all the stories of Australians’ schooldays promises, then, a high payoff if it is well done. It is a high-risk enterprise, though: a pointillist canvas brilliant in each fleck may easily look like mud from a distance. There are well over a hundred authors here, with only three pages or so each to paint a vignette of school. In fact, the result is an enormous success. The editors have a sure eye, and they and their research assistant, Pamela Williams, have put in the work to find the goods. Almost every piece is gripping, and quite different from the others. The total effect is additive, and is an unexampled insight into how the Australia we know came into being. The classics are there: Henry Lawson and Patrick White, Seven Little Australians and The Getting of Wisdom, Donald Horne, Barry Humphries and Clive James. So are the many unknowns whose recollections take us into obscure corners. If there is one overall theme, it is that of sameness, difference and “fitting in”. The effect of the accumulated evidence is rather more subtle than the received ideas on “identity and difference”, multiculturalism and so on. School is where the strangeness of one’s own family, or of one’s own personality, meets the social world – itself perhaps no less weird, objectively speaking, but possessed of resources for ensuring conformity. (shrink)

Schadenfreude is the emotion we experience when we obtain pleasure from others’ misfortunes. Typically, we are not proud of it and admit experiencing it only sheepishly or apologetically. Philosophers typically view it, and the disposition to experience it, as moral failings. Two recent defenders of Schadenfreude, however, argue that it is morally permissible because it stems from judgments about the just deserts of those who suffer misfortunes. I also defend Schadenfreude, but on different grounds that overcome two deficiencies of those (...) recent defenses. First, my defense accounts for the wide range of circumstances in which we experience Schadenfreude. Those circumstances often involve feelings and judgments that are less noble and admirable than judgments regarding just deserts. Second, it accounts for the sheepish or apologetic feelings that commonly accompany Schadenfreude. The two recent defenses can account for those feelings only by holding that they are mistaken or misguided. In opposition to those who view Schadenfreude as a moral failing, I argue that it is morally permissible unless it is part of a causal chain that produces an immoral act. The moral permissibility of the emotion is necessary in order for individuals to have the emotional freedom that, in turn, is necessary for their well-being. Schadenfreude’s moral status is similar to a sexual fetish’s. Like a fetish, experiencing Schadenfreude is not immoral in itself, but sharing and discussing it with others is immoral in many contexts. (shrink)

Self‐renewal and differentiation of stem cells are tightly regulated processes subject to intrinsic and extrinsic signals. Molecular chaperones and co‐chaperones, especially heat shock proteins (Hsp), are ubiquitous molecules involved in the modulation of protein conformational and complexation states. The function of Hsp, which are typically associated with stress response and tolerance, is well characterized in differentiated cells, while their role in stem cells remains unclear. It appears that embryonic stem cells exhibit increased stress tolerance and concomitant high levels of chaperone (...) expression. This review critically evaluates stem cell research from a molecular chaperone perspective. Furthermore, we propose a model of chaperone‐modulated self‐renewal in mouse embryonic stem cells. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The common claim that American foreign policy is “imperial” is contradicted by the fact that the actual, definable historical empires have characteristically exercised formal, as well as decisive, control over their peripheral dependencies—properties that the keenest analysts do not ascribe to the geopolitical system that has been constructed by the United States. Why, then, the ascription of “empire” to the United States? One reason is to condemn American foreign policy by linking it to the unjust, destructive, and self‐destructive tendencies (...) that are held to be inherent in a nation’s quest for, and maintenance of, “empire.” The variant of this anti‐imperial thesis that has been the special province of certain conservatives and libertarians appropriates the “empire” thesis to invent non‐security motives for American foreign policies, and correspondingly to denigrate security threats to the United States. Yet—ironically—as with the more characteristic left‐wing anti‐imperialism, the conservative‐libertarian version exemplifies a cultural dimension of the strategic situation of the United States: Far from being an “empire,” or even an accomplished hegemon, America is better described (metaphorically) as the object of a multi‐pronged “siege.”. (shrink)

Where is language? Answers to this have attempted to 'incorporate' language in an 'extended mind', through cognition that is 'embodied', 'distributed', 'situated' or 'ecological'. Behind these concepts is a long history that this book is the first to trace. Extending across linguistics, philosophy, psychology and medicine, as well as literary and religious dimensions of the question of what language is, and where it is located, this book challenges mainstream, mind-based accounts of language. Looking at research from the Middle Ages to (...) the present day, and exploring the work of a range of scholars from Aristotle and Galen to Merleau-Ponty and Chomsky, it assesses raging debates about whether mind and language are centred in heart or brain, brain or nervous-muscular system, and whether they are innate or learned, individual or social. This book will appeal to scholars and advanced students in historical linguistics, cognitive linguistics, language evolution and the philosophy of language. (shrink)

