In this book G. W. Leibniz presents not only his reflections on predestination and election but also a more detailed account of the problem of evil than is found in any of his other works apart from the _Theodicy_. Surprisingly, his _Dissertation on Predestination and Grace_ has never before been published in any form. Michael J. Murray's project of translating, editing, and providing commentary for the volume will therefore attract great interest among scholars and students of Leibniz's philosophy and theology. (...) Leibniz addresses such topics as free will, moral responsibility, divine causation, justice, punishment, divine foreknowledge, and human freedom, revealing crucial aspects of the genesis of his mature metaphysics and the theological motivations behind it. (shrink)

This volume is a critical edition of the ten-year correspondence between Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, one of Europe’s most influential early modern thinkers, and Bartholomew Des Bosses, a Jesuit theologian who was keen to bring together Leibniz’s philosophy and the Aristotelian philosophy and religious doctrines accepted by his order. The letters offer crucial insights into Leibniz’s final metaphysics and into the intellectual life of the eighteenth century. Brandon C. Look and Donald Rutherford present seventy-one of Leibniz’s and Des Bosses’s letters in (...) the original Latin and in careful English translation. Few of the letters have been translated into English before. The editors also provide extensive annotations, deletions, and marginalia from Leibniz’s various drafts, and a substantial introduction setting the context for the correspondence and analyzing the main philosophical issues. (shrink)

This study empirically assesses the extent to which intrinsic value theories of nature are accepted and acknowledged outside the realm of academic environmental ethics. It focuses on twenty of the largest landowning organisations in England, including both conservation and non-conservation organisations and investigates the environmental philosophical beliefs and values held by representative individuals of these groups. An in-depth interview was held with a representative from each organisation. The interviews were analysed using qualitative data analysis software and the results compared against (...) a backdrop of academic philosophical positions. The study found that an ecocentric position which acknowledges nature's intrinsic value was adopted by the majority of respondents, both from conservation and non-conservation organisations. However, it was also found that individuals felt the idea of nature's intrinsic value was generally not reflected in organisational policy. (shrink)

Writing in the foreword to Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind and speaking of his upbringing in Chicago between the wars Saul Bellow attests that …as a Midwesterner, the son of immigrant parents, I recognized at an early stage that I was called upon to decide for myself to what extent my Jewish origins, my surroundings [‘the accidental circumstances of Chicago’], my schooling, were to be allowed to determine the course of my life. I did not intend to (...) be wholly dependent upon history and culture. Full dependency must mean that I was done for. The commonest teaching of the civilized world in our time can be stated simply: ‘Tell me where you come from and I'll tell you what you are’. (shrink)

Mill's feminism has been attacked as being logically incoherent. The general verdict has been that Mill can easily be defended from the charge. However, both sides in the debate have ignored the fact that his feminism is part of a broader theory of liberal empiricism. Placing The Subjection of Women in this context re–opens the question of its logical credentials and reveals a basic weakness in Millian feminism.

The principles of the 3Rs—replacement, refinement, and reduction—strongly shape discussion of methods for performing more humane animal research and the regulation of this contested area of technoscience. This special issue looks back to the origins of the 3Rs principles through five papers that explore how it is enacted and challenged in practice and that develop critical considerations about its future. Three themes connect the papers in this special issue. These are the multiplicity of roles enacted by those who use and (...) care for animals in research, the distribution of “feelings that matter” across species and spaces of laboratory animal practice, and the growing importance of “cultures of care” in animal research. (shrink)

Saul Kripke is one of the most original and creative philosophers writing today. His work has had a tremendous impact on the direction that philosophy has taken in the last thirty years and continues to dominate some of its most fundamental aspects. Given Kripke's importance it is perhaps surprising that there is no introduction to his philosophy available to the general student. This book fills that gap. As much of Kripke's work is highly technical, the book's central aim is to (...) provide clear exposition of Kripke's ideas in a form that is understandable to a beginning readership as well as a commentary on them that more advanced students will find useful. The book begins with a discussion of Kripke's early work on modal logic, which provides the foundation for many of his later philosophical contributions, before examining in detail Kripke's central ideas and arguments contained in Naming and Necessity. In further chapters, Kripke's work on semantic paradoxes and his theory of truth are outlined as well as his controversial interpretation of Wittgenstein's famous private language argument. Kripke's ideas are situated alongside those of his precursors and some of the most important and interesting responses to them are explored. The reader is thus able to appreciate the path-breaking nature of Kripke's contributions, how they have challenged fundamentally traditional interpretations, and how they have sparked some of the most important philosophical debates of recent years. (shrink)

The author discusses both dobbs' article and philpott's work as they apply to "linking quantum considerations to time intervals of an order of magnitude such that they can be consciously appreciated." (staff).