In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Picking Up the Pieces of a Shattered Culture:Abandoning Sartre for AquinasR. E. HouserI expect to die in my bed, my successor will die in prison, and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. Then his successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the Church has done so often in human history.—Francis Cardinal George (2010)Here I propose (...) to present a feature of the ethics of Thomas Aquinas, his ethical doctrine of virtue, concentrating on the four cardinal virtues—justice, prudence or good practical judgment, courage, and temperance. Plato first selected them as the four premier virtues, but they go back at least to Homer, for whom wily Odysseus exemplified prudence, warlike Achilles courage, old Nestor justice, Penelope and Telemachus, Odysseus' wife and son, temperance. And I offer them as central to living the morally good life required to "rebuild civilization" in an America that so fair and judicious a man as Cardinal George could call a "ruined society." To see the need for Thomas's solution, we must begin with the problem. Now, all societies depend upon the deep and fundamental ideas of the most important thinkers, prophets and sages, saints, and yes, even philosophers. Their ideas "trickle down" to influence regular folk, like you and me, those who whose hard work actually makes a society thrive, or die. And when those fundamental ideas change, the moral principles of those who embrace those ideas change, and consequently their actions change, and as a result the wider society in which they live changes, for better or worse. Such effects can now be felt across America [End Page 135] by all; but most of us are unaware of the primary intellectual agents of these changes, since they operate at the level of fundamental ideas, not politics or business or day-to-day life. And often their originators have died before the ideas reach full cultural force. So, ignorance of history makes it difficult to deal with present problems caused by those ideas.My first conclusion will be that a major cause of the current coarsening of our culture is the group of ideas of the French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre, even though most Americans have never heard of him, and most of those who recognize his name have not read his works carefully enough to see the connection. Why Sartre? In the honors program at my university, I had a bright young lady of Muslim heritage who had gone to a lycée, one of France's elite classical secondary schools. "Did you read the classics?" "Yes." Expecting Montaigne or Pascal, I asked, "Who?" Her answer: "Sartre." So let us begin with the theory and practice of Sartre and his long-time lover Simone Beauvoir, whose book The Second Sex was an intellectual spark for the women's liberation movement. Then we turn to some real-life examples of Sartrean influence on ourselves and American culture. Finally, for the best remedy for non-Christian and Christian alike, I recommend Aquinas's doctrine of virtue, when taken in its full scope.Sartre's Ethics of Absolute FreedomIn 1946, the year I was born, Sartre gave a lecture to a meeting of French librarians, which became his most popular book, Existentialism is a Humanism. There he laid out the core of his thought about God, humans, and their ethical behavior. Here I arrange his main ideas in an order that facilitates comparison with Aquinas, beginning with his view of human ontology and proceeding to its impact on the four cardinal virtues.Human OntologySartre turned his back on the traditional metaphysical view that every creature is an individual substance defined by a nature or essence it has in common with all other things of that type. In his "first principle of existentialism," Sartre skips over other animate things, plants and animals, and compares humans to inanimate objects:Let us consider... a book or a paper-cutter: here is an object made by an artisan whose inspiration came from a concept.... One cannot postulate a man who makes a paper-cutter but does not know what it is... (shrink)

THE PAPER BEGINS BY CONSIDERING THREE ALTERNATIVE DEFINITIONS OF "ANALYTIC," ONE IN TERMS OF LOGICAL TRUTH, ONE IN TERMS OF THE MEANINGS OF WORDS, AND ONE IN TERMS OF SELF-CONTRADICTION OR INCOHERENCE. NEXT, FIVE DEFINITIONS OF "NECESSARY" ARE CONSIDERED, ONE IN TERMS OF ANALYTICITY, AND ONE PICKING OUT THE BROADER KIND OF LOGICAL NECESSITY DISCUSSED BY KRIPKE AND PLANTINGA. FINALLY, THREE DEFINITIONS OF "A PRIORI" ARE CONSIDERED. ONLY ON A FEW OF THESE DEFINITIONS DO THE CATEGORIES OF ANALYTIC, NECESSARY, AND (...) A PRIORI COINCIDE. (shrink)

There are numerous ‘solutions’ to the problem of evil, from which theists can and do freely take their pick. It is fairly clear that any attempt at a solution must involve a scaling-down of one or more of the assertions out of whose initial conflict the problem arises – either by a downward revision of what we mean by omnipotence, or omniscience, or benevolence, or by minimizing the amount or condensing the varieties of evil actually to be found in (...) the universe. And indeed, in one or more of these different ways, the charge of logical inconsistency can no doubt always be vouchsafed at least a formal answer. Unfortunately, the mere ironing-out of formal inconsistencies does not of itself go very far towards providing a solution to this central problem of theism which will be morally, religiously, and intellectually convincing and acceptable as well as logically impeccable. Everything depends on how the inconsistencies are ironed out. For every attempt at a solution of the problem of evil has to be made at a price, in keeping with the scale and type of conceptual or ethical readjustments which it requires of us. And if the solutions which are generally offered seldom seem to carry much conviction, this is because the price they require us to pay nearly always seems far too high. A ‘solution’ to the problem of evil that is to count as a genuine solution must not require us to make any conceptual or ethical readjustments which it would not on independent grounds be entirely reasonable to make. A ‘solution’ that was finally to count as the solution of the problem of evil would presumably need to be that particular one which required us to make only those conceptual and ethical readjustments which were on independent grounds the ones that it was the most reasonable to make. What follows is offered as a solution, in the above sense, of the problem of evil. However, I shall not here attempt to argue that it is the solution. (shrink)

Here’s a problem that any reliability theory must face, whether it’s one that holds that beliefs are justified just when they’re products of belief-forming mechanisms with the potential of having good records of yielding true beliefs, or one that holds that a belief meets the standards for knowledge if and only if its causal basis rules out any relevant chance of mistake. The problem is made evident when cast in probabilistic terms. Let r be S’s reason for tokening the true (...) belief that p under conditions c. Then, according to reliabilism, Sis justified in believing that p under c iff r makes it sufficiently probable that p, whileS knows that p iff the conditional probability that p on r and c is unity. But how do we specify the belief context c to be counted as epistemically relevant? As urged recently by John Pollock, on the face of it there seems to be no principled reason for excluding mention of the truth value of the proposition believed. As he says, ‘The only obvious way to construct an objective non-epistemic kind of definite probability is to make it conditional on everything that is true [at the belief’s tokening]’ ; and, as he notes, ‘one feature of the present circumstances is a characterization of the belief as a belief in [p ], and another feature is the truth value of [p]’. But if we allow both the belief token and its truth value membership in the relevant belief context, we then have the hopeless task of explaining how the probability of the token’s being true can be anything but one or zero, one if what is believed is true, and zero if it’s false. This in tum would commit reliabilism to the foolish doctrines that a belief’s truth is sufficient for knowledge, while no false belief is ever even justified. No wonder, then, that Pollock says ‘there is no way to construct an intelligible notion of reliability which does the job required by the reliabilist’. And he is surely right in this: Neither knowledge nor justification can be explained as the chance of a belief’s being true if the relevant belief context is required to mention both the belief tokened and its truth value. We would be engaged in a comparably pointless task were we to try to explain the likelihood of a wager’s being a good bet on a horse race when we had to include among the givens both which horse was picked and its finish, or were we to try to make sense of the assertion that a theory’s predictions have a good chance of being true when both what the theory predicts and its outcome had to be included among the givens. (shrink)