They say that argumentative writing skills are best learned through writing argumentative essays. I say that while this is excellent practice for argumentative writing, an important exercise to practice structuring such essays and build critical thinking skills simultaneously is what I call the four-sentence paper. The exercise has the template They say..., I say..., one might object..., I reply... One might object that the assignment oversimplifies argumentative writing, stifles creativity, promotes an adversarial attitude, or that students can’t consider objections well (...) anyway. I reply that a simplified form of argumentative writing is fine for beginners, especially since the template is ubiquitous in philosophy; that any assignment template has room for creativity; that considering objections is consistent with good manners; and that despite some pitfalls of trying to defend a thesis and consider objections, students are capable of considering objections well with proper instruction and practice. (shrink)

Examination of a comprehensive database of political knowledge, constructed from pooled 1988 and 1992 National Election Studies, refutes criticisms that haue sometimes been lodged against standard tests that seem to reveal profound levels of public ignorance. Although most people know something about politics, the typical citizen is poorly informed, and only a small group is very knowledgeable about politics. Differentiating people according to their perceptions of the most important national problem does not reveal pockets of well‐informed “issue publics” among the (...) electorate. The NES data also show that knowledge makes a difference in how people feel about government spending for social‐welfare programs, and in how well citizens were able to connect their partisanship and ideological proclivities to their votes in the 2000 presidential election. (shrink)

The topic of the democratic public's limited competence has preoccupied students of democracy for centuries. Anecdotal concerns about the problem reached their peak of sophistication in the writings of Walter Lippmann and Joseph Schumpeter. Not until Philip E. Converse's “The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics” did statistical research overwhelmingly confirm the worst fears of such democratic skeptics. Subsequent work has tended to confirm Converse's picture of a tiny stratum of well‐informed ideological elites whose passionate political debates find little (...) echo, or even awareness, in the mass public. While a great deal of attention has been devoted to “saving” democratic legitimacy from such findings, the Converse‐inspired work of John Zaller (1992) shows how fruitful Converse's basic ideas can be not only in analyzing real‐world political events, but in pulling together and stimulating new lines of research into what moves the “creative synthesizers” of belief systems; into the factors that affect the small numbers of people who grasp such systems and attempt to transmit them to the public; and into the long‐term psychological or cultural sources of the predispositions with which members of the mass public confront the resulting political messages. (shrink)

On American Freedom critiques the value of freedom as it is now manifest in America's political, economic, and cultural life in light of a more robust value of freedom coordinated around human dignity and civic participation. Drawing from historic sources as diverse as James Madison, Adam Smith, and Catherine Beecher - as well as from contemporary sources like George W. Bush and Bob Dylan - the book paints a bleak picture of this most cherished American value. At the same time, (...) On American Freedom outlines a reform initiative that will secure a more preferred value of freedom by simply by reconfiguring the federal system to include reorganized and empowered city-states capable of serving as sites for a fuller form of freedom than Americans now enjoy. (shrink)

Over the course of his career, Murray Edelman made one of the few sustained attempts by a theoretically inclined political scientist to explore the effects of the public's overwhelming ignorance of politics. In his early work, he focused on political elites? manipulation of an ignorant public through the deployment of symbolism. In his later work, however, he suggested that even elites are the puppets of their ideologies. His early work has been well received; his later work has gone largely unremarked. (...) The reason may have to do with the very thing that Edelman was, in his later work, addressing: the ideological biases of his politically elite audience. (shrink)

Second Life, an on-line, interactive environment in which users create avatars through which they have virtual experiences, is a contemporary experiment in utopia. While most often it is used for social networking, it also is used for commercial and educational purposes, as well as for political activism. Here, we share the results from a course that uses Second Life as a tool for examining social justice. We examine the notion of utopia, present the results of a pre- and post-survey designed (...) to measure the effectiveness of our Second Life course, and relate insights gleaned from the centerpiece assignment of the course that required students to construct proposals for how $200 best could be spent in Second Life to promote social justice. Finally, we demonstrate how Second Life can be a helpful classroom tool for examining John Rawls’s influential utopian work, A Theory of Justice. (shrink)

