Orthodox Judaism is one of the fastest-growing religious communities in contemporary American life. According to the 2013 Pew Center Survey on American religious life, Orthodox Judaism is poised to surpass all other denominations of Judaism in the United States by 2050. Anyone who wishes to understand more about Judaism in America will need to consider the tenets and practices of Orthodox Judaism: who its adherents are, what they believe in, what motivates them, and to whom they turn for moral, intellectual, (...) and spiritual guidance. Among those spiritual leaders none looms larger than Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, heir to the legendary Talmudic dynasty of Brisk and a teacher and ordainer of thousands of rabbis during his time as a Talmud teacher at Yeshiva University from the Second World War until the 1980s. Soloveitchik was not only a Talmudic authority but a scholar of Western philosophy. While many books and articles have been written about Soloveitchik's legacy and his influence on American Orthodoxy, few have looked carefully at his disciples in Torah and Talmud study, and even fewer at his Jewish thought and philosophy. "Soloveitchik's Children: Irving Greenberg, David Hartman, Jonathan Sacks, and the Future of Jewish Theology in America" is the first book to study closely three of Soloveitchik's major disciples in Jewish thought and philosophy: Rabbis Irving ("Yitz") Greenberg, David Hartman, and Jonathan Sacks. These three figures hold unique places in modern and contemporary American Jewish life. Each has been highly influential not only within American Orthodoxy but within American Judaism more broadly; each has contributed significantly in the development of Jewish philosophy and theology in the postwar era; each has founded and presided over institutions of their own. David Ross Goodman narrates how each of these three major modern Jewish thinkers learned from and adapted Soloveitchik's teachings in their own ways, even while advancing his philosophical and theological legacy. Goodman highlights the approaches taken by Greenberg, Hartman, and Sacks to some of the most critical religious and philosophical issues of our time: Jewish-Christian relations and interfaith theology; the proper religious response to the Holocaust; the place of creativity in religious life; and the primacy of life in the Jewish tradition. The story of religious life and Judaism in contemporary America is incomplete without an understanding of how three of the most consequential Jewish thinkers of this generation adapted the teachings of one of the most consequential Jewish thinkers of the previous generation. "Soloveitchik's Children" tells this gripping intellectual and religious story in a learned, and engaging manner, shining a light on where Jewish religious thought in the United States currently stands-and where it may be heading in the coming generations. (shrink)

In this impressive first book, Clark explores the extraordinary history of the Destruction of Troy by Dares the Phrygian. Dares's account of the fall of Troy is a short, Latin prose narrative that claims to be an eyewitness account of the Trojan War, translated from the Phrygian by Cornelius Nepos, the Roman historian, and sent to Sallust, another, even more famous Roman historian. Dares's text came to light as late antiquity turned into the medieval era, and Dares was promptly hailed (...) as “the first pagan historian”—a predecessor of Homer—by Isidore of Seville. Throughout the medieval period, a series of scholars were transfixed by Dares. His text was taken as the earliest and thus most reliable source for the world-changing event of the Trojan War—which led to the foundation of Rome and the shape of the West. It was exciting not just for its antiquity but also for its polemical revision of the standard received story. Not only did its prefatory letter claim—with a nicely rationalizing rhetoric—that even the Athenians declared Homer was “insane” for imagining that gods and humans might meet on the battlefield, but also, even more alluringly, Dares stated that Aeneas, the pious hero of Virgil's Aeneid, was a traitor who had sold out Troy to the Greeks: he escaped the sack to found Rome because he had opened the doors of the city to its enemies. The pious Aeneas, exemplary hero, committed the deeply impious act of treachery to his own fatherland. Dares provided a moral rejoinder to later Roman political propaganda and provoked a set of intense debates about the past, its value, and its truth.Early modern humanists were more suspicious. The great scholars Scaliger and Vossius in particular turned their philological fervor against what they saw as an obvious forgery—but even then, not everyone was persuaded. The celebrated Bodin, most surprisingly, still thought Dares represented historical truth. Clark carefully shows how oversimplified the common story of the triumph of humanist learning is. It took a lot of work and much forgetting as well as persuasion for Dares to lose his position. It was indeed only in the Enlightenment that Dares finally passed into the half-light of insignificance reserved for forgeries. One strength of Clark's book is his insistence on trying to discover with generosity and understanding how apparently baffling opinions could be held and argued for—how, that is, the past is a foreign country even and especially where such apparently basic ideas as historical truth are at stake (a topic not without relevance in modern politics).Clark examines in considerable detail across several centuries how Dares was read and mobilized. It is especially satisfying to have a work of reception history that stretches across the modern historiographical divides (of the late antique, medieval, early modern, and Enlightenment periods) and sees how complex the lines of continuity and change are. The naive prose of Dares, in Clark's sophisticated analysis, raises profound questions of what antiquity is and why it matters; how authenticity and authorship are constructed differently across this time period; what the relations are between fiction, truth, and exemplarity (both in theory and in practice); and how texts shift in status and attribution. Dares indeed, as Clark puts it well, “test[s] the meaning and boundaries of antiquity itself.” The range of material is stunning: not only in terms of who read and used Dares but also in terms of the other texts that were read and transformed alongside his. It is remarkable, for example, to see how Joseph of Exeter's medieval hexameters were attributed to Dares (and then reattributed), or how Dares became silently incorporated into a work of Jerome. Despite this richness, I would have liked to see more pages on the relation between pagan and Christian historiography. How does Dares's believed (but false) claim to be an eyewitness relate to Christian claims to witness events (martyr means [eye-]witness)? Philology and its attack on authenticity were key to the battles of the Reformation. Clark could also have spent more time exploring what difference the rediscovery of the Greek text of Homer made to the story of Dares's reception. Homer's rise in the West is part of Dares's fall. In its detail, however, and its range of questions and scope of material, The First Pagan Historian is an exemplary work of reception history. (shrink)

