Questions about perception remain some of the most difficult and insoluble in both epistemology and in the philosophy of mind. This controversial but highly accessible introduction to the area explores the philosophical importance of those questions by re-examining what had until recent times been the most popular theory of perception - the sense-datum theory. Howard Robinson surveys the history of the arguments for and against the theory from Descartes to Husserl. He then shows that the objections to the theory, (...) particularly Wittgenstein's attack on privacy and those of the physicalists, have been unsuccessful. He argues that we should return to the theory sense-data in order to understand perception. In doing so he seeks to overturn a consensus that has dominated the philosophy of perception for nearly half a century. (shrink)

In this volume, thirteen distinguished contributors from the United States, Canada, Britain, and Germany cast light on important aspects of Kant's liberal thinking.

This is a collection of articles which represents current research on the metaphysics of causation and laws of nature, mostly by authors working in or active in the Australasian region. The book provides an overview of current work on the theory of causation, including counterfactual, singularist, nomological and causal process approaches. It also covers work on the nature of laws of nature, with special emphasis on the scientific essentialist theory that laws of nature are, at base, the fundamental dispositions or (...) capacities of natural kinds of things. Because the book represents a good cross-section of authors currently working on these themes in the Australasian region, it conveys something of the interest and excitement of an active philosophical debate between advocates of several different research programmes in the area. (shrink)

• Explores various aspects of the concept of forward-looking collective responsibility and its application • Presents fifteen articles written by leading philosophers from around the world • Extends the philosophical discussion of collective responsibility and collective morality towards future collective action.

In I 7 Aristotle lays down criteria for what is to count as human happiness. Happiness for man is self-sufficient , complete without qualification , peculiar to humans , excellent , and best and most complete . Many interpreters agree that in X 6–8 Aristotle uses these along with other criteria to disqualify the life of amusement and rank one happy life above another.

Is torturing innocent people ever morally required? I rebut responses to the ticking-bomb dilemma by Slote, Williams, Walzer, and others. I argue that torturing is morally required and should be performed when it is the only way to avert disasters. In such situations, torturers act with dirty hands because torture, though required, is vicious. Conversely, refusers act wrongly, yet virtuously, thus displaying admirable immorality. Vicious, morally required acts and virtuous, morally wrong acts are odd, yet necessary to preserve the ticking-bomb (...) dilemma’s phenomenology, the role of habituation in moral development, the virtue/continence distinction, and morality’s overridingness, consistency, and plausibility. (shrink)

Extract in lieu of Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to propose a hypothesis to illuminate Ortega's critical response to Heidegger's question of being (Seinsfrage). While Ortega integrated the classical requirements for the idea of Being into his idea of human life as radical reality, Heidegger's delineation of human life (Dasein) was only preliminary to the final philosophical task of understanding the question of Being itself (Sein) as the transcendent horizon for human life. For Ortega human life is not (...) merely a preliminary ontology that points to another transcendent reality, but final reality itself. I shall argue here that: (1) Ortega saw Heidegger's Seinsfrage as both empty and dead-ended as a philosophical enterprise; (2) by Heidegger's refusal to understand human life and its circumstances as the final goal of philosophy, he failed to account for the reality of human life in its circumstantial, historical, and methodological dimensions; and (3) Heidegger's philosophical project results in a frozen and metaphysical concept of human nature that transcends the historicality of humanity's actual existence and artificially bifurcates history into opposed metaphysical and empirical dimensions that only Ortega's doctrine of historical reason can synthesize. (shrink)

Basic concepts -- Identifying arguments -- Logic and language -- Informal fallacies -- Categorical logic: statements -- Categorical logic: syllogisms -- Statement logic: truth tables -- Statement logic: proofs -- Predicate logic -- Induction -- Probability.

Recently, as I have become more computer-literate, I have noticed some interesting parallels between computer mechanisms and Aquinas’ metaphysics of angelic faculties. The present essay expands on some of the analogies which Aquinas himself, though no proponent of AI theory, might have found interesting.

Employing the National Institute of Mental Health-funded Prevention of Suicide in Primary Care Elderly Collaborative Trial as a case study, we discuss 2 sets of ethical issues: obtaining informed consent for a clinic-based intervention study and using treatment as usual (TAU) as the control condition. We then address these ethical issues in the context of the debate about the quality improvement efforts of health care organizations. Our analysis reveals the tension between ethics and scientific integrity involved with using TAU as (...) a control condition and the difficulty in designing high-quality research in a community-based setting. (shrink)

It has been argued that neither the biological or the moral justifications commonly given for adoption of brain-death criteria are adequate; and that the only argument that succeeds is an ontological justification based on the fact that one's personal identity terminates with the death of one's brain. But a more satisfactory ontological approach analyzes brain death in terms of the existence of a person in connection with a body, not personal identity. The personal-existence justification does not supplant the usual biological (...) and moral arguments, but acts in concert with them. (shrink)

In Quantifiers and Propositional Attitudes, Quine held (a) that the rule of exportation is always admissible, and (b) that there is a significant distinction between a believes-true (Ex)Fx and (Ex) a believes-true F of x. An argument of Hintikka's, also urged by Sleigh, persuaded him that these two intuitions are incompatible; and he consequently repudiated the rule of exportation. Hintikka and Kaplan propose to restrict exportation and quantifying in to favoured contexts — Hintikka to contexts where the believer knows who (...) or what the person or thing in question is; Kaplan to contexts where the believer possesses a vivid name of the person or thing in question. The bulk of this paper is taken up with criticisms of these proposals. Its ultimate purpose, however, is to motivate an alternative approach, which imposes no restrictions on exportation or quantifying in, but repudiates Quine's other intuition: this is the approach taken in my A Logical Form for the Propositional Attitudes. (shrink)