Ferdinand Mount has been fascinated by the great thinkers and politicians who have shaped human history over the past two millennia In this fascinating, and provocative book, he examines the proposals for a political theory from a number of widely different historical figures. Twelve key people, from the great orator and statesman of Ancient Greece (Pericles) to the inspiration of the founding of the state of Pakistan (Muhammad Iqbal) we take a colourful and rip-roaring journey through the historical figures (...) who have both inspired and provoked Mount in equal measure. The lives of men such as Jesus Christ, Rousseau, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, and Thomas Jefferson are discussed and comparisons are drawn between the various approaches each figure promoted in their works - whether philosophical, or political theories. For those wishing to be guided by Mount's choices and be swept along by his brilliantly erudite prose, this will be a particular enjoyable read. Lots of colour, humour and passion governed all these people careers and Mount brings them to life like no one else can. Praise for the international-bestselling Tears of the Rajas:- 'Mount is a skilled and fluent writer who does his subject justice' --Literary Review 'Mount relates this remarkable story with a gentle wit, a lightness of touch, a boyish enthusiasm as well as a genius for the telling pen-portrait... It is a remarkable story, and cumulatively amounts to an epic panorama of British Indian history much more substantial than the 'collection of Indian tales, a human jungle book', which Mount modestly describes as his aim in the introduction.' --William Dalrymple, The Spectator 'What [Mount] provides instead is of far greater value: a perceptive antidote to nationalistic prejudicial thinking, and an opportunity for a greater understanding of the aftereffects of British imperialism in some of the world's most troubled regions.' Sunday Times 'Although Tears of the Rajas is replete with stirring tales of adventure, it is a deeply humane book. Mount's heart is at all times with the people of India, whose lives are turned upside down by blundering attempts at modernisation.' The Times. (shrink)

In a recent discussion article in this journal, Gila Sher responds to some of my criticisms of her work on what she calls the formal-structural account of logical consequence. In the present paper I reply and attempt to advance the discussion in a constructive way. Unfortunately, Sher seems to have not fully understood my 1997. Several of the defenses she mounts in her 2001 are aimed at views I do not hold and did not advance in my 1997. Most prominent (...) among these are her claims that I reject the formal-structural account, because it licenses “unnatural” logical constants, and that I consider the “truth-functional criterion” for connectives “a paradigm of a successful criterion of logicality”. Both of these claims are simply false, as even a moderately careful reading of my 1997 will show. Other charges she makes have some basis in fact but are inaccurate. For example, she says that I claim that FS is “neutral with regard to the apriority of logic,” and that this neutrality “renders it inconsistent”. What I actually say is that Sher’s acceptance of the neutrality in question is “inconsistent with part of the legacy of Tarski, a legacy that she finds very congenial”, not that FS itself is inconsistent. More interestingly, she misunderstands my claim about the apriority of logic, and clarification of this misunderstanding suggests two distinct ways in which logic might be held to be free of empirical influence. It is also noteworthy that Sher’s statements about the apriority of logic constitute both a change in the position she took in her 1991 and, although she seems not to realize it, an admission that she does not take issue with one of my major criticisms. (shrink)

This volume presents fourteen of William E. Mann's essays on three prominent figures in late Patristic and early medieval philosophy: Augustine, Anselm, and Peter Abelard. The essays explore some of the quandaries, arguments, and theories presented in their writings. The essays in this volume complement those to be found in Mann's God, Modality, and Morality. While the essays in God, Modality, and Morality are primarily essays in philosophical theology, those found in the present volume are more varied. Some still (...) deal with issues in philosophical theology. Other essays are aporetic in nature, discussing cases of philosophical perplexity, sometimes but not always leaving the cases unresolved.All the essays display, directly or indirectly, the philosophical influence that Augustine has had. His Confessions is a rich source for philosophical puzzlement. Individual essays examine his reflections on the alleged innocence of infants, which raises questions about cognitive, emotional, and linguistic development; his juvenile theft of pears and its relation to moral motivation; and his struggle with and resolution of the problem of evil. One essay presents the rudiments of an Augustinian moral theory, rooted in his understanding of the Sermon on the Mount. Another essay illustrates the theory by discussing his writings on lying. Mann argues that Abelard amplified Augustine's moral theory by emphasizing the crucial role that intention plays in wrongdoing.Augustine bequeathed to Anselm the notion of. (shrink)

Skeptical theism contends that, due to our cognitive limitations, we cannot expect to be able to determine whether there are reasons which justify God’s permission of apparently unjustified evils. Because this is so, the existence of these evils does not constituted evidence against God’s existence. A common criticism is that the skeptical theist is implicitly committed to other, less palatable forms of skepticism, especially moral skepticism. I examine a recent defense against this charge mounted by Michael Bergmann. I point out (...) that the Bergmannian skeptical theist is unable to determine concerning any event or feature of the world whether that feature or event is good or evil all-things-considered. Because of this the skeptical theist must abandon any attempt to act in such a way that the world becomes better rather than worse as a result. These, I claim, are seriously skeptical conclusions, and should cause us to be skeptical about skeptical theism itself. (shrink)

Syntactic semantics is a holistic, conceptual-role-semantic theory of how computers can think. But Fodor and Lepore have mounted a sustained attack on holistic semantic theories. However, their major problem with holism (that, if holism is true, then no two people can understand each other) can be fixed by means of negotiating meanings. Syntactic semantics and Fodor and Lepore’s objections to holism are outlined; the nature of communication, miscommunication, and negotiation is discussed; Bruner’s ideas about the negotiation of meaning are explored; (...) and some observations on a problem for knowledge representation in AI raised by Winston are presented. (shrink)

