Foundations of Civic Engagement is a comprehensive survey and reassessment of the entire field of social and political philosophy. Suitable for use as a primary text for courses on political thought, this book explores the basic arguments of the most important historical and contemporary figures—including Ancient Greek, modern and contemporary theories of communitarianism, social contract, feminism, postmodernsim, Marxism, and theories of communicative actions—and offers a thematic critique and integration of these philosophies.

Intuitively, it seems that some belief-forming practices have the following three properties: 1. They are rational practices, and the beliefs that we form by means of these practices are themselves rational or justified beliefs. 2. Even if in most cases these practices reliably lead to correct beliefs (i.e., beliefs in true propositions), they are not infallible: it is possible for beliefs that are formed by means of these practices to be incorrect (i.e., to be beliefs in false propositions). 3. The (...) rationality of these practices is basic or primitive. That is, the rationality of these practices is not due simply to the availability, by means of some process of reasoning that relies purely on other practices, of a rational or justified belief in the reliability of these practices. -/- How can there be such practices? This paper offers an answer to that question. (shrink)

First published in 1938, An Essay on Critical Appreciation aims to provide a language suited for the explication on beauty. This explication is not based merely on emotion but is motivated by contemplation and discrimination. By virtue of being rendered in a discourse, an appreciation can claim to be critical or discriminating and 'beauty' can be said to have characteristics. The search of such a language takes the author through the contemplation on the meaning of 'beauty', entertaining contrary views, and (...) reaching at an understanding of the aesthetic situation. This book will be of interest to students of English literature, philosophy and art. (shrink)

The _Symbolic Forms_ has long been considered the greatest of Cassirer’s works. Into it he poured all the resources of his vast learning about language and myth, religion, art, and science—the various creative symbolizing activities and constructions through which man has expressed himself and given intelligible objective form to this experience. “These three volumes alone make an outstanding contribution to epistemology and to the human power of abstraction. It is rather as if ‘The Golden Bough’ had been written in philosophical (...) rather than in historical terms.”—F.I.G. Rawlins, _Nature_. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to defend a broad concept of visual perception, according to which it is a sufficient condition for visual perception that subjects receive visual information in a way which enables them to give reliably correct answers about the objects presented to them. According to this view, blindsight, non-epistemic seeing, and conscious visual experience count as proper types of visual perception. This leads to two consequences concerning the role of the phenomenal qualities of visual experiences. First, (...) phenomenal qualities are not necessary in order to see something, because in the case of blindsight, subjects can see objects without experiences phenomenal qualities. Second, they cannot be intentional properties, since they are not essential properties of visual experiences, and because the content of visual experiences cannot be constituted by contingent properties. (shrink)

St. Thomas Aquinas enables the reader to appreciate both Thomas's continuity with earlier thought and his creative independence. After a useful account of the life and work of St. Thomas, McInerny shows how the thoughts of Aristotle, Boethius, and Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius were assimilated into the personal wisdom of St. Thomas. He also offers a helpful study of the distinctive features of Aquinas's Christian theology.

We propose that the primary cause of schizophrenia is a pathological extension of synaptic pruning involving local connectivity that unfolds ordinarily during adolescence. Computer simulations suggest that this pathology provides reasonable accounts of a range of symptoms in schizophrenia, and is consistent with recent postmortem and genetic studies. NMDA-receptors play a regulatory role in maintaining and/or eliminating cortical synapses, and therefore may play a pathophysiological role.

A central source of socially meaningful signals is the face, which can be visually analyzed to understand a person's emotions, intentions, beliefs, and desires, along with information about that person's social status, approachability, age, and gender. This article reviews the neural basis of the perception of such signals in humans, focusing on facial expression and gaze, and touching on lesser-studied signals such as pupil dilation and blushing. It discusses the involvement of structures such as the insula, orbitofrontal cortex, amygdala, and (...) superior temporal gyrus, which are studied in some detail with respect to how they process social stimuli. It reveals that social perception also involves information from other modalities and depends on the context in which signals occur. (shrink)

The _Symbolic Forms_ has long been considered the greatest of Cassirer’s works. Into it he poured all the resources of his vast learning about language and myth, religion, art, and science—the various creative symbolizing activities and constructions through which man has expressed himself and given intelligible objective form to this experience. “These three volumes alone make an outstanding contribution to epistemology and to the human power of abstraction. It is rather as if ‘The Golden Bough’ had been written in philosophical (...) rather than in historical terms.”—F.I.G. Rawlins, _Nature_. (shrink)

v. 1. Beginnings to Plotinus.--v. 2. Philosophy from St. Augustine to Ockham.--v. 3. Renaissance to the Romantic Age.--v. 4. Philosophy from the Romantic Age to the Age of Positivism.--v. 5. Philosophy from the Age of Positivism to the Age of Analysis.

Collection of papers presented at the University of Notre Dame in September, 1966.

The present volume brings together a number of things I have written on the subject of analogy since the appearance of The Logic of Analogy in 1961. In that book I tried to disengage St Thomas' teaching on analogous names from various subsequent accretions which, in my opinion, had obscured its import. The book was widely reviewed, various points in it were rightly criticized, but its main argument, namely, that analogical signification is a logical matter and must be treated as (...) such, was, if often confronted, left finally, I think, standing. The studies brought together now reflect the same concentration on the teaching of Aquinas. I am not of the opinion that everything important on the question of analogy, and certainly not everything of importance on those problems which elicit the doctrine of analogy, was said by Thomas Aquinas. But it was my decision, for my personal work, first to achieve as much clarity as I could with respect to the teaching of Thomas, and then to go on to other writers, both ancient and modern. I am currently engaged in working out the relations among equivo cation, analogy and metaphor in Aristotle. When that study is com pleted, I shall turn eagerly to some quite recent contributions to the nature of religious language. In short, the present work, which is by and large a prolongation of my attempt at an exegesis of Thomistic texts, marks the end of one phase of my research into the problem of analogy. (shrink)

In this article the author analyzes the different ways in which one can speak of an end of philosophy. He (she) shows the way in which the key to the continuation of philosophy in our days is only attainable through the overcoming of sophistry and skepticism.

The philosophy of George Herbert Palmer, by C. M. Bakewell.--Personal traits of George Herbert Palmer, by E. W. Hocking--Faculty minute on the life and service of Professor Palmer.

O presente estudo é uma proposta de aplicação do triângulo de Pascal às generalizações das possibilidades de valores de verdade das proposições elementares do Tractatus de Wittgenstein. O Objetivo da aplicação desta notação é facilitar a manipulação e a análise de uma grande quantidade de proposições elementares preservando o escopo de possibilidades de verdade, algo que a notação das tabelas de verdade de Wittgenstein não é capaz de satisfazer. Para realizar esta tarefa, executo os seguintes passos: introduzo a teoria da (...) figuração, apresento como o autor expressa as possibilidades de verdade das proposições, além de expor o método e a notação de generalização das possibilidades de verdade. Em seguida, defino e exemplifico o triângulo de Pascal como notação alternativa e, por fim, verifico a validade da notação do triângulo no contexto das definições de número, soma e produto aritmético do Tractatus, de modo a preservar a consistência da notação com o pensamento do filósofo. (shrink)