The aim of this paper is to cast light upon the moral vision—the vision of what is good and what is obligatory —that governs many if not most of the motion pictures produced in the United States in recent years. I especially have in mind productions such as Pleasantville, Cider House Rules , and American Beauty , and will give special attention to these three movies in what follows. But the phenomenon in question extends far beyond these cases. The basic (...) idea governing these films is now a wide-spread and deep-lying conviction in the contemporary American soul. It is that moral rules and rigorous moral order in life, as traditionally understood, are meaningless or pointless at best, and really are repressive of the best aspects of human relationships, individuality and creativity . What would have traditionally been thought of as moral propriety and human goodness is now generally thought of as arbitrary and as harmful to life, if not downright vicious (at least in its effects), largely because they eliminate or repress feelings , the true elixir of life. (shrink)

Exploiting the resources of phenomenal conservatism, Harold Netland has offered a “critical-trust” approach to assessing the veridicality of religious experience and to ascertaining its evidential force in relation to Christian theistic belief. I suggest that, if we give seemings carried in religious experience their epistemic due, it may turn out that religious experience is practically universal and that the potential defeat of justification for religious belief by disagreement among purported epistemic peers is itself defeated by the private character of seemings (...) in the religious experiences of believers. (shrink)

How to reconcile the existence of evil with the belief in a benevolent God has long posed a philosophical problem to the system of Christian theism. This work redress this difficulty in modern terms.

In his critical commentary on my earlier essay, "The Evidential Value of Miracles," Evan Fales explores a series of general methodological issues in sympathy with David Hume and sets forth three arguments against the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, which it was not the purpose of my essay to defend but which I nevertheless affirmed. In response, I first address each of Fales’s critical asides and interpretive comments, and then respond to his claim that there are three independently (...) decisive arguments against the historicity of the resurrection. Our exchange is part of a larger book symposium on miracles. (shrink)

R. Douglas Geivett and James S. Spiegel present a textbook for philosophy courses that uses classic and current films to explore major philosophical themes such as the human condition, mind and knowledge, the moral life, faith and religion.

This unique textbook--the first to offer balanced, comprehensive coverage of all major perspectives on the rational justification of religious belief--includes twenty-four key papers by some of the world's leading philosophers of religion. Arranged in six sections, each representing a major approach to religious epistemology, the book begins with papers by noted atheists, setting the stage for the main theistic responses--Wittgensteinian Fideism, Reformed epistemology, natural theology, prudential accounts of religious beliefs, and rational belief based in religious experience--in each case offering a (...) representative sample of papers by leading exponents, a critical paper, and a substantial bibliography. A comprehensive introductory essay and ample cross-references help students to contrast and evaluate the different approaches, while the overall arrangement encourages them to assess the full range of philosophical positions on the issue. Carefully selected to provide both a comprehensive overview of current work and a series of modern perspectives on many classic sources--Swinburne's detailed discussion of Hume's critique of the design argument, for example, as well as an entire section evaluating and extending Pascal's famous Wager--the essays also provide a uniquely readable survey that will be useful in a wide range of undergraduate and graduate courses in philosophy of religion and epistemology. (shrink)

There is an irony about this that can only be appreciated by considering carefully Greco’s epistemological method. With alacrity and equanimity, Greco denies the efficacy of skeptical arguments as arguments that the conditions required for empirical knowledge are not fulfilled. His confidence in this matter is not the result of an elaborate anti-skeptical argument. Rather, it is born of an awareness that there are clear cases of empirical knowledge. This I find refreshing. The shortest route to denying the generalization embodied (...) in knowledge-skepticism is producing counterexamples to the generalization by identifying bona fide cases of empirical knowledge. This is embarrassingly easy to do. G. E. Moore exhibited a special talent for this when he held up his two hands and laconically remarked, “Here is one hand, and here is another.”. (shrink)

Behavioral paternalism raises deep concerns that do not arise in traditional welfare economics. These concerns stem from behavioral paternalism’s acceptance of the defining axioms of neoclassical rationality for normative purposes, despite having rejected them as positive descriptions of reality. We argue that behavioral paternalists have indeed accepted neoclassical rationality axioms as a welfare standard; that economists historically adopted these axioms not for their normative plausibility, but for their usefulness in formal and theoretical modeling; that broadly rational individuals might fail to (...) satisfy the axioms for various reasons, making them unpersuasive as normative criteria; and that even if their violation did constitute irrationality, that would not justify paternalists’ choosing among inconsistent preferences to define an individual’s “true” preferences. (shrink)

