In contemporary epistemology of religion, evidentialism has been included in a wider critique of traditional foundationalist theories of rational belief. To show the irrelevance of evidentialism, some critics have offered alternatives to the foundationalist approach, prominent among which is Alvin Plantinga's 'warrant as proper function'. But the connection between evidentialism and foundationalism has been exaggerated, and criticisms of traditional foundationalism do not discredit evidentialism in principle. Furthermore, appeals to warranted belief imply that the heart of evidentialism — the proportioning of (...) belief to rational grounds — has not been discredited but assimilated to the reliabilist view of knowledge by expanding the concept of evidence to include religious experience. In the end, the warrant concept extends the reach of evidentialism, thereby enhancing rather than diminishing its relevance for rational belief. (shrink)

The postmodern debate has been heavily influenced by often contradictory conclusions about the foundations of knowledge: hermeneutics challenges epistemology, politics challenges science, identity theory challenges critical theory, pragmatism challenges formalism, and so on. Horace Fairlamb contends that philosophy's foundationist quest has usually been misconceived as a choice between a 'super-science' and theoretical anarchy. Through an examination of the history of foundationism, and detailed analysis of the work of leading theorists including Fish, Foucault, Derrida, Gadamer and Habermas, Dr (...) class='Hi'>Fairlamb argues for a less reductive and less arbitrary conception of knowledge and meaning. The result in this 1994 book is a sophisticated critique of contemporary theory with implications for philosophers as well as literary theorists, and an important contribution to the re-evaluation of theoretical discourse. (shrink)

Though Adam Smith believed that the spontaneous forces of the market set prices at the most productive level, he doubted that market forces price wages as fairly as the prices of other commodities. In fact, various observations by Smith suggest that the market tends to undervalue wages almost as naturally as it naturalizes the prices of most commodities under nonmonopolistic conditions. Those observations imply the germ of a capitalist theory of exploitation.

So far, the sciences of complexity have received less attention from philosophers than from scientists. Responding to Salthe’s (Found Sci 15, 4(6):357–367, 2010a ) model of evolution, I focus on its metaphysical implications, asking whether the implications of his canonical developmental trajectory (CDT) must be materialistic as his reading proposes.

Epistemology has traditionally sought to discover the foundations of knowledge. Recently, anti‐foundational philosophers have construed epistemo‐logy's failure to discover an ultimate ground to indicate the bankruptcy of foundational theory. On closer examination, however, the history of epistemology reveals the aim of foundational theory to be different both from the reductive ideal of its traditional defenders and from the unsystematic relativism that its recent critics offer instead. An alternative history of foundational theory reveals a progress toward multiple necessary foundations which is (...) the task of epistemology to articulate. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Critical Conditions: Postmodernity and the Question of FoundationsBruce KrajewskiCritical Conditions: Postmodernity and the Question of Foundations, by Horace L. Fairlamb; xii & 271 pp. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994, $59.95 cloth, $17.95 paper.Some theories might be in critical condition, but others are terminal, run aground by their own illogic, according to Horace Fairlamb. Despite some theories’ terminal state, Fairlamb still senses dangers, (...) for as he says in his introduction: “If critical authority cannot turn to metaphysical permanence, transcendental subjectivity, scientific objectivity, formal systematicity, methodological closure, or any other transcending constraints for its authority, are we not left with nothing firmer than Nietzschean perspectivism and an anarchy of wills to power? Might not the respectable looking Trojan Horse of philosophical hermeneutics be filled with sophists, gamesters, and fascists?” Well, yes and no and maybe.Fairlamb explores the issue of foundationalism, later called foundationism, in eight chapters, an introduction, and a conclusion. Most of the eight chapters are labeled as devoted to single contemporary thinkers and theorists, all male: Stanley Fish, Jacques Derrida, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Michel Foucault, Jürgen Habermas. Fairlamb has problems with all these people, and he is very good at laying out objections, based in logic, that arise from the main positions of each. He wants to provide “an analysis of how certain strategies fail to address foundational problems” (p. xi).This analysis consists mainly of turning positions back on themselves, so that when Fish or Habermas or any one of the people addressed in the book makes a claim that indicates an anti-foundational position, Fairlamb jumps in to ask: where is the foundation for the anti-foundational positions? This tactic fills the book, and becomes the driving force of a number of questions and assertions that follow a similar pattern. For instance: “Fish’s radical hermeneutics condemns universalism, but constantly practices it” (p. 40), or “Gadamer’s vision of philosophical hermeneutics must have non-historical authority lest it reduce to his historically bound prejudices” (p. 127). At the end, Fairlamb feels he has demonstrated the logical paradoxes and argumentative blind spots of the various theorists and thinkers mentioned above, and he proposes instead what he calls “a heterological foundationism [that] is able to account for both what changes and what stays the same, and thereby account for the failure of both reductive foundationism and relativism” (p. 263).While I can applaud Fairlamb the logician, I cannot recommend the book. The deck is stacked from the beginning, as he admits early on: “I do not claim to represent the entire range of these authors’ works and thought, nor all their subsequent revisions and recantations” (p. xi). The game here is not to think about the thinkers at all, which is perhaps why Fairlamb rehearses some knee-jerk positions, such as an attack (p. 25) on Derrida’s too-famous statement “there is nothing outside the text.” While he cites (p. 266) Rodolphe Gasché’s [End Page 271] The Tain of the Mirror, Fairlamb apparently refuses Gasché’s reading of the sentence that “does not permit the conclusion that there is nothing else but texts, or for that matter, that all is language” (Tain, p. 281).By dealing only with the logic of some works, Fairlamb unburdens himself of the need, for instance, to attend to Gadamer’s Gesammelte Werke, or to any of the thinkers’ writings in their original languages, a task even some postmodernists agree is foundational for basic scholarship. One can only guess that the universal language of logic has no patience with foreign languages, except to lay bare the inconsistencies and paradoxes of selected bits of syntax.Bruce KrajewskiLaurentian UniversityCopyright © 1996 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

