This volume dispels the idea that Platonism was an otherworldly enterprise which neglected the study of the natural world. Leading scholars examine how the Platonists of late antiquity sought to understand and explain natural phenomena: their essays offer a new understanding of the metaphysics of Platonism, and its place in the history of science.

A mass casualty (MASCAL) event is different to a major incident. The crux of this difference is that in a major incident, by the adoption of special measures, normal or near-normal standards of care can be maintained. In a MASCAL, irrespective of what special measures are instituted, standards of care inevitably drop. This is a, currently unmet, challenge for medical planning and planning policy. Twenty-First century weaponry is capable of producing thousands of causalities a day over a period of several (...) days in peer-on-peer conflict. In this chapter, we propose that medical planning for military events on this scale should include the following: explicit acceptance that ‘gold standard’ care cannot be given to patients who are triaged for treatment, a better understanding how to identify those patients who will not be triaged for treatment, a focus on ensuring patient flow (which includes diversion, self-care and remote monitoring), and implementation of the principle that care should be given by the lowest capable provider. We attempt to begin to develop some principles for planners to consider drawing on historical precedents and explore some of the ethical implications of our proposals. (shrink)

Aristotle's explanation of the “active intellect” inDe AnimaIII, 5 constitutes a problem for us simply because we have to take this philosopher so seriously. If he were a writer given to poetic lapses or mythical adornments to his work we could consider dismissing the whole chapter as unessential. However, we know that Aristotle does not write unessential chapters, and that he is invariably engaged in an attempt to explain his subject fully and systematically, neither adding to it nor leaving anything (...) out.TheDe Anima, for example, is an attempt to describe the characteristics of living things, in an ascending order from the basic functions of vegetables to the most abstract thinking by human beings. The activities of nutrition, sensation, common sense, imagination, and movement are presented in Book II and in the early part of Book III. (shrink)

The disavowal of positivist science by many educational researchers has resulted in a deepening polarization of research agendas and an epistemological divide that appears increasingly difficult to span. Despite a turning away from science altogether by some, and thus toward various forms of poststructuralist inquiry, this has not held back the renewed entrenchment of more narrow definitions by policy elites of what constitutes scientific educational research. The new sciences of complexity signal the emergence of a new scientific paradigm that challenges (...) some of the core assumptions of positivism, while offering the potential to develop a new kind of social science that demands both rigour and imagination in coming to understand the emergence and behaviours of social systems and the subsystems that comprise them. The language, concepts and principles of complexity are central to the development of a new science of qualities to complement the science of quantities that has shaped our understanding of the physical and social worlds. Accomplishing this task promises to 1) open up new investigations that have thus far been beyond the purview of scientific study, 2) allow the study of social phenomena as fully embodied, or at least as more robust models than those represented in the abstracted empiricism upon which the sciences of quantities are predicated, and 3) allow for more coarse‐grained explanations and predictions of social phenomena to be legitimated as scientific. Both educational research and educational practice stand to gain from this expansion of the scientific repertoire to include rigorous and imaginative investigations of phenomena characterized by change and transformation. (shrink)

We chart the ways in which closure properties of consequence relations for uncertain inference take on different forms according to whether the relations are generated in a quantitative or a qualitative manner. Among the main themes are: the identification of watershed conditions between probabilistically and qualitatively sound rules; failsafe and classicality transforms of qualitatively sound rules; non-Horn conditions satisfied by probabilistic consequence; representation and completeness problems; and threshold-sensitive conditions such as `preface' and `lottery' rules.

Limited aggregationists argue that when deciding between competing claims to aid we are sometimes required and sometimes forbidden from aggregating weaker claims to outweigh stronger claims. Joe Horton presents a ‘fatal dilemma’ for these views. Views that land on the First Horn of his dilemma suggest that a previously losing group strengthened by fewer and weaker claims can be more choice-worthy than the previously winning group strengthened by more and stronger claims. Views that land on the Second Horn suggest that (...) combining two losing groups together and two winning groups together can turn the losing groups into the winning groups and the winning groups into the losing groups. This paper demonstrates that the ‘fatal dilemma’ is neither fatal nor a dilemma. The First Horn is devastating but avoidable and the Second Horn is unavoidable but not devastating. Nevertheless, Horton’s argument does help to narrow down the acceptable range of views. (shrink)