Robert Solomon has presented a version of business ethics in terms of virtues theory. It is a good thing that business ethics should be understood in terms of virtues theory, but the account that Solomon gives is seriously misleading in important respects. "A virtue is a pervasive trait of character that allows one to 'fit into' a particular society and to excel in it," he says. This is something that we might query: what a society will recognize as a virtue (...) might well be what fits that formula, but sometimes we shall want to recognize as a virtue what enabled somebody to stand out against his or her society and change it, and shall want to say that those traits that enable somebody to fit happily into (say) a slave society are vices rather than virtues. That is to say, a society's recognition of virtues, its application of virtues theory in picking out various character traits as valuable, will depend on other judgments common in that society, and we might well differ from that society in those judgments. (shrink)

Two years ago in two articles in a thematic issue of this journal the three of us engaged in a critique of principlism. In a subsequent issue, B. Andrew Lustig defended aspects of principlism we had criticized and argued against our own account of morality. Our reply to Lustig's critique is also in two parts, corresponding with his own. Our first part shows how Lustig's criticisms are seriously misdirected. Our second and philosophically more important part picks up on Lustig's challenge (...) to us to show that our account of morality is more adequate than principlism. In particular we show that recognition of morality as public and systematic enables us to provide a far better description of morality than does principlism. This explains why we adopt the label “Dartmouth Descriptivism.”. (shrink)

Abstract How is meaning assigned to those terms in a theory which are remote from direct observational instantiation? Models and analogies play a role, but close examination of theories in high energy physics shows that the design of experimental apparatus also influences the interpretation of such terms. Certain apparatus favours certain kinds of effects, and this affects the way mathematical theories are interpreted. In particular track producing apparatus becomes involved with theories in which photonic terms are picked out in the (...) theory. A further conceptual constraint is thus introduced. It is argued that this situation favours the interpretation of dispositional properties as affordances rather than as simple dispositions. (shrink)

One of the problems that Bayesian regularity, the thesis that all contingent propositions should be given probabilities strictly between zero and one, faces is the possibility of random processes that randomly and uniformly choose a number between zero and one. According to classical probability theory, the probability that such a process picks a particular number in the range is zero, but of course any number in the range can indeed be picked. There is a solution to this particular problem on (...) the books: a measure that assigns the same infinitesimal probability to each number between zero and one. I will show that such a measure, while mathematically interesting, is pathological for use in confirmation theory, for the same reason that a measure that assigns an infinitesimal probability to each possible outcome in a countably infinite lottery is pathological. The pathology is that one can force someone to assign a probability within an infinitesimal of one to an unlikely event. (shrink)

In this paper I critically examine the Generality Problem and argue that it does not succeed as an objection to reliabilism. Although those who urge the Generality Problem are correct in claiming that any process token can be given indefinitely many descriptions that pick out indefinitely many process types, they are mistaken in thinking that reliabilists have no principled way to distinguish between relevant and irrelevant process types.

The authors have attempted a sustained exploration of the cluster of problems involved in the relationship between Christian faith and intellectual integrity. They alternate brief essays, each picking up where the other left off. The latter sections tend to become somewhat technical for a book intended for use by undergraduate students, but there is some fruitful philosophical encounter which could make this book useful in courses in the philosophy of religion.--R. J. W.

Against the background of a recent exchange between Cristina Lafont and Hubert Dreyfus, I argue that Heidegger's method of ?formal indication? is at the heart of his attempt in Sein und Zeit to answer ?the ontological question of the being of the ?sum?? (SZ, p. 46). This method works reflexively, by picking out certain essential features of one's first-person singular being at the outset of its investigation that are implicit in the question ?what is it to be the entity I (...) am?? On the basis of these features, various further a priori, ontological structures (care and temporality) that constitute one as a first-person singular entity then become accessible. Formal indication is thus formal in two senses: it officially designates or signals certain first-person singular phenomena as the topic of investigation, and it picks out features which define the ontological form of the entity in question. It is thereby the method by which a legitimately transcendental account of our being may be begun to be generated by each of us from out of our factical, immanent existence. (shrink)

A number of philosophers have attempted to solve the problem of null-probability possible events in Bayesian epistemology by proposing that there are infinitesimal probabilities. Hájek and Easwaran have argued that because there is no way to specify a particular hyperreal extension of the real numbers, solutions to the regularity problem involving infinitesimals, or at least hyperreal infinitesimals, involve an unsatisfactory ineffability or arbitrariness. The arguments depend on the alleged impossibility of picking out a particular hyperreal extension of the real numbers (...) and/or of a particular value within such an extension due to the use of the Axiom of Choice. However, it is false that the Axiom of Choice precludes a specification of a hyperreal extension—such an extension can indeed be specified. Moreover, for all we know, it is possible to explicitly specify particular infinitesimals within such an extension. Nonetheless, I prove that because any regular probability measure that has infinitesimal values can be replaced by one that has all the same intuitive features but other infinitesimal values, the heart of the arbitrariness objection remains. (shrink)

This line has been thought corrupt by most editors, though there is no agreement on the remedy. The Herald is plainly asking why the people at home are despondent: picks up the Chorus's phrase . But as Wilamowitz says, ‘ de populo aut senatu Argivorum accipi non potest’: it can only mean the army at Troy, as in lines 538 and 545. The usual inference is that arparw is corrupt.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Uttering the Unutterable: Aristotle, Religion, and Literature by Louis GroarkeJay R. ElliottGROARKE, Louis. Uttering the Unutterable: Aristotle, Religion, and Literature. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023. 336 pp. Cloth, $120.00Louis Groarke’s Uttering the Unutterable is an extraordinarily ambitious book. Its aims include: to provide a definition of literature; to argue that literature must be morally good; to argue that literature is necessarily concerned with an “utterable” transcendent reality; to (...) advance a version of Aristotelian realism in metaphysics and epistemology; to defend the Western “tradition” in literature and philosophy; to criticize the entire enterprise of structuralist and poststructuralist literary theory; to criticize the entire enterprise of analytic philosophy of language; to resurrect the Chicago School of literary criticism associated with figures such as R. S. Crane and Richard McKeon; to relitigate the mid-twentieth-century battles between the Chicago School and “New Criticism”; and to offer an homage to Groarke’s former teacher, the Chicago-trained Bernard Suits.At the center of Groarke’s project is his aspiration to formulate an Aristotelian literary theory and to defend it against a wide variety of alternative perspectives. But as the above list of Groarke’s ambitions suggests, he carries out this aspiration in a highly unusual way. For Groarke, questions of literary theory are not to be debated exclusively— or even primarily—through discussion of literature. This book contains very few examples of literary works, and none of them is discussed in depth. Indeed, for Groarke, matters of literary theory are not even to be [End Page 719] discussed primarily in terms of literary theory. Rather, Groarke’s central conviction is that we can approach literature properly only by situating it within the context of certain fundamental questions in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and religion. Readers who pick up this work expecting a discussion of Aristotle’s Poetics will be sorely disappointed. Groarke barely mentions this seminal work of Aristotelian literary criticism. Rather, his project begins from a diagnosis of what ails contemporary literary criticism: that it suffers, not so much from a false view of literature, as from a false view of truth, goodness, and reality. He accordingly undertakes to provide a better view of those fundamental matters, one that he derives from aspects of Aristotle’s thought. According to Groarke, it is these aspects of Aristotle that have the most to offer literary theorists today.Groarke draws his most important Aristotelian inspiration from Aristotle’s discussion of theōria in Nicomachean Ethics 10.7–8. In Groarke’s view, Aristotelian theōria is a truthful vision of a supreme reality that transcends human life and pervades the universe. This vision, for Groarke, is what literature is (or should be) about. On this basis, he critiques forms of literary criticism that see literature as concerned only with politics, or with class distinctions, or with entertainment, or with language itself. As Groarke sums up his argument: “[L]iterature supplies opportunities for intelligence gathered up in an artful and superlative moment of beholding of what is fundamental, real, meaningful, and true. Literature provides an avenue for contemplation (theōria), facilitating a divine-like gaze upon the world.” For Groarke, Aristotelian theōria allows us to behold what is “fundamental, real, meaningful, and true.” It is especially valuable because it affirms the essential unity of these attributes. Like Aristotle’s god, Groarke’s transcendent reality is simultaneously the highest reality and the summation of all value. For Groarke, to engage in theōria is thus to affirm that the universe is suffused with moral significance. It is this stance that Groarke thinks literature should promote.I have a great deal of sympathy both for Groarke’s reading of Aristotle and for his sense that these aspects of his thought are relevant to fundamental questions about literature. But I found the experience of reading this book challenging. The bulk of Groarke’s work is not devoted to developing his Aristotelian conception, applying it to literary case studies, or considering any problems it might raise. Rather, Groarke applies most of his time and energy to attacking what he perceives to be the myriad enemies of his Aristotelian outlook in the... (shrink)

