We were shocked and deeply saddened to learn the news today. We had not heard from Martin for some time and were planning to write soon. Like so many others I considered Martin a loyal friend as well as a distinguished scholar. He set the highest standards for integrity and dedication to scholarship. No one was more generous in sharing his knowledlge with younger scholars.

In The Contemplative Foundations of Classical Daoism, Harold D. Roth explores the origins and nature of the Daoist tradition, arguing that its creators and innovators were not abstract philosophers but, rather, mystics engaged in self-exploration and self-cultivation, which in turn provided the insights embodied in such famed works as the Daodejing and Zhuangzi. In this compilation of essays and chapters representing nearly thirty years of scholarship, Roth examines the historical and intellectual origins of Daoism and demonstrates how this distinctive (...) philosophy emerged directly from practices that were essentially contemplative in nature. In the first part of the book, Roth applies text-critical methods to derive the hidden contemplative dimensions of classical Daoism. In the second part, he applies a "contemplative hermeneutic" to explore the relationship between contemplative practices and classical Daoist philosophy and, in so doing, brings early Daoist writings into conversation with contemporary contemplative studies. To this he adds an introduction in which he reflects on the arc and influence on the field of early Chinese thought of this rich vein of scholarship and an afterword in which he applies both interpretive methods to the vexing question of the authorship of the Inner Chapters of the Zhuangzi. The Contemplative Foundations of Classical Daoism brings to fruition the cumulative investigations and observations of a leading figure in the emerging field of contemplative studies as they pertain to a core component of early Chinese thought. (shrink)

A number of philosophers have argued that a naturalized epistemology cannot be normative, and thus that the norms that govern science cannot themselves be established empirically. Three arguments for this conclusion are here developed and then responded to on behalf of naturalized epistemology. The response is developed in three stages. First, if we view human knowers as part of the natural world, then the attempt to establish epistemic norms that are immune to scientific evaluation faces difficulties that are at least (...) as severe as the purported difficulties for naturalized epistemology. Second, some examples of the ways in which norms are proposed and evaluated in the course of scientific research are considered and it is concluded that science has no need for trans?scientific norms. Finally, the three arguments introduced at the outset have no force when they are viewed in the light of the preceding discussion. (shrink)

One of three distinct approaches to his famous ‘Trust’ argument, this paper written by Garfinkel in 1960, and never before published, proposed a rethinking of rules, games and linguistic classifications in interactional terms consistent with Wittgenstein’s language games. Garfinkel had been working in collaboration with Parsons since 1958 to craft an approach to culture that would replace conceptual classification with the constitutive expectancies of interaction and systems of interaction. The argument challenged the work of cultural anthropologists influenced by zoology and (...) biology, who called themselves ‘ethnoscientists’ and studied culture in terms of linguistic classification systems. Garfinkel had proposed an alternative sociological ‘ethnoscience’ of culture and language that would focus on how culture was made, on how linguistic events are achieved, and on the rules of their making. This ‘Language Games’ approach followed Wittgenstein in seeking what Garfinkel called a literal description of cultural/linguistic events: meaning by ‘literal’, a step-by-step account of the constitutive and preferred rules participants use to create a recognizable event-in-a-language. Made famous three years later in version associated with Schutz, Garfinkel’s Trust argument also appears in a 1962 text (Parsons’ Primer, published in 2019) in a version built on Parsons. (shrink)

Aesthetic internalism claims a link between judgement and motivation: aesthetic judgements bring with them motivations to act in characteristic ways. Critics object that there is a difference between merely liking something and judging it to be aesthetically good, and that it is our likings, not our aesthetic judgements, that motivate us. This paper develops a version of aesthetic internalism that can respond to this criticism. Wholehearted aesthetic judgements are characterized by stability, attention, and motivation. Making such judgements is an important (...) part of a good life, and so at least some aesthetic judgements are motivating. So we have reason to think that this version of aesthetic internalism is true. This paper defends wholehearted aesthetic internalism against objections, and assesses an argument from aesthetic internalism to aesthetic non-cognitivism. While wholehearted aesthetic internalism can only offer qualified support to non-cognitivism, it nonetheless offers a number of fruitful avenues for further work. (shrink)

Harold Osborne; Creativity, Progress and Personality, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 18, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 213–221, https://doi.org/10.111.

