Revolutionizing received opinion of Taoism's origins in light of historic new discoveries, Harold D. Roth has uncovered China's oldest mystical text--the original expression of Taoist philosophy--and presents it here with a complete translation and commentary. Over the past twenty-five years, documents recovered from the tombs of China's ancient elite have sparked a revolution in scholarship about early Chinese thought, in particular the origins of Taoist philosophy and religion. In _Original Tao,_ Harold D. Roth exhumes the seminal text of (...) Taoism--_Inward Training (Nei-yeh)_--not from a tomb but from the pages of the _Kuan Tzu,_ a voluminous text on politics and economics in which this mystical tract had been "buried" for centuries. _Inward Training_ is composed of short poetic verses devoted to the practice of breath meditation, and to the insights about the nature of human beings and the form of the cosmos derived from this practice. In its poetic form and tone, the work closely resembles the _Tao-te Ching_; moreover, it clearly evokes Taoism's affinities to other mystical traditions, notably aspects of Hinduism and Buddhism. Roth argues that _Inward Training_ is the foundational text of early Taoism and traces the book to the mid-fourth century B.C. (the late Warring States period in China). These verses contain the oldest surviving expressions of a method for mystical "inner cultivation," which Roth identifies as the basis for all early Taoist texts, including the _Chuang Tzu_ and the world-renowned _Tao-te Ching._ With these historic discoveries, he reveals the possibility of a much deeper continuity between early "philosophical" Taoism and the later Taoist religion than scholars had previously suspected. _Original Tao_ contains an elegant and luminous complete translation of the original text. Roth's comprehensive analysis explains what _Inward Training_ meant to the people who wrote it, how this work came to be "entombed" within the _Kuan Tzu,_ and why the text was largely overlooked after the early Han period. (shrink)

Heuristics provide insight into the inconsistencies that characterize thinking related to the use of nonhuman animals. We examine paradoxes in judgments and policy related to the treatment of animals in science from a moral intuition perspective. Sunstein's ideas are consistent with a model of animal-related ethical evaluation we developed twenty-five years ago and which appear readily formulated as moral heuristics.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Science Wars and BeyondHarold FrommScandalous Knowledge: Science, Truth and the Human, by Barbara Herrnstein Smith; viii & 198 pp. Durham: Duke University Press, 2005, $21.95 paper.Fear of Knowledge: Against Relativism and Constructivism, by Paul Boghossian; 139 pp. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, $24.95.Barbara H. Smith, a professor of comparative and English literature at both Duke and Brown, has read widely in philosophy and the sciences. "Scandalous knowledge" is her (...) phrase to describe not the "science wars" (to use the title of the notorious Spring/Summer 1996 issue of Social Text) but the epistemology wars. The chief antagonists in these wars consist, on the one side, of traditional proponents of "classical" philosophy's normative, analytic, justifying, and stable methodologies and proponents, on the other, of such twentieth-century constructivist epistemologies as those of Ludwik Fleck, Thomas Kuhn, Michel Foucault, David Bloor, and Bruno Latour. "The scandal," Smith explains, is classical philosophy's "apparent inability to show how, when and why we can be sure that we know something or, indeed, that we know anything" (p. 1). In her well-executed Introduction, perhaps the best chapter in the book (for its panoramic picture of today's "Theory of Knowledge" conflicts), Smith prepares us for her espousal of constructivist methodologies but first distinguishes between "epistemological constructivism"—a philosophical methodology with an antagonism toward universal rationalities, philosophical "realism," in-itselfness, or [End Page 580] the Correspondence Theory of Truth—and the cultural critique often called "social constructionism," a distinction she acknowledges to be sometimes difficult and hazy. Social constructionism, a highly political activity, is critical of traditional notions of the normative and is engaged with the workings of cultural critics, ethicists, feminists, gender theorists, critics of institutional power, and the "goes without saying" of mainstream assumptions in the treatment of race, sexuality, the "natural" and the innate. In a word, the global conflict she describes is between "reason" (a contested term) and politics (not very contested, except for who and what are political), between the putative eternal verities of thought and the contingencies of daily life. Whereas a "constructivist" sociologist of science would stress the social, collective, intersubjective, institutional aspects of scientific knowledge, questioning "the standard understandings and treatments of such terms as fact, discovery, evidence, proof, objectivity and, of course, knowledge and science themselves" (p. 7), the "social constructionist" would be more likely to focus on class, politics, economics, and culture seen as a congeries of power structures.Smith is particularly distressed by the claims of traditional philosophy when she asks, "May it not be the case that the strict distinctions and divisions of labor that underwrite philosophy's self-honoring role in the study of science and knowledge beg all the relevant questions and, where maintained, insure philosophy's self-confinement?" (p. 10). She sees knowledge as assembled from multiple sources: philosophy, science, social sciences, human animality and subjectivity but she is not suggesting an abandonment of the notion of "truth," just a curbing of the notion of absolute knowledge, or knowledge of things-in-themselves (though even traditionalists believe being known can't be an aspect of a thing-in-itself.) In the process of constructing truths, "reason is not 'abandoned' for 'irrationalism'; scientific knowledge is not 'equated with' myth or ideology; and so forth... but are reconceived as variable gradients rather than fixed, distinct and polar opposites" (p. 11). She prefers to speak of the "superiority" of certain claims rather than their fixed universality via "rationalist-realist-positivist epistemology." As her overall theme, Smith wants to defend constructivist epistemology as the appropriate one for the twenty-first century and, to a slightly lesser extent, the goals of social construction, while deriding as unfounded the attacks against their purported relativism, nihilism, fatuous egalitarianism, and political correctness. Her performance is undeniably impressive but her success is mixed.The stronger first half of the book mounts a plausible defense of [End Page 581] constructivist epistemology. Starting off with a quick survey of "Pre-Post-Modern" relativists from Heraclitus to Wittgenstein, Smith moves on to twentieth-century modernist questioners of objectivist-universalist epistemes, from Heidegger and Einstein to Franz Boas, Edward Sapir, Lenin, and in the arts Woolf, Stravinsky... (shrink)

