An original and provocative book that illuminates the origins of philosophy in ancient Greece by revealing the surprising early meanings of the word "philosopher" Calling Philosophers Names provides a groundbreaking account of the origins of the term philosophos or "philosopher" in ancient Greece. Tracing the evolution of the word's meaning over its first two centuries, Christopher Moore shows how it first referred to aspiring political sages and advice-givers, then to avid conversationalists about virtue, and finally to investigators who focused (...) on the scope and conditions of those conversations. Questioning the familiar view that philosophers from the beginning "loved wisdom" or merely "cultivated their intellect," Moore shows that they were instead mocked as laughably unrealistic for thinking that their incessant talking and study would earn them social status or political and moral authority. Taking a new approach to the history of early Greek philosophy, Calling Philosophers Names seeks to understand who were called philosophoi or "philosophers" and why, and how the use of and reflections on the word contributed to the rise of a discipline. Drawing on a wide range of evidence, the book demonstrates that a word that began in part as a wry reference to a far-flung political bloc came, hardly a century later, to mean a life of determined self-improvement based on research, reflection, and deliberation. Early philosophy dedicated itself to justifying its own dubious-seeming enterprise. And this original impulse to seek legitimacy holds novel implications for understanding the history of the discipline and its influence. (shrink)

Basing his view on the object relations theories of the "British School" of psychoanalysis, Christopher Bollas examines the human subject's memories of its earliest experiences (during infancy and childhood) of the object, whether it be mother, father, or self. He explains in well-written and non-technical language how the object can affect the child, or "cast in shadow," without the child being able to process this relation through mental representations of language.

Plato Tom Angier -- Aristotle Timothy Chappell -- Stoics Jacob Klein -- Aquinas Vivian Boland O.P -- Hume Peter Millican -- Kant Ralph Walker -- Hegel Kenneth Westphal -- Marx Sean Sayers -- Mill Krister Bykvist -- Nietzsche Ken Gemes and Christoph Schuringa -- Macintyre David Solomon.

Ever since Parmenides, one of philosophy's riddles has been how we are able to direct our thoughts to non-being. Erhard uses the problem of non-existence as the starting point for an analysis of Husserl's phenomenology. He examines Husserl's interpretation of judgments about non-being as judgments made "under assumption" and his analysis of "free fantasy." Erhard thus demonstrates that Husserl is compatible with today's non-relational theories.

: A distinctive nonconsequentialist argument for criminalisation and punishment claims that the citizens of a state that did not criminalise serious mala in se perpetrated in its jurisdiction would be complicit in their commission. However, one objection to such an argument is that such citizens cannot be complicit because they play no causal role in the commission of the offence. Against this objection, I argue that causal contribution is unnecessary, and that one way in which a secondary agent can become (...) complicit in a principal’s wrongdoing is if they allow that wrongdoing to be carried out in a domain over which they have authority, and with their permission. As a result of giving permission, the agent shares in the principal’s blameworthiness. (shrink)

This paper has five theses, which are intended to address the claims in Jerry Fodor's paper. (1) The question arises of the relation between the philosophical theory of concepts and epistemology. Neither is explanatorily prior to the other. Rather, each relies implicitly on distinctions drawn from the other. To explain what makes something knowledge, we need distinctions drawn from the theory of concepts. To explain the attitudes mentioned in a theory of concepts, we need to use the notion of knowledge. (...) (2) Concepts can have a normative dimension without their nature being interpretation‐dependent, and without their nature being mind‐dependent. The normative dimension traces back instead to the role of truth as a constitutive aim of judgement. (3) Conceptual combination is to be explained at the level of reference and semantic value. When we respect this fact, there is no difficulty in explaining compositionality for epistemically‐constrained concepts. (4) Epistemically‐constrained theories of concepts are committed to the applicability of the notion of the a priori. They are not committed to the applicability of the notion of analyticity, where this is construed as truth purely in virtue of meaning or the identity of concepts. (5) Possession of a concept has causal‐explanatory powers, whether given by a possession condition in the form presented in A Study of Concepts, or by possession of an implicit conception. A possession‐condition theory of concepts need not be a form of dispositionalism. (shrink)