The influence of historiography on aspects of political thought in France, Italy and Germany. In recent years the overlap between political thought and historiography has changed the boundaries of intellectual history. Donald Kelley, the longtime editor of The Journal of the History of Ideas has played a leading part in this process. These essays by his friends and former students follow in his footsteps. The collection is divided into three parts: France, England [six essays], and Italy and Germany [four essays]. (...) Anthony Grafton and John Salmon provide an introduction, and the volume concludes with a bibliography of Donald Kelley's many works. Historians and Ideologues is designed for those with an interest in the contribution of historiography to political thought, and will be a timely addition to the growing reaction against the postmodern scepticism in historiographical research in this field. Contributors include Ann Blair, Julian Franklin, Kathleen Parrow, David Harris Sacks, Sarah Hanley, Daniel Woolf, Gordon Schochet, Joseph Levine, John Pocock, Perez Zagorin, William Connell, Donald Phillip Verene, and Michael Carhart. Anthony Grafton is a Professor in the Department of History at Princeton University. John Salmon is the Marjorie Walter Goodheart Emeritus Professor of History at Bryn Mawr College. (shrink)

This article defends John Locke's notion that the cosmos is owned by God and explores the ethical implications of such divine ownership. Locke's theory, recently revived by Baruch Brody, is modified and defended against criticisms leveled against it by Joseph Lombardi and Robert Young.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Ethics and Morality Edited by Elliot N. Dorff and Jonathan K. CraneLouis E. NewmanThe Oxford Handbook of Jewish Ethics and Morality EDITED BY ELLIOT N. DORFF AND JONATHAN K. CRANE New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. 499 pp. $150The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Ethics and Morality addresses what has long been a major lacuna in the field of Jewish studies. No one who (...) studies the history of Judaism would deny that ethics has always occupied a central place in Jewish thought and practice. Yet the scope and range of Jewish ethical reflection, the variety of ethical theories that have animated this tradition, and the diversity of ethical viewpoints represented by major thinkers across the centuries remain far less widely understood than they should be. With the publication of this outstanding and highly readable collection of essays, however, Elliot Dorff and Jonathan Crane have given us the most definitive and encyclopedic presentation of Jewish ethics ever assembled.This latest addition to the Oxford Handbook series encompasses twenty-nine essays that span the history of Jewish ethics from biblical times to the present, but that also introduce readers to its applied and theoretical dimensions as well as the practitioners and scholars who collectively define the field of Jewish ethics. Part 1, “Jewish Ethical Theories,” which is more accurately a comprehensive history of Jewish ethics, includes insightful pieces on biblical, rabbinic, and medieval ethics, but also pieces on key figures in the modern period from Baruch Spinoza to Martin Buber, Abraham Isaac Kook, and Joseph B. Soloveitchik, among others. This section also includes important explications of the ethics of the various modern movements of Judaism (Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist) as well as essays on specific events and theoretical perspectives that have shaped Jewish ethical discourse in the postwar period—the Holocaust, feminism, and postmodernism. What emerges from these short but remarkably focused and accessible essays is a rich tapestry in which the wide array of genres and methods that characterize the ethics of Judaism are on full display.The second half of the volume is devoted to applied ethics, and here again the diversity of Jewish ethics is showcased. The topics covered include bioethics, the ethics of speech, sexuality, business, the treatment of animals and the environment, politics (both in America