Intelligent design begins with a seemingly innocuous question: Can objects, even if nothing is known about how they arose, exhibit features that reliably signal the action of an intelligent cause? To see what’s at stake, consider Mount Rushmore. The evidence for Mount Rushmore’s design is direct—eyewitnesses saw the sculptor Gutzon Borglum spend the better part of his life designing and building this structure. But what if there were no direct evidence for Mount Rushmore’s design? What if humans (...) went extinct and aliens, visiting the earth, discovered Mount Rushmore in substantially the same condition as it is now? (shrink)

In a recent discussion article in this journal, Gila Sher responds to some of my criticisms of her work on what she calls the formal-structural account of logical consequence. In the present paper I reply and attempt to advance the discussion in a constructive way. Unfortunately, Sher seems to have not fully understood my 1997. Several of the defenses she mounts in her 2001 are aimed at views I do not hold and did not advance in my 1997. Most prominent (...) among these are her claims that I reject the formal-structural account, because it licenses “unnatural” logical constants, and that I consider the “truth-functional criterion” for connectives “a paradigm of a successful criterion of logicality”. Both of these claims are simply false, as even a moderately careful reading of my 1997 will show. Other charges she makes have some basis in fact but are inaccurate. For example, she says that I claim that FS is “neutral with regard to the apriority of logic,” and that this neutrality “renders it inconsistent”. What I actually say is that Sher’s acceptance of the neutrality in question is “inconsistent with part of the legacy of Tarski, a legacy that she finds very congenial”, not that FS itself is inconsistent. More interestingly, she misunderstands my claim about the apriority of logic, and clarification of this misunderstanding suggests two distinct ways in which logic might be held to be free of empirical influence. It is also noteworthy that Sher’s statements about the apriority of logic constitute both a change in the position she took in her 1991 and, although she seems not to realize it, an admission that she does not take issue with one of my major criticisms. (shrink)

The problem of truth in fiction concerns how to tell whether a given proposition is true in a given fiction. Thus far, the nearly universal consensus has been that some propositions are ‘implicitly true’ in some fictions: such propositions are not expressed by any explicit statements in the relevant work, but are nevertheless held to be true in those works on the basis of some other set of criteria. I call this family of views ‘implicitism’. I argue that implicitism faces (...) serious problems, whereas the opposite view is much more plausible than has previously been thought. After mounting a limited defence of explicitism, I explore a difficult problem for the view and discuss some possible responses. (shrink)

Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa, has established a new interdisciplinary program in science and religion. One of the features of this program is an undergraduate major in science and religion that requires substantial course work in at least one of the natural sciences as well as course work in philosophy, religion, and history. As a result of a grant from the John Templeton Foundation, Cornell College will offer a special course, God and Physics: From Aquinas to Quantum Mechanics (...) (April 1998), and will sponsor an international symposium on creation and contemporary cosmology (April 1999). Opportunities exist for interested scholars to come to Cornell as Templeton Visiting Fellows in order to participate in these activities. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume XXV, Numbers 1 and 2, April/November 1999, pp. 139-153 Hume on Monkish Virtues WILLIAM DAVIE In the second Enquiry1 Hume denounces the "monkish virtues," saying that men of sense will regard them as vices because they "cross all... desirable ends; stupify the understanding and harden the heart, obscure the fancy and sour the temper" (EPM 270). He includes under this heading, "Celibacy, fasting, penance, mortification, (...) self-denial, humility, silence, solitude." No doubt Hume's stance regarding the "monkish virtues" does fit into a particular vision of the desirable life, but it may be questioned whether it fits his philosophy with full consistency. In this paper, I will argue that Hume's explicit formula for identifying virtues fails to justify his rejection of the monkish virtues if it is followed without prejudice. I. Identifying Virtues Our whole comprehension of virtue, and our competence to identify it in any community, ultimately derives from our perception of virtue in particular instances. The edifice of morality reaches into the thin air of abstractions and general rules, but it does not begin there and it is always grounded in the concrete experience of human individuals. In the most basic case, what we perceive is not (say) the trait of kindness as embodied in George.2 We rather perceive the whole phenomenon of George in his particular situation. We pick up information about the person and the surroundings, including bits about motivation, moods, temptations, complications of all sorts, plus the general William Davie is an associate professor at the Department of Philosophy, 1295 University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403-1295, USA. e-mail: [email protected] 140 William Davie background understanding we have of human nature. We ascertain whether the man's character is useful or agreeable, for himself or others. All this is needed to "pave the way" for the activation of moral sentiment. Then we get an impression (not an idea) of the man's virtue; we feel the warm glow of George's kindness on this particular occasion. How does language figure in our experience of moral differences? We know that as any individual's time on earth mounts up, and as one gains a few years of experience, he or she will gradually acquire abstract ideas and the words which signify them. Here in brief is Hume's account of the formation process (T 17-25). The first order of business is to notice a resemblance among certain objects of experience; we apply the same word to all of them. Thus, we would gather indefinitely many instances in which the word 'kind' is applied to something, or where somebody speaks of 'kindness.' The word becomes associated with a certain custom, or habit of mind, which custom is evoked whenever we hear or speak that word, or at least whenever the word is used wrongly. In that event, the custom fires up some relevant counterexamples for our attention. If somebody asserts, "True kindness is always well-planned and fully reflective," our mind instantly lights upon cases of spontaneous or impulsive kindness. If we should overhear, "She is a very kind person, so people don't like her," we know that something is amiss. Our competence in handling abstract ideas clearly underwrites the catalog that Hume confidently envisions at the start of his second Enquiry. We can make two lists, one for virtues and one for vices. In this process, Hume thinks, "The very nature of language guides us almost infallibly" (EPM 174). We can easily appreciate why it should be so. Our moral epithets are mounted on items of direct perception. Our understanding of a particular word is really a custom of associating certain elements of our own experience. He offers some concrete guides, each of which can be used from one's armchair : 1. A philosopher can "enter into his own breast" for a moment, and consider whether or not he should desire to have this or that quality ascribed to him. 2. He can consider whether the attribution of a particular quality to him would come from a friend or an enemy. 3. He can consider whether a quality, if ascribed to any person, "implies... (shrink)

