Why should we seek and tell the truth? Does anyone know what truth is? Many are skeptical about the relevance of truth. Truth Matters endeavours to show why truth is important in a world where the very idea of truth is contested. Putting philosophers in conversation with educators, literary scholars, physicists, political theorists, and theologians, Truth Matters ranges across both analytic and continental philosophy and draws on the ideas of thinkers such as Aquinas, Balthasar, Brandom, Davidson, Dooyeweerd, Gadamer, Habermas, Kierkegaard, (...) Plantinga, Ricoeur, and Wolterstorff. Some essays attempt to provide a systematic account of truth, while others wrestle with the question of how truth is told and what it means to live truthfully. Contributors address debates between realists and anti-realists, explore issues surrounding relativism and constructivism in education and the social sciences, examine the politics of truth telling and the ethics of authenticity, and consider various religious perspectives on truth. Most scholars agree that truth is propositional, being expressed in statements that are subject to proof or disproof. This book goes a step farther: yes, propositional truth is important, but truth is more than propositional. To recognize how it is more than propositional is crucial for understanding why truth truly matters. Contributors include Doug Blomberg (ICS), Allyson Carr (ICS), Jeffrey Dudiak (King’s University College), Olaf Ellefson (York University), Gerrit Glas (VU University Amsterdam), Gill K. Goulding (Regis College), Jay Gupta (Mills College), Clarence Joldersma (Calvin College), Matthew J. Klaassen (ICS), John Jung Park (Duke University), Pamela J. Reeve (St. Augustine’s Seminary), Amy Richards (World Affairs Council of Western Michigan), Calvin Seerveld (ICS), Ronnie Shuker (ICS), Adam Smith (Brandeis University), John Van Rys (Redeemer University College), Darren Walhof (Grand Valley State University), Matthew Walhout (Calvin College), and Lambert Zuidervaart (ICS). (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to propose a new perspective on the difficulty and meaning of ethical work for financial controllers. This is achieved by drawing on concepts from Michel Henry’s phenomenology of life in the field of business ethics. The French philosopher Michel Henry is distinguished by his identifying two modes of appearing: ‘intentionality’ and ‘affectivity’ . Henry suggests that relying only on abstract representations constitutes a specific ideology that causes individuals at work to ignore the actual experience (...) of being affected, and hinders the appearance of life to guide their actions, in turn hindering ethics. Empirical illustrations are provided by a case study that explores the practices of management accountants in a travel retail corporation. By observing the empirical practices of management accountants, a body of professionals whose role is largely dependent on information technology, abstraction and technical expertise to trace organisational flows and transactions, we shed light on the difficult ethical issues associated with their role of surveillance and control of other managers’ work. The case study illustrates a wide range of everyday working practices among management accountants. Some convey the impression that they lack empathy and consideration for other individuals, while others engage in close cooperation and ethical practices despite the constraining configuration of their role. A significant result of this research is that it illustrates and interprets, based on Henry’s phenomenology, a wide range of working practices. Consistent with Henry, we argue that the source of business ethics lies beyond professional standards, codes and values. (shrink)

What is cognition? Despite the existence of a science of cognition there is no clear agreement on what makes certain phenomena cognitive, and others not. Within cognitivism the issue was neglected. Human intelligence was used as a standard, and any process—natural or artificial—that fitted this standard sufficiently could be considered ‘cognitive’. For post-cognitivist psychology the situation is different. It cannot rely on the ‘human standard’ in the same way. One might even say that the need for a post-cognitivist psychology arose (...) because cognitivism began with this most complex of all cognitive systems without a good understanding and appreciation of more basic, biological cases. Embodied cognition approaches remedy this anthropocentric bias by addressing a more varied set of processes that are not strictly limited to humans. Under these circumstances the question what we take cognition to be is more urgent. Are phenomena like insect walking (Brooks) and goal-seeking missiles (O’Regan and Noë) examples of cognition or not? What criteria do we use to answer such questions? Given this problem, the notion of perception-action coupling (or sensorimotor contingencies) becomes an important and fairly obvious option to provide a foundation for the notion of cognition. However, and intriguingly, the same problem occurs again: What are perception-action couplings? What would make something an example of perception-action coupling? Where are we to draw a line, if anywhere? It is self-evident that O’Regan and Noë’s (2001) example of a goal-seeking missile is controversial, but why exactly? What is missing? Can we ever do more than making intuitive judgments here? A way out of this dilemma may be found by developing the claim that perception-action coupling must be grounded in a biological context (Keijzer, 2001), and following what Lyon (2005) calls a biogenic approach. This option raises a whole new field of issues and topics that is of central concern for a postcognitivist psychology. (shrink)

