The validity and utility of the proximate-ultimate distinction in biology have recently been under debate. Opponents of the distinction argue that it rules out individual-level organismic processes from evolutionary explanations, thereby leading to an unfounded separation between organismic causation and evolutionary causation. Proponents of the proximate-ultimate distinction, on the other hand, argue that it serves an important epistemological role in forming different kinds of explanation-seeking questions in biology. In this paper we offer an interpretation the proximate-ultimate distinction not only as (...) a means of forming explanation-seeking questions, but also as a distinction that can help highlight the way in which individual-level organismic processes can be evolutionary causes. We do this by interpreting the distinction between proximate and ultimate causes as a distinction between structuring and triggering causes. (shrink)

Bird argues that Armstrong’s necessitarian conception of physical modality and laws of nature generates a vicious regress with respect to necessitation. We show that precisely the same regress afflicts Bird’s dispositional-monist theory, and indeed, related views, such as that of Mumford & Anjum. We argue that dispositional monism is basically Armstrongian necessitarianism modified to allow for a thesis about property identity.

This book deals with good, evil, happiness and morally enhanced post-humans. It offers a succinct historical elaboration of philosophical stances towards morality and happiness, focusing on Kant's ideas in particular. Human augmented ethical maturity in a futuristic version of Kant’s Ethical Commonwealth implies, among else, voluntary moral bio-enhancement ; consequently, more happiness – as morality and happiness are in a circularly supportive relationship; ultimate morality. UM is in its own way a universal morality. In line with the contention that Kant’s (...) vision of the future of humanity is one of a cosmopolitan moral order in which humans act virtuously in the broadest possible community, that is, humanity, it is justified to conclude that successful VMBE is conducive to Kant’s vision. In this context the book is of great interest to a broad audience, such as those interested in VMBE and novel conceptions of morality, and those with an interest in the historical development of morality and happiness, in philosophy and in post-humanity. (shrink)

As one would expect, Kant believes that there is a tension, and even a conflict, between our bodily humanity and its ethical counterpart: ‘Inclination to pleasurable living and inclination to virtue are in conflict with each other’ (Anthropology, 185-86 [7:277]). What is more unexpected, however, is that he further claims that this tension can be resolved in what he calls an example of ‘civilised bliss’, namely dinner parties. Dinner parties are, for Kant, part of the ‘highest ethicophysical good’, the ultimate (...) resolution of the conflict between our physical body and our moral powers, which consists in finding the right proportions for the ‘mixture’ between our partly ‘sensuous’ and partly ‘ethicointellectual’ nature. The aim of this paper is not only to explain Kant’s account of the ideal proportions of ethicophysical good in dinner parties, but also, and more importantly, to argue that dinner parties are in fact the ultimate experience for us, human beings. (shrink)

Why do corporations and wealthy philanthropists fund the human sciences? Examining the history of the Santa Fe Institute (SFI), a private research institute founded in the early 1980s, this article shows that funders can find as much value in the social worlds of the sciences they sponsor as in their ideas. SFI became increasingly dependent on funding from corporations and libertarian business leaders in the 1990s and 2000s. At the same time, its intellectual work came to focus on the underlying (...) principles of adaptation, innovation, and decentralized coordination supposedly at work in ‘complex systems’ from biological ecosystems to markets and firms. This research cast the ideas of the libertarian economist Friedrich Hayek into a new scientific idiom. SFI also became a space where figures in business, media, academia, and politics could come to learn to see the world in a particular way—to acquire the subjectivity of what I call ‘the Santa Fe Institute libertarian’. At SFI, visitors did not simply learn the principles of neo-Hayekian complex system science. They came to see themselves as agents of social evolution, providing the spark that the free-market system needed to produce new technologies and new solutions to social problems without top-down political direction. For the Institute's corporate and libertarian financiers, SFI was not just a space where intellectuals described the world in favored ideological terms, but a space where elite actors became committed to the project of making a new political-economic order. (shrink)