Mysticism is condemned as often as it is praised. Much of the condemnation comes from mysticism’s apparent disregard of morality and ethics. For mystics, the experience of “union” transcends all moral concern. In this careful examination of the works of such practitioners or examiners of mysticism as Paul Tillich, Thomas Merton, Evelyn Underhill, and Martin Buber, the author posits a spectrum of uneasy relationships between mysticism and morality. Horne explores the polarities of apophatic (imageless) and imaginative mysticism, the contemplative (...) and the active life, and morality and amorality. He stresses the importance of the distinction between “proper-name” (entirely personal) morality and “social” morality, for the history of Christian mysticism is a mix of minimal moral concern, proper-name morality, and social morality. The volume will be of interest to students of religious experience, ethics, and the recent history of mysticism. Carefully reasoned and documented, the argument is couched in clear prose, easily accessible to lay readers as well as to scholars. (shrink)

A central topic in research at the intersection of development and evolution is the origin of novel traits. Despite progress on understanding how developmental mechanisms underlie patterns of diversity in the history of life, the problem of novelty continues to challenge researchers. Here we argue that research on evolutionary novelty and the closely associated phenomenon of co-option can be reframed fruitfully by: (1) specifying a conceptual model of mechanisms that underwrite character identity, (2) providing a richer and more empirically precise (...) notion of co-option that goes beyond common appeals to “deep homology”, and (3) attending to the nature of experimental interventions that can determine whether and how the co-option of identity mechanisms can help to explain novel character origins. This reframing has the potential to channel future investigation to make substantive progress on the problem of evolutionary novelty. To illustrate this potential, we apply our reframing to two case studies: treehopper helmets and beetle horns. (shrink)

Sometimes we ought to aggregate lesser harms to many such that they outweigh greater harms to a few, and sometimes we ought not to. This seems self-evident, but it has proven surprisingly difficult to construct a coherent moral theory out of this basic observation. In particular, it is difficult to explain (in a principled way) when we ought to aggregate. Relevance views attempt to solve this problem by arguing that sufficiently lesser harms are irrelevant to greater harms and thus should (...) not be taken into consideration. My thesis develops and defends a new relevance view. The first half of the thesis focuses on when lesser harms can aggregate and outweigh stronger harms. I start by solving a ‘fatal’ dilemma for all relevance views. I show that one horn of the dilemma is fatal but avoidable, whilst the other is unavoidable but not fatal, and that the dilemma rests on a faulty assumption of weak-additivity. I then develop a new relevance view based around the principle that we ought to balance harms by similarity (i.e., we ought to balance greater harms against similarly great harms and lesser harms against other lesser harms) before deciding whether lesser harms are relevant to greater harms. The second half focuses on when lesser harms can aggregate and tiebreak between stronger harms. First, I show that relevance views cannot capture our intuition that sufficiently lesser harms should not tiebreak between greater harms, without forfeiting our intuitions in other important cases. Secondly, I demonstrate that relevance views are sometimes inappropriately insensitive to the number of harms in tiebreaking cases. To solve these problems, I distinguish between two types of relevance, and I introduce Broomean fairness into my account. Doing so allows my view to capture all our intuitions about when lesser harms can tiebreak between stronger harms. (shrink)