Thirteen essays on the treatment of a criterion for truth by such classical writers as Parmenides, Protagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Theophrastus, Philo, Epicurius, the Stoics, Plotinus, and Ptolemy, whose neglected Greek work on the subject is included here, along with an annotated English translation. The price $LB12.50, has been estimated to US $24. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

_Co-published with Kappa Delta Pi_ _The ABCs of Classroom Management_ equips teachers with a repertoire of expert strategies to develop classroom expectations and manage student behaviors. The second edition of this practical, alphabetical guide includes expansions on time-honored topics such as relationship building, communication, discipline, and behavior management, with the addition of new topics such as cyberbullying, violence prevention, social media, and substitute teachers. The newest quick reference to managing a classroom offers tried-and-true tips and specific examples of practical applications (...) in the classroom. Educators who purchase the second edition also can access ABC’s Online to find downloadable forms, samples and checklists, and links to related resources. This edition of _The ABC’s of Classroom Management_ gives future and new educators practical and informative tips and tools for managing their classrooms to apply right away so they can focus on student learning. Underlying the nuts-and-bolts entries of the book are the themes of teacher professionalism, leadership, and empowerment. Armed with a proactive attitude and the right tools that are applied purposefully and consistently, novice teachers develop their craft to become masterful educators. (shrink)

It has seemed to many philosophers—perhaps to most—that believing is not voluntary, that we cannot believe at will. It has seemed to many of these that this inability is not a merely contingent psychological limitation but rather is a deep fact about belief, perhaps a conceptual limitation. But it has been very difficult to say exactly why we cannot believe at will. I earlier offered an account of why we cannot believe at will. I argued that nothing could qualify both (...) as having been done “at will,” in the relevant sense, and as a belief. Thus, no believer could believe at will. If my arguments are correct, our inability to believe at will reveals no genuine lack in our powers of mind, any more than an inability to draw a square circle reveals a lack of artistic skill. My account has been recently criticized by Kieran Setiya, who has provided an account of his own. Here I revisit and defend my account, hopefully in a way that will both make my thought clearer and illumine some of the broader differences between Setiya’s approach and my own. I then briefly consider Setiya’s own argument, in part to further develop the contrast. (shrink)

This article is made available under Creative Commons licence CC BY-NC-ND, which permits non-commercial reproduction and distribution of the work, in any medium, provided the original work is not altered or transformed in any way, and that the work is properly cited.

The thesis that Weber was without influence in Weimar Germany is examined. It is shown that in contemporary published assessments and in private statements in interviews contemporary sociologists regarded him as important. The many dissertations on Weber and the enormous secondary literature are noted. This literature, which was contributed by some of the best minds of the day, included both the philosophical and sociological aspects of Weber's work. It is concluded that the thesis that Weber was without influence is false.

