Plato in the Third Sophistic examines the influence and impact of Plato and Platonism on later Christian and Byzantine rhetoric. The volume brings together specially commissioned articles from leading scholars of late antique philosophy and literature. Their examinations show that Plato is the single most important and influential literary figure used to frame the literature of this time. Plato in the Third Sophistic will help scholars and students from a wide range of disciplines better understand the (...) development of Christian and Byzantine rhetoric and philosophy during the third through sixth centuries. (shrink)

Historians of rhetoric refer to two Sophistics, one in the 5th century B.C. and another c. 2nd century A.D. Besides these two, there is a 3rd Sophistic, but it is not necessarily sequential. (The 3rd is “counter” to counting sequentially.) Whereas the representative Sophists of the 1st Sophistic is Protagoras, and the second, Aeschines, the representative sophists of the 3rd are Gorgias (as proto-Third) and Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-François Lyotard, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, and Paul de Man.To distinguish (...) between and among Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, and then Protagoras, Gorgias, and Lacan, the author determines how far each of these personages can “count.” The model of counting, used semiotically across the topoi of “possible/impossible,” is that of the people of New Guinea: “one thing, two things, many things.” It is determined (generally) that the philosophers, including Aristotle, count to “one”; the Sophists to “two”; and Gorgias, Lacan, and Lyotard, et al. count to “many things,” thereby breaking up a monism or binarism. The ancient philosophers employ a substratum of probability to hold together the contraries of “possible/impossible”; the Sophists employ anti/logic, which keeps the contraries/antitheses separate and therefore without synthesis, but which eventually threatens the integrity of the substratum, or the law of non-contradiction; and Gorgias, Lacan, Lyotard et al. theorize about the “impossibility”/“Resistance” of the Logos (reason, logic, law, argumentation, history) to Theory/Totalization, because of the Gorgian Kairos and the Lacanian Real — both of which enter the Logos and break up the cycle of the antitheses and create “something new, irrational” (Untersteiner).This “breaking up” has a negative/positive influence on Protagoras's “man-measure doctrine,” which in turn has a similar influence on “the problem of the ethical subject.” The subject/agent not only no longer “knows” (by way of Logos) but also no longer “acts” (as independent agent); the subject becomes a function of Logos as determined by Kairos/Real; it moves from a hypotaxis/syntaxis of “one” and “two” to a radical parataxis/paralogy of “some more.”From the “Impossibility”/“tragedy” of knowledge, however, comes the “Possible,” or “Possibilisms,” which allows for the new (though divided) ethical subject to reclaim its position as “individual.” Such a reclamation of the subject, however, has a profound effect on argumentation, and especially the notion of “consensus.” What is wanted, then, in a Third Sophistic “ethical” — as opposed to a “political” — rhetoric is “dissensus” through radical parataxes and paralogies. (shrink)

The third volume of Professor Guthrie's great history of Greek thought, entitled The Fifth-Century Enlightenment, deals in two parts with the Sophists and Socrates, the key figures in the dramatic and fundamental shift of philosophical interest from the physical universe to man. Each of these parts is now available as a paperback with the text, bibliography and indexes amended where necessary so that each part is self-contained. The Sophists assesses the contribution of individuals like Protagoras, Gorgias and Hippias to (...) the extraordinary intellectual and moral fermant in fifth-century Athens. They questioned the bases of morality, religion and organized society itself and the nature of knowledge and language; they initiated a whole series of important and continuing debates, and they provoked Socrates and Plato to a major restatement and defence of traditional values. (shrink)

In Lives of the Sophists Philostratus depicts the widespread influence of Sophistic in the second and third centuries CE. Lives of Philosophers and Sophists by Eunapius is our only source concerning Neo-Platonism in the latter part of the fourth century CE. Of the distinguished Lemnian family of Philostrati, Flavius Philostratus "the Athenian, " ca. 170-205 CE, was a Greek sophist who studied at Athens and later lived in Rome. He was author of the admirable Life of Apollonius of (...) Tyana and of Lives of the Sophists, a treasury of information about notable sophists. Philostratus's sketches of sophists in action yield a fascinating picture of the predominant influence of Sophistic in the educational, social, and political life of the Empire in the second and third centuries. The Greek sophist and historian Eunapius was born at Sardis in 347 CE, but went to Athens to study and lived much of his life there teaching rhetoric and possibly medicine. He was initiated into the mysteries and was hostile to Christians. His Lives of Philosophers and Sophists is our only source for knowledge of Neo-Platonism in the latter part of the fourth century. (shrink)

A major problem in the interpretation of Plato's metaphysics is the question of whether he abandoned self-predication as a result of the Third Man Argument in the Parmenides. In this paper I will argue that the answer to this question must be 'no' because the self-predication assumption is still present in the Sophist.

Multiple-choice questions have an undeserved reputation for only being able to test student recall of basic facts. In fact, well-crafted mechanically gradable questions can measure very sophisticated cognitive skills, including those engaged at the highest level of Benjamin Bloom’s taxonomy of outcomes. In this article, I argue that multiple-choice questions should be a part of the diversified assessment portfolio for most philosophy courses. I present three arguments broadly related to fairness. First, multiple-choice questions allow one to consolidate subjective decision making (...) in a way that makes it easier to manage. Second, multiple-choice questions contribute to the diversity of an evaluation portfolio by balancing out problems with writing-based assessments. Third, by increasing the diversity of evaluations, multiple-choice questions increase the inclusiveness of the course. In the course of this argument I provide examples of multiple-choice questions that measure sophisticated learning and advice for how to write good multiple-choice questions. (shrink)

Cet article est consacré au problème du rapport entre l’entrelacement des genres (συμπλοκὴ τῶν εἰδῶν) et le logos dans le Sophiste. Après avoir brièvement présenté le problème, je discute, dans la première partie, différentes solutions proposées par les commentateurs. Je cherche à montrer qu’aucune de ces solutions n’est pleinement satisfaisante. Dans la deuxième partie, je propose une nouvelle solution au problème de la συμπλοκὴ τῶν εἰδῶν fondée sur une distinction entre deux types de logos, le logos dialectique et le logos (...) doxique. Dans la troisième partie, je cherche à justifier textuellement cette solution en recourant à la fois au texte du Sophiste lui-même et à la dernière partie du Théétète. Dans ma conclusion, je suggère que la distinction entre logos dialectique et logos doxique correspond à une différence qui traverse toute l’œuvre de Platon, à savoir la différence entre connaissance et opinion. / This paper deals with the problem of the συμπλοκὴ τῶν εἰδῶν in the Sophist. In the first part, after a brief presentation of this problem, I discuss different solutions which have been proposed in the recent literature. I try to show that none of them is entirely satisfying. In the second part, I propose and explain a new solution based on a distinction between two types of logos : dialectical logos and doxastic logos. In the third part, I try to justify this solution on the basis of some passages of the Sophist and of the final part of the Theaetetus. To conclude, I suggest that the distinction between dialectical logos and doxasticlogos matches the difference between knowledge and belief made by Plato in his dialogues. (shrink)