and in Israel), criminal justice, and war. The topic of bioethics is wisely subdivided so that we find separate treatments of beginning and end of life, of access to health care, and of genetic technologies. [End Page 219] While some of these essays rehearse positions that will be familiar to those within the tradition, each is an original contribution designed to present the spectrum of positions on that issue that have been articulated by contemporary Jewish ethicists. Accordingly, this volume will now become the first place to look for broad, representative presentations on the most commonly discussed ethical issues of our time.The value of the whole collection is further enhanced by the editors’ introductions, which place the individual essays in context and explain their editorial decisions in selecting and arranging the contributions as they have. Each essay is accompanied by a substantial list of suggestions for further reading that will be valuable to readers in their own right. The entire volume is rounded out with a subject index and a list of references to classical Jewish literature. One could simply not ask for a more carefully constructed or broadly useful handbook on this subject.In any edited collection of this nature, the quality of the individual contributions will vary to some extent. In this instance, the overall quality is extremely high, which is a tribute both to the individual contributors and to the editorial guidance provided by Dorff and Crane. Still, one cannot help but notice that some essays in the second section of the book are more descriptive (e.g., Daniel Sinclair’s essay on end-of-life issues) while others are more ideologically driven (e.g., Arthur Waskow’s essay on environmental ethics). Similarly, while the essays average approximately fifteen to twenty pages each, a few are shorter and more cursory (e.g., Aaron Mackler’s essay on... (shrink)

René Girard's stance towards the Western philosophical tradition was somewhat ambivalent. On the one hand, he acknowledged that major philosophers had influenced him and had contributed valuable insights on questions of desire, religion, violence, and the sacred. On the other hand, he felt that Western philosophy often, if not always, neglected the founding violence that lies at the origin of culture. The relevance of this contention is the pivotal question of the two volumes of René Girard and the Western Philosophical (...) Tradition. The chapters in these books engage the French anthropologist in a dialogue with key figures in the history of Western philosophy. Volume 1 features chapters on Plato, Augustine of Hippo, Niccolò Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, Blaise Pascal, Baruch Spinoza, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Alexis de Tocqueville, Søren Kierkegaard, as well as René Girard. Volume 2 features chapters on the pre-Socratics, Aristotle, René Descartes, Friedrich Nietzsche, Carl Schmitt, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Emmanuel Levinas, Simone Weil, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Giorgio Agamben. (shrink)

This volume contains a collection of twenty-two essays composed by Popkin from 1979 to 1989 addressing themes in the history of philosophy. The content of the essays ranges in consideration from the kinds of skepticism found in Thomas Hobbes, David Hume, or Joseph Glanville to the "incurable skepticism" of Henry More, Blaise Pascal, and Søren Kierkegaard, to the influence of religious movements on such modern thinkers as Baruch Spinoza and Isaac Newton. The array of figures examined by Popkin (...) and their connections with religious or epistemological skepticism are the means through which he proposes an alternative to the traditional approaches which have been taken to the interpretation of seventeenth-century thought. (shrink)

Oliver Sacks MD, Clinical Professor of Neurology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, talked with Anthony Freeman during his visit to London in January 1995 to publicize his recently published book An Anthropologist on Mars. The interview is preceded by an overview of the book.