It is a pleasure to read Hume, and to watch him explore recalcitrant problems with agility of mind and grace of style. Ironically these twin abilities have worked against each other from the beginning, in the first place because in the matter of writing Hume was an innovator — nobody before him had so successfully albeit unwittingly adapted French syntax to the writing of English-and-Scottish - and in the second place because on the grace of his style subtleties of thought (...) flow past his readers, who then accuse him of obscurity. So abstruse were his writings to his contemporaries that he failed to achieve the literary recognition for which he craved; and even today, long after the elegance of his style has been received, it is said by Passmore that Hume in contrast to Berkeley ‘was a philosophical puppy-dog, picking up and worrying one problem after another, always leaving his teeth-marks in it, but casting it aside when it threatened to become wearisome.’ Similarly Selby-Bigge says in his introduction to the Enquiries:His pages, especially those of the Treatise, are so full of matter, he says so many things in so many different ways and different connexions, and with so much indifference to what he has said before, that it is very hard to say positively that he taught, or did not teach, this or that particular doctrine. He applies the same principles to such a great variety of subjects that it is not surprising that many verbal, and some real inconsistencies can be found in his statements. He is ambitious rather than shy of saying the same thing in different ways, and at the same time he is often slovenly and indifferent about his words and formulae. This makes it easy to find all philosophies in Hume, or, by setting up one statement against another, none at all. (shrink)

In this paper an argument by l j jost against the use of j o urmson's concept of central illocutionary force to support a speech act analysis of meaning is rejected on the grounds that jost misinterprets urmson's concept, but it is further argued that the concept correctly interpreted is still of little use because it provides no way of picking out the word whose meaning it explicates.

IT is ungenerous to pick holes in The Concept of Law. It is a great work. Its clarity is luminous, and its argument sustained and convincing. Hart is eminently successful in rescuing the concept of law from the Legal Realists, the Positivists, and the Formalists, who attempt to straitjacket it within schemata which are too narrow or too vague to give an adequate elucidation of it. But sometimes Hart is not carried along by his arguments as far as he (...) should. He makes too many concessions to his opponents, and his own account of the law is, in consequence, too formalist, in spite of having himself adduced cogent considerations elsewhere for rejecting the purely formalist line of argument. The rule of recognition, although important, is not fundamental. We should, rather, see law as a social phenomenon, to be distinguished from other social phenomena, but intelligible only in a social context, and not-as lawyers are too ready to suppose-an autonomous discipline which can be explained and understood entirely in its own terms. (shrink)

A key epistemic puzzle about theatrical performances of fictional narratives has to do with how spectators pick out and recognize the characters they encounter. An adequate solution to the puzzle is constrained by several factors : it should be similar to what we need to say about picking out and recognition of characters in non-fictional narratives ; it should be similar to what we need to say about picking out and recognizing elements in non-narrative performances ; it be it (...) must be sensitive to the fact that most plays do not name or describe their characters ; it must be sensitive to the fact that most spectators have no prior experience or preparation for what they will encounter ; and it must comport with any plausible story we have to tell about the mechanisms we bring to the identification and re-identification of individuals in daily life. In this paper, I review a solution that meets these constraints and, in particular, I show why the proposed solution is likely to be subserved by very basic cognitive mechanisms involved in object perception and recognition in everyday life. I conclude by responding to ontological worries the solution is likely to foster. (shrink)

A plural referring expression (‘the Fs’ or ‘Tom, Dick and Harriet’) may be used to refer either distributively, saying something which applies to each of the Fs individually, or collectively, to the Fs taken as a single totality. Predicate Logic has to analyse both uses in terms of singular reference, treating them quite differently in so doing; but we think of such an expression as functioning in basically the same way in both kinds of use. This understanding can be vindicated (...) if we recognise that what a plural referring expression picks out is not either an aggregate simpliciter or a set, but a plurality– an aggregate taken relative to a principle for individuating its constituents; this admits of being seen either as many things or as one. In any given case, it is the nature of what is being said about the plurality which tells us whether the reference to it is to be taken as distributive, collective, or a combination of the two. Talk about pluralities is extensional. Augmenting Predicate Logic to accommodate the distinctive inference‐pattern associated with distributive plural reference is simple – and arguably necessary, to cope with cases in which distributive and collective reference are essentially combined (e.g., attributions of concerted action). (shrink)

This paper responds to the commentaries from Stacy Carter and Alan Cribb. We pick up on two main themes in our response. First, we reflect on how the process of setting standards for empirical bioethics research entails drawing boundaries around what research counts as empirical bioethics research, and we discuss whether the standards agreed in the consensus process draw these boundaries correctly. Second, we expand on the discussion in the original paper of the role and significance of the concept (...) of ‘integrating’ empirical methods and ethical argument as a standard for research practice within empirical bioethics. (shrink)

Equality is one of the great issues of our age, but few people stop to wonder at its being an issue in politics at all. Yet it is surprising that a concept which has its natural habitat in the mathematical sciences should have taken root in our thinking about how we should be governed. We do not naturally think of society in terms of group theory, or rings or fields, and have long been aware of the difficulties in establishing any (...) over-arching social or political order. But we unthinkingly assume that we can meaningfully ask, and reliably tell, whether people are, or ought to be, equal to one another even while admitting how difficult it would be to say whether they were more or less than one another. Formal logic can help. Equality is an equivalence relation, that is to say one that is transitive, symmetric and reflexive. Equivalence classes pick out classes of people or things that are the same, or similar , in some respect or other. There are many such, and we need to specify in respect of what two things are or are not equivalent before we are saying, or asking, anything definite. I can be equivalent to you in respect of age, or height, or weight, and many equivalence classes— contemporaries, co-religionists, comrades—may be of great importance socially or politically. But equality is, in its original context, more than just an expression of sameness. It suggests also a possibility of being either more than or less than. I can be the same age as you, but if I were not, I should be either older than you, or younger. This is always the case in mathematics. The law of trichotomy holds, that if two things are not equal, then one is greater, in the relevant respect, than the other, and the difference can itself be measured. With human beings, however, there are rather few respects in which we can be properly measured. Age, height and weight apart, the ascription of most numerical measures is a dubious affair. At one time psychologists were confident that they could measure intelligence, and economists still purport to measure wealth, but the ascriptions they actually make do not seem to deserve the confidence called for.. (shrink)

