Theism, according to David O'Connor, has in recent centuries been on trial for its life, the charge being that the existence of so much evil in the world is incompatible with belief in a benevolent creator. But this trial, he claims is incapable of producing a reasoned verdict.

In his paper ‘Has the Ontological Argument Been Refuted?’, 97–110) William F. Vallicella argues that my attempt to show that the Ontological Argument begs the question is unsuccessful. 1 I believe he is wrong about this, but before endeavouring to vindicate my position I must first make clear what precisely is the point at issue between us. The Ontological Argument is not a single argument, but a family of arguments. Newly devised formulations of the argument are frequently put forward by (...) philosophers in an effort to avoid difficulties that have been pointed out in previous versions. As a consequence there is no possibility of a conclusive proof that every form of the argument embodies the same fallacy. Nevertheless, one can, I believe, prove that all the standard versions of the argument embody a certain fallacy and that, given the nature of the argument, it is therefore unlikely that the argument can be formulated in such a way as to avoid this difficulty. What I tried to show in my paper is that the six best-known versions of the argument all beg the question and that they do so at the same point in the argument, namely when it is asserted that it is possible that an absolutely perfect being exists. It is difficult to see how an ontological argument could be formulated without including this claim as one of its premises, since the distinguishing badge of the argument is the inference from the possibility of an absolutely perfect being to its actuality. It must be unlikely then, if my criticism of these six versions is correct, that there is any way of formulating the argument that avoids this fallacy. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to identify and describe published research articles that were named in official findings of scientific misconduct and to investigate compliance with the administrative actions contained in these reports for corrections and retractions, as represented in PubMed. Between 1993 and 2001, 102 articles were named in either the NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts ( Findings of Scientific Misconduct ) or the U.S. Office of Research Integrity annual reports as needing retraction or correction. In 2002, (...) 98 of the 102 articles were indexed in PubMed. Eighty-five of these 98 articles had indexed corrections: 47 were retracted; 26 had an erratum; 12 had a correction described in the comment field. Thirteen had no correction, but 10 were linked to the NIH Guide Findings of Scientific Misconduct , leaving only 3 articles with no indication of any sort of problem. As of May 2005, there were 5,393 citations to the 102 articles, with a median of 26 citations per article (range 0–592). Researchers should be alert to Comments linked to the NIH Guide as these are open access, and the Findings of Scientific Misconduct’ reports are often more informative than the statements about the retraction or correction found in the journals. (shrink)

This essay explores a variety of important Chinese conceptions of the actual and ideal relationship between human beings and the rest of the natural world. It presents views from the earliest period of historical China, the latter part of the Shang dynasty (ca. 1200–1050 bce), and from representative thinkers of other periods, extending down to the last imperial era, the Qing dynasty (1644–1911 ce). There is a fairly clear line of development from the earliest period, when the Chinese saw the (...) natural realm as chaotic, dangerous and largely inscrutable, to a later view of the world as well ordered, inclined toward human good and more open to understanding. This later view was first expressed during the “Eastern Zhou” (770–221 bce), and reached a mature and systematic form in the following Han dynasty (206 bce–220 ce). Subsequent periods saw remarkable variation in the specific features of this view but its general form – a belief in a well ordered and manageable world, inclined toward human good and open to human understanding – remained dominant throughout subsequent Chinese history. (shrink)