Baruch Brody contends that the fundamental assumption on which the tradition is based is erroneous and that once this assumption is shown to be in error, all philosophical problems in this area have to be rethought. Originally published in 1980. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback (...) and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

It seems to me that those who place great value on the right to human freedom can be badly divided on the question of the use of force by states to defend the liberties of those who are not citizens of that particular state. Concerned about the liberties to be defended, they might be enthusiastic supporters of the use of such force by liberty-loving countries throughout the world. Concerned about the liberties that might be violated when the state marshals its (...) forces for use internationally, they might adopt a more isolationist approach to this issue. This paper is an attempt to help clarify this conflict by looking at some of the philosophical issues it raises. Because I wish to avoid factual debates about current conflicts, I will give no real-life examples. However, they are on my mind, and I hope the reader will keep them in mind as well. (shrink)

The first two parts of Objectivity and Insight explore the prospects for objectivity on the standard ontological conception, and find that they are not good. In Part I, under the heading of subject-driven scepticism, Sacks addresses the problem of securing epistemic reach that extends beyond subjective content. In so doing, he considers models of mind proposed by Locke, Hume, Kant, James, and Bergson. Part II, under the heading of world-driven scepticism, discusses the scope for universality of normative structure-a problem which (...) survives even after the assumption of an epistemologically significant breach between subject and object has been rejected. In the third part of the book Sacks introduces an alternative conception of objectivity, and shows that there is good reason to accept it. This conception turns on an insight which is taken to be implicit in transcendental idealism, and responsible for its abiding appeal; but Sacks's articulation of that insight is neither idealist nor metaphysical. (shrink)

This book contains the material for a first course in pure model theory with applications to differentially closed fields.

Name der Zeitschrift: Naharaim Jahrgang: 10 Heft: 2 Seiten: 195-213.

The Oxford Philosophical Texts series consists of authoritative teaching editions of canonical texts in the history of philosophy from the ancient world down to modern times. Each volume provides a clear, well laid out text together with a comprehensive introduction by a leading specialist, giving the student detailed critical guidance on the intellectual context of the work and the structure and philosophical important of the main arguments and explain unfamiliar references and terminology, and a full bibliography and index are also (...) included. -/- The series aims to build up a definitive corpus of key texts in the Western philosophical tradition, which will from a reliable and enduring resource for students and teachers alike. -/- Spinoza's Ethics is one of the classical texts of philosophy but is also one of the most difficult to understand because of the author's use of rigorous logical deduction and the geometrical framework within which his ideas are set. In Ethics, he discusses the nature of human beings and the way in which a rational person might live; the nature of God; and offers an account of true freedom and how it can be attained. -/- This latest text in the Oxford Philosophical Texts series includes a new, lucid translation of the Ethics by G.H.R. Parkinson along with a comprehensive guide to the understanding of Spinoza's work. An extensive introduction includes: a short biography of Spinoza himself; the form of his writing including his own particular uses of definitions; an introductory guide through the philosophy of Ethics; and a summary of the contents of Ethics itself. Further aids include a glossary of terms, extensive notes to the text. (shrink)

Students of the Enlightenment have long assumed that the major movement towards atheism in the Ancien Régime was centered in the circle of intellectuals who met at the home of Baron d'Holbach during the last half of the eighteenth century. This major critical study shows, contrary to the accepted views, that in fact, atheism was not the common bond of a majority of the members and that, far from being alienated figures, most of the members were privileged and publicly successful (...) citizens devoted to peaceful and gradual reform. Alan Charles Kors determines the coterie's membership and discovers it to have been a diverse assemblage of philosophes, men of letters, and scientists. Analyzing the thought and behavior of those members who lived past 1789, the author argues that the hostility to the Revolution expressed by the coterie's survivors was fully consistent with their world view. Originally published in 1976. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

The second edition incorporates Samuel Shirley's pre-eminent translation with corrections of the typographical errors of its first edition, and a new general index. Seymour Feldman has contributed a new Bibliography and notes.