This article aims at elucidating the logic of Arist. SE 22, 178b36–179a10 and, in particular, of the sophism labelled "Third Man" discussed in it. I suggest that neither the sophistic Walking Man argument, proposed by ancient commentators, nor the Aristotelian Third Man of the , suggested by modern interpreters, can be identified with the fallacious argument Aristotle presents and solves in the passage. I propose an alternative reconstruction of the Third Man sophism and argue that an (...) explanation of the lines regarding the identity of Coriscus and Coriscus the musician (178b39–179a3) is indispensable for its correct understanding, since they hint at another sophism in some important aspects analogous. Finally, I show that two contradictions concerning spotted by scholars in the passage are only apparent and can be dissolved once the assumption that the anti-Platonic Third Man argument is at stake here is discarded, and once the passage is read in the light of its agonistic context. (shrink)

The διακριτικὴ τέχνη (the art of separating or discriminating), from which the sixth definition of theSophiststarts (226b1–231b9), is puzzling.Prima faciethe art of separating does not fit the initial division of art between ποιητικὴ τέχνη (production) and κτητικὴ τέχνη (acquisition) at 219a8–c9. Therefore, scholars generally agree that, although mutually exclusive, ποιητική and κτητική are not exhaustive and leave room for a third species of art, διακριτικὴ τέχνη, on a par with ποιητική and κτητική. However, I argue that textual evidence suggests (...) otherwise. (shrink)

Latin commentators came across the « Third Man » in Aristotle’s Sophistici elenchi. The way they dealt with the argument is a fair illustration of how they were both faithful to the text and innovative in their understanding of its most challenging issues. Besides providing a detailed survey of all manuscript sources, the introductory essay shows that Latin interpretation originates from a mistake in Boethius’ translation which radically transformed the argument. The edition makes available for the first time a (...) considerable amount of new documentary evidence which made it possible to solve the riddle of the Latin « Third Man ». (shrink)

The third volume of Professor Guthrie's great history of Greek thought, entitled The Fifth-Century Enlightenment, deals in two parts with the Sophists and Socrates, the key figures in the dramatic and fundamental shift of philosophical interest from the physical universe to man. Each of these parts is now available as a paperback with the text, bibliography and indexes amended where necessary so that each part is self-contained. The Sophists assesses the contribution of individuals like Protagoras, Gorgias and Hippias to (...) the extraordinary intellectual and moral fermant in fifth-century Athens. They questioned the bases of morality, religion and organized society itself and the nature of knowledge and language; they initiated a whole series of important and continuing debates, and they provoked Socrates and Plato to a major restatement and defence of traditional values. (shrink)

Two decades ago, the introduction of the Implicit Association Test (IAT) sparked enthusiastic reactions. With implicit measures like the IAT, researchers hoped to finally be able to bridge the gap between self-reported attitudes on one hand and behavior on the other. Twenty years of research and several meta-analyses later, however, we have to conclude that neither the IAT nor its derivatives have fulfilled these expectations. Their predictive value for behavioral criteria is weak and their incremental validity over and above self-report (...) measures is negligible. In our review, we present an overview of explanations for these unsatisfactory findings and delineate promising ways forward. Over the years, several reasons for the IAT’s weak predictive validity have been proposed. They point to four potentially problematic features: First, the IAT is by no means a pure measure of individual differences in associations but suffers from extraneous influences like recoding. Hence, the predictive validity of IAT-scores should not be confused with the predictive validity of associations. Second, with the IAT, we usually aim to measure evaluation (“liking”) instead of motivation (“wanting”). Yet, behavior might be determined much more often by the latter than the former. Third, the IAT focuses on measuring associations instead of propositional beliefs and thus taps into a construct that might be too unspecific to account for behavior. Finally, studies on predictive validity are often characterized by a mismatch between predictor and criterion (e.g., while behavior is highly context-specific, the IAT usually takes into account neither situation nor domain). Recent research, however, also revealed advances addressing each of these problems, namely (1) procedural and analytical advances to control for recoding in the IAT, (2) measurement procedures to assess implicit wanting, (3) measurement procedures to assess implicit beliefs, and (4) approaches to increase the fit between implicit measures and behavioral criteria (e.g., by incorporating contextual information). Implicit measures like the IAT hold an enormous potential. In order to allow them to fulfill this potential, however, we have to refine our understanding of these measures, and we should incorporate recent conceptual and methodological advancements. This review provides specific recommendations on how to do so. (shrink)

In his treatment of subjective mind, Hegel argues that the development that characterizes the vital process of a human individual is logically unique in that it dissolves the contradiction between two logical determinations that characterize any vital activity: the contradiction between the ‘immediate singularity’ of the subject of this process and its ‘abstract generality’. Hegel employs the term Bildung to characterize any vital activity that has this form. The idea that the distinction between human life and non-human life is a (...) logical distinction is one of the main lessons that Hegel thinks we should learn from Aristotle's treatment of the idea of life. In this article I distinguish between two contemporary varieties of this Aristotelian idea: a sophisticated variety that emphasizes the idea of second nature in order to characterize the distinctiveness of the human, and a naive variety that thinks of the human's uniqueness in terms of characterizations that already belong to its first nature. I argue that Hegel is neither sophisticated nor naive but offers a third variety of Neo-Aristotelianism that solves the difficulties of the other two. This has decisive consequences for his understanding of Bildung. Although the notion of Bildung describes an empirical process, Hegel argues, it is not an empirical concept. Rather, it is the concrete concept of the process of actualization that characterizes a self-conscious form of life that reflects the inner temporality of this form's actuality. (shrink)

Our interpretation of the "parmenides" 132a1 - 132b2 has the following features. (i) it stresses that the third man argument is an infinite regress and (ii) notes its epistemological thrust. (iii) a faithful translation of the last line of the argument reads "and no longer will each of the forms be for you one but each is infinite in multitude." parmenides' point is that each form, which socrates believed to be complete (one), turns out to be an unbounded, incompletable (...) series of subforms useless for comprehending the unity of many particulars. (iv) related problems are seen to occupy plato in the "philebus" and in the "sophist". (shrink)

-/- In Plato's work the "Sophist", Socrates, who typically occupies a central position in Plato's dialogues, is assigned a supporting role. This has led some scholars to argue for a shift in Plato's oeuvre, where he distances himself from Socrates and introduces a new main protagonist. However, this new protagonist remains unnamed and is only identified by his social position as Xenos, indicating that he is an outsider and a stranger whose identity is ambiguous. In this article, I argue that (...) Plato's decision to leave the character unnamed serves to raise a first problem: the question of whether this stranger is a friend or an adversary of philosophy. At the beginning of the dialogue, Socrates employs a series of references to Homer to bring into play a second problem: the problem of disguise. The third problem, “What is a sophist?”, is attributed to the Xenos. This is the only problem that is explicitly developed and is, therefore, the most prominent in the dialogue. If we relate these three problems to each other, it becomes clear that they represent contradictory intuitions without providing us with a strict criterion for deciding which of these intuitions is correct. By presenting these problems in their entanglement without providing a way out, Plato invites his readers to think without making explicit what the outcome of this thinking should be. -/- [In Dutch: In de "Sofist" speelt Sokrates, vaak het meest prominente personage in Plato’s dialogen, alleen maar een bijrol. Dit heeft veel interpreten ertoe verleid om een breuk in het oeuvre van Plato te postuleren, waarbij Plato afstand zou nemen van Sokrates ten behoeve van een nieuw personage. Ik zal echter laten zien dat Plato er bewust voor kiest om dit nieuwe personage naamloos te laten en hem alleen aan te duiden via zijn sociale positie als xenos (vreemdeling). Hiermee roept Plato, zo zal ik betogen, impliciet een eerste probleem op: is deze naamlo- ze Xenos een vriend of een vijand van de filosofie? Aan het begin van de dialoog wordt er door Sokrates een tweede probleem in spel gebracht: het probleem van de vermomming. Het derde probleem — ‘wat is een sofist?’ — wordt toegeschreven aan de Xenos. Dit is het enige probleem dat expliciet wordt uitgewerkt en is dan ook het meest prominent aanwezig in de dialoog. Als we deze drie problemen op elkaar betrekken dan wordt duidelijk dat ze tegenstrijdige intuïties vertolken, zonder dat we een strikt criterium krijgen aangereikt om te beslissen welke van deze intuïties de juiste is. Door deze problemen in een nog niet ontwarde kluwen te presenteren, nodigt Plato zijn lezers uit tot denken, zonder expliciet te maken wat de uitkomst van dit denken zou moeten zijn.]. (shrink)