The doctrine of mens rea can be expressed in this way: MRP: If A is culpable for performing phi, then A performs phi intentionally in circumstances in which it is impermissible to perform phi. The Sermon on the Mount suggests the following principle: SMP: If A intends to perform phi in circumstances in which it would be impermissible for A to perform phi, then A’s intending to perform phi makes A as culpable as A would be were A to (...) perform phi. MRP and SMP are principles representative of intentionalism, a family of views that emphasizes the importance of intention to judgments about culpability. This essay examines an intentionalist’s defense of MRP with respect to lying, strict criminal liability, and the distinction between intention and foreseeability, along with a defense of SMP with respect to failed attempts, and self-defense. (shrink)

The Philistines.—Hebrew monotheism.—Administration of Samuel.—Early Hebrew psalmody.—Exterior marks of the Prophet.—Modes of divination.—Foreigndangers of Israel.—Appointment of Saul.—Romantic Philistine campaign.—Ammonite inroad.—Enmity with Amalek.—Massacre of the Amalekites.—David, anointed by Samuel.—David, Saul’s armour-bearer.—David, Saul’s son-in-law. —David, a freebooter.—David with Achish of Gath.—David reinforced from Israel.—David’s return to Ziklag.—Battle of Mount Gilboa.

This essay argues that neutral paternalism (NP) is problematic for antiperfectionist liberal theories. Section 2 raises textual evidence that Rawlsian liberalism does not oppose and may even support NP. In section 3, I cast doubt on whether NP should have a place in political liberalism by defending a partially comprehensive conception of the good I call “moral capacity at each moment,” or MCEM, that is inconsistent with NP. I then explain why MCEM is a reasonable conception on Rawls's account of (...) reasonableness. In section 4, I handle concerns that showing NP fails the test of Rawlsian public justification is a nonstarter since NP does not threaten any of our basic liberties. I sketch an argument that, if this is so, the burden is on political liberalism to defend its particular account of basic liberties, since MCEM is reasonable on Rawlsian grounds. More precisely, MCEM is a conception that challenges the way Rawls characterizes basic liberties; that is, his list of basic liberties should be more inclusive by political liberalism's own structural commitments, including Rawls's “liberal principle of legitimacy.” On this revised account, political liberalism can mount a strong opposition to hard legal paternalism. (shrink)

In Elephant , director Gus Van Sant dramatises a massacre at a suburban American high school in order to examine narrative cinema's ethical capacity to respond to that which resists being framed as a meaningful event. In the film, this stubborn stuff is experience shot through with contingency. Van Sant depicts acts of violence that are indiscriminate and, at best, ambiguously motivated, as well as school-day activities that appear coincidental and insignificant. This essay argues that the director aims to screen (...) contingency to mount a critique of conventional narrative film's terror of contingency, its anxious drive to convert all cinematic time to good, signifying use. It also argues that Van Sant complicates or crosses up this aim by constructing a self-reflexive text attuned to the inherent irresponsibility in assuming that radical contingency's dead time could be fully and faithfully animated on screen. While the film camera and a still camera used by a student photographer in the film shoot people with the ostensible aim of capturing contingency in all its otherness, both projects are, at the same time, linked, in complex ways, to the student killers who shoot people with the aim of eliminating all otherness. The film's recognition of its own drive to plot in a deadly fashion thus illustrates Van Sant's profound sensitivity to the challenges of responding responsibly to a time of terror and, more broadly, to the terrors of time. (shrink)

The philosophy of religion as a distinct discipline is an innovation of the last two hundred years, but its central topics--the existence and nature of the divine, humankind's relation to it, the nature of religion and its place in human life--have been with us since the inception of philosophy. Philosophers have long critically examined the truth of (and rational justification for) religious claims, and have explored such philosophically interesting phenomena as faith, religious experience and the distinctive features of religious discourse. (...) The second half of the twentieth-century has been an especially fruitful period, with philosophers using new developments in logic and epistemology to mount both sophisticated defenses of, and attacks on, religious claims. The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Religion contains newly commissioned chapters by 21 prominent experts who cover the field in a comprehensive but accessible manner. Each chapter is expository, critical, and representative of a distinctive viewpoint. The Handbook is divided into two sections. The first, "Problems," covers the most frequently discussed topics, among them arguments for God's existence, the problem of evil, and religious epistemology. The second is called "Approaches" and contains four essays assessing the advantages and disadvantages of different methods of practicing philosophy of religion. The Handbook offers contributors of high stature who present substantive and in-depth treatment of the most central topics. It is a must-have reference for anyone with an interest in philosophy and religion. (shrink)