Discovery of temporal association patterns, temporal association rules from temporal databases is extensively studied by academic research community and applied in various industrial applications. Temporal association pattern discovery is extended to similarity based temporal association pattern discovery from time-stamped transaction datasets by researchers Yoo and Sashi Sekhar. They introduced methods for pruning through distance bounds, and have also introduced SEQUENTIAL and SPAMINE algorithms for pattern mining that are based on snapshot data scan and lattice data scan strategies respectively. Our previous (...) research introduced algorithms G-SPAMINE, MASTER, Z-SPAMINE for time profiled association pattern discovery. These algorithms applied distance measures SRIHASS, ASTRA, and KRISHNA SUDARSANA for similarity computations. SEQUENTIAL, SPAMINE, G-SPAMINE, MASTER, Z-SPAMINE approaches are all based on snapshot and lattice database scan strategies and prunes temporal itemsets by making use of lower bound, upper bound support time sequences and upper-lower distance bound, lower bound distance values. The major limitation of all these algorithms is their inevitability to eliminate dataset scanning process for knowing true supports of itemsets and essential need to have dataset available in memory. To eliminate the requirement of retaining dataset in main memory, algorithms VRKSHA and GANDIVA are two pioneering research contributions that introduced tree structure for time profiled temporal association mining. VRKSHA is based on snapshot tree scan technique while GANDIVA is a lattice tree scan based approach. VRKSHA and GANDIVA both apply Euclidean distance function, but they do not estimate support and distance bounds. This research introduces the pioneering work ULTIMATE that uses a novel tree structure. The tree is generated using similarity measure ASTRA. ULTIMATE uses support bound and distance bound computations for pruning temporal patterns. Experiment results showed that ULTIMATE outperforms SEQUENTIAL, SPAMINE, G-SPAMINE, MASTER, VRKSHA, GANDIVA algorithms. (shrink)

I show that Armstrong’s view of laws as second-order contingent relations of ‘necessitation’ among categorical properties faces a dilemma. The necessitation relation confers a relation of extensional inclusion (‘constant conjunction’) on its relata. It does so either necessarily or contingently. If necessarily, it is not a categorical relation (in the relevant sense). If contingently, then an explanation is required of how it confers extensional inclusion. That explanation will need to appeal to a third-order relation between necessitation and extensional inclusion. The (...) same dilemma reappears at this level. Either Armstrong must concede that some properties are not categorical but have essential powers – or he is faced with a regress. (shrink)

Has the diversity of corporate boards of directors improved? Should it? What role does diversity play in reducing corporate wrongdoing? Will diversity result in a more focused board of directors or more board autonomy? Examining the state of Tennessee as a case study, the authors collected data on the board composition of publicly traded corporations and compared those data to an original study conducted in 1995. Data indicate only a modest improvement in board diversity. This article discusses reasons for the (...) scarcity of women on boards and concludes that, to enhance strategic decisions, board membership should reflect the corporation''s consumer population. Thus, women are a critical but overlooked resource. Areas for future research are also considered. (shrink)

This paper discusses attempts to explain why there are more than zero instances of the causal relation. In particular, it argues for the conclusion that theism is no better placed than naturalism to provide an "ultimate causal explanation".

It's been 41 years since the publication of Ernst Mayr's Cause and Effect in Biology wherein Mayr most clearly develops his version of the influential distinction between ultimate and proximate causes in biology. In critically assessing Mayr's essay I uncover false statements and red-herrings about biological explanation. Nevertheless, I argue to uphold an analogue of the ultimate/proximate distinction as it refers to two different kinds of explanations, one dynamical the other statistical.