Anton Bruckner, the Austrian composer famous for his monumental and sophisticated symphonies, has never been among the most popular composers in the English-speaking world. However, the fact that his works became the favourites of the Nazis before and during WWII has been the subject of an ongoing scholarly debate since the 1990's. Not only did Hitler show personal approval of the symphonist, the National Socialist Party used the orchestral music of Bruckner to accompany a number of important party events. For (...) example, in the 1939 video footage of Hitler's 50th birthday celebration, we hear the final climax of the Fifth Symphony accompanying images of the F??hrer. After the German radio announced the death of Hitler on 1st May 1945, the Adagio of the Seventh Symphony was played, perhaps as a kind of funeral music for the Nazi dictator. (shrink)

In this paper, I provide an interpretation of the symploke ton eidon at Soph. 259e. My goal is to show that the specific metaphysical view expressed by the interweaving of forms best accounts for Plato’s explanation of truth and falsehood. In the first section, I introduce the fundamentals of the interpretation of the greatest kinds and their functions. After that, I propose an interpretation of the assertion at 259e, the upshot of which is that the interweaving of forms only deals (...) with extra-linguistic items, that it is related to both truth and meaning of linguistic items, in a very complex way which I aim to explain throughout the paper, and that it never involves sensible particulars. In the second section, I put forward my reading of the Stranger’s description of how logoi are structured and how they work. I pay particular attention to the view that words reveal being when they intertwine to form a statement. In the third section, I interpret the statements concerning Theaetetus. My goal is to advance a new reading of the specific role that kinds and their interweaving play with regard to the truth and falsehood of the statements concerning Theaetetus. The result is the very specific view that the kinds, which are the separated ontological cause of what happens in space and time, are the grounds of both the truth and the meaning of statements. (shrink)

Marina McCoy defends three interrelated claims about the topic mentioned in her title. First, the distinction between philosophy and rhetoric in the dialogues is not as clear as some commentators seem to think. Second, since philosophy as practiced by Socrates includes important rhetorical dimensions, there is no important methodological distinction between philosophy and rhetoric. Third, it is his virtues—and not any particular method—that differentiate Socrates the philosopher from sophists and rhetoricians. McCoy pursues different aspects of her theses through the (...) Apology, Protagoras, Gorgias, Republic, Sophist , and Phaedrus.Her approach coheres with that of a contemporary school of interpretation according to which a proper appreciation of the dramatic setting of each dialogue will show that the content of Socratic conversation is not meant to be a body of substantive philosophical doctrine. Rather, Socrates’ quarry is the souls of his interlocutors. McCoy’s contribution to this line of. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Plato on the Rhetoric of Philosophers and SophistsMichael SvobodaPlato on the Rhetoric of Philosophers and Sophists by Marina McCoy New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. vii + 212 pp. $74.00, hardcover.With her new book, Marina McCoy, an assistant professor of philosophy at Boston College, succeeds in opening up new lines of inquiry into Plato’s formative engagement(s) with rhetoric: first, by involving other Platonic dialogues in the ongoing interrogations (...) of the Gorgias and Phaedrus and, second, by patiently considering the implications of the different accounts of sophists and philosophers that result. These new investigations are aided by the diverse disciplinary voices with which Marina McCoy herself converses—works by classicists, critics, philosophers, political theorists, and rhetoricians, works taken from a wide range of journals. In her interpretation of the Gorgias, for example, one encounters the names one would expect from a thorough and up-to-date review of these different literatures: Arieti, Dodds, Fussi, Gordon, McComiskey, Nightingale, Saxonhouse, and Yunis. Thus, Plato scholars from both rhetoric and philosophy will find much of interest in this book.McCoy provides a clear overview of her project in her introduction (1–22). In separate readings of the Apology, Protagoras, Gorgias, Republic, Sophist and Theaetetus, and Phaedrus, three interrelated claims are presented and developed: first, consistently distinguishing the philosopher from the sophist was a difficult challenge for Plato—and for the ancient Athenians; second, Plato’s conception of philosophy includes “important rhetorical dimensions,” and third, Plato ultimately differentiates the philosopher [End Page 191] from the sophist on the basis of character (3). To substantiate these claims, the dramatic and historical elements of Plato’s dialogues are interpreted in tandem with their explicit arguments. McCoy notes that the experience of reading the dialogues often reproduces the psychological tensions captured by them. In other words, Plato uses rhetorical techniques to cause his readers both to question philosophy and to engage in it as they do so (7). At the same time, McCoy recognizes that the terms of these discussions were hotly contested: “The Greek mindset at the time of Plato is one of passionate interest in the nature, power, and danger of logos : terms such as philosophia, rhetorike, sophist, and rhetor become part of the weaponry in the battle” (11). By attending to these elements in the seven dialogues examined in the following six chapters, McCoy seeks to show that philosophy is better defined as an interaction of souls than as a collection of analytical techniques, that the approach of Plato’s Socrates “relies more on phronesis and kairos than techne ” (15).These broad claims are immediately tested in the second chapter of the book, “Elements of Gorgianic Rhetoric and the Forensic Genre in Plato’s Apology ” (23–55). Here McCoy further develops two observations about the Apology. First, Socrates’ claims to the contrary, the Apology actually incorporates a number of elements common in forensic speeches at the time of his trial: a standard speech structure, arguments from probability ( eike ), and portrayal of character ( ethopoioa ) (26, 40). But perhaps more provocatively, second, in the Apology Plato seems to allude to Gorgias’ In Defense of Palamedes ; both speeches portray their speakers as public benefactors who cannot have committed the crimes of which they are accused but who nonetheless cannot defend themselves effectively under the conditions of their trial (32–39). When McCoy then calls our attention to the historical elements in the Apology —the life and death of Chaerophon, the role played in Athenian culture and politics by the oracle at Delphi, and the rules governing testimony—we must consider the possibility that Socrates may successfully be using rhetorical techniques, not to win his juror’s favor but to confuse and challenge them. Thrown off their moral balance, McCoy argues, his jurors might be led to question themselves. “Socrates’ risky choice to appeal to the oracle story forces each juror to make a choice: he must decide whether Socrates’ philosophical activity is a moral and even religious virtue” (51). In and through the Apology, Plato may be doing something very similar for his readers: “If Gorgias’ Encomium of Helen is a forensic piece disguised as [an] encomium, perhaps Plato’s Apology... (shrink)