BackgroundResearch ethics and the measures deployed to ensure ethical oversight of research (e.g., informed consent forms, ethics review) are vested with extremely important ethical and practical goals. Accordingly, these measures need to function effectively in real-world research and to follow high level standards.MethodsWe examined approved consent forms for Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) studies approved by Canadian research ethics boards (REBs).ResultsWe found evidence of variability in consent forms in matters of physical and psychological risk reporting. (...) Approaches used to tackle the emerging issue of incidental findings exposed extensive variability between and within research sites.ConclusionThe causes of variability in approved consent forms and studies need to be better understood. However, mounting evidence of administrative and practical hurdles within current ethics governance systems combined with potential sub-optimal provision of information to and protection of research subjects support other calls for more scrutiny of research ethics practices and applicable revisions. (shrink)

Richard Gale has mounted the most effective attack on religious experience’s cognitive credentials in recent decades. This article explains why I am nonetheless not persuaded by it. I argue that: (1) Contrary to Gale, mystical experiences do take an objective accusative, and are therefore presumptively cognitive. (2) The tests for the veridicality of religious experience are more like those for sense experiences than Gale allows. (3) Gale’s “big” or “deep” disanalogy (viz., that “there are no analogous dimensions [to space-time] in (...) which the apparent object of a religious experience could be housed” and, as a result, no way to distinguish between religious experiences that are of numerically one and the same religious object and religious experiences “that are of merely qualitatively similar ones”) is not as devastating as he thinks. (4) Gale’s critique of my and Alston’s attempt to defuse attacks on the cognitively of religious experience by appealing to categoreal differences between the apparent objects of religious experience and sense experience is unsuccessful. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Sermon on the Mount and Moral Theology: A Virtue Perspective by William C. Mattison IIIRebekah EklundThe Sermon on the Mount and Moral Theology: A Virtue Perspective William C. Mattison III NEW YORK: CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2017. 290 pp. £75.00Undergirding this book is a principle from the Catechism of the Catholic Church: the "analogy of faith" or "the coherence of the truths of faith (...) among themselves" (241). the "truths of faith" under consideration are Matthew's sermon on the Mount (sM) and the virtue ethics of thomas aquinas. Mattison aims to restore the sM to a more prominent place in Catholic moral theology by demonstrating the convergence between the teachings of the sM and thomistic virtue ethics.In this endeavor, the book largely succeeds, even if it occasionally over-reaches—that is, the sM is always shown to be in perfect harmony with thomas's teachings on virtue ethics, in which some readers might see points of tension. For example, Mattison uses thomistic action theory to argue that the beatitudes (Mt 5:3–12) and the sM's concluding exhortations (Mt 7:13–29) both demonstrate an "intrinsic relationship" between action and eternal reward; that is, the "qualifying condition" (e.g., meekness) is itself constitutive of happiness and is thus an activity that continues in eternal life (22–25, 209, 221). Purity of heart works well in this framework, but Mattison struggles to make mourning fit. the thomistic lens determines the sense of the text: Whatever mourning is, it is an activity that must persist in heaven, limiting the options for interpretation.Mattison also aligns the seven virtues—faith, hope, love, prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude—with the seven beatitudes (following augustine's reduction of the beatitudes from eight to seven), with the seven petitions of the Lord's Prayer, and with sections of the sM as a whole. these latter, broad pairings are not always easy to find. Mattison matches the beatitudes with the virtue of faith, and the six antitheses with the virtues of temperance and fortitude. the virtue of love pairs with Matthew 6:1–6, 16–18 (teachings on prayer, alms-giving, and fasting, sans the Lord's Prayer); prudence, with Matthew 6:19–34 (worry and money); justice, with Matthew 7:1–12 (judging, asking, the golden rule); and hope, with Matthew 7:13–29 (concluding warnings and exhortations).similarly, a virtue is assigned to each beatitude (47) and to each petition of the Lord's Prayer (252). In the case of the Lord's Prayer, Mattison insists on a particular order of the virtues, following aquinas's ordering (but reversing [End Page 207] temperance and fortitude). But he does not use the same order of virtues for the Beatitudes or for the broader alignments with the whole SM (the orders are completely different for all three lists), raising the question of why Aquinas's order matters for one set but not for the others.Mattison's alignments show both his indebtedness to patristic and medieval tradition and his innovation. Medieval commentators commonly matched sets of sevens (Beatitudes, virtues, vices, gifts of the Spirit), but (rather remarkably) none of them ever appears to have understood the seven petitions of the Lord's Prayer as requests for the seven virtues, as Mattison does. Likewise, Mattison's alignment of the Beatitudes with the virtues follows the practice but not the substance of previous lists; his pairings match neither Ambrose's nor Aquinas's. I would have found a discussion of the differences helpful.The question is whether Mattison's alignments are fruitful or merely forced, and here readers may find the results to be mixed. Some are illuminating, such as the vice of presumption in relation to Matthew 7:21–23; others, such as the alignment of the six antitheses with the seven sacraments, "appear a bit of a 'stretch,'" as even Mattison admits (110).Overall, scholars and graduate students interested in Thomistic virtue ethics, and in the relationship between scripture and Catholic moral theology, will find much food for thought here.Rebekah EklundLoyola University MarylandCopyright © 2018 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