Periods of transition are often symbolically associated with death, making the latter the paradigm of liminality. Yet, many volumes on death in the social sciences and humanities do not specifically address liminality. This book investigates these "ultimate ambiguities," assuming they can pose a threat to social relationships because of the disintegrating forces of death, but they are also crucial periods of creativity, change, and emergent aspects of social and religious life. Contributors explore death and liminality from an interdisciplinary perspective and (...) present a global range of historical and contemporary case studies outlining emotional, cognitive, artistic, social, and political implications. (shrink)

The ultimate tool, it could be said, is the brain and body. Therefore, a way to understand tool use is to study the brain's control of the body. A more manageable aim is to use the tools of cognitive science to explore the planning of physical actions. Here, I focus on two kinds of physical acts which directly or indirectly involve tool use: producing finger‐press sequences, and walking and reaching for objects. The main question is how people make choices between (...) finger‐press sequences, and how people make choices between walk‐and‐reach sequences. Are the choices made with reference to motor imagery, in which case the longer the sequences are the longer it takes to choose between them, or are shortcuts taken which rely on distinctive features of the alternatives? The reviewed experiments favor the latter alternative. The general view of action planning emerging from this work is one in which action features are highlighted and held in memory, not just to choose between potential actions but also to control the unfolding of long actions over time. Speculations are offered about tool use. (shrink)

The thrust of this article is to give a brief account of the ultimate reality as viewed by Indian philosophical system namely, Vedic philosophy, Upanisads, Buddhism, Jainism and Charvaka. Though the root of this issue is traceable to the Vedic hymns, there are various interpretations of these hymns concerning the nature of ultimate reality, for instance some of the orientalists introduces henotheism as a transitional stage from polytheism to monotheism in Indian philosophy but according to some of the Indian thinkers (...) neither polytheism nor henotheism nor even monotheism can be taken as the keynote of the early vedic philosophy. This article has not covered the views of six Indian well-known schools of philosophy, i.e., Nimansa, Vedanta, Shankhya, Yoga, Nyaya and Vaisheshika particularly those of Shankara and Ramanuja concerning the nature of Brahma which are very interesting and thought-provoking. (shrink)

I explain why Ross Cameron's definition of ultimate ontological basis is incorrect, and propose a different definition in terms of ontological dependence, as well as a definition of reality's fundamental layer. These new definitions cover the conceptual possibility that self-dependent entities exist. They also apply to different conceptions of the relation of ontological dependence.

Most advocates of biogenetic modification hope to amplify existing human traits in humans in order to increase the value of such traits as intelligence and resistance to disease. These advocates defend such enhancements as beneficial for the affected parties. By contrast, some commentators recommend certain biogenetic modifications to serve social goals. As Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu see things, human moral psychology is deficient relative to the most important risks facing humanity as a whole, including the prospect of Ultimate Harm, (...) the point at which worthwhile life is forever impossible on the planet. These risks can be mitigated, they say, by enhancing moral psychology in novel ways. Persson and Savulescu argue that some parents should modify the underlying biogenetics of their children's moral psychology, if such measures were safe and effective, but they admit these interventions may not decouple humanity from Ultimate Harm. Neither are these modifications the only options, they concede, for addressing risks to humanity. Even with these concessions, saving humanity from itself is a fairly poor reason to modify the moral psychology of children. In most ways, adults would be better candidates, morally speaking, for modifications of psychology. Even then, there is no direct link between morally enhanced human beings and the hoped-for effect of better protection from Ultimate Harm. Asserting a general duty of all to contribute to the avoidance of Ultimate Harm is a better moral strategy than intervening in the moral psychology of some, even though meeting that duty may involve substantial interference with the free exercise of one's interests. (shrink)

_Enlightenment from the _South Park_ gang faster than you can say, "Screw you guys, I'm going home"!_ _The Ultimate South Park and Philosophy: Respect My Philosophah!_ presents a compilation of serious philosophical reflections on the twisted insights voiced by characters in TV’s most irreverent animated series. Offers readers a philosophically smart and candid approach to one of television’s most subversive and controversial shows as it enters its 17th season Draws sharp parallels between the irreverent nature of _South Park_ and the (...) inquiring and skeptical approach of Western philosophy Journeys deep beyond the surface of the show’s scatological humor to address the perennial questions raised in _South Park_ and the contemporary social and political issues that inspire each episode Utilizes familiar characters and episodes to illustrate such philosophical topics as moral relativism, freedom of expression, gay marriage, blasphemy, democracy, feminism, animal ethics, existential questions, and much more It’s a Bigger, Longer & Uncut version of the highly acclaimed _South Park and Philosophy: You Know, I Learned Something Today_—and is guaranteed to be much funnier than killing Kenny. (shrink)