One of the Belmont Report’s most important contributions was the clear and serviceable distinction it drew between standard medical practice and biomedical research. A less well-known achievement of the Report was its conceptualization of innovative practice, a type of medical practice that is often mistaken for research because it is new, untested, or experimental. Although the discussion of innovative practice in Belmont is brief and somewhat cryptic, this does not reflect the significant progress its authors made in understanding innovative practice (...) and the distinctive ethical issues it raises. This article explores the history and broader context of Belmont’s conception of innovative practice, its strengths and weaknesses, and its contemporary relevance for scholars working in bioethics and health policy. While this conception of innovative practice deserves our attention, it is inherently limited in some important ways. (shrink)

The Life of the Transcendental Ego presents essays by a number of distinguished writers in the continental tradition of philosophy. The essays include problems in transcendental philosophy, the nature of autobiography, the validity of existentialism, the possibilities of phenomenology, as well as focused discussions of concrete issues in aesthetics and ethics.

A philosophical consideration of political affairs has the disadvantage of being incapable, in and of itself, of implying any specific practical action or policy. It would, then, seem useless except for the accompanying reflection that specific policy undertaken without any attention to principles, is mindless; and mindless action can have no expectation either of practical effect or of intellectual defense. No doubt the relation of principles to action is complex indeed; but at least it can be said that practical principles (...) without reference to possible action are vacuous, and action which can not be clarified by principle is aimless commotion. Principled action offers us then the best that can be hoped for. That, however, is the work not of philosophy but of statesmanship, a faculty which is as theoretically clear as it need be but also skilled by experience in reading the existing political scene. Accordingly my present remarks aim only at some principles involved in the understanding of war, focusing on those which seem conspicuously absent in contemporary discussion, and not at defending any specific judgments about the current war. Examples of incoherent principles will be drawn from present discussions; but any other war might have served equally well. No judgment about the present war can be derived from these remarks on principles; and if most of the false principles are quoted from the antiwar side, it is only because that side has been more vocal. (shrink)

Abstract:In this paper, I analyze the wilderness kind in terms of both natural and social elements. As a natural kind, wilderness has a historical essentialist analysis in terms of a lineage defined by historical, relational properties. The wilderness kind also has a social component, for only those spaces humans can access and develop can count as wilderness. Advantages to the view include a good fit with intuitive cases, as well as satisfying a plausible set of general conditions on social kinds. (...) I also consider and reply to objections concerning lineages and kind membership, vagueness, developability as accidental to wilderness, anthropocentrism, and the distinction between kinds and concepts. (shrink)

The question of the possibility of philosophy being an art form concludes Robert Nozick’s Philosophical Explanations.1 He seems to be of the view that an affirmative answer would augur well for further inquiry into the kinds of core philosophical questions, those that “make us tremble,” he writes, which he has just examined: the identity of the self; why is there something rather than nothing; knowledge and skepticism; free will; the foundation of ethics; and the meaning of life.2 These explorations aim (...) at answering the question: “how are we valuable and precious?”. Although he does not spell it out, it is clear that he seems to think that showing that philosophy can be an art form would reveal how it... (shrink)

Today, happily, we have much less confidence than a Montesquieu or a Hegel in depicting the “spirits” of nations, times, and generations. The more intelligible such depictions are, and the more suitable for their role in world–historical drama, the less plausible they seem to those whose spirits they are supposed to be. For no matter how subtly drawn and with no matter how many reservations, they remain in the end categories. The application of categories to any living subject matter itself (...) generates a categorial malaise: the category is clear, but life while it illustrates that category, also illustrates its opposite, as well as an indefinite number of other categories not encompassed in either the one or the other. (shrink)