These arguments are fairly well known today. It is interesting to note that v. Kries already knew them, and that they have been ignored by Reichenbach and v. Mises in their original account of probability.2This observation leads to the interesting question why the frequency theory of probability has been adopted by many people in our century in spite of severe counterarguments. One may think of a change in scientific attitude, of a scientific revolution put forward by Feyerabendarian propaganda- and who (...) would deny that Reichenbach was an excellent propagandist!My suggested explanation is the following:J. v. Kries is still a mentalist in the tradition of Descartes and Locke. This can be shown very well from his logic, which he wrote even much later (1916). A mentalist does not pose semantical questions in a proper sense: he rather asks which ideas in the human mind make up a concept. And studying probability in this way, he will find in any case that what is in the human mind is first of all an expectation. Therefore, his analysis of the concept of probability will be centered around the concept of expectation.People tended to approach the problem in quite a different way after the scientific revolution which led from mentalism to lingualism. They tended in many cases to use operationalism and to ask how probabilities are determined in science, if they wanted to clear up the meaning of probability. This new aspect of probability, which was caused by looking at it from a new position or standpoint, suggested it to be the limit of relative frequencies in the first instance. This suggestion was so strong that all objections were ignored, and all counterarguments encountered deaf ears.Of course I have used here an oversimplification. Neither was J. v. Kries untouched by Poincaré's conventionalism, which is essentially a movement leading to the breakdown of mentalism; nor was Reichenbach, when he wrote his thesis in 1915, already a lingualist in any respect.Nevertheless, I think that the lingualist revolution, which took place particularly in mathematics and physics, has also changed the attitude towards probability. It would be interesting to corroborate this thesis by extensive study of the history of science in the late 19th century.Besides this historical aspect of v. Kries' theory, there is a systematic one which should be noticed. Though his theory still has a mentalist outlook, many of v. Kries' statements can be translated into the present lingualist idiom and then become most interesting contributions to the present discussion. We shall then state that for v. Kries probabilities appear first of all in probabilistic hypotheses which may or may not be confirmed by empirical data. Therefore, they have a role similar to theoretical concepts.3But that is not the only predominant feature of v. Kries' theory. He is approaching objective probability in a way which is quite unfamiliar to present day philosophers or mathematicians. Objective probabilities are connected with other concepts in three different ways. First of all, probabilistic hypotheses are confirmed by empirically found relative frequencies in a finite series of events. Secondly, they serve as an aid for decisions. And finally, there is a third relationship. Probabilities have to be explained by theories which are in many cases not formulated in probabilistic terms themselves. We can try to understand probability in one of the first two ways via their connection to other concepts. That is what is usually done by interpretations in terms of frequencies or decisions. A third approach, however, is to understand the nature of probability by the way probabilities are explained, and that is what v. Kries does. Such an approach does not seem unusual at all. In many cases the nature of a kind of objects is characterized by giving an explanation. If somebody asks what an eclipse of the moon is, we shall answer - as Aristotle already proposed - by giving an explanation of it. Thus it is quite natural to answer a question as to the nature of probability by describing the general type of explanation of probability distributions in natural or social science. The answer given by v. Kries is - as we know today — of limited validity. Quantum mechanical probabilities are not explainable by Spielräume. V. Kries solution, however, is remarkable in one important respect. It accounts for the time direction of objective probabilities, which are always predictive or forward probabilities, while retrodictive or backward probabilities are always subjective. The relation of objective probabilities to time direction is surely of utmost importance for natural philosophy. I do not know of any other philosophical foundation of probability which takes into account this deep-rooted relation. Therefore, v. Kries' interpretation may help us to understand one of the most intricate puzzles of philosophy. It may be nearly one hundred years old, but is by no means out of date. (shrink)

A familiar tradition in Plato scholarship has it that self-predication is one of the most important issues to be settled in an attempt to understand Plato‘s metaphysical views. Perhaps only latent in the initial formulations of the theory of Forms, the problem becomes manifest in the Parmenides, especially in the Third Man Argument where the assumption that a Form can have the property that it is helps to generate a vicious regress destructive of the notion of a single Form (...) over many particulars. (shrink)

This paper aims to show how some of Wittgenstein's considerations in the Philosophical Investigations speak to the neo-empiricist tendency to give sensation a purely causal, non-epistemic role. As the foil for Wittgenstein's criticisms, I outline the way Wilfred Sellars rehabilitates sensory impressions from his own diagnosis of the Myth of the Given by construing them as purely causal episodes. Sellars' work shows how it is possible to have a keen appreciation of the incoherence of the empiricist model yet to believe (...) that we ought to maintain that model by modifying our account of the role that sensations play in perception. Sellars and Wittgenstein have the same understanding of what a non-epistemic conception of sensations must involve. Wittgenstein articulates the way this conception manifests itself in ordinary thinking while Sellars gives it a sophisticated theoretical elaboration designed to retain what is key for sensory episodes while avoiding traditional problems of givenness. The instructive difference between Sellars and Wittgenstein is that while Sellars believes we can develop a coherent non-epistemic conception, Wittgenstein’s work suggests that we cannot. (shrink)

This superb collection of writings on buddha nature by the Third Karmapa Rangjung Dorje (1284-1339) focuses on the transition from ordinary deluded consciousness to enlightened wisdom, the characteristics of buddhahood, and a buddha's enlightened activity. Most of these materials have never been translated comprehensively. The Third Karmapa's unique and well-balanced view synthesizes Yogacara Madhyamaka and the classical teachings on buddha nature. Rangjung Dorje not only shows that these teachings do not contradict each other but also that they supplement (...) each other and share the same essential points in terms of the ultimate nature of mind and all phenomena. His fusion is remarkable because it clearly builds on Indian predecessors and precedes the later often highly charged debates in Tibet about the views of Rangtong ("self-empty") and Shentong ("other-empty"). Although Rangjung Dorje is widely regarded as one of the major proponents of the Tibetan Shentong tradition (some even consider him its founder), this book shows how his views differ from the Shentong tradition as understood by Dolpopa Taranatha and the First Jamgon Kongtrul. The Third Karmapa's view is more accurately described as one in which the two categories of rangtong and shentong are not regarded as mutually exclusive but are combined in a creative synthesis. For those practicing the sutrayana and the vajrayana in the Kagyu tradition, what these texts describe can be transformed into living experience. (shrink)

This edition collects all the surviving evidence for the fifth-century BCE Athenian sophist Antiphon and presents it together with a translation and a full commentary, which assesses its reliability and significance. Although Antiphon is not as familiar a figure as sophists such as Protagoras and Gorgias, substantial fragments have survived from his major works, On Truth and On Concord, including extensive remains preserved on papyrus. In addition, information about his doctrines is preserved by ancient writers ranging in time from Aristotle (...) to Simplicius and beyond. The introduction provides a brief sketch of Antiphon, his works, and his place in the fifth-century BCE sophistic movement, including his important contribution to the contemporary debate over the relation of law and nature. It also deals with the controversial question of the identity of Antiphon the sophist in relation to Antiphon of Rhamnus and other men of the same name. (shrink)