This group of essays critically examine Horace Kallen's ideas and philosophy, and the extent of his influence. It describes how Kallen helped introduce Zionism in the United States, and how he became one of the first Americans involved in the founding of national civil rights and civil liberties organizations.

Modern physics has revealed the universe as a much stranger place than we could have imagined. The puzzle at the centre of our knowledge of the universe is time. Michael Lockwood takes the reader on a fascinating journey into the nature of things. He investigates philosophical questions about past, present, and future, our experience of time, and the possibility of time travel. We zoom in on the behaviour of molecules and atoms, and pull back to survey the expansion of (...) the universe. We learn about entropy and gravity, black holes and wormholes, about how it all began and where we are all headed. Things will never seem the same again after a voyage through The Labyrinth of Time. (shrink)

At least since Foster (2002), scholars interested in Aristotle’s views about environmental ethics have focused primarily upon his teleological account of non-human animals as the basis for an Aristotelian environmental virtue ethics. But although Aristotle’s scientific account of non-human animals can serve as the basis for a form of environmental ethics akin to “nature preservation,” one finds in his account of “household management” (or oikonomikē) a very different sort of environmental ethic, one that looks much more like a form of (...) “nature conservation.” My paper argues that for Aristotle, oikonomikē is indeed both “environmental” and an “ethic.” The first part of my chapter shows that oikonomikē is fundamentally environmental insofar as it concerns what Aristotle in Politics 1.8 calls “property acquisition in accord with nature” or “true wealth” (Pol. 1.8.1256b26–27, 30–31), namely the prudential use of natural resources in a way that recognizes the dependence of ways of life upon different habitats or environments. The second part of my chapter shows that oikonomikē is also an “ethic” insofar as it embeds three different kinds of limit on the use of animate and inanimate natural resources, namely that natural resource use is subordinate to expertise about the happiness of the political community (or what Aristotle calls “politics” [πολιτική]); that natural resource use, as an instrumental good, is limited and governed by the craft or expertise of oikonomikē; and that notions of unlimited commercial “wealth acquisition” (χρηματιστική) are based on ethically problematic ways of life. After showing that Aristotle’s account of oikonomikē is indeed an environmental ethic, the third part of my chapter considers the objection that oikonomikē is a weak environmental ethic insofar as it is exploitatively or axiological anthropocentric. I respond that Aristotle’s account of non-human animal domestication provides conceptual resources for thinking about non-human animals as subordinate members in one’s ecological-political community, especially with respect to his invocation of the craft analogy (in the example of shepherds) and inter-species utility friendships. Although Aristotle has multiple sources relevant for understanding environmental ethics, his account of oikonomikē is both a neglected source and a potentially fruitful one. (shrink)