Humans routinely modify their walking speed to adapt to functional goals and physical demands. However, damage to the central nervous system often results in abnormal modulation of walking speed and increased risk of falls. There is considerable interest in treatment modalities that can provide safe and salient training opportunities, feedback about walking performance, and that may augment less reliable sensory feedback within the CNS after injury or disease. Fully immersive virtual reality technologies show benefits in boosting training-related gains in walking (...) performance; however, they lack views of the real world that may limit functional carryover. Augmented reality and mixed reality head-mount displays provide partially immersive environments to extend the virtual reality benefits of interacting with virtual objects but within an unobstructed view of the real world. Despite this potential advantage, the feasibility of using MR-HMD visual feedback to promote goal-directed changes in overground walking speed remains unclear. Thus, we developed and evaluated a novel mixed reality application using the Microsoft HoloLens MR-HMD that provided real-time walking speed targets and augmented visual feedback during overground walking. We tested the application in a group of adults not living with disability and examined if they could use the targets and visual feedback to walk at 85%, 100%, and 115% of each individual’s self-selected speed. We examined whether individuals were able to meet each target gait speed and explored differences in accuracy across repeated trials and at the different speeds. Additionally, given the importance of task-specificity to therapeutic interventions, we examined if walking speed adjustment strategies were consistent with those observed during usual overground walking, and if walking with the MR-HMD resulted in increased variability in gait parameters. Overall, participants matched their overground walking speed to the target speed of the MR-HMD visual feedback conditions. The percent inaccuracy was approximately 5% across all speed matching conditions and remained consistent across walking trials after the first overall walking trial. Walking with the MR-HMD did not result in more variability in walking speed, however, we observed more variability in stride length and time when walking with feedback from the MR-HMD compared to walking without feedback. The findings offer support for mixed reality-based visual feedback as a method to provoke goal-specific changes in overground walking behavior. Further studies are necessary to determine the clinical safety and efficacy of this MR-HMD technology to provide extrinsic sensory feedback in combination with traditional treatments in rehabilitation. (shrink)

Almost a decade in the making, the radical research, meditations and experiences of Rev. David William Parry have culminated in a work that interweaves Mount Athos, the Arts, Religion, Philosophy, Theatre, Literature and Poetry in a delightfully fresh style of penmanship.

Amplifying Bernard Williams’ critique of the Nietzschean project of a revaluation of values, this paper mounts a critique of the idea that whether values will help us to live can serve as a criterion for choosing which values to live by. I explore why it might not serve as a criterion and highlight a number of further difficulties faced by the Nietzschean project. I then come to Nietzsche's defence, arguing that if we distinguish valuations from values, there is at least (...) one form of the project which overcomes those difficulties. Finally, however, I show that even on this reading, the project must either fall prey to ‘Saint-Just's illusion’ or fall back into the problems it was supposed to escape. This highlights important difficulties faced by the Nietzschean project and its descendants while also explaining why Williams, who was so Nietzschean in other respects, remained wary of the revaluation of values as a project. (shrink)

Bernard Williams charges that the moral psychology built into R. M. Hare’s utilitarianism is incoherent in virtue of demanding a bifurcated kind of moral thinking that is possible only for agents who fail to reflect properly on their own practical decision making. I mount a qualified defence of Hare’s view by drawing on the account of the ‘reactive attitudes’ found in P. F. Strawson’s ‘Freedom and Resentment’. Against Williams, I argue that the ‘resilience’ of the reactive attitudes ensures that (...) our taking an instrumental view of our dispositions to experience guilt and compunction, as Hare calls for us to do while engaged in ‘critical’ moral thinking, will not prevent us from experiencing these feelings as people ordinarily do while we are thinking ‘intuitively’. I also consider the implications of my argument for consequentialism more generally and (briefly) Kantianism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:William of Tyre, Livy, and the Vocabulary of ClassConor KostickThe most valuable source for the history of the early crusades and the Kingdom of Jerusalem is undoubtedly William of Tyre's A History of Deeds Done Beyond The Sea. A work of great scholarship and careful detail, it is particularly important in that William was Chancellor of the Kingdom of Jerusalem from 1174 and Archbishop of Tyre (...) from 1175 to his death c. 1185 and so was closely placed to the political decision making of the period. William was also a careful and highly educated scholar; although born in Jerusalem, he spent twenty years among the leading intellectuals of France and Italy and, after pursuing an avid interest in the liberal arts, devoted himself to civil law and the teachings of the masters at Bologna.1 In this respect William is far more than a narrator of crusading history, for which he would be highly regarded; he is also an important figure in the intellectual advances of the twelfth century. A close examination of William's vocabulary of social order shows that in his work he advanced the evolution of twelfth-century social concepts and also shed some light on the social structure of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.The History was commissioned by King Amalric of Jerusalem in 1167 and took its final form after redrafting by William in 1184, and it is clear that in his work William reveals a very rich vocabulary to describe social classes (see appendix). William actually uses the term classis to mean a social category of person. Current scholarship in history, sociology, and political theory would consider it anachronistic to talk about class in the twelfth century. Indeed, the use of classis as a term for social category must have been extremely rare as even such eminent scholars of lexicographers as Charles Dufresne Du Cange and Jan Frederik Niermeyer do not note it.Insofar as medieval writers before William discussed society, they referred to ordines, the orders of society. In the early part of the eleventh century even [End Page 353] the most advanced discussion of the subject of class had not progressed beyond the work of Adalbero, Bishop of Laon, and Gerard, Bishop of Cambrai, writing c. 1025, who had articulated the famous tripartite division of society according to function—those who pray, those who fight, and those who labor.2William uses the term ordo to mean order in the theological sense and ordines to indicate social order, but equally often he uses the term classis for the same purpose. For example, in describing the character of Baldwin III, he writes that "[Baldwin] acquired so great favor to himself from the commoners and the greater people that he was more popular with both classes [classis] than his predecessors."3 After the defeat of King Louis VII at Mount Cadmus, 7 January 1148, during the Second Crusade, William describes how the women fearfully cast about during for the return of fathers, lords, husbands, and sons: "and while they did not find what they sought they spent the night kept awake by the burden of their cares... nevertheless there returned in the night some of each of these classes [classis]."4Classis also appears in the phrase secundae classis homines, a phrase used three times to indicate a category of middle-class person. In describing the distant origins of the Hospitallers he says that it was a time when "there also flocked [to Jerusalem] some of the other nations, both nobles and the second class of men."5 At the fall of Balbis (3 November 1168) King Amalric's troops, "scarcely spared the old people and children, and were not any more merciful to the second class of persons."6 For his campaign beginning December 1170 the king's formidable opponent Saladin "increased his army with commoners and the second class of people."7 It is interesting to note that in these last two examples the term is referring to Muslim society, which William must have considered as socially diverse as his own. The existence and activity of a middle class of person as subjects of his history required William to use... (shrink)