Three theses are explored, the first two historical and the third philosophical‐theological: (1) throughout most of the history ofWestern civilization, science and religion have been closely connected with each other, and each has benefited from the connection; (2) the belief that science and religion have always been in conflict is not based on the actual history of either set of institutions; and (3) structurally a relationship between the two institutions is in the interest of both. By religion here I mean (...) specifically, but not exclusively, Judaism. (shrink)

One of the most respected religious thinkers of our time makes an impassioned plea for the return of religion to its true purpose—as a partnership with God in the work of ethical and moral living. What are our duties to others, to society, and to humanity? How do we live a meaningful life in an age of global uncertainty and instability? In To Heal a Fractured World, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks offers answers to these questions by looking at the ethics of (...) responsibility. In his signature plainspoken, accessible style, Rabbi Sacks shares with us traditional interpretations of the Bible, Jewish law, and theology, as well as the works of philosophers and ethicists from other cultures, to examine what constitutes morality and moral behavior. “We are here to make a difference,” he writes, “a day at a time, an act at a time, for as long as it takes to make the world a place of justice and compassion.” He argues that in today’s religious and political climate, it is more important than ever to return to the essential understanding that “it is by our deeds that we express our faith and make it real in the lives of others and the world.” To Heal a Fractured World—inspirational and instructive, timely and timeless—will resonate with people of all faiths. (shrink)

This paper adds temporal logic to public announcement logic (PAL) and dynamic epistemic logic (DEL). By adding a previous-time operator to PAL, we express in the language statements concerning the muddy children puzzle and sum and product. We also express a true statement that an agent’s beliefs about another agent’s knowledge flipped twice, and use a sound proof system to prove this statement. Adding a next-time operator to PAL, we provide formulas that express that belief revision does not take place (...) in PAL. We also discuss relationships between announcements and the new knowledge agents thus acquire; such relationships are related to learning and to Fitch’s paradox. We also show how inverse programs and hybrid logic each can be used to help determine whether or not an arbitrary structure represents the play of a game. We then add a past-time operator to DEL, and discuss the importance of adding yet another component to the language in order to prove completeness. (shrink)

The paper aims to cast light on the kind of proof involved in central transcendental arguments. It is suggested that some of the difficulty associated with such arguments may result from the tendency to construe them simply as articulating relations between concepts or propositional contents. A different construal, connected with phenomenological description, is outlined, as a way of bringing out the force of these arguments. It is suggested that it can be fruitful to think in terms of this construal in (...) understanding some of Kant's transcendental proofs. The recommended construal also helps to understand the nature of the link between transcendental arguments and transcendental idealism. (shrink)

The essence of who we are depends on our brains. They enable us to think, to feel joy and sorrow, communicate through speech, reflect on the moments of our lives, and to anticipate, plan for, and worry about our imagined futures. Although some of our abilities are comparatively new, key features of our behavior have deep roots that can be traced to the beginning of life. By following the story of behavior, step-by-step, over its roughly four-billion-year trajectory, we come to (...) understand both how similar we are to all organisms that have ever lived, and how different we are from even our closest animal relatives. We care about our differences because they are ours. But differences do not make us superior; they simply make us different. (shrink)

Moses Mendelssohn is often described as the founder of modern Jewish thought and as a leading philosopher of the late Enlightenment. One of Mendelssohn's main concerns was how to conceive of the relationship between Judaism, philosophy, and the civic life of a modern state. Elias Sacks explores Mendelssohn's landmark account of Jewish practice--Judaism's "living script," to use his famous phrase--to present a broader reading of Mendelssohn's writings and extend inquiry into conversations about modernity and religion. By studying Mendelssohn's thought in (...) these dimensions, Sacks suggests that he shows a deep concern with history. Sacks affords a view of a foundational moment in Jewish modernity and forwards new ways of thinking about ritual practice, the development of traditions, and the role of religion in society. (shrink)

A broad critical review of national policies on biomedical research - human, epidemiologic, clinical trials, genetic, reproductive, etc.