The notion of entrepreneurship developed by Israel Kirzner has applications far beyond the market process. Legal entrepreneurs are lawyers, activists, and other participants in the legal process who are alert to opportunities to alter legal rules, thereby benefiting themselves or their clients. Legal entrepreneurship creates a dynamic that can generate virtually continuous change in the structure of legal rights and duties. On the one hand, the notion of legal entrepreneurship is a testament to the value of Kirzner’s project. But on (...) the other, it creates a serious problem for Kirzner’s conception of welfare economics, which depends on the existence of a stable background of property rights. If the notion of entrepreneurship implies continual change in property rights, then the power of Kirznerian welfare economics is substantially curtailed.La notion d’esprit d’entreprise développée par Israel Kirzner a des applications qui vont bien au-delà du processus de marché. Les entrepreneurs juridiques sont les avocats, les activistes et autres participants au processus juridique qui ont conscience des opportunités de transformer les règles de droit, que ce soit pour leur propre bénéfice ou pour celui de leurs clients. L’entrepreneuriat juridique crée une dynamique qui peut générer des changements presque continus dans la structure des droits légaux et des devoirs. D’une part, la notion d’entrepreneuriat juridique est un témoignage de la valeur du projet de Kirzner. Mais d’autre part, il crée un sérieux problème quant à sa conception de l’économie du bien-être de Kirzner qui repose sur l’existence d’une structure stable de droits de propriété. Si la notion d’esprit d’entreprise implique un changement continuel dans les droits de propriété, alors la portée de l’économie du bienêtre de Kirzner est substantiellement réduite. (shrink)

The Issues at Issue: Heidegger declares metaphor to be a function of metaphysics. Ricoeur's tension theory of metaphor takes the understanding of metaphor beyond metaphysics. Ricoeur's theory of metaphor is a theory of metaphorical statement not of naming. The classical, lexical theory of metaphor focuses on a primary meaning of each metaphor. As such metaphor is merely ornamentation in language. What it names could more appropriately be accomplished in literal language. In contrast, metaphor is understood by Ricoeur to be a (...) semantic event made possible by three kinds of tensions. One may understand symbols to function with the same metaphorical tensions. In the case of symbols, however, these tensions function not at the level of the sentence but rather of the narrative. Metaphor and symbol both have an ‘ontological priority’ over other elements of discourse and experience. They ‘work’ because of the event character of both understanding and experience. Understanding and experience have event as their condition of possibility. Metaphor and symbol both have a ‘temporal priority’, as well, for they serve as the shock to think ‘more’. This can occur, however, because they are part of a circularity that is non-metaphysical, that is, the circularity of the event character of the Being-of beings. Hence, just as metaphors are always ‘larger’ than the sentence, so are symbols always ‘larger’ than the narrative. (shrink)

Chapter INTRODUCTION Charles Sanders Peirce is quickly becoming the dominant figure in the history of American philosophy. The breadth and depth of his work ...

The American thinker Charles Sanders Peirce, best known as the founder of pragmatism, has been influential not only in the pragmatic tradition but more recently in the philosophy of science and the study of semiotics, or sign theory. Strands of System provides an accessible overview of Peirce's systematic philosophy for those who are beginning to explore his thinking and its import for more recent trends in philosophy.

I develop an account of the role that biology plays in the Timaeus’ view of nous and other aspects of cognitive life. I begin by outlining the biology of human cognition. I then argue that these biological views shine an important light on different aspects of the soul. I then argue that the human body is particularly friendly to nous, paying special attention to the heart and the liver. I next consider the ways that the body fails to protect our (...) nous. I conclude by comparing human nous with the cognition of non-humans. (shrink)

In 1905 William James wrote an essay in McClure's Magazine recalling the importance to his own work of the Scottish-born philosopher Thomas Davidson. In the essay, James states that Davidson was "essentially a teacher." What is interesting when one looks at Davidson's life and work is that, for Davidson, teaching does seem to be an essential feature of what it means to be a philosopher. Here, I develop how Davidson construes this linking of philosophy and teaching with a concluding emphasis (...) on the two schools he established: Glenmore, a summer philosophy program in the Adirondacks and the "Breadwinners' College," an open school he began for working persons in New York City. I offer this as a discussion paper so that James's recollection of Davidson's importance to his own work may provoke us to consider how we presently understand the linking of teaching and philosophy. This seems especially appropriate for an academic culture such as ours in which much of our time is spent teaching and in which we are often primarily evaluated by a separate category of professional "research." The American tradition has "lost" any number of its important.. (shrink)