Contemporary architecture is increasingly grounded in science and mathematics. Architectural discourse has shifted radically from the sometimes disorienting Derridean deconstruction, to engaging scientific terms such as fractals, chaos, complexity, nonlinearity, and evolving systems. That's where the architectural action is -- at least for cutting-edge architects and thinkers -- and every practicing architect and student needs to become conversant with these terms and know what they mean. Unfortunately, the vast majority of architecture faculty are unprepared to explain them to students, not (...) having had a scientific education themselves. Here is an architecture book by an architect/scientist, just in time to help architects in the new millennium. Alexander discusses many of the scientific terms arising in cutting-edge architecture, and explains them to those who don't have scientific training or advanced mathematical knowledge. We find discussions of the evolution of forms; the importance of process in design; iteration; genetic algorithms; sequences of transformations; different levels of scale (i.e. fractals); etc. They are explained here by an architect who is also a scientist, because he wants to change the way architects think and build. Alexander is not merely popularizing other scientists' results and making them accessible to architects: he is in fact presenting new and original scientific work that ties many of these concepts together in a way that will be useful to architects. (shrink)

Heidegger's connection with Nazism is well known and has been exhaustively debated. But we need to understand better why Heidegger believed National Socialism to be the best cure for the ills of modern society. In this book Christopher Rickey examines the internal logic of Heidegger's ideas to explain how they led him to become a powerful critic of liberalism and a Nazi supporter. Key to Rickey's interpretation is the radically antinomian conception of religiosity he finds at the core of (...) Heidegger's challenge to modernity. Heidegger responds to the crisis of modernity with a philosophy attuned to the fundamental need for humans to live with the proper stance toward the divine. Inspired by Lutheran and mystical theology, Heidegger outlines an essentially religious conception of authentic human being. Like his radical Lutheran forerunners, Heidegger politicizes the radical strains of Luther's theology to create a potent revolutionary brew: the revolution of the saints. Rickey traces out the ways in which these currents fundamentally shape Heidegger's thought: the Lutheran background to his critique of modern science and the technological rationality it spawns; his transformation of Aristotle's prudential conception of practical wisdom into the total revelation of being that lays the basis for revolutionary political action; and his mystical and sectarian understanding of authentic community. Rickey shows how this political-theological vision forms the basis of Heidegger's concrete political action, and concludes with an analysis of the fundamental problems this vision poses to our political thinking today. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

Engineering the Climate: The Ethics of Solar Radiation Management is a wide-ranging and expert analysis of the ethics of the intentional management of solar radiation. This book will be a useful tool for policy-makers, a provocation for ethicists, and an eye-opening analysis for both the scientist and the general reader with interest in climate change.

David Carr's account of the nature of professional work is described and examined. It is argued that Carr's criteria for distinguishing between professional and non–professional work are not adequate. The criteria are as follows: the professions’ essential role in promoting human flourishing; their contestability; their direct concern for the well–being of clients; their provision of a high degree of autonomy for practitioners. They do not mark out a qualitative difference between professions and other occupations. Carr's notion of civic necessities applies (...) to what he describes as non–professional as well as to professional work. The role of commercial considerations in the usefulness of some kinds of work is considered and a distinction is made between technical and occupational virtues. Carr treats professional virtues as occupational virtues without appreciating that nearly all occupations have both occupational and technical virtues. A significant part of the wouthwhileness of work is bound up with practice of the relevant occupational virtues. (shrink)

This chapter, which concentrates on the violent imaginaries that informed the reports and deeds of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, reviews the perseverance of pre-colonial notions of a sacred king whose “wild sovereignty” and inability to promote the flow of imaana earns him fateful sacrifice. The term imaana denotes a supreme being and, in a more generalized way, a “diffuse, fecundating fluid” of celestial origin whose activity upon livestock, land, and people brought fertility and abundance. As imaana's earthly representative, the king (...) channeled fertility to the rest of humanity. The chapter also discusses symbolism of the sovereign's body and its implicit link with the process of liquid flow. Habyarimana is an inadequate conduit of imaana and thus not a worthy king. He is the antithesis of Ruganzu Ndori. -/- . (shrink)

The first comparative study of Heidegger and Schelling, recognizing Schelling's place in post-Kantian GermanIdealism and his contribution to Heidegger's later thought.

We describe an infinitary logic for metric structures which is analogous to Lω1,ω. We show that this logic is capable of expressing several concepts from analysis that cannot be expressed in finitary continuous logic. Using topological methods, we prove an omitting types theorem for countable fragments of our infinitary logic. We use omitting types to prove a two-cardinal theorem, which yields a strengthening of a result of Ben Yaacov and Iovino concerning separable quotients of Banach spaces.