We argue that there is a conflict among classical theism's commitments to divine simplicity, divine creative freedom, and omniscience. We start by defining key terms for the debate related to classical theism. Then we articulate a new argument, the Aloneness Argument, aiming to establish a conflict among these attributes. In broad outline, the argument proceeds as follows. Under classical theism, it's possible that God exists without anything apart from Him. Any knowledge God has in such a world would be wholly (...) intrinsic. But there are contingent truths in every world, including the world in which God exists alone. So, it's possible that God contingently has wholly intrinsic knowledge. But whatever is contingent and wholly intrinsic is an accident. So, God possibly has an accident. This is incompatible with classical theism. Finally, we consider and rebut several objections. (shrink)

Integrating theory with case studies, this book examines the practical application of moral theory in clinical decision-making through 40 composite cases based on actual clinical experience. Complex, realistic, and challenging, these examples contain the multiplicity of factors faced in clinical crises, making this a superb exploration of the ways in which theory relates to actual life-or-death situations.

This paper aims to extend in two directions the probabilistic dynamic epistemic logic provided in Kooi’s paper (J Logic Lang Inform 12(4):381–408, 2003) and to relate these extensions to ones made in van Benthem et al. (Proceedings of LOFT’06. Liverpool, 2006). Kooi’s probabilistic dynamic epistemic logic adds to probabilistic epistemic logic sentences that express consequences of public announcements. The paper (van Benthem et al., Proceedings of LOFT’06. Liverpool, 2006) extends (Kooi, J Logic Lang Inform 12(4):381–408, 2003) to using action models, (...) but in both papers, the probabilities are discrete, and are defined on trivial σ -algebras over finite sample spaces. The first extension offered in this paper is to add a previous-time operator to a probabilistic dynamic epistemic logic similar to Kooi’s in (J Logic Lang Inform 12(4):381–408, 2003). The other is to involve non-trivial σ -algebras and continuous probabilities in probabilistic dynamic epistemic logic. (shrink)

This paper provides a sound and complete proof system for a language that adds to Dynamic Epistemic Logic a discrete previous-time operator as well as single symbol formulas that partially reveal the most recent event that occurred. The completeness theorem is by filtration followed by model unraveling and other model transformations. Decidability follows from the completeness proof. The degree to which it is important to include the additional single symbol formulas is addressed in a discussion about the difficulties of the (...) completeness for a language that only adds the previous-time operator to DEL. Discussion is also given regarding the completeness for a language obtained by removing common knowledge operators from. (shrink)

A broad treatment of politics and society in Britain by the Chief Rabbi of the Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth. Sacks proposes a new politics of responsibility in which all portions of society have a part to play - a politics not of interest but of involvement - and hope.

Sacks argues that faiths must remain open to criticism, keep alive their separate communities and still contribute far more to national debates on moral issues. they m,ust also learn to get along better. His thesis is that we still live under a Biblical canopy and that a cohesive morality needs the uniting bonds of faith. Confidence in a faith is a subtle quality and lack of it shows in many ways, some contradictory. Dr Sacks has that confidence and the quiet (...) charisma to communicate it. The subject of this book - religions and ethics- is good ground for him to build on: The Jewish contribution to ethics is distinctly rational and has a long and illustrious tradition. Moral philosophy is after all a Jewish preoccupation. In recent years, he writes, religion has taken us unawares. The rise of the Moral Majority in the USA, the Islamic Revolution, the growth of religious parties in Israel, the power of Catholicism in Poland and the African continent all run contrary to the basic thesis that modernity and secularization went hand in hand and could almost be regarded as synonyms. Instead and against all prediction religion has resurfaced in the public domain. In this book Sacks argues the case for a broadly based return to tradition within the context of religious pluralism and tolerance. Religious values remain a strong force within our culture to be renewed. For our society to be viable indeed they must be renewed. (shrink)

This almost self-contained introduction to higher recursion theory is essential reading for all researchers in the field.

This paper compares the treatment of other minds in Strawson and Sartre. Both discussions are presented here as transcendental arguments, and some striking parallels between them are brought out. However the primary significance of the alignment lies in the difference that emerges between two forms of transcendental proof, with the phenomenological treatment in Sartre promising to yield a stronger conclusion than Strawson's argument. The paper goes some way towards bringing out this difference.