It is meet and right that pride and humility should be the two human characteristics on which University sermons have to be preached. Left to myself, although I might have picked on my modesty as something I should share with you, I should have given the preeminence to other among my sins than pride. My greed, my sloth, my avarice or, in this salacious age my lust, are subjects on which I could tell you much that might interest you. Pride (...) lacks immediate appeal. We are not sure what it is, or whether it is a bad thing, when we think of it in purely individual terms. But when we consider it collectively, we can see that it is, together with humility, something Oxford is peculiarly well qualified to preach on. We all of us are proud of our university. We were proud, and our schoolmasters were proud, when we first got our places here. We are, dons and undergraduates alike, proud of our colleges, each grateful that good fortune has brought him to the best college in Oxford, and anxious that everyone else should secretly acknowledge it to be the best. Our parents were proud when we took our degrees, and although we profess to be unconcerned with classes, we are deeply content to record our firsts when occasion requires us to do so, or have our contemporaries allude to them as opportunity offers. We are studious, as dons, not to pull rank, safe in the knowledge that others will do it for us, and that we shall receive the deference due to a fellow of an Oxford college. In an age that is egalitarian in theory but elitist at heart, Oxford men have benefited greatly, as other forms of social eminence have been eroded, leaving a clear field for our own claims to public esteem, which are, if not entirely unchallenged, still generally allowed. Oxford is, as we like to be told by outsiders, a centre of excellence, and a lot of the resplendence rubs off on us, not altogether undeservedly. It is, as we corporately admit on Commemoration Sunday, largely due to our having entered into other men's labours.. (shrink)

Much epistemological theorizing is the attempt to specify what makes for meritorious cognition, but epistemologists have not, despite meritorious effort, achieved unity when it comes to picking out the feature and principles that are distinctive of epistemic normativity. In this essay we explain why this is the inevitable outcome. We isolate important but overlooked variations in the link between epistemological theorizing and the idea of epistemic unification, and then argue that much epistemological theorizing is misguided because it aims toward complete (...) epistemic unification when only partial epistemic unification, at best, is possible. But our arguments — based on work in moral epistemology and philosophical psychology — stop short of epistemological eliminativism, and thus we stake out a middle ground between philosophers such as Descartes, the earlier Alston, Audi, and the earlier BonJour on one hand and Rorty, Fish, and Patricia Churchland on the other. (shrink)

Until fairly recently a common way of doing history of science was to pick up an important strand of contemporary scientific thought and to trace its origin back to the philosophical tangle of the scientific revolution. This approach conveniently by-passed the breakdowns of once useful and pervasive theories, and neglected the long intellectual journeys along devious routes. History of science read like a success story; the pioneers who failed were neither dismissed nor excused; they were simply ignored. The historian (...) knew what he was hunting for and he was careful to limit his search to areas where his quarry was sure to be found. This method, which has been dubbed the precursor-view, stands in contrast—albeit, not in opposition—to the contextual method, which aims at a better understanding of the actual thought-processes of the early scientists. On this second view, history of science must not only account for present theories in the light of past developments, it must also assess old theories in terms of the scientist's conceptual framework, and judge them against the background of the world picture of his age. This may lead the historian down the blind alleys of the past, chasing spurious attempts at explaining the nature of physical reality, but it can clear the ground for a less anachronistic interpretation of the emergence of modern science and the actual process of discovery. History of science acts as a winnowing fork, but we cannot suppose that the discoverer himself always separated the wheat from the chaff, and we must be ever wary of equating the dream with the task. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Art of Theater—A PrécisJames R. Hamilton (bio)In The Art of Theater I propose and explain a claim that many theater people hold true in some form but, so far as I can tell, have defended in a manner that has had almost no success outside discussions among themselves.1 The claim proposed is that, in an unqualified way, theater is a form of art. By that I mean theatrical (...) performances are what are created in the practice of theater and that theatrical performances are works of art because they can be picked out and appreciated in the same ways we appreciate other kinds of artworks.2The agenda I set for the book is to state and explain what that claim comes to—exactly and in detail. Accordingly, most of the book consists of explanations of what else must be true if the claim is true, together with arguments defending the truth of those entailments. Some of the material consists of clarifying what the claim does not entail, and some passages contain arguments to show that alternative claims have problems that this one does not. Of these, I have allowed the explanation and clarification materials to carry the burden. Many philosophers and literary theorists are likely to find the claim incomprehensible because they have inherited, rather than critically accepted, a conception of theater as centrally dependent on literary texts.3 Philosophers, literary theorists, and theater theorists are better served by the explanations and clarifications I offer, however, because they show the claim can withstand the immediate objections or worries likely to arise.The direct argumentation I offer for the claim is historical. Indeed, I begin the book by tracing how theater has been conceived and practiced in the European theatrical tradition since the 1850s. I start there and then for several reasons. First, it is the beginning of a period of great achievement in theater, when literary artists began again to write for theater. Second, the same period also gave rise to a now dominant conception of theater: namely, [End Page 4] the idea that theatrical performances, or at least the most often performed, are events that are dependant primarily if not exclusively on literary texts. Finally, the 1850s were also the beginning of a period in which theater people were both doing and thinking about theater in ways that resisted that very same dominant conception. The conclusion I come to in tracing this history is that—without always intending to and sometimes by intending the opposite—theater’s theoretical practitioners have put us in a position to see the truth of the claim that theatrical performance itself is an independent form of art. Assured we can see that truth in the actual historical practices of theater, even in its most self-consciously text-oriented period, I then proceed to explain and clarify the claim.To begin with, the enormous success of the conjunction of literature and theater in late European theater practice means that any view of the art status of theatrical performances must explain the relation between a performance and a literary text, at least when a literary text is used in the performance. This is the first bit of explanation I undertake. A number of models of this relationship have been proposed, and I survey three of the primary ones. First, the “literary” model holds that performances illustrate or, at best, interpret the text and exist as a means to present the content—or the interpreted content—of the text in a performance mode. Second, the “two-text” model holds that the content of the literary text must be translated, adapted, transformed, reconstructed, or otherwise “reinscribed” in the language of theater. A third model, popular in analytic aesthetics, attempts to piggyback an account of theatrical works, texts, and theatrical performances on the well-developed ontology of musical works, scores, and musical performance.4 This third model might provide the right ontology of theatrical performances. Before we try to determine what kinds of things or events make our experience of theater what it is, however, first we should seek the best explanation of that experience. And that is the task I undertake in... (shrink)

The relative contributions of biological and cultural factors in determining category characteristics almost certainly vary for different categories, so that the results of these simulations on color categories don't necessarily generalize. It is suggested here that categories that pick out structure in the environment of strong behavioral significance to individual agents will be predominantly biologically determined and will converge without interagent communication, whereas those categories that serve primarily to coordinate behavior in a population will require communication to converge.