My aim is to challenge recent attempts at reconciling moral realism and naturalism by pushing ethical naturalists into a dilemma. According to one horn of the dilemma, ethical naturalists must either build unique facts and properties about divergent social structures into their subvenient sets of natural facts and properties, and so jeopardize the objectivity of moral truths, or insist, in the face of all possible worlds in which people have different moral beliefs than ours, that they are all mistaken—this despite (...) the fact that the belief-forming mechanism responsible for their moral beliefs was never concerned with the truth of those beliefs in the first place. This will bring me to suggest that moral properties might only weakly supervene upon natural phenomena. But, according to the other horn of the dilemma, weak supervenience is a defeater for moral knowledge. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:James S. Mullican DETERMINISM, FATALISM, AND FREE WILL IN HAWTHORNE A recurrent theme in Nathaniel Hawthorne's writing is the relationship between fatalism and free will. His tales, romances, and notebooks contain explicit and implied references to man's freedom of choice and his consequent responsibility for his acts, as well as to "fatalities" that impel men to various courses of action. Much of the ambiguity in Hawthorne's fiction rests (...) on this conflict between the notions of human freedom and responsibility on one hand and fatalism on the other. Although there is no question that this theme was important for Hawthorne, there is much disagreement concerning what Hawthorne himself believed. Critics have taken virtually every position on the spectrum between the poles of complete freedom and complete fatalism. That this disagreement exists should not be surprising. Hawthorne was an artist, not a philosopher or theologian; an important element of his technique, perhaps essential to his vision of life, was his ambiguity. His dual vision of the world, of matter and spirit, of evil and good, and his emphasis now of one, now of the other, engender disagreement concerning his view of life. His alternate fascination with and apparent rejection of Puritanism have led some to believe he was a predestinarían, others to hold that he was a "libertarian," and at least one critic to write that Hawthorne believed in a "modified predestination." Turner argued that Hawthorne's attitude toward reform led him to fatalistic thinking. Since reform movements touched only the surface manifestations of vice, such movements were useless, in Hawthorne's view. The logical conclusion of such a position, reasoned Turner, was fatalism. "Hence reform which would stir only the superficial outcroppings and would leave untouched the real causes underneath would be futile at best. And since the true sources of evil, so Hawthorne thought, lie largely beyond the reach of human efforts, fatalism was the certain end of his thinking." Turner saw evidence for fatalism 91 92Philosophy and Literature in Hawthorne's fiction also: "... there is a clear suggestion that the decisions [by Hester, Dimmesdale, Rappaccini, Ethan Brand, and Hollingsworth] have been inevitable, that the agent responsible is fate rather than Hawthorne's character." This critic concluded that Hawthorne was convinced that "the universe, including man and man's soul, is governed by inexorable law." Some critics have linked Hawthorne's beliefs regarding free will and fatalism to his attitude toward Calvinism. Schneider wrote, "... Hawthorne translated into empirical truths the essential doctrines of Calvinism.... From the popular doctrine of reform, he returned to the Puritan doctrine of divine sovereignty." Schneider suggested that Hawthorne purified the doctrines of the Puritans and returned them to their original purpose, salvation of the soul. "He recovered what Puritans professed but seldom practiced—the spirit of piety, humility, and tragedy in the face of the inscrutable ways of God." Cowley wrote that Hawthorne "believed in predestination, as the Calvinists did." Mills was of the opinion that Hawthorne was the most sympathetic to the Puritans of the writers of his day, but that Calvinist dogma was moderated and softened in Hawthorne: "He did not accept completely the Calvinist doctrine of predestination, nor did he emphasize the supreme sovereignty of God which was the driving force of Calvinism." Other critics have granted some measure of freedom to Hawthorne's characters. Arvin wrote, "... freedom of choice exists, but on so narrow a basis that, once exercised in the wrong direction, it is forever resigned." Fairbanks held that Hawthorne reserved to man the initial moral choice which set up the chain of necessity, and from that notion Fairbanks drew the conclusion that, "Though often called a fatalist, Hawthorne believed in free will." Schwartz, in an unpublished doctoral dissertation, argued from Hawthorne's life and from his writings that he rejected fatalism in favor of free will. Wagenknecht noted that Hawthorne refused "to accept foreordination and total depravity." Still other critics have emphasized a paradoxical element in Hawthorne 's writing, his acceptance of both horns of the dilemma. Waggoner wrote: "He saw man as immersed in a mystery in which responsibility is at odds with fate. His own natural tendency was to emphasize causation at the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:122 HUME ON CURING SUPERSTITION In the first volume of his masterful treatment of the Enlightenment Peter Gay says that "David Hume proclaimed philosophy the supreme, indeed the only, cure for superstition." The context suggests that Hume had great "confidence" in this project and that he shared Diderot's view of the philosopher as the apostle of truth who would teach all mankind. Certainly Hume, in common with his philosophical (...) compatriots, thought that superstition was a great evil. He may also have thought that philosophy was the best weapon with which to oppose superstition. But did he think that it was a "cure" and that the philosopher was a pathfinder for a new and glorious dawn of universal enlightenment? He seems rather to have held a somewhat more modest and circumspect view of what philosophy can accomplish by way of liberating humanity from superstition than did some of his more optimistic contemporaries — a view 2 worthy of closer examination. The purpose of this paper is to explain just what he did think by examining those texts where he writes about the curative virtues of philosophy. So that any shifts in Hume's views may be more apparent, the relevant passages will be considered according to their chronological order. In the conclusion to Book I of the Treatise (1738) Hume characterizes the results of his reasoning as a "forelorn solitude" in which he is separated, not only from the crowd, and from "metaphysicians, logicians, mathematicians, and even theologians," but also from philosophers, who, like all others, follow the inconsistent dictates of imagination in alternating between belief in the continual existence of sensible matter and the 123 reliability of causal reasoning, which teaches us that sensible objects are in us, rather than in external nature (T 265-6). His own philosophical reflections have led to the realization that even the causal "connexion, tie, or energy lies merely in themselves," as certainly as do sensed qualities. Thus the philosophical quest itself, which seeks a knowledge of "the ultimate and operating principle... which resides in the external object," is revealed as a contradictory or meaningless enterprise. We are left with a "very dangerous dilemma, whichever way we answer it," whose horns are precisely superstition and philosophy. That is, we may either "assent to every trivial suggestion of the fancy... often contrary to each other... [which will] lead us into such errors, absurdities, and obscurities, that we must at last become asham'd of our credulity;" or we may "take a resolution to reject all the trivial suggestions of the fancy, and adhere to the understanding" which will lead us to the conclusion that there is "not the lowest degree of evidence in any proposition, either in philosophy or common life" (T 266-8). He believes that philosophy has come to an impasse which he does not know how to escape, and which we commonly deal with by simply ceasing to think about the problem, finding ourselves "absolutely and necessarily determin'd to live, and talk, and act like other people in the common affairs of life" (T 269). Observation of the actual effects of philosophy upon conduct warrants the conclusion that "refin'd reflections have little or no influence upon us," excepting, of course, for that brief time in which those reflections leave us quite agitated and confounded by our inability to provide answers to the questions which most trouble us. 124 Philosophy is here characterized, not as a cure for superstition, but as an equal and opposite mental disposition, whose reflections ultimately undermine its own rational credentials, so that they seem no more valid than those of superstition. He does indeed resort to the therapeutic metaphor, but only to make nature the physician which "cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium" by applying that "carelessness and inattention" which he earlier identified as that which "alone can afford us any remedy" for philosophical despair (T 218). So philosophy is itself in need of the cure afforded by amusement and the various "common affairs of life" with which gentlemen occupy themselves. When engaged in those pursuits, philosophy seems individually and socially useless, in effect "an abuse of time" (T 270). If one returns to... (shrink)