New pedagogical visions and technological developments have brought argumentation to the fore of educational practice. Whereas students previously 'learned to 'argue', they now 'argue to learn': collaborative argumentation-based learning has become a popular and valuable pedagogical technique, across a variety of tasks and disciplines. Researchers have explored the conditions under which arguing to learn is successful, have described some of its learning potentials and have developed Internet-based tools to support such learning. However, the further advancement of this field presently faces (...) several problems, which the present book addresses. Three dimensions of analysis - historical, theoretical and empirical - are integrated throughout the book. Given the nature of its object of study - dialogue, interaction, argumentation, learning and teaching - the book is resolutely multidisciplinary, drawing on research on learning in educational and psychological sciences, as well as on philosophical and linguistic theories of dialogue and argumentation. (shrink)

Transcendental idealism has been conceived of in philosophy as a position that aims to secure objectivity without traditional metaphysical underpinnings. This article contrasts two forms of transcendental idealism that have been identified: one in the work of Kant, the other in the later Wittgenstein. The distinction between these two positions is clarified by means of a distinction between transcendental constraints and transcendental features. It is argued that these conceptions provide the - fundamentally different - bases of the two positions under (...) discussion. With the core of the positions identified, it is then suggested that neither form of transcendental idealism - the Kantian or the Wittgensteinian - manages to combine the twin aims of safeguarding objectivity and maintaining metaphysical parsimony. The Kantian form appears to succeed on the first score at the cost of failing on the second, while the Wittgensteinian form succeeds on the second and fails on the first. (shrink)

We draw out significant consequences of a relatively popular theory of metaphysical modality—branching actualism—for cosmological arguments for God’s existence. According to branching actualism, every possible world shares an initial history with the actual world and diverges only because causal powers (or dispositions, or some such) are differentially exercised. We argue that branching actualism undergirds successful responses to two recent cosmological arguments: the Grim Reaper Kalam argument and a modal argument from contingency. We also argue that branching actualism affords a response (...) to one popular defense of the classic contingency argument. What results are new difficulties for several cosmological arguments arising from the metaphysics of modality. (shrink)

"When it comes to morality as it is practiced in medicine, Brody makes clear that the ethical issues are never as simple as black and white - that there are myriad factors and fine nuances that can and should challenge decision making as it is commonly practiced in difficult medical cases. In this collection, delving thoughtfully and systematically into methodology, research ethics, clinical ethics, and Jewish medical ethics, he tackles thorny life-and-death questions head-on and fearlessly. He casts a light into (...) all the corners of end-of-life decisions - a field in which he has exemplary credentials - while illuminating a new understanding of morality and ethics." "The introduction outlines much of Brody's approach, defines the terminology used, and contrasts his ethical positions with much of the competing literature, Taking Issue will be invaluable to students and scholars in medical ethics, bioethics, and the philosophy of medicine." "Baruch A. Brody is the Leon Jaworski Professor Biomedical Ethics and director of the Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy at Baylor College of Medicine. He is also a professor of philosophy at Rice University and director of the Ethics program at the Methodist Hospital."--BOOK JACKET. (shrink)

The notion of a weakly scattered theory T is defined. T need not be scattered. For each a model of T, let sr() be the Scott rank of . Assume sr() ≤ ω\sp A \sb 1 for all a model of T. Let σ\sp T \sb 2 be the least Σ₂ admissible ordinal relative to T. If T admits effective k-splitting as defined in this paper, then θσ\cal Aθ\cal A$ a model of T.

Model theoretic considerations purportedly show that a certain version of structural realism, one which articulates the nvtion of structure via Ramsey sentences, is in fact trivially true. In this paper we argue that the structural realist is by no means forced to Ramseyfy in the manner assumed in the formal proof. However, the structural realist's reprise is short-lived. For, as we show, there are related versions of the model theoretic argument which cannot be so easily blocked by the structural realist. (...) We examine various ways in which the structural realist may respond, and conclude that the best way of blocking the model theoretic argument involves formulating his Ramseyfied theories using intensional operators. Introduction The model theoretic arguments On Ramseyfying away predicates The model theoretic argument bites back Restricting the second order quantifiers 5.1 Naturalness 5.2 Intrinsic 5.3 Qualitative 5.4 Contingent and causal Intensional operators and relations between properties Conclusion. (shrink)