Running back then, we can collect a few salient facts about the Invisible World:While things in it are visible, the World itself upon which they are conditioned is not and can not be in principle.Among things in the world, contingency or surprize is a central feature, making possible both the content of perception and the possibility of action, and is in effect some sort of synonym for life. The contingency means both the nondeducibility of what happens as well as the (...) dependence of each thing upon the others in varying degrees of relevance.The World of events and things, certainly ourselves, is composed of singulars, unrepeatable and unique occurrences or things; singularity also derives from the World Itself, the invisible singular condition of Fact.Within the world, each thing appears within a horizon, a last limit of visibility for us wherever we are, but that horizon is itself movable as we move our existential point of view. Beyond one horizon there are other things not too unlike ontologically the ones we see, and so emerges what Jaspers calls a ‘horizon of horizons.’ In short, we remeet that famous ‘etc.’ almost invariably bound up with what the world of things is for us. This ‘horizon of horizons’ itself derives from another aspect of the World as Invisible: its absolute self-enclosed infinity. How else could such an absolute cause or condition express itself seriatim except through endlessness?The last feature we noted was the fracture within the world of things: to wit, that while complete in one sense, in another our world is far from constituting a whole. We are there, too, and are not members of it no matter how much some would like to be so.Singular, unique condition of what is in the world, a world of essential surprize, interdependence, increasingly the Invisible World begins to take on the characteristics of the old philosopher's God, something of the order of Spinoza's God, natura naturans, the world of things being the same substance but taken bit by bit, natura naturata. And if this identity of God and the World seems and has always seemed slightly blasphemous, since God is usually opposed to the World, to soften the blow we might only consider their point of resolution: the Soul, or Transcendental Ego, has the possibility of knowing all this, or at least exploring their unity. To revert to Spinoza again, each Attribute, in his case Extention and Thought, is infinite, but infinite in its own kind. The world of things appears to us indeed infinite, but then it is only a ‘kind’; there is also Thought, or infinite Subjectivity, also infinite in its own kind. And what does thought think about? Well, most usually the world into which it was born; but then it is not long before it perceives the absolute condition of that, and then also there is its reflexivity upon itself. Together, though not by way of summation, the Absolute Source as described is the philosopher's God. Spinoza also said that our Idea of God is identical with God's idea of Himself. (shrink)

In a world of massive extinctions where not all taxa can be saved, how ought biologists to decide their preservation priorities? When biologists make recommendations regarding conservation, should their analyses be based on scientific criteria, on public or lay criteria, on economic or some other criteria? As a first step in answering this question, we examine the issue of whether biologists ought to try to save the endangered Florida panther, a well known glamour taxon. To evaluate the merits of panther (...) preservation, we examine three important arguments of biologists who are skeptical about the desirability of panther preservation. These arguments are (1) that conservation dollars ought to be spent in more efficient ways than panther preservation; (2) that biologists and conservationists ought to work to preserve species before subspecies; and (3) that biologists and conservationists ought to work to save habitats before species or subspecies. We conclude that, although all three arguments are persuasive, none of them provides convincing grounds for foregoing panther preservation in favor of other, more scientifically significant conservation efforts. Our conclusion is based, in part, on the argument that biologists ought to employ ethical, as well as scientific, rationality in setting conservation priorities and that ethical rationality may provide persuasive grounds for preserving taxa that often are not viewed by biologists as of great importance. (shrink)

Shaftesbury's philosophy combined a powerfully teleological approach, according to which all things are part of a harmonious cosmic order, with sharp observations of human nature (see section 2 below). Shaftesbury is often credited with originating the moral sense theory, although his own views of virtue are a mixture of rationalism and sentimentalism (section 3). While he argued that virtue leads to happiness (section 4), Shaftesbury was a fierce opponent of psychological and ethical egoism (section 5) and of the egoistic social (...) contract theory of Hobbes (section 6). Shaftesbury advanced a view of aesthetic judgment that was non-egoistic and objectivist, in that he thought that correct aesthetic judgment was disinterested and reflected accurately the harmonious cosmic order (section 7). Shaftesbury's belief in an harmonious cosmic order also dominated his view of religion, which was based on the idea that the universe clearly exhibits signs of perfect divine design (section 8). According to Shaftesbury, the ultimate end of religion, as well as of virtue, beauty, and philosophical understanding (all of which are turn out to be one and the same thing), is to identify completely with the universal system of which one is a part. (shrink)

Abstract:Bertrand’s elder brother, John Francis Stanley (Frank) Russell, who was the second Earl Russell for over 50 years, led a fascinating life as a politician, electrical engineer, author, traveller, businessman, barrister, law reformer, polemicist and pioneer motorist. Notorious in his lifetime for his sensational marital history, his prominence has waned since his death to the extent that he is remembered mainly as “the wicked earl” who was twice divorced and once imprisoned for bigamy. His achievements do not match (...) those of his brother, grandfather, third wife and other relatives, but his life merits examination in its own right as well for its familial links with leading figures in Britain’s political, cultural and intellectual history. (shrink)

Shaftesbury's Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times is a collection of treatises on interconnected themes in moral philosophy, aesthetics, literature, and politics. It was immensely influential on eighteenth-century British taste and manners, literature, and thought, and also onthe Continental Enlightenment. The author was a Whig, a Stoic, and a theist, whose commitment to political liberty and civic virtue shaped all of his other concerns, from the role of the arts in a free state to the nature of the beautiful and (...) the good.This is the first new edition of Shaftesbury's Characteristicks as a coherent collection for almost a century. A substantial Introduction discusses Shaftesbury's works and ideas in the context of his times, and traces the reception and influence of his writings through the eighteenth century andbeyond. A full and scholarly commentary is provided, as well as a complete textual apparatus. The very thorough Index is Shaftesbury's own.The text is essentially that of the first edition of 1711, as marked up with changes by Shaftesbury himself in preparation for the posthumous second edition of 1714; and the striking emblematic engravings he commissioned especially for the second edition are incorporated. (shrink)