By a fragment of a natural language, we understand a collection of sentences forming a naturally delineated subset of that language and equipped with a semantics commanding the general assent of its native speakers. By the semantic complexity of such a fragment, we understand the computational complexity of deciding whether any given set of sentences in that fragment represents a logically possible situation. In earlier papers by the first author, the semantic complexity of various fragments of English involving at most (...) transitive verbs was investigated. The present paper considers various fragments of English involving ditransitive verbs and determines their semantic complexity. (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)

Information and its cognate concepts are frequently used in increasingly varied areas of scientific and scholarly investigations, from computing and engineering to philosophy and the social sciences. As a consequence, a great deal of interesting and exciting research is taking place in a wide range of fields, which do not always communicate with each other. So the second workshop1 of the IEG (the interdepartmental research group in philosophy of information at the University of Oxford2), took the shape of a series (...) of seminars, hosted in Oxford by the Department of Engineering Science, during the academic year 2008–2009. The project aimed to bring together leading experts in the broadly construed area of information research, with the goal of offering a stimulating series of talks and discussions on “the nature and scope of information”. (shrink)

Sophists’ apologia. -/- Sophists were the first paid teachers ever. These ancient Greek enlighteners taught wisdom. Protagoras, Antiphon, Prodicus, Hippias, Lykophron are most famous ones. Sophists views and concerns made a unified encyclopedic system aimed at teaching common wisdom, virtue, management and public speaking. Of the contemporary “enlighters”, Deil Carnegy’s educational work seems to be the most similar to sophism. Sophists were the first intellectuals – their trade was to sell knowledge. They introduced a new type of teacher-student relationship – (...) the mutually beneficial communication on equal terms. They taught pupils how to think independently and how to persuade others, which was inseparably connected with the rise of democracy in the most advanced Greek polices. Sophists were the first to proclaim that all people are naturally equal. They put forward the idea of natural rights and social contract, working out the fundamentals of the present-day law. In addition, they developed the basics of philology, psychology, logic, and gave a scientific explanation to the origins of religions. They embodied definite positive ideals of their epoch. Sophistry flourished in the second half of the Vth through he first third of the IVth centuries B. C. The period coincides with the heyday of the entire Greek history – the so called Greek Miracle epoch. Sophists expressed some present-day concepts of Ancient Greek ideology and mentality, characteristic of its Golden Age times. The Ancient Athens of the times of Periclus were similar to the Florence of Renaissance as to the type of social structure. That is why (?) the art of eloquence (public speaking) was highly respected in Florence. The two cities had a lot of features of the present-day capitalist society, which was due to their role as the main centres of industry of their “worlds-economies”. During the subsequent Hellenic period, the Old Order was restored, based on the feudal rent recipients’ rule. The degradation of society resulted in the decline of sophistry. Sophistry represents the highest point in the evolution of Greek philosophy. It is also the most prominent school as to the novelty of its ideas. That was owing to the common propensity for innovation typical of Periclus’ Golden Age, which in its turn resulted from the establishment of the individualistic and rationalistic thinking similar to present-day mentality. Among other aspects, close attention was paid to ethnic issues; some humanistic ideas such as Master and Servant ethics and Enlightment as the primary condition of man’s freedom, received scientific grounding. The genre of philosophical dialogue was developed, as well as the rationalistic scientific gnoceology, aimed at consistently opposing any religion. Dialectics, the most outstanding achievement of the Antiquity, was also worked out by the sophists. Zeno of Helleas was one of the sophists. Democrites’ ideas were, too, quite close to dialectics. Socrates’ contemporaries regarded him ironically, as shown, for example, in the Aristophanes’ comedy “Clouds”. Nevertheless, this scholar can still be referred to as a sophist, although of somewhat weird personality. Socrates’ popularity, which came later, should be attributed to the fact that he was the first philosopher ever to have been sentenced and executed by law, rather than to any valuable scientific contributions. Sophistry as such, rather than Socrates, marks the line between pre-Socratic and post- Socratic schools. Plato, with the exception of his latest works, is considered to belong to the same philosophical school. Specifically, there are valid reasons to believe that he was paid fees by his disciples. In Plato’s Dialogues, all points of view will be proven and then disproved, so that an integral philosophical system is hard to observe. Plato’s “Idealism” is but one of the many possible theories. His ideal philosophy is a high-minded argument of wise men. As late as towards the end of his life, Plato betrayed the ideals of sophistry, turning into the world’s first proponent of totalitarianism. Sophistry is Greek classical literature. Later on, philosophy, as well as the entire Greek civilization, started to fall into decline. Over 500 subsequent years, Hellenistic-Roman scholars never came up with anything novel. The entire process of antique philosophical evolution can be subdivided into the following six stages: Phoenician (IX–VIIth centuries B. C.), archaic (VIth – the first half of IVth century B. C., classic (the epoch of sophistry: the second half of the Vth through the first decades of the IIIrd centuries B. C.), late antique (middle of the IIIrd – first decades of the VI th centuries B.C.) The fact that early in the VIth century B. C. sophistry was rejected in Athens, has a lot to do with the consequences of their defeat in Peloponnesian war, a social catastrophe. Ever since, the prevalent part of the criticism of sophistry is a criticism of sophists’ immoral ways of life and personalities, rather than the essentials of their philosophy. For instance, Aristotle’s criticism primarily concerns their pragmatism and tendency to make a profit out of teaching. However, Aristotle himself taught his disciples along similar lines, showing them how to “be able to prove both opposites”. It was Aristotle who summed up sophists’ century-long elaborations. The traditional modern interpretation of sophists as shown in Plato’s dialogues appears to be groundless. The truth of the matter is that Plato regards sophists as more serious philosophers than Socrates was. It becomes especially clear in the dialogue titled “Protagoras”, which shows the latter as gaining an undoubted victory over Socrates. Generally speaking, Plato’s works never regard sophists as weak or worthless opponents. A common opinion as to the essence of sophists’, in particular, Protagoras’s philosophy, has hitherto not been worked out. Many researchers renounce the very existence of any specific philosophical position in sophistry. The term “relativism” itself now has a bad name. However, it should be borne in mind that Protagoras doctrine emerged as a result of an attempt to get out of the ontological dead-end to which the entire Greek natural philosophy had come. To this purpose, he employed Anaxagoras’s idea about everything comprising everything, whereupon he built his physical-ontological theory, and Zeno of Helleas’s concept that all objects are such and different at the same time in the same respect. According to Protagoras’s philosophy, every object does not only seem, but is different from every other object, including human beings. Therefore, every person is his or her own measure of all other entities. The objective reality is the Ego’s relations with the outer world. Every object’s essence is defined through its interaction with ourselves. Nothing remains stagnant – every existence already contains non-existence, and vice-versa. However, the relativity of being is not to be regarded as absolute. That means, that relatively stable and therefore relatively cognizable entities do exist, among them the words we say. Doubt is not considered absolute by relativists either, which differentiates them from skeptics and agnostics. They dare to believe. Uncertainty is Godly – here, Protagoras becomes very close to the concept of apathetic theology. Gorgius shared Protagoras’s views and tried to prove them applying the same method as Zeno applied when upholding Parmenidis’s philosophy. He argued that if one accepts the opposite point of view and agrees that nothing can exist and not exist at the same time, one is bound to come to an the absurd conclusion that nothing is cognizable and nothing exists. To prove that there is a universal contradiction within the Existence itself, Protagoras and his followers in their turn put forward a number of special logical arguments, called rules of contraries, or sophisms. The most well-known of them is the Euathle’s sophism, which proves that an object can be such and different at the same time in the same respect. Generally speaking, all relationships of any entity are extraneous. The idea that all entities, including concepts, exist and do not exist at the same time, was also accepted by Plato. It should be stressed, that Plato’s philosophy as a whole is relativists’ greatest achievement. In his dispute against relativism, Aristotle put forward the main concepts of his ontology: the existence falls into the existence in possibility and the existence in reality, or substance and accidence – the ever changing “sublunary” world and the stable world of divine heavenly bodies. This division made his system self-contradictory to the point of absurd. Aristotle quite realized, that the direct disproof of relativism is hardly possible, which fact makes his criticism a mere tautology. It is very indicative in this respect that materialists, idealists and even skeptical agnostics applied the same arguments do disprove relativism. That demonstrates that the inner contradiction between any forms of “absolutism” and relativism is the most fundamental philosophical problem. Relativist ideas were repeatedly renewed throughout history, provided the social conditions were favourable. In variations, the concepts were advanced by Tzuan Tsi and ancient Chinese sophists, apostle Paul, Nicolas of Cusa, Galileo, Rene Descartes, G. Berkley, D. Hume, Ch. S. Pierce, E. Mach, A. Bogdanov, F. de Saussure, N. Bore, P. Feuerabend, U. Quain and others. However, no consistent relativist ontological system was developed after Protagoras. Meanwhile, a valid relativist theory could provide a clue to a fuller and more adequate general physical concept of the world, and to a deeper understanding of quantum mechanics. -/- Relativism as an ontological system of beliefs. -/- The relativist principle of relativity of all that exists is fundamental for the entire system of philosophy. Absolutely everything exists, but, at the same time, no existence is absolute. Anything is possible, but those entities only exist for us with which we interact this way or another, i. e., reality is interaction, “I interact – hence, I exist”. However, an overly close relationship between entities leads to non-existence – in other words, there is a certain existential optimum. For all of us, information, or perceptible heterogeneities, is real. Each of us is the center of a definite system of interactions with the world. If God is an endless Possibility, then the World is but the man’s dialogue with God. However, the ties that bind us with the world are of some definite kind, which predetermines our reality. The principle of relativity constrains itself, as any relativity is relative. On the one hand, that calls forth the Evil – caused by our own weakness. On the other hand, it makes our world relatively stable and cognizable. Generally speaking, the world is what we are. Everybody has an own Universe, but since people are fairly similar, our universes can be regarded as one Universe with common laws and regulations. It is possible for us to change the degree of objects’ existence in relation to ourselves and one another. It is equally important, though, to remain ourselves (keep following our “warrior’s path”). Since everything exists and no existence is absolute, the process of cognition should involve a criticism of everything but never a complete rebuttal of anything. The criterion of verity for any theory then is in its capacity to build itself upon a bigger number of diverse statements than in any other theory. Theoretically, all philosophies should ideally be complementary. The question of what in fact happened is meaningless unless we specify the “we”, the “where” and the “when”. The past can only exist as part of the present. When we change, our past undergoes corresponding qualitative objective changes, all of which are irreversible. The contemporary physics regards all objects of the Universe as existing for one another, which results in absurd conclusions. In fact, only what we interact with, exists. The so called “speed of light in vacuum” c is the maximum speed of direct interaction and direct exchange of signals. Specifically, at the oncoming speed c with a significant blue parallax the gamma-quantum is unable to interact with the matter. When this speed is reached, the gravitational mass of objects in relation to one another becomes equal to zero (imaginary), whereas their inertial mass equals infinity. Further acceleration will bring us into an entirely different Universe. That means that the Universe is an open system, which fact destroys all present-day cosmological models. Anything is possible in this world. Our reality is magic. Every bit of space contains a potentially limitless number of bits of other, however virtual, universes, as well as an infinite number of particles, which are still virtual for us (as postulated by quantum mechanics). In other words, there exists an infinity of different realities. With all the above in mind, the different levels of entities’ existence, in particular, of Life and Reason, should be taken into consideration. For example, to which extent a live system exists in relation to the inanimate forms of being is very indefinite, as what life is has to be determined by living creatures. An even greater compass of levels of existence can be brought about through interaction – that is the core idea of Godel’s theorem. As a result, the range of forms of existence tends towards infinity – the evolution of matter through super-intelligence will bring us up to God’s heights. A more generalized mathematical model of the physical world, including a universal operator of the co-existence of objects, can be developed based on the above considerations. The bonds between objects become weaker owing to 1) a high speed, 2) acceleration, 3) rotation, 4) strong gravity, 5) strong fields of other kinds, 6) the difference of levels of existence , 7) phase shifts. Yet, there always is an existential optimum. Such mathematical model is to operate certain non-transitive algebras. Relativist ontology assumes that the notion of “temperature” is relative, thus making it possible to ignore the Second Law of Thermodynamics. In its turn, that will allow for phase shifts. A perpetual motion machine of the second type will become a reality. Rotation could presumably be used to increase inertial and decrease gravitational mass, slowing down the time. An experimental research could shed light on the mentioned effects. (shrink)