This paper will argue that the puzzles about instantaneous velocity, and rates of change more generally, are the result of a failure to recognize an ambiguity in the concept of an instant, and therefore of an instantaneous state. We will conclude that there are two distinct conceptions of a temporal instant: (i) instants conceived as fundamentally distinct zero-duration temporal atoms and (ii) instants conceived as the boundary of, or between,temporally extended durations. Since the concept of classical instantaneous velocity is well- (...) defined only on the second conception of instants, we will conclude that this distinction allows us to avoid the above dilemma. If instantaneous velocity is well-defined then the states of a system at various instants are not logically distinct and thus we cannot generate Zeno’s paradox. However, if we assume that the instants are metaphysically distinct, then instantaneous velocity is not well-defined and thus the second horn of the dilemma about the causal-explanatory role of instantaneous velocity cannot be generated. (shrink)

Toot. Pass gas. Break wind. Cut the cheese. Float an air biscuit. Burp from behind. Blow the brown horn. The backfire, bant, bucksnort, booty bomb, colon cologne, drifter, fanny bubble, gasser, gurgler, moon beam, nether belch, pants puffer, pooh tune, rip-snort, sphincter whistle, thunder dumpling, tush tickler, and trouser cough. These are synonyms for a bodily function that is as natural as breathing, eating, or sleeping. Yet unlike other physiological functions, the ‘flatus’ is a source of endless humor – perhaps (...) more so than any other subject in human experience. But why are farts funny? That is a question that is both serious and philosophically interesting. (shrink)