Aristotle of Stagira (384–322 BCE) originates the study of zoology and political science. But whereas his zoology identifies a continuum between human and non-human animals, in his political and ethical works he appears to view human and non-human animals as different in kind in order to illustrate the superiority of the former and justify the instrumental use of the latter. For instance, Aristotle’s account of the virtue of moderation (namely that which concerns how humans experience pleasure) depicts non-human animals as (...) predators who only view other animals as a meal and immoderate human animals as beast-like and disgraceful because they act, “not insofar as they are human beings but insofar as they are animals” (EN 3.10.1118b2–3). Nonetheless, Aristotle wrote another ethical treatise, the Eudemian Ethics, that offers discussions that parallel those in the Nicomachean Ethics but that eschew negative characterizations of non-human animals—as if Aristotle had excised all such negative depictions of non-human animals from the Eudemian text on rhetorical grounds. I argue that the reason that Aristotle treats pleasure so differently is the result of his contrast between ethics as a function of political science (as found in the Nicomachean Ethics) and a “non-political” ethical reflection (as found in the Eudemian Ethics) that is more in line with Aristotle the zoologist. (shrink)

According to Singer, it is not directly wrong to kill 'non-self-conscious beings', such as lower animals, human foetuses and newborn infants, provided that any consequent loss of happiness is made good by the creation of new sentient life. In contrast, normal adult humans, being 'self-conscious', generally have a strong preference for going on living, the flouting of which cannot, Singer argues, be morally counterbalanced by creating new, equally happy individuals. Singer's case might be reinforced by taking account, not only of (...) the preference for continued life itself, but also of other preferences for whose satisfaction continued life is essential. It proves difficult, however, to find a formulation of 'preference utilitarianism' which, while lacking other obviously unacceptable consequences, supports Singer's 'non-replaceability principle'. Also, Singer's position fails adequately to accommodate our conviction that the lives of human beings are, in general, more valuable than those of other animals. Finally, his thesis that lower animals (let alone human infants) are replaceable, has decidely counterintuitive implications. (shrink)

This review covers experimental approaches to sound-symbolism—from infants to adults, and from Sapir’s foundational studies to twenty-first century product naming. It synthesizes recent behavioral, developmental, and neuroimaging work into a systematic overview of the cross-modal correspondences that underpin iconic links between form and meaning. It also identifies open questions and opportunities, showing how the future course of experimental iconicity research can benefit from an integrated interdisciplinary perspective. Combining insights from psychology and neuroscience with evidence from natural languages provides us with (...) opportunities for the experimental investigation of the role of sound-symbolism in language learning, language processing, and communication. The review finishes by describing how hypothesis-testing and model-building will help contribute to a cumulative science of sound-symbolism in human language. (shrink)

A rational process for assessment of environmental policy options should be based on an appreciation of how humans value nature. Increased understanding of values will also contribute to the development of appropriate ways for us to relate to and manage natural areas. Over the past two decades, environmental philosophers have examined the notion that there is an intrinsic value in nature. Economists have attempted to define and measure the market and nonmarket economic values associated with decisions concerning natural areas. Psychologists (...) have tried to assess the extent to which people believe in an intrinsic value in nature, and have also begun to work with economists to improve nonmarket valuation techniques. I briefly review the contributions made to our understanding of natural area value by environmental philosophy, psychology and economics, and develop a model that integrates insights from these disciplines. Components in the model include cognitions, held values, assigned values and various modes of value expression. I make recommendations for future validation, development and use of the model. (shrink)

Politics VII.1-3 enacts a contest that concludes that ‘whether for a whole city-state in common or for an individual, the best way of life would be a practical one’. Scholarship on VII.1-3 has focused on the best way of life for an individual to the neglect and even misunderstanding of the best way of life for a polis. The best way of life for a polis is, I argue, a specification of the foreign policy or ‘inter-polis’ relations for the best (...) constitution. Such a foreign policy appears to include the possibilities of both isolationism and regional hegemony, although Politics VII-VIII more broadly suggests that such latitude is constrained by the teleology of life, which shows that war should be pursued only for the sake of peace. (shrink)

The moral dilemmas raised by modern medicine are no longer the concerns of doctors alone, but are the subject of intense public debate. Test-tube babies, the mechanical prolongation of life, the prescription of contraceptive pills to underage girls, the nontreatment of handicapped newborns--these issues generate widespread discussion throughout society. In this book, well-known experts address these concerns from philosophical, medical, and legal points of view. Clearly written and thought-provoking, these essays will contribute to the understanding of contemporary moral thinking and (...) medical practice, and will inform public debate. (shrink)