This study compares Australian marketers with those in the United States along lines that are particular to the study of ethics. The test measured two different moral philosophies, idealism and relativism, and compared perceptions of ethical problems, ethical intentions, and corporate ethical values. According to Hofstede's cultural typologies, there should be little difference between American and Australian marketers, but the study did find significant differences. Australians tended to be more idealistic and more relativistic than Americans and the other results were (...) mixed, making it difficult to generalize about the effects of moral philosophies on the components of ethical decision-making measured here. This is an important finding; as firms become increasingly more globalized, marketers will more often be involved in cross-cultural ethical dilemmas and it seems natural to assume that similar cultures will have similar ethical orientations. That assumption may well prove erroneous. (shrink)

Philosophers, policymakers, and scientists have long asserted that ecological science – and especially notions of homeostasis, balance, or stability – help to determine environmental values and to supply imperatives for environmental ethics and policy. We argue that this assertion is questionable. There are no well developed general ecological theories having predictive power, and fundamental ecological concepts, such as 'community' and 'stability', are used in inconsistent and ambiguous ways. As a consequence, the contribution of ecology to environmental ethics and values lies (...) more in the realm of natural history and case studies than in the realm of general theory. Moreover, although general ecological theory is unable to contribute to environmental values in the way many philosophers and policymakers have hoped, environmental values can and do contribute to ecological hypotheses and methods. Using examples related to preservation versus development, hunting versus animal rights, and controversies over pest control, we show that, because ecology is conceptually and theoretically underdetermined, environmental values often influence the practice of ecological science. (shrink)

David Earl Over is a leading cognitive scientist and, with his firm grounding in philosophical logic, he also exerts a powerful influence on the psychology of reasoning. He is responsible for not only a large body of empirical work and accompanying theory, but for advancing a major shift in thinking about reasoning, commonly known as the 'new paradigm' in the psychology of human reasoning. Over's signature mix of philosophical logic and experimental psychology has inspired generations of researchers, psychologists, and (...) philosophers alike over more than a quarter of a century. The chapters in this volume, written by a leading group of contributors including a number who helped shape the psychology of reasoning as we know it today, each take their starting point from the key themes of Over's ground-breaking work. The essays in this collection explore a wide range of central topics--such as rationality, bias, dual processes, and dual systems--as well as contemporary psychological and philosophical theories of conditionals. It concludes with an engaging new chapter, authored by David Over himself, which details and analyses the new paradigm psychology of reasoning. This book is therefore important reading for scholars, researchers, and advanced students in psychology, philosophy, and the cognitive sciences, including those who are not familiar with Over's thought already. (shrink)

Earl Conee is a well known contemporary defender of the impossibility of moral dilemmas. In his 1982 paper "Against Moral Dilemmas" he argued that moral dilemmas are impossible because the existence of such a dilemma would entail that some obligatory action is forbidden, which is absurd. More recently, in "Why Moral Dilemmas are Impossible" he has defended the impossibility of moral dilemmas by claiming that the moral status of an action depends in part on the moral status of its (...) alternatives. I will here argue that this claim -- as he understands it -- is sufficiently controversial to undermine the force of his argument. (shrink)

Evidentialism is a popular theory of epistemic justification, yet, as early proponents of the theory Earl Conee and Richard Feldman admit, there are many elements that must be developed before Evidentialism can provide a full account of epistemic justification, or well-founded belief. It is the aim of this book to provide the details that are lacking; here McCain moves past Evidentialism as a mere schema by putting forward and defending a full-fledged theory of epistemic justification. In this book McCain (...) offers novel approaches to several elements of well-founded belief. Key among these are an original account of what it takes to have information as evidence, an account of epistemic support in terms of explanation, and a causal account of the basing relation that is far superior to previous accounts. The result is a fully developed Evidentialist account of well-founded belief. (shrink)