We present a new modeling framework for recognition memory and repetition priming based on signal detection theory. We use this framework to specify and test the predictions of 4 models: (a) a single-system (SS) model, in which one continuous memory signal drives recognition and priming; (b) a multiple-systems-1 (MS1) model, in which completely independent memory signals (such as explicit and implicit memory) drive recognition and priming; (c) a multiple-systems-2 (MS2) model, in which there are also 2 memory signals, but some (...) degree of dependence is allowed between these 2 signals (and this model subsumes the SS and MS1 models as special cases); and (d) a dual-process signal detection (DPSD1) model, 1 possible extension of a dual-process theory of recognition (Yonelinas, 1994) to priming, in which a signal detection model is augmented by an independent recollection process. The predictions of the models are tested in a continuous-identification-with-recognition paradigm in both normal adults (Experiments 1–3) and amnesic individuals (using data from Conroy, Hopkins, & Squire,2005). The SS model predicted numerous results in advance. These were not predicted by the MS1 model, though could be accommodated by the more flexible MS2 model. Importantly, measures of overall model fit favored the SS model over the others. These results illustrate a new, formal approach to testing theories of explicit and implicit memory. (shrink)

Christopher Pincock discusses the nature of the explanation of the universality of certain natural phenomena, such as critical phenomena. Under what conditions can they be called emergent?

The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Love offers a wide array of original essays on the nature and value of love. The editors, Christopher Grau and Aaron Smuts, have assembled an esteemed group of thinkers, including both established scholars and younger voices. The volume contains thirty-three essays addressing both issues about love as well as key philosophers who have contributed to the philosophy of love, such as Plato, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, and Murdoch. The topics range from central issues about the (...) nature and variety of love, the possibility of its rational justification, and whether it is an emotion, to the significance of love for law, economics, morality, and free will. The volume also contains an introduction to the subject as well as essays on love’s relation to jealousy, biotechnology, religion, knowledge, and several other topics. This wide-ranging handbook will be a key resource for specialists working on the philosophy of love, and a helpful guide for those looking to learn more about the area. (shrink)

Understanding statements containing the past tense involves tacit knowledge of the generalization of such principles as this: ‘Yesterday it rained’ is true if and only if yesterday had the same property as today is required to have for a present‐tense thought ‘It is now raining’ to be true when evaluated with respect to today. This is a variant of the truth‐value link. This tacit knowledge integrates with realism about the past because present‐tense statements are as categorical as their past‐tense counterparts (...) and cannot be reduced to counterfactuals without circularity. An externalist model of the perception of temporal properties and relations can be given, one involving a constitutive sensitivity to instances of those temporal properties and relations themselves. This can contribute to an explanation of how memory supplies knowledge of the past. (shrink)

Provides an orientation and an array of conceptual & critical tools for scholars theorising political life today. Christopher Robinson connects Wittgenstein's philosophy to strategies for achieving political vision in this age where politics has been replaced by bureaucracy as the predominant form of public order, and now takes the form of dissent.In particular, Wittgenstein's remarks on perception are brought to bear on theory's historical and etymological roots in clear seeing. This frees the theorist to explore the city of language (...) and sheds fresh light on political concepts such as liberty, dignity, dissent, and ideology. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:From Parnassus to EdenChristopher McDonoughFor Rebekah SmithIn these pages some seven years ago, Robert Renehan (1992) discussed the passage from book 19 of the Odyssey in which the young Odysseus’ cousins sing a healing incantation over his wound in the wilderness of Mount Parnassus. 1 Renehan was specifically interested in bringing to light the Old Irish comparanda, so as to display the Indo-European roots of this particular form of (...) magical healing; he was clear in stating, nonetheless, that such practices are found in many other parts of the world. To encounter this custom, however, it is not necessary to study ancient Ireland or Greece, as I discovered by surprise in class one day.When lecturing on the Odyssey in the past, I have always enjoyed lingering over this particular scene, presenting to students Erich Auerbach’s ideas on mimesis as well as more general folkloric material. 2 In addition to the Irish evidence adduced by Renehan, I have usually mentioned anecdotes about the brauchers (wizards) of the Pennsylvania Dutch, some of whom could still blood by chanting—even over the telephone (see Dorson 1964, 115). Thus it was, in the fall of 1995, that I was giving a guest lecture on book 19 for a classical mythology class at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. I had just finished reciting some of the stories above, when a student raised his hand to ask, “Is that anything like talking out fire?” Before I could respond, another student also spoke up. “I was thinking that, too,” she said.A few others were nodding their heads in recognition, though the majority of the class looked perplexed. I certainly was, since I had no idea what they were talking about. The first student explained that he [End Page 297] was from Eden, North Carolina, a Piedmont town near the Virginia border; that, in this area, there were old women who could talk out fire; that, if a person had been burned, such a woman could be hired to speak to the fire and convince it to leave the body; that his own grandmother was such a woman; and that he himself as a child had had a burn talked out of his hand, which hand—the very hand he had raised!—he now raised again as dramatic testimony of the treatment. A few other students said that they too were familiar with the custom, though none had quite so intimate a familiarity as he.In the days that followed I did a little research on the topic, fearing that I may have been hoodwinked by some true son of crafty Autolykos. But his story checked out: the phenomenon of “talking the fire out of a burn” is well attested in North Carolina and throughout the South. 3 While folklorists have collected many accounts of this type of healing, perhaps the most vivid description is given by Southern writer Harry Crews. In A Childhood: The Biography of a Place (1978 = 1993, 17–170), a memoir of his upbringing in Depression-era rural Georgia, the author relates that, while playing as a boy, he had fallen into a cast-iron tub filled with boiling water for skinning hogs; over two-thirds of his body was scalded and, he recalls, the skin of his left hand came off “like a wet glove.” His family was too remote and too poor for a hospital trip, and had to rely on some makeshift arrangements set up by the local doctor. Shortly thereafter, however, they were visited by a rough character named Hollis Toomey, known throughout the area for his ability to talk out fire. Crews recounts what happened next:Hollis Toomey’s voice was low like the quiet rasping of a file on metal. I couldn’t hear most of what he had to say, but that was all right because I stopped burning before he ever started talking. He talked to the fire like an old and respected adversary, but one he had beaten consistently and had come to beat again. I don’t remember him once looking at my face while he explained: “Fire, this boy is mine. This bed is mine... (shrink)