In Lockwood, I defended a conception of phenomenal qualities, according to which they can exist unsensed. Edward Feser points out that a key argument to which I appealed, in support of my claim that phenomenal qualities can ‘outrun awareness’, fails to show that there are phenomenal qualities of which we are unaware; rather, it shows only that phenomenal qualities have attributes of which we are unaware. This may be granted. But I argue that we can certainly imagine experimental data (...) which would provide support for my thesis. Moreover, the conception of unsensed phenomenal qualities is, so I claim, a perfectly meaningful one, and anyone who is prepared to entertain the idea of phenomenal qualities having attributes of which the subject is unaware, can have no principled objection to the idea of there being phenomenal qualities of which the subject is unaware. (shrink)

I have sought to keep a running tabulation of all books, edited collections, translations, and journal articles which are primarily devoted to Aristotle’s ethical and political writings (including their historical reception but excluding neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics). Criteria for inclusion in this bibliography are: (1) published after January 1, 2021 (including pre-publication articles assigned a DOI); (2) devoted to one of Aristotle’s ethical or political works (e.g., Pol, EN, EE, MM, Athenian Constitution, Protrepticus); and/or (3) devoted to ethical or political concepts (...) examined elsewhere in Aristotle’s corpus (e.g., Rhetoric, Poetics, zoological treatises, etc.). I encourage scholars to alert me about published works that I have omitted or listed incorrectly. (shrink)

British Journal for the History of Philosophy, Volume 19, Issue 5, Page 1012-1015, September 2011.

Annotated bibliography of Aristotle's Politics.

The concept of temporal flow has been attacked both on the grounds that it is logically incoherent, and on the grounds that it conflicts with the theory of relativity. I argue that the charge of incoherence cannot be made to stick: McTaggart's argument commits the fallacy of equivocation, and arguments deployed by Smart and others turn out to be question-begging. But objections arising from relativity, so I claim, have considerably more force than Lucas acknowledges. Moreover, the idea of equating the (...) cosmic time which arises in general relativistic cosmology with a metaphysically preferred space-time foliation, founders on the fact that the Friedmann models are idealisations. Finally, Lucas may be right in claiming that dynamical wave-function collapse, provided it does not propagate superluminally, will define a preferred foliation. But it is arguable that this consideration, so far from supporting Lucas's position, is grounds for rejecting collapse interpretations of quantum mechanics. (shrink)

In the Classical Quarterly, Vol. XXIII. i, pp. 7–10, Mr. Denniston attempts to revive the ancient and once honoured sport of gloss-chasing. But the day of that perilous pastime has gone, and this latest effort is perhaps less successful than some of its predecessors. In his notes on the De Elocution of Demetrius he hunts and traps the unwary ‘gloss’ in his net of criticism, but unfortunately the snare is faulty, and the ‘catch’ escapes. I propose to discuss each of (...) his suggested ‘glosses’ in his order, basing my arguments against his conclusions— on probabilities; on the usage of Demetrius in this work: § 271. καθλου δ νς λEεως τ σματα κα πκρισιν κα γνα παρει τ λοντι, μλιστα τ διαλελυμον, τοτ' στι δειντητα. (shrink)

This paper is about how the horror of noise has been expressed in the work of some writers, fiction and theory, who have detected a certain alien weirdness lurking in the human voice. I link this to Deleuze and Guattari’s discussion of ‘becoming-animal’, in which a ‘strange ecology’ is described. ‘We sorcerors’, they say, are drawn to experimental alliances with nature. The ‘sorceror’ is admitted to a multitudinous, teeming space and opened up to the immanent alien. H. P. Lovecraft’s weird (...) fiction frequently deals with alien simulacra of human language and speech. This is speech as human-alien alliance. In Thomas Ligotti’s fiction, too, we find becoming articulated as speech-noise. Apocalypse is imagined as ecstatic choral annihilation in which all souls merge into a great ‘black unity’. For Ligotti, we are the suffering puppets of a Schopenhauerian Will akin to Lovecraft’s ‘blind idiot god’, Azathoth. Nevertheless, what Deleuze and Guattari call ‘becoming zero’ can be associated with an affirmative thought of noise ontology, a furore which is sounded more from Bataille's 'Mouth' than from Azathoth’s mad musicians. As the head is thrown back in joyful frenzy, the mouth opens, screams ejaculate and rend with nature’s explosive propagation, like a blossoming flower or the racket of an anus. (shrink)