We show that the set of ultimately true sentences in Hartry Field's Revenge-immune solution model to the semantic paradoxes is recursively isomorphic to the set of stably true sentences obtained in Hans Herzberger's revision sequence starting from the null hypothesis. We further remark that this shows that a substantial subsystem of second-order number theory is needed to establish the semantic values of sentences in Field's relative consistency proof of his theory over the ground model of the standard natural numbers: -CA0 (...) (second-order number theory with a -comprehension axiom scheme) is insufficient. We briefly consider his claim to have produced a solution to the semantic paradoxes by introducing this conditional. We remark that the notion of a operator can be introduced in other settings. (shrink)

Strong reciprocity has recently been subject to heated debate. In this debate, the “West camp” :231–262, 2011), which is critical of the case for SR, and the “Laland camp” :1512–1516, 2011, Biol Philos 28:719–745, 2013), which is sympathetic to the case of SR, seem to take diametrically opposed positions. The West camp criticizes advocates of SR for conflating proximate and ultimate causation. SR is said to be a proximate mechanism that is put forward by its advocates as an ultimate explanation (...) of human cooperation. The West camp thus accuses advocates of SR for not heeding Mayr’s original distinction between ultimate and proximate causation. The Laland camp praises advocates of SR for revising Mayr’s distinction. Advocates of SR are said to replace Mayr’s uni-directional view on the relation between ultimate and proximate causes by the bi-directional one of reciprocal causation. The paper argues that both the West camp and the Laland camp misrepresent what advocates of SR are up to. The West camp is right that SR is a proximate cause of human cooperation. But rather than putting forward SR as an ultimate explanation, as the West camp argues, advocates of SR believe that SR itself is in need of ultimate explanation. Advocates of SR tend to take gene-culture co-evolutionary theory as the correct meta-theoretical framework for advancing ultimate explanations of SR. Appearances notwithstanding, gene-culture coevolutionary theory does not imply Laland et al.’s notion of reciprocal causation. “Reciprocal causation” suggests that proximate and ultimate causes interact simultaneously, while advocates of SR assume that they interact sequentially. I end by arguing that the best way to understand the debate is by disambiguating Mayr’s ultimate-proximate distinction. I propose to reserve “ultimate” and “proximate” for different sorts of explanations, and to use other terms for distinguishing different kinds of causes and different parts of the total causal chain producing behavior. (shrink)

Hegel's Science of Logic makes the just not low claim to be an absolute, ultimate-grounded knowledge. This project, which could not be more ambitious, has no good press in our post-metaphysical age. However: That absolute knowledge absolutely cannot exist, cannot be claimed without self-contradiction. On the other hand, there can be no doubt about the fundamental finiteness of knowledge. But can absolute knowledge be finite knowledge? This leads to the problem of a self-explication of logic (in the sense of Hegel) (...) and further, as will be shown, to a new definition of the dialectical procedure. The stringency of which results from the fact that always exactly that implicit content is explicated that was generated by the preceding explication step itself and is thus concretely comprehensible. At the same time, a new implicit content is generated by this act of explication, which requires a new explication step, and so forth. In the dialectical procedure reinterpreted in this way, dialectical arguments are not beheld, guessed at or even surreptitiously obtained, but are methodically accountable. Thereby dialectics is understood as a self-explication of logic by logical means and thus as a proof of the possibility of ultimate-grounding in the form of absolute and nevertheless finite – and thus also fallible – knowledge. (shrink)