ABSTRACT The purpose of this article is to show how William James's thought can help to construct a critical approach to the conceptualization of unexpected destructive events and suggest modes of conceptualization that reduce social injustice. I draw on several interrelated themes in James's thought, including, but not limited to: metaphysical and moral relationalism, the tragedy of choice, and the psychology of selective attention. Specifically, I argue that James provides resources for mounting a criticism of a kind of essentialist (...) thinking about unexpected events; for showing how this essentialism can create social injustice by obfuscating social choices and causing marginalized groups to bear a disproportionate share of social costs; for helping to construct a pluralistic approach to unexpected events that makes transparent the tragic choices laying behind them; and for putting this approach to use in ways that mitigate social injustice. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Prelude to Tackling Contemporary Crises: William James and a Psychological Springboard to Political ChangePaul Croce (bio)“That selective industry of the mind,... incessantly deciding, among many things,... which ones for it shall be realities.”—William James, 1892 (PBC, 167)“[N]either the whole of truth, nor the whole of good, is revealed to any single observer.”—William James, 1899 (TT, 149)The modern world has witnessed tremendous increases in prosperity, and that (...) material abundance has spurred great achievements. But these successes have also brought enormous and troubling side effects. Climate change, biodiversity loss, social inequality, and more problems have grown into crises with potential to challenge the achievements themselves. Alongside these challenges, many outstanding proposals have also emerged for dealing with our present crises. The crises and the insights for addressing them are in a harrowing competition, reminiscent of what H. G. Wells called “a race between education and catastrophe.” During recent chapters of this contest, especially in the United States, sound suggestions for halting or reversing environmental deterioration and for reducing class and racial inequities have gained some public and political support but have also met considerable resistance.1 While direct work to [End Page 26] address the crises is important, those efforts can be supported with understanding of the people and ideologies resisting that work. In fact, neglect of these impediments, which can further enable them to reduce abilities or willingness to address problems or even notice them, may be the biggest crisis of all.Just as medication can directly heal an illness while rest and self-care can build up general strength to support recovery, so coping with crises calls for both grappling with them directly and also consideration of the impediments that reduce the strength of those steps toward social healing. The inquiry here serves as a complement to sound proposals for immediate action by diagnosing what has hindered their realization. Outcries against injustice and creative interventions address the acute conditions of current crises, while cultural assessments of ways those responses gain or lose attention serve as prescriptions for addressing the chronic conditions that have exacerbated the crises through distraction. As with medical issues, long-term and preventive care of chronic problems can support acute treatment, even as they do not displace the need for immediate action.This article confronts a puzzle about why so many people do not pay attention to such large problems in nature and society and what steps can be taken to bridge that divide between the committed and the distracted. The emphasis here on attention shifts focus away from ideological differences and toward the values selections that drive the ideological differences. This article portrays James’s own path as he learned from differences before explaining how his theories offer insights on how selective choices shape the assumptions supporting ideologies that so often form into hostile contrasts.2 In addition to these alerts about the challenges of disagreement, he also presents methods to encourage listening across differences for chances to turn some of those commitments into constructive possibilities rather than treating them as reasons [End Page 27] to fight. These ways to evaluate cultural and political debates and increase understanding about selective choices can shed light on how so many people have been unwilling or unable to pay attention to the mounting problems, and through encouragement of more listening with respect, these methods can encourage more support for addressing the crises themselves.I. Jamesian Ways to Listen Across DifferencesCharles Taylor calls William James (1842–1910) “our great philosopher of the cusp.” This brief, elegant expression depicts a borderland thinker adept at mediating contrasting ideas. James’s often-difficult experiences in development toward that way of thinking and that reputation provide more depth about the contrasts that he experienced on the way toward his creative syntheses in psychology and philosophy.3 His wrestling with different interpretations serves as a microcosm for the challenges and rewards of listening for potential insights on each side of even hostile contrasts. He designed deliberate ways to reckon with differences, considering each to be a partial yet valuable window into the human condition. In his youth, he was torn between the competing perspectives of religious thought... (shrink)