We tend to think that a person who is both reasonable and moral can have a good life. What constitutes a life that is not only good but superlative, or even “marvellous” or “holy”? Those who have such lives are called sages, heroes or saints, and their lives can display great integrity as well as integration with a transformative “Spiritual Presence.” Does it follow that saints are perfect people? Is there a common vision that impels them to seek holiness? In (...) a controversial interpretation of mysticism Horne suggests that there is no single formula for the meaning of life and no one story that displays it to us. Mysticism, rather than being just a visionary perception, then becomes a problem-solving process that brings about a creative transformation of the personality at a critical stage in life. He suggests also that saints may be imperfect morally and describes true saints as double-minded: they are serious in a playful way. Mysticism and Vocation illuminates our understanding of saintly lives by explicating their mystical characteristics and extending discussions of mysticism to explain its role in active lives. In discussing important decisions that go beyond conventional morality, it adds to recent philosophical arguments by Charles Taylor, Alasdair MacIntyre, Iris Murdoch, Bernard Williams and others to the effect that morality should be defined more broadly to deal with the human condition. This book will be of interest to students of philosophy and religious studies, in both graduate and undergraduate programs. (shrink)

A practical system of reasoning must be both correct and efficient. An efficient system which contains a large body of information can not search for the proof of a conclusion from all information available. Efficiency requires that deduction of the conclusion be carried out in a modular way using only a relatively small and quickly identified subset of the total information. One might assume that data modularity is incompatible with correctness, where a system is correct for a logic L iff (...) it proves exactly what is valid in L. We point out that modularity and correctness are indeed incompatible if the logic in question is classical. On the other hand, the two desiderata are compatible for relevance logic. Furthermore, Horn clause resolution theorem proving is modular (this helps explain its relative efficiency) and the logic for which it is correct is relevance logic not classical logic. (shrink)

Readers of “lives” of the famous know well the tendency of biography, and especially autobiography, to become steadily less interesting as the subject grows older. A predictable record of challenges met, enemies shafted, honours received and great men encountered often succeeds an account of a childhood that is a highly-coloured and unique emotional drama. Often the best pages are those on the subject’s schooldays, when the personality first tangles with the public realm. As Barry Oakley says of school in a (...) piece quoted in the book’s preface: “Like the stage, it’s an image of life: life accelerated, life concentrated, life more formidable.” The project of selecting just the highlights of all the stories of Australians’ schooldays promises, then, a high payoff if it is well done. It is a high-risk enterprise, though: a pointillist canvas brilliant in each fleck may easily look like mud from a distance. There are well over a hundred authors here, with only three pages or so each to paint a vignette of school. In fact, the result is an enormous success. The editors have a sure eye, and they and their research assistant, Pamela Williams, have put in the work to find the goods. Almost every piece is gripping, and quite different from the others. The total effect is additive, and is an unexampled insight into how the Australia we know came into being. The classics are there: Henry Lawson and Patrick White, Seven Little Australians and The Getting of Wisdom, Donald Horne, Barry Humphries and Clive James. So are the many unknowns whose recollections take us into obscure corners. If there is one overall theme, it is that of sameness, difference and “fitting in”. The effect of the accumulated evidence is rather more subtle than the received ideas on “identity and difference”, multiculturalism and so on. School is where the strangeness of one’s own family, or of one’s own personality, meets the social world – itself perhaps no less weird, objectively speaking, but possessed of resources for ensuring conformity. (shrink)

In the sixteenth century, Sir Thomas More criticized Martin Luther’s purported denial of a conscious intermediate state between bodily death and bodily resurrection. In the same century, William Tyndale penned a response in defense of Luther’s view. His argument essentially defended the proposition: If the Intermediate State obtains, then bodily resurrection is superfluous for those in the paradisiacal state. In this article, I enter the fray and argue for the truth of this conditional claim. And, like William Tyndale, I use (...) the content and argument of a particular chapter in the Bible, namely, 1 Corinthians 15, to make the point. (shrink)