Although many aspects of Inference to the Best Explanation have been extensively discussed, very little has so far been said about what it takes for a hypothesis to count as a rival explanatory hypothesis in the context of IBE. The primary aim of this article is to rectify this situation by arguing for a specific account of explanatory rivalry. On this account, explanatory rivals are complete explanations of a given explanandum. When explanatory rivals are conceived of in this way, I (...) argue that IBE is a more plausible and defensible rule of inference than it would otherwise be. The secondary aim of the article is to demonstrate the importance of accounts of explanatory rivalry by examining a prominent philosophical argument in which IBE is employed, viz. the so-called Ultimate Argument for scientific realism. In short, I argue that a well-known objection to the Ultimate Argument due to Arthur Fine fails in virtue of tacitly assuming an account of explanatory rivalry that we have independent reasons to reject. (shrink)

My understanding is that proximate explanations concern adaptive mechanism and that ultimate explanations concern adaptive rationale. Viewed in this light, the two kinds of explanation are quite distinct, but they interact in a complementary way to give a full understanding of biological adaptations. In contrast, Laland et al. (2013)—following a literal reading of Mayr (Science 134:1501–1506, 1961)—have characterized ultimate explanations as concerning any and all mechanisms that have operated over the course of an organism’s evolutionary history. This has unfortunate consequences, (...) such as allowing random drift to form the basis for ultimate explanations, and allowing proximate and ultimate explanations to bleed into each other until their distinction is meaningless. Here, I suggest Laland et al’s explanatory framework of “reciprocal causation” is not conducive to successful biological science, and that they have misunderstood key elements of the theory of Darwinian adaptation. (shrink)

Contributed articles presented at the International Seminar on Ultimate Reality and Meaning during July 2006 at Centre of Advanced Study in Sanskrit, University of Pune.

Explores ultimate realities in a range of world religions and discusses the issue and philosophical implications of comparison itself.

Mayr’s proximate–ultimate distinction has received renewed interest in recent years. Here we discuss its role in arguments about the relevance of developmental to evolutionary biology. We show that two recent critiques of the proximate–ultimate distinction fail to explain why developmental processes in particular should be of interest to evolutionary biologists. We trace these failures to a common problem: both critiques take the proximate–ultimate distinction to neglect specific causal interactions in nature. We argue that this is implausible, and that the distinction (...) should instead be understood in the context of explanatory abstractions in complete causal models of evolutionary change. Once the debate is reframed in this way, the proximate–ultimate distinction’s role in arguments against the theoretical significance of evo-devo is seen to rely on a generally implicit premise: that the variation produced by development is abundant, small and undirected. We show that a “lean version” of the proximate–ultimate distinction can be maintained even when this isotropy assumption does not hold. Finally, we connect these considerations to biological practice. We show that the investigation of developmental constraints in evolutionary transitions has long relied on a methodology which foregrounds the explanatory role of developmental processes. It is, however, entirely compatible with the lean version of the proximate–ultimate distinction. (shrink)

I argue that, according to St. Thomas Aquinas, God--and not one's own happiness through union with God--is the ultimate end of the moral life strictly speaking. Although He is the source of happiness, God Himself, and not the happiness of knowing Him, is the center of the virtuous agent's life. Thus Aquinas, while incorporating all of the strengths of a virtue ethical framework, is not a eudaimonist in the normal sense, and is thus immune to any self-centeredness objections. I set (...) the stage by contrasting two of Aquinas' explicit and repeated theses. First, he maintains that happiness, strictly speaking, consists in an act of knowledge (the knowledge of God) inhering in the human intellect, rather than in any act of the will. Secondly, he maintains that loving God, an act of the will, is better than knowing Him. This indicates that loving God is better than happiness. By analyzing Aquinas' distinction between the love of friendship and the love of concupiscence, and his distinction between end in the sense of object and end in the sense of attainment, I show that he holds that loving God is better than knowing Him not because the activity of loving God is the ultimate end of the moral life, but because God Himself is the ultimate end of the moral life. Thus man's ultimate end is neither himself nor any condition that He can enter into, but rather a being separate from himself. (shrink)

Yin Haiguang’s investigation and pursuit of the idea of “Man” reflect not merely a limited historical or parochial academic interest, but indeed address an ultimate concern of humanity which transcends any spatio-temporal limitations. In criticizing “modern man” for its faceless and non-self-identical figure, Yin Haiguang brings the conditions, purposes and noble values of humanity to light. His work has extraordinary significance for the highest aims of humanity and civilization.