This volume re-examines traditional interpretations of the rise of modern aesthetics in eighteenth-century Britain and Germany. It provides a new account that connects aesthetic experience with morality, science, and political society. In doing so, the book challenges longstanding teleological narratives that emphasize disinterestedness and the separation of aesthetics from moral, cognitive, and political interests. The chapters are divided into three thematic parts. The chapters in Part I demonstrate the heteronomy of eighteenth-century British aesthetics. They chart the evolution of aesthetic concepts (...) and discuss the ethical and political significance of the aesthetic theories of several key figures, namely the third Earl of Shaftesbury, David Hume, and Adam Smith. Part II explores the ways in which eighteenth-century German thinkers examine aesthetic experience and moral concerns and relate to the work of their British counterparts. The chapters here cover the work of Kant, Moses Mendelssohn, Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, and Madame de Staël. Finally, Part III explores the interrelation of science, aesthetics, and a new model of society in the work of Goethe, Johann Wilhelm Ritter, Friedrich Hölderlin, and William Hazlitt, among others. This volume develops unique discussions of the rise of aesthetic autonomy in the eighteenth century. In bringing together well-known scholars working on British and German eighteenth-century aesthetics, philosophy, and literature, it will appeal to scholars and advanced students in a range of disciplines who are interested in this topic. (shrink)

One of the most significant disputes in early modern philosophy was between the moral rationalists and the moral sentimentalists. The moral rationalists — such as Ralph Cudworth, Samuel Clarke and John Balguy — held that morality originated in reason alone. The moral sentimentalists — such as Anthony Ashley Cooper, the third Earl of Shaftesbury, Francis Hutcheson and David Hume — held that morality originated at least partly in sentiment. In addition to arguments, the rationalists and sentimentalists developed rich analogies. (...) The most significant analogy the rationalists developed was between morality and mathematics. The most significant analogy the sentimentalists developed was between morality and beauty. These two analogies illustrate well the main ideas, underlying insights, and accounts of moral phenomenology the two positions have to offer. An examination of the two analogies will thus serve as a useful introduction to the debate between moral rationalism and moral sentimentalism as a whole. (shrink)

Today we are all familiar with the iconic pictures of the nebulae produced by the Hubble Space Telescope’s digital cameras. But there was a time, before the successful application of photography to the heavens, in which scientists had to rely on handmade drawings of these mysterious phenomena. Observing by Hand sheds entirely new light on the ways in which the production and reception of handdrawn images of the nebulae in the nineteenth century contributed to astronomical observation. Omar W. Nasim investigates (...) hundreds of unpublished observing books and paper records from six nineteenth-century observers of the nebulae: Sir John Herschel; William Parsons, the third Earl of Rosse; William Lassell; Ebenezer Porter Mason; Ernst Wilhelm Leberecht Tempel; and George Phillips Bond. Nasim focuses on the ways in which these observers created and employed their drawings in data-driven procedures, from their choices of artistic materials and techniques to their practices and scientific observation. He examines the ways in which the act of drawing complemented the acts of seeing and knowing, as well as the ways that making pictures was connected to the production of scientific knowledge. An impeccably researched, carefully crafted, and beautifully illustrated piece of historical work, Observing by Hand will delight historians of science, art, and the book, as well as astronomers and philosophers. (shrink)

Although this issue of the JSE, as usual, contains a diverse cocktail of interesting papers, two of those papers are sufficiently out of the ordinary to deserve a few comments. In this issue, we fearlessly address—for the second time in the JSE’s history—one of the thorniest and most interesting topics in English literature—namely, the debate over Shakespeare authorship. As some current SSE members are undoubtedly aware, many have challenged the orthodox view that the works of Shakespeare were written by the (...) person traditionally identified as the author—that is, William Shaxpere of Stratford-upon-Avon. SSE stalwart (and my editorial predecessor) Peter Sturrock tackled the topic in the JSE in 2008 (Sturrock 2008), and then several years later followed that up with a book on the subject (Sturrock 2013). What Sturrock did brilliantly was to demonstrate how one can invoke Bayesian probability theory to challenge the orthodoxy in a compelling way. For this issue, we reprint that paper and combine it with a penetrating new work on the subject by David Roper. Roper approaches the matter from a different angle than that adopted by Sturrock. He draws on the science of cryptography to argue that the true author of the Shakespeare works was Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford. (This is also the conclusion emerging most naturally from Sturrock’s book.) Roper argues that Sixteenth-Century techniques of using codes and ciphers were both common and quite well-developed, and that these permitted concealing secret messages within apparently innocent passages of prose or poetry. Moreover, Roper marshals a great deal of historical evidence for the claim that de Vere and others had good reason to conceal de Vere’s authorship of the works attributed to Shaxpere. So I hope our readers will enjoy this excursion into what should be largely unfamiliar territory for most of them. I know I learned a great deal from these papers, and I’m pleased that the JSE can make a scientific contribution to this venerable debate. As I see it, the papers by Sturrock and Roper together constitute a fascinating and impressive full frontal assault on the orthodox view. (shrink)