Liberation theology is widely referred to in discussions of politics and religion but not always adequately understood. The second edition of this Companion brings the story of the movement's continuing importance and impact up to date. Additional essays, which complement those in the original edition, expand upon the issues by dealing with gender and sexuality and the important matter of epistemology. In the light of a more conservative ethos in Roman Catholicism, and in theology generally, liberation theology is often said (...) to have been an intellectual movement tied to a particular period of ecumenical and political theology. These essays indicate its continuing importance in different contexts and enable readers to locate its distinctive intellectual ethos within the evolving contextual and cultural concerns of theology and religious studies. This book will be of interest to students of theology as well as to sociologists, political theorists and historians. (shrink)

Compared with children, adults are widely assumed to possess more mature moral understanding thus justifying deference to their moral authority and testimony. This paper examines philosophical discussions regarding this child-adult moral relation and its implications for moral education, particularly accounts suggesting that the moral status of children constitute grounds for treating them paternalistically. I contend that descriptions and justifications of this paternalistic attitude towards children are either unacceptably crude or mistaken. While certain instances justify paternalistic treatment towards children, in the (...) context of moral education the paternalistic attitude is largely irrelevant and even counterproductive. I make a case that children can readily meet minimal standards for moral understanding and engagement. Even when children have no final say, there is still a significant normative difference between deferring paternalistically to the adult's moral testimony and interacting with the child in moral conversation. These considered, I defend a social-contextualist account of moral education that incorporates a participatory (over a paternalistic) pedagogical attitude. Further, instead of portraying moral education in terms of stages (as argued by Kohlberg), moral education should be characterized more as a gradual appreciation of and sensitivity to normative demands that apply in various shared contexts and spheres of human concern. (shrink)

Research Articles Christopher Heath Wellman, Social Philosophy and Policy, FirstView Article.

This paper argues that a liberal state is justified in promoting relationships of conjugal love – the form of relationship that is the basis of the institution of marriage – on the grounds that they are essential to the development and maintenance of autonomy. A deep human need is that the detail of our lives be recognized (accepted, affirmed, granted importance) by others (or by an other). Autonomy can be compromised when this need is not met. So a state concerned (...) with autonomy ought to be concerned with relationships in which people can be given recognition. This argument justifies support for friendship as well as conjugal love; why is the latter particularly special? The answer is that in conjugal love partners value each other exclusively (i.e., in a way they do not value anyone else). Conjugal relations therefore recognise the uniqueness and individual value of a person's life in away that friendship does not. (shrink)

This moving, insightful and ultimately hopeful and helpful blend of memoir and philosophical exploration begins in Christopher Phillips's native stomping grounds of the tiny volcanic island of Nisyros, Greece and unfurls through space and time as the author explores the connections between his immediate circumstances and the eternal wisdom of popular philosophers.