This paper mounts a partial defense of the basic structure objection to the egalitarian criticism of productive incentives. The defense is based on the claim that some duties of justice are subject to a reciprocity condition. The paper develops this position via an examination of the debate between Andrew Williams and G. A. Cohen on publicity and incentives. Reciprocity is an intrinsic feature of a relational conception of social justice, not simply a requirement of stability. Not all duties are conditional (...) on reciprocity because some duties are owed to third parties, as well as to their primary targets. Some forms of exploitation may be unconditionally wrong, but not the specific kind of exploitation at stake when talented individuals accept market wages. (shrink)

Is evidential support transitive? The answer is negative when evidential support is understood as confirmation so that X evidentially supports Y if and only if p(Y | X) > p(Y). I call evidential support so understood “support” (for short) and set out three alternative ways of understanding evidential support: support-t (support plus a sufficiently high probability), support-t* (support plus a substantial degree of support), and support-tt* (support plus both a sufficiently high probability and a substantial degree of support). I also (...) set out two screening-off conditions (under which support is transitive): SOC1 and SOC2. It has already been shown that support-t is non-transitive in the general case (where it is not required that SOC1 holds and it is not required that SOC2 holds), in the special case where SOC1 holds, and in the special case where SOC2 holds. I introduce two rather weak adequacy conditions on support measures and argue that on any support measure meeting those conditions it follows that neither support-t* nor support-tt* is transitive in the general case, in the special case where SOC1 holds, or in the special case where SOC2 holds. I then relate some of the results to Douven’s evidential support theory of conditionals along with a few rival theories. (shrink)

We develop and apply a multi-dimensional conception of explanatory depth towards a comparative analysis of inflationary and bouncing paradigms in primordial cosmology. Our analysis builds on earlier work due to Azhar and Loeb (2021) that establishes initial condition fine-tuning as a dimension of explanatory depth relevant to debates in contemporary cosmology. We propose dynamical fine-tuning and autonomy as two further dimensions of depth in the context of problems with instability and trans-Planckian modes that afflict bouncing and inflationary approaches respectively. In (...) the context of the latter issue, we argue that the recently formulated trans-Planckian censorship conjecture leads to a trade-off for inflationary models between dynamical fine-tuning and autonomy. We conclude with the suggestion that explanatory preference with regard to the different dimensions of depth is best understood in terms of differing attitudes towards heuristics for future model building. (shrink)

The debate over the existence of a “public sphere” in China’s Late Qing/Early Republican era began nearly three decades ago, but it has yet to generate a special socio-cultural review on the “Confucian social imaginary” of the Chinese people. The article builds on existing “economic-political approach” and “idea-communication approach” to argue decisive factors hindering the development of a Habermasian “public sphere.” These includes (1) people’s traditional-collectivist lifestyle, (2) lack of understanding of “universal equality,” (3) conservative self-positioning during social transition, (4) (...) regionalist attitude toward outsiders, (5) lack of access to Enlightenment ideas, (6) disregard for parliamentary systems, and (7) ignorance of the rule of law. (shrink)

Some philosophers have recently argued that decision-makers ought to take normative uncertainty into account in their decisionmaking. These philosophers argue that, just as it is plausible that we should maximize expected value under empirical uncertainty, it is plausible that we should maximize expected choice-worthiness under normative uncertainty. However, such an approach faces two serious problems: how to deal with merely ordinal theories, which do not give sense to the idea of magnitudes of choice-worthiness; and how, even when theories do give (...) sense to magnitudes of choice-worthiness, to compare magnitudes of choice-worthiness across different theories. Some critics have suggested that these problems are fatal to the project of developing a normative account of decision-making under normative uncertainty. The primary purpose of this article is to show that this is not the case. To this end, I develop an analogy between decision-making under normative uncertainty and the problem of social choice, and then argue that the Borda Rule provides the best way of making decisions in the face of merely ordinal theories and intertheoretic incomparability. (shrink)

Two controversial cases in Confucian literature present the demands of filial piety as conflicting with those of impartial justice. Let us call them the Case of Concealment (Analects 18.13) and the Case of Evasion (Mencius 7A53). A dogmatic reading of the texts indicates that both Confucius and Mencius give more weight to filial piety than to justice. This essay, however, provides an alternative reading of the cases: the liberal reading. I argue that the Confucian teachers used the cases as moral (...) dilemmas that force Confucian students to learn how to use a cluster of Confucian virtues, including practical wisdom, discretion, and straight determination, under difficult circumstances. The liberal reading views these moral dilemmas as rhetorical tools; they guide Confucian students in meditative exercises and ultimately transform students’ mode of seeing and being. (shrink)

Volume 31 contains papers and commentaries presented to the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy during academic year 2014-15. Works: _Symposium_, _Republic_, _Euthyphro_, Proclus’s _De malorum_, _Sophist_, _Statesman_; topics: eros, tripartite soul, what the gods love, evil, Homeric motifs.

The volume contains papers and commentaries presented to the _Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy_ during the academic year 2015-16. Works: Phaedrus, Republic, Apology, Laws, Seventh Letter, Stoic texts. Topics: Stoic blending, reciprocal eros, perception in tripartite soul, Stoic identity, Plato’s politics and events.

