In "Action and Responsibility,'' Joel Feinberg pointed to an important idea to which he gave the label "the accordion effect.'' Feinberg's discussion of this idea is of interest on its own, but it is also of interest because of its interaction with his critique, in his "Causing Voluntary Actions,'' of a much discussed view of H. L. A. Hart and A. M. Honoré that Feinberg labels the "voluntary intervention principle.'' In this essay I reflect on what the accordion effect is (...) supposed by Feinberg to be, on differences between Feinberg's understanding of this idea and that of Donald Davidson, and on the interaction between Feinberg's discussion of the accordion effect and his critique of the voluntary intervention principle. (shrink)

Examines Arthur Schopenhauer's (1788-1860) conception of human agency and responsibility, his unique ethics of the morally virtuous character, and his assessment of life as fundamentally suffering. This title focuses on his contention that the human will and the human body cannot have a cause and effect relationship with each other.

"I suspect that this will become the book on Schopenhauer's metaphysics for many years to come, and will be required reading for any serious student of Schopenhauer's thought."--David E. Cartwright, University of Wisconsin, Whitewater.

As a work of a scholarship it seems to me to compare favourably with the best books on the subject, including those by Marcus Singer and Onora Nell.' Prof.

Without introducing quantifiers, minimal axiomatic systems have already been constructed for Peirce's triadic logics. The present paper constructs a dual pair of axiomatic systems which can be used to introduce quantifiers into Peirce's preferred system of triadic logic. It is assumed (on the basis of textual evidence) that Peirce would prefer a system which rejects the absurd but tolerates the absolutely undecidable. The systems which are introduced are shown to be absolutely consistent, deductively complete, and minimal. These dual axiomatic systems (...) reveal an interesting elegance, independent of their historical motivation. (shrink)