Between 1787, and the end of his life in 1832, Bentham turned his attention to the development and application of economic ideas and principles within the general structure of his legislative project. For seventeen years this interest was manifested through a number of books and pamphlets, most of which remained in manuscript form, that develop a distinctive approach to economic questions. Although Bentham was influenced by Adam Smith's An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, he (...) neither adopted a Smithian vocabulary for addressing questions of economic principle and policy, nor did he accept many of the distinctive features of Smith's economic theory. One consequence of this was that Bentham played almost no part in the development of the emerging science of political economy in the early nineteenth century. The standard histories of economics all emphasize how little he contributed to the mainstream of late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century debate by concentrating attention on his utilitarianism and the psychology of hedonism on which it is premised. Others have argued that the calculating nature of his theory of practical reason reduced the whole legislative project to a crude attempt to apply economics to all aspects of social and political life. Put at its simplest this argument amounts to the erroneous claim that Bentham's science of legislation is reducible to the science of political economy. A different but equally dangerous error would be to argue that because Bentham's conception of the science of legislation comprehends all the basic forms of social relationships, there can be no science of political economy as there is no autonomous sphere of activity governed by the principles of economics. This approach is no doubt attractive from an historical point of view given that the major premise of this argument is true, and that many of Bentham's ‘economic’ arguments are couched in terms of his theory of legislation. Yet it fails to account for the undoubted importance of political economy within Bentham's writings, not just on finance, economic policy, colonies and preventive police, but also in other aspects of his utilitarian public policy such as prison reform, pauper management, and even constitutional reform. All of these works reflect a conception of political economy in its broadest terms. However, this conception of political economy differs in many respects from that of Bentham's contemporaries, and for this reason Bentham's distinctive approach to problems of economics and political economy has largely been misunderstood. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 123.2 (2002) 257-273 [Access article in PDF] The Colonial Subject in Ovid's Exile Poetry P. J. Davis IN RECENT YEARS ONE FOCUS FOR THE DISCUSSION of Ovid's poetry, including of course the exile poetry, has been its relationship to the Augustan regime. Although employing essentially the same critical assumptions, scholars have divided into more and less conservative camps, arguing for a pro- or anti-Augustan Ovid. (...) 1 However, in the case of the exile poetry at least, this situation has been altered by a chapter in a recent book by Thomas N. Habinek, in which he argues for what might be termed a conservative (i.e., pro-Augustan) reading, but employing forms of argument that, in classical studies at least, are decidedly unconservative. 2 Drawing on the work of the cultural materialists, 3 Habinek draws an analogy between Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto and later European colonization narratives in order to argue that "Ovid's laments from exile and dispatches from the contact zone of Pontus sentimentalize his own and his readers' involvement in the project of Roman imperialism." 4The suggestion that Ovid's representation of Tomis and the Black Sea region in the first century C.E. has affinities with later European accounts of foreign and especially colonized territories is an intriguing one that clearly merits consideration. Habinek takes the idea still further and suggests that Ovid's mental attitude in Tomis is akin to that of a colonist living in one of the European colonial empires. Indeed, he quotes D. K. Fieldhouse's explanation of the durability of these empires: "The [End Page 257] basis of imperial authority was the mental attitude of the colonist. His acceptance of subordination—whether through a positive sense of common interest with the parent state, or through inability to conceive of any alternative—made empire durable." 5 For us, who are primarily concerned with Ovid, the important issue here is: who is the colonist with whom Ovid is being compared? After all, between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries, across two American continents, Asia, Africa, and Australia, European colonies took many different forms, incorporated many different peoples and embodied widely varying relationships with the metropolitan power. In fact, Fieldhouse's concern here is with the startling character of the American Revolution, for he argues that "loyalty was the norm and rebellion a break with long-established tradition"(1966, 103). For Fieldhouse the colonist whose mental attitude is so important is a male inhabitant of one of Britain's North American colonies in the second half of the eighteenth century. Fieldhouse is not concerned with colonists in general. How appropriate is the situation of this colonist, say, a locally born resident of pre-Revolutionary Boston or New York, as an analogy for that of Ovid among the Tomitans? The resemblance is not immediately striking.Although citing Fieldhouse's analysis of the nascent United States, Habinek makes it clear that in fact he has a very different kind of colony in mind, a colony in which a European power has control over a numerically superior non-European population: "A comparable claim can be made with regard to the agents of Roman imperialism—soldiers, administrators, and culture workers alike—especially as the Roman system was transformed during the Augustan age from what Conrad's Marlow called 'merely a squeeze' to a colonial system of pacification backed up by an idea, namely, the superiority of Roman culture to that of its subject populations." 6 The use of the phrase "White Man's Burden" 7 as the title for this section of the chapter and the reference to Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness 8 suggest that Habinek conceives of Roman Moesia as [End Page 258] analogous to one of Britain's twentieth-century Asian or African colonies. How appropriate is this analogy? No doubt there were soldiers and administrators in the province. Indeed, Ex Ponto 4.7 is addressed to Julius Vestalis, prefect of the maritime coast, 9 while 4.9 refers to L. Pomponius Flaccus, who had held... (shrink)

Abstract In this paper, I attempt to throw light on the phenomenon of postmodernism by comparing it with the understanding of other cultures such as the Indian and Chinese. One can say that postmodernism, like, say Mahayana Buddhism, Taoism and Advaita Vedanta recognise the impossibility of finding an absolute in the world. However, unlike the latter three, rather than moving on beyond finite things, postmodernism seems content to simply sit and play around with the non?absolutes that it has found (even (...) if ?ironically'). Comparison with the philosophies of other cultures, and also the message of Christianity, show clearly the mistake that postmodernism makes in doing this. Finally, I note some of the responsibilities that Western postmodern philosophers have. (shrink)

Hume's 'Natural History of Religion' offers a naturalized account of the causes of religious thought, an investigation into its 'origins' rather than its 'foundation in reason'. Hume thinks that if we consider only the causes of religious belief, we are provided with a reason to suspend the belief. I seek to explain why this is so, and what role the argument plays in Hume's wider campaign against the rational acceptability of religious belief. In particular, I argue that the work threatens (...) a form of fideism which maintains that it is rationally permissible to maintain religious belief in the absence of evidence or of arguments in its favour. I also discuss the 'argument from common consent', and the relative superiority of Hume's account of the origins of religious belief. (shrink)

For long stretches of Greek history in the classical period, Diodorus Siculus provides the only surviving continuous narrative of events. For this narrative he summarized, however incompetently, the work of earlier and greater historians whose original texts are lost to us. This makes Diodorus an invaluable quarry of the historian and the historiographer alike, but one that can only be used with discretion. We need to get as clear an idea as we can of the way his mind worked, where (...) his account is most likely to be useful, and what sort of distortions to expect when he goes astray. Research into his methods and procedures is thus an urgent necessity. The present study, the fullest ever undertaken for any part of Diodorus, aims to meet the needs of both history and historiography. In the introduction, necessarily substantial, the aims, sources, and methods of Diodorus are examined in detail. The findings of this investigation are then applied in commenting on Book 15, a particularly important book which deals with the crucial years between the King's Peace, concluded in 387/6 BC, and the aftermath of the battle of Mantinea fought in 362 BC. (shrink)

In a world in which it was easy to contrast slavery as being ruled by others with freedom as the power to rule others, it might have been said that subjection to a tyrant was bad but being a tyrant was good if one could get away with it. But in the fourth century Plato and Aristotle created a contrast between kings as good rulers and tyrants as bad rulers, which has been standard ever since. However, recent studies have tried (...) to move away from the polarisation of good kings and bad tyrants, and look more generally at the nature of monarchic rule in Greece. This article explores the topic of tyrants and the use of the notion of tyranny in classical Greece, at the end of the sixth century and in the fifth and fourth. (shrink)