This essay attempts a restatement of the relationship between art and science in terms of “making” and “knowing.” It first surveys the various ways art and science were related in the early modern period, arguing that one result of the new naturalistic representation was the emergence of a new visual culture that reinforced appeals to eyewitness and firsthand experience and in some cases fostered a new examination of European culture. At the same time, art, understood as the work of the (...) human hand in imitating nature, came to be viewed as one of the central characteristics that distinguished European society from the past. Moreover, artist/artisans helped constitute the aims and methods of the study of nature during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, articulating a new kind of authority for nature and providing the artworks that engendered a culture of nature study and collection. Thus art and artisans were fundamental motors of the Scientific Revolution. More attention to the visual culture of early modern Europe, including religious and devotional imagery, and seeking out intersections between making and knowing, as some art historians studying techniques have begun to do, will add to our understanding of the relationship between art and science in the early modern period. (shrink)

Structuré en trois grandes parties, Vieillesses et vieillissements dresse un vaste panorama des recherches contemporaines francophones en la matière. L’ouvrage est constitué en trois parties : une première relative à la construction politique des problèmes de la vieillesse, une seconde attentive aux cadres sociaux de la vieillesse et une troisième centrée sur l’expérience du vieillissement. Les éditeurs ont fait le choix judicieux de faire dialoguer une trentaine d’auteurs, alternant articles..

Cinq mille ans d'Histoire consignée nous montrent à la fois une humanité créatrice d'indéniables progrès et, simultanément, prisonnière de schémas qui la paralysent ou l'affolent. C'est comme si l'humanité cherchait son bonheur en suivant obstinément des stratégies qui lui assurent rarement une satisfaction durable. Assurément, il doit exister de sérieuses raisons à ces choix de comportements inefficaces, alors même que personne ne dispose d'une seconde vie pour rattraper les échecs de la première. Dans Le paradoxe humain, l'auteur resitue le psychisme (...) de l'Homme dans le contexte de l'évolution et en analyse les caractéristiques fondamentales. Il souligne l'importance des limitations de ce psychisme à l'origine du malaise de l'homme, inextricablement enchevêtré dans le désir d'ouverture aux autres et la nécessité, toujours en vigueur, de se battre irréductiblement pour exister à quelque prix que ce soit. Cette étude nous confronte aux potentialités et aux limitations inhérentes du psychisme de notre espèce et nous amène à une vision à la fois réaliste et optimiste de l'humanité. A la croisée de la psychologie et de l'anthropologie, cet ouvrage offre, avec un regard neuf, une réflexion sur le psychisme humain fondée sur la psychologie des profondeurs et constitue une contribution de la psychologie à une organisation de la vie sociale et politique centrée sur l'homme et son épanouissement. (shrink)

Many assume that we can be responsible only what is voluntary. This leads to puzzlement about our responsibility for our beliefs, since beliefs seem not to be voluntary. I argue against the initial assumption, presenting an account of responsibility and of voluntariness according to which, not only is voluntariness not required for responsibility, but the feature which renders an attitude a fundamental object of responsibility (that the attitude embodies one’s take on the world and one’s place in it) also guarantees (...) that it could not be voluntary. It turns out, then, that, for failing to be voluntary, beliefs are a central example of the sort of thing for which we are most fundamentally responsible. (shrink)

In this paper I consider fairness of blaming a wrongdoer. In particular, I consider the claim that blaming a wrongdoer can be unfair because blame has a certain characteristic force, a force which is not fairly imposed upon the wrongdoer unless certain conditions are met--unless, e.g., the wrongdoer could have done otherwise, or unless she is someone capable of having done right, or unless she is able to control her behavior by the light of moral reasons. While agreeing that blame (...) has a characteristic force, I am skeptical of this charge of unfairness. My skepticism concerns itself less with the particular conditions of fairness proposed than with the idea that blame can be rendered unfair by its characteristic force. If to blame a person were simply to perform certain intentional actions, then, as we will see, blame could be rendered unfair by its force. But to blame a person is not just to act in certain ways. It is, at least in large part, to make certain judgments or adopt certain attitudes. However, it is unclear how these attitudes or judgments carry "force"? and also unclear whether they can be rendered unfair by their force. Examining these issues, I will suggest that much of the force of blame is found in a set of judgments--most centrally, the judgment that one person failed to show proper regard for others. But, I will argue, once it is granted that such judgments are true, their characteristic force cannot render them unfair. (shrink)