Amajor shift in critical attitudes toward the arts took place in the eighteenth century. The fine arts were now looked upon as a group, divorced from the sciences and governed by their own rules. The century abounded with treatises that sought to establish the overriding principles that differentiate art from other walks of life as well as the principles that differentiate them from each other. This burst of scholarly activity resulted in the incorporation of aesthetics among the classic branches of (...) philosophy, heralding the cognitive turn in epistemology. Among the writings that initiated this turn, none were more important than the British contribution. The Arts in Mind brings together an annotated selection of these key texts. A companion volume to the editors' Tuning the Mind, which analyzed this major shift in world view and its historical context, The Arts in Mind is the first representative sampling of what constitutes an important school of British thought. The texts are neither obscure nor forgotten, although most histories of eighteenth-century thought treat them in a partial or incomplete way. Here they are made available complete or through representative extracts together with an editor's introduction to each selection providing essential biographical and intellectual background. The treatises included are representative of the changed climate of opinion which entailed new issues such as those of perception, symbolic function, and the role of history and culture in shaping the world. Contents include: Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury, "Characteristics"; Francis Hutcheson, "Inquiry Concerning Beauty, Harmony and Design"; Hildebrand Jacob, "Of the Sister Arts: An Essay"; James Harris, "On Music, Painting and Poetry"; Charles Avison, "An Essay on Musical Expression"; James Beattie, "Essay on Poetry and Music as They Affect the Mind"; Daniel Webb, "Observations on the Correspondence between Poetry and Music"; Thomas Twining, "On Poetry Considered as an Imitative Art," "On the Different Senses of the Word Imitative as Applied to Music by the Ancients and by the Moderns"; Adam Smith, "Of the Nature of that Imitation which Takes Place in What are Called the Imaginative Arts." Ruth Katz is Emanuel Alexandre Professor of Musicology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She is co-editor with Carl Dahlhaus of Contemplating Music, a four-volume study of the philosophy of music. Ruth HaCohen is Clarica and Fred Davidson Senior Lecturer of Musicology at the Hebrew University. (shrink)

Anthony Ashley Cooper, the Third Earl of Shaftesbury, was the grandson of the First Earl of Shaftesbury. The First Earl, along with John Locke, was a leader and founder of the Whig movement in Britain. Locke was the First Earl's secretary and also the tutor of the Third Earl. Both the First and Third Earls were members of parliament and supporters of Whig causes. Although both the First and Third Earls were involved in politics, the (...) Third Earl is better known for intellectual pursuits. Indeed, the Third Earl is second only to Locke in terms of influence during the eighteenth century. Yet if one takes into account effects upon literature, the arts, and manners, as well as upon philosophical trends and theories, Shaftesbury might be even more influential. Even if we restrict ourselves to philosophy, Shaftesbury's ideas were admired by thinkers as different as Leibniz and Montesquieu—something which could obviously not be said about Locke. Within ethics, Shaftesbury influenced Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, Samuel Butler, and Adam Smith and is credited with founding the “moral sense” school of thought. (shrink)

The generality problem is one of the most pressing challenges for reliabilism. The problem begins with this question: of all the process types exemplified by a given process token, which types are the relevant ones for determining whether the resultant belief counts as knowledge? As philosophers like Earl Conee and Richard Feldman have argued, extant responses to the generality problem have failed, and it looks as if no solution is forthcoming. In this paper, I present a new response to (...) the generality problem that illuminates the nature of knowledge-enabling reliability. My response builds upon the insights of Juan Comesaña’s well-founded solution to the generality problem, according to which relevant types are content–evidence pairs, i.e., descriptions of both the target belief’s content and the evidence on which the belief was based. While most responses to the generality problem, including Comesaña’s, only posit one relevant type for any given process token, I argue that knowledge-enabling reliability requires a process token to be reliable with respect to multiple content–evidence pairs, each with varying degrees of descriptive specificity. I call this solution multi-type evidential reliabilism. After offering a clear formulation of MTE, I conclude by arguing that MTE is sufficiently informative to rebut Conee and Feldman’s generality problem objection to a reliability condition on knowledge. (shrink)

Adam Carter’s book Autonomous Knowledge: Radical Enhancement, Autonomy, and the Future of Knowing is excellent. It is clear, well-written, and interesting. On the whole, Autonomous Knowledge is rea...