In his "A Neglected Argument for the Reality of Goc" (1908), Charles Peirce argued for two dimensions of belief in God's reality. On the one side, he maintained that this belief would be useful for guiding the conduct of life; on the other side, he maintained that the belief could function as the first stage in a scientific inquiry. My suggestion in this paper is that we examine the last of Peirce's 1903 lectures on pragmatism at Harvard to see how (...) the possibility of this dual function arises out of his late theory of cognition in which the functional certainty of perception is brought to close quarters with the provisionality of hypotheses. The upshot is that for Peirce a healthful religious belief should internally "marry" science and religion —theory and practice — by allowing provisional and vague conceptions of God to carry on the work of guiding conduct. /// No texto "A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God" (1908), Charles Peirce defende que há duas dimensões de crença na realidade de Deus. Afirma, por um lado, que esta crença poderia ser útil para orientar o comportamento (conduct of life); por outro, que ela poderia ser como que o primeiro escalão numa investigação científica. A minha sugestão neste artigo é que, examinámos as últimas conferências de Peirce de 1903 sobre o pragmatismo em Harvard para ver como a possibilidade desta dupla função surge da sua última teoria de conhecimento (cognition) em que a certeza funcional de percepção é usada para aproximar o aspecto provisório das hipóteses. A consequência disso é que para Peirce uma saudável crença religiosa deve "juntar" internamente ciência e religião - teoria e prática - permitindo as concepções provisórias e vagas de Deus para continuar a tarefa de orientar o comportamento. /// Dans ce texte "Un argument négligé pour la réalité de Dieu" (1908), Charles Peirce soutient qu'il y a deux dimensions de croyance en la réalité de Dieu. Il afflrme, d'un côté, que cette croyance pourrait être utile pour orienter le comportement (conduct of life) et, par ailleurs, qu'elle pourrait être pour ainsi dire le premier niveau dans une recherche scientifique. Ma suggestion dans le présent article est que nous examinions les dernières conférences de Peirce en 1903 sur le pragmatisme à Harvard pour voir comment Ia possibilite de cette double fonction surgit de sa dernière théorie de la connaissance dans laquelle la certitude fonctionnelle de perception est utilisée pour aborder l'aspect provisoire des hypothèses. La conséquence en est que pour Peirce une saine croyance religieuse doit "unir" intrinsèquement science et religion - théorie et pratique - en permettant les conceptions provisoires et vagues de Dieu. (shrink)

The ability to transfer genes from one species to another provides a powerful method to study genetic regulatory differences between species in a homogeneous genetic background. A survey of several transgenic animal experiments indicates that the vast majority of regulatory differences observed between species are due to differences in the cis‐acting elements associated with the genes under study. A corollary is that in almost all cases the host species provides the necessary regulatory proteins for expression of the transgenes in specific (...) tissues in which the endogenous homolog is not expressed. Although the details of the cis‐acting differences are unknown for most cases, it appears that these differences may consist of the acquisition or loss of unique elements or subtle variation of conserved elements. It is unknown whether much of this variation is directly related to adaptive evolution. The identification of the promoter enhancer elements responsible for these differences is an important first step in examining the functional significance of this variation. (shrink)

Can thought arise out of matter? Can self, soul, consciousness, “I” arise out of mere matter? If it cannot, then how can you or I be here? I Am a Strange Loop argues that the key to understanding selves and consciousness is the “strange loop”—a special kind of abstract feedback loop inhabiting our brains. The most central and complex symbol in your brain is the one called “I.” The “I” is the nexus in our brain, one of many symbols seeming (...) to have free will and to have gained the paradoxical ability to push particles around, rather than the reverse. How can a mysterious abstraction be real—or is our “I” merely a convenient fiction? Does an “I” exert genuine power over the particles in our brain, or is it helplessly pushed around by the laws of physics? These are the mysteries tackled in I Am a Strange Loop, Douglas Hofstadter's first book-length journey into philosophy since Gödel, Escher, Bach. Compulsively readable and endlessly thought-provoking, this is a moving and profound inquiry into the nature of mind. (shrink)

The essays in this book have grown out of conversations between the authors and their colleagues and students over the last decade and a half.