Since the mid-1980s, Galen Strawson has introduced an argument into the analytic debate about the concept and possibility of freedom. He has repeated and defended it in various formulations, which amounts to an “impossibilism” of freedom in the moral sense, i. e., to the impossibility that we can be called ultimately responsible for the moral quality of our actions based on existing freedom in the full sense. In this paper, I want to explain Strawson’s argument, which is supposed to prove (...) this intuitive difficulty as impossible to fulfill, and to show the conditions of its persuasiveness. Furthermore, I will make clear how and by what right philosophers like Kant, Fichte and especially Schelling were able to evade this argument avant la lettre by introducing the concept of an intelligible self-constituting act of freedom. (shrink)

Wolfhart Pannenberg's innovative account of the Trinity, in which the mutual self-distinction of the divine persons is also constitutive for the divinity of each, is an important corrective to one-sided views of Trinitarian relations which reductively account only for relations of origin. However, his account ties relationality to death and self-emptying in such a way that it becomes impossible to escape a hierarchical account of Trinitarian relations in which the differences between the persons collapse into an ordered relation that repeats (...) the pattern of the relations of origin. As a result, the most significant potential contribution of Trinitarian theology, its responsiveness to a reality that is internally differentiated yet non-competitive, is lost. This problem is the result of tying the inner-Trinitarian relations too closely to the cross, such that there has to be something in the divine life that can make the cross possible, a move that has become increasingly popular in recent Trinitarian theology. The inner-Trinitarian relations are then reduced to a single taxis which is not sufficiently flexible to respond to the various ways in which God interacts with the world as narrated in the Bible. (shrink)

Beyond the world, i.e. beyond the collection of finite things, there is some one being who rules, not only as the soul is the ruler in me (or, to put it better, as the self is the ruler in my body), but also in a much higher way. For the one being who rules the universe doesn’t just •govern the world but also •builds or makes it. He is above the world and outside it, so to speak, and therefore he (...) is the ultimate reason for things. ·That follows because •he is the only extramundane thing, i.e. the only thing that exists out of the world; and •nothing in the world could be the ultimate reason for things. I now explain that second premise·. We can’t find in any individual thing, or even in the entire collection and series of things, a sufficient reason why they exist. Suppose that a book on the elements of geometry has always existed, each copy made from an earlier one, ·with no first copy·. We can.. (shrink)

My topic lies on conceptual terrain that is quite familiar to philosophers. For others, a bit of background may be in order. In light of what has filtered down from quantum mechanics, few philosophers today believe that the universe is causally deterministic. That is, to use Peter van Inwagen's succinct definition of “determinism,” few philosophers believe that “there is at any instant exactly one physically possible future.” Even so, partly for obvious historical reasons, philosophers continue to argue about whether free (...) will and moral responsibility are compatible with determinism. Compatibilists argue for compatibility, and incompatibilists argue against it. Some incompatibilists maintain that free will and moral responsibility are illusions. But most are libertarians, libertarianism being the conjunction of incompatibilism and the thesis that at least some human beings are possessed of free will and moral responsibility. (shrink)

Eventually, Kuhlmann proposes a dispositional trope ontology, according to which particularized properties and not things are the most basic entities.

Potentialism is the view that the universe of sets is inherently potential. It comes in two main flavours: height-potentialism and width-potentialism. It is natural to think that height and width potentialism are just aspects of a broader phenomenon of potentialism, that they might both be true. The main result of this paper is that this is mistaken: height and width potentialism are jointly inconsistent. Indeed, I will argue that height potentialism is independently committed to an ultimate background universe of sets, (...) an ultimate V, up to its height. (shrink)