Plato famously promised to complement the Sophist and the Statesman with another work on a third sort of expert, the philosopher--but we do not have this final dialogue. Mary Louise Gill argues that Plato promised the Philosopher, but did not write it, in order to stimulate his audience and encourage his readers to work out, for themselves, the portrait it would have contained. The Sophist and Statesman are themselves members of a larger series starting with the Theaetetus, Plato's investigation (...) of knowledge, and the whole series relies on the Parmenides, the second part of which presents a philosophical exercise, introduced as the first step in a larger philosophical program. Gill contends that the dialogues leading up to the missing Philosopher, though they reach some substantive conclusions, are philosophical exercises of various sorts designed to train students in dialectic, the philosopher's method; and that a second version of the Parmenides exercise, closely patterned on it, spans parts of the Theaetetus and Sophist and brings the philosopher into view. This is the exercise about being, the subject-matter studied by Plato's philosopher. Plato hides the pieces of the puzzle and its solution in plain sight, forcing his students (and modern readers) to dig out the pieces and reconstruct the project. Gill reveals how, in finding the philosopher through the exercise, the student becomes a philosopher by mastering his methods. She shows that the target of Plato's exercise is internally related to its pedagogical purpose. (shrink)

This paper attempts to clarify the nature and the importance of a third kind of sophistic argument that is not always found in the classification of those arguments in the secondary literature. An argument of the third kind not only is a valid one, but is also constituted of true propositions. What makes it a sophistic argument is the fact that it produces a false semblance of scientific explanation: its explanation seems to be appropriate to the (...) explanandum without being so. Evidence from this kind of argument comes from Sophistic Refutations 11, and Brison’s attempt to square the circle should be counted as one of its instances. (shrink)