A common line of thought claims that we are responsible for ourselves and our actions, while less sophisticated creatures are not, because we are, and they are not, self-aware. Our self-awareness is thought to provide us with a kind of control over ourselves that they lack: we can reflect upon ourselves, upon our thoughts and actions, and so ensure that they are as we would have them to be. Thus, our capacity for reflection provides us with the control over ourselves (...) that grounds our responsibility. I argue that this thought is subtly, but badly, confused. It uses, as its model for the control that grounds our responsibility, the kind of control we exercise over ordinary objects and over our own voluntary actions: we represent to ourselves what to do or how to change things, and then we bring about that which we represent. But we cannot use this model to explain our responsibility for ourselves and our actions: if there is a question about why or how we are responsible for ourselves and our actions, it cannot be answered by appeal to a sophisticated, self-directed action. There must be some more fundamental account of how or why we are responsible. I replace the usual account with a novel but natural view: responsible mental activity can be modeled, not as an ordinary action, but as the settling of a question. This shift will require abandoning the tempting but troublesome thought that responsible activity involves discretion and awareness—which, I argue, we must abandon in any case. (shrink)

I hope to show that, although belief is subject to two quite robust forms of agency, "believing at will" is impossible; one cannot believe in the way one ordinarily acts. Further, the same is true of intention: although intention is subject to two quite robust forms of agency, the features of belief that render believing less than voluntary are present for intention, as well. It turns out, perhaps surprisingly, that you can no more intend at will than believe at will.

Anderson (philosophy, U. of Sunderland, England) presents an exegetical, restorative, and critical account of French philosopher Ricoeur's early work on human will, seeing in it a dual-aspect perspective of people that helps make sense of his later complex writings. Emphasizes the important impact of Kant on his original thinking. (Editor's note: this review corrects a misleading one appearing in the December 1993 issue.) Paper edition (837-0), $19.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

Barrett, Pamela My name is Lucky and I am, because I'm a dog..

A good number of people currently thinking and writing about reasons identify a reason as a consideration that counts in favor of an action or attitude.1 I will argue that using this as our fundamental account of what a reason is generates a fairly deep and recalcitrant ambiguity; this account fails to distinguish between two quite different sets of considerations that count in favor of certain attitudes, only one of which are the “proper” or “appropriate” kind of reason for them. (...) This ambiguity has been the topic of recent discussion, under the head “the wrong kind of reasons problem.”2 I will suggest that confusion about “the wrong kind of reason” will be dispelled by changing our account of what a reason is. While I agree both that reasons are considerations and that certain.. (shrink)

Here I defend my solution to the wrong-kind-of-reason problem against Mark Schroeder’s criticisms. In doing so, I highlight an important difference between other accounts of reasons and my own. While others understand reasons as considerations that count in favor of attitudes, I understand reasons as considerations that bear (or are taken to bear) on questions. Thus, to relate reasons to attitudes, on my account, we must consider the relation between attitudes and questions. By considering that relation, we not only solve (...) the wrong-kind-of-reason problem, but we also bring into view rational agency—the use of reasons in thought. (shrink)