Hamilton shows how awareness of the uses of space -- in particular uses of space in which to stage an event of any kind -- enable spectators to pick out characters, props, and the like across performances within production runs, across production runs, and even across productions employing different scripts. The key ideas of object identification are taken both from the philosophical and the empirical literature and are treated as epistemic ideas rather than metaphysical conceptions.

The Norrington Table is scotched, but not killed. It still appears each year in a national daily, having been compiled by an enterprising graduate with more need for money than time. Some people argue that this shows the futility of trying to suppress the table. But that is not so. In a free society it is open to anyone to obtain information and publish his results. There are many things that people might like to know about colleges. Of greater interest (...) to many than schools results would be the average earnings of graduates of each college five years after going down: that would enable people to pick the best college for repaying student loans, and for enjoying the fruits of worldly success. An enterprising graduate with nothing better to do might go through the university telephone directory, and work out the Ms-ratio for each college and department: no doubt the Daily Telegraph would pay good money for a list of those parts of Oxford that were entirely Ms-free. What is important is not what other people say, but what we say, or seem to endorse its being said, about us. Once the Norrington table appeared to have our imprimatur, it suggested that we set too much score by schools results, and instead of regarding final examinations as a necessary evil, bad, but less bad than any available alternative, we reckoned that getting a good result in schools was the chief.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Trungpa's Barbarians and Merton's Titan:Resuming a Dialogue on Spiritual EgotismSteven R. ShippeeA Dialogue Begun: The Meeting of Chögyam Trungpa and Thomas MertonMuch of the dialogue on the spiritual life between Buddhists and Christians has centered on two locations in the United States. The first is Naropa Institute (now University) in Boulder, Colorado. This institution was founded in 1974 by Chögyam Trungpa, a Tibetan master and lineage holder of both (...) the Nyingma and Kagyü traditions, two of the four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism. Under Trungpa's guidance, Naropa hosted an important series of Buddhist-Christian contemplative dialogues in the 1980s.1 A second significant place is Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky, the Trappist monastery that became home to Thomas Merton in 1941. Since 1996, and through the efforts of several of the same people who had worked on the Naropa dialogues, the abbey has hosted three interreligious "encounters" sponsored by the Monastic Interreligious Dialogue.2An important link between these dialogues, as well as the initial inspiration for the first of them,3 is the meeting of the two men most famously associated with each of the hosting institutions, Trungpa and Merton. As many of their respective readers know, the two men met in Calcutta on 19 October 1968, and spent several days together.4 This contact was very stimulating to them both and seemed the beginning of a deep friendship. Merton was so impressed with Trungpa that he immediately determined to visit Trungpa's new monastery in Scotland. Trungpa later said, "Meeting Thomas Merton was wonderful,"5 and that he felt he "was meeting an old friend, a genuine friend."6 Despite the brevity of their relationship, during his last talk on 10 December, Merton said he likewise considered Trungpa "a good friend."7 Later that same day, their friendship and dialogue were terminated by Merton's death. Not two months had passed since the meeting in Calcutta. Trungpa called Merton's death "a tremendous loss, to me personally and to the world of genuine spirituality."8Judith Simmer-Brown has provided the fullest picture thus far of the relationship between Trungpa and Merton.9 One of the facts that most intrigues Trungpa's [End Page 109] followers is his own recollection, shared with participants at the third Naropa dialogue, that the two discussed what he called "spiritual materialism" (his most common phrase for spirituality co-opted by ego) at some length over dinner and drinks.10 This article picks up where that recollection leaves off. While we do not know more about the specific content of that discussion, we do have a body of writings from each man on topics relating to the quest and pitfalls of authentic spirituality. A comparative analysis of these proves worthwhile, as further elucidation of what made possible their meeting of the minds and the immediate affection they felt for each other, and certainly as wisdom that still has the power to deepen our spiritual experience today by exposing the manipulations and deceptions to which ego11 subjects even our noblest spiritual aspirations.The challenges to authentic spiritual life were major concerns for both Trungpa and Merton, a leitmotif that characterized almost all of their respective teachings and written works.12 As an extensive examination of these is not possible here, I have set side by side one symbol from each: Trungpa's modification of the traditional Tibetan teachings on the Lalos (kla.klo, literally "barbarians"), which he translated as the "Three Lords of Materialism," and Merton's reflections on the tragic Titan Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods. These two symbols, while certainly not exhaustive of their insights, nonetheless effectively crystallize their respective thoughts on the matter, and thereby allow us to see that Trungpa and Merton shared very striking insights both about the malady of spiritual egotism and about its necessary antidotes.Chögyam Trungpa on Spiritual MaterialismIn talks given from 1970 to 1973, Trungpa gave teachings to his students on "the Three Lords of Materialism," symbolic personifications of the trap to which he referred as spiritual materialism.13 Believing that most of his students were sincere about the spiritual path, he... (shrink)

Peter Geach brings the same careful attention to logical detail to these studies in the philosophy of religion and philosophy of mind as he has brought to other philosophical works. Some of the topics discussed here, however, will surprise some readers of Geach's earlier works, e.g., reincarnation, immortality, creation, praying for things to happen, and worshipping the right God. There are separate chapters on these topics as well as chapters on thought, form and existence, and the moral law. It should (...) be noted for readers who may not share Geach's interest in some of these topics that each of the chapters makes important points about issues which go beyond the topics of immediate interest. For example, Geach's two chapters on reincarnation and immortality are very interesting commentaries on the problem of personal identity, and the chapter on praying for things to happen is an interesting essay on time. The chapters on existence and thought pick up themes from Geach's earlier writing on Aquinas and Frege and mental acts. The Aristotelian roots of Geach's thought are clear in these essays from his account of existence and thought to his denial of clear sense to the idea of an immortality of a separate soul or its reincarnation. There is a helpful analytical index.--R. H. K. (shrink)

This dissertation argues for a metaethical theory I call "Expressive-Assertivism." Expressive-Assertivism is a distinctive, substantial refinement of dual-use metaethical theories traditionally associated with R. M. Hare, C. L. Stevenson, and, more recently, with David Copp. If true, Expressive-Assertivism clarifies, resolves, or dissolves---without, in turn, raising additional difficulties---a number of philosophical problems, including what Michael Smith calls "The Moral Problem," which many consider to be the central organizing problem in contemporary metaethics. The following are the three most important features of Expressive-Assertivism. (...) ;1. The central tenet. The proper, literal use of an ethical sentence, such as 'Donating to charity is right', is the performance of a direct expressive illocutionary act and a direct assertive illocutionary act. Recognizing that ethical sentences can be used to both directly express a speaker's attitude and directly assert something about the world captures what is intuitively compelling about "expressivist" theories---namely, that there is some strong connection between a speaker's sincere moral utterance and his or her motivations to act---and what is intuitively compelling about "descriptivist" theories---namely, that moral utterances appear to have descriptive or cognitive content and, therefore, are truth-evaluable. The Central Tenet is the feature of Expressive-Assertivism that dissolves The Moral Problem. ;2. The generality principle. The proper, literal use of an ethical sentence directly expresses an attitude, not toward the subject of the sentence, but toward things of a more general kind, namely, things that have the property picked out by the ethical predicate . ;3. The extensionality principle. A speaker directly expresses an attitude toward things that have the property picked out by an ethical predicate whenever that predicate appears in any extensional context. Together, the Extensionality and Generality Principles shield Expressive-Assertivism from many objections to traditional expressivist theories, including "The Embedding Objection," which many consider to be the most difficult problem faced by expressivists. (shrink)