The third volume of Professor Guthrie's great history of Greek thought, entitled The Fifth-Century Enlightenment, deals in two parts with the Sophists and Socrates, the key figures in the dramatic and fundamental shift of philosophical interest from the physical universe to man. Each of the two parts is available as a paperback with the text, bibliography and indexes amended where necessary so that each part is self-contained. Socrates dominated the controversies of this period, as he has dominated the subsequent (...) history of western philosophy. He was the first to identify and grapple with some of the most intractable and persistent logical and philosophical problems; but he was also and has remained a highly controversial figure because of his extraordinary personal qualities and his remarkable career. Professor Guthrie offers a balanced and comprehensive picture of the man, his life, and his thought. (shrink)

In this philosophically sophisticated and historically significant work, John H. Zammito reconstructs Kant's composition of The Critique of Judgment and reveals that it underwent three major transformations before publication. He shows that Kant not only made his "cognitive" turn, expanding the project from a "Critique of Taste" to a Critique of Judgment but he also made an "ethical" turn. This "ethical" turn was provoked by controversies in German philosophical and religious culture, in particular the writings of Johann Herder and the (...) Sturm und Drang movement in art and science, as well as the related pantheism controversy. Such topicality made the Third Critique pivotal in creating a "Kantian" movement in the 1790s, leading directly to German Idealism and Romanticism. The austerity and grandeur of Kant's philosophical writings sometimes make it hard to recognize them as the products of a historical individual situated in the particular constellation of his time and society. Here Kant emerges as a concrete historical figure struggling to preserve the achievements of cosmopolitan Aufkl-rung against challenges in natural science, religion, and politics in the late 1780s. More specifically Zammito suggests that Kant's Third Critique was animated throughout by a fierce personal rivalry with Herder and by a strong commitment to traditional Christian ideas of God and human moral freedom. "A work of extraordinary erudition. Zammito's study is both comprehensive and novel, connecting Kant's work with the aesthetic and religious controversies of the late eighteenth century. He seems to have read everything. I know of no comparable historical study of Kant's Third Critique."-Arnulf Zweig, translator and editor of Kant's ;IPhilosophical Correspondence, 1759-1799;X "An intricate, subtle, and exciting explanation of how Kant's thinking developed and adjusted to new challenges over the decade from the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason to the appearance of the Critique of Judgment. "--John W. Burbidge, Review of Metaphysics "There has been for a long time a serious gap in English commentary on Kant's Critique of Judgment Zammito's book finally fills it. All students and scholars of Kant will want to consult it."--Frederick Beiser, Times Literary Supplement. (shrink)

This third Companion To Ancient Thought is devoted to ancient theories of language. The chapters range over more than eight hundred years of philosophical enquiry, and provide critical analyses of all the principal accounts of how it is that language can have meaning and how we can come to acquire linguistic understanding. The discussions move from the naturalism examined in Plato's Cratylus to the sophisticated theories of the Hellenistic schools and the work of St Augustine. The relations between thought (...) about language and metaphysics, philosophy of mind and the development of grammar are also explored. (shrink)

The third volume of Professor Guthrie's great history of Greek thought, entitled The Fifth-Century Enlightenment, deals in two parts with the Sophists and Socrates, the key figures in the dramatic and fundamental shift of philosophical interest from the physical universe to man. Each of the two parts is available as a paperback with the text, bibliography and indexes amended where necessary so that each part is self-contained. Socrates dominated the controversies of this period, as he has dominated the subsequent (...) history of western philosophy. He was the first to identify and grapple with some of the most intractable and persistent logical and philosophical problems; but he was also and has remained a highly controversial figure because of his extraordinary personal qualities and his remarkable career. Professor Guthrie offers a balanced and comprehensive picture of the man, his life, and his thought. (shrink)

This overview of Consciousness Studies examines the conditions that one has to satisfy to establish a scientific investigation of phenomenal consciousness. Written from the perspective experimental psychology, it follows a two-pronged approach in which traditional third-person methods for investigating the brain and physical world are complementary to first-person methods for investigating subjective experience allowing the possibility of finding “bridging laws” that relate such first- and third-person data to each other. Mindful of the relative sophistication of third-person methods (...) the chapter focuses on the problems of developing similarly sophisticated first-person methods. The problems are of three kinds: (1) Epistemological problems: How can one obtain public, objective knowledge about private, subjective experiences? (2) Methodological problems: Given that one cannot attach measuring instruments directly up to experiences, what psychological “instruments” and procedures are appropriate to their study? (3) The relation of the observer to the observed: The more closely coupled an observer is with an observed, the greater the potential influence of the act of observation on the nature of the observed (“observer effects”). Given this, how can one develop introspective and phenomenological methods where the observer is the observed? The chapter argues that the epistemological problems are more apparent than real, although this requires one to construe what is private versus public, and what is subjective or intersubjective versus what is objective in a slightly different way—with some enabling consequences for a science of consciousness. Methodological problems are real, but not fundamentally different to the problems traditionally faced in experimental psychological investigations of mental phenomena. The close-coupling of observer with the observed in first-person investigations can also be a problem, producing “observer effects” that are more acute than in most third-person investigations. The chapter suggests that one can either try to minimise such effects or to harness them, depending on the purpose of the investigation. (shrink)

A quite popular approach to solving the Causal Exclusion Problem is to adopt a counterfactual theory of causation. In this paper, I distinguish three versions of the Causal Exclusion Argument. I argue that the counterfactualist approach can block the first two exclusion arguments, because the Causal Inheritance Principle and the Upward Causation Principle upon which the two arguments are based respectively are problematic from the perspective of the counterfactual account of causation. However, I attempt to show that the counterfactualist approach (...) is unable to refute a sophisticated version (i.e. the third version) of the exclusion argument in that the Downward Causation Principle, a premise of the third exclusion argument, is actually implied by the counterfactual theory of causation. Therefore, even if other theories of causation might help the non-reductive physicalist to solve the exclusion problem, the counterfactual theory of causation cannot. (shrink)

Aristotle's illustrations of the fallacy of Figure of Speech (or Form of Expression) are none too convincing. They are tied to Aristotle's theory of categories and to peculiarities of Greek grammar that fail to hold appeal for a contemporary readership. Yet, upon closer inspection, Figure of Speech shows many points of contact with views and problems that inhabit 20th-century analytical philosophy. In the paper, some Aristotelian examples will be analyzed to gain a better understanding of this fallacy. The case of (...) the Third Man argument and some modern cases lend plausibility to the claim that Figure of Speech is of more interest as a type of fallacy than has generally been assumed. Finally, a case is made for the view that Figure of Speech, though listed among the fallacies dependent upon language, is not properly classified as a fallacy of ambiguity. More likely, it should be looked upon as a type of non sequitur. This has important consequences for the profile of dialogue associated with this fallacy. (shrink)