Aeneas' encounter with Deiphobus forms a critical juncture in Vergil's "Aeneid". In the underworld Aeneas retraces his past to its beginning; so too Vergil's audience returns to its starting point: the fall of Troy. Deiphobus himself is a metonym of Troy, embodying her guilt and punishment. But Aeneas is frustrated in his attempt to reconcile himself to this past. Aeneas attempts the Homeric rites of remembrance-heroic tumulus and epic fama-but these prove to be empty gestures. The aition of Deiphobus' tomb (...) is revealed to have miscarried. Rhoeteum was known as the tomb and shrine of Telamonian Ajax, not Deiphobus, and Octavian's recent restoration of the Rhoetean memorial would have strengthened the already close association between Rhoeteum and Ajax in the mind of Vergil's audience. Vergil exploits Rhoeteum's resonance with Telamonian Ajax and Odysseus, Antony and Octavian, to reflect on the process of constructing national memory, a process of which epic is an integral part. Vergil suggests that one hero's memorial frequently involves the appropriation and effacement of another. In a similar vein, the heroic fama of Deiphobus which Aeneas had heard in Troy is proven false. Deiphobus' narrative of his death is replete with Odyssean allusions which critique both Homeric heroism and Homeric kleos. Evocative allusions to Catullus' laments for his brother suggest eternal elegiac mourning as an alternate generic model for memorial and reconciliation with the past. But Aeneas is denied this option. At the center of the epic, at high noon, on a cosmic crossroads, Aeneas is poised between past and future, between mourning and hope, between Deiphobus and Deiphobe, between epic and elegiac. The Sibyl interrupts and moves Aeneas forward. Aeneas is not purged of his past, but rather denied the opportunity for true reconciliation, which is bestowed not by forgetting but by remembrance. (shrink)

On peut lire " L'Emprise " de deux manières : comme un texte de rupture ou bien de continuité. Dans le premier cas, assez subalterne, on y verra le " persiste et signe " de l'hérétique après les foudres qui l'ont frappé lors de la guerre du Kosovo. Dans le second, plus intéressant, une mise à jour du " Pouvoir intellectuel " (1979), pour décrire comment l'ordre moral est aujourd'hui passé aux mains d'un nouveau magistère, la presse. Assumant avec les (...) moyens du bord la fonction immémoriale de pouvoir spirituel, le journalisme serait alors la figure moderne du cléricalisme. Dans cette situation, il n'est pas inutile de rappeler que le règne du clergé n'est pas celui du bon Dieu. (shrink)

Na[sdotu]īr al-Dīn al-[Tdotu]ūsī, Memoir on Astronomy . [Sdotu]adr al-Sharī‘a. An Islamic Response to Greek Astronomy: Kitāb Ta‘dīl Hay’at al-Aflāk of [sdotu]adr al-Sharīa , Edited with Translation and Commentary by Ahmad S. Dallal, X + 461 pp., figs., index. Leiden - New York - Köln, E.J. Brill, 1995.

Examining both why and how Emerson evades the ancient quarrel between literature and philosophy, this book entirely rethinks the nature of Emerson's radical individualism and its relation to the possibility of an ethics and a politics. The author argues that the quarrel between literature and philosophy never took place in America, and that instead traditional philosophical work staged itself here as a form of literary praxis and cultural therapeutics, epitomized in the work of Emerson. A revisionary study of some of (...) Emerson's central essays, Less Legible Meanings also invites the reader to reconsider the nature of Emerson's influence on contemporary American culture and to discover new ways in which we might continue to understand his work. Interdisciplinary in scope, the book makes equal use of the history of philosophy, psychoanalytic theory, and cultural history. (shrink)

I first pose a challenge which, it seems to me, any philosophical account of forgiveness must meet: the account must be articulate and it must allow for forgiveness that is uncompromising. I then examine an account of forgiveness which appears to meet this challenge. Upon closer examination we discover that this account actually fails to meet the challenge—but it fails in very instructive ways. The account takes two missteps which seem to be taken by almost everyone discussing forgiveness. At the (...) end, I sketch an alternative account of forgiveness, one that I think meets the challenge and avoids the missteps. (shrink)

I will argue that making a certain assumption allows us to conceptualize more clearly our agency over our minds. The assumption is this: certain attitudes (most uncontroversially, belief and intention) embody their subject’s answer to some question or set of questions. I will first explain the assumption and then show that, given the assumption, we should expect to exercise agency over this class of attitudes in (at least) two distinct ways: by answering for ourselves the question they embody and by (...) acting upon them in ways designed to affect them according to our purposes—in roughly the way we exercise agency over most ordinary objects. (shrink)