Description: The book is, so to say, a bouquet in two respects. It is, first, a presentation of academic tributes, in the form of a festschrift, to a well-known Indian philosopher Professor Margaret Chatterjee; and, second, a hand-picked collection of original essays of multifaceted reflection for serious students of philosophy. Areas of study covered are various-metaphilosophy, philosophy or religion, metaphysics, aesthetics, existentialism, and Indian and comparative philosophies; and so are the lands of the philosophers who have contributed to the making (...) of this volume: India, England, Greece, America, Canada, and Japan. The work is a signal product of international cooperation and philosophy-a cause which Professor Chatterjee has been actively pursuing for long and with great success. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Fitness, Fatness, and Aesthetic Judgments of the Female Body:What the AMA Decision to Medicalize Obesity means for other Non–Normal Female BodiesSara R. Jordan“I’ll be happy to refer you to our dietician to get you on a program to help you get your weight under control before it becomes a problem”.As my new physician spun around out of the examination room door, my head spun faster. I had heard the (...) phrase “get your weight under control” twice that morning, but the contexts in which the phrase was uttered could not have been more different.At 7:30 a.m., my fitness trainer was imploring me to get my weights under control as I struggled under a bar, laden with slightly less than my body weight, to do a final set of front squats. At 11:15 a.m., my new general practitioner was imploring me to get my weight under control, by which he meant to learn how to reduce my body mass index (BMI) to match the chart prominently displayed on his office wall. The exhortation to get my weight under control meant such radically different things in these two contexts that it was difficult to comprehend the meaning of the phrase.I am 5’4” and 158 pounds. This gives me a BMI of 27.3, which means that I am considered overweight; right in the middle of the category of overweight. Or, according to the definition of the BMI found on the calculator pinned to the National Heart Lung and Blood Institutes (NHLBI) webpage, I am over fat. If the BMI is, “a measure of body fat based on height and weight that applies to adult men and women” then I carry a health–threatening percentage of body fat. If my fitness trainer, with his 12 point skin–fold caliper test is correct, my body fat percentage of 17% is within the limits expected of female (non–endurance) athletes. In terms of health, then, I am a paradox: according to one standard, I am healthy and fit, according to another, I am unhealthy and fat.As this new physician picked apart my weight, suggesting I should lose between 15 and 20 pounds to bring myself to “full health”, I found myself quite annoyed. He was a small, rail thin, man with greying hair, tired eyes, unpressed khakis, and a beaten pair of black–ish grey “Crocs” on his feet. He looked disheveled and as if he had not seen the inside of a weights room in his life. As I listened to him address my history, current vitals, and how being overweight in my 30s could lead to being [End Page 101] “fat and 40”, I looked him over and made a snap judgment of “I could bench (press) you [right out this window]”. While I was angry with his delivery, I tried to remind myself that he was an overworked physician in a multi–lingual office, trying to operate under a new paradigm in healthcare policy, practice, and diagnostic categories. Specifically, prompted by the medicalization of the condition of obesity by the American Medical Association, my physician was reflecting the professional wisdom that I suffer from a condition needing preventive treatment. He was trying to be a good practitioner to recommend preventive treatment, but to me, he was being a terrible physician.The AMA Declares Obesity a DiseaseThe declaration by the American Medical Association in 2013 that the condition of being obese is one that requires medical treatment is one that I, on the face of it, support. By inviting the medicalization of the condition, the AMA opens the door for individuals who wage a deeply personal battle with their weight to find support in their physicians’ offices and from their insurance companies. Yet, the blunt tools that are used to assess these conditions raise my ire, emotionally and intellectually.Intellectually, the use of the BMI calculator for snap diagnosis of all individuals makes easy sense. It is an easily comprehended tool and, for a normally distributed population, such a simple tool is an excellent choice. But, it stands to treat outliers like me poorly. Outliers, such as particularly fit... (shrink)

One of the more obscure arguments for Rawls’ difference principle dubbed ‘the Pareto argument for inequality’ has been criticised by G. A. Cohen (1995, 2008) as being inconsistent. In this paper, we examine and clarify the Pareto argument in detail and argue (1) that justification for the Pareto principles derives from rational selfinterest and thus the Pareto principles ought to be understood as conditions of individual rationality, (2) that the Pareto argument is not inconsistent, contra Cohen, and (3) that the (...) kind of bargaining model required to arrive at the particular unequal distribution that the difference principle picks out is a model that is not based on bargaining according to one’s threat advantage. (shrink)

This book is a very expensive disappointment. It is a series of edifying discourses on the limits of the knowledge of physics for understanding the universe in all its dimensions. To bring home the point that physics can provide no ultimate metaphysical, theological, moral/ethical, or even cosmological answers to questions which must inevitably be raised, Jaki races up and down the pages of the more reflective and perhaps near-philosophical utterances of famous physicists, chemists, etc. The fruits of his obviously omnivorous (...) reading are a welter of names, quotes, and footnotes served up to the reader en masse in an attempt to establish by authority, apparently, a general position which might or might not have been establishable by analysis and argument. There are some curiosities that may interest the historian of science in the book, but the philosophical pickings are slim.—E. A. R. (shrink)

Prosentential theorists claim that sentences such as “That’s true” are prosentences that function analogously to their better known cousins–pronouns. For example, just as we might use the pronoun ‘he’ in place of ‘James’ to transform “James went to the supermarket” into “He went to the supermarket,” so we might use the prosentenceforming operator ‘is true’ to transform “Snow is white” into “‘Snow is white’ is true.” According to the prosentential theory of truth, whenever a referring expression (for example, a definite (...) description or a quote-name) is joined to the truth predicate, the resulting statement contains no more content than the sentence(s) picked out by the referring expression. To assert that a sentence is true is simply to assert or reassert that sentence; it is not to ascribe the property of truth to that sentence. The prosentential theory is one kind of deflationary theory of truth. Like all deflationary theories, it provides an alternative to explanations of truth that analyze truth in terms of reference, predicate satisfaction or a correspondence relation. (shrink)

Can the humanities survive in an age of science? Yes, if analytic philosophers will only stop picking on traditional philosophy and recognize the latter's proper and legitimate role in society. That role according to Veatch, is one that enables man to grasp the nontechnical meaning of our everyday world where we learn to know and understand the nature of things. Such knowledge serves as the necessary ground for not only our common sense attitudes, but also for establishing values and norms (...) for a moral life. What is more, Veatch contends, this knowledge of man, his nature, and his values is not merely emotive or psychological; rather, it is factual. Using traditional logic as its organon, knowledge of a more humanistic variety can establish itself as factual in spite of analytical claims to the contrary. Thus Veatch proceeds from the general problem of the humanities versus science to the more specific area of the two logics: traditional Aristotelian logic and modern symbolic logic. The former is the proper tool of the humanities, the latter serves the method of the physical sciences. Both logics deal with facts in their respective areas. Traditional logic lays bare the facts that make human life meaningful, while symbolic logic operates with formal structures that make technological progression possible. One logic does not cancel out the other. Veatch prefers to view the two logics as a "both... and" structure rather than as an "either... or" situation. To effect this he launches a counterattack against analytic philosophy's repudiation of traditional logic. He charges certain analysts with committing a fallacy that makes necessities and impossibilities a mere function of our language rules. Veatch, however, sees our rules of language as determined by real necessities in the world. He claims that Wittgenstein's celebrated attack on the doctrine of essences never really denies Aristotle's notion of substance as the formal or intelligible aspect of individual entities. Although his justification of traditional logic as a grammar for discourse in the humanities presupposes certain metaphysical commitments, on the whole his plea for traditional philosophy is persuasive.--J. J. R. (shrink)