In his new book, Fred Schauer adopts a prototypical approach to the law in order to reestablish the importance of “The Force of Law”, and I strongly support his claim that there are interesting things to be said about the relationship between law and force. One aspect concerns the special kind of force to which the law is related. In the tradition of political philosophy, this kind of force has often been characterized with the state's monopoly on legitimate force. Whereas (...) the essay will support the idea that the law has a monopoly of force, it will challenge the idea that it is its legitimacy that makes it characteristic. It is a monopoly not so much on legitimate, but on ultimate force. The robustness of the force the law is—prototypically—related to, however, should not obscure the fact that the relation between law and force is quite delicate and precarious. Three strategies of the law to manage this fundamental precariousness are pointed out. (shrink)

The system of natural deduction that originated with Gentzen , and for which Prawitz proved a normalization theorem, is re-cast so that all elimination rules are in parallel form. This enables one to prove a very exigent normalization theorem. The normal forms that it provides have all disjunction-eliminations as low as possible, and have no major premisses for eliminations standing as conclusions of any rules. Normal natural deductions are isomorphic to cut-free, weakening-free sequent proofs. This form of normalization theorem renders (...) unnecessary Gentzen's resort to sequent calculi in order to establish the desired metalogical properties of his logical system.Ultimate normal forms are well-adapted to the needs of the computational logician, affording valuable constraints on proof-search. They also provide an analysis of deductive relevance. There is a deep isomorphism between natural deductions and sequent proofs in the relevantized system. (shrink)

Nicholas Rescher accepts the Principle of Sufficient Reason. In his Nature and Understanding, he gives two candidates for an ultimate explanation: a virtuously circular explanations of facts by laws and laws by facts, and an explanation of the world in terms of optimalism. I argue that the first of these depends on the second, and that the second could be improved by switching to a weaker optimalism or to a theistic explanation.

This print textbook is available for students to rent for their classes. The Pearson print rental program provides students with affordable access to learning materials, so they come to class ready to succeed. For courses in Introductory Philosophy An active approach to philosophy While most introduction to philosophy courses focus on reading philosophical texts, Ultimate Questions: Thinking about Philosophy pushes students toward an active learning approach. The text is designed to instigate meaningful discussions between students and instructors, relying on more (...) than 100 "Food for Thought" exercises throughout. These exercises are based on the author's own experience engaging students in lecture environments and are designed to help students discover how well they understand philosophical concepts and how to apply them to real-life scenarios. The 4th Edition has been extensively updated with a new chapter, chapter expansions, and more. (shrink)

What I want to do in this essay is examine a notorious argument put forward by Galen Strawson. He advocates what he describes as an a priori argument against the possibility of ultimate (moral) responsibility. There have been many attempts at answering Strawson, but whether they have been successful is debatable. I attempt to employ Henri Bergson's approach to the free will debate and assess whether what he says has any purchase in terms of criticism of Strawson's position. I conclude (...) that Bergson's views offer a serious alternative in debates about free will. (shrink)

How to live meaningfully in the face of the unknowable We human beings had no say in existing—we just opened our eyes and found ourselves here. We have a fundamental need to understand who we are and the world we live in. Reason takes us a long way, but mystery remains. When our minds and senses are baffled, faith can seem justified—but faith is not knowledge. In Ultimate Questions, acclaimed philosopher Bryan Magee provocatively argues that we have no way of (...) fathoming our own natures or finding definitive answers to the big questions we all face. With eloquence and grace, Magee urges us to be the mapmakers of what is intelligible, and to identify the boundaries of meaningfulness. He traces this tradition of thought to his chief philosophical mentors—Locke, Hume, Kant, and Schopenhauer—and shows why this approach to the enigma of existence can enrich our lives and transform our understanding of the human predicament. As Magee puts it, "There is a world of difference between being lost in the daylight and being lost in the dark." The crowning achievement to a distinguished philosophical career, Ultimate Questions is a deeply personal meditation on the meaning of life and the ways we should live and face death. (shrink)

This paper is a contribution to the debate on epistemic foundationalism. Section I expounds and criticises Hans Albert's critical rationalist antifoundationalism position. Section I1 discusses Karl‐Otto Apel's ‘transcendental pragmatic’ argument for ultimate epistemic foundations. Section III suggests how the latter argument can be restated so as to avoid ambiguity and yield a plausible case for epistemic foundationalism.