In this rich cultural history, Pamela Robertson Wojcik examines America's ambivalent and shifting attitude toward homelessness through a close study of film cycles from five distinct historical moments that show characters as unhomed and placeless, mobile rather than fixed: failing, resisting, or opting out of the mandate for a home of one's own. From the tramp films of the Silent Era to the Oscar-winning Nomadland in 2021, Wojcik shows how film cycles reveal a tension in the American imaginary between (...) viewing homelessness as, on the one hand, deviant or threatening, and, on the other, emblematic of freedom and independence. Blending social history with insights drawn from a complex array of films, both canonical and fringe, Wojcik effectively 'unhomes' dominant narratives that cast aspirations for success and social mobility as the focus of American cinema, reminding us that genres of precarity have been central to the American cinema (and American story) all along. (shrink)

Our aim is to show that translating the modal graphs of Moretti’s “n-opposition theory” (2004) into set theory by a suited device, through identifying logical modal formulas with appropriate subsets of a characteristic set, one can, in a constructive and exhaustive way, by means of a simple recurring combinatory, exhibit all so-called “logical bi-simplexes of dimension n” (or n-oppositional figures, that is the logical squares, logical hexagons, logical cubes, etc.) contained in the logic produced by any given modal graph (an (...) exhaustiveness which was not possible before). In this paper we shall handle explicitly the classical case of the so-called 3(3)-modal graph (which is, among others, the one of S5), getting to a very elegant tetraicosahedronal geometrisation of this logic. (shrink)

This paper poses questions regarding the ethical prioritisation in qualitative research studies on assessing a person's or a group's fitness to provide informed consent, arguing that this may have unwanted as well as desirable consequences, particularly in relation to rights of citizenship for socially marginalised populations who tend to be labelled vulnerable. Drawing on three theoretical perspectives (Arendt, Honneth and Bourdieu), it is suggested that the emphasis placed on a research participant's capacity to provide informed consent cannot be regarded solely (...) as a protective measure for ?vulnerable? groups, but is also bound up with their social positioning as socially ?deficient? according to liberal (classical and neo-liberal) models of citizenship. Participation in a qualitative study can be seen as a dimension of the civil and human right to freedom of expression, and this can be particularly important for those labelled vulnerable as freedom of expression is a precondition for recognition and parity of status. Nevertheless, the importance of informed consent is not rejected; instead, it is posited that the protective rights accorded to vulnerable groups in qualitative research need to be considered alongside other human goods, such as the promotion of voice, agency and active citizenship. (shrink)

Author of "Kubla Khan" and the epic "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," Samuel Taylor Coleridge is remembered principally for his contributions as a romantic poet. This innovative reconsideration of Coleridge's thought and career not only demonstrates his importance as a philosopher but also recovers romanticism as both an aesthetic and a political movement. Pamela Edwards radically departs from classic theories of Coleridge's development and reads his writing within the framework of a constantly shifting political and social landscape. Drawing (...) on the ideology, rhetoric, and institutional theory at the turn of the late British Enlightenment, Edwards unearths the fundamental continuities in Coleridge's writing during the revolutionary period of 1794 to 1834, paying particular attention to the rhetoric of Coleridge's pamphlet and miscellaneous writings, the journalism of the Napoleonic years, his philosophical and ultimately political treatises within the contexts of his notebooks and letters, and his readings and intellectual friendships. What emerges is a clearer understanding of Coleridge's political philosophy and his contributions to the origins and ideology of British Liberalism. Coleridge's interest in history, nature, and law as inherently interconnected projects producing an ideal or scientific reading of society reveals a developed progressive social and cultural state theory anchored in individual conscience, moral autonomy, and a civic and participatory human agency. If the Statesman could understand and finally master this scientific view of the world, he would be able not only to adjust political and social institutions to comprehend the historical contingencies of the moment but to see through the problem of the moment to the dynamic of change itself. (shrink)

Although theoretically rigorous, the book is comprehensible to the beginning qualitative researcher.

Pamela Moore; Experience and the Growth of Understanding: how does knowledge start?, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 14, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages.

Pamela Moore; Perspectives on Punishment, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 8, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 76–102, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.