In the last third of the twentieth century, humanists and social scientists argued that attention to genetics would heighten already‐existing genetic determinism, which in turn would intensify negative social outcomes, especially sexism, racism, ableism, and harshness to criminals. They assumed that laypeople are at risk of becoming genetic essentialists. I will call this the “laypeople are genetic essentialists model.” This model has not accurately predicted psychosocial impacts of findings from genetics research. I will be arguing that the failure of (...) the model can be traced to its inability to recognize the complexity of laypeople’s attitudes; its incorrect theory of how beliefs, attitudes, and discourse function; and its blindness to how academics’ own interests can override the available evidence. More specifically, I suggest that the substantial data about laypeople’s deployment of genetics supports what I will call the “laypeople are strategic essentialists model” better than the “laypeople are genetic essentialists model.” The strategic essentialists model holds that people tend to store multiple categories, including multiple causal forces, that they deploy “strategically” to serve context‐dependent goals. It will be difficult for academics to reorient ourselves to model laypeople as sophisticated strategic essentialists rather than as naïve genetic essentialists. Perhaps a little shift, however, will be of value. (shrink)

This book develops a unified theory of moral progress. The author argues that there are mechanisms in place that consistently drive societies towards moral improvement and that a sophisticated, naturalistically respectable form of teleology can be defended. The book's main aim is to flesh out the process of moral progress in more detail, and to show how, when the right mechanisms and institutions of moral progress are matched together, they create pressure for the desired types of moral gains to manifest. (...) The first part of the book deals with two issues: the conceptual one about what moral progress is, and the broadly empirical one whether it is possible. It shows that cultural evolution successfully explains the origins of modern forms of morally welcome change. The second part argues that there is logical space for a moderate, scientifically credible form of teleology, and that the converse case for moral decline is weak. It addresses the types, drivers and institutions of moral progress that allow for the storage, transmission and cumulative improvement of our normative infrastructure over time. Finally, the third part demonstrates why moral progress cannot be accounted for in metaethically realist terms. Moral Teleology will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working in ethics, moral epistemology and moral psychology. (shrink)

Popular representations of third-world sex workers as sex slaves and vectors of HIV have spawned abolitionist legal reforms that are harmful and ineffective, and public health initiatives that provide only marginal protection of sex workers' rights. In this book, Prabha Kotiswaran asks how we might understand sex workers' demands that they be treated as workers. She contemplates questions of redistribution through law within the sex industry by examining the political economies and legal ethnographies of two archetypical urban sex markets (...) in India.Kotiswaran conducted in-depth fieldwork among sex workers in Sonagachi, Kolkata's largest red-light area, and Tirupati, a temple town in southern India. Providing new insights into the lives of these women--many of whom are demanding the respect and legal protection that other workers get--Kotiswaran builds a persuasive theoretical case for recognizing these women's sexual labor. Moving beyond standard feminist discourse on prostitution, she draws on a critical genealogy of materialist feminism for its sophisticated vocabulary of female reproductive and sexual labor, and uses a legal realist approach to show why criminalization cannot succeed amid the informal social networks and economic structures of sex markets. Based on this, Kotiswaran assesses the law's redistributive potential by analyzing the possible economic consequences of partial decriminalization, complete decriminalization, and legalization. She concludes with a theory of sex work from a postcolonial materialist feminist perspective. (shrink)

The West has a stereotypical image of businesses, officials, and politicians, etc., in the East (Third World) countries being pervasively corrupt while it views itself as being almost completely uncorrupt. One closer look, however, realities turn out to be quite different. Business corruption is much more universal that Westerners are generally willing to accept. The major differences are that corruption in the East is practiced so blatantly that it makes major news. Western businesses, on the other hand, have, over (...) time, developed sophisticated techniques whereby corruption becomes almost invisible. This paper discusses the myths and realities of Eastern versus Western corruption and discusses several means which have allowed Western companies to exploit others through subtle and, almost invisible means. The overall advantage, however, still goes to the West where petty corruption has been pretty much eliminated. (shrink)

To a first approximation, ‘bodily skill’ refers to the capacity to successfully utilize the body in the world to achieve goals. But the body is complex, and bodily skill manifests in many different ways. Further, work on bodily skill spans the philosophy of mind, action, and cognitive science, as well as the sciences of motor control and perception. This chapter aims to provide an overview of recent themes and key ideas. First, we review work on the nature of skill as (...) such. Second, we discuss ways theorists have discussed the implementation of skill in the human body, and a theoretical difficulty associated with explanations of implementation. Third, we discuss the importance of the idea of a hierarchical representational architecture for understanding skill’s implementation, and various ways this architecture can be made more sophisticated. Fourth, we discuss work that attempts to understand skill execution on-the-fly, and in particular, work that attempts to understand the connection between intentions and motor representations, and the connection between implicit sensorimotor adaptation and explicit planning and executive control. Fifth, we discuss work on the models that assist fine-grained skill execution, as well as the idea that even at rapid, fine-grained motoric levels, one finds intelligent systems and mechanisms supporting skill. Finally, we consider the place of bodily awareness in an account of bodily skill. (shrink)

A full third of the book is devoted to "Buddhist themes," and although I am unfortunately unqualified to comment on its exegetical and interpretative quality, I can report that I found the discussion fascinating and enlightening. Priest gives us clear, precise, technical, and philosophically sophisticated theorizing based around these thinkers, giving the lie to the not-uncommon trope among analytic philosophers that so-called "continental" and Eastern thought are inherently wooly, without rigor.1At the start of her insightful and disconcerting essay, Amy (...) Olberding mentions that "while responsibility for the conversational practices" that "exclude" and are forms of boundary policing "are... (shrink)

Three famous sophists are referred to together in the Apology of Sokrates as still practising their enviably lucrative itinerant profession in 399 b.c. : Gorgias of Leontinoi, Prodikos of Keos and Hippias of Elis. The last of these was the least well known to the Athenian demos, having practised mainly in I Dorian cities. There is no extant reference to him in Old Comedy, but we can assume that he was sufficiently famous – especially for his fees – to justify (...) his inclusion as the third of this ‘triad’; cf. the triad Protagoras – Hippias – Prodikos in the Protagoras, considered further below. Gorgias was by now a grand old man of about ninety , the last survivor of the first generation of fee-taking educators, associated first and foremost in the popular mind with the suspect arts of political and forensic persuasion. Prodikos and Hippias were probably in their sixties. (shrink)

The Athenian sophist Philostratus completed a romanticised biography of Apollonius of Tyana in the second or third decade of the third century A.D. One of the most striking aspects of the presentation of this firstcentury Pythagorean sage and miracleworker in the Vita Apollonii (VA) is his role as 'politically active philosopher'. Not only does the protagonist of the VA regularly intervene in situa-tions of conflict in Greek cities and instruct their citi-zens on how they ought to live together, (...) but he also appears in contact with Parthian and Indian kings and Roman emperors. The present study deals with this promi-nent facet of Philostratus' portrait of the Tyanean sage. There are three main issues. The first is the question of the extent to which the Apollonius tradition provided support for the image of the contacts of the protagonist of the VA with cities and monarchs. The second is consideration of how the author dealt with and elaborated these elements in his source material. The third is the question of to what extent the protagonist of the VA may be regarded as a spokesman for the explicit political views of Philostratus. In other words, the aim is to analyse the image of the protagonist of the VA as a 'politically active philosopher' as the result of the interaction between the traditions associated with a sage and miracleworker who was regarded as a representative of Pythagorean wisdom, on the one hand, and the paideia, cultural baggage and mentality of a sophist, on the other. (shrink)