This book is a transcription from tapes of a course given by Tillich in the spring quarter of 1963 at the University of Chicago Divinity School. The title is somewhat misleading as Tillich spends a very limited amount of time on the period after Nietzsche--no doubt because of lack of time in the course schedule--and also devotes an entire third of the book to developing the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century philosophical, theological, and cultural background for nineteenth-century Protestant theology. He is especially (...) good on the Enlightenment and the way in which Hume, Rousseau, and Kant, though undeniably enlightened, prepared the way for the Romantic reaction to the superficial rationalism that had culminated in Deism and the bourgeois ideal of reasonable religion. Romanticism itself is viewed as the attempt to resolve the problem of the relation between the finite and the infinite; and Schleiermacher and Hegel are treated in detail as the ones who picked up the romantic problematic and carried it through to systematic theological and cultural synthesis. Tillich then explores the breakdown of the synthesis as it passed through the historical problem of Christianity, the anthropological problem, the proto-existential criticism of Schelling and Kierkegaard, the sociopolitical criticism of Marx, and the voluntaristic and Lebensphilosophie criticism of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. From here on Tillich appears to be racing with the school calendar. He gives a rapid review of the neo-Kantian-Ritschlian, Erlangen, and Harnackian schools of liberal theology, and concludes by touching briefly upon Bultmann, Troeltsch, Barth, and his own thought. The course was meant to be a survey, but Tillich's presentation of the material is so deft and unerring, and so gently guided in its historical and conceptual unfolding by his own favored theological and religious categories, that the overall impression is of a theological meditation on homo religiosus.--E. A. R. (shrink)

The primary purpose of this book is to probe the "deep common sources" of Wittgenstein’s Investigations and Remarks on the Foundation of Mathematics in his later philosophy of language. The question is whether Wittgenstein’s thought about mathematics can be presented sympathetically, and so defended from charges of superficiality or eccentricity which have often been levelled against it. There are other strands in this complex, simultaneously gripping and maddening work, including confrontations of varying extent with relevant doctrines of Dummett, Davidson, and (...) Quine, to cite the main cases. The character of Wittgenstein’s own thought was far from systematic, yet this does not seem to justify the virtual lack of systematic presentation of his defense by Wright. We can, nevertheless, pick out the main thrust of Wright’s case. The author takes his bearings by the quarrel within twentieth century philosophy of mathematics between platonism and intuitionism. Platonism may be briefly described as the view that, if p is a mathematical proposition, we know what would be the case if p were true, even if we can't show that p is true. For intuitionism, on the other hand, to know what would be the case if p were true, is impossible unless we can show that p is indeed true. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Enviornment 6.2 (2001) 119-124 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Eugene Odum: Ecosystem Ecologist and Environmentalis Eugene Odum: Ecosystem Ecologist and Environmentalist. Betty Jean Craige. The University of Georgia Press, Athens, 2001, pp. 226. $34.95. ISBN 0-8203-2281-4 (Hardback) A serendipity initiated this review. A half hour before checking my voice mail and receiving the invitation to write this review, I stood at the University of Georgia (...) Press table at the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (ASLE) conference in Flagstaff, Arizona. Picking up Betty Jean Craige's new text, I thought to myself, "This book looks interesting! I'm going to have to read it!" Not only did that wish come true; now I have the opportunity to share my thoughts.Prima facie, it may seem odd to print a review on a biography of a scientific ecologist in an environmental ethics journal. In fact, however, nothing could be more appropriate. The science of ecology is directly relevant--even essential--to the ethics of the environment: the human/nonhuman dynamic is contingent upon the identity of human beings, the essence of natural systems, and the interactive relationship between the two. As an environmental philosopher, it was this realization which directed me to the life sciences. [End Page 119]I recommend that environmental philosophers read Craige's book for at least three reasons. First, as just mentioned, the science of ecology addresses some of the necessary conditions for developing an environmental ethic--the ontology of natural systems and the relationship of biota (including Homo sapiens) with the abiotic environment.Second, and more specifically, Odum is a scientist of special concern to environmental philosophers--not to mention moral philosophers and philosophers of science--with his reticence to take seriously the is/ought (or fact/value) gap first identified by the great David Hume. As is widely known, philosophers and scientists who maintain the existence of such a gap contend that it is logically impossible to derive value-laden statements, such as ethical statements, from value-free statements, such as factual statements. According to this line of reasoning, the only way to move from the observation that human activity is causing species extinction to the imperative PRESERVE SPECIES! is another normative assumption that anthropogenic species extinction is bad. Thus Odum is at loggerheads with Bertrand Russell when the philosopher writes: "... questions as to 'values' lie wholly outside the domain of knowledge. That is to say, when we assert that this or that has 'value,' we are giving expression to our own emotions, not to a fact[.]" Siding with Russell against Odum, many ecologists refrain from making ethical (and hence environmentalist) injunctions.What makes Odum especially fascinating is that he recovered from the hangover of Modernity which numerous scientists and philosophers still suffer from: the inability of moving from descriptive science to prescriptive ethics. As Craige remarks over and over again, Odum moves easi-ly between ecology and environmentalism (p. 64): "His inclusion of human beings in ecosystems turned ecosystem ecologists into environmentalists--that is, advocates of policies and social behaviors protective to the natural environment--erasing the line traditional to Western thought between science and politics" (p. 45. See also p. xvii, p. 41). Odum's attitude marks a major breakthrough for the project of grounding environmental ethics in ecological science.Third, Odum is a great scientist whose work is relevant to a host of other philosophical issues. In our recent book, The Philosophy of Ecology: From Science to Synthesis (University of Georgia Press, 2000), Frank Golley and I struggled not to include a piece by Odum in every section of the book. Odum's work has implications for every area in the philosophy of ecology: the ontology of the ecological entity, the reductionism/holism [End Page 120] debate, the rationalism/empiricism debate, evolutionary ecology, and the relationship of ecology to ethics. In light of my work in the philosophy of ecology and familiarity with Odum's research--not to mention meeting him personally several times--I find several of Craige's statements perplexing. When she writes... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Reconfiguring Modernity: Concepts of Nature in Japanese Political IdeologyWilliam R. LaFleurReconfiguring Modernity: Concepts of Nature in Japanese Political Ideology. By Julia Adeney Thomas. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 2001. Pp. xvi + 225.Books written by persons who self-identify as intellectual historians usually lend themselves more easily to review in history journals than in those that focus on philosophy. Reconfiguring Modernity: Concepts of Nature in (...) Japanese Political Ideology, Julia Adeney Thomas' study of certain Meiji period thinkers is such a book. In 2002 it was awarded the John K. Fairbank Prize in history. Taking a cue to step into her topic from an early essay by Robert Bellah, one in which he had written that "the concern for nature has been a pervasive one in much of modern Japanese thought,"1 Thomas specifies her own search: "It is now time to recover the historical mutability of that concept, and to describe precisely its politics at particular moments in Japan's confrontation with modernity, both within the dominant ideology of the moment and with the alternatives to it" (pp. 30-31).Thomas is among those American students of Japan apparently trained to challenge the massive amounts of excavational scholarship and mile-high reputations of Japanese scholars of Japan. She picks arguments with some of the most highly respected Japanese minds of the twentieth century: the late Maruyama Masao, the late Ienaga Saburō, and Matsumoto Sannosuke.Although Thomas' criticisms tend to focus on those portions of the works of these prolific scholars that have been translated into English,2 some of her criticisms are certainly interesting and possibly valid. For instance, Maruyama, "who repeatedly excoriated Japan's reliance on the political authority of nature (shizen) " (p. 16), envisioned modernity, surely desirable, as involving a move "against Chu Hsi Confucianism"—that is, "an inevitable turning away from nature (shizen) to invention (sakui)" (p. 17). Nevertheless, Maruyama's hero, Ogyū Sorai (1666-1728), had understood "the narrative of modernity" but, tragically, stepped "back from invention at the critical moment, unable, it would seem, to embrace it as the culmination of the historical process" (p. 19).Thomas, rightly I think, indicates that most left and liberal thinkers in Europe and America in the early and mid-twentieth century were skeptical of an invocation of the "natural" in the making of political theory.3 However, she stakes a claim to being part of a different generation, one that rejects the old binary opposition between nature and culture—as well as the further assumption that Western political thinking had successfully disengaged itself from invoking the category of what is natural. Taking a cue from Stephen Toulmin's demonstration of how many of Europe's modernizers embraced and used, rather than rejected, concepts of nature,4 Thomas claims that, at least for us who now live "'on the far side of modernity,' nature can be seen [End Page 172] as multivalent rather than the antonym in a series of binary opposites." In practice this means that for us now, "nature can no longer appear synonymous with the anti-modern, the past, the oppressive, or the Orient" (p. 25).I ask that the reader highlight the sentences above. They constitute what in my view is the most important and by far the most interesting move made in Refiguring Modernity. I will return to them below. First, however, I will recapitulate the progression of the book's chapters. They move in the pattern of linear history. The first, discussed already and titled "The Trouble with Nature," introduces the problem. The second, "The Topographical Imagination of Tokugawa Politics," deals with thinkers of the Tokugawa (Edo) period (1600-1868). Theirs was an era during which, although Chinese claims to being both topographically and morally central had long been dutifully accepted in Japan, strong-thinking Japanese argued that China's frequent dynastic changes demonstrated that "centralness need not be possessed physically to be enacted morally" (p. 42). By outdoing contemporaneous Chinese in terms of being Confucian, Neo-Confucian, or whatever it was that had its origins in China, Japanese and in some sense Japan as a whole were imagined to be the "real China."5... (shrink)