Considered ahead of its time since the first publication in 1981, Medical Choices, Medical Chances provides a telescope for viewing how developments in the fields of medical research, medical technology, and health care organization are likely to influence the doctor-patient relationship in the 21st Century. The book explores this intricate web of relationships among doctors, patients, and families and offers a new framework for mastering the emotional and intellectual challenges of uncertainty, while at the same time providing tools for all (...) concerned to regain control from managed care. It is a must-read for all those interested in medicine and where it is headed in the new millennium. (shrink)

: This paper discusses the role of ethical considerations in the formulation of public policies aimed at shaping the scientific agenda. Specifically, new and controversial public policy issues will confront us in the twenty-first century as the result of developments on the frontiers of biomedical science. Some of the anxieties in the ethical arena generated by the rapid pace of these developments are likely to result in efforts to place constraints on the shape of the scientific agenda and the application (...) of new knowledge. Our moral propositions, therefore, will be tested and re-tested in their application to evolving social, cultural, and historical circumstances and the ever-changing technological context. (shrink)

The response to Kripke’s modal argument I wish to propose appeals to the distinction between indicative descriptions, i.e., descriptions formed using indicative verb forms, and what I shall call subjunctive descriptions, descriptions formed using non-indicative verb forms used in subjunctive conditionals. The contrast is between ‘the person who is richer than anyone else in the world’ and ‘the person who would have been richer than anyone else in the world’. The response to Kripke’s modal argument is that indicative descriptions are (...) always rigid designators and so do not contrast with proper names. (shrink)

I shall reply to Mr Stevenson's criticisms of my Objects & Identity (1980) in the order in which they occur in his review; mostly this will be a matter of clearing up obvious confusions.

Olympiodorus led the Platonist school of philosophy at Alexandria for several decades in the sixth century, and both Platonic and Aristotelian commentaries ascribed to him survive. During this time the school’s attitude to the teaching of Aristotelian syllogistic, originally owing something to Ammonius, changed markedly, with an early tendency to reinforce the teaching of syllogistic even in Platonist lectures giving way to a greater awareness of its limitations. The vocabulary for arguments and their construction becomes far commoner than the language (...) of syllogistic and syllogistic figures, and also of demonstration. I discuss the value of these changes for the dating of certain works, especially where the text lectured on does not demand different emphases. The commitment to argument rather than to authority continues, but a greater emphasis eventually falls on the establishment of the premises than on formal validity. (shrink)