In his book Objectivity, William Earle has attempted to give the phenomenologically intentional aspect of awareness its philosophical due. To sharpen the issues, it may be well to review some of the main points of his treatment. Earle combines a realist view of the object of awareness with a partially Hegelian conception of awareness. Awareness, according to Earle, involves three stages, recognizable as thesis, antithesis and synthesis. The thesis is made up of the subject and object intertwined, and not yet (...) distinguished from each other. The antithesis is constituted by a recoil of the subject from the object back upon itself. Earle terms this recoil a primary reflexivity of the subject, which, though ingredient in awareness, is not yet sufficient to constitute awareness. Whereas for Hegel the reflexive recoil of the subject back upon itself constitutes the object for the subject, for Earle this recoil of the subject in no way creates its object. The reflexive withdrawal of the subject from the object simply separates two metaphysically distinct entities. Hegel's separation of subject and object alienates the subject from himself; Earle's separation of subject and object alienates the subject from the world. But for both Earle and Hegel, knowledge of the object does not take place until a redemptive synthesis of subject and object occurs. In the Hegelian scheme the redemptive synthesis unifies the subject with himself. According to Earle, however, the redemptive synthesis achieves only knowledge of the object as other than the subject; that is, it is the object as distant from, therefore intended by, the subject that is known. The final stage in knowledge is thus constituted by a positive approach of the subject to a metaphysically distinct object. Earle must therefore insist, as he does, that immediate self-awareness is, in principle, impossible. He characterizes his own method as retrospectively reflexive, very different from the primary reflexivity involved in the constitution of awareness. To justify the validity and possibility of this retrospective reflexivity, he argues for the metaphysical identity of a subject forever outside of and beyond its own acts, and, of course, inaccessible to knowledge in a way that the world independent of the subject is not. (shrink)

By the 1880s it had become clear that the intellectual tide in Britain was turning against the idea of a minimal state. Under the influence of the New Idealists, the Liberal Party, once the champion of individual liberty, had changed into an organ for interventionist legislation. Challenging this movement was an assortment of anti-collectivists including Old Liberals, Tories, and radical individualists. Spearheading the defence of individualism was the 10th Earl of Wemyss, Francis Wemyss-Charteris-Douglas. Most famous for his role in (...) the formation of the Liberty and Property Defence League, Wemyss worked tirelessly in parliament to obstruct legislation deemed inimical to liberty, as well as to organise a mass educational effort to instruct the public about the errors of collectivist philosophy and policy. This paper examines the role Wemyss played within late Victorian individualism and considers how the melding of traditionalism and individualism provided an intellectual home for libertarianism on the Right. (shrink)

Anthony Ashley Cooper, the Third Earl of Shaftesbury, was the grandson of the First Earl of Shaftesbury. The First Earl, along with John Locke, was a leader and founder of the Whig movement in Britain. Locke was the First Earl's secretary and also the tutor of the Third Earl. Both the First and Third Earls were members of parliament and supporters of Whig causes. Although both the First and Third Earls were involved in politics, the (...) Third Earl is better known for intellectual pursuits. Indeed, the Third Earl is second only to Locke in terms of influence during the eighteenth century. Yet if one takes into account effects upon literature, the arts, and manners, as well as upon philosophical trends and theories, Shaftesbury might be even more influential. Even if we restrict ourselves to philosophy, Shaftesbury's ideas were admired by thinkers as different as Leibniz and Montesquieu—something which could obviously not be said about Locke. Within ethics, Shaftesbury influenced Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, Samuel Butler, and Adam Smith and is credited with founding the “moral sense” school of thought. (shrink)

The letters of the learned and indomitable Lady Anne Bacon, mother of the philosopher Francis Bacon, are made accessible for the first time in this edition. Bringing together nearly two hundred letters, scattered in repositories throughout the world, her correspondence sheds fresh light not only on the activities of early modern elite women, but also on well-known Elizabethan figures, including her children, her privy councillor relatives, such as William Cecil, Lord Burghley, and controversial figures, including the Earl of Essex. (...) Translations of Lady Anne's frequent use of Latin, Greek and Hebrew reveal the impact of her humanist education on her correspondence and a substantial introductory chapter allows a detailed picture of Anne's life to emerge through her surviving letters. (shrink)

‘I proceed. ‘Edwin and Morcar, the earls of Mercia and Northumbria, declared for him: and even Stigand, the patriotic archbishop of Canterbury, found it advisable—”’ ‘Found what?” said the Duck. ‘Found it’ the Mouse replied rather crossly: ‘of course you know what “it” means.’ ‘I know what “it” means well enough, when I find a thing’, said the Duck: ‘it's generally a frog or a worm. The question is, what did the archbishop find?’.