Harold Noonan; VI*—Names and Belief, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 81, Issue 1, 1 June 1981, Pages 93–108, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotelia.

Traditional empiricist analyses of the source of scientific objectivity were based on two guiding themes: that a claim can be objective only if it is tested against some independent touchstone, and that observation provides that touchstone. The issue of objectivity arises here only for beliefs that are formulated as propositions or sets of propositions, and the standard view demands that objective beliefs make claims about entities that exist independently of those beliefs, and whose properties can be determined and compared with (...) the content of the beliefs under examination. In addition, it is demanded that the means of acquiring information about the entities in question be logically independent of the beliefs being tested. For example, if the belief that my typewriter has forty-five keys is to be objective, the typewriter must, in some sense, exist independently of any of my beliefs about it, and, although as a practical matter I might not check how many keys the typewriter has unless I happened to be testing some hypothesis, the procedure for determining the number of keys must not presuppose any of my beliefs about the number of keys. These demands hold whether we take such entities as my typewriter to be material objects that exist completely independently of our awareness of them and with which we somehow make contact through impressions, Machian elements, sense-data, or sensations. For even among those empiricists who hold that we ultimately perceive only our own sensations, it is still maintained that our beliefs in no way determine what sensations will occur at a given time. (shrink)

Mysteries: remains of a hidden life -- Words on paper -- In search of a person behind the words -- A France of broken families -- Families -- Politiques -- Breaking with his father -- Aristocratic Paris -- Libertine Paris -- A political education -- Gearing up for war: mathematical inspirations -- Breda -- Military engineering -- Meeting Isaac Beeckman -- The Holy Roman empire -- Anxious dreams -- Curious meetings -- War and diplomacy in Europe -- Into Bohemia -- (...) To Hungary and disaster -- The Baltic and return to the Netherlands -- Again in France -- Paris and the rosicrucian scare -- The Valtellina and Rome -- The struggle for France -- Problems with the cardinal -- The campaign for La Rochelle -- Confrontation and departure -- The meetings -- Confrontation and conversation -- Becoming a sectarian -- Feeling threatened -- Exile -- Not yet concluded. (shrink)

Many bioethicists have recently shifted from using “physician-assisted suicide” (PAS) to “medical aid-in-dying” (MAID) to refer to the act of voluntarily hastening one’s death with the assistance of a medical provider. This shift was made to obscure the practice’s connection to “suicide.” However, as the charge of “suicide” is fundamental to arguments against the practice, “MAID” can only be used by its proponents. The result has been the fragmentation of the bioethical debate. By highlighting the role of human agency—as opposed (...) to natural processes—in causing death, the term “PAS” makes it easier both to perceive potential risks to vulnerable populations and to affirm suicide as a potentially autonomous choice. As such, “PAS” thus more transparently expresses the arguments of both supporters and opponents of the “right to die,” while avoiding the unnecessary stigmatization of suicide and suicidal people which is a result of the usage of “MAID.”. (shrink)

The word δξα is used frequently by Plato and with the many shades of meaning that it had in the idiomatic Greek of his time. References to all its occurrences and to those of δοξζω in the Platonic corpus Lafrance gives in an appendix to his book ; and from these in his first chapter he selects typical cases to exemplify a score or more of what he calls “literary” meanings, which he divides into two main groups, the objective sense, (...) “appearance”, and the subjective, “opinion”. By eliminating the occurrences of doxa in these colloquial or “literary” senses he restricts his investigation to Plato's philosophical uses of the term, disregarding even the occurrences of these in what he deems to be merely repetitious or undeveloped passages and subjecting to minute analysis only the most fully developed and consequently most significant philosophical passages concerned with doxa. This is the fourth of the four methodological principles that are formulated by Lafrance to govern his investigation and read in the light of which the dialogues, he believes, reveal an intelligibly coherent theory of doxa. According to the first of these principles in the reading of any Platonic text there must be borne in mind the period of Plato's intellectual evolution in which it was written and the nature of his epistemological notions at that moment; according to the second, Platonic dialogues being genuine philosophical dramas, it is always as fulfilling a function in a definite dramatic situation that Plato discloses his thought to the precise extent that he has decided to do so, and consequently any passage on doxa, to which as such no dialogue is devoted, must be understood in the light of the context in which the question of doxa has arisen. According to the third principle the understanding of a Platonic text requires that account be taken of the scholarly literature dealing with it. (shrink)