This is an excellent addition to Bobbs-Merrill's "Text and Commentary Series." In addition to the text of the Principles, there are eleven critical essays, three of which are original with this volume. Turbayne has arranged the essays to parallel the unfolding of the major themes in the Principles. Thus, he himself opens with "Berkeley's Metaphysical Grammar," which picks up and develops the theme of the centrality of the study of language to the philosophical enterprise, a point Berkeley makes in his (...) "Preface." Next, W. H. Hay and Richard Van Iten are paired together with different perspectives on Berkeley's nominalism. By way of comment on esse is percipi, G. E. Moore and W. T. Stace present their respective refutations of idealism and realism. Richard Popkin discusses skepticism and Berkeley. Popper examines the ways in which Berkeley anticipated Mach and Einstein, as well as significant features of contemporary philosophy of science. Turbayne and Cornman offer differing appraisals of the philosophy of mind that is sketched in the Principles. Paul Olscamp attempts to systematize the elements of Berkeley's critical theory. Finally, J. D. Mabbott treats of "The Place of God in Berkeley's Philosophy" and argues for a radical voluntarism in Berkeley--a not surprising analysis, but one which often gets buried under the epistemological issues raised in the Principles. Turbayne has also supplied an excellent introduction, a chronology of Berkeley's life, a working bibliography, and an analytical index. This enhances the usefulness of an already first-rate book.--E. A. R. (shrink)

This book is the second part of the second volume of Ricœur's projected three volume work, La Philosophie de la Volonté. The first volume has already been translated as The Voluntary and the Involuntary and the first part of the second volume, which is titled generally Finitude et Culpabilité, has been translated as Fallible Man. The third part of the second volume has been projected as an Empirics of the Will, while the third volume has been broadcast as a Poetics (...) of the Will. The entire project moves from phenomenology to thought, in an attempt to give an account of man from the standpoint of Will, or more dramatically put, from the standpoint of human freedom and all the vicissitudes of existence that come with this freedom. Evil is one of the more portentous consequences of human freedom, and this book is concerned to explore it in a fashion which is initially phenomenological. But it moves toward the reflective thought that will emerge full blown in the Empirics. There Ricœur will offer a transcendental validation of the hermeneutic he has adopted to explain man through interpreting the way man presents himself to himself in his prereflective language and comportment with the world. In the first part of the book Ricœur picks up the leading symbols of evil, given through the phenomenon of confession, and follows them in their dialectical progression from evil as defilement, through evil as sin, to evil as guilt. His discussions of the Sumerian, Babylonian, and Hebrew writings, as they witness to these stages in the symbolization of evil, are exceptionally sensitive and thoroughly informed by the scholarship. Ricœur then turns his attention to the systematization of these symbols in the various archaic myths, giving first a typology of these myths and, finally, a dynamics of the myths. In the latter his Christian as well as his hermeneutical standpoints begin to assert themselves more explicitly. The preferred myth on evil, for Ricœur, is the Adamic myth, and he moves outward from there to the tragic myth, as expressed in the Greek dramatists, to the theogonic myth as expressed in Hesiod and the Sumerian and Babylonian literature, and finally to the orphic myth of the exiled soul. In addition to sustaining the development of the main thesis about the way in which a phenomenology of the symbols of evil gives rise to thought, Ricœur has many individual analyses and insights that are extremely exciting. His consideration of Plato's supposed dualism, which he interprets along the lines of Pauline dualism, which is to say, as not being an ontological dualism, is one of the more striking of these analyses. The combined rigor of argument and richness of material in this book signal a high place for it in the recent philosophical literature in general.--E. A. R. (shrink)

We argue that broad, simplegeneralizations, not specifically linked tocontingencies, will rarely approach truth in ecologyand evolutionary biology. This is because mostinteresting phenomena have multiple, interactingcauses. Instead of looking for single universaltheories to explain the great diversity of naturalsystems, we suggest that it would be profitable todevelop general explanatory frameworks. A frameworkshould clearly specify focal levels. The process orpattern that we wish to study defines our level offocus. The set of potential and actual states at thefocal level interacts with conditions at (...) thecontiguous lower and upper levels of organization,through sets of many-to-one and one-to-manyconnections. The number of initiating conditions andtheir permutations at the lower level define thepotential states at the focal level, whereas theactual state is constrained by the upper-levelboundary conditions. The most useful generalizationsare explanatory frameworks, which are road maps tosolutions, rather than solutions themselves. Suchframeworks outline what is understood about boundaryconditions and initiating conditions so that aninvestigator can pick and choose what is required toeffectively understand a specific event or situation. We discuss these relationships in terms of examplesinvolving sex ratio and mating behavior, competitivehierarchies, insect life-histories and the evolutionof sex. (shrink)