There are a number of agricultural farming practices that are controversial. These may include using chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides, and planting genetically modified crops, as well as the decision to dehorn cattle rather than raise polled cattle breeds. We use data from a survey of Missouri crop and livestock producers to determine whether a farmer’s ethical framework affects his or her decision to engage in these practices. We find that a plurality of farmers prefer an agricultural policy that reflects (...) principles based on rights rather than principles of utilitarianism or justice. Furthermore, after controlling for personal and farm characteristics, we find a positive correlation between farmers preferring a rights-based policy and a farmer’s use of chemical farm inputs and polled rather than horned cattle. We also find that a combination of ethical framework and farm and farmer characteristics correlate with decisions to use farm chemicals, while only farm and farmer characteristics affect the decision to plant GM crops and only a farmer’s ethical framework affects the decision to use polled cattle. (shrink)

John Dewey.--William Chandler Bagley.--Herman Harrell Horne.--The Catholic viewpoint.--Educational implications compared.--Conclusion.--Bibliography (p. [129]-135).

Experiential evidence shows that pain is associated with common meanings. These include a meaning of threat or danger, which is experienced as immediately distressing or unpleasant; cognitive meanings, which are focused on the long-term consequences of having chronic pain; and existential meanings such as hopelessness, which are more about the person with chronic pain than the pain itself. This interdisciplinary book - the second in the three-volume Meanings of Pain series edited by Dr Simon van Rysewyk - aims to better (...) understand pain by describing experiences of pain and the meanings these experiences hold for the people living through them. The lived experiences of pain described here involve various types of chronic pain, including spinal pain, labour pain, rheumatic pain, diabetic peripheral neuropathic pain, fibromyalgia, complex regional pain syndrome, endometriosis-associated pain, and cancer-related pain. Two chapters provide narrative descriptions of pain, recounted and interpreted by people with pain. Language is important to understanding the meaning of pain since it is the primary tool human beings use to manipulate meaning. As discussed in the book, linguistic meaning may hold clues to understanding some pain-related experiences, including the stigmatisation of people with pain, the dynamics of patient-clinician communication, and other issues, such as relationships between pain, public policy and the law, and attempts to develop a taxonomy of pain that is meaningful for patients. Clinical implications are described in each chapter. This book is intended for people with pain, their family members or caregivers, clinicians, researchers, advocates, and policy makers. (shrink)

Angel's declared purpose is to “demystify” mysticism by approaching it as we do ordinary phenomena, and his eventual conclusion is that mystical experiences are very similar to some of our everyday experiences. To demonstrate that, he provides us with three closely-argued chapters on, successively, the typology of mysticism, the reasons for mystical silence, and the relationship of mysticism to other experiences. Ultimately, he claims that mysticism need not be mysterious because all of us have quasi-mystical experiences.

We estimate that 208,000 deep brain stimulation (DBS) devices have been implanted to address neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders worldwide. DBS Think Tank presenters pooled data and determined that DBS expanded in its scope and has been applied to multiple brain disorders in an effort to modulate neural circuitry. The DBS Think Tank was founded in 2012 providing a space where clinicians, engineers, researchers from industry and academia discuss current and emerging DBS technologies and logistical and ethical issues facing the field. (...) The emphasis is on cutting edge research and collaboration aimed to advance the DBS field. The Eighth Annual DBS Think Tank was held virtually on September 1 and 2, 2020 (Zoom Video Communications) due to restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The meeting focused on advances in: (1) optogenetics as a tool for comprehending neurobiology of diseases and on optogenetically-inspired DBS, (2) cutting edge of emerging DBS technologies, (3) ethical issues affecting DBS research and access to care, (4) neuromodulatory approaches for depression, (5) advancing novel hardware, software and imaging methodologies, (6) use of neurophysiological signals in adaptive neurostimulation, and (7) use of more advanced technologies to improve DBS clinical outcomes. There were 178 attendees who participated in a DBS Think Tank survey, which revealed the expansion of DBS into several indications such as obesity, post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction and Alzheimer’s disease. This proceedings summarizes the advances discussed at the Eighth Annual DBS Think Tank. (shrink)