Volume 31 contains papers and commentaries presented to the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy during academic year 2014-15. Works: _Symposium_, _Republic_, _Euthyphro_, Proclus’s _De malorum_, _Sophist_, _Statesman_; topics: eros, tripartite soul, what the gods love, evil, Homeric motifs.

The volume contains papers and commentaries presented to the _Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy_ during the academic year 2015-16. Works: Phaedrus, Republic, Apology, Laws, Seventh Letter, Stoic texts. Topics: Stoic blending, reciprocal eros, perception in tripartite soul, Stoic identity, Plato’s politics and events.

_Reading Aristotle: Argument and Exposition_ demonstrates that Aristotle’s treatises rely crucially on expository principles—questions of proper sequence, pedagogical method, and distinctions between different sciences.

Although declarations of the death of God seem to be provocations announcing the end of the era of theology, this announcement is actually central to the Christian revelation in its most classic forms, as well as to its reworkings in contemporary religious thought. Indeed provocative new possibilities for thinking theologically open up precisely in the wake of the death of God. Already Hegel envisaged a revolutionary new realization of divinity emerging in and with the secular world through its establishment of (...) a total order of immanence. However, in postmodern times this comprehensive order aspired to by modern secularism implodes or cracks open towards the wholly Other. A hitherto repressed demand for the absolute difference of the religious, or for “transcendence”, returns with a vengeance. This difference is what could not be stated in terms of the Hegelian System, for reasons that poststructuralist writers particularly have insisted on: all representations of God are indeed dead. Yet this does not mean that they cannot still be powerful, but only that they cannot assign God any stable identity. Nietzsche’s sense of foreboding concerning the death of God is coupled with his intimations of the demise of representation and “grammar” as epistemologically bankrupt, but also with his vision of a positive potential for creating value in the wake of this collapse of all linguistically articulated culture. He points the way towards the emergence of a post-secular religious thinking of what exceeds thought and representation. (shrink)

In this book William G. Lycan offers an epistemology of philosophy itself, a partial method for philosophical inquiry. The epistemology features three ultimate sources of justified philosophical belief. First, common sense, in a carefully restricted sense of the term-the sorts of contingentpropositions Moore defended against idealists and skeptics. Second, the deliverances of well confirmed science. Third and more fundamentally, intuitions about cases in a carefully specified sense of that term. The first half of On Evidence in Philosophy expounds a (...) version of Moore's method and applies it to each of several issues. This version is shown to resist all the standard objections to Moore; most of them do not even apply. It is argued, in Chapters 5 and 6, that philosophical method is far lesspowerful than most have taken it to be. In particular, deductive argument can accomplish very little, and hardly ever is an opposing position refuted except by common sense or by science. The final two chapters defend the evidential status of intuitions and the Goodmanian method of reflectiveequilibrium; it is argued that philosophy always and everywhere depends on them. The method is then set within a more general explanatory-coherentist epistemology, which is shown to resist standard forms of skepticism.In sum, William G. Lycan advocates a picture of philosophy as a very wide explanatory reflective equilibrium incorporating common sense, science, and our firmest intuitions on any topic-and nothing more, not ever. (shrink)

A major problem for interpersonal aggregation is how to compare utility across individuals; a major problem for decision-making under normative uncertainty is the formally analogous problem of how to compare choice-worthiness across theories. We introduce and study a class of methods, which we call statistical normalization methods, for making interpersonal comparisons of utility and intertheoretic comparisons of choice-worthiness. We argue against the statistical normalization methods that have been proposed in the literature. We argue, instead, in favor of normalization of variance: (...) we claim that this is the account that most plausibly gives all individuals or theories ‘equal say’. To this end, we provide two proofs that variance normalization has desirable properties that all other normalization methods lack, though we also show how different assumptions could lead one to axiomatize alternative statistical normalization methods. (shrink)

The Gifford Lectures were established in 1885 at the universities of St Andrews, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Edinburgh to promote the discussion of 'Natural Theology in the widest sense of the term - in other words, the knowledge of God', and some of the world's most influential thinkers have delivered them. The 1901–2 lectures given in Edinburgh by American philosopher William James are considered by many to be the greatest in the series. The lectures were published in book form in (...) 1902 and have been reprinted many times. James, who was educated in the United States and Europe, and spent much of his career teaching philosophy at Harvard, was very influential in the development of modern psychology, and in these twenty lectures he explores the personal experience of religion. Some of the topics include religion and neurology, 'the sick soul', saintliness, and mysticism. (shrink)

There is understandable concern about policies or practices that impose one person's will on another. These seem to disrespect autonomy. But such concerns suppose that there is something there to r...

Tom has mounting evidence that he has incurable cancer, but he also believes that he would be happier, regardless of the truth, were he to believe that he is healthy. W.K.Clifford, who famously claimed, “It is wrong, always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence,” would, depending upon the sufficiency of Tom’s evidence, direct him to believe that he has incurable cancer, no matter the results for his happiness. The legendary pragmatist William James, on the other (...) hand, might deem this one of those situations in which it is permissible to follow one’s passions, and therefore might advise Tom to trust in his health in the face of the evidence to the contrary. Which one is right: the evidentialist or the pragmatist? The core of my research to date has aimed at resolving this central debate in the ethics of belief. (shrink)