William James and Education is a dynamic collection of original essays spotlighting William James as a role model for bringing philosophy to bear on the persistent issues of life and education. Using James's philosophical ideas, the contributors evade the polarization and superficiality that permeate the debate around such educational issues as standards versus diversity, cultural consensus versus multiculturalism, religion versus science, and individual freedom versus social determinism. The result is a synthetic collection of essays offering original, unique, (...) and useful insights. One of the most influential of American philosophers, William James is relevant today because he provides a way of understanding human behavior that is both rigorous and humane. James shows how we may soften and sometimes harmonize rigid ideological divisions, such as those plaguing contemporary education, with a pragmatic approach to issues of theory and practice. By reconsidering some of the roots of American thought in James's work, this volume points the way to valuing both uniqueness and universality, among other seemingly opposing concerns. The result is a lively weave of historical and contemporary thought, providing philosophical perspectives on the critical issues facing educators today. (shrink)

This is a big book, conceived on a grand scale. Sprigge does not fight shy of addressing the large central issues. He takes James and Bradley head on and expounds their philosophy without compromise and without assuming that the only way we can appreciate them is by making them more palatable to the modern mind by watering down what they wrote. While he relates their thought to modern philosophical concerns he does not presuppose that modern philosophical concerns as such (...) should act as the arbiter of what counts as philosophical good sense. In other words, we can learn from Bradley and James, whether or not they could also learn from us. (shrink)

1. Implicature: some basic oppositions IMPLICATURE is a component of speaker meaning that constitutes an aspect of what is meant in a speaker’s utterance without being part of what is said. What a speaker intends to communicate is characteristically far richer than what she directly expresses; linguistic meaning radically underdetermines the message conveyed and understood. Speaker S tacitly exploits pragmatic principles to bridge this gap and counts on hearer H to invoke the same principles for the purposes of utterance interpretation. (...) The contrast between the said and the meant, and derivatively between the said and the implicated (the meant-but-unsaid), dates back to the fourth century rhetoricians Servius and Donatus, who characterized litotes—the figure of pragmatic understatement—as a figure in which we say less but mean more (“minus dicimus et plus significamus”; see Hoffmann 1987 and Horn 1991a for discussion). In the classical Gricean model, the bridge from what is said (the literal content of the uttered sentence, computed directly from its grammatical structure with the reference of indexicals resolved) to what is communicated is constructed through implicature. As an aspect of speaker meaning, implicatures are by definition distinct from the non-logical inferences that the hearer draws; it is a category mistake to attribute implicatures either to hearers or to sentences (e.g. P and Q) and subsentential expressions (e.g. some). But we can systematically (at least for generalized implicatures; see below) correlate the speaker’s intention to implicate q (in uttering p in context C), the expression p that carries the implicature in C, and the inference of q induced by the speaker’s utterance of p in C. (shrink)

This paper defends two claims. First, I argue that you always have some reason to comply with the social norms applicable to your situation, no matter how immoral or ridiculous, provided you are in the social domain. This is not a baroque, technical fact about social norms: it is fundamental to understanding what they are, how they work, and how they can be a source of grave injustice. Second, I argue that this fact about social normativity requires re-thinking the distinction (...) between formal and robust normativity. Social norms are not robustly normative. But nor are they merely formally normative. Since these two categories are widely assumed to be exhaustive, this requires revising our normative taxonomy. (shrink)

it is easy to think that he did. Clifford certainly had one. In a celebrated essay he argued for the thesis that “it is wrong always, everywhere and for anyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence“; and his title was “The Ethics of Belief.” Clifford was not alone, for Huxley, also, was of that same opinion. For him, such belief was not just wrong: it was “the lowest depth of immorality.” With that opinion, and with those advocates of it, (...) class='Hi'>James was locked in a struggle throughout his life; and it is a reasonable suspicion that the opponent of one ethics of belief is himself an ethicist with a rival ethics of belief of his own. That suspicion, moreover, appears to be confirmed by James's best known essay. He himself came to the view that his The Will to Believe would have been better named The Right to Believe, and it is a commonplace that “right” is a word of the ethical vocabulary. In short, there are obvious signs pointing to a positive answer to our question. (shrink)